Three black boys in white suits are mopping up the hall when I come out of the dorm.
They usually get up before me and commit sex acts in the hall before I can catch them. I feel their hate.
When they hate like this, it’s better if they don’t see me. I walk along the wall quietly as dust in my canvas shoes, but they somehow feel my fear and they all look up, all three at once, their eyes’re glittering out of the black faces.
“Here’s the Chief. The super Chief, fellows. Ol’ Chief Broom. Here you go, Chief Broom.”
One of them puts a mop in my hand and points to the spot where I must clean today, and I go.
They start talking behind me, heads close together. Hospital secrets, hate and death. They think I’m deaf and dumb, so they’re not afraid to talk about their hate secrets when I’m nearby. Everybody thinks I’m deaf and dumb. I’m cagey enough to fool them that much. I’m half Indian, and if this fact ever helped me in this dirty life, it helped me to be cagey, helped me all these years.
I’m mopping near the ward door when the Big Nurse opens it with a key. She comes in and locks the door behind her.
She’s carrying her wicker bag in the shape of a tool box. She’s had it during all the years I’ve been here. It’s of loose-weave and I can see inside it; there’s no compactor lipstick or woman things, that bag is full of the things she’s going to use in her duties today – wheels and cogs, tiny pills that gleam like porcelain, needles, forceps, watchmakers’ pliers, rolls of copperwire…
She nods at me as she goes past me. I push the mop back to the wall and smile and try not to let her see my eyes – they can’t tell so much about you if your eyes are closed.
In my dark I hear how the things in her wicker bag clash as she passes me in the hall. When I open my eyes she’s near the glass Nurses’ Station where she’ll spend the day sitting at her desk and looking out of her window and making notes on what goes on in front of her in the day room during the next eight hours. Her face looks pleased and peaceful with the thought.
Then… she sees those black boys. They’re still talking in the hall. They didn’t hear how she came into the ward. They sense that she’s glaring down at them now, but it’s too late. It was a mistake to group up and whisper together when she was expected on the ward. She bends and advances on where they’re trapped at the end of the corridor. She knows what they’ve been saying, and I can see that she’s furious. She’s going to tear the black bastards limb from limb, she’s so furious. She looks around her. Nobody up to see, just old Broom Bromden the half-breed Indian back there who is hiding behind his mop and can’t call for help because he can’t talk. So she really lets herself go and her painted mouth twists, stretches to an open snarl. I hold my breath. My God, this time they’re gonna do it! This time they let the hate build up too high and they’re gonna tear one another to pieces before they realize what they’re doing!
But right at that moment all the patients start coming out of the dorms to check on what’s the hullabaloo about and she has to change back before she’s caught in the shape of her hideous real self. The patients are still half asleep. They see the head nurse. She is smiling and calm and cold as usual. She is telling the black boys that they shouldn’t stand in a group and gossip when it is Monday morning and there is such a lot to get done on the first morning of the week…
“…old Monday morning, you know, boys…”
“Yeah, Miz Ratched…
“…and we have a number of appointments this morning, so perhaps, if your group talking isn’t too urgent…”
“Yeah, Miz Ratched…”
She stops and nods at some of the patients who stand around and stare out of eyes all red and puffy with sleep. She nods once to each. Her face is smooth, like an expensive baby doll, and baby-blue eyes, small nose, pink little nostrils – everything works perfectly together except the orange color on her lips and fingernails, and the size of her bosom. A mistake was made somehow in manufacturing when those big, womanly breasts were put on that otherwise perfect work, and you can see how bitter she is about it.
The men are still standing and waiting. They want to know what appointments she was telling the black boys about, so she remembers me and says, “And since it is Monday, boys, it will be a good start on the week if we shave poor Mr. Bromden first this morning, before breakfast, and see if we can’t avoid some of the noise he usually makes.”
Before anybody can turn to look for me I hide in the mop closet, shut the door after me, hold my breath. Shaving before you get breakfast is the worst time. When you got something under your belt you’re stronger and more wide awake, and the bastards who work for the Combine can’t use one of their machines on you in place of an electric shaver. But when you shave before breakfast – six-thirty in the morning – then what chance you got against one of their machines?
