Short Story / On Using Restraints (Analysis)
The UT shuttle swung through the bus circle with a swirl of leaves in its wake. I tossed the empty bottle I had been shifting between hands and stepped toward the bus as it stopped. Its door snapped open, and the driver raised his palm to my face.
“Got your ID?” he asked.
I was flustered. “Since when do I need an ID?”
“Since seven, when we combine routes,” he said.
My cheeks grew hot. A crowd of students had gathered behind me, and I felt their eyes on the back of my neck.
“Look, I just got out of the emergency room like, an hour ago.” I lifted my hair, uncovering a clump of gauze on my neck.
“Damn, girl. What happened?” he asked.
“Rough day at work.”
“I hear you, young lady.”
I sat in back and watched the others show their ID’s and sit down to untangle their ear buds. Tears welled up, burning my eyes. I turned to the window and surveyed the empty university streets, glowing burnt orange under the street lamps. My gaze recoiled and found my reflection in the bus’ window. I was twenty-eight and had nothing. No degree, no husband, no kids. Only a hungry kitty and a state job that threatened to kill me. Twenty-eight… In twenty years I would be forty-eight, and in forty years I would be dead.
The gauze covered a bite from a patient at the Austin State School. Since they had hired me, I was sole supervisor to Caroline: sixteen years old, mildly retarded, and bipolar. From two to ten every day, I was stuck at arm’s length from her, holding a thick, red binder, doing everything necessary to keep her from harming herself.
For once, I made the best of it. A few jobs earlier, a coworker had quoted Martin Luther King to me. Something about how even a street sweeper must sweep streets as well as Michelangelo painted. The idea had stuck with me, and I did my job as best I could. I treated Caroline with respect and spoke to her as if we were on the same level, which most of the other workers would not do. We played games, watched movies, and even attended the state school’s chapel together.
As much as she liked me, I was still subject to her mood swings. While we were coloring Christmas decorations earlier that night, I spotted some contraband on her desk. Some half-ass had let a box of pencils slip in, and I was furious. Since Caroline had such a high risk of self-injury, she was only allowed to use crayons.
“Sorry, buddy, but I’m going to have to take these--”
“You kiss my ass, you fucking twat,” she yelled, and took a swing.
I ducked away, and she threw the box, which landed in the corner of the room with a clatter. Pencils flew everywhere, like tiny wooden missiles. Not satisfied with her marksmanship, she began to throw other things at me: sneakers, stuffed animals, books. They all missed, though I stood in one place the whole time.
“Cut it out, Caroline. You’ll only make things worse for yourself,” I said. “At this rate, I’m going to have a lot to put in your file.”
“You fuck off, Gracie, you stupid fucking cocksucker,” she screamed, and picked up her boombox, preparing to launch it at me.
“You know what? Do it. I dare you. They’ll take me off you for good.”
“Go to hell.”
I ran from the room and called for help. Behind me, the stereo crashed against the wall, and suddenly I felt her weight on my back, her hands gripping my hair. I dropped the binder and tripped over it, sending us both onto the dirty linoleum.
“Let me go!” I tried to unclench her fistfuls of hair, but her grip was subhuman.
That’s when I felt the bite. I screamed as loud as I could. Footsteps thundered up the hallway until I heard the unit coordinator's voice.
“What the fuck!” she yelled.
The weight lifted, and I ran down the hall. When I reached the front door, I looked back to find the woman struggling alone with Caroline. Since she had accused the other workers of abusing her, they could only watch helplessly, forbidden to touch her even in an emergency. I walked out the front door and heard it lock behind me.
At first, I refused to go to the emergency room, but my boss told me I wasn’t allowed back without a medical release. And I did want my job didn’t I? Of course I did; there was rent to pay. I waited two hours in the emergency room before the doctor looked at the bite, flushed it out with some diluted antiseptic, and injected a tetanus shot into my arm. I signed the release papers and walked out into the night.
Since I had been stuck with that miserable job, I had become completely immersed in the culture, forgetting about the rest of the population and its skewed ideas about mental patients. When I got hired, I had such high hopes of changing their perception and truly helping people. But I never did.
There were many times when I knew the state school wasn’t helping anyone. Like when my boss yelled at the patients because she was having a bad day. Or when a coworker came in with a hamburger and ate it in front of the patients, who just stared, probably thinking about their unpalatable dinners.
I was doubtful on the first day, when I stepped into the patients’ vocational training room. During training, I had been pumped full of propaganda about how “we never allow our patients to sort rags.” To my amazement, however, the twelve women there were picking up oily red shop towels and putting them into different bins based on how torn up they were. When my boss came in and announced that it was payday, all the clients flocked to her to get their money.
Even before Caroline was assigned to me, she ran up and said, “Hey, new lady. Guess what? I got seven dollars and fifty-eight cents this week.”
At the time I was shocked by how little they were paid. Still, they never much complained about the work, and they spent the money as soon as they got it, usually on that night’s dinner. We weren’t all that different. I worked with what others treated like rags and was also happy to spend my money.
“Stacy is just retarded,” said a whiny female seated in front of me.
As the bus rocked around a corner, I opened my eyes and glared at the back of the head I suspected it came from. What piqued my anger more than anything was the casual use of the word “retard.” Even though my job made me sick, I still had the common decency to respect my patients. In my book, calling something “retarded” was the like calling my patients trash. And they weren’t; that dumb brunette sitting in front of me on the bus was. Fantasies played in my mind of how beautiful my fist would look in that ugly cunt’s little mouth, but I managed to restrain myself. The bus lurched to a stop, and I got off.
“Thanks, mister,” I yelled over my shoulder.
“Don’t mention it. Just try to have a good night, all right?”
When I entered my apartment, I had to hold my breath. The stench of a dirty litterbox burned my nostrils. The sight of the place was no better than its smell; it looked like someone had thrown a grenade into a dorm room. An Iron Maiden poster with one corner eaten away by years of moving and thumbtacking hung on the wall next to the television. CD’s were stacked haphazardly on a Cheeto rack that I had garbage-picked from the back of a 7-11. Cat toys, half-chewed with little tufts of poly-fill sticking out, littered the living room floor. On the coffee table were three Lone Star cans and a patch of dried brown fluid that had once been coffee. A few unfinished crossword puzzles were on the couch next to a crocheted pillow with another mystery spot. The Papasan was filled with dirty laundry, and Butter, my cat, sat in the middle, licking his balls. He leaped down and ran up to me with his fat gut swaying back and forth.
“Nyeeerrr…” he said in the crankiest cat voice he could muster.
“Nyer to you too,” I said, as he wove his fat yellow body around my legs. “You must be hungry.”
He led me to the kitchen, where the bowl I had filled that morning was empty.
“Jesu Christo, fatass. You’re eating me out of house and home.”
I opened the cabinet to find the can of tuna I had been saving for him. He meowed excitedly. I spooned half the can on the plate for him and left the other half for myself.
“Eat while you can. There might not be any more in a month or so.”
The blinking light on my answering machine caught my eye. Oh, boy, I thought, collectors. I knew the routine. I pressed play, and an electronic voice told me I had sixty days to get in touch with…Erase.
As the next message began, another electronic voice greeted me: “Hello, Gracie Turk. Your Shot in the Dark mailbox contains one message. The confirmation code is 6549878. Thank you for using the Austin Chronicle Shot in the Dark.”
Shot in the Dark, I thought, as I scribbled down the number. When was I so desperate that I put up a personal ad?
Then I remembered the night I drank a bottle of Rex Goliath at Trophy’s out of a styrofoam cup and came home crying because I was lonely. I had just returned from another draining day at the state school and had no one to commiserate with. Roger, my only friend in the city, had a new girlfriend who thought I was a bad influence. Everyone else was back home, married, or busy with grad school. In my slump, I had become one of those desperate people I used to mock. On my desk, under the envelopes I had saved from collection letters, was an index card with the first draft of the ad:
Drinking buddy needed. Preferably male. Must be nonjudgmental.
Oh, God, what’s wrong with me? My mother would disown me if she knew I had placed a personal ad. “The only good place to find a husband is church,” she always said. It was advice I never listened to, since I hung around bars well before I was of age and well after the joy of drinking had worn off. A cocktail of bad judgment, depression, and loneliness often influenced my decisions and I fully recognized this as one of them. My self-destructive side was beginning to play Devil’s Advocate. C’mon Gracie, have a little fun. After tonight, you’ve earned it. Besides, it’s not an actual personal ad; you’re just looking for a drinking buddy. And aren’t you the least bit curious as to what kind of pathetic moron would answer such an ad?
Once I had figured out the system and passwords and hit every number on the keypad about six times, I was finally able to retrieve my message.
A whiny male voice greeted me: “Ummm…I’m looking for a drinking buddy too. Give me a call. My cell is 912-6360.”
He was so excited, he didn’t leave a name. This was going to be awkward, I thought, as I dialed his number. The phone rang four times and my nerves nearly made me hang up.
“Hello?” the whiny voice said.
“Oh, um, hi,” I said and paused. Shit…What do I say now? “This is the lady with the, uh, ad in the Chronicle…Drinking buddy?”
“Oh, yeah. I was wondering when you’d call.”
Was this guy desperate or what? I pictured a bald man wrapped in a ratty old bathrobe, sitting in a faded green armchair and staring intently at his phone.
“So, uh, how do you want to do this?” he asked.
“Just come over to my house. BYOB.”
“Okay. Where do you live?”
I told him my address and gave him brief directions.
“Is there anything you want me to bring?”
I thought for a minute. Did I have any wine? Maybe, but if this guy was offering, why not?
“Yeah. How about a bottle of Rex Goliath?”
“Um, okay. What kind?” he asked.
“I don’t care. They all taste the same.”
“All right…So, uh…See you soon.”
“Yeah, okay. Bye.”
I walked across the living room and plopped onto the couch. Even though I knew company was coming, I was too exhausted to clean up the place. I was probably too exhausted to have company, but I needed to talk to someone who wouldn’t attack me. Oh well, I thought. The ad did say ‘nonjudgmental,’ after all. The back of my neck was still kind of tender, so a bottle of wine would come in handy. I picked up the remote and started flipping channels. Nothing looked appealing, but I wanted to find something silly to take my mind off how useless my job made me feel. Finally, I settled on the Daily Show. Al Franken was on, talking about a new book that I refused to buy until it came out in paperback. I tried to keep my mind on the show, but it kept returning to work.
Part of me was still in shock over what happened. I had done so much to help Caroline in her treatment, and she was willing to compromise it all over a box of pencils. She wasn’t grateful for my help, and she surely wouldn’t be apologetic for her actions tomorrow. She was never apologetic. Why bother anymore? Maybe I should just quit. Sure, it would be easy to wake up tomorrow and tell my boss, but then what would I do? Jobs didn’t just drop out of the sky. Before this one, I had worked at another treatment facility for kids with behavior problems, and I ended up walking off the job after an especially violent night shift. After that, I tried to find some sort of office job, but every place required experience, and it wasn’t like I knew what I was looking for anyway. When my unemployment was about to run out, the state school called. I wasn’t thrilled, but during training it seemed like it was a place that actually cared about people. Maybe, for once, I could take pride in my job. When training was over, and I was placed on my unit, I was disheartened to find that this was just as miserable as the treatment center. Still, walking off of this job would make me feel like a quitter, and it would make my resume look even worse.
The old broken doorbell clicked a few times. People often tried to use it before resorting to knocking. Usually they were from nice apartments, whose management actually fixed things. I looked over and bit my lip. Oh, god, it’s him, I thought, and realized we hadn’t exchanged names. I got up, turned off the TV, and opened the door.
“Hi…” the man in the doorway said with a grimace, probably realizing he didn’t know my name either. He was only a few inches taller than me, with thin blond hair. Despite his receding hairline, he looked close to my age. In each hand was a brown paper bag.
“Hi. Uh, yeah, my name’s Gracie,” I said.
“Yeah, mine’s Kellan,” he said.
We stood there in silence for a moment, not knowing what to do. He didn’t look like a serial killer, nor did he have the creepy vibes of a serial rapist. He did, however, strike me as the greasy kind of guy who lurked in corners of triple x stores and would eventually go to jail for the volumes of child pornography on his computer. Shit, he probably alphabetized it by genre.
“Well, come on in,” I said, arching my eyebrows and sucking in my breath.
He stared in awe of his surroundings. Maybe I should have cleaned up after all. I felt my face flush.
“Oh, man. I’m really sorry about the mess,” I said. “I just got home from work and haven’t had a chance to clean up yet.”
“Naw, man. It’s cool. I like your place,” he said, staring at the cat, who looked up and hissed. The artificial way he tried to adopt my speech grated my ears.
“Butter,” I scolded.
Butter jumped up and ran into the bedroom, as fast as his bulk would allow. Kellan laughed.
“You named your cat ‘Butter’? Whatever happened to ‘Fluffy’?”
I thought this was an obnoxious way to break the ice. Two can play that game, I thought.
“’Fluffy’ is what unimaginative people name their cats. I named him ‘Butter’ because he’s yellow and soft, like homemade butter,” I said, not liking where things were headed. “Allrighty. So why don’t you pick out some music and I’ll open the wine?” I pointed to the Cheeto rack.
He handed me the two paper-swathed bottles and started to browse my cd collection. I took the wine out of the bags and found that he had brought Rex Goliath merlot and chardonnay. The pussy-ass chardonnay would be his bottle. Still, I wasn’t crazy about drinking merlot, just because it’s what Roger and I used to drink when we went to Trophy’s, before that god-awful bitch took him away.
“Hey Gracie, you got any Coldplay? What’s the Flaming Lips all about?”
Christ, was this guy kidding?
I walked back into the living room where he was still staring at the cd rack, and handed him his bottle. He looked surprised that his wine wasn’t in a glass, but he lifted it to his lips while I put a Johnny Cash cd on. I sat down at the dining table and he joined me, then immediately started babbling about himself, between long gulps of chardonnay.
“See, I just can’t get used to these Austin drivers. They’re just so slow, and what’s with this waving when they pass you?”
I put down my bottle. “Well, when I used to drive, I waved out of courtesy to thank the person for letting me in. And Texas used to have a campaign called ‘Drive Friendly’, which means you wave to other drivers.”
“Oh. How cute. In LA, we just cut off ‘em off. But don’t get me wrong, Austin’s all right. I mean, you guys have that awesome frog, and Stevie Ray Vaughn, and Buffalo Exchange…”
He kept yammering on about how cool he thought Austin was. Each time he took a swig from his bottle, a bulky gold ring with a red stone glinted in the fluorescent light.
“Are you wearing your high school ring?” I asked.
He abruptly put down the bottle, choking on chardonnay. It was half empty. He was drunk, but I had yet to even get a buzz.
“No. This is my college ring,” he said, and shoved it in my face. The words ‘University of California’ swayed back and forth, as if they were challenging me to catch up with them.
I pushed his hand back to his side of the table and said, “Whoa, buddy. You almost decked- “
“This ring symbolizes seventeen years of hard work,” he explained, and took a celebratory swig of wine, as if he had just graduated all over again. “I’m proud to be an alumnus of,” he looked down at his ring and hiccupped, “UCLA.”
“Oh, okay. That’s good,” I said, realizing I would have to carry him to his car when he passed out, which hopefully would be soon. Which one was his car? Probably the one with the car alarm that spewed eighteen different sirens during thunderstorms.
“So, Gracie,” he said, slurring my name, “what do you do?”
That question always burned my eardrums, because I felt like people used it to size others up. Since I never finished college, the question stung even more, because usually the people asking this had the life I envied. Looking away, I sighed.
“I work at the Austin State School.”
He looked taken aback. “You mean there’s another college in Austin? I didn’t know-“
“No.” This guy was so ignorant it hurt. “The Austin State School is like a mental hospital. Kind of like the state hospital, only we have clients who are both mentally retarded and mentally ill.”
I sipped my merlot. Kellan went silent, digesting what I told him. Johnny Cash sang about the unfortunate fate of Jacob Green. Suddenly, a knowing look flashed across his face.
“So wait. You like, work with ‘tards, huh?”
Hearing the abbreviation was even worse than hearing the whole thing casually tossed around, especially since it came from a man whom Roger would refer to as a ‘tool’. As I clenched my teeth and tried to control my temper, a certain training exercise at the state school came to mind. My training group sat in a circle around a volunteer, pelting them with terms of abuse. Someone yelled out ‘tard’ and it had shocked me to realize how insensitive people could be.
“I kind of work with ‘tards too. You ever hear of the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied, barely managing to keep it together.
“Well, I’m their senior webmaster.”
Why did this guy have to trivialize my job? I picked up the bottle and put it down, deciding I was done drinking for the night. My teeth clenched tighter, and I felt my lips purse.
“I’m sorry, but how does designing a webpage make your job like mine?”
“You know, crazies and ‘tards come to the shelter too…” he started.
“Well, it’s not the same,” I snapped.
Kellan probably knew he had stepped into hostile territory at that point. He changed his tone.
“Just so you know, I deeply admire people who help others,” he said.
It was a sort of truce on his part, but he sounded just as hollow as the guy from the insurance agency who said the same thing before telling me to apply elsewhere.
“Hey, what happened to your neck?” he asked, pointing to the gauze.
In my anger, I had forgotten about the lump of gauze jutting from the side of my neck.
“Oh, well, today wasn’t a good day at work,” I started. “A client bit me.”
“Holy shit. That’s crazy. Why’d they do that?” he asked.
“I took her box of pencils away, because she was going to hurt herself.”
He looked confused. “How?”
“Pretty easy, actually. The sharp points of pencils can break the skin if applied with enough pressure. Also, patients will sometimes bite off the eraser and use the metal to cut themselves. If a patient mentions suicide, we have to take away pencils.”
Kellan seemed satisfied. He looked thoughtful for a moment, and then took another gulp of wine. Then his forehead wrinkled again.
“Well, don’t you guys put them in straightjackets or something?”
I sighed. “No. They quit using straightjackets long before I started working there. If our patients get out of hand, we have to restrain them ourselves.”
He stared at me quizzically, and then a silly grin came over his face. After sucking down the last dregs of his chardonnay, he stood up and held his arms out.
“Do me,” he said.
“What?” I asked.
“Show me one of the restraints you use. Come on. I’ll even pretend to be one of them,” Kellan said, as he beat his chest with the side of his hand. In a slurred nasal drawl, he said, “Hey, Gracie, I’m going to bite you,” and chomped his teeth together.
“It’s not a party trick.”
“I’m going to bite you.” Chomp-chomp.
Never before had I met anyone so insensitive. I wanted him to feel as powerless and desperate as my clients felt when we had to use restraint. I remembered a particular restraint used one night when Caroline was cutting herself with a piece of glass she found. Another worker ran and jumped on her back, knocking her to the ground. Caroline cried and screamed that she wanted her mommy, while the worker held her down with her knee planted in the small of her back. I was at the far end of the room, ushering the other patients out, watching in horror, torn between calling the investigators and running over to help. With Kellan, it was as if tonight’s shift had been extended and he was testing me, to see if I would compromise the ethics I thought I had. Of course, at work I had done nothing. While it would be impossible to replicate the move exactly, I knew of another involving a supine position.
“Aaaarrrrggghhh,” I cried, running at him.
He looked surprised for a moment before I grabbed his arms, crossing them in front of his chest, and used my weight to push him down. We went down together hard on the floor. I tightened my grip on his crossed arms, pulling them further outward, and dug my knee into his stomach.
His look of surprise went away and he started laughing.
“Whoa. That was awesome. You do that everyday?”
I looked away in disgust and dug my fingernails into his arms. He tried to move his head upward.
“Hey, there…That’s kind of hot. You want to-“
“Get out,” I yelled, letting go of his arms and rolling off of him.
His face fell, and he wobbled as he tried to get back on his feet. “What? I thought we were having fun.”
I stomped to the front door and said, “You ask the people I have to restrain every day if they’re having fun. That’s right, people, not tards.”
I opened the door and motioned outside, “Oh, and next time you want to see how the other half lives, don’t use me as your guinea pig.”
Kellan hung his head and walked out the door. I slammed it behind him, and the impact shook his empty wine bottle. Sinking back onto the couch, I stared at the wall, trying to calm down. Why had I given in and restrained him? I felt as though I had completely compromised my ethics for no reason. How could I go back to work now, knowing what I was capable of?
I got off the couch, picked up the phone, and dialed a number I didn’t think I would ever dial again.
“This is Roger. Leave a message,” his voicemail said.
“Hey, Rog. It’s Gracie. I really need to talk to you…Umm…I don’t know. Just call me sometime, whenever you get a chance, please?”
I hung up and retreated to the couch, not sure whether he would call back. After a while, Butter snuck back into the living room and jumped in my lap. Rubbing his chin, I said, “Hey, you. Sorry about the racket.”
He looked up at me as if to say it was okay, and then kneaded my legs. He sank his claws into my leg especially hard as he purred. I scratched him behind his ears.
“You’re not going to like this, Butter, but things around here are going to be hard for a while. Your mom needs to look for a new job.”
“Nyeeerrr…” he said, as if he knew what I was saying.
“Yeah, I know. No tuna, no fun. I’m going to have to lay off the sauce as well. But it’s not going to stay like that forever.”
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I really enjoyed your work and I think could do a lot with it if you ever chose to extend the story. I would love to read more! Have you ever thought of trying a novel?
There wasn’t anythign I saw that should be changed or corrected, so I am sorry if this isn’t a quality review. You did an amazing job with descriptions and I really felt like I was there. Great piece! I hope you continue with it, I can see great things coming from it!
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