Number 135

by Darren Fleeger

At 135 Oak Street there is an old house. Mice, rats, and an occasional cat are the only visitors nowadays. If you go upstairs into the attic, there's a trunk at the far end. Open it and you will find a photograph of me. It was taken when I was a small child. I was wearing my Sunday best. You can see the house in the background, all new and fresh. The rest of my family is there: mother, father, and my brothers and sisters.

I do not know why the trunk remains in the attic. Was it forgotten many years later when my family moved out? Or were the memories too sad and difficult for them to face. You see, that was the last photograph taken of me before I became "sick."

A year later I began to hear voices. I did not know where they came from. Some people thought I was making it all up, but to me they were all too real. I also became depressed and angry a lot. Where once I was a top student in my school with many ribbons and trophies to prove it, now I was kept out of school as my family decided what to do with me.

That house on 135 Oak Street was the last real home I had, unless you can call the State Asylum for the Insane a home. It was finally too much for my family. They meant well, but were embarrassed by my actions and were persuaded by a doctor that the hospital would be the best place for a person like me. He said I suffered from melancholia and dementia praecox.

The hospital smelled funny and was very noisy. In the years to come I would learn to tune out the sounds and odors. The daily routine was very strict. We were told when to eat, when to go to the bathroom, and given only the sunshine that could make it through the heavy iron bars on the day room windows.

My family did not forget me at first. When they could, they would visit. Sometimes I made sense and on other visits when I didn't, they looked sad. It was hard for my mother to hold back the tears. Sometimes she couldn't. I wasn't getting any better although there were many treatments. Shock therapy, isolation, cold baths and showers, and "calming" medicines became familiar to most patients in the hospital and I was no exception.

So the years went on and on. I saw the changes of the seasons from behind the walls. "He'll never get any better," they would say. "This is where he belongs." Perhaps they meant well, but that place was hell.

Hundreds of patients came and went. Only a few recovered and actually made it back to the real world. For most of us, the hospital became an endless routine, day after day without much hope. Once in a while, when you least expected it, hope would appear in the guise of a smile, a new friend, or an unexpected treasure of a little bird who made its nest on the window sill. His freedom became ours. I trained my mind to fly away with him. Oh, the places we went and the things we saw!

There was one place where my thoughts never ventured happily. This was Ward 5, at the back of the hospital. At first it didn't concern me. But later, when friends disappeared forever into its dark mystery, I began to wonder. One day I learned from an old-timer that Ward 5 was the last place you went before you were expected to die. No one ever came back from there. I tried to keep my mind away from it, but as I got older the reality of Ward 5 became a bigger part of my life. Where did the people go afterwards? One by one my friends went there and I never saw them again.

Years later when I was old man of 45, I came face to face with the one place we all tried to avoid. I was sent to Ward 5 because I had tuberculosis. No one said I was going to die, but we all knew it. It was a dreadful place of lost minds, endless coughing, and the smell of death patiently waiting in the shadows.

My family had long since moved away. The house on 135 Oak Street was sold many times and like me, began to fall apart. If you looked at both of us, you could see the lost promise of a life unfulfilled. The house no longer had human occupants and I was forgotten in a back ward.

When it came, death was a relief. I remember little about the time just before my passing, but was surprised when some time later I could see everything going on around me but from above. I was strangely detached from it all, yet something held me to my body as I watched them place it in a simple pine casket. They took it out a door I had never seen before, placed it on a cart, and slowly moved over the hospital grounds.

They traveled past the incinerator, beyond the laundry, way out back into a beautiful field with birds and trees. I followed the procession closely and wondered why we were never permitted to go to this beautiful place. Then I knew. This was Pauper's Field, where they buried people forgotten by their families or too poor to afford a decent burial.

My coffin was placed in the ground and covered with dirt. Maybe a few words were said, but I remember more the birds singing than what if anything was spoken. I then saw someone pull out a little card. He wrote down my name on it and placed it back on his clipboard. Another man appeared carrying a simple iron cross. This he pounded into the freshly dug grave where my body was now. That was it. They left the cemetery and went about their business. They had done this hundreds of times before. I knew this because the whole field was dotted with crosses that sprouted like flowers in some bizarre garden. Quite a few were heavily rusted.

At first I didn't see them. Later, I began to feel different. It was then that I saw them. Slowly their presence became apparent to me. Some faces I recognized as old friends from years ago. Others were unknown to me. All welcomed me. Each one had a story to tell, related not by words but by emotions and feelings. When it was my turn, we all gathered around my grave. It was then that I saw the marker for the first time. I began to laugh. For here, the dead are identified by a number known but to God and that man with the clipboard. I soon learned that for each grave there was an index card with a number corresponding to our grave. My laughter was one of irony, for my number was 135, the same as on my beloved childhood home.

So long ago. It all seems so very far away. Today the hospital is closed and the people there have returned to the community, employees and patients alike. Pauper's Field is overgrown with weeds. The markers are rusted beyond all casual recognition. The index cards were lost a long time ago. Few people visit. Once someone came by with a camera and filmed the mess that was once a pretty field. The problems that once caused me so much anguish have disappeared.

We who are buried here are happy now for the most part, but have just one request: please don't forget that we once lived, that we once knew earthly joy and sorrow. Our memories deserve better than a run-down cemetery. My name no longer matters. I am known by my spirit now. If you want to visit, look for number 135.