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The Awakening of Miss Adelaide

By Linda Books Davis

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February 15, 1912 Texas Asylum
Well, son of mine, I received your letter dated Jan 1, 1912. You were expecting your very own babe. I hadn’t heard in so long. If you don’t put Asylum on your letter I fear it will stop in town.
I was sorry to hear you couldn’t come to see me. I would like to see your babe but want to see my own children the worst. I would like so much to see your picture and will send you mine if I can get it made.
You said your wife was to make me something. Now, dear, tell her don’t do it. I haven’t much place to keep my things, and laundering is done by machinery.
The silver-haired resident drops her pencil and bolts upright with an ear inclined toward the door. Footfalls hammer the corridor floor planks, the cadence akin to a dirge.
Naught but trouble has come calling, sure as the world.
She slides her pencil and stationery under her mattress and skitters to her barred window. Slouching against the sill, she awaits the approaching trustee’s daily visit.
Outside, the lawn appears crisp with frost. A piano plinks somewhere in the distance, sparking a memory, a wisp she has tucked into a wrinkle in her mind. It tugs . . . pokes . . . prods.
The notes gather into a long-neglected tune, a discordant overlay
4 The Awakening of Miss Adelaide
to the tramp of heels creeping nearer. A hymn reaches for her like her mother’s hands, warm and tender.
She hums, and a bit of lyrics return. “‘Take my life and let it be . . .’” Her breath, warm on the frigid pane, creates a cloud as dreary as the pewter sky. The vapor imprisons the sacred words in glass.
The heel-pounding halts at her door.
Brass keys rattle on a jailer’s ring. One slips into the well-oiled lock, smooth as a knife slashing butter. The mechanism’s innards click, and the door creaks open.
“Wasting your time again, Birdie?”
The resident pivots to her caller, a stern-faced matron whose raven hair has been stretched tight against her scalp and gathered into braided coils above her ears. Dinginess rings her pale eyes. She plunks her fists at her waist, and her loop of keys clang, metal on metal, brittle-like.
Birdie entwines her hands at her waist. “Idle hands . . .”
“Are the devil’s workshop.” The woman raises her beaked nose and glares.
“Aye.” Birdie settles into a cane-seated rocker, her sole possession from back home. She angles her eyes toward the floor as she has been taught she must—or suffer the consequences—and picks up her tatting shuttle. “Baby gown.”
The implement clicks. The shuttle spool whirs.
The dour trustee harrumphs. “You’ll not keep track of your thoughts long enough to complete it. Besides, there’s laundry. Washer woman’s down with a cough.” She extends a forefinger, its nail filed needle-sharp. “You’ll take her place.”
Birdie’s shoulders slump. Her thoughts are laid out in a lovely pattern today, not jumbled scraps in a rag basket like yesterday. When would she complete the infant’s gown? The baby would outgrow it soon.
She runs her fingertips along her knotted forehead. How long has she lived in this place?
The day of her commitment all but emerges then fades away. She kneads her brow. Images flash, unbidden but insistent, knitting her

Linda Brooks Davis 5
insides.
Her heart races.
Her thoughts speed.
She squints and gives her head a shake. Not again.
She halts her chair runners and sets aside her freshly threaded shuttle.
The delicate loops and knots must wait.
“Idle hands.” Bounding upward, she circles past the white iron
bedstead overlaid with ticking mattress and homespun sheets. “Devil’s workshop.”
She passes the pine table with its dented tin plate. The narrow, three-drawer chest crowned by a stone wash basin and pitcher. And the single window to the thick vegetation beyond. Once. Twice. Thrice.
“Work. Work. Work”
“You’re late, woman.” The matron whips around and signals her charge to follow. “And crazy as a loon besides.”
Birdie follows close on the woman’s heels. “Wash. Fold. Iron.”
“Aw, stop yer yowling.”
The rhythm of the dirge picks up and sparks Birdie’s feet into a jig.
She will dance a reel this day. Sure as the world.
“‘Take my moments and my days. Let them flow in ceaseless praise.’”
She whispers the words her heart remembers. The lyrics have become her mantra.

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