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one rude question after another. The woman didn’t bother to look up as she penciled my answers on a sheet.
    “What have you on?”
    “My clothing.”
    Another nurse lifted my dress and slips as if I were a child. “One pair of shoes, one pair of stockings, one cloth dress, one straw sailor hat,” and so on. When the examination was over, someone yelled, “Into the hall, into the hall.”
    A kindly grey-haired patient told me that this was an invitation to supper.
    “Get in line, two-by-two,” “Stand still,” “How many times must I tell you to stay in line?” As the orders were snapped, a shove and a push were administered, often accompanied with a slap on the ear.
    We lined up in a hallway where open windows invited a cold draft. The shivering, thinly clad women looked lost and forlorn. Some chattered nonsense to invisible people; others laughed or cried.
    The grey-haired woman who had been kind nudged me. With sage nods and pitiful uplifting of her eyes, she assured me that I shouldn’t mind the poor creatures because they were all mad. “I’ve been here before, you know,” she said. She volunteered earlier that this was her second commitment to the island. Her daughter had managed to get her released but her son-in-law had her recommitted.
    When the dining room doors opened a mad rush was made for the tables. Food was already set out for each person—a bowl filled with a pinkish liquid which the patients called tea, a piece of thick-cut, buttered bread, and a saucer with five prunes.
    A large, heavy-set woman pushed by me and sat down. She immediately grabbed saucers from other place settings and emptied the contents in one long gulp while holding down her own bowl. Then proceeded to empty two more. As I watched, the woman opposite me grabbed my bread.
    The older woman with me offered me hers, but I declined and asked an attendant for another. The attendant glared at me as she flung a piece of bread on the table. “I see you’ve lost your memory, but not how to eat.”
    The bread was hard and dry, the butter rancid. One taste of the “tea” was enough—a bitter, mineral favor, as if it had been made in copper.
    “You must force down the food,” my new friend said. “If you don’t eat you’ll be sick and who knows, with these surroundings, you may go crazy.”
    “It’s impossible to eat this swill.” Despite her urging, I ate nothing.
    After dinner we were marched into a cold, wet concrete bathroom and ordered to undress. A patient chattering and chuckling to herself stood by the bathtub with a large, discolored rag in hand.
    I refused to undress. “It’s too cold.”
    Nurse Grupe, whose name tag said she was the head nurse, ordered me to undress.
    “No. Heat this place first.”
    She glared at me and I almost obeyed. What a poisonous disposition.
    “Undress her.”
    Nurses grabbed me, pulled off my clothes, and forced me into the tub. As I shivered in the cold water, the babbling woman scrubbed me with harsh soap that rubbed my skin raw. “Rub, rub, rub,” she chanted.
    My teeth chattered and my lips turned blue as buckets of cold water went over my head. I yelped and Nurse Grupe slapped the back of the head.
    “Shut up or I’ll give you something to yell about.”
    While I was still dripping wet, they put me into a short canton flannel slip labeled across the back in large black letters, Lunatic Asylum, B. I. H. 6 . The letters stood for Blackwell’s Island, Hall 6.
    As I was led away I looked back and saw Miss Maynard, a poor, sick girl I’d met on the boat to the island. She pleaded not to be placed in the cold bath. It was useless, of course. Resistance simply inflamed Nurse Grupe’s poisonous personality.
    I was taken to room 28 where a hard cot and coarse wool blanket awaited.
    My wet clothes and body dampened the pillow and sheet. I tried to find some warmth with the blanket, but when I lifted it up to my chin it left my bare feet exposed.
    As I lay shivering, I heard a