Babushka

by Jess Dowling (New Zealand)

I didn't expect to find USA

A spider is crawling down the Grandmother’s lined face. It’s web weaving its way from her headscarf to the cleft in her chin. I step closer. Each creaking footfall sends soft puffs of powder into the air, lightly dancing across my boots. The spider darts under the curl of the Grandmother’s peeling nose, the breeze past the shards of a broken window causes the nose peel to flap delicately against the trembling form. I didn’t expect to find her here. Transfixed to the wall, transfixing visitors with her gaze, the few who make it to the abandoned hospital of Ellis Island. “This is the unhappiest room in the building”. My guide John has joined me, a shiny hard hat perches jauntily on his head. “See that corridor there?”. He points to a wall of boarded-up broken windows, the hallway beyond just visible through the cracks. “That’s the happiest. Immigrants walked down that corridor when it was time for them to leave for New York City and the American Dream. The poor people in here could only watch.” My hand trails across a desk, it’s top a cracked and dry desert. “This was the gold standard in hospitals. The staff here got to see every disease on the planet! If you worked here, you could work anywhere”. We step over the skeletal frame of a chair, soft cloudy webs falling from three legs. My little friend has been busy. “They followed Florence Nightingale's teachings. Patients were put in wards with other patients with the same disease. Didn’t mix them all up like elsewhere. That’s why the complex is so large. 22 buildings all for different illnesses. Even a psychiatric ward - when we go outside, you’ll see a brick house with a cage around it, for recreational purposes y’know?” Looking around at the bleak skeletal frames of the ward, it’s difficult to imagine that this was once one of the most substantial healthcare ventures in American history. “And it was free!” John looks at me wide eyed with excitement. “Can you imagine what it would be like to have free healthcare?” I smile. “I’m from New Zealand”. “Ahh, lucky, you can then. What I wouldn’t give for free healthcare!” He points out a mirror in the corner of the room, pulls out a handkerchief and gives it a rub. A reflection of the Statue of Liberty shines through. Standing proudly against the blue skies, thick green trees hugging her base. “She’s a beauty, isn’t she?” “Incredible view. I guess that would be a good motivator if I was lying here ill. The ones who got this ward were lucky”. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But the rooms with the best views of Lady Liberty were reserved for the immigrants who would be deported back home…or be dying here”. A chill wind blows through. I shiver. Dried autumnal leaves slither across the floor, wrapping around the legs of a rusty red bed frame, it’s middle sagging as if still holding the weight of its long-departed inhabitants. “What about her?” I nod towards the Grandmother on the wall. “Bit creepy isn’t it? A French artist visited and wanted to do something interesting with the old archive photos. Bring some life back into the place. She’s a Babushka, a Czech Grandmother, had measles”. “Did...did she make it?” “She got to walk down that corridor”. A sliver of light has creeped through the boarded windows, igniting a soft dusky glow across her face. “We better head off Kiwi. Don’t want to miss that ferry”. John begins to stroll down the corridor. I stand still, thinking. He calls out to me, his voice echoing back to the room. “Don’t worry. Most people survived. The gold standard of hospitals, remember?” I glance up at Babushka, her eyes steady on mine once more. “Goodbye” I whisper. The spider scuttles out. It knows it’s time for me to move on, like so many thousands before.