A Mind of One’s Own

Penelope Scambly Schott is back with a new book of her poems, and in ‘Cool Women Volume Three.’

By: Ilene Dube

The Pest Maiden is about the author’s distant cousin, Jean Heuser (pictured), who was afflicted with mental illness in the days before modern medicine could treat it.

   It’s a good thing Penelope Scambly Schott is a poet and not a marketing executive. Had she been the latter, she might have titled her book Dancing with Demons. Bravo to Ms. Schott for calling it The Pest Maiden: A Story of Lobotomy (Turning Point, 2004), a name that more accurately reflects the point she is trying to make: that a woman could be subject to lobotomy merely because she was considered a "pest."
   Speaking from her home in Portland, Ore., Ms. Schott brings up the case of Rosemary Kennedy, J.F.K. Jr.’s oldest sister, who died in January: "She didn’t even have mental illness," says Ms. Schott. "She may have been dyslexic. Her father had her lobotomized, without telling her mother (Rose), because he didn’t want Rosemary to embarrass the family with her sexual escapades."
   These so-called escapades were instances where Rosemary would run away from the convent where she was cared for to meet boys, says Ms. Schott. "The irony is, after her lobotomy, she lived out the rest of her life in the care of nuns."
   Not only did the lobotomy fail to control Ms. Kennedy’s mood swings, but it left her with an infantile mentality, staring at the walls. Her speech became unintelligible babble.
   Ms. Schott, a Rocky Hill and Griggstown resident for 30 years, will return to the area for three book-related events in early April. She will read from The Pest Maiden at Chestnut Tree Books in the Princeton Shopping Center April 9. Also a member of the Cool Women poetry group, Ms. Schott will appear at the Princeton Public Library April 10 for the launch of Cool Women Volume Three (Cool Women Press, $15), and then again April 11 at Barnes & Noble in West Windsor.
   The Pest Maiden is a collection of poems about Ms. Schott’s distant cousin, Jean Heuser, who was afflicted with mental illness — probably schizophrenia — and, without her consent, treated with lobotomy. Sadly, this happened in February 1954, two weeks before Smith Kline Beecham received the patent for the anti-psychotic drug Thorazine. Since then, lobotomies are no longer used to treat psychosis.
   Ms. Schott never actually met Jean, but when her grandmother’s first cousin, Viola Paradise, died, Ms. Schott inherited "the green box."
   Ms. Paradise was "Aunt Vi" to Jean, but also a surrogate mother. When Jean was 8, her father was institutionalized for what was probably schizophrenia, and when Jean was 20, her mother died of cancer. So it was Aunt Vi who visited Jean in the mental hospital and was in large measure responsible for her care.
   The green box, stored in Ms. Schott’s Rocky Hill attic, remained unopened for 10 years because she was afraid to learn of its contents. It contained letters, diary notes and medical communications concerning Jean.
   Ms. Schott suffered a breakdown of sorts of her own. After her children left home, she had a bout of deep depression that lasted six months. She hid inside her house, and gradually overcame the illness. "I waited until it was safe and my husband dealt with the outside world; I was lucky to have a man to run interference for me while I was mentally worn out," she says. "I gave myself a rest time."
   Years later, when she was able to look at the contents of the green box without fearing a bomb would explode, she took it upon herself to type all the material. She stored it in a folder for two years, then went away for a month and wrote the initial draft of The Pest Maiden.
   "I wrote it so that Jean’s life wouldn’t be completely wasted," she says.
   The parts of the poems that are italicized are from original correspondences. Ms. Schott has ingeniously woven her poetry around these notes.
   Jean was a ballet dancer and, as seen in her letters, bright and funny. In re-creating her voice, Ms. Schott plays with nursery rhymes.
   In the poem, "I Ask My Mother About Jean," Ms. Schott writes: "So how crazy was she?/ ‘She took off her clothes/and lay on the floor screaming.’"
   After the lobotomy, Jean never improved or left the hospital and her mental deterioration continued until cancer took her life.
   Ms. Schott confesses she was scared of Viola. Viola was the first woman in the family to have gone to college. She became a writer and moved to Greenwich Village, penning novels and short stories published in The Atlantic Monthly. By day she was a social worker.
   "I only saw her two times a year, and she kind of took over," Ms. Schott says. "She wanted to see what I was writing and commented on it in a way that made it seem hers and not mine. I thought her novels were disguising her lesbian tendencies."
   "My mother once asked Viola/ Had she ever slept with a man?/ ‘I tried it once but I didn’t like it/ I suffered from painful menses,’" writes Ms. Schott in The Pest Maiden.
   And, in another poem,
"So see what happens/ when you educate a girl:/ no man wants her/ in spite of her flaming hair/ but my sister Edith/ was a dancer/ and a great beauty/ and she did her duty/ and married Harry/ and made me Aunt Vi/ and I did try/ All Jean’s life/ I tried/ because if I’d had to give birth myself/ I’d have died/ Even the thought/ makes me squeeze/ tightly/ my thighs"
   It was from her grandmother that Ms. Schott learned to love literature and poetry. Growing up in New York City, Ms. Schott would visit her grandmother in Winnetka, Ill., in the summers and sit out on the porch in the dark as her grandmother read poetry aloud. "I would get a glimpse of the other world," Ms. Schott recalls.
   In the three and a half years since Ms. Schott moved to Portland — her husband, retired from Lucent Technologies in Hopewell, wanted to return to his roots there — she has continued to teach on-line courses in Shakespeare, American poetry and creative writing for Thomas Edison State College. While in the Garden State, she taught at Rutgers and Raritan Valley Community College and served as librarian for the Griggstown Historical Society. Among her various jobs she has been a home-health aide, an artist’s model and a donut-maker at Scrumpy’s Cider Mill in Belle Mead. "The academic world can get unreal," says Ms. Schott. "I always liked to do something else that put me in a different life, but always I was a writer."
   Among the other books she’s written is Penelope: The Story of the Half-Scalped Woman (University of Florida Press, 1999). Another narrative series of poems, it tells the real-life account of Penelope Stout who was shipwrecked on the coast of New Jersey in the 1600s, then attacked and rescued by Native Americans. "She had 500 descendants before she died," says Ms. Schott. Some of those descendants founded Hopewell.
   "The only Penelope I knew growing up was Penelope in ‘The Odyssey,’ so I was interested in another Penelope," she says. "She also had an odyssey, as I had in my own life. I loved telling the story of a woman who triumphed over her struggles."
   Ms. Schott wrote a novel, A Little Ignorance, but likes telling stories in poems better. "I can leave out the connectives," she says.
   Now that she lives on the West Coast, she makes at least four trips east a year for readings with the Cool Women: Eloise Bruce, Carolyn Foote Edelmann, Lois Marie Harrod, Betty Lies, Joyce Greenberg Lott and Judy Michaels. Although she is actively involved with two poetry groups in Portland, she says none can compare to Cool Women. "They all came out to visit last summer," she says. "No one had ever heard anything like these New Jersey women with attitude. I miss them."
   Recently, Ms. Schott spent some time at the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, N.M. "There are these adobe houses offered to writers, musicians and artists for three months, just to be. It’s up to the residents how much time to spend with each other. Mostly I sat in the house and wrote and wrote and wrote. I have access to more of my brain when I don’t have to worry about running out of milk or doing the laundry. After working 14-hour days, I would walk for two hours onto a dead-end road and into the sage and climb hills on Indian land."
   Sadly, while Ms. Schott was packing to leave for Portland, the green box disintegrated, though Ms. Schott did manage to salvage its contents. But now that the story of The Pest Maiden can be read by all, perhaps the box’s time had come.
   "When I was young, I used to think you could become a better person," Ms. Schott says. "Now I’ve learned to just live with the person you are."
Penelope Scambly Schott will read from The Pest Maiden: A Story of Lobotomy at Chestnut Tree Books, Princeton Shopping Center, 301 N. Harrison St., Princeton, April 9, 4 p.m. For information, call (609) 279-2121. She will appear with the Cool Women poets for the launch of Cool Women Volume Three at Princeton Public Library, 65 Witherspoon St., Princeton, April 10, 3 p.m.; for information, call (609) 924-9529; and at Barnes & Noble Booksellers, MarketFair, West Windsor, April 11, 8 p.m.; for information, call (609) 716-1570.