I Never Promised You a Rose Garden Chapter 6 Summary

  • Deborah meets with Dr. Fried, who asks her for details about her early life from her perspective.
  • Deborah explains how she was only five when she had the tumor in her urethra. It made her feel like everything that was wrong with her was "concentrated in the secret evil inside that forbidden place" (6.6).
  • Deborah had a dream the night before the operation that she was broken apart and then scrubbed clean. Then she had another dream about a broken flowerpot. The bloom of the plant in the pot felt like it was Deborah's "ruined strength" (6.6).
  • The doctors told Deborah the operation wouldn't hurt because they were going to put her "doll" to sleep (6.7). The insult of the euphemism, and then the pain that came afterwards in her private parts, was unbearable. After the operation, Deborah asked the doctors why they lied to her about the pain. They told her it was so she wouldn't be scared. Then they still call her private parts her "doll."
  • Deborah felt insulted and untrusting of almost everyone after this ordeal.
  • Dr. Fried is angry on Deborah's behalf and calls the doctors "fools." She wonders why they lie to children (6.12).
  • Deborah is moved by Dr. Fried siding with her, so she tells her that she thinks she still has the tumor. Dr. Fried suggests that thinking she still has the tumor punishes her, not the doctors.
  • Deborah tells Dr. Fried a Yri word, "Upuru," which summarizes her emotions associated with that hospital experience. Then, because she slipped a secret from Yr, she's punished by being closed off from Earth.
  • Dr. Fried watches Deborah slip away from reality and wishes Deborah knew the strength she possessed, that all mentally ill people possess.
  • Deborah slips away from earth for days and then returns to the area she calls "Midworld." Here she can look out at Earth without having to be fully present.
  • Deborah talks with Carla, a fellow patient who is quickly becoming her friend.
  • Deborah tells Carla about the visit with her mom. She says her mom asked questions in order to figure out why Deborah was sick.
  • Carla tells Deborah that she hates the people who made her sick. She then recounts how her own mother shot her and her brother and then herself. Her brother and mother didn't survive the gunshot wounds, but Carla did.
  • Deborah explains the hierarchies of the mental hospital. She is in B ward, and D ward is for the more disturbed and truly insane. The thought of D ward scares her, but otherwise, in her Yr world, the Censor, the god in Yr who controls the flow of information between worlds and judges it as good or bad, doesn't make Deborah feel any cause for alarm.
  • Christmas comes, and the mental hospital is decorated. Deborah feels that the festiveness is a lie.
  • Deborah continues her sessions with Dr. Fried. Deborah is growing to trust her, even though she tells Dr. Fried that she's prying into her secrets.
  • Deborah recounts when her younger sister Suzy was born. Deborah was five at the time, and she didn't get all the fuss; she thought the baby was ugly and gross. When her parents insisted she should love the baby automatically, Deborah said, "I wasn't even in on the consultation" (6.56). That was a pretty funny and precocious thing to say, but it marked the start of a downward spiral.
  • Deborah got more and more socially awkward from that point on; even distant family members just kind of tolerated her.
  • The anti-Semitic kids on Deborah's block, who had equally anti-Semitic parents, called her a "dirty Jew" (6.58).
  • Deborah tells Dr. Fried about the summers she went to a camp, from the time she was five to the time she was nine years old. The counselors and a lot of the kids were openly anti-Semitic.
  • Deborah recognizes that Dr. Fried is truly empathetic, and she seems surprised that someone from Earth would be so kind to her: "I did not know that they endowed Earth-ones with insides" (6.62).
  • After this session, Deborah finds her own world of Yr is against her for giving up their secrets.
  • Anterrabae informs Deborah that she has to go to the Pit for punishment.
  • To control this loss of Yr's loyalty and love, Deborah slices up her arm with the top of a tin can. She gets moved up to the DisturbeD ward she feared so much, and we get to hear an attendant calling Deborah "a spoiled rich kid" who never had to deal with anything really hard in her life (6.69-70). Not exactly a nice welcome.