Written By Ally LeMaster

When I think back to the archives, I think about the hazy lighting.

How the documents were lit up by sterile fixtures. The whole building seemed muted, except for the latex-free, oversized green gloves. 

After hours of pouring over archives, my hands felt like a layer of the past rubbed off on my fingers— that somehow the particles in the air at Mansfield Training School carried from all these years to end up in the present. 

I remember the smell of the old transfer paper and wondered if that’s the scent that perforated MTS too.  

Mildew and must. 

I wanted to know who touched the papers before me and what their hands did before and after. Were their hands healing? 

Did they cause harm? 

Or were their hands simply bystanders to horrors that went on there?

I remember trying to stop myself from asking questions that could never be answered. Just to stick to words written on the paper in front of me.  

But there were still questions on top of questions. 

I remember combing through every single document because I was scared to miss the important detail. Like if I read every single word, I could actually make sense of what happened.  But I couldn’t find those words because sometimes actions won’t always have meaning behind them. 

I would always catch myself looking up at the face of the archivists. How they talked firmly about the present, but the research team was sunken deep in the past. 

Mostly, I think back to the relief and worry that went through me when it was time to leave. 

In the archives, you absorb almost a decade’s worth of information in a day and have to go back home to a false sense of normalcy. I remember how my days in the archives stuck to me like the embrace of a shrunken sweater.

I’d pull up to my house exhausted. 

My dad would ask me how my day at the archives went. 

Every detail of every document swarmed my head, from the restraint logs to employee guidebooks. The sad, the grim, and the troublesome stories told in the archives were always at the tip of tongue. 

But I knew I had to pull away from the question. I didn’t want the information to haunt him like it did me. 

“My day at the archives was good, Dad.”

And I’d go to my room as if nothing ever happened.