The volunteer of the title is Ted, a teenager who does service volunteering at a residential facility for mentally ill people. He is assigned to visit with Elizabeth, a schizophrenic woman who is a long-term resident. It turns out that Elizabeth understands herself to be deeply connected with a seventeenth-century woman named Hester. Although Ted has to overcome a negative attitude toward mental illness, he finds himself emotionally drawn to Elizabeth’s situation.
Elizabeth’s problems include a long-ago stillbirth, and the loss of her son is intertwined with the images of Hester that both plague and comfort her. Sexual guilt and association with The Scarlet Letter’s Hester Prynne seem to be other elements. Identifying Ted with her dead son stirs up maternal affection combined with grief, and Elizabeth refuses her medication.
The reader learns that Ted’s mother had depression; he apparently thinks that the visits would have value in understanding her. Experiencing troubles with his girlfriend as well, it seems Ted may be seeking escape at the facility as much as genuinely giving of himself. As he spends more time with Elizabeth, they go into town together, but this outing seems more than she can handle in her non-medicated condition. Her identification with Hester extends to a larger connection to Puritan society, including her own ancestors, and an encounter with a Pilgrim-themed poster turns disastrous. Finally, Ted must discontinue the visits.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/76709/you-are-not-a-stranger-here-by-adam-haslett/
This story is about a high school student named Ted, who signs up as part of a volunteer program to visit Plymouth Brewster Structured Living Facility. He is assigned to work with a resident named Elizabeth Maynard, a person suffering from schizophrenia who has spent two decades at the facility. Ted's visits mean a lot to Elizabeth. The author writes the following at the beginning of the story: "that boy has given her hope, a hope Elizabeth never imagined she'd have again."
Elizabeth usually is compliant, and the voice of Hester, a seventeenth-century woman, only comes to her once in a while. However, Ted's visits have made Hester appear more often, as Elizabeth has decided to stop taking her medicine. The story flashes between Ted's relationship with a fellow student named Lauren Jencks and Elizabeth's recollections of the past. She recalls the time she spent at a mental institution on the Connecticut shore, when her then-boyfriend, Will, came from Cambridge (Massachusetts) to visit her.
Elizabeth also recalls giving birth to Will's child and thinking of a line from a document written by one of her ancestors. The line was as follows: "sad past words to report Hester has died giving me a boy." This is how Elizabeth likely heard about Hester. In flashbacks, the reader learns that Elizabeth gave birth to a stillborn boy, who was born with an umbilical chord wrapped around his neck. While giving birth, she saw Hester holding the baby between Elizabeth's legs. After this experience, Hester never left Elizabeth.
During Ted's visits, Elizabeth takes a drive and then has a difficult time visiting a mall, as she imagines Hester becoming offended at a poster of a pilgrim. After she rips the poster off the wall, Elizabeth and Ted must quickly leave the store, and she tells him about seeing another woman in the car. The narrator reveals that Ted deals with mental illness at home, as his mother sometimes locks herself in her room and refuses to leave. Ted thinks, "Enough already with the fucking mentally ill, for Christ’s sakes, enough, but something made him come.” The reason that Ted comes to visit Elizabeth is that she helps him through his relationship with Lauren, including his first sexual experience. In the end, however, the new administration at the facility refuse to allow Elizabeth to receive visits from Ted, and she is crushed as a result.
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