Broken Wings 02 Midnight Flight (20 page)

The way we're being treated, we'll all end up in a hospital soon," Robin offered.
"Exactly." Teal nodded and turned to Gia. "Maybe that's where Posy is In a hospital."
Gia looked up sharply and glanced at me. Then she dropped her fork so hard, she almost cracked her dish. "Why don't you all shut up? All this whining and moaning, day in and day out. That's what she wants you to do. I'll tell you who's going to end up in a hospital here, me. I'm going to get sick as hell listening to all this groaning and crying."
"Is that right?" Teal retorted, her eyes filling with indignation, "You never cry? You never moan or complain? You're little Miss Perfection."
"Stop it!" I cried, slapping my hand on the table. "Gia's right. Just stop it. Everyone just shut up."
Teal folded her arms under her breasts and turned to me. "Please,"
I
added.
The rage drained out of her face. She looked at Mindy, Rabin, and Gin and went back to her food.
We ate in funereal silence, all of us staring out as if our eyes had been turned around and we were looking in at our own dark thoughts, I was sure we resembled inmates on death row contemplating their end,
Afterward.
I
returned to barracks alone and went to bed. The others marched in slowly when they were finished with the kitchen chores. Teal announced that thanks to haying to pick up my load, she was too tired to do any schoolwork. No one said anything different, even though the expectation was they would all receive a demerit for turning in the work late. Someone turned off the light before the buddies could.
The door opened and M'Lady Two looked in, "Tired girls?" She laughed, "I'll let everyone know you went to bed early. Maybe we'll get you up earlier."
I
heard the door close and then
I
heard Robin say. "And let them know you should drop dead. too."
Teal laughed and Mindy giggled. Gia was quiet. Dr. Foreman's warnings about how volatile she could be returned. Was she planning some sort of revenge? Was it safe to fall asleep with her only a few feet away? I wanted to apologize, to explain, and to get her to see I had no choice. but
I
was afraid to do it. Instead.
I lay awake for as long as
I
could, Finally, my eyelids refused to be open and sleep came sweeping over me like a cool breeze.
The way the morning began. I thought the silence that had fallen among us would continue all day. No one spoke. With little more than a grunt, everyone rose, dressed, washed, and went to the bathroom. Reciting the morning chant was the most wards any of us uttered for hours, even at breakfast. While the others milked the cows, picked chicken eggs, fed the pigs, and did some weeding in the garden. I was assigned to feed and brush down all four horses, as well as clean out the stalls. I worked almost mindlessly, moving as if
I
were a robot or someone in a drugged stupor.
Once in a while. I would pause and think about Mama. Had she died in her sleep or did she get an attack and panic and die while they were trying to help her? Was she sorry in the end? Did she think at all of me? Think of my daddy? I couldn't imagine anything more lonely than to die among strangers, to have no one around you who would shed tears over your passing, no one who was more than just professionally interested in what was happening to you. You would know that when it was over, they would shake their heads
and
most likely within the same hour, maybe the same minute, return to their normal daily lives. Some who witnessed your passing might not even remember to mention it to anyone afterward. You were, after all, just a statistic.
What did the doctor ask in that letter? What she should do with Mama's remains? How do you write such a question? Surely the doctor was thinking, we've got to get her out of here. She's one of our screwups. Come get her, sweep up this mess, remove it from our sight.
Did Mama deserve it? Was she so wicked that she was being punished?
Is that what was happening to all of us now? We were bad: we had all done illegal things, some of us worse than the others. Bath Mindy and Gia were nearly responsible for killing another human being.
and
Teal and Robin were thieves. Should anyone feel sorry for us? Should we be upset at the cruelty of the buddies? Was Dr. Foreman right? Could she cure us of evil, turn us into good people? Should we resist? Should
I
blame myself for surrendering completely?
These questions circled in my brain like mayflies. The more
I
tried to swipe them away, the more they came. They were relentless. I had to stop working and hold on to something to keep myself from spinning and fainting. I caught my breath and started to brush down one of the horses; then I saw Cria in the doorway. She had a small garden spade in her hand. With the sunlight behind her. her face was in total darkness. She looked more like a ghost or a shadow coming to life as she slowly walked into the horse barn toward me.
I stepped to my right and took hold of the handle of the shovel we used to clean out the horse stalls. I wasn't going to let her hurt me. She stopped about halfway,
"You think you told her something about me that she didn't already know?" Gia began.
She made me. She put me in the Ice Room and you know what she can do to you. You were the one who said you're not in the Ice Room. The Ice Room is in you. Now
I
know what you meant. That helmet thing... there were rats all over me and she knew how much I hated them."
"She didn't have to do that to you to get information. She just wanted to break you. Phoebe. She already had Mindy tell her everything
I
said about Posy. Mindy denies it. but I know she did. She pretends to believe me, but she doesn't. Dr. Foreman has her thinking otherwise."
"Is it true. Gia? Are you making up Posy?" "What do you think?"
"I
think you are," I said, my eyes on the hand that held that spade like a switchblade.
She smiled coldly, her small mouth stretching and curling in the corners with disgust. "You're going to be a Foreman girl then, are you? You're going to stay here or come back here and become a buddy someday so you can torment and torture someone like you?"
"No.
^-
She crossed over to a bale of hay and sat, digging her spade into it.
She told me what Mindy did with her baby," I said.
"Did she?" Cria smiled and shook her head. "Dr. Foreman used the same technique on me. telling me what Posy had done. This was afterward, of course.
^-
"After what?"
"After the imaginary Posy disappeared, but that's what imaginary people do, don't they? They disappear."
"What did she tell you Posy had done?" I asked.
"Why do you want to know if you don't believe there ever was a Posy?"
I didn't say anything and she looked at the horse behind her. "Posy liked the horses. too. She would have slept with them if they had let her. I told you Natani took a liking to her just as he has taken to you. He taught her many things, but the most valuable was how to escape."
"Are you saying she escaped? I thought you believed she was put into the basement and might even still be there."
"From time to time. Posy escaped, and maybe in the end. forever."
"I don't understand. Gia."
"Do you know anything about meditation?"
"No. I mean, it's a religion or something, isn't it?"
"It's not a religion, but it's part of some religions. It's part of what Natani believes."
"What does that have to do with Posy?" "He taught her how to meditate, to leave this world and enter some spiritual place, and when she was there, no one could touch her, hurt her. It got so she would rather be there than here all the time, and it wasn't long after that when she disappeared." Gia looked like she was crying now. I thought I saw a tear glistening on her cheek.
I stepped closer to her, "It doesn't make any sense to me.
I
don't know what any of that means."
"Maybe you can get Natani to show you."
"I want to believe you. Gia. I really do. and I don't want to hurt you I'm sorry I betrayed you in there."
"You didn't betray me in there, but you are betraying me out here," she said, standing. She took her spade out of the hay.
"What does that mean?"
"You don't believe me. That's more important to me."
"I said
I
want to believe you."
"Do you?"
"Yes,"
"Okay, we'll set. I'll give you the chance to prove that." She started out.
"When?" I called after her.
She turned back. "Maybe tonight."
"How?"
"We'll get into the basement."
"I thought you said the door had a lock on it. How can we get in?"
"Leave it to me. We'll get in and then we'll see if Posy is there or if she was." she said, and walked out of the horse barn.
Wind Song reached over the stall door and poked me in the back of my head.
I looked at him.
Was that meant to be a warning? Did he see something in Gia's actions?
Was I as crazy as Gia? Now I believed what Natani had told me... horses and people could talk to each other.
Meditation? Escape? What was she talking about? How was I supposed to understand any of this? More important, how had I fallen into this whirlpool of pain and confusion?
Every time Gia saw me the remainder of the day, she looked at me weirdly. She said nothing else to me about the basement and Posy, so I thought it was just something that had flown in and cut of her mind as quickly as a humming-bird. However, just before we started to the house for dinner, she stepped up beside me and whispered. "Don't tell the others anything about this. It will just be you and me, understand?"
I nodded, but it all made me nervous. The one thing I didn't want to do was get into any more trouble here. but I didn't want to anger Gia any more than I already had either. I was so anxious about it all that I didn't eat well, and sure enough, before the dinner ended. Dr. Foreman came into the dining room.
"How are my girls doing tonight?" she asked, her eyes fixed mainly on me.
We all muttered all right and thank you.
"You should make sure you eat well. Phoebe. You have to keep up your strength for the challenges that lie ahead, and believe me." she said, looking at everyone now. "there are challenges. I would like to speak with you before you return to the barracks to do your homework. Phoebe. Come to the office when you're finished with your kitchen duties."
I nodded and returned to eating, but the other girls. especially Gia, looked at me and then each other.
"What's that about, I wonder?" Mindy asked.
"I don't know," I said.
"What I don't know is why she is so worried about you eating and you getting stranger," Teal said. She didn't watch over me like that after my
horrendous episode."
"Well, then," Mindy said. "maybe your episode wasn't as horrendous as you make it out to be."
"What are you talking about? You were there when they brought me back. You saw."
Mindy shrugged. "I know how to put it on. too."
"Put it on? Listen to that. Phoebe, tell her what its like to be stung by one of those... things."
I looked up. "It's painful, makes you nauseous.
I
think
I
even had a fever."
"See?" Teal jumped on the end of my words.
"That's Phoebe, not you." Mindy said, barely looking at her.
"I
wish it happens to you, that's all. Then we'll see how horrendous it is and isn't."
"And
I
wish you get bitten by a rattlesnake in the bathroom in your you know what," Mindy countered,
Teal flung a glob of her mashed potatoes at her, hitting her in the cheek,
"Bitch!" Mindy screamed. She was about to toss her glass of cranberry juice at her when M'Lady Three appeared in the doorway.
"Problem?" she asked.
"No," Mindy said quickly.
"You're a bit of a messy eater, aren't you. Mindy? Why don't you do all the dishes, silverware, and clean off the table yourself tonight? Maybe that will make you neater. You have any problem with that?" she asked quickly.
"No," Mindy said, shaking her head. Some of the mashed potato fell to her plate. She wiped her chin and looked away quickly.
"Good. The rest of you, except for Phoebe bird, return to the barracks. Let's go."
Teal. Robin. and Gia rose. Mindy lowered her head. but I could see the tips of her ears were so red, they looked like tiny candle flames. She
didn't
lift her head until they were gone.
"She'll be sorry," she muttered.
"Just
wait and see."
"Don't get into
a
fight again. Mindy. They're just hoping you will," I advised her. "And then you'll know what it's like in the Ice Room."
She looked at me with surprise, not expecting anything nice or kind from anyone, I think, especially one of us.
"Right." she said.
"Thanks."
She began to gather the dirty plates and bowls. I thought about helping her, but something told me Dr. Foreman watched
us
in this room. Maybe there really were microphones or secret cameras all over this place.
"See you later," I said, and went out and down to Dr. Foreman's office, To my surprise she wasn't sitting behind her desk,
but
on the sofa instead. She was reading a magazine and looked up
and
smiled,
"Hi. Come an in,"
I
did and she indicated I should sit on the sofa.
"I
can't believe some of the fashions young people your age are wearing these days. Look at this, for example." She turned the magazine to show me
an
actress wearing what looked like nothing more than two large Band-Aids over her breasts and a flimsy skirt. She had what resembled a dog collar
around
her neck. "And she's about to enter some award show. Would you wear that?"
I
shook my head.
"I
didn't think so. Mindy might. She probably wore things like this. She was
a
classic
nymphomaniac, you know. You know what that is, of course."
"A nympho? Someone who has
a
lot of sex,"
"Yes. Only she had those tendencies ever since junior high school, even sixth grade. To me a girl who is so wild
and
loose with her body has
no
respect for herself.
I
know your mother was very loose. right?"
I nodded. What could I do, deny it? She obviously knew a lot about all of us. and
I
did write about some of Mama's sexual escapades when