Chicago Stories: West of Western (12 page)

“Is there someone to take you to the emergency room?” Seraphy asked when they reached the front door. She'd been stupid to help Sister Ann up those stairs. Her ankle wouldn't take any weight and had already turned an odd bluish tint where it puffed out around a wad of socks. She could see it was worse than she'd thought, at least a bad sprain, if not a break. It needed professional care.

“Leggo of me,” the old woman said, shaking herself loose. “I'll manage without the likes of you.” The door wasn't locked. She hopped over the threshold and tried to slam the door behind her.

“Like hell you can,” Seraphy caught the door before it could close and followed her in. “The likes of me? Just what does that mean?”

“Yuppie scum! You people move into a neighborhood like this and buy up everything, throwing out good people because they can't afford your yuppie rents. Get back to the suburbs and leave us alone.” The familiar political rant was there but automatic now, no energy left in the words. Pain bleached Sister Ann's face. “And shut that door. All my heat's getting out.” Dropping her scarf on the floor next to a pile of battered boots and shoes, she hobbled to an armchair and teetered, scrabbling at her coat buttons. Noticeably chilly even after she was outside, the room had a peculiar odor, sweet and rotten at the same time. No lights were on in the apartment and apparently no one around to help the injured woman.

“Don't take that coat off,” Seraphy said, “You're going to the emergency room. You prefer Norwegian or St. Mary's?” She rubbed her aching head and sighed. No way she was getting out of this, and she was already late for work. Her hair was stiff with sleet that was starting to melt and run down the back of her neck, she couldn't feel her feet in her soggy Nikes, and her head felt like a beach ball.

“I said get out! I'm not . . . I can't—” her antagonist slung her wet coat across the room, overbalanced, and fell, missing the chair and landing at Seraphy's feet. “Shit!”

“Right, I can see you don't need help, and I don't feel much like helping you, either, but we're stuck with each other. Stop acting like a damned child and humor me.” Seraphy retrieved the coat. “I've had enough of this. We're going to St. Mary's, since that's closer. Or I could call the paramedics and let them collect you.”

“No.”

“Okay, your choice, you can sit here until you rot if that makes you happy. I'm going home now because my head hurts and I have to change my clothes and go to work. And I'm not from the suburbs. I grew up on the South Side.” Why was she defending herself?

“Hyde Park, no doubt. Same thing. Elitist bastards.” Sister Ann tried to sneer, but coughed instead, then stopped to catch her breath. “No paramedics, I'll go with you. Just don't think that changes my opinion.”

“Like I give a damn what you think.” Seraphy pulled her up and wrapped the coat around her. “Little Italy.”

“What? Speak up, I can't hear you.”

“Not Hyde Park, Little Italy. My father was a contractor and I have five brothers and a sister. Let's go.”

“Doesn't matter. Gentrifiers . . . are . . . gentrifiers,” Sister Ann hissed as she hopped to the door. “Spending thousands . . . on huge places . . . you don't need. . . . Throwing out poor folks . . . so you can have your . . . Jacuzzis and dishwashers.” She clutched at Seraphy as she hopped.

“Shut up and walk. You can piss and moan when we're in the car. Watch it here, the edge of the step's slick.” Feisty old bitch. Christ, she'd probably have to fumigate her Jeep to get the smell out. Maybe she should donate some soap. Maybe shove it down the old witch's throat.

Getting down the steps exhausted both of them, Sister Ann complaining all the way and Seraphy fighting the temptation to push her down the steps. At the sidewalk they stopped to rest before crossing to the Jeep.

“I never threw anybody out, Sister Ann. You know damned well my place was abandoned for years before I moved in. Even you couldn't have liked having druggies and gangbangers squatting next door.” Hell. Seraphy realized she was yelling and the old ladies across the street were getting a free show. Shit, even the gangbangers hanging out by the old Camaro were watching. Not that either group made a move to help. She propped her smelly charge against the side of the Jeep and unlocked the door.

“Here, you slide in and I'll lift your foot up.” Sister Ann's foot looked darker now and ballooned angrily above her ratty sneaker.

“Owww. Careful. You don't need all that space.”

Dear God, did the old witch never quit? Tempted to slam the door on her dangling foot, Seraphy checked to see her charge was tucked in before she slammed the door, hard. At the hospital an orderly helped a complaining Sister Ann out of the car and into a wheelchair. Seraphy sagged against the seat. Thank God that's over, she thought as she rolled down the windows to air the car out. She was putting the Jeep in gear when the orderly tapped on her window.

“The lady says to tell you you can pick her up in a couple of hours. Better call before you come, make sure she's ready.”

“But I have to go to work—” Seraphy spluttered and glared at Sister Ann, now ensconced in the wheelchair in the open doorway. Before she could finish her sentence, the orderly turned and claimed his patient. The door swished closed behind them.

Fucking hell.

Chapter 10

“Pelligrini.” Seraphy kept
one eye on the CAD program as she answered the phone, watching the computer make the necessary changes to her preliminary plan. Her client would be in tomorrow morning to see finished drawings.

“Seraphy? Sister Ann. I'm stuck here waiting for these dolts to get around to x-raying my foot and God only knows when that's going to happen. You need to go over to my place and take care of Maria until I get home.”

“Excuse me?” Seraphy dropped her pen. Surely she hadn't given the woman any reason to think she could ask her for favors. “Look, Sister Ann, I'm at work. You know, the thing a person does who has bills to pay? Whoever this Maria is, I don't know her. You'll have to call somebody else.”

“There isn't anyone else. Not those donkeys upstairs at my place. The girl's sick. You have to go.”

“I can't. Sick? There's no . . .” Taken off guard, Seraphy fished for an excuse not to go. “I can't leave work,” she repeated, “I don't know anything about taking care of sick people.”

“All you have to do is take her formula out of the fridge, heat it up, and give it to her in a glass with a straw. Everything's there. And she'll need water, too. Use the ice chips in the freezer, she likes those.”

“I can't, I said. Formula? Don't have a key.” No, she thought, this can't be happening. I'll just say no.

“Under the mat.” Jesus, in that neighborhood? After yesterday?

“I'm at work. I can't . . .”

“Her name's Maria. Be sure to wear two pairs of gloves. The box is on the table. And the safety glasses.”

“Gloves? Glasses? What—” What the hell was she talking about?

“To protect you from the virus,” Sister Ann interrupted, then hung up before Seraphy could reply. Seraphy threw the phone across the room.

Virus?

Full-blown
AIDS, and Maria was younger than Seraphy expected, twelve, maybe fourteen, age was hard to tell with her body so emaciated. Only her silky black hair remained of whatever beauty she might once have had. Her tiny face was all sunken cheeks and raccoon eyes. Purple lesions showed along her nightgown's scooped neckline.

The child whimpered in her sleep, wiping her hands back and forth across the faded blanket. Her restless whimpering reminded Seraphy of a sick kitten she once tried to nurse. The kitten died. Dim from closed shades and over-warm from the space heater in the corner, the room smelled like the plague, a nauseating mix of bodily fluids and sickly-sweet room deodorizer. Seraphy swallowed as the smell set off alarms in her mind. Goose-bumps rose on her arms and every instinct she had nagged at her to run.

What the hell was Sister Ann thinking, keeping the child here? The girl needed medical attention, and there was no evidence she was getting any. No pills or prescription bottles, vitamins, no doctor's instruction sheets on the door, not even a thermometer near the bed. Just a pile of clean sheets on the dresser and bale of Depends in the corner next to a red hazardous waste container.

In the kitchen, at the rear as in most Chicago apartments, she found formula in the refrigerator and, on the table, a bowl and two glasses fitted with lids and straws. Next to the tray were a box of surgical gloves, two plastic-wrapped pairs of safety glasses, and a sign reminding the caretaker to double-glove. The kitchen was large and sunny and must once have been a bright, warm place to start the day, but now looked as if aliens had sucked the life from it. Seraphy wasn't surprised when two of the burners on the avocado green stove refused to light.

Probably best not to wake Maria. Nothing to do in the meantime. Unwilling to sit down anywhere in the filthy apartment, she wandered into the dining room. A built-in hutch, now missing a drawer, a scarred table with magazines, drifts of unopened mail. An old Olivetti portable typewriter. No computer, no fax machine, no printer.

In the living room, a sagging couch faced two resale-shop chairs littered with public health and social work manuals. Seraphy leafed through piles of leftist political rants on the floor, covers depicting starving children and men with guns. Mixed with these, St. Augustine's
Confessions
, St. John of the Cross, and a collection of the writings of the visionary Abbess Hildegard of Bingen. Apparently Sister Ann didn't care for the light stuff. Political polemic, social work manuals, Surgeon General's reports, and all balanced with the most unworldly of medieval theologians.

Photos on the mantel promised to be more interesting, group photos mostly, nuns in different jungly places. At least she thought they were nuns. They had that nun look, although none of them wore habits. Sister Ann as a young woman, with three friends, in a classroom, teachers. The same three nuns in front of a shabby one-room schoolhouse in a clearing, children crowding around at their knees. Several photos of different nuns with small, Indian-looking people in front of concrete block buildings or holding classes under trees. Sister Ann and another woman in front of a small airplane. A bearded man in jungle fatigues, loaded down with weapons. At the end of the mantelpiece, a large photo with a caption, a group on an elaborate staircase, “Christmas, Caritas House, 1979.” Andre said Sister Ann had been a Caritas nun. Based in New York, maybe? What did he say about being involved with revolutionaries?

Sister Ann must be in her sixties now. Seraphy thought she'd heard the order no longer existed. How did she end up here? From the clothes and cars the photos looked at least thirty years old, more like forty. Yet she called herself Sister Ann and appeared to be trying to keep some vows. Well, poverty and charity, maybe, but obedience, not so much and cleanliness obviously wasn't a vow.

Squeaking bed springs brought her back to the task at hand. Maria was awake.

“Hi, I'm Seraphy from next door,” she said from the doorway. “Sister Ann had to leave and sent me to fix you something to eat.” The girl struggled to sit up.

“Not hungry . . . water,” she said in a small voice. She licked her flaking lips and pulled the blanket and sheet up around her neck. “Turn on the light, please.”

“Okay,” Seraphy flicked the switch and forced herself not to flinch at the sight of the girl. Dying, her brain said, she's dying. “That better?”

“Thirsty.”

“Okay, back in a minute.” It took only a second to get a quarter-cup of ice chips and a minute more to put on gloves and glasses and wet a paper towel. Maria lay passive as Seraphy wiped her face and offered ice chips. Too weak to hold the cup, the girl lay back against the pillow, opening her mouth like a baby bird. Seraphy cringed at the white patches and purple sores covering her tongue. No wonder the kid craved ice. Maria mumbled thanks as the ice numbed her mouth.

The half-cup of formula heated quickly. Seraphy dumped it into the glass, wondering how caregivers could do this kind of work day after day. She couldn't abandon Maria, but all she wanted was to run out the door and forget she'd ever been there at all.

“Hun-hunh,” the girl said, shaking her head as Seraphy walked into her room with the glass. “Not . . . hungry.” Her head flopped back onto the pillow. “Ice?”

“Sister Ann told me you need to drink this, Maria.” Up close the girl's skin looked like rice paper stretched over a skeleton. Surely even a light touch would tear that fragile skin and shatter the bird bones beneath. All Maria's life seemed concentrated in those hot eyes.

“Would you at least try for me?”

“No med'cine. I . . . throw up.” She looked like she meant it. Seraphy noticed a stainless steel bowl on the floor by the bed and backed away a step.

“But this is only food, not medicine, and Sister Ann will be pissed at me if you don't even try.”

Already exhausted, Maria shut her eyes and opened her mouth. Wounded, Seraphy thought again, a wounded bird. She lifted Maria and touched the glass straw to her cracked lips. The girl jerked and Seraphy felt her gag as formula trickled down her throat, but she managed not to vomit.

“I'm so sorry, is there anything I can do?” Seraphy felt ignorant and helpless and angry at her helplessness. “Let me wipe your face.”

”Ice,” Maria said, her voice barely audible. “Have to eat . . . they said . . . have to, for my baby.”

“Baby?” She couldn't have heard that right. Maria tugged at her blanket, fussing until she pulled it free, releasing a cloud of body odor that made the hair on the back of Seraphy's neck rise. She stared and couldn't reply, couldn't move. Clear through the thin white cotton nightgown was a round bump like half a basketball, a fat dome-shaped growth stuck on the stick-like body of the child. Maria stroked her belly and smiled, then winced as her lip cracked open. Automatically Seraphy offered her more ice, then pulled the blanket over the swollen belly and wiped her flushed forehead.

“Feels . . . good . . .” Maria, her face scrunched and determined. “Drink now.” She sucked at the glass straw, this time managing two swallows before she clamped her lips shut and let her head fall back. Seraphy saw her throat work trying to keep the liquid down and tasted bitterness in her own mouth. It took Maria almost an hour to finish the half-cup of formula. She sucked up the last drops with a tiny smile and was asleep in a second.