Pieces of Hate (5 page)

Lynda’s hand rose to pass over her face, touching it self-consciously — just her fingertips, brushing her flesh here and there. Then the hand dropped loosely to the bed.

“Maybe it’s you,” she said. “Maybe you’ve made me look better. I wouldn’t be surprised. Because it’s so good to have you here.”

Margaret did not reply. She just kept staring at her sister. Lynda did look different. Maybe it was her imagination, her lack of sleep . . . but Lynda’s face had something it did not have the day before. Her skin had more color in it and her eyes more life and sparkle.

But Margaret simply smiled and said, “I’m glad.”

Lynda pulled her hand away. “Go on, finish your breakfast.”

With a little reluctance, Margaret went back to her hash browns.

As she ate, Lynda said, very quietly. “Hey, you didn’t get to meet my roommate yesterday. She was out for tests. From what I hear, she’s got all the doctors stumped. Anyway, she’s really old and she doesn’t have anybody. Maybe after you’re done eating, you could go see her and say hi. She gets so lonely. I don’t think she’s, um . . . you know, quite right, but . . . she’s really nice, and she’d love it so much. Would you mind?”

Margaret was finished, but she smacked her lips over the tip of each finger before asking, “What’s her name?”

“Mrs. Watkiss. That’s all I know.”

“Sure, I don’t mind.” She stood, stuffed the foil wrappers and cardboard containers into the Burger King bag, wadded them up and dropped them into the garbage can. After slapping her hands together a few times, she walked across the room toward the drape that was wrapped around the other bed and said, “Hello, in there.”

A frail voice responded: “Yes?”

Margaret pulled the drape along its track and smiled at the old woman lying in bed. “Hello, Mrs. Watkiss. My name’s Margaret. I’m your roommate’s sister. I wanted to say hi.”

The old woman’s wrinkles were so deep and her skin so pasty, that they didn’t look real; they looked like movie makeup or a latex mask with threads of thin white hair splaying from the top of the head and over her flat pillow. There were small bandages on her face — one over her right cheekbone, another on the line of her jaw just to the right of her chin, one on the side of her nose, and another in the center of her forehead. She squinted up at Margaret.

“Margaret, you say?” It was an effort, but after shifting her weight back and forth, looking like a beetle stranded on its back, she propped herself up on both elbows.

“That’s right.”

“Well, well, ain’t you sweet,” the old woman whispered through a weak smile. “To come see me, I mean. Ain’t that just so nice.”

“Would you like me to fluff that pillow and adjust your bed so you can sit up?”

“Would you? I’d like that, thanks.”

Margaret used the control to adjust the head of the bed, then she leaned over for the deflated-looking pillow and fluffed it up. As she did so, she was a bit disconcerted by the intensity with which Mrs. Watkiss stared into her eyes. She wrapped an arm around the old woman’s bony shoulders, lifted her up and slid the pillow beneath her head.

“Thanks,” Mrs. Watkiss said again, still not taking her eyes from Margaret’s. Her brow, lined with nothing more than the ghostly tufts of what used to be eyebrows, was drawn downward tensely above her bleary deep-set eyes. “You’re real purty,” she said, her slight, trembly smile clashing with her frown.

Margaret joined her hands behind her back and smiled nervously. “Thank you, that’s very nice of you to say. Is there anything I can — ”

“Just like your sister,” Mrs. Watkiss continued. “She’s purty, too. I can tell, even though . . . she’s been so sick.” She lowered her voice to a throaty whisper on the last four words. “She’s real sweet, too. Just like you.” She continued to smile, although it seemed quite an effort for her lips; she continued to frown, as well.

“Well, you don’t look so bad yourself. Mrs. Watkiss,” Margaret lied cheerfully. “Except for those little bandages. Have the nurses been beating up on you, or something?”

Another weak smile as she continued to stare into Margaret’s eyes. “Well, see, they had to take these things offa my face. Somethin’ called nelimonas, or . . . menilomas, or . . . somethin’ like that.”

“Melanomas?”

Mrs. Watkiss’s eyebrows bobbed, eyes still staring. “Yeah, that’s them. They had cancer in ’em, or somethin’, I guess. So, they took ’em off.”

“Then you must be glad they’re gone.”

“At this point, what do I care?”

“Is there anything else I can do for you, Mrs. Watkiss?” Margaret asked, her toes wiggling anxiously in her shoes. The old woman’s stare was becoming more piercing by the second and it made Margaret feel as if she were being interrogated under hot lights. “Would you like a drink of water? I’ve got a few magazines, if you’d like to read.”

Mrs. Watkiss waved her thick-veined, liver-spotted hand dismissively and rolled her head back and forth on the pillow, her eyes locked onto Margaret’s the whole time. Then, slowly, she raised her hand and crooked her knobby, arthritic forefinger, beckoning Margaret to come closer. With her hands on the chrome side rail, Margaret leaned over the old woman.

“Happened to me, too,” Mrs. Watkiss said, her voice little more than a breath. “When I was thirty-one. On a beautiful spring night. I was alone, tryin’ to walk away my woes. My boyfriend had dropped me for another girl, so I was feeling low, see. And then . . . there they were alla sudden. And they gave it to me . . . what they gave to you. A gift from above, honey, that’s what it is. Every bit as much a gift as the breath of life God gave us all.”

Margaret felt a tingling on the back of her neck as she glanced over her shoulder to see Lynda lying on her side, fast asleep.

“Maybe I shouldn’t be tellin’ you this, I don’t know. I ain’t so good with words, y’know? Can’t really express myself so well. I never got much education. But I got this feelin’, see. Prob’ly ain’t too many of us around. Maybe I should tell you what I know, even if I don’t do it so good.” She paused and took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “See at first, I was real afraid of ’em. I’m sure you were, too. I was even afraid afterwards, when it was all over. Took awhile for me to figure out just what had happened . . . what what’d been done to me. But, oh, then when I realized . . .” She raised her hand and rested it on Margaret’s, which had gone white as it gripped the chrome rail.

Suddenly, something shot up Margaret’s spinal column and exploded inside her skull:

Green light . . . the shimmering green glow all around her as she lies flat on a cold, hard slab . . . and the faces above her . . . no mouths or noses, but enormous oval eyes of deep, glistening black . . . and the hands reaching for her, with their long, stick-like fingers, each with four knuckles . . . touching her . . . stroking and prodding and exploring . . . and all the while, she is paralyzed, unable to move, to speak, even unable to take a very deep breath . . .

“You okay, honey?” Mrs. Watkiss asked, patting Margaret’s tense hand as she lifted her head a couple inches off the pillow.

Margaret felt a bead of perspiration trickle down her side from her armpit and she had the sudden urge to start gulping air as if she were suffocating. “Fine. I’m . . . fine.”

“Well, then . . . where was I? Oh, yeah. I didn’t say nothin’ to anyone about what happened that night. Who’d believe me, anyway? Some people really get their cookies on that sort of thing, even go on them television talk shows to tell about it. But I’m just not the type to go around claimin’ that somethin’ the size of a city block came out of the sky and some funny lookin’ people took me inside to hook me up to some machines.”

It happened again, and like before, it filled nothing more than a fraction of a second in time, but inside Margaret’s head it was a small, shrieking eternity:

Something is suspended several feet over her head, lowering slowly. It is made of a shiny, silvery metal and has four spidery legs on each side, which move as it nears her. They contract, until they are about the right size to fit snugly around her skull. Two small, oval cups are positioned above three spaghetti-like tubes, which emerge from the center of the object — two on top and one below — with quivering jewels of moisture clinging to the tip of each. The device is less than two inches away from pressing over her face and clamping itself onto her head when Margaret realizes that the cups will fit over her eyes, and the upper tubes will go into her nostrils, while the single, lower tube will enter her mouth. She tries to close her mouth, which has been open wide as if to yawn ever since she arrived, but she cannot. Even her lips and eyelids are numb and useless, paralyzed. She is able to do nothing more than watch as the shiny device covers her face and replaces the green glow with utter darkness . . .

Margaret blinked rapidly and swallowed hard several times; her throat was suddenly dry and scratchy, as if she had been screaming.

“You sure you’re all right, honey?” Mrs. Watkiss asked. “You’re lookin’ pale’?”

“Tired,” Margaret said tightly. “That’s all. I drove from Los Angeles and I’m . . . tired.”

“Well, you’ll feel better soon. You got somethin’ that’ll keep you well. I tell ya. And I know, better than anyone.” She smiled, her thin lips wrinkling back over long yellowed teeth. “I didn’t tell anyone about what happened — you’re the first and only, in fact — but that didn’t keep me from usin’ the gift. I used it quiet-like, without nobody knowin’. But I knew. And I can’t tell you how . . . wonderful it was,” she went on in her raspy whisper, giving Margaret’s hand a squeeze, “to be able to do the things I could do then. At first, anyway. But then . . . it went bad. Not the gift, no, I ain’t sayin’ that. I went bad, see. It was me. I could do real good things, yeah, sure. But boy, I tell ya . . . I could do some . . . some real bad things. Bad, bad things.” Her face darkened as she shook her head slowly. “The gift, see . . . it can’t go bad. Only the person who gets it’s the one who can go sour. At least, that was . . . my experience.”

As she listened, Margaret felt as if the hair on her head was moving forward and backward in waves, and beneath her clothes, her skin streaked with rivulets of perspiration, crawled with chilly gooseflesh.

“Don’t you let that happen to you, Margaret. What happened to me, I mean.”

Margaret had to lick her lips and swallow again before attempting to speak. “And exactly . . . what happened . . . to you?”

“Like I said, I went bad. I soured. I let the gift down, not the other way around. Lotsa good things can be done with the gift. Lotsa bad things, too. But you gotta make a decision, I guess.” She lifted her head from the pillow. “Promise me you won’t sour on the gift like I did. Use it the way it was meant to be used.” Her head turned on its spindly neck, and Margaret looked over her shoulder, following the old woman’s gaze to find that she was looking at Lynda, who was still asleep.

When Margaret looked at Mrs. Watkiss again, her head was back on the pillow. Clearing her throat, Margaret said, “Um, I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about, Mrs. — ”

“Oh, sure you do. You the first one I’ve met, you know. I didn’t even know it was possible to recognize another like me till I saw your eyes. I knew right away. I still ain’t sure how, I just . . . knew. You’ve got the gift, all right, no doubt about that. Here . . .” She reached up and lightly touched four fingertips to Margaret’s temple. “. . . and here. That’s where it nests, best I can tell.” She placed her hand back on Margaret’s, patting it in a comforting grandmotherly way.

Margaret could only stare, lips parted, at the old woman. She could think of nothing more to say.

Mrs. Watkiss’s small gray head seemed to sink into the pillow as her paper-thin eyelids closed halfway. She seemed exhausted from all the talk.

“You was sure sweet to come see me,” Mrs. Watkiss said, her voice growing hoarse. “You go back to your sister now. That’s where you can do the most good.” She closed her eyes, the hint of a smile on her weathered lips, and drifted off. Her hands slipped off of Margaret’s and dropped to the bed. Her nose made a small whistling sound as she breathed.

Margaret took a few slow steps backward, drawing the drape back into place. Checking to make sure Lynda was still asleep, she hurried into the bathroom, locked the door behind her and vomited her breakfast into the toilet . . .

8

Holding a cold paper towel to the back of her neck. Margaret leaned against the bathroom wall trying to pull herself together. Her mind was going in so many directions at once that she wasn’t sure that pulling herself together was a viable option.

She’s just on old woman, Margaret kept thinking, trying to make the words convincing. Even Lynda said she wasn’t quite right. She’s just crazy, that’s all. And she just happened to catch me at a weak moment.

As she dabbed her face with the paper towel, she thought, Then again, maybe it’s not a weak moment. Maybe I’m going crazy, too.

After rinsing her mouth and running her fingers through her hair, she went back to Lynda’s bedside to find her sister still asleep on her side, her right hand hanging limply over the bottom bar of the side rail. Margaret lowered herself into the chair slowly, staring at Lynda’s face, narrowing her eyes as she studied it.

Yes, it looked different than it had yesterday, there was no question. Even in sleep, there was more color in her cheeks. Yesterday, it had been a taut face, stiff as a plastic Halloween mask, as if reacting to pain at every moment, even while sleeping; now it was a relaxed face, smoother, still much too thin, but without the tension it had held the day before. The bandana was wrapped crookedly around her head, revealing some of her nearly bare crown; a shadow made up of tiny, fine hairs darkened her scalp, as if her head had been shaved and her hair was trying hard to recover. Margaret looked down at the bony hand hanging off the edge of the mattress.