The Messenger (27 page)

“Then he decided he was going to come after
me …
” Nadja says bitterly. So she ran too. For over two months the sisters lost touch with each other. It was only the efforts of another girl, Venerette,
that saved them, when she gave Paula the lead to Monica’s place in K.C., a shelter for women in trouble and on the run from the men in their lives.

It was nice of Venerette, who was there at the start, but now she’s gone. Now Paula thinks coming there was the wrong thing to do; she hates Brush Creek. After Niv-L and his crew she wants nothing more to do with ghetto people. “Except for Monica, of course.”

“What about the baby?” Daria asks the girl. Paula is propped up on pillows against the wall. The bed is just a big block of foam rubber covered with a motley assortment of blankets and bedspreads. “How will you take care of it? There is no husband.”

Nadja gives her a frown. For a long time Paula doesn’t look up, she just sits there rubbing her stomach. “I would like to keep it,” she answers in a quiet voice. “But … yes, I may not be able. Monica said that maybe she can help me …”

Nadja puts her tea down on the floor and crawls onto the bed with her sister and wraps her arms around her. They cuddle like that, silently, and Daria pours the rest of the tea into Paula’s cup and takes the things to the kitchen.

Wandering through the house, she discovers another bedroom, this one with bunk beds to be used by children. There are no sheets or pillows for the top bed, but someone has been sleeping in the bottom bunk.

Off the kitchen is a dining room. There are pocket doors to close it off from the living room, and one door has been pulled shut. A sort of bed has been made up there with a recliner with sheets and a quilt. It’s probably for Monica. In the kitchen there is a stack of four large blue plastic bottles of water. On the stove, a kettle and a cauldron, the kind of thing you would use for cooking pasta in a restaurant.

In the living room is a television on a crate with a long black cable entering from a hole that has been punched in the plaster. She can hear the sisters talking, and even some laughter coming from the bedroom, so she finds the remote and settles down on the sofa.

The pirated cable only receives the basic package, all the local stations and the public networks. As Daria clicks through them she
is startled to hear Italian. She flicks past it, and then back—one of those old classic movies. She has seen it a hundred times back in Rome. Fellini. Laughing, grotesque faces and circus music.

There is a situation comedy, something with a laugh track. The television works fine. It’s at least thirty-six inches, a behemoth that maybe they could use to heat the room if required. It has been centered in front of a soot-scarred fireplace, which, from the lack of a screen, andirons, or cinders, looks like it has been plugged.

She comes upon news of a multiple car crash, news of a basketball upset, news of a school closing. She keeps going, looking for national and international news. There is a noise at the front door, a snapping of latches, and someone saying, “Don’t get up, don’t get up …”

Monica is another huge black woman, but tightly built. “I’m Monica; are you Nadja?”

“No,” she says.

“Hi. Thank you,” Nadja says, coming out of Paulina’s room.

“It’s all right. She’s doing well, but she needs to stay in bed. Are you a nurse, have you ever done any of that, either one of you?” Monica unstraps a black nylon carryall she’s brought in. “There’s some clean linens out there in the car …”

Daria braces herself against the arm of the sofa, stands, and goes out for the laundry.

Monica’s car is a beat-up Jeep Cherokee. The back windows are shattered and patched with plywood and duct tape. The doors have been painted white and then a city shield has been added, stenciled with black spray paint:

The laundry is in two garbage bags, and she knows it will hurt too much to carry more than one, so she doesn’t even try. She hugs the first one to her chest, and takes the steps slowly.

“… and there is no cost at all unless she goes to the hospital, and I’m going to be here when any of that happens. She’s got my
pager. I’ll show you, I’ll show both of you how to work it,” Monica is saying when Daria comes in the door. She puts the bag of laundry on the sofa in the living room.

Her face feels hot, and for a moment she is dizzy. On the television the announcer is pointing to a map. The United States is represented as pale blue on a deep blue background. The individual states are finely outlined in white. Where is Kansas?

The map suddenly blossoms red—clusters around New York, Washington. Down the eastern states. Another dot where she supposes Atlanta is. Chicago maybe, she does not quite know where it is. A dot that must be right there in Kansas City. A few more oddly spaced ones … places she does not know. A string all down the west coast, clusters at Los Angeles and … Seattle, she guesses.

Spread through the airports, she thinks. How much was because of her and Lufthansa 7416? Now it’s happened, now it’s too late. All she can do is stand there and watch, propped up against the archway to the living room.

She steps back from the archway, takes a deep breath, and starts back out for the second bag of laundry.

“… So, remember, we don’t want her to move around extra, because she had some spotting. I had the doctor come in and see her and he said she’s fine. But she’s got orders to be completely laid back, you know what I mean?” Monica says, and goes out to the kitchen.

Daria brings in the laundry and sorts it in the front room. Mostly
sheets and towels. There is a stack of diapers with a paper wrapper holding them together. She takes the towels to the bathroom and stacks them on a shelf. The bathroom is clean enough. Some of the tiles in the shower have been patched with something that was slathered on the wall, then sprayed over with some kind of plastic paint. People have been born in worse places, she thinks.

Monica comes back from the kitchen. “Everybody’s going to have to help here, okay? Are you girls fine with that?”

“Of course,” Daria says over her shoulder.

“Are you all right? You not sick yourself, are you?”

“My boyfriend hit me …” she says, touching her side.

“After a soccer match,” Nadja says. “With a fence … post.”

“Lessee …” Monica pulls up Daria’s shirt to look. “Ow …” Monica says, reaching out and softly touching the bandage. In the mirror, Daria can see where a brown stain has leaked through the gauze.

“I’m going to have to look at that,” Monica says, dropping the edge of the T-shirt. “But did you both hear what I say? We all are here to be taking care of your sister. That’s what’s going on. This is work. It’s good you’re here,” she says, “because she is going to be putting herself through a lot.”

“What if you’re gone?”

“That’s what the pager’s for. I got mine on all the time. You call me first … I’ll be right around here somewhere. I know she doesn’t want to go to the hospital, but if she has to go to the hospital, she’s going to go to the hospital. That’s the law. I told her that—”

“She knows.”

“She better get mentally prepared on account of she’s not all that big, you know?” Monica shows with her hands the circumference a proper pelvis should be.

“Let’s figure out where everybody is going to sleep …” Monica says.

The recliner, with a tall reading light next to it, is the hot seat. It’s close to the running water, and where a telephone would be if there was one connected. It can be closed off from the living room (somewhat) with the working half of the pocket door, but it is open
to the kitchen. Monica uses it when she sleeps over, which she has been doing with more frequency since Paula started spotting.

Daria is relegated to the sofa in the living room. She can see the news that way, and she’s not in the way of the highly traveled path between the kitchen and Paula’s bedroom.

There’s not really a door, but she no longer cares much about privacy. None of them do, really, except Monica, who has hung a curtain over the broken pocket door. The sofa itself is thick, bean-bag-style, brown and puffy, covered in velvety synthetic fabric. She has landed with angels, she thinks. It might be true. The house has been at one time a Christian one, she can see a shadow and a picture hook where a crucifix once hung.

Monica’s voice, coming from Paula’s room: “We’re going to raise up that bed. I can’t bend over a low bed like that and do any good with a baby.…” She says she has asked her cousin and his friends to come over with a bed frame and box spring to lift the mattress to a working height.

They are big boys who arrive, led by Brutus and galumphing through the house. Boys with clean T-shirts and sloppy pants that they nevertheless avoid tripping over as they load in Paula’s new bedroom suite. Brutus is cheerleading the operation, making introductions. Being particularly nice to Paulina and pretending not even to notice Nadja.

“Here’s the one, here’s the one that knows who’s right.” He smiles at Daria, and reaches up to touch her cheek with two fingers, and she realizes he’s hitting on her.

The bed frame goes together pretty quickly. At one point in its life, it has been through some sort of trauma, and midway through the construction one of the boys has to retrieve a screw gun from his pickup truck. His name is Xavier and he is Monica’s nephew or cousin, it’s not exactly clear.

Paula watches the whole drama from the safety of a rocking chair that has been placed all the way across the room by the window. She sits with a blanket across the lower half of her body and looks out at the yard. In the afternoon light the window is glowing red.

“That’s good, that’s all good!” says Brutus, leaping back.

“Worrrrrrrrd …” Xavier says, and his friend Zeno, the quiet one, laughs.

The box spring is reasonably clean and fits within the rails, then the foam mattress goes up and Monica tests the height, leaning against the frame to see if it wobbles, and then supervises the making of the bed. There is a big mattress protector, then a rubber sheet, a fabric sheet, another rubber sheet and a second fabric sheet. “… so you can change the bed fast and not put her in discomfort …”

Brutus appears over Daria’s shoulder with a big bag. “Picked you up something to tide you over.…” Inside are bags of potato chips, a big bottle of Diet Coke, some candy bars, and peanut butter.

“Thanks, Brutus …”

“I know you’re going to get hungry, you and Nadja … we’ll make sure you don’t starve to death.”

“That’s very sweet. Thank you.”

“When she gets into it, you know, then you call me. We’ll be here to help you if you need us to go get anything, okay? Okay, Monica?”

“That’s good, Brutus. Now y’all get out of here so she can sleep a little. All this running around is stressful.”

A minute later Daria sees him with Nadja out in the front yard. She is standing in the dry grass, kicking it with her heel, and smoking, listening to him as he stands there joking around.

Dinner is macaroni and cheese, with some pieces of cantaloupe and Diet Coke. They sit around Paula’s room and bring her what she needs. In the higher bed the pregnant girl seems suddenly smaller, a tiny person running her fingers over the fashion magazines spread out around her on the covers.

The two sisters fall into their memories of Russia, and Daria helps by clearing the dishes and washing up. Monica finds her in the kitchen.

“Okay, let me see this place you got in your side, now,” the
black woman says. She has brought her big bag in and set it on the counter.

“Oh, it’s okay. You don’t have to—”

“Mmm-hmm, let’s just see how it’s doing.” She has put on a pair of latex gloves. Daria sighs and turns and braces herself against the counter while Monica folds up her top and slides one blade of a scissors under the tape and clips it away from the wound. “Oh, yeah …” she says softly. “Get you some antibiotics for this …”

“It feels like the rib is—”

“I bet it does. It probably is … It feels like there’s a piece in there. Hold on there for a second.” There is a stinging pain, and a squeezing sensation that radiates through Daria’s lungs, and then Monica is pressing a wad of gauze against her ribs. “Hold on to this …” Daria reaches around and presses the gauze into her side. She is sweating. Dizzy. The wall opposite her breaks out in little colorful raindrops.

There is a sound of running water, and then a sharp click as Monica puts something down on the counter—

“You were climbing over a fence?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Uh-huh, I bet it is,” Monica says, moving Daria’s hand aside and putting a fresh dressing on the wound, then taping it up. “That’s going to weep a little but that’s good. You want to keep it draining some …” With her fingers she feels along the great corset of tape that Nadja wrapped around her. “This isn’t as tight as I’d like,” she says, and in seconds wraps another four turns of tape around Daria’s middle. “Don’t worry, you’ll just learn to breathe shallow, right?”

“I guess …”

“I think you have a fever; your skin is all red. Here,” she says, inserting a thermometer into Daria’s mouth and bracing her by putting both hands on her shoulders. “Now you listen to me, young lady. You need to get yourself straight. You know what I mean?”

“I guess,” she says through closed teeth.

“Don’t you
guess
. You
know
. You get yourself figured out, or get away from here, you understand? I’ll throw you out of this house in one half second if you go bad on me. You don’t think I can do it?”

“No … I’m sure … I know that—”

“You damn right,” Monica says. She takes the thermometer out and checks it. “You got a little fever,” she says, and then looks her hard in the eye. “You get in there and get to sleep and be ready so you can help out when her time comes for labor.”