Woman On The Edge Of Time (23 page)

“I’ll take Zuli now. Person’s weary and must sleep.” Gently Bee rose with her slung over his shoulder and carried her off along the river path toward the bridge downstream, whistling softly as he padded off.

Everyone had drawn back to leave Bolivar with Sappho. He held her head with his fingers flexing, moving, and for the first time in a quarter of an hour, her lips groped to form words. “Good … Here! Good,” was all she said and then in a hoarse shudder she expelled her breath and was still.

Bolivar rose. “The person who was Sappho is dead.”

Jackrabbit spoke to his kenner, cermoniously repeating, “The person who was Sappho is dead.”

The bell tolled more slowly. Barbarossa dodged through the gathering people, carrying a plank. He laid it on the ground and Luciente moved forward to help Jackrabbit and Bolivar lift Sappho from the cot and place her on the plank. White Oak and Aspen, shaken with weeping, turned to each other to embrace. Bolivar’s knuckles were clenched white on Jackrabbit’s arm. The freckles on his hand stood out like the blotches on aged skin. White Oak steadily stroked Aspen’s cropped head.

Jackrabbit was one of the four people who lifted a corner of the plank and began to carry Sappho into the filmy strands of rain. Aspen’s thick grown hair lay like a bouquet of shiny grasses wedged under the small claw hands folded on Sappho’s narrow chest. Aspen, White Oak, and Bolivar stumbled along
behind the body, White Oak walking with her arm around Aspen, Bolivar going along ahead of them in stiff dignity, as if the only joints in his body were in his bare knees. Luciente fell in behind them with Connie. “Where are we going? To the undertaker?”

“The family, the lovers, the closest friends sit with the body to loosen their grief. After supper everybody in the village will gather for a wake in the big meeting hall where we politic, watch holies, hold indoor rituals.”

“When is the funeral?”

“Funeral?” Luciente consulted the kenner. “We have no such. All night we stay up together speaking of Sappho. Then at dawn we dig a grave and lay the body in. Then we plant the mulberry tree Sappho wanted. Someone will go to the tree nursery in Marion for one. Then before we go to bed, we visit the brooder and signal the intent to begin a baby.”

“Right away? That’s heartless. One in, one out!”

“Why heartless? In a week traditionally, when we are caught up on work and sleep, we discuss into which family the child should be born and who are to be mothers. We begin by meditating on the dead.”

“It just seems … cheap somehow. No funeral, no undertaker. Just shovel them in.”

“Connie, your old way appears barbaric to us, trying to keep the rotting body. To pretend we are not made of elements ancient as the earth, that we do not owe those elements back to the web of all living … For us a good death is one come in the fullness of age, without much pain and in clear mind. A full life is a used life! Person should be tired … . You should sit in on the wake with us! You’ll see. It feels beautiful, it feels good. You’ll see what beauty Jackrabbit makes—person and Bolivar spectacle together. Bolivar is a ritual maker. I myself will perform tonight with my drums—which we should scamp over and get after we set up at the meetinghouse.”

“Something is wrong!” She felt a threat shaking her. “Let go, Luciente. Let me go!”

“With haste, Connie!” Luciente stepped back and Connie faded through into the chair in the dim day room. Nurse Wright was slapping her to and fro till her jaw ached.

“Please … don’t!”

“Thought you’d … withdrawn.”

“I feel real funny today. I think I slept or passed out. The medication … I felt real funny after I took it today.”

Nurse Wright was a motherly woman in her fifties, but overworked. She had given up and just drifted along in the ward, leaning heavily on her attendants. Connie liked her but felt she couldn’t be relied on. Nurse Wright peered into her eyes. “Ummm. I’ll mention it to the doctor. Maybe you’re on the wrong dosage.”

“I think I’m kind of sensitive to drugs, maybe,” she said meekly. She was still shuddering with the force of the transition. Her heart pounded wildly and Nurse Wright, taking her by the wrist, pursed her lips at the pulse.

“I’ll mention it to the doctor. You may be on too high a dosage, or maybe not. He’ll say in the end. Now, on your feet.”

She rose shakily. “I feel funny.”

“Come along now. It’s time to get in line for your supper.”

“They’re moving us all on a special ward,” Skip said. “Here in the medical building.”

“Who says?” Connie asked. Rumors had galloped back and forth through their little group for two weeks.

“Fats, the friendly attendant. He says pretty soon we’ll all be moved onto a ward fixed up for us.”

“Men and women both? A locked ward?” Even if it was locked, at least she could get to be on the same ward as Sybil again.

“I think locked.” Skip pulled a long face. “They don’t act like they’re fixing to turn us loose. I got a funny letter from my father, saying they’re real proud I’ve been picked to be in a pilot project for special attention, and they hope I’ll cooperate and get well. That we’re lucky to have such a famous doctor, written up in
Time
magazine.”

“Redding?”

“The same. But they’re even more bowled over by a Dr. Argent, who’s head of some institute.”

“Dr. Argent? There’s nobody around here like that.”

“Beats me. What bothers me is that the hospital’s been after them to sign a permission for something.”

She hugged herself, trying to summon up the nerve. Skip had his own clothes, he always seemed to have a little cash, even cigarettes. “Skip … could you loan me a little to call my niece in New York City? I haven’t had a visit since I got here. I know if I talk to her, I can get her to bring me some money and some
of my clothes. They’re ashamed, and they’re pretending I don’t exist since they sent me up.”

“My folks guilt-trip over sending me to the state hospital. They don’t come either, but they deposit an allowance.” Skip fished out a pouch he wore under his shirt. He had made it in Occupational Therapy. She longed for OT privileges but couldn’t get them because Mrs. Richard had put down bad things in her record. OT was just an hour every other week (the men went one week and the women the next) playing with clay or cutting out leather, but it was something to do. Of course you couldn’t really relax because the OT had to justify her job by writing a report too (“patient withdrawn, made woman with overdeveloped sexual features”), but it was some kind of change. Skip stuck the pouch back under his shirt and slid a dollar into her hand. “Hope it does you something.”

She hid the dollar in the secret compartment under the bottom flap of her shopping-bag-within-a-shopping-bag—both wearing dangerously thin and mended twice on the handles. “Thanks, Skip. Listen, if I can get her, she’ll come through. She has to.”

“They don’t like us, you know, We’re lepers … . You know what the last experiment was they pulled on me? They stuck electrodes on my prick and showed me dirty pictures, and when I got a hard-on about men, they shocked me. Whatever they’re into here, it can’t be that painful, right?”

As they sat on the bench waiting for Acker, the denim psychologist, to give them some new test, she felt better. She had a secret key to the world, if only she got permission to use the phone that night.

The time they could make phone calls was fixed: after supper, before roll call. She waited in line to ask permission.

Sharma asked, “Please can I have some toilet paper?”

“Again? What are you doing in the bathroom, Sharma?”

“It’s the medication. It makes me have to pee all the time, Nurse, honest.”

“It doesn’t do that to any other patient. Why would it do that to you? If you didn’t play with yourself, you wouldn’t have to pass urine every five minutes.” Two sheets of toilet paper doled out.

“Please can I make a phone call?” Sylvia asked.

“Who do you want to call?”

The black woman shifted her feet. “My boyfriend.”

“What’s his name?”

“Duster.”

The nurse was still waiting.

Reluctantly Sylvia added, “Duster MacPhee. He’s in Yonkers.”

“You have the money?”

“Right here, I sure do.”

“Okay. The men’s attendant is on duty in the hall.” The nurse acted out permitting a great favor.

“I need a couple of aspirin. I have a terrible headache tonight.” A new patient, Mrs. Souza, held out her hand impatiently.

“Your medication is listed on your chart, and it doesn’t include aspirin,” the night nurse said.

“But I have a headache. I don’t need any … medication. Drugs. Just plain, ordinary aspirin.”

“You’re a doctor now, to prescribe for yourself, Mrs. Souza? Is that what you’re doing in the hospital—thinking you’re a doctor?”

“I’m not asking for morphine, Nurse. Just aspirin! Like we sell in the drugstore I own with my husband, by sizes up to one thousand! Aspirin!”

“Sweetie, you may or you may not own a drugstore, but you’re contused now. You aren’t the one who prescribes for the patients in here. Now go sit down! Now! Or I’ll have you sedated.”

Mrs. Souza could not believe it. She turned to Connie, next in line. “I was only asking for plain aspirin, for my headache! I’ll tell the doctor about this.”

“Better sit down,” she said softly. She could not risk saying more. She stepped past Mrs. Souza and in her best beggar’s manner pleaded, “Please, I would really appreciate it if I could call my niece Dolly Campos in New York City?”

“You have the money?”

She showed her the precious dollar, cashed into quarters and dimes from Mrs. Stein. “See? Enough to call her. Please. I would appreciate it, Nurse, ever so much.”

“I sure would like to know where you got that, Mrs. Ramos,”

“It’s mine. See? Please.” Again she held out her hand with the precious coins hot in her palm. “I would really like to talk with my niece, Dolly Campos, in Manhattan. You have her on the list of family, if you want to check it.”

“Go ahead. Though I’d like to know what you did for that money. Did you bum it in dimes?”

A man was talking on the pay phone already and four others were ahead of her, including Sylvia. They could all hear, although the man tried to hold his mouth close to the receiver and cup his other hand around it. Still, when his wife could hear him, they could hear him too.

“So how come you haven’t brought it? I’m not angry … . I can’t talk louder, baby … . So sell the goddamned house before they foreclose! Never mind what your brother said … . Now listen … . I’m not yelling! … Listen, so call a real estate man—that’s what they’re for … . Never mind what he says, the commission comes out of the price. If they don’t sell it, they don’t get anything, Margaret. Listen to me!”

“Hurry up, you,” the kid next in line said. “I got to call by eight o’clock. You been on ten minutes!”

The whole line wriggled with excitement, anxiety, the dreadful force of focusing all longing on that black object waiting to eat their precious coins. The attendant leaned smoking against the far wall, idly flirting with a woman patient giggling in short nervous bursts, her eyes fixed on his shoes. Dolly might not be home. She might be with a john. Geraldo might be with her, and he would hang up. To get Geraldo would be worse than not to get anyone, because that would alert him to Connie’s trying to reach her niece. If she could only call in the morning!

The kid was talking to his mother and father at once, presumably on different extensions. He was about fifteen, with acne run wild in the hospital, a tubby build, hands that shook on the phone. It depressed her to see a kid with hands that shook. She stared at the greasy texture of the wall opposite, like the skin of a dirty old lizard. Geraldo’s sharp lizard boots. He would be there, of course, he would answer the phone. She could try to disguise her voice. If he answered and she hung up immediately, maybe her coins would come back. No, that
didn’t work; once he answered, the money was lost and the chance blown.

The kid left the phone dangling and shuffled off. “Bitch, bitch, bitch,” he mumbled and slammed headfirst into the opposite wall. The attendant seized him by the scruff.

Sylvia grabbed the phone for her call. Behind them five others were waiting. Sylvia dialed her number. It was busy. Her face would not accept that. She dialed again. It was busy again. Without a word she went to the end of the line to wait another turn. Her face was wondering who her boyfriend was talking to. Her face was naming women, her face was inventing women he was about to run over to see, hop into bed with, love in total forgetfulness of her.

Connie fumbled at the coins, dropped a dime, stomped it and scooped it up in blurred haste before she could lose her place in line. She dialed deliberately, not too slow, not too fast. The number rang. Third ring. Picked up. Her heart rose like an express elevator.

“Hello, this is Dolly Campos’ residence. I am busy right now but I will call you back as soon as I am free. Please state your name and number, and I will get back to you just as soon as I can. That’s a promise! Love from Dolly. You have sixty seconds after the tone.”

She could not comprehend for a moment and then she realized it was a recording machine. She said quickly, for she had already lost seconds, “Dolly, my baby, it’s me, Connie, in the hospital. Please, come to see me! This weekend or next. Please! Bring me a little money and clothes! Write me. Please, Dolly! Don’t forget me!” It beeped again before she could get in “Don’t forget me,” and she spoke to dead air. She hung up the phone and drifted away. A machine. Across the hall the attendant was muttering in the ear of the woman patient, who fidgeted and shook her head limply.

What was Dolly doing with a machine? She must still be in the life. That way could she pick and choose? Fat chance. A machine! She had worked Skip for a dollar to speak to a rotten machine.

Friday she got a letter that had been opened and read, pawed through, inspected, and passed upon by staff, but still it was
hers. From Dolly, in English. The staff took an extra week on Spanish; maybe Dolly remembered, or more likely she could not write Spanish.