Broken Wings 2 - Midnight Flight

by Andrews, V. C.

  As soon as I sat up, my back felt as if all the muscles in it were tearing away from the bones.

  “Stand up!” M'Lady Two screamed at Robin.

  M'Lady Three lifted her bunk at the foot of it, then dropped it hard to the floor.

  Robin cried out with pain. Reluctantly, she rose, groaning like someone in her eighties or nineties.

  “What time is it?” she asked, rubbing her lower back.

  “Did you speak? Did you say something without permission? I didn't hear anything, did I? Well?” M'Lady Two demanded, her nose so close to Robin's, I thought they would touch.

  Robin shook her head.

  “All right then,” M'Lady Two said, standing straight. She turned so she was addressing me as well. “This morning you will be introduced to your chores first and then you will be taken to breakfast.”

  “This first breakfast is a gift since you have done little to earn the food,” M'Lady One said. “Consequently, from this time on, whenever you approach a m'lady or any other student at this school, you are to say, 'Excuse me. I'm sorry.' Should you forget to do it, you will be given a demerit on the spot. Is that understood? Is it?” she screamed at me.

  “Yes,” I said. Robin nodded.

  “March out,” M'Lady Two ordered, and we did so.

  The sunlight made me squint. I covered my eyes and gradually got accustomed to what I was seeing. How could it be so hot so early? I wondered.

  I looked for Teal. She was standing by her bunk, wavering as if drunk, her head down. The shackles were off her feet, but still attached to the cot. I looked around. The other two girls were nowhere in sight.

  “Okay, let's have it,” M'Lady One ordered. Robin looked at me. Teal raised her head. None of us knew what she wanted. “The prayer!” she screamed. “Our morning prayer. Are you all as stupid as you are incorrigible? Recite.”

  We began.

  “No mumbling. Loud,” she commanded.

  Teal, who now looked terrified of making any mistakes, did the best. Robin and I spoke a split second behind her, correcting ourselves.

  “Not absolutely perfect, but passable,” M'Lady One decided, just as M'Lady Three came toward us. She was carrying three shovels over her shoulder.

  “Good morning, girls,” she sang with exaggerated glee. “Isn't it a beautiful morning? This is one of your tools.” She distributed the three shovels to us. Teal took hers as if the handle were made of steel wool, holding it as softly as possible with just the tips of her fingers.

  “From now on, you are responsible for it,” M'Lady Three continued. “We will show you where the tool shed is. You will put them away neatly with every other tool. When you open the tool shed door, wait a moment or two since rattlesnakes seem to find it comfortable in there and I know we're low on antirattlesnake venom.”

  Teal looked up sharply and then at the two of us. I saw Robin was having trouble swallowing. She looked like she would topple any moment. My heart was pounding like a jungle drum, sending warnings to every part of my body. My blood was in a panic, rushing through my veins as if it were looking for a place to hide.

  “This morning you will join Natani. He is a Navajo Indian and the farm manager. You are to give him the same respect and obedience you give to any of us. He will explain your work to you and you will work for two hours before we go to breakfast. As you have been told, you haven't done enough to earn it, but you will be given this first meal anyway. However, I assure you, anyone who doesn't do her job adequately will not be given breakfast and will remain out there working until she does.”

  Robin raised her hand.

  “Yes, you may speak,” M'Lady Two said.

  “Can 1 go to the bathroom first?”

  “You all can go to the bathroom one at a time.” She turned to her right to point at a narrow shack.

  “What's that?” Teal asked. “I mean, permission to speak.”

  M'Lady Three nodded.

  “What's that?”

  “That's your outhouse.”

  “What's an outhouse?”

  “It's your bathroom, stupid. Once again, I advise you to hesitate a moment or two after you open the door as rattlesnakes like to curl up and sleep around the toilet at night.”

  Robin froze, her eyes widening.

  “We're not going to wait all day for you to go to the bathroom, girls. If you don't go now, you pee or whatever in your diapers. Move!” M'Lady Three screamed.

  With great hesitation, Robin started for the outhouse and Teal and I followed behind. As we did, I started to look around more at our surroundings. Obviously we were somewhere deep in some desert. I could see cactus and brush, but outside of the immediate property, which was fenced in, there was no grass, just long, rolling, brown, crusty dirt in every direction. The sunlight wavered over it, making it look even hotter and drier. Mountains were way off in the distance.

  To our right we could see dozens of pigs bumping and pushing at each other to get at feed. They slobbered through mud and their own excrement, their heads down, consuming themselves in eating. Farther to the right were four horses nibbling on hay. The gardens were on our left and from the looks of them were bigger than any other garden I had seen. I recognized cornstalks, but nothing else, not being much of a farmer or around farms ever.

  Robin opened the outhouse door and jumped back. “Who wants to go first?” she asked Teal and me.

  Both of us looked in. Toilet? There was nothing but what looked like a big pipe with a crude wooden seat around it. Instead of toilet paper, sheets of what looked like wrapping paper were beside it.

  “Let's go, girls,” M'Lady Three called. “Every minute you waste here, you have to make up at the garden, and that's how much longer it will be before you have any food.”

  Teal stepped in timidly. She started to close the door behind her and then screamed and jumped out.

  “Something's crawling in there. I saw it!” she cried.

  “It's more afraid of you than you are of it, whatever it is,” M'Lady Three said, stepping up. “Either pee in your pants or go in and do it now.”

  “Oh, God!” Teal screamed, her hands pressed to her temples. “I can't stand this. I can't stand it!”

  Her whole body started to shake. I looked at the three buddies to see what they would do, but they just stared at her, watching her cry and pound herself. She raged for a few more moments, then sank to the ground, sitting and sobbing with gasps like someone who couldn't catch her breath.

  “I want to go home!” she cried. “I'll do anything, say anything, promise anything. Let me go home. Please.”

  M'Lady Two turned to Robin. “Are you going to the bathroom or not?” she asked as if seeing Teal's tantrum and fit was nothing out of the ordinary for any of them.

  Robin nodded and went into the outhouse.

  Teal fell on her side and closed her eyes. “I want to go home,” she whispered. “I want to go home.” She said it louder: “Please, let me go home.”

  “What happened to the tough rich girl whose father would be angry at us? I have news for you, girl. Listen to this headline. You've got a long way to go before you go home,” M'Lady Three told her. “And all you're doing this morning by throwing this stupid tantrum is making that journey longer yet.”

  The door opened and Robin came out. She looked pale, but said nothing. I stepped in, quivering all over, and did my business. When I came out, Teal was sitting up and wiping her cheeks.

  “It's all right,” I told her. “There's nothing in there but some bugs and ants.”

  She grimaced, got up, and went in. When she came out, we were marched toward the gardens. I couldn't imagine working in this sun for two hours before we could get something to eat. Surely, this was cruel and these people would be held responsible for whatever happened to us. They would be sorry, I thought, and that thought of them all getting into big trouble gave me enough strength to walk on.

  As we approached a new field, we saw Gia and Mindy hard at work turning over the earth. No
w that we were outside with them, I could see how tan their faces were. It amazed me that Mindy was able to do any work being as thin as she was, but she seemed unstoppable, digging, turning, digging, without looking up. Gia worked the same way.

  At first none of us saw the man we were told was called Natani. He seemed to rise up from the ground where he was squatting, emerging like an instantly growing, dark brown tree trunk. He looked our way, then he wiped his hands on the sides of his overalls and walked toward us. As he drew closer, I thought he was at least a hundred years old. Although his hair was black with barely a sign of gray, his face was a dried prune. He had a small build and was surely not more than five feet four inches tall.

  “Here are your three new squaws,” M'Lady Three told him, and laughed. “They are very delicate flowers so you will have your hands full keeping them alive.”

  He said nothing, but looked at us and nodded not to agree with her, but more to acknowledge us. He wore a pair of white muslin trousers, a calico shirt, a pair of buckskin moccasins, and a bandanna twisted and tied around his head. On his right wrist was a leather band fastened with buckskin lacing and decorated with silver and turquoise.

  “I am Natani,” he said to us. “I will show you how we grow what we eat, how we care for the animals that care for us and give of themselves to us, and how we must live side by side with what is wild and true.”

  He looked at the buddies to see if they had any more to say or any other instructions.

  “If any of them give you any trouble, let us know,” M'Lady One said in as threatening a tone as she could produce. Natani looked at her without expression, then turned and beckoned for us to follow him.

  I watched Gia and Mindy working. They still seemed to have little or no interest in the three of us. To me they were like people who had suffered a lobotomy or something. Were we doomed to become like them?

  “This is good ground,” Natani explained, and waved his hand over the earth before us like a priest blessing it. “It can bring all our seeds and plants to blossom and feed them what they need. It has sun all day and there are no big rocks, just little ones to remove. Here we have little wind. We must turn the earth on its back and then again to soften it and make it welcome our seeds and the roots of the plants we introduce to it.”

  He nodded at three wheelbarrows full of plants.

  “It is the same for us, for we want to be welcomed wherever we go to live and grow. There is much to learn from the earth and the wind, the sky, and even the rocks. Never turn your back on anything and never stop listening.”

  “Oh, brother,” Teal said. “We're in the hands of some crazy Tonto. Next we'll see the Lone Ranger.”

  Natani did not look like he heard or understood, but something in his aged face told me he had.

  “Let's just get this over with,” I muttered. “I'm starving and thirsty.”

  “We will turn over the ground and then we will with trowels dig holes for our tomato plants.”

  “Just what I always wanted to do,” Robin said. “Plant tomatoes. Like I didn't work hard enough on my grandparents' farm. They raised sheep, and talk about stinks,” she said, holding her nose.

  “Here we have goats,” Natani said. “And we make cheese with the milk.”

  “Goats? I thought those were pigs,” I said.

  “Pigs, too.”

  He smiled wider and we could see he was missing some teeth. He spread us out and showed each of us how we should use the shovels and how to turn the earth. We started to do it, and Teal immediately cried about her hands.

  “This is hard. I'll get blisters!”

  Robin and I worked quietly, glancing every once in a while at Mindy and Gia, who stopped working and left the garden.

  “Where are they going?” Robin asked jealously. “I didn't hear any bells ringing.”

  We worked on, Teal moaning the loudest, but soon all three of us were muttering to ourselves. I didn't think it was possible to get this tired and sore. Every once in a while, Natani would take the shovel from one of us and again demonstrate how to use it efficiently. He seemed to have magical hands, making it all look so easy.

  At one point he knelt by Robin and picked up a rock. It glistened.

  “She has waited a long time to see the sun again,” he said.

  Robin looked at me and shook her head. “She?”

  Teal groaned and cried, “I'm going crazy. How is this a school? I nearly froze to death out there last night.”

  “What choice do we have at the moment?” Robin asked dryly. “It doesn't look like there's a bus station nearby.”

  “I don't care. The whole thing, this idea of this being a school, all of it is someone's idea of a sick joke. My parents probably arranged for all this just to scare me to death. Well, I'm not ashamed to admit they have. I just want to go home.”

  “Big deal what you want, what any of us want,” Robin said.

  Teal looked at her with a mixture of disgust and anger. “You might be willing to hang around and take all this crap, but I'm not.”

  “Yeah?” Robin rested on her shovel. “And what are you going to do, call your daddy?”

  “I might just do that and wave good-​bye to you when they take me home.”

  Robin laughed.

  Teal looked like she would go at her, but for the fact that M'Lady Two appeared and announced we could go to breakfast. My mouth was so dry from the heat and the dust, I couldn't swallow. We laid our shovels down, and like truly obedient puppy dogs, we followed her back to the main house. Outside the door, we were told to take off our clodhopper shoes and wash our hands in the springwater coming out of a pipe in an outside wall. We were also permitted to take a drink. Water had never tasted as good or as refreshing.

  Suddenly, Dr. Foreman appeared in the doorway. She looked as elegant and composed as she had the first time we had met her. One thing was for sure—she never did any chores on this farm, I thought, not with those fingernails.

  “Good morning, girls,” she said. “I understand you've had a good beginning. There will be merit points waiting for you at the day's end if you continue to behave and follow our rules.”

  Robin raised her hand and Dr. Foreman nodded at her.

  “Will they get us mattresses, pillows, and blankets?”

  “They could. Let's wait and see, but you're thinking on the right track, Robin. That's good. That's reality. Now come in, take from the food table, and sit at the dining room table. One of Natani's nephews is our cook and he's very good.”

  We walked into the entryway and looked to our right where a table of fruits, juices, breads, cereals, and hard-​boiled eggs were displayed. At the long dining-​room table, Mindy and Gia ate quietly, neither looking up at us nor at each other for that matter.

  M'Lady Two came up behind us. “Remember, when you meet each other, when you meet one of us, you say, 'Excuse me. I'm sorry,' ” she instructed. “We'll be listening for it.”

  We were herded to the food table.

  “Do not make a pig of yourself or you will sleep with the pigs,” M'Lady Two warned.

  All of us timidly filled our plates and poured ourselves some juice. Then we approached the table and Mindy and Gia looked up.

  Robin said it first: “Excuse me. I'm sorry.”

  Teal and I recited it as well and we sat.

  “After breakfast, you will return to the garden. There is no lunch. You will go from the garden and be oriented to your chores on the farm, and then you will be brought back here for your first therapy session. The initial one will be a group session. I like to think of them as get-​well sessions,” Dr. Foreman told us, wearing that friendly smile.

  “Following all that, we will have a reality check and your buddies will give me their evaluations of your behavior. We will assign merit points as they were earned and you will be rewarded accordingly. Eat slowly, girls. Waste not, want not,” she sang, and walked away. The buddies followed her out of the dining room and we were all finally alone and togeth
er.

  “Why did you tell on me last night?” I demanded immediately of Gia.

  She didn't look up, but Mindy did and said, “She received two plus points for that. She's close to being able to make a phone call or receiving one.”

  “Golly gee, how lucky can a girl get,” Teal muttered. “A phone call.”

  “You'll see how lucky that is after a while,” Mindy told her confidently.

  “How long have you two been here?” I asked.

  “I've been here four months. Gia's been here seven,” Mindy said.

  “Seven!” Teal exclaimed. She looked at Gia. “How could you last here that long?”

  “We manage. Like Natani says, a branch that doesn't bend, breaks. You learn how to bend,” Mindy said. “It's that simple.”

  “Doesn't she talk, say anything except point out who has broken a rule?” Robin asked, nodding at Gia.

  Gia looked up at us. Her eyes looked more ebony than mine perhaps because they were shining with such anger. However, it didn't look like anger directed just at us. She looked as though she was in a habitual rage, hated everyone and everything. A tiny, cold smile flowed into her small mouth that seemed to have forgotten how to smile.

  “Oh, you're so smug and so smart now,” she said. "You still think you're stronger than they are, or someone will come charging in here and save you and tell you it's all a big mistake. They can't do these things to you. You don't have to be here. You have rights. How dare they take away your rights? You'll get so you pray for it, but all you will hear in return are the yelping coyotes or Natani's drums when he is talking to the wind and the stars.

  “You see this piece of bread?” she said, holding it Up. “It's more important to me than your friendship. Think you'll never get that way yourself?”

  She laughed a maddening, shrill laugh that put icicles under my breasts. Then she lost her energy again, and like a weakening lightbulb paled and lowered her head to continue eating.

  None of us spoke. I saw that Mindy was staring at me curiously, waiting to see my reaction.

  “I hope I never get like that,” I said.

  Gia nodded her head but kept it down and kept eating. “You're eating on our plates and out of our bowls,” she muttered.