Broken Wings 2 - Midnight Flight

by Andrews, V. C.

  At last I heard her whisper through the crack, “I can't face her. Go on inside yourself and talk to her.”

  “What?”

  I listened and heard nothing.

  “What did you say, Gia? Gia!”

  I pushed on the metal door. It moved, but this time the hasp and the lock stopped it from going any farther.

  That grinding.

  She had put the hinge back, screwed it in. I was locked within. My heart pounded until the blood filled my face and the pounding echoed in my ears. I pushed and pushed, but the metal door didn't budge. It was heavy, too.

  I thought about screaming for help, then stopped before I started and thought, how would I explain this to Dr. Foreman now? I hadn't done anything but violated rules. The buddies were sure to pounce on me.

  “Gia, please. Let me out. Please,” I begged. “We'll both get into so much trouble if you don't. Please. Hurry.”

  I thought I felt something on my ankle and spun around, losing my balance. Fortunately I caught myself on the side of the concrete before I fell down the remaining steps, but in doing that, I dropped the lighter. I heard it bounce down the steps. Now, in the pitch darkness, I was sweating more from panic than heat. I heard myself whimper.

  Slowly, using my foot, I searched each step until I felt something move. I hesitated, waiting to see if it would move again, but under its own power. I touched it, and then, confident it was the lighter, I knelt down in careful increments and felt for it. When I had my hands around it, I permitted myself to breathe again.

  I flicked it on.

  I had the lighter, but what was I going to do?

  I looked at the door at the bottom of the stairs. Maybe it was unlocked and maybe I could make my way through the basement and then upstairs and out the front door of the hacienda without anyone hearing or knowing. It was worth a try. Certainly, I couldn't stay here all night and I didn't want to shout for help if I didn't have to.

  I continued down the stairs and turned the door handle, pushing gently on it. The door groaned so I stopped and waited, listening to see if anyone moved about above. There was no sound so I pushed again and the door opened enough for me to slip through. I thought about it again, looked back up the stairs, realized I had no choice, and went into the basement.

  It wasn't much of a basement, just a single, long room. I lifted the lighter as if I were imitating the Statue of Liberty or something and turned slowly. There was furniture, a small bed and a dresser. The bed had a light blue pillow and a blanket. Someone had obviously slept there. The pillow was still indented with the shape of her head.

  Over to the right of the bed was a small desk, resembling the desks we had sat at when first brought to the orientation room. Instead of a stool, there was a wooden chair. I saw a small lamp on the desk and approached slowly, gazing into the dark depth of the basement. What frightened me the most, of course, was the possibility of rats.

  But the basement floor was bone dry and actually looked as if it had recently been swept and vacuumed. I didn't see any spiderwebs either. I lifted the lighter a little higher and the darkness retreated a bit more. I could make out a short stairway at the far end. I didn't see into every dark corner yet, but I didn't think anyone was there.

  I walked down a bit farther and held the light high enough so I could find the floor grate Gia had spoken about. I didn't, but I thought I did hear voices, so I turned quickly and retreated.

  I approached the desk and found the switch for the lamp. To my joy, it lit, and with that illumination I could clearly see the whole room. Except for this little bit of furniture, there was nothing and, I concluded, releasing the hot breath I had bottled up in my lungs, no one in the basement.

  I gazed at the desk and saw an envelope. The envelope wasn't addressed, but when I picked it up, I realized something was in it. I took out the paper and unfolded it. This was a letter and it began with Dear Mom and Dad.. .

  I sat on the chair and began to read the letter.

  First, I want to tell you I'm all right. It was very, very hard at first. Dr. Foreman made it seem as if this was going to be a fun place with strict rules, but nevertheless, not an unpleasant experience. She and I had a wonderful talk when I first arrived. She explained how her first concern would always be my well-​being, but she wanted me to understand that sometimes, she would appear very cruel and unreasonable to me. She compared herself to a dentist.

  “I've got to drill away the rot in you,” she said, “the decay that's poisoning the healthy part of you.”

  I thought that was very reasonable and I promised her I would always try to see things from her point of view. We got started on a good note.

  Here at her school, she has older girls to assist her. She told me those girls were former students. At first, I couldn 't believe it. She had given them so much responsibility. How could they have been in enough trouble to be sent here and then become trusted assistants?

  Dr. Foreman said that when I improved, I would probably make for a great assistant, who she calls buddies because they help the new students. They acted tough and hard, but I knew they were only trying to help me.

  Anyway, I have another reason for writing this letter. Dr. Foreman has gotten me to understand that I can't improve until I admit to my problems and weaknesses. She says girls like me have to go through a process not unlike the process alcoholics experience. We have to stand up and confess first. We have to say, “I am an alcoholic.”

  Of course, I'm not an alcoholic. I have to say I'm a liar and a deceitful person. So, first, let me say that. I have lied and deceived you both many times. I'm sorry about it, but I'm most sorry for what I did right before I was sent here. I know it was a horrible thing to do to make Tamatha sick by putting that insect poison in her food. I was so angry, but that didn 't justify it. As Dr. Foreman says, I have got to learn how to channel my anger into other, more productive activities and learn how to talk about the things that bother me. I can tell you I worked hard at hiding everything and it wasn't your fault that you never knew half the terrible things I had done. You didn 't deserve to have a daughter like me.

  Thanks to Dr. Foreman and her treatments, I can now do all that she suggested I should do. I'm ashamed, of course, and I'm sorry, too. We don't promise things here. Promises are like soap bubbles. They look really beautiful, but when you touch them, they pop and fall to earth and are gone. Dr. Foreman says, “They're not worth the air they're written on.” She has a wonderful way of putting things sometimes.

  So I won't make promises about the future and how I will behave. I'll just do the right thing.

  I don't want you to believe that all this has happened overnight. It took a long time and I had to do many, many things that I know would be unpleasant to anyone else, especially some of my so-​called friends. Dr. Foreman has shown me how none of them were really my friends.

  There is only one other girl here at the moment. Dr. Foreman says the new girl and I are sort of between scheduling periods, and new girls will be arriving soon. Dr. Foreman just doesn 't take anyone that people want to send here. She spends a lot of time analyzing and thinking about the girl and her problems first.

  This other girl who is here is a lot like me in so many ways, but she is very unhappy and still very angry at the world and everyone in it. She hates me for being happy about anything. She calls me Pollyannaish and says my eyes are blinded by stars. She's very intelligent, but very bitter.

  Dr. Foreman decided recently that she was not a good influence on me and we, therefore, had to be separated. She gave me a new place to stay. At first, it was a very lonely place and then, one day, a man, an Indian man who is in charge of the ranch animals and farming, told me that the world is really inside you and not outside you. His name is Natani and I did not understand what he meant, of course.

  But he showed me how to look inside myself and find the world I needed. That's really where I go now. In the beginning, I was there for very short periods. Those periods grew longer
and longer until I realized I could go there forever, if I wanted. I told Natani and he didn't say I should or shouldn 't. He said I would know myself how long I should be away.

  This is probably confusing you. I know it's hard for anyone who hasn 't done it to understand.

  But, I can't explain it any more than to say, I'm happy, happy enough to want to stay here forever.

  So, Mom and Dad, I wanted to write this last letter to you and tell you good-​bye, but not a sad good-​bye. Oh, no. This is a happy good-​bye for I am not leaving you. In my world we are always together and, Mom, you are as beautiful as you were when you were a young woman, and, Daddy, you are as handsome as you were when you were a young man, and do you know what else? You don't get old in this world. You are young forever and ever, and you are always laughing and smiling. We 're together the way we should be, the way we once were, and you always have time for me.

  So be happy for me, Mom.

  Be happy for me, Dad.

  I love you more now.

  Forever,

  Posy I stared at the name and then I reread the letter.

  Something creaked behind me and I spun around, half expecting now to see a fragile, diminutive, young girl smiling. There was no one and it was deadly silent.

  I folded the letter and put it back into the envelope and left it on the desk. I wanted to get out of here as quickly as I could. I switched off the small lamp and flicked my lighter. Moving slowly to keep the flame from going out, I headed toward the short stairway.

  When I reached the foot of it, another light went on and every breath in my body flew out of my body like a flock of sparrows abruptly frightened. Every bone turned to marshmallow. I felt as if I had stepped into a pool of ice water, the cold racing up my legs into my stomach and over my breasts, pushing my blood into my head.

  There, in a tiny circle of illumination created by a large flashlight pointing up just under her chin, was Dr. Foreman. Her face absorbed the light and emerged from the darkness as if it were made of some luminescent substance, her eyes dark and gaunt, her teeth incandescent. Actually, she looked more like a skeleton resurrected.

  “Careful, Phoebe,” she said. “Watch your step, dear.”

  I didn't know what to say, what to do. I was still too frozen to move.

  “Don't be afraid. First, I want you to return to the desk and get that letter. Go on.” She pointed the flashlight to create a lighted pathway for me. “Go!”

  I moved quickly, snapped up the envelope, and returned to the stairway.

  “Come up now.” She directed the beam of light to the wooden steps. “The lighting down here doesn't work. It hasn't for as long as I've had the place, but it never mattered. I don't use the basement that often. We clean it from time to time and check our plumbing, but that's about it,” she explained, as if it were important for me to know the most insignificant details about the house.

  I started up the stairs and she turned and opened the door that led into the downstairs hallway.

  “Come along.”

  I followed her down the hall to her office. The house was as quiet and as dark as the basement had been. She flipped the light switch and entered, turning to encourage me to follow. I know I was moving, but I was so frightened, I didn't think about it. I floated in behind her and sat on the sofa.

  She pulled a chair up and sat right in front of me, smiling at me. I still held on to the letter, expecting she would take it, but she didn't ask for it or pluck it from my fingers.

  “Look at you. You look like you've actually seen a ghost.”

  “I'm sorry, Dr. Foreman. I thought that if I did what Gia wanted, she would change. I would tell her there was no Posy and then she would stop talking about her, but she tricked me and locked me in and .. .”

  Dr. Foreman actually laughed. “Cure Gia? That's what you hoped to do in one evening? I only wish it had been that easy, Phoebe. Gia has been here almost a year.”

  “A year? But Mindy told us she was here four months and Gia was here seven.”

  “That's what Gia told her, I'm sure. Actually, that makes sense. It was about five months ago that Posy left. In her bizarre counting, that's how she sees it.”

  “What do you mean since Posy left? I thought there wasn't any Posy? That letter downstairs? Was that written by the real Posy?”

  “No,” she said, still laughing. “That was Gia, but that was when Posy left. It's all as I told you.”

  “I don't understand,” I said, shaking my head.

  “You will.” She looked very pleased.

  “You're not mad at me for going down there?”

  “No, Phoebe. It was my idea. When I spoke with Gia after you told me what she was saying, I convinced her to do exactly what she has done.”

  “What?”

  “I told Gia she had to do it, she had to get you into the basement so you could see for yourself that Posy was gone. Actually, she went about it cleverly. I didn't think about the details, unscrewing the hinge, screwing it back on, all that. I expected to find her down there with you. She how bright she can be? If some of the girls sent to me would put their energy and ingenuity into worthwhile and good things . . .”

  She shook her head and contemplated me again. “I knew you didn't believe me completely. I thought that this would be the best way for you to see for yourself and understand. You do now, don't you?”

  “No, not really.” I didn't know whom to feel sorrier for, myself or Gia.

  Dr. Foreman looked impatient and annoyed for a moment, then softened.

  "All right. I'll spell it all out for you. Gia was the one in the basement. I put her there as part of a therapy program I designed. She had cleverly invented this fictional character so as to avoid any hardship, any pain inflicted on her. As long as she had Posy, she could deny her own problems. They were Posy's problems, understand?

  “Making Posy my daughter was her way of getting back at me.”

  “Why didn't you just send her away to a clinic or something?” I asked.

  “She wasn't crazy. She was clever and still is. I knew I would eventually help her if I kept trying and utilizing some of my own methods. They worked. She wrote that letter as a way of saying good-​bye, which was also quite clever I thought.”

  “What is all that about Natani?”

  “Natani.” She shook her head. “He's delightful with his Indian ways. He has no idea how often he has helped me with my girls. That's why I keep him on, actually. He's a calming factor. Sort of a release valve. This place is a pressure cooker at times.”

  “But, Gia told me I'd find Posy down there so she still believes in her. She's still not cured, right?”

  “Well, it doesn't matter that she still believes there was a Posy. The most important thing now is after you tell her and show her everything, she won't be using Posy ever again as a scapegoat. That's my first goal in treating her. Anything she does now, she knows is her own fault. Unless, of course, she creates someone else, but I don't think she will. I think she's finally past all that and on her way.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  "Specifically, you will return to the barracks and you will tell her there was no one there, and you'll give her that letter. You'll tell her you read it. You know it was a letter to Posy's parents and you know she's gone for good. And you know Posy lied when she said she was my daughter.

  “So,” she continued, leaning over to pat my knees, “you see, you really will have helped me. Unwittingly, perhaps, but nevertheless, you will have.”

  I shook my head. It was all still so confusing, so off-​the-​wall for me, the way she had used me and was still using me. If anything, it made me want to get out of here even more. I think she saw that in my face.

  “For now, I don't want any of the other girls to know about any of this. It's our little secret, our problem to solve. I expect you to carry out this order, Phoebe,” she said sternly. “You understand what I want?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yo
u've made some nice strides these past few days, Phoebe. I can see you growing and changing and becoming someone who can be trusted with responsibilities. You're going to be fine, despite the unfortunate hand you've been dealt in your life.”

  She stared at me with that soft smile on her face again, the smile that deceives, that gives girls like me so much hope. I remember seeing a mean boy tormenting a stray dog once in Atlanta. He spoke to it softly, kindly, and the dog wagged its tail and filled its heart with trust as it drew closer, and when it was close enough, the boy swung the stick he had behind his back and struck the animal so hard, it lost its balance, scraping its paws over the road to get its bearing and get away, but it wasn't fast enough to avoid a second cruel blow. It managed to run off then, the boy's evil cackle following it like some flame of hate and rage. The boy turned and looked at me. He had a face full of anger, but also satisfaction. He had hurt some-

  thing and taken revenge on a world that rained pain on him, I thought.

  And then I thought what great pain was showered down on Dr. Foreman to make her the way she was?

  If she knew I even thought such a thing, she would lose that smile so quickly, my head would spin.

  “Okay, Phoebe. Go on back to the barracks. Take the letter and do as I said.”

  I rose and walked out of her office, down the dark hallway and out the front door. The grounds that had been dreamy with a ceiling filled with stars now just looked dark. I felt as if I were walking through a tunnel at the end of which was only a deep hole.

  When I reached the barn, I paused and looked back. I thought I could make out a tall, darker shadow on the steps of the hacienda.

  Doesn't she sleep? I wondered, and entered the barn.

  Gia was in her cot and looked to be asleep. Everyone else was.

  I approached her quietly and knelt at her side, poking her gently.

  Her eyes opened and she looked at me, but she didn't sit up.

  “I'm sorry,” she said. “I had to do it that way.”

  “I know.”

  “Did you see her?”

  “No, but I found this letter she wrote. She's gone. It's a letter to her parents telling them good-​bye. I read it and I know she's gone, and I also know she was lying about being Dr. Foreman's daughter. Whatever you heard her say to Dr. Foreman wasn't true. Dr. Foreman probably just humored her until she could help her. Read it all and you'll see.”