Woman 99

by Greer Macallister

  I stared at Martha, sorry I’d offended her by speaking thoughtlessly. Her fight was different from ours, infinitely harder. I couldn’t apologize for the color of my skin, nor could I change hers. All I could do was say, “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. Go on.”

  She placed her fist in her palm and said, “We need to aim somewhere. If we don’t, we’ll be here forever. Agreed?”

  “Agreed.”

  To Celia, she said, “I like this escape idea. I’m all for it. And I say San Francisco’s our destination.”

  “How far are we from San Francisco?” I asked.

  “Didn’t you come from there?”

  I said, “I don’t remember the path terribly well.”

  Martha said, “Not much to remember. There are only so many roads. The widest one leads to the biggest city. We’ll get there eventually.”

  “Eventually!” I said. “How long?”

  “Walking? Two days, maybe three, depending. Less if we find a way faster than our feet.”

  Celia’s eyes flicked back and forth between my face and Martha’s.

  I said, all uncertain, “And then when we get there, to the city? Will we be welcomed?”

  Martha’s face was hardly encouraging. She said firmly, “I have a house that’ll welcome me. Come or don’t. If your family doesn’t want you, pick somewhere else to go.”

  I kept my mouth shut then. I did, of course, hope to go back to my family. And I needed to do so quickly. I’d counted and recounted the days, and the same bleak number kept resurfacing. Ten days left and that was all. If it took three days to travel to San Francisco, that left only a week. A mere seven days. It didn’t seem like there was any way it could be enough.

  And I wouldn’t go without Phoebe. This escape plan would give me the chance to do what I’d come here to do: stand on the porch of my parents’ house with Phoebe in tow, demanding they let us in. I knew there would be great uncertainty after we returned, but I would worry about that later. I’d focus on crossing the miles first.

  * * *

  At night, after the door was shut, Martha pulled us together again to huddle in the corner, just the three of us. There was something in the way she eyed Celia, and I wondered if she didn’t quite trust our new recruit yet. She didn’t keep me in suspense long.

  Martha said, “In order for this to work, I think we should tell each other our secrets.”

  “Oh?” asked Celia.

  “I need to know you’re not going to betray me, sell me out. If you do, I’ll have something on you. You see? And it’s the same in reverse—you know that I won’t give away your plans, because if I do, you can tell the bigwigs whatever my secret is, and we’ll all be worse off than before.”

  I leapt into the fray, because I was tired of hiding it. “I’m not insane.”

  Martha chuckled low in her throat. Celia did not.

  “Why are you here, then, principessa?”

  I confessed, “I came here to free my sister. And when we escape, we’re taking her with us.”

  “She’s not crazy?” asked Martha.

  “She doesn’t deserve to be here.”

  “Then why is she?”

  “It’s my fault,” I said, and it was the first time I’d said it out loud. But in that moment, there was so much anger in me that I had no room for sadness.

  Martha asked, “What ward?”

  “Euterpe.”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh?”

  “I was going to say, get her transferred, but they don’t transfer out of there. But go on. What did you do to get her sent here?”

  I weighed where to start, but began, “I was in love—I am in love—with a man named Henry Sidwell, and my parents betrothed me instead to his brother George.”

  Celia’s hand locked on my arm in a grip so tight, I cried, “Ow!”

  “George,” she said huskily.

  “Yes.”

  She said again, “George.”

  “What?”

  She touched a finger, the ring finger on her left hand. She brought the hand up close to my face so I could see it. I’d become familiar with the pattern of her burns but had never examined them in detail, not wanting to make her uncomfortable by staring too long. But she wanted me to look now, so I did.

  What she was pointing at was a stripe of skin more fiercely burnt than the skin around it, as impossible as that seemed. The branching, ribbed scars were absent. This spot was mirror-smooth, in a perfect thickness encircling the entire finger. Like a wedding ring.

  “You were married.”

  “To George,” she said.

  “Lot of Georges in the world,” said Martha, scoffing.

  Celia’s eyes watered and overran, and the tears tracked unevenly down her cheeks, one smooth, one ruined. “George Sidwell,” she hissed, and I finally saw the truth.

  Celia. That had been George’s wife’s name. Henry had told me so. Celia was the wife who died in the fire.

  It was unbelievable, yet here she was. I struggled to wrap my mind around it.

  I took her face in both hands and said, “You didn’t die. He said you died, but you didn’t.”

  She nodded, still crying silently.

  “Holy Mary, mother of Christ,” said Martha. “He what now?”

  I explained, “George Sidwell—he has charge of this place. He’s on the committee of investors. A politician, supposedly a widower. Said his wife died in a fire. She didn’t. Celia is that woman.”

  I remembered all the stories I’d told myself, on the benches, about why each woman I saw might have ended up here. And none of them had been as terrible as this true story. Not only was Celia trapped in this asylum, she was a prisoner of her own body, one that would not let her pursue happiness in the same way ever again. She was forever marked.

  “But how did you end up here?” I asked.

  Celia said, every word a clear labor, “The man George paid to set the fire. I escaped. He brought me.”

  Her words hit me like a sledgehammer in the chest. I had a thousand questions, but one was the most important. “Does George know you’re alive?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Martha said, “I’ll be damned. Nice to meet you, dead woman. I bet you could make a lot of trouble.”

  Celia smiled, the grin splitting her ruined face, showing surprisingly strong teeth. I heard her sigh, all the relief of her secret released, one huge breath. Then she dissolved into a hacking, throaty spasm of coughing, which could have been either strangling or laughter. I put my hand on her back. She managed a more modest smile.

  I thought about what Henry had told me about George, why he came back to San Francisco. How he’d married a striking woman in Sacramento, a tall, strong wife, but she’d died in a fire when the house burned down, one night when he was not at home. How sad he was to have lost her.

  It was almost the truth. Almost, yes. But not quite.

  I knew something now I hadn’t before. I still had mountains to climb, but at least someone had handed me a pickax.

  * * *

  Now that we’d made the decision to attempt escape, I knew something had to change. Martha and Celia and I were smart women, but none of us had ever tried to escape a place like this. I knew only one woman here who had. Not only had she tried to escape an asylum, she’d succeeded. Twice, in fact, from what she’d told me soon after we met.

  I’d been hesitant to trust Nora, but now I knew I’d have to risk it. There was no excuse for not using every possible tool, exploring every possible avenue, even if it came with risk. If she told her lover, so be it. If we failed at escape, Phoebe and I could well be imprisoned here forever. Nor was Celia safe here if someone found out her secret. We needed to attempt escape as quickly as possible, and we needed to succeed on our first try. There wouldn’t be a chance for a second.

  Martha would be angry. In the face of everything else, I could handle anger. It occurred to me also that while she’d come up with the idea of sharing secrets, we hadn�
�t yet heard hers. Was that her intent? Could she be trusted?

  We gathered in the dayroom that afternoon, and I could tell Phoebe was monopolizing my thoughts, as my wardmates swarming into the dayroom looked to me like a flock of disparate birds settling into their perches. Irene like a long-legged flamingo, Nettie like a clattering starling, Hazel a fragile sparrow, Bess a puffin.

  We had everything in common with birds except that none of us were free to fly.

  Then I felt a tap on my arm. It was Martha. She whispered to me and called me toward the bookshelf in the corner, clearly interested in discussing escape plans.

  I nodded yes, grabbed Nora’s hand, and said, “Come.”

  Nora shot me a look but kept her mouth shut, knowing questions like What’s this about? would only be a waste of breath. She followed me to the bookcase, where I pointed at the spine of one book and then another, pretending to make suggestions. Martha came up on my other side. Our backs were to the nurses. We kept our voices low and steady.

  Celia sat nearby with her back to us, close enough that she could hear every word but staying back to make it look less like an intentional gathering. Three women talking was bad enough. We needed every advantage we could get.

  I gestured at a water-damaged copy of Poor Miss Finch and said to Nora, “We’re escaping.”

  Nora betrayed no surprise or shock. She only said, “Good.”

  “She’s not part of this,” Martha said, struggling to keep her voice low.

  I said simply, “We need her.”

  “You might need her. I sure don’t.” Martha replied.

  “And what do we need you for?” said Nora to Martha, plucking the copy of Poor Miss Finch from the shelf and handing it to Martha to keep up the illusion. We angled inward. No one in the room but me could see that Nora’s gaze locked with Martha’s, challenging, direct.

  Martha gritted her teeth into something that might look like a smile from far away. She thrust the book back into Nora’s hands. “This was my idea.”

  “Revolution was yours. Escape was Celia’s.” I made a small gesture in Celia’s direction so Nora would understand she was part of the plot. She nodded.

  A blandly pleasant smile on her face, Nora said to Martha, “More trouble than you’re worth. You can’t keep calm long enough to wait when waiting’s required.”

  “Can’t I?”

  “She can,” I broke in. “We need you both. We need fire, and we need savvy. Together, we can crack this. Or we could just stand around sniping and get caught. Then we’re on the matron’s mercy. Do you want that?”

  I cast a meaningful look at the door. The others followed it. I saw them both struggle with their desire to come out on top, to have the last word. They both made the decision to stand down.

  Shelving the book in her hand and reaching out for another, Nora said to Martha, “So, tell me your plan.”

  “If you’re so smart, tell us what you think it is,” Martha replied. She might give a little, but she clearly wasn’t ready to give up.

  “You need to find the right time to run.”

  Martha said, “Oh, you don’t say,” like it meant something dirty. “What’s your suggestion?”

  “Wait until they take us outside the fence,” said Nora. “They’ll call for a work crew when the olives need to be brought in. Sometime in November.”

  “Too late!” The words sprang from my mouth unbidden, and I knew my voice was too loud.

  Nora closed the book in her hands and extended it to me, keeping up the charade. Her gaze was cold. “Try to leave too soon, and you won’t make it. Want to leave tomorrow? Go ahead. No one here will go with you.”

  I looked at Martha, and she wouldn’t meet my eyes. Celia’s profile was impassive.

  With a thoughtful look, Nora said, “Well, there wouldn’t be enough of them on the hike to follow us. If we decided to sprint from the hill. Then we could go sooner.”

  “You don’t think they’d raise the alarm?” asked Martha.

  “Oh, I know they would. We have a choice. Sprint and count on their inability to follow us—at least one would have to stay behind to watch the other inmates, if they didn’t want to lose twenty sheep on account of four. Trust in the numbers.”

  “And what’s the other choice?” I asked.

  Nora held up a second finger. “Or we could tie up the nurses. Heaven knows we’ve got the rope. But it would slow us down. Others might try to join in. Half of these women would be dead weight at best.”

  I snuck a look around the dayroom at the other inmates of Terpsichore, the imbecilic and the belligerent and the vicious, and decided her estimate was generous. Any one of them would slow us down. Even the ones whose company I enjoyed, like Irene or Hazel, might have a weak moment and betray us. We had to be heartless. Just us four, and Phoebe. No one else.

  Nora continued. “Faster is better. We’ll be outside the fence, and we know which direction San Francisco is in.”

  Martha said, “Why San Francisco?”

  “Only a fool would run anywhere else,” said Nora. “Can I finish?”

  “Please.”

  Nora said, “It’ll be hard with nothing but the clothes on our backs—if we could smuggle some supplies, some real dresses, that would be better—but either way, not impossible.”

  “Have you forgotten about her sister?” Martha said. I wasn’t sure if she actually cared about Phoebe or just wanted to find out whether Nora knew as much as she did. “She’s not on the hikes.”

  “Not yet.”

  “And never likely to be. We can’t get her transferred into the ward.”

  “Maybe you can’t,” Nora said with a smug look directly at Martha.

  We all fell silent at that. Martha appeared slightly deflated. I’d hoped it didn’t have to be a zero-sum game between them, where one could only win if the other lost, but in the end, I decided it didn’t matter. They needed each other, and I needed them both. With their cooperation and God’s grace, the five of us would be gone from here before the week was out.

  We shelved the books we’d been pretending to discuss and drifted off in different directions, Martha toward the piano, Nora the windows. I patted Celia on the shoulder, and she inclined her head, just a little, in a grave nod.

  As I lay down on my cot that night, my mind was full of plans. I’d visit Phoebe in Euterpe again, let her know help was on the way. I’d ask the right questions to figure out what was between here and San Francisco, how long it might take us, what resources we might use along the way. I’d see too if we could steal food for the journey and hide it on our persons somehow. If Nora could get Phoebe transferred onto the ward in the next two days, we’d have two days after that to squirrel things away, and on the third morning, we could leave.

  I imagined our jackrabbit dash from the hill, a race over the top of the summit where we always paused—the looks of surprise on the faces of other inmates, one nurse picking up her skirts to run after us but dizzied with choices when we scattered in separate directions, the thrashing noises of our own feet in unfamiliar underbrush until finally we drew together on a wide path and knew the silence behind us meant we’d gone far enough that no one would follow. We’d gather our energy for the long hike south, square our shoulders, and go.

  That night, for a change, I slept.

  * * *

  The next morning when I awoke, even before I opened my eyes, I knew immediately that something was wrong.

  I felt oddly rested, swimming up from the darkness with more ease than usual, less resistance. It felt unnatural now, after so many days of fitful, insufficient sleep.

  The morning routine in Terpsichore was inflexible: Piper, Winter, and Salt roused us from our beds in the early morning with clatters and thumps, shouting when needed to stir us in the predawn darkness. Salt in particular was likely to shove a recalcitrant inmate clear off her cot, and many were the mornings when an aggrieved howl was the sound that woke me. He would leave while the women dressed, but he was
always there for the initial awakening, either shouting or causing others to shout.

  Today, however, I woke to near silence. Two or three women whispered in the darkness, and even though we had no windows, there somehow seemed to be a difference in the light.

  I rolled on my side and saw Nora’s eyes were open as well. I was about to ask her if she thought something was wrong when the door opened. Women all across the cots stirred at the sound.

  Piper entered, but only Piper. She turned up our lights, and more women were stirred, rising, blinking. Was it my imagination, or did Piper look a little paler than usual, more anxious?

  Martha swung her legs down from her cot and rose in a smooth motion, looking as tense as I felt. “Where’s Nurse Winter?” she asked, her voice sharp.

  “Never you mind about that,” Piper said. “Off to work. Rouse yourselves.”

  “No hike this morning?” Martha asked.

  Piper pretended not to hear her, clapping her hands twice. “To work, ladies!”

  “Should we get ourselves dressed first?” called Bess.

  “Of course,” said Piper. “Put some speed on it! Let’s go!”

  Salt appeared in the doorway. “Now,” he shouted, and women who’d still been in their beds roused themselves to action.

  I’d never been fond of Nurse Winter, and her absence should have felt like a blessing, but instead, I found it jangled my nerves. We dressed ourselves as usual, but there were far more whispers. I saw countless glances pass between the women of Terpsichore, between Nora and Martha, between Bess and Irene. Even Nettie, who I’d never seen react to anything short of a thunderstorm, fluttered and peeped more than usual. Celia was the only one who seemed unflustered, probably because she wasn’t accustomed to the routine we now diverged from. When Piper and Salt marshaled us into line without the older nurse appearing, my tension became even more unbearable. He held us while she chalked us, her hand skimming so fast and so light, I wondered whether our numbers would even be visible in an hour.

  We worked at our usual assignments, me to the soapmaking shop, Nora to the kitchen, and so on, as best I could tell. I kept my head down as I worked. I wanted to discuss the oddity of the morning, but pressing the bars was the most exacting work we did, and a lapse in attention at the wrong moment could leave me burned or worse. So I did my best to press the lavender-scented soap into the forms and lift the bars out with the tongs at the right moment, while my flickering mind insisted on showing me images of my mother at home in her lavender-scented hallway, my sister in the Tranquility Chair, and Celia, her remaining eye alight, saying, Bugger revolution. Escape.