The Second Life of Mirielle West

by Amanda Skenandore

  When she went to the sink to refill the pitcher, she snuck a water glass for herself. After a glance over her shoulder to be sure no one was looking, she took two of the small, white pills. There was no hideous aftertaste or immediate roiling of her stomach. Maybe Jean was right; maybe they did save these pills for the favorite patients, if for no other reason than they went down better than chaulmoogra oil.

  She stuffed the jar with cotton so the pills wouldn’t rattle and returned to her work, already feeling healthier and more spry. As the morning passed, she found her hand slipping into her pocket again and again to check that the medicine bottle was still there. She figured how many pills she’d take each day and where in her room she’d hide the bottle. It gave her something to think about while she turned down bedclothes or waited for the thermometer to cook beneath a patient’s tongue. These menial tasks brought her no closer to home, to a cure, so she had to hope the iodide would.

  Lunch arrived. After serving the patients, Mirielle took her plate outside and ate her shrimp gumbo and rice leaning against the walkway railing. The air—hot and sticky as it was—smelled of newly cut grass and blooming roses. A vast improvement over the infirmary’s smell of Lysol and liniment.

  She forked a bite of gumbo into her mouth and chewed. Her taste buds smarted at the fiery seasoning, but the plump shrimp and fluffy rice went down easier than it had when she’d first arrived. That was what, three months ago? Yes, three months and ten days. After Felix’s death, time’s edges had softened, one day, one week, one month, bleeding into the next. Here, the days had taken on shape again.

  A flutter of blue wool hurrying toward the infirmary caught Mirielle’s eye. From a distance, the sisters’ huge cornets really did look like birds caught mid-flight. The wool and wings took shape into a woman—one of the sisters whose name Mirielle didn’t know. She bustled into the infirmary and reappeared with Sister Verena only a minute later.

  “I must go assist in the operating room,” Sister Verena said to Mirielle. “I trust you will be able to keep yourself occupied under Sister Loretta’s eye.”

  A chuckle tried to work its way past the gumbo Mirielle had just swallowed. She choked and coughed instead. Sister Loretta’s eyes were so bad she couldn’t see an elephant standing in front of her without her thick glasses. Even then Mirielle wondered.

  “I’ll do my best not to go to pieces on her.”

  Sister Verena frowned and hurried away, the other sister shuffling to keep up.

  Back inside the infirmary, Mirielle cleared away the lunch trays while many of the women napped. Even Sister Loretta, seated at the nurses’ desk in the corner, had let her eyelids close. But when Mirielle came to collect the last tray, she found her housemate Madge awake and scowling. An ulcerated and infected nodule on her leg had brought Madge to the infirmary over a week ago. The wound had healed, but Madge continued to spike fevers.

  “You came for my tray last on purpose,” Madge said to her. “Just so I’d have to sit with these dirty dishes in front of me longer and inhale that sickening shrimp and pepper smell.”

  “You ate almost your entire plate of gumbo.”

  “That don’t mean I like the smell.”

  Mirielle collected her tray, shoved it into a slot in the food cart, and wheeled the cart toward the door. The kitchen staff would grumble if she didn’t have it ready when they came by to collect it.

  No sooner had she left the cart, than Madge’s call bell rang. Mirielle flapped a hand at her so Madge wouldn’t wake the entire infirmary with the sound. But she continued to ring the bell until Mirielle made it clear across the room to her bed.

  “No need to hurry, dollface. I’m only suffering,” Madge said.

  “I was just here. What do you want?”

  “I dropped my book.”

  Madge’s book lay splayed on the floor beside her bed.

  “You and I both know you’re perfectly capable of bending over to get it.”

  “What if I fell from my bed? I could break an arm.”

  Mirielle bent over and picked up the book. “Trust me, you have to fall a lot farther than that.” She dropped the book in Madge’s lap and turned to go. Not three steps gone, and Madge’s bell rang again.

  “Shh! You’re going to wake the entire colony.” She grabbed the bell from Madge’s hand and set it on the far side of her nightstand.

  “I don’t like this book. Fetch me another from the reading room.”

  “I can’t leave Sister Loretta here alone.”

  “Sure you can. Besides, what do you have better to do? Powder your nose? Repaint your lips? I suppose that’s one good thing about being in here. I don’t have to wait for hours on end while you preen about in the bathroom.”

  “Excuse me for giving a darn about the way I look.”

  Madge snorted. “Like that matters when you’re here waiting around to die. You think the grim reaper’s gonna care a damn what you look like when he comes for you?”

  “I shall not be dying here,” Mirielle said, feeling all the more certain for the weight of the medicine bottle in her pocket. “Besides, a girl feels her best when she looks her best.”

  Another snort.

  “You should try it.” Mirielle pulled a strand of Madge’s hair from behind her ear. It was softer than she expected. Rich brown streaked with gray. “Your hair is actually quite lovely. Have you ever thought about a bob?”

  Madge batted her hand away. “That’s nonsense.”

  “I could cut if for you. I’ve watched my stylist do it dozens of times.”

  “I’d rather read a bad book.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Mirielle turned away but had only made it a few steps again when she heard Madge’s gravelly voice. “I guess a little trim wouldn’t hurt.”

  She sharpened a pair of scissors from the supply cabinet and rummaged through the infirmary’s cubbies and drawers until she found a comb. A lice comb, but it would have to do. She’d never actually cut anyone’s hair. Not even her children’s. The nanny saw to that. But she mustered a confident stride to Madge’s bedside, lest the woman change her mind.

  “Sit up straight and hold still. I’ll have you looking like Mrs. Castle in no time.”

  First came the detangling. Madge’s hair was so crimped and knotted, it was plain no one had run a brush or comb through it in days. Mirielle took care to be gentle, starting with short strokes at the bottom and working her way to the top.

  “It’s got to be washed, there’s no way around it,” Mirielle said, and piled towels around Madge’s shoulders before dousing her head with water and scrubbing her oily roots with soap.

  To her surprise, Madge didn’t complain or protest but gave over to Mirielle’s fingers with a contented sigh. After rinsing away the soap and combing the hair smooth, Mirielle grabbed the scissors. Her first snips were tentative. Madge’s hair reached the middle of her back. She remembered the shock at seeing her own long, beautiful hair scattered around her the first time she’d cut it short and hoped Madge didn’t have the same vain attachment.

  With Sister Loretta and the other patients still dozing, Mirielle took her time. A snip here and there, then a step back for assessment. At first, the sides were jagged, and Mirielle had to cut the hair a little shorter than she’d intended to even them out. But when she finished and stepped back for the final time, she beamed at the result.

  “It suits your face so well.”

  Madge patted and fingered her hair, her face puckered. “Get a mirror. I want to see.”

  A quick glance at the sleeping patients and Mirielle hurried back to her room. She grabbed her silver hand mirror and, after a short hesitation, her rouge and lipstick too.

  Madge wanted the mirror right away, but Mirielle insisted on a few more passes of the comb first. “You messed up my masterpiece with all your fingering.”

  When she pulled the makeup out of her apron pocket, Madge gave a dismissive wave. “I don’t need that shit. Who’ve I got to impress
?”

  “It’s not about impressing anyone. It’s about feeling your best. Now keep still.” She dabbed two fingers in the rouge, but hesitated before smearing it across Madge’s cheeks. Her skin was thick and uneven from nodules that had ulcerated and then healed.

  A few of the women in the surrounding beds had woken—likely from Madge’s fussing—and Mirielle could feel their stare upon her as her fingers hovered over Madge’s face.

  Just do it already, she told herself. It wasn’t as if she didn’t have the disease too. As if the same bacteria that had ruined Madge’s face didn’t also live inside her. She brushed her fingers over one cheekbone, then the other, blending out and downward. Twenty-one years Madge had been locked up here. She’d probably never worn makeup before in her life.

  “There. Now for some lipstick.”

  When Mirielle finished, she handed Madge the mirror. Madge held the glass inches from her face then back at arm’s length. Her eyes remained narrowed and her lips pinched.

  Maybe Mirielle had gone too far with the makeup. Maybe she should have only trimmed Madge’s hair instead of shearing it off at the shoulders. “You don’t like it.”

  A tear leaked from Madge’s eye, and Mirielle hurried for a hankie. She’d only been trying to help. Maybe Charlie was right. She was incapable of imagining someone else’s needs beyond her own.

  When she returned with the hankie, Madge was still holding the mirror before her face.

  “Your hair will grow back in a jiffy, you’ll see. And I can wipe away the rouge and lipstick.” Mirielle dabbed the corner of the hankie in Madge’s water glass. But when she reached out to wipe off the makeup, Madge pulled away.

  “I look . . . I look like a cinema star.” She turned to the other patients, who were now sitting in their beds gawking. “Don’t I?” Madge didn’t wait for their reply but gazed back at the mirror. “A goddamned cinema star.”

  Mirielle had seen her smirk and sneer but never actually smile before. Mirielle smiled too.

  “Do me next!” the woman one bed over said.

  “No, me!” said another. “I want to look just like Theda Bara.”

  “No, you don’t,” Mirielle said. “She’s got an awfully big nose. And an ego to go with it. But I’ll see what I can do.”

  The afternoon passed more quickly than any since her arrival. She didn’t notice the changing light as the sun crossed the sky. She didn’t notice the tick of the wall clock or ache in her feet. She didn’t notice Sister Verena’s return until a sharp ahem cut through the women’s happy chatter.

  “Blessed Virgin! What is going on here?”

  Mirielle froze, her fingers enmeshed in another patient’s hair and soapsuds up to her wrists.

  “I leave for three hours and you turn the infirmary into a . . . a beauty parlor.” She said it with the same repugnance one might utter cat house. “Where is Sister Loretta?”

  Sister Loretta gave a soft snore from the corner.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!”

  Mirielle dried her hands on her apron, choking back a laugh. The only other time she’d heard Sister Verena curse—a nun’s version of cursing, anyway—it had meant trouble.

  “I thought it might lift the women’s spirits. A fresh haircut. A little rouge. It’s so dreary in here all the time and—”

  “Is nothing serious to you? This is a hospital. The women here are . . .” She paused, glancing beyond Mirielle at the women sitting up in bed before saying the word dying. But everyone heard it in the silence. And any cheer that had blossomed in the room while Mirielle flitted from bed to bed with her scissors and comb wilted. “The women here are ill. They’re in need of rest and medicine, not haircuts and rouge.”

  Mirielle wiped her hands on her apron, her gaze locked on Sister Verena. “Maybe they’re in need of both.”

  “Because you think that is precisely why you’ve no business working here. It was a mistake from the beginning.”

  “I feel better today than I have all week,” Madge said.

  “Me too,” said another patient, patting her new bob.

  The woman whose head was still lathered with shampoo spoke up too. “You can’t sack Mirielle. She hasn’t finished with my hair.”

  Sister Verena’s gaze flickered from one woman to the next, her flinty expression softening into resignation.

  “A woman feels her best when she looks her best,” Madge added, and Mirielle couldn’t help but smile.

  “Oh, all right,” Sister Verena said at last. “But you’re not to shirk your other responsibilities to play beautician.”

  “Yes, Sister.”

  “And no more lipstick. I’ll not have you turn my infirmary into a den of immorality.” She stomped away before Mirielle could get herself into more trouble asking about kohl or face powder. Better to take her victories where she could and keep the lipstick in her pocket. Right beside the iodide.

  CHAPTER 22

  Mirielle continued to take the potassium iodide pills for three days straight. She stashed a few pills in her pocket or purse and swallowed them alongside her chaulmoogra oil. By the fourth day, she was sure the lesion on her neck had flattened and become less red. By the fifth day, the pale patch beneath her thumb that had started this whole mess all but vanished.

  So on the sixth day, when her legs began to itch, she thought little of it, blaming the heat and muggy Louisiana air. She took her pills as usual and went about her day. Everyone in the infirmary who was well enough to sit up wanted their fingernails buffed and hair styled. Sister Verena kept her busy sharpening needles, emptying bedpans, and changing dressings too.

  The next day, while she stood inside the X-ray room, helping Sister Verena ready shot after shot of thick chaulmoogra oil, her legs itched all the worse. It was sweltering in the small room, the electrical fan sputtering in the corner no match for the summer’s heat. When she bent down to scratch her legs, she felt dozens of tiny bumps through her silk stockings. Someone in house eighteen must have left the screen door open last night and invited in the mosquitos.

  As the morning progressed, the itching turned to an aching. The line of patients awaiting their shots seemed never to shorten. She shifted her weight from foot to foot and at last dragged over a crate to sit on, but the throbbing in her legs only grew worse.

  She awaited Sister Verena’s chastisement. Can’t you stand still? Must you sit? But instead she said, “Are you quite well, Mrs. Marvin? Perhaps you’d like to take the afternoon off.”

  Was this a trick? Something to lord over Mirielle’s head later? “No, I’m fine. Quite capable of finishing my shift.”

  The supper bell rang just as Mirielle finished packing up the needles and cotton and empty bottles of chaulmoogra oil.

  “I’ll send one of the men to fetch the supplies back to the infirmary,” Sister Verena said to her. “Go eat.”

  Trick or no, Mirielle nodded. But she hadn’t any appetite and went to her house instead. On her way to her room, she stopped in the bathroom, swallowing the iodide pill she’d stowed in her pocket with a few palmfuls of water. She splashed water onto her cheeks too, relishing the coolness against her skin. When she turned off the faucet and straightened, she caught sight of herself in the mirror. Her face was flushed. The spot on her neck, just yesterday flattened and pale, had swollen into a bright red boil.

  She hurried to her room and tore off her stockings. Tiny boils covered her legs. She touched one. It was hot and painful. Mirielle recoiled and flung her skirt down to cover the sight, for once grateful for the uniform’s ridiculous length. What was happening to her? An allergy of some sort. The harsh detergent they used in the laundry had always bothered her. Or maybe it was the bath soap. She’d run out of her favorite soap from home and been forced to use the plain, hospital-issue soap until Charlie obliged to send her more.

  She changed out of her uniform into her nightgown, refusing to look at her sore, bumpy legs. Never mind waiting on Charlie. Tomorrow she’d buy different soap at the cante
en before she showered. She lay down on her bed without turning down the sheets or quilt. A little air would do these bumps good. And she was hot anyway. Tired too. Sunlight slipped in beneath the thin silk curtains she’d made from a skirt the laundryman had ruined. Her bedside clock read five thirty. Just a little nap then. Tonight was movie night at the rec hall, and she’d promised Irene she would come. The projector they had was a relic that broke down every other reel. The films they showed were ancient—three, four, sometimes ten years old. And never the good ones, the ones she’d watched in nickelodeons and vaudeville halls when her father and grandmother thought she was sipping tea in some society girlfriend’s parlor. Star of Bethlehem, Ivanhoe, Jane Eyre—pictures that had made her fall in love with the cinema long before she ever met Charlie.

  She fell asleep thinking of those movies. Jane and the handsome Mr. Rochester. The three wise men on their camels following a shining star through the desert. But in her dreams, those images morphed. She was Esmeralda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, averting her eyes from the grotesque Quasimodo. Then, just as suddenly, it was she whose limbs and back were twisted, whose skin was coarse and hairy, whose face was that of a monster. It was from her that others hid their eyes. She was Nosferatu, Frankenstein, Mr. Hyde. Soon it was not enough for the others in her dream to look away. They pointed and snickered. They gasped and scowled. Those few who dared come close kicked and pinched her. They grabbed her shoulder and shook her.

  “Polly,” they said, and she swatted them.

  “Baby, wake up.”

  Mirielle jolted awake, her arms flailing against the strong hands that held her shoulders. “Get away!”

  “It’s me, baby. Irene.”

  Irene? Irene. Mirielle sat up and flung her arms around her. “I was having the most awful dreams.”