by Jaimy Gordon
“You’re not even twelve years old,” I said. “You’re gonna puke if you smoke. You puke all the time anyway. That’s why you’re here. You can’t afford to lose even one more calorie or you’ll croak.” “I smoked awready,” Emily said, “my brother Barney showed me.” “Brother Barney,” I sneered, “what an example. When was this?” “They let him home for Christmas when I was ten.” (Barney was in reform school.) “I bet he pushed one in your mouth and made you smoke.” Emily was no snitch, but she didn’t deny it. Instead she said proudly: “We smoked Kools.” “Okay, I’ll give you a cigarette if you promise not to throw up.” “Okay.” “Swear.” “I swear.”
I believed her. In fact, suddenly I was afraid she would choke back her puke or die trying, for this was another way of being pure. Things were getting out of hand, it was like she was going down the laundry chute headfirst again, and this was not what I’d had in mind for my see-through princess at all.
“Also, you have to eat a coddy,” I stipulated. “I’ll throw up.” “So smoke and eat a coddy and you won’t throw up. You swore.”
There was a nub of logic there and you could see her circling it, circling it, looking for a place to land. Luckily I had a coddy on me as I often did in those days. I took a puck of damp white napkin out of my pocket and spread it open and there was my rusty round coddy, fifteen cents at the snack bar in the lobby, and next to it I laid a cellophane two-pack of saltines, a squirt-tube of mustard, a Pall Mall and my 250-wrapper Mr. Peanut lighter, not available in any store.
“You gotta eat, Peabody, or you’ll never get out of here,” I said. No, that argument was lame, for none of us Bug Motels exactly wanted out of here. “I mean out of this room,” I added. “Okay.” “Swear.” “I swear.” She took up the coddy in one hand and the cigarette in the other, and I picked up my lighter.
And now I ignited and she nibbled and puffed, gulped and hacked and fizzed and choked. The cigarette smoke steamed out of the yellow baby-bird angles of her beak, curled like chicken feathers around those agonized calluses where the rough little lips came together, and all at once two worms of sumpm worm-white gleamed in the corners of her mouth, regurgitated coddy I guess-
I turned my back on her and grabbed the first thing that stuck out-which turned out to be the most disgusting object a person could bump into, an old dry sink on the wall that could have been a urinal, that’s how it looked. I threw back my head and gasped for air and accidentally caught sight of Emily in the mirror over the sink. She was waxier white than the pillow behind her, a little cloud of smoke floated over her face and her ugly-cute forehead was dented with worry.
“You don’t have to eat anything,” I gave in, “I can’t save you if you’re gonna do like that.” “S’purty good,” she said meekly, “kinda dry.” “Aw spit it out,” I said, “or I might puke myself.” “S’kinda sharp. I mean it tastes kinda sharp, when I’m chewing and the smoke goes up my nose. Like chewing needles or sumpm.” “Oooo, that does sound good. Much better than poop,” I said bitterly. “I thought you liked poop,” Emily said. “I said everybody liked poop, not me.” “Ain’t you everybody? One of em I mean?” “I guess so,” I sighed.
“You could still save me,” Emily said plaintively, the way a kid wheedles you to keep playing. Only, old Emily would never say I could save her just to keep me playing. I sneaked a glance at her in the mirror. Her cute-ugly mug was peaceful against the white pillow. The back of her hand smeared over her mouth in an almost satisfied way. “Whatcha do with that coddy?” I demanded. “I eat it.” “Aw come on, Emily!” “Yeah. Honest. It was good.”
I squinted at her suspiciously. Her fingers, as short and skinny as birthday candles, lay on the coverlet and half a cigarette still stuck up from them, fuming. There were ashes in every direction: black smears on the pillowcases, pale gray drifts down the front of her I CHOCOLATE bathrobe. But nothing worse.
“You didn’t puke?” “Unh-unh. I swore.” “You’re not really going to smoke that thing to the end, are you, Emily?” “I like it with a coddy.” “You swear you ate that coddy? I’m going to get you another one and see.” “Don’t go. Pretty please don’t go. Let’s play Old Maid.”
Old Maid! I remembered the last time Margaret and me played Old Maid: when Merlin got called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and they put us on the B &O to New York all by ourselves. Grandpa Koderer gave the porter five dollars to keep an eye on us but everyone forgot we would be alone on the ferry. We were thrilled. First we exhausted our quarters in the car-deck candy machine. The water looked heavy and black like motor oil and when we were staring into it, eating Caramel Creams, Margaret’s hat fell in. This was so pleasant that some of our cards “blew away” too. At last we watched the Old Maid’s pruny face float, curl, sink. So the deck was ruined. On Central Park West we had colds and Aunt Henrietta Schapiro sat on the bed and taught us Hearts and that was the end of Old Maid. Poor dears. You’re more than half orphans now.
“Don’t go. Let’s play Old Maid.” Why couldn’t I stop? “Only if you eat a coddy,” I bullied. “I ain’t hungry no more. Don’t go.” “Swear you’ll eat a coddy and I’ll come right back.” “I swear. But don’t go. They won’t let you in,” she said, and the bottom lip of her little buggy mouth trembled.
“Don’t worry, I can get in anytime I want. I’ll stay till you stop eating coddies, I swear. Hey, wanna split a Hollywood Bar?” She gave me a sickish smile-her lip curled back on her bucked bad teeth in friendly, bashful disgust. “Unh-unh. Too-maybe,” she said.
HOW LOVE GOT ME OUT OF THERE
The door hadn’t quite hissed shut behind me when I hit the dayroom, running. “Gimme fifteen cents,” I panted at the Bug Motels’ card table, “I got her to eat a coddy.” The whole place was smoking like an Indian encampment. There were around ninety little aluminum foil ashtrays in that room, and every ashtray had its mental patient. O, Bertie and Dion sat together in the whirly, cobwebby light, in a rubble of gum wrappers and potato chip bags, slapping their cards against the table. “Come on, gimme fifteen cents,” I repeated, “she ate a coddy, the whole thing.” Laughter burped out of the TV.
Bertie lazily shoved a dollar at me. “Who ya talking about-Emily? She ate?” “She ate a coddy.” “So what do you need fifteen cents for?” “Another coddy.” “You think she’s gonna eat another one?” “She swore.” “Cheese, Koderer, you’re doing better than Buzzey, maybe you should open up your own bughouse,” Bertie said with a smile. I squinted at him to see if he meant it. Probably not, but I didn’t care. I was Sigmund Food crossed with Margaret Meat, maybe I’d be Doctor Zuk someday after all.
“So how’d you do it?” O spooky-fluted, one eye narrowing at me in suspicion, the other hidden under the blueblack dip of her forelock. I wondered then, I wonder now, why a dark billow of hair over one eye makes a woman look dangerous, like a pirate’s eye-patch, but beautiful too. O watched me with her other smudgy eye that was telling me, Walk the plank. “How’d you get her to eat?” she asked again, without smiling. She was bristling mad, I could tell, and suddenly I didn’t care to go into that just now. “Tell you later,” I huffed, snatching up the dollar.
“Hey, pick me up a coddy too,” Dion said, “while you’re down there. And a pack of Tareytons.” Another dollar fluttered to the table. “Get me a coddy and a chocolate snowball and ten pieces of Bazooka,” someone else chimed in. “Five pretzels. And a strawberry turkish taffy for Mrs. Wilmot.” “A dime’s worth of banana BB bats and a pack of peanut butter crackers.” Pretty soon half the nuts in the dayroom were putting in their orders. “Forget it,” I shouted, “I’m just buying for the Bug Motels.” “Yeah, all you grown-up mental patients ever do is sit on your fat asses and watch TV and fart,” Bertie tactfully assisted me, “go get your own stuff.” “That doesn’t represent my views,” I announced to the dayroom, since I was Sigmund Food crossed with Margaret Meat, “I just have an urgent mission to execute.” Under my breath: “Damn you, Bertie, don’t s
tir up the mental patients, I’m in a hurry and this could be a matter of life or death.” Bertie laughed. “We might grow up into mental patients ourselves,” I hissed. “We are mental patients,” O reminded me. “Yeah, well we’re not hopeless cases yet,” I said.
I started for the sixth-floor landing where the elevators were, put my hand on the ward door, and all at once I felt O’s pirate eye pegleg it up my back. You’re not loving me and me alone the way you promised, it told me telepathically. You’re no beauty but you’ll pay. I looked around reluctantly. This was when I figured it out that O was insanely jealous (I do not speak figuratively, we were in the bughouse), and like all insanely jealous people she was clairvoyant. It didn’t take a Sigmund Food-I mean everybody’s dreambox is a cellar full of the stuff, hungers half and whole, lost loves, unobtainable oinks, etc. Now she was peering into my dreambox and sniffing another woman in my life and I was making haste to cut Doctor Zuk out of my thoughts with a can opener. “Emily’s organs are rotting,” I said weakly-but everybody knew that already. “Er, how bout you, O?” “What about me?” she echoed spookily. “You want anything from downstairs?” She didn’t even answer. “How bout a Hollywood Bar?” “I can get what I want myself,” she replied. She was scary but-well I’ll bring her up a cherry snowball I thought-just lemme feed old Emily first.
SNOWBALLS SWEATING IN A cardboard six-pack, pretzel rods marching across breast pocket like a squadron of cigars, candy bars crackling low in my overalls, soft warm coddies swinging in a small white bag from my teeth. And one of Dion’s Tareytons fuming away between my knuckles. I had had to ask an intern for a light. Wouldn’t you know, when Emily was ready to eat, it was the world’s lunchtime; the line had stretched from the snack bar to the newspaper kiosk all the way across the lobby. Where had I left my own cigarettes and my 250-wrapper Mr. Peanut lighter? Godzillas sakes-on Emily’s bed-fifty-three minutes ago. The first floor, the second floor sank away, beaten-looking people, broken-off chunks of families, got on and off. Yes I’d lost my perfect fix on Emily’s rescue by funding this expedition with Bug Motels’ candy money, that was a mistake, my fault for flouncing around pretending I was Margaret Meat, but now I was on my way back to her cute-ugly, spindly self.
Then the elevator jerked to perfect blackness and stillness and stopped dead and right away I started to be very very sorry just like O had telepathically said I would. I knew O was at the bottom of it, she had the power-some electrician or maintenance guy or orderly she had oinked, or who was praying to oink her next week-she had to stop thinking of men that way. There was an emergency phone in all these elevators. When I felt around for the receiver and pressed it to my ear, O spooky-fluted out of the earpiece: “You ate my heart with ketchup, jewgirl, and now you’re gonna pay,” and hung up. In the black elevator, sweat started to trickle under my dirty bangs. My armpits itched madly. That was when it came back to me, the queer story I’d heard about how O first got to Rohring Rohring. The same old stuff about working the Pratt Street bars from the age of twelve, and busting out her stepfather’s bathroom window where they had locked her in and climbing down the garage roof and never coming back, and ten foster homes and fifteen shows in juvenile court and three years’ probation later-but what I now remembered was the judge finally kicking her case to Rohring Rohring after she nailed her little foster sister, who she liked better than anybody, that was the part I particularly remembered, to the kitchen door with an oyster knife. The little sister had been trying to slip away… Had O thrown the knife like Mary Hartline on Super Circus? I wondered uneasily-Mary Hartline who walked upside down on the knives in her hands, her back arched like a bow.
Just then the elevator lurched back into motion, seemed to sink more floors than the hospital had floors, into the sewers beneath Broadway. It grounded like a submarine; I heard it scrape gravel. The doors sprang open, some kind of spotlight beamed into my eyes and I couldn’t see a thing-and then sumpm boinked against the wall behind me. I turned around. The spotlight picked out its edges. A jeweled dagger (probably it was just a garish letter opener filched from one of the royals) stuck there in the padding a second or two and fell to the floor, clunk. I leaned down and picked it up and squinted into the black. “What do you want, O?” “I don’t want nuttin from you,” she spooky-fluted, from a few feet away. “Well, cheese,” I said-I was impressed; the sweat rolled steadily, copiously out of my armpits-“if you don’t end up in the bughouse for life, you could get a job in a circus. Maybe Merlin would even hire you.” I thought better of that. “But for Merlin’s World Tour you’d have to be nonviolent. I don’t think you qualify.” “I could plead insanity if I killed you,” O trilled darkly, out of the darkness. “Besides, I’m still a juvenile. I betcha I’d get off,” she speculated. I tried my best to ignore this line of thought.
“Ain’t you gonna ask me what you did wrong?” O spooky-fluted. “No,” I replied, but on she went. “You said you’d be mine all mine. I oughta cut your nose right off, you dirty jew bull dagger.” I stared into the blackness, found the gauzy glow of her ratted hair like a frozen eddy in a stream, and imagined her wild raccoony eyes ringed with black, sparkling over my death. This was a side of beauty I’d never seen. Could you sink your face between her momps after she called you that, even if she asked you to? Of course I didn’t know yet exactly what a bull dagger was. “Takes one to know one,” I ventured recklessly, “and anyhow I never said I’d be yours all yours.” “I oughta cut your lying lips off too. You love that skeleton baby-you love her more than me. You sneaked into Emily’s room, you dirty liar.” “You love Emily as much as I do,” I pointed out, gesturing into the blind dark with my bag of coddies, for O was deeply sentimental when she wasn’t throwing knives. “That don’t make me no bull dagger,” she growled. “Maybe you wouldn’t mind telling me,” I croaked out carefully, “what a bull dagger is?”
Sumpm about that was going too far: O bloomed out of darkness, furious, grabbing at my hair and throat and shedding great wet sobs: “Go eat yourself, you jew jasper-” She could throw a knife but not a punch I guess. Or maybe she didn’t really want to hurt me. I held the jeweled letter opener firmly behind my back and let her bite and scratch. Toothmarks on my neck might make Doctor Zuk… vaporized that idea, think of Emily, Emily! My poor see-through princess who even ate for me, I had to see that she truly loved me, loved me more than she loved any of them, and now where was I when she needed me? I had been gone over an hour. Suddenly the lights came up, with a lurch we started to move, 3B, 2B, 1B, through the basements. O’s face was still in my face, but now we were drenched with fluorescent light. You’d think I wouldn’t be able to see beauty so close up, just hair roots and blackheads and tiny red threads in the eyeballs, but tears webbed her gunky eyelashes like dew in the grass at night and even her sweat was flowers. When the kiss came it was hot and dry, then hot and wet, it sucked in all bodily terrains, a southwestern national park of a kiss and I forgot to notice if it was any different because the other one kissing had just called me a dirty jew.
We hit L for Lobby and the buttonboard came back to life, flashing red and green and buzzing from every floor, a throttled ping ping ping came from the speaker box and “… Buzzey, Dr. Buzzey, code green, six-o-seven, stat. Repeat, Personnel, code red, code red, six-o-seven, stat. Dr. Beasley, Doctor Zuk, code green, six-o-seven, stat”-over and over. We stopped kissing. We stared at each other. We had been in Rohring Rohring long enough to read this sort of audio minestrone with our ears closed. It was trouble with a patient and the patient was Emily, it was fire, fire, fire and the fire was in Emily’s room.
The elevator stopped, the doors rumbled apart and a bunch of emergency guys of a type I had never seen before, in khaki with long schnozzes of gas masks dangling from their shoulders, trooped on like D-Day and pushed us off and went zooming up the shaft, as we stood there in the lobby blinking at each other. The buttons down the sides of all four elevators were pulsing colors like the dashboard of a spaceship, and so many pings
pinging at once I thought death death and busted out crying and so did O. “I bet she’s okay,” O said, changing her mind a second later, her eyes huge in their smutty rings, violently sniffing down a sob, for I guess to see me, the Bogeywoman, bawling was almost as scary as death. “She ate a coddy today, innit?-she ain’t ready to die. Just a little smoke in the quipment or sumpm, I betcha.” “I did it, O, it’s my fault-I left my cigs up there with her,” I said, “and my Mr. Peanut lighter.” “Sufferin cheeses,” O said, her face grave, and didn’t even try to say sumpm to make me feel better. “The stairs,” we both blurted, and ran up them two at a time.
Outside Emily’s room was one of those mob scenes like you always see at a downtown Baltimore fire, where the official standers-around, with their uniforms on and their official autos blocking the street, fold their arms and squint sternly at the unofficial standers-around and make sure the nobodies don’t get close enough to see anything good. The nurses were part of this inner circle-all three Corny Norns, Miss Roper, Miss Mursch, Miss Hageboom. O and I ducked behind a medications cart that somebody had abandoned and lay on our bellies and peered between the shelves of snort-sized dixie cups and through the holes between the nurses. Those gas mask emergency guys were gone, which could be a good sign, but Emily was in trouble or this whole crowd of royals would have drained away in two seconds flat.
Now someone rolled one of those portable curtains around the bed, and looking at this was like watching some pitiful amateur puppet show trying to start, elbows dispiritedly punching cloth, flat rubber soles shuffling at the bottom of the curtain, and now and then some big thing accidentally sticking out, bald head of Dr. Buzzey, muscled bicep in green sleeve of Dr. Beasley, potato-shaped butt of Dr. Schock in her sack dress. Then I heard an exotic, familiar squinch, and taking my chin to the floor I saw, on the far side of the bed, the silver sandals of Doctor Zuk, who had just heavily shifted her weight. I heard, illegibly vibrating, the low tobacco-cured C-string of her voice. She was sort of crooning sumpm. My heart drowned.