I nodded again. I wanted her to know that I was safe and happy, but something stopped me from telling her how much I loved Paradise Ranch, that it was the best place I had ever lived. It didn’t seem fair, since she was trapped in jail.
I pushed out of the hug, looked at her, and shrugged. “It’s okay.”
Mother turned her attention to her sister and said, “Eleanor, I can’t get used to your habit. Looks like Halloween. Must you wear it every day?”
“Yes, Barbara. I choose to wear the habit every day.”
“I’m not used to being called Barbara,” Mother said.
“Adjust. You’re Barbara, not Babe. It is time for you to grow up. You need to get out of this dreadful situation and take care of Ruby Clyde.”
“I’ve messed up everything.” Mother waved a hand in front of her own face, like she was clearing smoke. “You take her, Eleanor. Ruby Clyde is better off with you.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. She couldn’t just give me away like that. I didn’t remember ever being cross with my mother, but she couldn’t just give up on me, not after all we had been through. I was so upset I barely heard what they said next.
Eleanor grabbed Mother’s wrist and shook it. “Barbara, you are talking nonsense.”
“What’s so wrong with nonsense? The world is full of nonsense. Why am I in here? I didn’t do anything wrong, yet here I am in this jail.”
Eleanor lowered her voice to a firm whisper. “That’s my point exactly, Barbara. We are going to find bail money so that you can get out and be a mother to your daughter. Ruby Clyde needs you.”
Mother looked overwhelmed. I wished she had the energy to fight for me.
The side effect of being cared for by someone like Eleanor is that you realize how far short your mother has fallen. I know it had been hard for her. Maybe my father, if he had lived, would have helped, but all my life, honestly … adults had worn me out. I was so mad all at once, I almost bit something.
The only thing that calmed me down was knowing that Eleanor Rose would take care of me. I had a home at Paradise Ranch in that peach orchard with all those nuns. To escape my emotions, I went up in my head. I imagined walking that back hill and crawling out on that limb hanging over open air and not being afraid because it was just me. And I stayed there in my imaginary world until it was time to leave the jail.
* * *
We stood outside the building, Joe Brewer and Aunt Eleanor talking about getting Mother out on bail. Mr. Brewer said the judge refused to set bail because she had no family or ties to the community, nothing to keep her from running off. But she did too have ties to the community; she had her sister, who was rich—just look at her big fat ranch. And Joe Brewer was a lawyer—lawyers have money, don’t they? I couldn’t make this add up. But then again, why bother? Mother didn’t even want to get out.
I watched cars and taxis and trucks, flowing down the streets, getting backed up at lights. Honking, like laying on the horn would help anything.
“Are you okay?” I barely heard Mr. Brewer’s voice through the blaring car horn. I assumed he was talking to me, but when I turned around I saw that he was talking to Aunt Eleanor. The little square part of her face that showed through the fabric looked like it had shrunk up and turned gray. She had both hands over her belly.
“It’s nothing,” she said. But it takes a liar to know a liar. She wasn’t okay.
“Shall we sit down?” Joe Brewer asked, but she shook her head.
“It’ll be fine. Since surgery, it’s always something.” She tried to smile, but it was not a happy one. “It can wait. I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow. Anyway, we need to work on Barbara’s case. I have an idea about bail…”
“Sister Eleanor?” Joe Brewer circled his arm around both shoulders and guided her to the bus stop bench. “We need to sit down.”
Aunt Eleanor melted into him, her legs listing out to one side, and I realized he was practically holding her up. “I’m perfectly fine,” she kept saying. But when he lowered her down to the metal bench, she took a few deep breaths and then said, “On second thought, we better drop by the hospital.”
I’ll tell you what, Joe Brewer was a man of action. He just picked her up off her feet and said, “Come on, Ruby Clyde.” Her head was on his shoulder, and her body, all wrapped in fabric, was across both his arms. Her little blue boots dangled out of the bottom of her skirt. He marched across the street to the parking garage and ordered me to open the door of his car, which was parked front and center in a VIP spot, I guess from him working there.
He placed Eleanor in the back, fastened her seat belt, told me to jump in. I rode beside her all the way to the hospital, holding her hand. At some point she fell asleep or something, because she quit talking and went limp.
She looked dead. I wondered if that was the way cancers killed you. Talking about bail on the sidewalk one minute, dead the next. I worried that we had killed her, me and my mother, coming into her solitary life and tossing everything around.
I leaned into her, searching for a sign of life. Her upper lip twitched. It drew in just a bit and showed teeth. “Can you hear me? Aunt Eleanor! Can you hear me?” Her head rolled to one side.
All that safe feeling I had with her vanished. It had only lasted about a minute. Now it was over and gone. I was back in the bushes, shivering.
I know I said some time back that I never cry, but something came out of my eyes. It was the salt water of a brand-new feeling; it was more than sadness or fear or anger. I felt like someone had sliced me open with a razor blade and all the stars of the universe spilled out on the floor.
I rubbed my healing hands together and touched them to her cheeks. I covered her ears, then moved my fingertips to her eyelids. I wrapped my healing hands around her head and kissed her on the forehead. My healing powers weren’t working fast enough. She was three shades of gray when Joe Brewer wheeled up to the emergency room doors.
TWENTY-TWO
Emergency rooms are horrible. If There is a hell on earth (and my mean grandmother always said there was), it would certainly be an emergency room. People were bleeding and howling everywhere. Six televisions blared six different talk shows. And the room stank with fear. Maybe I was in a dream.
When I’m a nurse I am not going to work in one, that’s for sure.
They belted Aunt Eleanor onto a rolling table and flew through the swinging doors. It is the hardest thing in the world to let go of someone you love, let them go through those swinging doors with strangers who might be able to save their lives, but maybe not. Letting go is not something I’m cut out to do. If Joe Brewer hadn’t been holding on to my arm, I would have followed Aunt Eleanor, made sure they were saving her right. But Joe Brewer knew enough about me to hold on tight and make me stay in the waiting room.
I sat down, stood up, and sat down again, then told Mr. Joe Brewer that he ought to call Frank at the Red Eye and tell her what happened. Somebody needed to see about Bunny.
While he called I looked at the other people in the waiting room, but they were too sad to describe. Mothers, brothers, sisters, wives, all with their hearts cut wide open because their loved ones had disappeared through the swinging doors. Just like Eleanor.
Suddenly a honking car skidded to a stop outside the glass doors. A man ran in screaming, “My wife needs help! She’s having our baby now.”
I swiveled around just in time to see a dozen medical people swirl around him and surround the car. I walked over to watch through the glass, but a wall of blue scrubs blocked my sight. It looked like the mother was in the backseat. After a few minutes, one of the doctors turned around with an armful of blanket. The top of a tiny wet head showed with a circle of dark hair. And goo, some white goo. The automatic doors opened for him and I heard the baby cry as the doctor rushed through the swinging doors. Two nurses hurried behind him arguing about the time of birth. One said this minute, the other said it was three minutes later. How important is the exact minute of your birth?
On TV shows they do the same thing with time of death. The father pushed the new mother in a wheelchair, rushing after their baby, but a nurse stopped him at the swinging door and took his wife away.
I watched the father sit down and start making phone calls. He was happy. I guessed it was better to be born in an emergency room than die in one. But I wouldn’t want either one. The six swirling television screens made me feel like I was inside a kaleidoscope.
Time must have passed, because just when I thought I couldn’t stand it anymore, Frank and Sister Joan flew in like mother birds. All four of us chattered, talking over each other. What? When? Where? How? Until all was told.
After that, since we couldn’t control the surgery, we started talking about things we could control. Did we need anything to eat or drink. Had anyone told the other nuns, or Gaylord Lewis. Where were the cars. Joe’s car was still at the door. Eleanor’s blue van was across town where we had parked.
Frank and Sister Joan sandwiched me on the waiting chairs while Joe Brewer moved his car to the regular parking. When he returned we sat all in a row, the four of us, in silence because we’d run out of chatter. Our complete thoughts were holding on to Eleanor’s life.
Waiting and waiting and waiting. Pacing. Wait some more. All four of us until finally a doctor walked up to us and said, “I have good news.” And the breath we let out could have blown the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria all the way to America. The doctor explained that Eleanor had an obstruction in her bowel, but they had gone in and fixed her. Soon as the doctors stitched her up, she would go into the recovery room.
I was relieved, but I needed to see her to believe it.
“Thank God.” Frank began rustling about, readying herself to leave. “Ruby, let’s go home and get some rest. She won’t be able to have visitors tonight.”
“Nope,” I said. “Not leaving.”
“Don’t be silly,” Frank said. “Children are little bags of germs—hospitals hate them.”
“You don’t understand. I have to stay. I help at the school infirmary all the time. I have nerves of steel. Everybody says so.”
“Hospitals have rules.” Sister Joan tried to sound firm, but she was a softie. “Visiting hours.”
“But I’m family,” I said. “I’m her only family right now.”
Frank and Sister Joan looked at each other. Nobody had told them that the secret was out.
“Yes, I know you guys know who I am,” I said. “That’s why we came down to Austin. To meet Joe Brewer and see my mother.”
Sister Joan laughed that yawny laugh and said, “Glad that’s out in the open.”
I turned to Joe Brewer. “I am not leaving this hospital until I see her. I can’t.”
Joe Brewer put an arm around my shoulder and told the two women that he would keep me down in Austin for the night. “Might be nice for Sister Eleanor to see a friendly face when she wakes up.”
Then he found Eleanor’s van keys and told the ladies where they could find the parking garage.
Frank scowled and pulled her chin, then nodded reluctantly. Sister Joan said a little prayer and took the keys.
As Frank and Sister Joan walked out together, bumping into each other and turning back, they said, “Call me, Ruby Clyde. I’ll come get you.” And again they said, “You don’t ever need a reason.” A few more steps. “Just call me.”
I waved and said, “Go home now. I can’t call you if you are still here.”
My mother birds dragged each other away.
* * *
Mr. Joe Brewer parked me in the hospital room and told me to sit still until Eleanor got out of recovery. He was going back to the office to get some things, he said. So I sat down in a wide chair and looked around. Life-saving equipment was blinking in the shadows. That was all a good lesson for me about being a nurse. The bed had buttons, the wall had buttons. There were wires and tubes and machines on wheels.
I prayed. I made a deal with God that if he saved Eleanor Rose I would do everything on earth to be easy, and help her, and make her happy. I think it is okay to strike bargains with God, if it’s not to get something for your own self. I wanted Eleanor Rose to live, that wasn’t selfish. Except that if she lived I’d get to stay with her at Paradise Ranch and that was selfish, but it wasn’t all selfish.
Waiting alone in that hospital room made me so nervous I fell flat asleep, twirling into another world. I had a nightmare there. It chills my blood just to think of it, but I’ll tell it anyway, now that the pictures are flashing in my mind. There was a hideous clown following me and he knew my name. Every time one of his big shoes slapped down, he would sing a letter from my name R-U-B-Y, four steps, and then he would stop and scream Clyyyyyyyyyyde. And when he did that, peaches shot out of his mouth like machine gun bullets.
When I woke up, Aunt Eleanor was asleep in the hospital bed. Her lips were cracked and there was spittle in the corners. She wasn’t using her nose enough to breathe, so you could smell her insides when she exhaled. Otherwise she looked okay for a gray skinny lady with no hair. Better than dead, that’s for sure.
I pulled a chair right up to her bedside so I could look at her face until she woke up. I wanted her to see me first instead of waking up in a hospital room alone, not knowing what had happened. That would scare the daylights out of me, waking up like that. I wasn’t going to let that happen to her.
After a long time, she stirred. She snorted in the back of her throat and her eyes opened halfway.
On the bedside table there was a little sponge on a stick sitting in a glass of water. I took the sponge and dabbed her lips. That made her tongue stick out. I dabbed her tongue. That made her smack her lips. I kept dabbing until her eyes began to focus. When I felt she could see me I leaned close and whispered, “Aunt Eleanor, you are in the hospital but you are okay. You had a bowel obstruction, but they saved your life.”
Eleanor Rose looked at me, then she turned her head just enough to kiss my hand. “What a lovely little girl,” she said. “You are like a song that was never sung.”
TWENTY-THREE
When Joe Brewer came back to get me, Aunt Eleanor was fast asleep. He stood by my chair and held out his hand without saying a word. And I took it. He was the only reason I had gotten to stay in the room until Aunt Eleanor woke up.
Joe Brewer never let go of my hand, walking around the long halls of the hospital, through a bunch of swinging doors, up an escalator, through a glass tube, and into a parking garage where we got into his car. He only let go of my hand to drive. Driving he kept both hands on the wheel, but once he parked under a tall building, he walked around to my door, took my hand again, and guided me through two different elevators up to his house, which wasn’t a house at all, but something else—he called it a high-rise apartment. I realized I hadn’t been outside in the open air since we pulled up at the emergency room door with Aunt Eleanor. We had been under cover all the way from the hospital to Joe Brewer’s place. If you lived like that you’d never know if it was raining, or snowing, or hot or cold, or day or night even. You’d never need a winter coat or umbrella or any of that. You’d spend your whole life like the weather didn’t matter.
Upstairs, Joe Brewer opened his apartment door and signaled for me to go in before him. I did, but when I walked into the main room, I stopped cold. The entire wall was windows. And out those windows was a million sparkling lights: the river, the park, and more buildings stretched as far as I could see.
It made me dizzy. I thought I felt the building swaying. But after the day we had had, I was dead tired so I went into the bedroom he said was mine, crawled into bed, and went to sleep.
When I woke up the next morning, I thought of all the strange places where I had woken up since leaving home, which was no longer home. Paradise Ranch was as close to home as I had, but now I was in this fancy apartment in the sky.
But then Bunny wiggled against my back and I didn’t give a hoot where I was.
“Where’d you come from?” I
purred.
Sister Joan had wafted in the door, saying, “Brought you some clothes, sweetie. And Frank sent Bunny for a visit. But I have to take him back when I go.”
I hugged Bunny so tightly that he oinked.
I jumped out of bed to dress. When I got out in the main room, Joe Brewer had already made me some eggs and told me to go sit on the balcony, where Bunny was curled around Sister Joan’s feet. I still thought the tall building was swaying, and eating out there on a platform hanging off the side wasn’t very appetizing. But I did what he said.
“How’d you sleep?” Joe Brewer asked as he sat down with his coffee.
“I don’t remember,” I said. “I was asleep the whole time.”
He laughed but I hadn’t made a joke.
Nobody else seemed to feel the building sway. I was getting right seasick. The only way I could eat was keeping my eyes locked on my plate. No looking at the city spread out below us.
I heard Mr. Brewer and Sister Joan talking about the law, court, and other people in trouble. He had to go to work, he said, and after I took my last bite of scrambled egg I asked him how many people like Mother he was helping.
“Dozens.” He shrugged, gazing out over the city like it was a pasture full of clients. “Too many,” he said. “And there are always more. We are seriously overloaded in the office.”
Mr. Joe Brewer must have seen the cloud pass over my face because he said, “Don’t worry. I am particularly interested in your mother’s case.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” I said.
He stood up and explained that he was on his way to meet with Mother. He needed to tell her about Sister Eleanor going to the hospital.
“Won’t that worry her?” I asked, thinking about my mother just giving up on me, asking Aunt Eleanor to keep me.
“Your mother is stronger than you think,” he said. “Besides, she is waiting to hear about bail. We can’t go down that path until Sister is better.”
I didn’t know they were working on bail. “Nobody told me that,” I said. “I could help,” I said.
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