“Here’s another idea, Laurel. Let me know what you think. Perhaps you could borrow the clothes for as long as you’re here at the hospital with Aspen. Would that be allowed?”
Row, borrow, rob. “I’d have to ask Seth.”
Mrs. Clemmons reached into her pocket and brought out a cell phone that she put on Aspen’s table. “Am I correct in remembering that you told me Seth has a cell phone?”
Had I told her that? I couldn’t remember. All the days here seemed like one long day, and sometimes I answered questions and sometimes I might have imagined she asked them. “Only for emergencies.”
“Wouldn’t Aspen being in the hospital Intensive Care Unit be considered an emergency?”
I thought about it. “No, I don’t think so. Seth says the only medicine children need is sleep.”
“I see. Tell me something, Laurel. Are you concerned that Seth might be angry if you called?”
Oh, he would be angry, all right. I had defied his orders, stolen money, and then I hadn’t come home to do my chores. “I’m sure of it,” I said.
“What if I called him and explained the situation? Or what if a doctor called him?”
I shook my head. “That would make him very angry.”
“Sometimes life delivers what I call extenuating circumstances,” Mrs. Clemmons said. “Do you know what I mean?”
Tent, taunt, exit. Add an r and you could spell nature, which is beautiful and free and always there to make you feel better. “Not really.”
“Thank you for telling me that. I’ll try to explain myself differently so I’m clearer. Aspen getting so sick, you had to make a decision for her well-being by bringing her here so the doctors could try a different kind of medicine to help her. When a person ignores the rules to help someone, that’s called bravery. God understands.”
“Oh, we don’t believe in God,” I told her. “We used to, but now we’re Native American.”
She frowned at me. “Seth might be relieved to hear what is happening with Aspen, and with you. After all, you’ve told me that the Farm believes everyone who lives there is part of a family. So wouldn’t it be a good thing to let him know how you both are so he can tell the others? What do you think?”
One minute we were talking about the clothes and then the phone and now being brave, but she didn’t know I had stolen ten dollars. Thou shalt not steal. I couldn’t work it out in my mind. “I left and he didn’t know and I went to Big Pharma and the Outside World and he would be so angry he might put me out. Then where would I go?”
“I can help you find a place.”
“I don’t have any money.”
“There are places to stay that don’t require money.”
Nothing is free. Ever. People will screw you. “But even though Aspen came out of my body she is everyone’s daughter because that’s how the Farm works.”
“What if—”
“Please,” I said. My head hurt and my stomach was growling so loud she could hear it. “No more. Put the phone away. Take the clothes back.”
Some time went by while she didn’t say anything and I didn’t say anything and Aspen’s machines made their whooshes and clicks and beeps. Puh-shoo-up. I wanted to slap that machine, just to make it shut up. Aspen looked like she would wake up any minute. Like all I had to do was wait. Like if I left the room, she’d wake up, and not see me there, and then she would do the crashing again, or worse.
Then Mrs. Clemmons said, “Tell you what. I’ll leave the phone here with you so that you can make the decision without any pressure. I believe I have come up with a solution that covers all the bases. Laurel, how about this? Just for today, you take the clothes and toiletries. You shower and change into the clean clothes. I’ll take your own things home with me and wash them, and return them to you tomorrow. If you still feel that you can’t keep the clothes, you can switch them out for the clean overalls and turtleneck and you never have to see the new clothes again. How does that sound?”
The overalls were just for doing chores. After that I put on the skirt and that was how women were supposed to dress. “We’re supposed to wear skirts.”
“I didn’t know that, but I’m sure I can find one for you. What about pants temporarily?”
Temporary. Air, pore, liar, temp as in high temperature like Aspen’s. I was so tired. “Fine. Call him,” I said, and told her the number.
I didn’t know if it was okay or if I was just so tired and a shower sounded so good. Maybe a part of me had already turned Worldly in my heart because the minute I saw those clothes I wanted them. So much so that I wanted to say burn these old clothes, I never want to see them again. But if Seth heard that, he would tear the clothes off me, lock me into the barn, and take Aspen away forever. But he wasn’t here. Aspen was asleep in a coma. Already I could feel the new clothes on me, changing me, because I was born with Sin and filled with Sin and Unrepentant and just plain bad. I said yes to the clothes. I had no intention of giving them back, not now, not tomorrow, not ever. Mrs. Clemmons stayed with Aspen and I went to the nurses’ locker room to take a shower.
I stood in front of the shower stall in the nurses’ quarters where there were lockers and mirrors and, thanks to Mrs. Clemmons, no one but me. Then I couldn’t remember if I’d locked the door, so I had to go check it. Mrs. Clemmons promised no one could come in while I was here. I tried the door again. Me doing the locking—that was a first. I went back to the shower stall and it was so different from at the Farm—some kind of metal, not the stone walls Frances had built by hand with rocks she collected. It might be a trick like Seth said they did to people in Germany during World War II, not showers with water, but execution by gas you couldn’t even smell. He knew everything. I tapped the metal shower walls in a lot of different places. Nothing there seemed different, or tricky, no trapdoors. I turned the faucet on and touched the water with my fingers, and then I smelled them. Water, unless there was a secret ingredient or germs. How would they allow germs in a hospital? Now that I was standing here, the steam rising, I really wanted to take that shower.
Warm water. Soft bar soap that made my skin feel so smooth. I washed my hair twice, and left the conditioner on while I just stood there feeling warm water on my back. When I drew the razor up my legs I felt as if I were a snake shedding its ugly old skin that would wash down the drain forever. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done shaving, but once I put the razor in my hand, it knew what to do, so I must’ve done it Before.
Wasting water is wrong, but the truth is, I never wanted that shower to end. I rinsed my hair and shut the faucet off and just stood there with the steam in the air and the water dripping off me, peeking out of the shower in case someone had come in but no one had come in because remember the door? Locked. Dummy. Stupid. Ugly. Locked. I placed one towel down on the bench and sat on it, facing the door just in case. I used another towel to dry myself off and rubbed my hair. It felt so soft it seemed like it was someone else’s, Aspen’s, when she started to grow hair, corn-silk soft and so white-blonde like Abel’s. I opened the package of underpants and chose the blue ones. I never had blue ones unless it was Before. The bra felt very strange but I finally got it figured out from the picture on the package and pulled up the straps tighter and there I was wearing a bra, and I liked how it felt and I didn’t want to take it off. The jeans felt sinful against my legs, tight, showing off my body instead of hiding it. A woman’s body is sinful, Seth said. Beware of wicked women; Eve diverted Adam’s obedience from God; women must not wear men’s clothing. I got to wear the overalls while I cleaned but then I was supposed to wear the skirt. Did that matter anymore?
Just before I left for the shower I let Mrs. Clemmons dial Seth’s cell-phone number for me to talk to him, not her, just so he’d know where I was. A message came on that said the number was no longer in service. “Does that concern you?” she asked.
Con, corn, nor, core. “He does that sometimes,” I told her. “He buys the kind of phone that you use and throw
away. Frances said it isn’t ecological. He told her that sometimes it’s better to be safe than ecological.”
“Safe from what?” Mrs. Clemmons asked.
I didn’t know how to answer so I didn’t say anything.
After my shower I put my dirty clothes into the bag Mrs. Clemmons had given me, and when I slid the shoes on it was as if someone was holding my feet, wishing them long walks and warm toes always. I couldn’t stop looking at them, touching the suede, brushing it one way and then the other, forgetting the animal they came from. I brushed my hair free of tangles, and then when I looked in the mirror I saw my scar. Everything I felt about the clothes being new and beautiful and mine went away. The truth was that no amount of conditioner (diet, tide, roe is fish eggs) or clothes was going to make me look like someone that anyone wanted. Or sound like it. Seth was right. I was ugly and the scar was hideous and my voice was terrible and it was my fault that Sin was in my blood and who else would want me? No one. If not for Aspen, what good was I to the world? If she crashed again and didn’t come back, where would I go? Maybe the place Mrs. Clemmons knew of, but why would I bother if Aspen was gone? I buttoned the shirt to the very top button. When I turned the collar up, it itched, but it hid most of my scar. Much better. Now I could walk back to Aspen’s room without everyone giving me a dirty look.
On the way, it dawned on me that I could just walk right out of this hospital, go into a store, use a telephone, learn to drive a car. Be Worldly. Why not, since I was Sinful already? But Seth needed me the way Abel had—God wants you to be with me because you keep me from hurting other girls, he said, all those times he hurt me on purpose.
I accidentally pushed 1 instead of 2 and the elevator stopped on the first floor instead of the second, and I thought maybe if I could just see that tall ceilinged room of windows one more time, I would feel more like a person with doors right there instead of trapped inside with nowhere to go. I walked out of the elevator and down the hall toward that room and there was something I didn’t know was there, called a Gift Shop. In the window three plastic plugged-in aquariums each featured a different scene. One had a roll of brightly colored fish swimming that flashed with light whenever the fish swam by. I knew it wasn’t real but it was like a dream in that it felt almost real. The second one had butterflies flying, all kinds, and all colors. I knew they weren’t real, either, but they were beautiful all the same, and all I could think was how much Aspen loved butterflies and how she would love one of the electric butterfly aquariums but I had left my purse in her room but wait I didn’t have a purse and I had no more money. Maybe I could steal one. Old St. John said stealing was easy if you knew how. If she would just wake up, I would, I would take one and give it to her and they could add it to the bill for her being here.
The third one had big smiling gray fish and the word purpose came into my mind and then a second later, dolphin. Pin, lop, hop. Just looking at them I remembered something from Before and I hadn’t done that in years. Another place, another time, I had seen real dolphins, swimming and jumping, for real. There was cold water splashing on me and people screaming happy screaming, and there was ice cream and carrying a black-and-white stuffed animal and someone big holding my hand. It was such a fun day I thought maybe it was a birthday, not January first like for everyone, and I wanted to be there again so badly I almost had to sit down.
A lady who worked in the gift shop came over to me and said, “Dear, can I help you with something? Are you lost?” and I wanted to tell her yes, I need help to remember the dolphin day but that would sound crazy so I shook my head no and hard as it was I walked away from the aquariums and didn’t go in the tall window room, just headed to the elevator and pressed 2.
Inside my body it felt like I was filled with broken glass. Every step I took hurt. What was the matter with me? Was I getting sick? All the way back to Aspen’s room I had tears that would not stop. New clothes didn’t help. Scars never went away. Somewhere there were real dolphins and I had seen them but I couldn’t even remember them all the way because I was so stupid. I thought how I could leave the hospital and go looking for the dolphins, but when I got back to Aspen’s room the doctors were in the hallway, talking to Mrs. Clemmons. They had mad looks on their faces that could not mean anything good.
“What happened?” I said in my ugly voice that made them look at me like I was worse than dirty or sick or stupid.
“The doctors are concerned that Aspen is losing weight,” Mrs. Clemmons said, and took my arm and pulled me into Aspen’s room, past the doctors. “It doesn’t mean she is sicker.” She put both her arms around me while I cried about a fish I couldn’t even remember and the weight I couldn’t make my daughter gain. “All of this is taking quite a toll on you,” she said, and I wondered how she could see my thoughts the way Seth could. Was it something people were born with, or a trick? She couldn’t be like Seth, though, because every time she came to visit, she brought me presents, clothing, or a sandwich, or Diet Coke Vanilla in cans that were 100 percent recycled, she promised. She didn’t want to hurt me. She knew about Waterfall Mist conditioner and razors and my Jungle shoe size. She didn’t call the cops or a social worker because she was a psychologist, a word I couldn’t even spell unless I looked at her card. She didn’t trick me to tell her about Seth. Mrs. Clemmons listened when I told the Princess of Leaves story and she said I was good at stories, that I could be a writer if I wanted to. She talked and she tried to make me feel better. It was kind of like having a friend or even a mom, and the minute I thought about having a mom, more tears came hot and painful down my face burning like acid and I wanted to scratch my eyes out, anything to make it stop hurting.
She helped me sit down in the chair I slept in and held my hand. “Laurel, you take all the time you need to get yourself together,” she said. “I’ll go outside for a while to give you some privacy, but I’ll be back. You don’t have to talk to the doctors right this minute. Here, let me take your dirty clothes.”
While she was gone, I thought about the Princess, lost in the dark woods. The monster that had taken her from the guard had zapped her with a bolt of lightning, and her legs wouldn’t work. She tried to speak, but the words came out jumbled. Later, he forced her to drink a bitter tea. He wanted her to eat food, too, but she refused until one day the hunger was so strong that she would have eaten acorns raw, poison, but she didn’t do that because she wanted to see the king and the queen again. Eating is the first step to finding my way back, she told herself. Cold oats or beans, I can’t escape if I’m weak. “You should eat,” I whispered to Aspen. “You have to wake up and eat or else the princess will be stuck with the monster forever.”
When the nurse came in later that night, Carolyn, one I hadn’t met before, she said, “I’m supposed to put in Aspen’s feeding tube.”
“I thought Susie was our nurse today.”
“She’s at dinner,” Carolyn said. “It won’t take a minute. I’ve done a million of these.” She gloved up and unwrapped a plastic package with tubing.
“What is that?” I asked.
“It’s a flexible tube that goes into her nose and down into her stomach.”
“Will it hurt?”
She snorted. “Your daughter’s in a coma. She can’t feel anything.”
“Will a feeding tube make her wake up?” I asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” she said. It didn’t take very long. Now Aspen had four tubes total, breathing, pee, IV, and feeding.
Five days ago she was playing in the snow. Catching snowflakes. Our dog Curly ran beside her trying to bite them. That had made her laugh so hard. She stayed outdoors until I dragged her in, and then she didn’t want dinner, only to sleep. She shivered like she couldn’t get warm. Then her nose ran, she got a fever, then the seizure, and no more waking up. Coming to the hospital was a blur to me, rocking chairs, numbers, ice baths, CT crashing; now I had to add to that list bad blood counts and losing weight and the feeding tube. Every day I prayed to
Our Creator to make things better, but it wasn’t helping. Seth always said, Believe in good things and good things will happen, but I knew it wasn’t true, it was a saying to make Frances and Caleb and Old St. John stay through the winter and work harder. If you go you can’t come back, he said, and that made them stay because where else would they go in the winter? Old St. John sometimes went into town and came back with a bottle and drank until he was as stupid as me. That made Seth laugh, but if Frances had done it, he wouldn’t have laughed, and he would have yelled at her, maybe hit her, and for sure made her fast and do a sweat.
I hated sweats. Not the darkness, the heat. Smelling poisons coming from other people’s bodies. Being naked, trying to stand the heat longer than I wanted to. If you got too hot and had to go outside of the sweat lodge you were supposed to yell, “All my relations!” to make your ancestors and relatives send you the strength to go back in. Seth said that was the Way, and We Were All Family, but I knew that was a lie. My people from Before were dead and I only had one relation, Aspen. Today’s shower had felt so good. I was clean and dressed in new clothes, but tomorrow they would be dirty, and then what? Wash them in the bathroom sink? The restroom is for patients only.
Later, Susie the nurse came in with a big shot and this creamy-colored stuff inside. “Hello, darlin’,” she said to Aspen.
“Is that medicine?” I asked.
“No, sweetie, this is nutrition. I’m going to put it in her NG tube. Come watch. I’ll show you how and then you can do it.”
Susie was the nice nurse. For two days we had her, and then it was Leilah, not as nice. Carolyn in between when the nurses were on breaks. I watched Susie press the plunger on the shot and the creamy nutrition disappeared down the tube. “How long until she gains weight?” I asked.
Susie smiled at me. “Everything takes time, Laurel. Why don’t you go get something to eat yourself?”
Finding Casey Page 17