"I was looking at Miguel. 'No, I'm not.'
"The whole class turned around suddenly and laughed. I was inflamed. A simple question, a routine matter.
"'What are you doing, Duffino?' her tone was like gravel. 'Sitting there saying the rosary?'
"More laughter.
"'No, teacher.'
"'What did you say?'
"'Teacher, teacher,' I repeated, like a parrot. Where are the teachers who hear what we're thinking? Where are the ones who want us to grow strong?
"I burst out of my chair and began to speak loudly. 'I am looking for the truth, teacher!'
"Now everyone was staring at me. What did I care? Let them
stare.
"'I asked if you know the causes of the American Revolution, the war for independence?' She only wanted a two word answer.
"'Independence,' I answered without hesitation, even though she was smirking at me, and had not even the least inkling of what I was saying. 'What a wonderful dream. They fought the war for independence. Freedom and independence. Everyone in this country wanted to be free from religious oppression, domination. Lies said in the name of God.'
The teacher's voice got shaky. 'Very good.' The knuckles on her hands grew white.
"'Freedom from lies, Miss Santia.'
"'That's enough, Duffino. Sit down.'
"But it wasn't enough. 'Freedom from pain.' And who was she to tell me to sit down? I wasn't ready. Rows of eyes in the room were staring at me. Foolish eyes. 'They fought the war to be free of owing your life to another, to another person's laws. They're
still fighting it, Miss Santia.'
"I knew that if I continued she'd call in the school monitor. Then I felt Miguel turn around and stare at me too. His eyes swerved over me like a bolt of lightening. When I looked back at him, I saw his eyes shining.
"'That's fine, Duffino. That's excellent.' The teacher was scraping her throat. 'You may sit down now.'
"I did not sit down though.
"'I said, Sit Down!'
"'But I know something that they don't know, Miss Santia,' I continued. My eyes went back and forth to Miguel. 'You can only be free if you know how to love. They fought the war for love.'
"The bell rang out and mouths started to whisper.
'But this love isn't a simple matter.'
"Miguel rose in his seat. The other kids were whispering and laughing. I just kept repeating over and over. 'But this isn't a simple matter. Is it Miss Santia? Is it?'
"Finally I heard somebody say. 'She's flipped out.' That wasn't so unusual, either. People at this school flipped out everyday. I hadn't flipped out, though. I just said what I had to.
"Then a deeper voice in the room called out, 'Shut up.' He yelled it both to me and the kids. 'Shut up and get moving.'
"The kids listened. 'You heard the bell ring. Get going.'
"Soon the classroom was empty of everyone. Only Miguel remained, standing behind me. I put my head down and started to cry.
"'Put on your jacket, Duffino.' He was talking softly, sweetly. I could not believe he was talking to me. 'Please,' he continued, 'let me help you put your jacket on.'
"A new group of kids came filing into the room for the next period. I reached for my jacket.
"'Don't cry, Duffino.' He leaned over and breathed on my neck. I did not even know I was crying. He put his arms around me and led me out of the classroom, along the hallways, down the steel staircase, past the school guard and into the street.
"Out of school at ten in the morning! Out in the schoolyard with the wild ones! I heard the bells ringing inside the school house, clanging, and calling everyone to their places while we stood apart in the wet, beautiful street."
But now Duffino had enough. She suddenly stood up and started stamping her feet on the ground.
I felt sick inside, suddenly, shaking.
"Ai! Ai!" I started calling, to stop her.
It had no effect. I called louder. I was calling the good angels to come be our side.
"I'm calling the angels, Duffino. They're here."
That stopped her.
"The good angels can help us. They know what we're doing here. They know what's happening. They know we all need to be crazy. It's an escape hatch when nothing else is working. A cave we can go and hide in. But then we get stuck in it. It's hard to get out once we've crawled inside!"
She turned away from me completely.
"Ai! Ai!"
I knew she heard me! Soon our time would be over for today. Like it or not, I knew I said all I should have. I was all mixed up though. I wanted to both cry, and celebrate. I didn't want to leave Duffino in pain.
"You never meant to do any harm," I murmured as the bells announcing the end of Free Hours rang out from the top of the hill, and echoed far down here, calling a sad refrain.
She looked away.
"We have to go now, Duffino."
We turned together, and started back up the long hillside. Our feet crunched the weeds at exactly the same moment.
When we got to the middle, I began to run. The earth under my feet was sluggish and cold. Duffino came running after, barely a step behind, as if my very own shadow were following me. In a swoop, I felt both her exhaustion and mine. I could almost not tell the difference between them.
Duffino caught up, walked beside me closely. When we got to the top of the hill, she reached out her hand for just one moment, and touched my shoulder with her palm.
I jumped.
She tapped me again.
I stood still and let her tap me. I knew she was saying, "Thank you very much, Charlotte, for everything."
Chapter Ten
I returned from free hours flush that afternoon. I had a delicious secret. I had read Duffino's words out loud. I was breaking the silence, bringing her back to reality, bit by bit by bit.
As evening came and daylight fell, not one person even began to suspect that I had taken her cure into my own hands. The evening routine went on as usual.
Duffino would not look or speak to me for the rest of the evening. That was all right with me. After so much talking, I knew she was hiding. She needed to hide. Nothing wrong with hiding, I thought. She can only stay in her cave for so long, after tasting the fresh afternoon air.
As for me, I was tired of hiding. I was ready for more. I wanted to tell everybody we had a fine afternoon, Duffino and I. We took a big step. We were daring, courageous. We did not let ourselves be daunted by illness. What more could you really want from a day?
Later that night, though, I began to wonder. For a long time
she was restless, tossing in her bed. She couldn't sleep and
she wouldn't look at me further. When I looked over I saw her sheet pulled way up over the top of her head. She hadn't done that since she first arrived.
The lights in our room were still on. Miriam Stony, the head nurse, hadn't come in yet for the last evening inspection.
Two plastic cups of milk were still sitting untouched on the tables at the side of our beds. Neither of us had drunk the rotten stuff down.
"Duffino," I said, trying to soothe her, "maybe you should drink your milk?" They put something in the stuff that usually calmed us. "You have to. She'll be here in another minute."
She just mumbled under her covers. I thought I heard her say, to hell with Miriam Stony.
"You have to obey Miriam Stony," I said, "or they'll take your free hours away!"
A click sounded, the thick door opened and Duffino fell silent while Miriam Stony, in her blue cotton frock, a little tray in her hand, hair pulled tightly behind her head in a bun, came in.
"You haven't drunk your milk tonight, girls."
Straight as an arrow, I gulped mine down.
"Very good, Charlotte. Duffino, how about you?"
Duffino ducked down and hid deeper under her bed sheets. From down there all remained still.
"Duffino, do you hear me?"
"I'll give her the milk," I piped up quickly.
>
"I'm in charge here, Charlotte, and you know it." Miriam threw me a long look.
"Of course I know it."
Miriam put her wide hands on her hips. "Whose job is it to
get the milk into the patients if they won't do it themselves?"
"I get the message."
"No, you don't."
"I said, I get the message, Miriam."
She glared at me. "Miriam?"
Another act of defiance. Talking back to the stone lady. Calling her by her first name.
"Nurse Stony, don't I always obey you?"
Her thin mouth pursed tight. "Reluctantly."
Reluctantly. I turned the word over in my heart. How else was I supposed to do it? Was I to jump up, bow on the floor, and yell out, Miriam Stony, Miriam Stony, hail, to Miriam Stony!
"Reluctant obedience doesn't do the job." She stood stiff in her spot. "Half-hearted acceptance of the rules."
"Miriam Stony."
"Don't call me by two names."
"But you call me Charlotte Ananda."
"I never do that!"
"Charlotte Ananda." That sounded pretty.
"You have no last name. You belong to no one."
I took it. It was further than she usually went.
"You were found on the doorstep of St. Aloyisha's Parish. There was never a record of your mother or father. No one ever came to claim you."
I took another deep, cold breath into my lungs.
"Therefore you have no last name. The facts, Charlotte. Let's
keep to the facts. When we leave reality, we leave the facts. Our
job here is to make sure everyone accepts the facts, just as they are." Her face loosened up then, almost a smile.
Whose facts did she want me to accept, anyhow?
"I was placed there by The Holy Ghost," I countered.
"Keep talking like that and you'll stay here forever."
"Mother Mary had a hand in it."
"You're slipping, Charlotte."
"I'll slip." I hated myself when I gave in like that.
Caved in before old Miriam Stony. But I'd been here far too long
to let things get out of hand again. It would be six years tomorrow, my twenty-ninth birthday. I wasn't getting sent down to Insulin again. Not for anything. Not for anyone, either. I would lie through my teeth, if it made me seem sane.
"The rules are the rules," she repeated again, like a small- brained parrot.
"Right," I said.
"And that's all it takes. That's all. Accept the rules, and you get better. No more sickness. You might even get out of this place someday."
Despite myself I started laughing with my particularly nerve racking laugh. I knew it jarred the nurses.
"I have no sickness, Miriam Stony."
But she didn't even hear me. She was finished with me and
had turned to Duffino, the prize patient here.
"Pull down the sheets, Duffino."
Duffino didn't do it.
"Do you hear me?"
"Let me give her the milk," I interrupted. "She's not bothering anyone. What's the matter?"
Miriam looked at me strangely. "Duffino will drink her milk from me. And if I have to, I'll stay here and wait for her all night long."
On Duffino's bed, the bed sheets rustled ever so slightly. A little ripple.
"I know you hear me Duffino." Miriam's voice grew thin and
piercing. Usually by now our milk was drunk down.
From under the covers, like the branch of a willow, Duffino reached her long arm out, and with a sharp rip, knocked the milk over. Fast.
Miriam screamed and jumped out of the way. A little splash
of the rotten milk flew up on her uniform just before it hit the
ground.
I leapt out of my bed to wipe it up. But it was too late. Like a street cat ready for action, Miriam pressed the green button on the side of the wall.
"You'll pay for this, Duffino. And good." Her small eyes got tinier.
A bell rang out. You could hear it clanging along the corridors. The bell meant emergency. A voice over the loudspeaker repeated, "Emergency in Ward One-O-Two." That was our room. Orderlies were being summoned. I shut my eyes tight for a second and put both hands over my ears.
When I opened my eyes I noticed that under Duffino's bed sheets all had become tremendously still. Death-like.
"It's only a small glass of milk," I pleaded with Miriam. "It's the intention behind it," she breathed.
"What was the intention?" I tried to pigeon-hole her. To throw her off guard.
But she was excited now. Anyone could see it. "One act of violence draws another."
Wouldn't she love it, I thought. A real act of violence.
"There has been too much violence already." Miriam went on. She was so worked up she could hardly speak. Her words spilled out one after another. "All of you inmates, just give you a chance, you'll turn over the tables. Stab us to death. You're basically rotten."
"What did you say?" Now Miriam Stony was going too far. "Give you a chance and you'll rip up this whole place. Bite the hand that feeds you. And don't think we forget it either. Don't think we're not ready for action." Then she pressed her wide finger on the green button again.
Under the bed sheets Duffino began to sob, to ache and moan. You couldn't tell, though. No one saw it. No one heard it. The sheets were silent and immaculately still. But I heard her. I felt every last thing she was feeling as I watched the door open and two orderlies come in.
Miriam stood there and pointed. "Bed 18."
The orderlies walked to Duffino's bed, leaned down and pulled back the thin sheet that covered her.
"Ai!" I screeched out.
Duffino was silent.
They scooped her up in their arms. She lay there silent, unmoving, as they carried her lifeless body to the door.
"Don't take her," I lunged out after them wildly.
"Get out of the way, Charlotte." Miriam got between me and the orderlies.
"She didn't do anything. Nothing at all. I was here. I saw it."
"Get back down in bed."
"Take me instead."
By now the orderlies had taken Duffino through the heavy steel door.
"Where is she going? Down to Insulin?"
A little light shone in Miriam Stony's eyes. "She'll be back when she's ready. You go to sleep, Charlotte."
"How can I sleep now?"
Miriam smiled. "Do you need a pill, after all this commotion?"
"What's the commotion? One glass of milk?"
"It's the intention behind it. Don't be deceived by small matters. Look deeper. The intention is all."
"Oh yeah?" I couldn't let her go so easily. "Oh yeah? I heard what you said, Miriam, you said we're all basically rotten. Wait until I tell Dr. Farbin! I remember when you first came here, the doctors told you never to talk like that. I've been here longer than you, remember that!"
She shook her head back, smiled grimly, turned, shut the lights off, slammed the door hard and left me alone with the sorrow of us all.
How could I sleep? I tried to pray for help for us
loonies in the tiny light that came in through the window. "Someone, somewhere, hear me," I prayed hard, "Come make us safe and sound." I had forgotten the words of all other prayers. "Sweet Jesus," I tried again, "where are you? Have you
forgotten we're all lost on this terrible earth?"
* * * * *
The next morning Dr. Colin Ethan was not at all pleased to discover Duffino was not in the dayroom as usual. He was doubly disturbed to hear that she had been taken down to floor C.
"Floor C?" he asked, amazed. "Insulin? What exactly happened last night?"
He asked the day nurse, Lannie Tournie, who immediately drew a blank gaze. Why in the hell was he asking that idiot when I, her roommate, was sitting right here?
"Dr. Ethan," I got up from the sofa and tucked the book I
was reading, Death In Veni
ce, under my arm. Like them, I tried to look as professional as possible. I stood as tall as I was able and marched between Colin and Lannie.
He turned to me strangely, his left eye quivering. I could see he was terribly, terribly over wrought. "Yes?"
"I am Duffino's roommate."
"I realize that." He looked as if he were about to cry.
"Ask me about Duffino. Don't ask Lannie Tournbelt." I wanted to reach up and stroke his arm.
"I beg your pardon?"
"What's wrong with me?" I repeated.
Dr. Ethan looked startled. "Nothing."
"Why do you ask her?"
"Lannie's the day nurse. She has all the records."
"But I was there. I saw exactly what happened."
He could barely hear what I was saying though. He was listening to me through some kind of haze, and although he was looking at me, he seemed far away.
"You were there?" he said dimly.
He could not imagine any connection between me and Duffino.
Lannie Tournie said nothing at all. She stood there like wood, staring down at her pad.
"Read to me from your notes," Dr. Ethan murmured to Lannie. "Tell me why exactly she was sent down."
Lannie Tournie looked up from the pad and quickly stepped back between me and Colin Ethan.
"Insubordination," she read off the page, without emotion.
"What?"
"Duffino would not obey orders. She attacked Miriam Stony last night."
"Like hell," I murmured.
"Attacked Miriam Stony?" Dr. Ethan exclaimed. "I want all the details."
"Then why not ask me?"
"Be quiet, Charlotte," Dr. Ethan reprimanded.
Lannie looked at him for a long moment. "How come you want all the details?" His behavior was most unusual for a new resident.
"Because I desire them."
"This is not regular procedure."
"Nevertheless, I order it," Dr. Ethan replied firmly.
Lannie clicked her heel on the floor, turned sharply and left to go and get details as he walked back and forth, looking like a lost, forlorn child. Rather than go and see his other patients, he went to the big picture window and stood there looking out at the hills which were turning more rust golden every day. Some tiny sparrows came along and hopped up the neatly pebbled path.
A beautiful day, I wanted to say to him, even though he had tossed me away. I wanted to reach up and pat him on the back, comfort him, tell him that this kind of thing happened regularly, that I knew how he felt about it. He wasn't alone. But I could not utter a sound.
Confinement Page 9