by Peter Wright
“I’m Ms. Williams.” She secures a sleeve around Kayla’s arm. The squeeze of a ball, and the sleeve tightens. “The girls call me Nurse Amy.” The pressure ebbs, and she removes the sleeve with a rip of Velcro. “Kayla’s a pretty name. Is that what they call you? Or Kay?”
“Kayla.” She blinks. “Kay, too. Both.”
The nurse sits on a wheeled stool, and Kayla thinks of her skates across the basement floor. Paperwork on the nurse’s clipboard. More questions. Did she have asthma? Epilepsy? Did she take medications? Had she had surgery? Kayla shakes her head. No, no, no.
The nurse slips on a small headlamp. A shine in Kayla’s eyes. “Looks like I’m going exploring, doesn’t it?” She picks up a comb. “Can you bend your head a bit?”
Kayla tucks her chin to her chest. The nurse forges parts, her touch gentle on Kayla’s scalp. “You have beautiful hair. How long since it’s been cut?”
Kayla hidden, shadows, her curtain of hair. “A while.”
The nurse moves to the Kayla’s other side. “You’ll find almost all the girls have situations similar to yours. They’ve lost their parents. Or they have ones that can’t take care of—”
Kayla’s gaze on her dangling feet. “They have my mother. Somewhere. Maybe at the stadium.”
She trembles with the mention of her mother’s name. The tightening of springs, spasms in her bowels. The tremors radiate beneath her skin. The nurse removes her headlamp. “You cold?”
Kayla lies. “Yes.”
The nurse retrieves a blanket from one of the cabinets and drapes it over Kayla’s shoulders. Kayla pulls the blanket’s edges tight.
“There are places we can contact,” the nurse says. “People we can write. I’ve helped some girls get in touch with their people.”
“Can we do that?”
“I’ve reached out more times than I’ve gotten answers, but we can try.”
“When?”
“Let’s give you a few days to settle in. Then we’ll talk. Promise.” Her fingers wriggle into an examination glove, the elastic secured with a snap. “I need you to take off your underwear.”
Kayla stares.
“It’s OK, honey. I’ll be quick. When was your last period?”
Kayla tries to think, but she’s can’t untangle the hours and nights of her recent days. “A week. Maybe two.”
“Are you sexually active?” She pulls on the other glove.
“No.”
“Good.” The nurse turns her headlamp back on. From her tray, she picks up a speculum, and the light shimmers on its chrome bills. “Ready?”
The nurse’s eyes patient. Kayla tries to let go of the blanket, but she can’t. Her fingers rusted, her spine swaying in time with the room’s hidden rhythms. The pulse of electricity. The flow of water. The greater tide of this place’s traffic of police and guards and lost girls. Its eye-of-God video streams, and with this perspective, Kayla understands her body, which just the day before she viewed as a machine, is only the latest sacrifice to a greater machine. A machine, she feels it now, the crush of gears and cogs and fates. She hears its heartbeat from behind the walls, sees its redlining circuits and pistons just beneath the nurse’s kind face. The machine opens wide, its only desire to consume her.
Her fingers clumsy, a rip of cotton. Her panties balled in her hands, and she thinks of Missy, both of them sisters, fodder to a vast evil. She surrenders and the rocking eases. She obeys the machine’s demands. The panties slip from her hand, and with the kiss of cotton and tile, she pulls away from herself. She climbs onto the exam table, the stirrups cool against her heels. The headlamp’s light catches beneath her gown. She pulls back her vagina’s folds. Her focus on the ceiling. The machine can have her meat and bones. Her skin and face and hair. She’ll keep the rest, a claiming of memory and identity. She grits her teeth against the metal’s chill and vows to mine a space deeper than the machine’s reach, and when she finds it, she’ll bolt the door tight behind her.
“Done.” The nurse peels off her gloves. “I’m guessing you wear an eight-and-a-half or nine shoe?”
“Nine.”
The nurse leaves. Kayla’s knees together, her arms folded across her chest. The machine presses down, and Kayla locks her door. Force against force, a problem out of her physics text. A formula with many variables and dwindling constants. The nurse returns. A pile of folded clothes, and on top, a pair of plain, white sneakers. She hands Kayla socks and panties and a bra. “We don’t win any fashion awards around here.”
Kayla dresses. Gray sweatpants. A long-sleeved white T-shirt. Before she can don the final garment, a maroon scrub top, the nurse lays a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll need to take that, honey.”
Kayla’s palm covers the thin cross. She’d forgotten about the necklace. Its butterfly weight, a chain as thin as pencil lead. The nurse extends a hand. “I’ll keep it safe for you.”
A whisper: “It’s my mom’s.”
“Promise I won’t let anything happen to it. There’s no jewelry inside. It only brings—”
Kayla’s hand over the cross. A welding of flesh to flesh, bone to bone. The cross’s imprint upon her palm. “It’s my mom’s.”
The machine churns. Its weight, its force, and in her ears, the return of rushing water. The room awash, blurred boundaries, auras of bad electricity. The nurse’s words lost beneath the thrash of Kayla’s heart. She can’t move her hand from her throat. Can’t solve the equation that will yield the words to make this all right. Her bones no better than twigs. Her skeleton poised to snap into a hundred pieces.
The nurse slips the maroon scrub top over Kayla’s head and guides her limp arms into the short sleeves. Kayla her puppet. “Tell you what. It’s late, and I’m guessing you don’t want to go through the thousand-question thing with the other girls. I’ll fix you up on the break-room couch. And I’ll let you keep the necklace for tonight. But I’m taking it tomorrow morning, understand?”
Kayla nods. The nurse’s guiding arm around her shoulder. The hallway floors recently washed, a squeak beneath her sneakers. The center’s taped line. The room of video monitors, and the guard looks up from his magazine. Another door, another room. A soda machine’s lit panel. A small countertop, a sink and microwave. The char of burnt coffee. A bulletin board posted with shift schedules and clipped cartoons. Beneath the bulletin board, a sofa.
“I’ll be right back,” the nurse says.
Kayla sits. Crumbs on the sofa’s cushions. A soda can on one of the tables. A pencil on the other. A small refrigerator beneath the counter. A hand-printed sign above the microwave. Your mother doesn’t work here. Clean your mess. Kayla rocks, her body struggling to divine a strain of harmony beneath this upheaval. A narrative she can understand. Her motions a wave on a graph that stretches over the city’s roofs and into the night.
The nurse returns with sheets and blankets and a pillow. “Still cold?”
Kayla nods.
They make up the couch. A brushing of crumbs. A threadbare sheet over the cushions. A pair of thin blankets, the scent of industrial detergent. Kayla hugs herself, rubs her arms, conscious motions, a disguising of her sway’s haywire current. Her body a betrayer. The nurse hands her a water glass and a pill. The glass trembles, a spill of drops. The pill small and oblong and peach-colored.
The nurse steadies Kayla’s hand. “Lots of girls take one their first night.”
Kayla places the pill on her tongue. A moment of bitterness and a washing down. She slides off her sneakers. This time last night she lay on Helen’s couch. She said a goodbye and walked though her sleeping neighborhood. The shelter of a bush she once played beneath. A morning’s mist and afternoon’s rain. A nap in a garage and a dinner with a family that had called her “daughter number two.” A ride in a police car and the fear of sinking beneath the river. The city’s burned-out buildings. A man with a gun, his stare and the things he’d do given the chance. A dozen backdrops, a landscape strung together with the logic of dreams. Then a
waking in this windowless room. The nurse pulls her chair close as Kayla rests her head upon the pillow.
“The first few days can be rough here.”
Kayla pulls the blanket under her chin. The nurse tucks Kayla’s hair behind her ear. “You’ll have to make your way. If you need to, you can ask to come see me.”
Kayla says nothing.
The nurse stands. “I’m on through tomorrow night, so I’ll see you in the morning.” She pauses in the doorway. “Try to get some rest, OK?”
“Nurse Amy?”
She flips the switch, her body a shadow against the outer light. “Yes?”
“Can I start that letter tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow’s going to be busy. Believe me. But we’ll do it soon. I promise.”
The door closes. The soda machine panel shines, a candied light. Kayla lies awake, ten minutes, a half hour. Her rocking eases. A drip from the faucet. A red light blinks on the ceiling’s smoke detector. The twitchings of the machine that holds her in its belly. A thin bar of light beneath the door, and she thinks of her father, a tennis ball and flashlight. She closes her eyes and feels the tug of stillness. She thinks of the pill and wishes she could have taken two. Her heartbeat softer with each minute. The machine’s purr brushes her skin, but she holds tight to the things that are still her own—her pulse and breath and will.
Have a plan, but certainty and familiarity have abandoned her, and all she can do is struggle to keep her head above the tide. To keep her mouth shut and her eyes and ears open. To think beyond the moment and the moment beyond that. To have hope even after all her other hopes have turned to ash. She closes her eyes. Hope. She needs hope. She touches her necklace. Nurse Amy. A letter. A mask she’ll wear and the workings of her mind. She has these . . .
She wakes, brushing her cheek. A touch or a dream, she can’t be sure. A man’s silhouette eclipses the soda machine’s red light. The man backs up, a collision with a chair. Kayla unsure if she’s seeing his front or back. She opens her mouth, but can’t summon the coordination to speak. The door opens, a flood of light, then darkness when it shuts. She closes her eyes and sinks back into the sea.
Kayla considers the break room’s textured ceiling tiles. She thinks about a world awash in currents seen and not and all the forces that have landed her on this strange shore. Her mother waits on another shore, one perhaps only miles away, but the distance between them stretches as wide as any ocean. She’ll find her. She’ll find her or she’ll survive until she’s found. But first, Kayla needs to navigate this new reality. She lies still, picturing the building from outside and meshing what she saw last night. 8:35 on the microwave’s clock, and she sifts through the machine’s morning rhythms. The footsteps overhead. The running water and flushed toilets. She pictures the second-floor windows and the shadows who witnessed her arrival.
She stands, stretches, the kinks worked from her spine, and as she shuffles to the sink, she considers the places she’s woken these past days—a car, beneath a dewy bush, this couch. She turns the faucet’s handle and cups her hands beneath the flow. A sip for her dry mouth. A cleansing for her face. She dries off, remembering her necklace as she presses the paper towel against her neck.
She drops the bunched towels into the sink. A quick working of the necklace’s clasp. Her fumbling reflection in the microwave door’s dark glass. The chain slides from her neck, and she hides it in one of the scrub top’s wide front pockets. The doorknob turns, Nurse Amy’s voice: “Kayla?”
Kayla steps back. She tucks her hair behind her ear. Fiddles with the cuff of her long-sleeved T-shirt. The nurse smiles. A tray balanced on one hand, a plate, toast and sausage. In the other, a small pail, and in it, a washcloth and soap, a boxed toothbrush. She elbows the light switch. A spit of fluorescent, and Kayla squints.
They sit at one of the round tables. Nurse Amy fills a glass at the sink and apologizes for the cold food, the plate wrangled as the cafeteria workers broke down the breakfast line. “It’s fine,” Kayla says. Tiny forkfuls and a gag with each swallow. The revulsion of the machine’s sustenance. A bite of toast, a sprinkle of dry crumbs. She wipes her mouth but quickly returns her hands to the table. The fear of drawing attention. The necklace she can’t surrender. Her body a shell offered to the world. The real her waiting beneath, a collection of secrets. Her thoughts turning. Her eyes opened wide.
“I let you sleep in,” the nurse says. “The other girls are done with breakfast and morning large-group. We’ll take you upstairs after you eat. You’ll have morning class then work duty. After lunch there’s afternoon class and another work duty, but that’s not all the time. Then exercise. Sometimes that’s outside, sometimes in. There’s chores and free time before dinner. Then evening activities. Craft classes or games. Just reading if you’d like. There’s a movie once a week. At 8:30, it’s back into your pod and lights out by 9:30. Starts all over again at 7:00 the next morning. 8:00 on weekends.”
Kayla imagines the hours on a timeline. The horizontal slots claimed by numbers and empty spaces. All of it waiting to be made real by her witnessing.
The nurse leans forward, her elbows on her knees. She pinches the scrub’s sleeve. Kayla’s chewing stops. “You’re a red,” the nurse says. “You’re in the east wing. The whites are in the west. You’ve seen the lines in the hallway?”
Kayla nods.
Nurse Amy’s smile weak. “Reds stay on the left. Whites on the right. Same thing in the auditorium and gym.”
Kayla sips her water “What’s the difference?”
“It’s just how things are. The folks who run things don’t say it out loud, but it’s understood the whites have it better. You’re going to have to accept that.” Nurse Amy sits back. “It depends where you came from. Your circumstances. The reds have situations like yours. Their parents with The Movement. In holding or . . .” She trails off. “And some of the reds are just girls in trouble, you know? The whites come from families where the parents were lost on the other side of things. They were police or military or with the government. Some were shipped from Philly after the bomb.”
A short circuit—a jump cut. Her father swaying. The faces below, glistening with sweat, shouting, smiling. She sets her fork on the plate. “Is it OK if I don’t eat anymore?”
“Sure.” The nurse slides the bucket across the table. “Why don’t you get yourself ready at the sink?” She speaks as Kayla brushes her teeth. “Have you ever switched schools?”
Kayla shakes her head. She spits into the sink and dries her mouth with a paper towel.
“But you’ve been at school when a new girl came, right?”
“Yes.”
“It’s not easy being the new kid. Knowing where to fit in when so much is already established. And it’s going to be even harder here because there’s no home you can return to at the day’s end. You can’t just shut your door and escape it all.”
“What about you?” A pause. “Can I come to you?”
The nurse nods. “Last resort. But it’s better if you handle things. Or handle them as much as you can.”
A soft knock and the door opens. The girl who enters is a good head shorter than Kayla. A wiry frame lost beneath a maroon top. Thin nose and thin lips and wide, brown eyes. Pale but not sickly. Auburn hair, long and straight. A veined forearm and on her wrist, an India-ink tattoo. A spread-winged bird. She reminds Kayla of the cross-country girls who ran laps around the playing fields, a pace Kayla could hold for a half mile at best. Then she could see this girl leaving her, fading. Her stride as steady as a clock and not a glance back.
“Kayla,” the nurse says, “this is Heather. She’s going to show you around the first few days.”
The nurse recounts Heather’s duties. They’ve obviously done this before, Kayla the latest link in a sad chain. Heather silent, nodding. A matter-of-fact intentness. A memory for Kayla—the Chinese restaurant her mother loved, the waiters who never wrote their orders.
“You’re in Mr. James’s class now
?”
“Yes.” The girl’s voice barely a scratch against the machine’s hum.
“Then that’s where we’ll go.” The nurse picks up the pail and toothbrush. “We all know how much Mr. James appreciates an interruption.”
“He does.” A lift at the corner of the girl’s mouth.
Kayla follows Heather and the nurse. The entrance hallway brighter, the angling of morning light. The machine’s drone rises to Kayla—voices, footsteps, a cart’s rolling wheels. A radio song from the room of surveillance monitors. The screens flicker with activity, unaware passings, the guard’s seat empty, and she thinks of the man in the break room and waking to a stroke of her cheek, and she wonders if she simply dreamed it all. She anchors her hand in the scrub’s pocket. The entrance hallway short, then a right at the longer corridor that connects the two main wings. Heather and Nurse Amy on the left of the hallway’s center stripe. Kayla too, only her steps stray closer to the boundary. The tape dirty, scuffed in spots. Every so often, a missed seam, a sloppy angle addressed with a newer patch.
The stairwell wide. Concrete risers. A mid-floor landing, and Kayla glances up. Two girls in white on the stairwell’s other side. The one in front Kayla’s size. Blond, pretty. A polite greeting for the nurse but her gaze on Kayla. Heather by her side, a whisper over Kayla’s shoulder, “Don’t let her stare you down.” A taller girl behind the blond, a redhead with thick shoulders and a strain of freckles across a broad nose.
“Look right through her or don’t look at all,” Heather whispers.
Kayla and Heather on the landing, the other girls halfway down the flight. Nurse Amy takes two quick steps toward the girls in white. “What’re you doing out of class?”
The blond’s smile a veneer of politeness. “Mr. Thomas sent us to the café to get some paper towels.”