But the guards came for her.
London struggled to her feet. Her stomach cramping in pain. Her head begging to stay stuck to the pissy mattress. Those pricks. They’d done her over badly. There wasn’t any place that wasn’t sore and bruised.
The women walked in a line just as they had before. They sat on the bench. London kept her head down because she actually couldn’t pick it up. Or focus her eyes. The shit buckets of the Back Ward weren’t something anyone wanted to focus on anyway.
London accepted her bucket, slipped to her knees, and began to shuffle about picking up shit, wiping up piss, passing the feet of women strewn about on the benches or wafting past her like ghosts. She was thankful to be on her knees instead of struggling to stand upright with a hose in hand inside the showers. It was a thoughtless job, and London didn’t think. Couldn’t think. Not past trying to keep moving.
How long she’d been working or hovering above the filthy floorboards when she felt the bleeding, she didn’t know. It began as a terrible pulling from deep inside her. Like her stomach had turned to poison and her body was attempting to shove it out of her. She leaned on her bucket and breathed through the pain as it moved from her stomach up into her chest and head like a screaming February wind. Then came the warm wetness between her legs. Scratchy. How could blood be scratchy?
Maxine was beside her then. Pulling her to her feet.
Standing released the blood, and it ran down her legs. There was an attendant, and Maxine. And now a toilet room, with a row of sinks and toilets just like in their dormitory. London, in all her pain, couldn’t help wondering why the women of the Back Ward couldn’t just shit in here.
They hiked up her dress. Placed her on a toilet, where London slumped over her knees. She heard the door lock and wondered if she was alone.
“It’s okay.”
Maxine.
London could hear herself moaning. The cramping was god-awful, like her menses had come and was seriously huffed. The pain bubbled, hotter and hotter, and London reached for Maxine in an effort to stop it.
Maxine understood, and she held on to London as wave after horrible wave ripped through her body… until finally—she noticed it first in the coolness of her forehead, and then immediately in the bottom of her stomach—London felt it ending. Felt it leave her. Not as one thing but as many, hot, wet, painful things. Maxine held on to her, and London held back. Held her so tightly, in fact, that Maxine’s shoulders had trouble heaving as she cried. London wanted to cry too. She wanted to cry more than anything else she’d ever wanted in her entire life, which seriously had never been much. Instead she clung to Maxine until the girl’s weeping shuddered to a stop.
Maxine leaned back, her watery eyes looking deeply into London’s. London held her gaze. The girl kneeling before her was thin and pale, her eyes sunk deeply into her face. How long had she been in the cages? How long had it been since that other terrible moment—when Rose had sobbed and Maxine, screeching, had been bound up and dragged away?
“It was my fault,” London whispered. “Not Alice’s. Mine.”
Maxine shook her head. “Not now.”
“But, Maxine—”
Maxine cut her off by sliding from her knees into a sitting position on the tiled floor, letting her head hang slack on her neck, and her hair fall across her face. She looked even thinner in this small human heap. But worse than this, she looked empty.
“Maxine,” London repeated, a feeling of desperation crawling up her throat.
The girl didn’t move.
London knew this world was crap. Just as the old woman always said. But, God, did it always have to be? Couldn’t some little piece of it not be?
“I know you love her. Please, Maxine.” London hardly recognized her own voice bleating like a goat in her ears. “Don’t stop loving her.”
Now Maxine straightened, her eyes lit with anger. “Why did everyone know about the money and the dress but me? Why?”
Anger was good. Anger wasn’t empty.
“Just knowing things means shit, Maxine. Absolute shit. But knowing the right thing to do, here, in a place like this… that’s something none of us knows.” The truth of her own words stunned her. Had she ever in her whole goddamn life known the right thing to do?
But she could still see the pain in Maxine’s eyes.
“Alice didn’t know what to do, Maxine. She just didn’t know what to do.”
“I know,” Maxine conceded, covering her face with both her hands and taking in a big breath. “I know.” She dropped her hands then and looked directly at London. “But now we need to do something.” She climbed back to her knees and began gathering toilet paper. “There isn’t much time.”
She handed the paper to London, and London placed it between her legs with pressure, letting the blood soak into the paper. Maxine went for more, wet some at the sinks to clean the blood from London’s legs, removed London’s blood-soaked underwear. When it was time for London to stand, she found she couldn’t, and Maxine took her arm and lifted her from the toilet.
“Don’t turn around,” Maxine told her. And London didn’t.
“Okay. Now,” she whispered.
London turned.
Maxine held a tiny red bundle wrapped in London’s underwear. A baby. Her baby. She had spent so much time trying not to think about it, and now, being separated from it, she regretted how she’d wasted that time. Regretted it terribly.
Maxine’s eyes searched the room. “Listen, we’ve got to hide it. We’ll come back for it later.”
“We’ll never be back here,” London said. “You know that.”
Maxine frowned, ignoring her.
A key clicked in the lock, and Maxine and London turned toward it.
The door opened. An attendant stood in the doorframe holding a towel, with a menstrual rag and clean underwear sitting on top of it. She stared at the two girls standing shoulder to shoulder in the toilet room, and took in what Maxine held in her hands.
Stepping inside, she placed the rag and the underwear on the sink, and then ripped the towel in two. “Give it to me,” she said.
Neither girl moved.
“It will be buried. As proper as I can do it on my own.”
Again the girls didn’t move.
“Listen,” the attendant said, looking behind her to be sure they were alone. “There’s two other ways this can go. Both of them bad. I’ll do as I said. I’ll lay the little thing to rest, best I can.”
Maxine turned to London.
London nodded, and so Maxine placed the bundle on the towel.
“Where?” London asked.
“On the grounds,” the attendant said, immediately understanding what London needed to hear. “But I won’t tell you exactly where. I can’t have you trying to visit it. They’d let me go for sure, and I need this job.” She gently folded the baby into the towel.
It was then that London felt as if she’d just put down something very heavy. Her eyesight darkened, and her legs shook.
The attendant closely considered London for the first time since she’d entered the room. “You okay?” she asked.
“I’m fine,” London answered.
It was a lie. And it made London feel so good to tell it. More like herself. Until her knees buckled.
Alice was alone for five nights. The longest nights she’d ever spent since her very first night in the dormitory, when every cough or sigh had sent her heart racing. If she had been anyone else on that first long, lonely night, she might have wished herself home, or off in some magical place. But Alice wasn’t anyone else, and she lay, heart racing, wishing for nothing.
On this fifth night alone as she stared up into the blackness hovering over her cot, she realized that she had been wishing for something that first night. It was the same something she wished for now: to disappear.
Wishing Maxine back, on the cot next to her, was something she didn’t do. Especially now, with Rose in the Sick Ward. She couldn’t live without Max
ine, and Maxine couldn’t live without Rose. So Alice found herself once again lying in the dark and asking it to swallow her.
The dark did not comply, and exactly ten minutes before the whistle blew, Alice opened her eyes, as she always did.
Sitting in periodic excusing, she again counted the things she’d done wrong. Letting Rose collect her stolen items. Not telling Maxine. Forcing Rose into her shell. Why did she see it all so clearly now when she couldn’t before? Because she was just what they always said she was, a moron. A moron who was slowly becoming an imbecile… who would soon be an idiot.
Four claps.
Keep going.
Alice kept going. Like the sun moved across the sky, she moved through each day, walking, blinking, breathing, but not living. Keeping going didn’t include living.
During morning circles, Mary came up on her. Walked next to her. They almost never interacted, she and Mary. Both of them understood that one black girl was hard enough for this world to deal with. Two together was too much. But Mary did it. Without a word. Reminding Alice that she wasn’t alone. Reminding Alice to keep walking.
During sewing, Helen plucked the trousers from Alice’s lap to finish the hem when they’d lain there too long. Another time, a frayed collar. Keep sewing.
Frances placed her apple on Alice’s lunch tray. Keep eating.
Dottie hummed next to her as they worked the mangle during Manual Training. Keep working.
And Edwina sat her quiet self closely next to Alice on the benches that evening. Keep breathing.
All of it. All of them. Kept Alice going.
* * *
Sitting by her window, Alice simmered in worry. Seven days and nights in the cages. When would this end? What would Maxine be like after so much time in the Back Ward? Would there be an eighth night? And Rose. Fevers could worsen. Could Maxine be in the Sick Ward now too? The idea of Alice’s old worry, the one where they all grew up and were separated, seemed like something out of the wonderful dream in which Maxine sang. Alice would take that worry in a heartbeat. But unlike the circular paths, life kept moving in a forward motion. There was no going back.
“Maxine!” Neddie cried.
Ragno clapped her hands three times mightily at the outburst, but Alice’s heart had already started beating wildly.
She hadn’t been looking. Didn’t look up now. Couldn’t.
She felt Edwina move away. Felt the cold absence. Felt Maxine sit. Felt Maxine’s thigh press lightly, so very lightly, against her own, and she knew. It was over, Maxine’s anger. It was over. Maxine had returned. And she didn’t hate Alice. Never had hated her. But the relief was short. Because of Rose.
Alice could feel Maxine searching for her.
The room was quiet. So quiet that Alice could hear herself blink. Everyone was watching, though all eyes faced the wall across from the benches on which the girls sat, as per the rules. But eyes didn’t have to be trained on a thing to see. Eyes were able to take in from their sides, from their tops, from their bottoms. So many eyes… all of them curious but not all of them kind. Alice didn’t move.
But she felt.
Alice felt the day her brother dropped her off. She felt that first dark night on the cot. She felt, always. The soft nut inside her pulsed against her hard shell. It threatened to break open those seams. Expose her. She blinked. And blinked. Her mouth filled with water. She blinked again.
She had to tell Maxine. A small trickle of sweat ran down her back. Alice straightened against the bench. The movement was too much, and she cleared her throat.
The eyes snapped over, not being able to control themselves against this new sound. Alice felt a small crack in the back of her head. And then another two cracks. Ragno. Clapping. Four claps this time. Saving her.
Everyone stood. Everyone lined up. Everyone walked to the toilets. Alice was part of everyone. Walking. Keeping going. She leaned in before she could stop herself.
“In the Sick Ward. With a fever.”
Maxine’s shoulders stiffened. But she kept walking. Kept going. Alice followed. Into the toilets, where the lock turned in the door and the girls were alone.
Maxine turned to Alice. “What happened?”
“Walking the circles. It was cold, and raining. Five days ago. They took her.”
Maxine moaned, and dropped onto a toilet, her head in her hands. “Five days. Alone. She won’t get well. She will look for me and look for me. And I’m not there. I can’t be there.” She hopped from the toilet, the idea of Rose alone in the Sick Ward too much to bear in a sitting position.
“Rose can’t be alone.” Maxine’s voice was high-pitched, and Alice saw that it wasn’t only Rose who feared being without her sister. Alice longed to comfort Maxine, to tell her she wasn’t alone, that Alice would always be here for her. She would have said so many things, but words were never something she had many of. And touching—Alice could feel Ellen watching.
But then Maxine’s face twisted into a strange look of joy. “London,” she choked. “London is there. In the Sick Ward. With Rose.”
“London?”
“She didn’t make it. They got her. She, she”—here Maxine stopped, became careful—“was beat up badly. She collapsed. She’s with Rose.”
Alice couldn’t believe they’d caught London. She’d felt sure London had made it. The strangest thought occurred to her then, that London had returned because Rose was sick. But Alice knew this was complete applesauce. London could not have known. Alice just didn’t want to be what this place said she was… what this place said they all were. She wanted London to prove them wrong. Because she knew she herself never would.
“She’ll be okay. Rose will be okay. Right, Alice? Right?”
Maxine said this while she searched Alice’s face, and Alice knew that her next words needed to be chosen very carefully, lest she lie to Maxine. She couldn’t lie to Maxine. Not now. Not about Rose.
“London won’t let anyone hurt her.”
Maxine smiled. Alice had never seen anything more beautiful.
* * *
That night, Alice was not alone. She lay watching Maxine on the cot next to her, sleeping the sleep of the exhausted, from a week in the cages, a week of hard labor and of harder circumstances. Maxine was wrapped up in her blanket, with Rose’s stick clutched to her breast. And when Alice opened her eyes ten minutes before the whistle, she made her first hopeful wish.
That this would be the day Rose and London came home.
London drifted in and out of sleep. When she drifted out, and the lights and sounds of the real world began to make themselves known, she’d quickly drift back in.
In was nice. In was free. From an old woman. From a milquetoast boy. From a tiny bloody bundle.
Eventually the real world held on to her longer and longer—with its obnoxious bright lights, and its cold piss, and its shouts and sobs and suffering. London understood where she was. The Sick Ward. She also understood the danger she was in. Her father had gone to the hospital and never returned.
Lying still and quiet and needing nothing, a kind of torpor came over her. She imagined that the world felt it too, and would leave her on this corner cot to waste away at her own pace. Most all of her was fine with this, just not her goddamn stomach. When an attendant came rolling a cart of oatmeal near her, London reached for it, and thus began her reluctant recovery.
On the first day she could fully remember, she ate breakfast, took note of the large room full of bodies in beds, and knowingly pissed her sheets, whereas previously she’d done it unawares. By the second day, the sheer misery of lying in her own blood and piss forced her onto the chamber pot, which in turn led to eating all three meals as they were offered. She was still bleeding, and her stomach cramping, although not as badly as it had in the toilets of the Back Ward. Those toilets. Her mind would often flit there—to the gray tile, and the attendant with her towel—but it refused to ever land.
By the third day, she was sick to death of lying in her ow
n mess. Throwing off her putrid blanket, she went in search of fresh nightclothes and a menstrual rag… and found Rose.
“Rose!”
The girl didn’t stir, and London touched her face, then jerked back her hand. Rose was hotter than a coal fire.
“Rose?” London whispered.
London looked around for a nurse, knowing it was useless, then turned to the sick lying nearby, as if any of them might know something, anything, about her friend. Hopeless, London turned back to the only one who could help her understand what was happening.
“Rose,” she begged. “Rose, can you hear me? It’s London. I’m here. Right here.” She picked up Rose’s hot hand and held it.
An attendant swung by. “I wouldn’t touch her if I were you. She’s burning with fever.”
“Do I look like you?” London snapped.
Too busy, the woman didn’t even stop to reprimand her.
“London?”
“Rose,” London gasped, turning back to the cot. “Rose, yes. It’s me. I’m here.”
Rose smiled but seemed too weak to open her eyes. “I knew you’d come visit me.”
“Visit?”
“We made a good plan, right? Christmas.”
Shit. Rose didn’t understand that London was back inside.
“London?”
“I’m here.”
“Do you have water to share?”
“I’ll get you water. I’ll be right back.”
She let go of Rose’s hand and wandered toward a set of open double doors, passing cot after cot, each containing a small mound of humanity twisted up in dirty blankets and smelling like browning broccoli.
Rose was sick because of what had happened. Sick over Maxine thrown to the ground, trussed like a pig in that straitjacket. Sick because she’d tried to help London.
Passing through the double doors, London entered an entirely new room, this one filled with more cots, more sick people. She hurried through this second room toward two large sideboards piled with clean laundry, but no water, and no one to ask about it.
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