After a while the sounds of the Sick Ward across the hall began to intrude. Coughing. The clanking of bedpans. A loud attendant giving someone the what for.
“We need to follow the protocol for a death,” Gladys said. “You haven’t done this yet. Would you like me to take care of Miriam, and I can teach you with the next… one?”
“No. Teach me.”
London needed to do something, and if it wasn’t some knobheaded protocol, it might be breaking a goddamn door from its hinge.
Gladys showed London how to fill out the yellow paper with the time when Miriam died and her number, and where they would file the paper when they were finished. They washed Miriam, and wrapped her in a clean sheet, and carried her down the hall to a locked door next to the locked door that led out of the Sick Ward. Gladys had a key. London had Miriam in her arms, her tiny body still soft and warm in the sheet. London did not think of her beautiful face, or the way she’d clicked her tongue whenever London had picked her up.
Gladys unlocked the door but didn’t open it. “This is a hard place.”
“Open it.”
Gladys sighed, but she let London enter.
It was another large room with windows lining the far wall, like the crib room, but instead of being filled with cribs, it was crowded with tables covered in strange objects. In the dark, it looked almost haunted, and when Gladys turned on the electric lights, London saw that it was. She held Miriam closer as they entered.
It was a lab, or an operating room. Maybe both. Gladys let London take in the room. The smell burned her nose and tasted almost sweet. The tables were loaded with wires, lights, tubing, and a jumble of scales and small machines. But it was the jars that caught London’s eye. Shelf after shelf of jars. With objects floating. And labeled with numbers like the ones they’d just written on Miriam’s yellow sheet.
“Yes,” Gladys said.
“Why?” London asked. “When they say we are incurable. Why would they cut us up? Are we that horrible that locking us away isn’t enough?”
“Maybe to find a way to prevent it,” Gladys said.
“We don’t need to be prevented.” She wanted to smash the jars. To pluck each one from the shelf and whip it at the floorboards with all her might.
Gladys stepped between the jars and London. “It’s time to say goodbye.”
“I said goodbye. She isn’t here anymore.”
But London didn’t believe it. Not really. She thought about running. Clutching Miriam in her arms and getting her the fuck out of there. But to where?
It was over. There was no place to run, and worse, no reason to. She allowed Gladys to take the dead child from her arms, the emptiness causing London to wobble. She reached out to steady herself, but then pulled her hand back from the table. She didn’t want to touch anything in this place.
Gladys took Miriam to a bank of steel iceboxes against the far wall of the room. After opening one and seeing it was full, she tried another. This one was empty.
As London watched Gladys slide Miriam into the chest, the girl in the iron lung sprang into her mind. It had been such a long time since London had thought of her. That machine, pushing the air in, pulling it back out. It had been months. Five months since the machine had taken over the girl’s breath. Was she still alive? London hoped she was. London had always hoped the girl would live. She hoped a lot of things, she realized, watching Gladys close the chest door.
“Icebox number twenty-six. We write that down next to the time of death.” And Gladys did. “Now we file the paper where I showed you, back in the crib room.”
London followed her out without looking back.
The claps sounded a half hour later as London sat by Rose’s side. The girl was sound asleep, looking smaller than she’d ever looked, her stick tucked against her chest.
The world is going to hell in a handbasket.
God, London missed the old lady. Of course she’d been right. She had always been right. The world was going to hell in a handbasket.
And London felt the pull of it.
Alice stuffed a third deviled egg into her mouth, the tangy cream of this one tasting just as delicious as the first. Deviled eggs. They had them once a year, on Easter. Alice loved deviled eggs. She swallowed the third, gulped down milk, and picked up her fourth. All while trying not to look at Maxine, who was staring down at her untouched breakfast.
“What’s the matter with her?” London asked, though she knew the answer, and also that Alice probably wouldn’t respond.
“What if I forget the song right in the middle of it?”
“The song only has one word,” London said.
“I’m playing it. Not singing it.”
“Well, we can all thank our lucky berries for that,” London said, “because I’d rather scratch my ass pimples than listen to you sing. But your piano-playing rates.”
Maxine smiled. “Thanks.”
Alice watched the girls as she ate another egg. Her stomach was beginning to hurt now, which meant she only had another egg or two left before she’d have to stop.
“I’m glad you’ll be with Rose,” Maxine said. “Can you really hear the service from the Sick Ward?”
“Gladys says we bundle everyone up, and then open all the windows. She says that the talking parts are hard to hear, but the music is like it’s playing right on a phonograph in the room with you. Especially the organ. She says you can hear the organ best of all.”
Again Maxine smiled. “It’s like she’ll be with me.”
“You should eat,” Alice said. Maxine had lost a lot of weight while Rose had been sick.
“You want my eggs?” Maxine asked.
“I’ll take ’em,” said London.
Maxine shoved them across the table toward London. Alice sighed.
Looking forward to Easter had kept Maxine going. Alice was dreading what came next. The beach. Always the beach. But the beach was a bunch of applesauce. It didn’t matter how much money they saved. Four of them running off? They’d be caught quicker than the pantry cats catch kits in short grass. Not that it mattered. Because they were going nowhere without Rose, and Alice knew that Rose was going nowhere. She could see it in London’s eyes. Rose was sicker than London was letting on.
Alice stuffed in her last egg. It was harder to swallow when she worried, yet she choked down the creamy yoke while she watched London eat Maxine’s.
Easter.
They had five more months until they graduated to the adult dormitory. Five more months to figure out what Alice hadn’t been able to figure out in almost five years. London would go. As soon as Rose was well. London would run. And she wouldn’t take the three of them with her.
She watched London beg an egg off Edwina, who waved her away. Just because the girl didn’t speak didn’t mean she didn’t eat. Edwina turned fifteen this spring. And following the May Day dance, to which all the fourteen-year-old girls were invited, she would move up. Neddie, twelve going on thirteen, had another two years. She’d be assigned another high-grade moron to watch over her. Neddie and Edwina had been together for three years. Alice noticed that Edwina passed her egg to Neddie under the table. Neddie giggled as she shoved it into her mouth.
London rolled her eyes. “Fuck you two,” she said, but it wasn’t said meanly. London was one of the only people Alice knew who could curse and make you feel warm inside.
She was changing, London. Accepting this place. Or maybe she was starting to like them all. Or at least she liked Manual Training. Monday couldn’t come fast enough for that girl. Taking care of Rose and the babies. Although, she rarely spoke about the babies. That was how much she liked them. At Fernald, you kept your trap shut about the things you cared most about. For some reason that Alice did not understand, once what you loved was let loose into the world, it was as if the machine that churned the institution day in and day out—the people, the files, the testing, the routines—conspired to take it away. You needed to hide the things you loved. Like Rose’
s stick in the heating grate. Loving was dangerous. It made you weak. It made Alice weak. It made Maxine weak. It was making London weak.
Four claps.
Maxine leaped from the table, knocking over her empty milk glass.
“Shit,” London grumbled. “It’s just a song.”
Maxine’s mouth twitched, but she didn’t respond. And she didn’t remind London not to cuss. Alice watched Maxine a little more closely then, and saw that it wasn’t the song. There was something else on Maxine’s mind, something else she was nervous about. And the five, or six, or maybe seven eggs Alice had eaten rolled in her stomach.
After lining up, they marched out of the dining hall and toward the chapel. The school was crawling with people. Like at Christmas, the community was invited to the chapel to join the institution’s Easter celebration. It was the last day of March, but winter clung. The grass was wet with slightly frozen dew, and the cold air blew from their mouths like smoke. As much as Alice hated the clapping, the circles, the excusing, the day-to-day never-changing routine of this place, there was also a comfort in it, a comfort she didn’t feel now, trudging through the slushy dew behind Maxine, wondering what it was that was going on. And why she hadn’t seen it before.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw London break off the line and head toward the North Building. Alice almost reached out… wanting to grab her back.
London.
Alice had come to depend on that girl, especially in moments like this, when Maxine was about to do something that could get her in trouble. Alice never wanted to tamp down Maxine’s happiness or excitement. There wasn’t enough of it, and when it cropped up, it was so golden, so bright, like an afternoon hour on the benches by the window with the winter sun shining down on your head. But whatever it was that Maxine was up to had to be stopped, and London never had any problems shutting down golden things. Although, all Alice could do was watch London’s long dark braid swing into the distance.
Alice stood up straighter, looking around for Ragno. The large white woman was huffing beside Frances, the girl’s arm clutched in the attendant’s grasp, Ragno dragging Frances along to keep pace with the group. Alice shivered. She knew how much Frances hated to be touched like that.
They were only a hundred feet from the entrance to the chapel. Alice leaned in. “You’ll do great today,” she whispered. If she got Maxine talking, maybe she could stop what was happening. Maybe even find out that nothing was happening.
But Maxine didn’t say a word. Instead she did something she never did, not unless they were lying on their cots in the dark. She swung her hand back toward Alice and grabbed the tips of Alice’s fingers, squeezing them.
Alice panicked.
“What are you doing? Maxxie? What’s going on? Tell me.”
Maxine wouldn’t turn around.
“Don’t do it,” Alice said. “Don’t. Whatever it is. Please.”
Alice immediately tried to suck her words back in. They were too loud, too filled with pain, with fear. Alice’s bad foot turned in, and she stumbled.
“You need to walk, girl,” Ragno snapped from behind her.
They were allowed to feel—the attendants, the nurses, the doctors. To snap in anger at you for not walking fast enough. To shiver with cold during circles, needing to take turns with other attendants while the girls walked on. To become emotionally attached… to their children, their husbands, their wives. All of it somehow marking them as normal. But for Alice to cry out in pain because of her aching foot, to reach out and touch Maxine’s warm hand, to scream in anger at not being able to stop this next horrible thing from happening—all of it marked her a degenerate.
Maxine now broke off the line, heading toward the back door to the chapel. Alice could see Miss Petruskavich give her a wave. She could see the bright smile on the music teacher’s face. Just like Alice couldn’t stop London from walking away, she couldn’t stop Maxine. Off Maxine went, and all Alice could do was keep walking while she stared after her.
Alice entered the chapel, filed into the pew, and took a seat between Helen and Mary.
“You smell like eggs,” Mary complained.
Alice ignored her. She was sure she did smell like eggs.
The service began with a hymn sung by the women’s choir. Alice didn’t bother looking for Maxine, who was tucked away wherever the organ was. The music stopped, and the minister climbed to the pulpit and spoke. Alice usually enjoyed the sound of his voice as he lectured, the deep tone of his rising and falling pleas to God creating a sort of calm that she looked forward to. But today his voice irritated her.
She felt a chill, and breaking her eyes away from the minister, found Ellen staring at her.
Alice was careful not to change her expression, not to twitch one single muscle as she once again focused on the minister. Ellen was always watching now. Alice knew she wasn’t Ellen’s ultimate target—that was London—but this didn’t mean Alice was safe, or Maxine. Because Alice and Maxine, they were London’s stick. And Ellen knew it.
The minister lectured on, talking about the rolling away of rocks and the rebirth and new life. Alice’s stomach began to cramp. Sweat gathered on her forehead. She wanted to hear those hallelujahs. Needed to hear them. Once they rang out, Alice somehow felt sure that whatever Maxine was planning to do, it would be over, and maybe Rose would get better, and maybe summer would come, and maybe it would all work out.
The sermon finally ended, and the men’s choir sang two hymns, long ones with so many verses that Alice couldn’t tell if this was still Easter Sunday, or possibly they’d been here an entire week already. Helen bumped her arm, looking sideways at her. Alice straightened up.
One of the men from the choir stood and sang alone as people passed golden plates back and forth through the pews to collect offerings. The girls in her row didn’t look up in anticipation because a plate would not pass their way. None of the plates were ever passed through the inmates.
Alice had never experienced time moving so slowly. The man sang on and on. The golden plates passed from left to right, and then right to left, the money piling higher and higher.
At last the song ended. The congregation stood. Alice stood with it. But her stomach seemed not to follow, at least not right away. She swayed, gripping the pew in front of her.
The organ struck a strident note, and now everyone sang, “Praise God from whom all blessings flow,” and the golden plates were carried in triumph up the center aisle to the lectern, spilling over with… clams!
Alice’s stomach flipped, taking all the eggs along for the ride. The whine that emerged could not have been louder. Helen tsk-ed her, and Mary moved away. There were a few giggles from the crowd. A second whine followed. Now Alice would have done anything for a little music, but the church was silent.
The third time her stomach called out, Ragno’s red face caught Alice’s eye. The attendant motioned angrily for the girl to leave the pew. Permission given, Alice stumbled over a hundred feet in her haste to leave the chapel. She had been periodically excused for so many years that she didn’t recognize at first just how close she was coming to releasing however many deviled eggs now furiously wanted the heck out of her stomach. People watched behind smiles of embarrassment. But her life had been full of watchers, and this sweaty moment of distress felt no different.
Making it out of the double doors of the chapel, she clomped down the steps to the Sunday school rooms, where she knew there were toilets. She prayed, for the very first time inside this building, that the doors would not be locked.
They weren’t.
Alice listened to the Hallelujah Chorus from her toilet seat. It was one of the strangest moments of her life. Listening to Maxine play and a church full of people singing, while taking a shit all by herself for the first time that she could remember.
“Maxine,” she whispered, “don’t steal it all, baby. Just don’t steal it all.”
London couldn’t believe it. Maxine had stolen thirty dollars
from the collection plate. That was a lot of kale! The molly didn’t just beat her gums. She followed through, even if her plan was still way off the tracks. Not only was it Monday, London’s favorite day of the week, but they now had stolen more money than London had ever seen at once. Although, she hadn’t quite seen it, since Alice had snatched it straight from Maxine and most likely already had it buried in their borax box.
Alice. That girl could be as jumpy as a damn street cat. She rated at both the mangles and with a needle, two skills that London saw could pull favors in this joint. The girl might have lived it rich in here if she hadn’t fallen in with the wrong crowd. The thought of Maxine and Rose being the wrong crowd made London laugh… which made Wally gurgle up at her.
“It slays you too, right?” she said to the baby in her arms.
“Put that child down and get to work.”
Gladys wasn’t serious, and London didn’t listen to her. At least not for another minute or two. But then London swaddled Wally and picked up Doris. Monday was always a busy day since the weekend attendants couldn’t be counted on to do much, and all the infants needed to be bathed, changed, and fed. London only had time to pop in to say good morning to Rose and make sure the girl was feeling better after yesterday.
Easter had been one gloomy flat tire in the Sick Ward. Maybe the doctors—sitting their healthy fat asses in their cushioned church pews next to their wives and children—had envisioned the degenerates of the Sick Ward bundled into clean white blankets and lined up smiling in front of the large opened windows of the North Building while they listened to the beautiful voices of the choir, accompanied by the thunderous organ ringing out across the great lawns of the institution. Though this was exactly how London had described it to Maxine and Alice the night before, the reality had been very different. The reality had been a room packed with a bunch of sad sick clunkers brought even lower by a holiday spent freezing in front of an open window with no family, no ham dinner, and no day of celebration.
The Degenerates Page 15