Future Home of the Living God(45)
She makes a pleasant humming sound of assent.
“But I feel comforted to renew the acquaintance now,” I say, and nod at her. We smile a bit idiotically at each other until we hear a nurse approaching. We quickly hide our handiwork. My roommate pretends to sleep and I paste a dreamy drug-addled smile on my face. The nurse who is working with former Dweeb nurse, now Jessie, brings us a couple of peanut butter sandwiches for lunch, with a side of army-green boiled peas. My roommate pretends to wake up. She nods and twinkles her eyes at the nurse, who says to me, “Isn’t she adorable?”
“Of course,” I say.
“Has she said a word?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, I’ll leave you two to enjoy your lunch.”
“Thanks. This looks sooooo good!”
“Bye-bye,” she says to my roommate. “You little China doll.”
As the nurse turns away my roommate watches her, unblinking, from under her eyebrows. She tips her head to the side, smiles. Deadly.
“Wow, I hope you never look at me that way,” I say, impressed.
She opens her mouth, as if she might speak. But shakes her head and goes all demure again.
“Oh all right! You’re so fucking mysterious! What the hell? Why don’t you say something?”
Her hands come out. She begins making signs. I took American Sign in high school, at Southwest. So I just laugh.
“You fake,” I say, furious. “I don’t know what the fuck your game is.”
But she won’t say a word, so I eat my lunch. I really am grateful for the peanut butter sandwich. It’s less disgusting than most of our lunches, although the bread is stale and dry. I choke down the spoiled peas for your sake. There’s a glass of powdered milk. I stir the lumps out with a fork and drink it in a gulp. Then the two of us go back to work. Now, just to bug her, I keep talking to my roommate about various pre-Columbian civilizations, touch on crackpot theories, mull over the Kennewick Man, mention skull size and race and anthropology. She nods and hums and keeps winding her ball of yarn. We’ve now taken apart four blankets and have a substantial number of rolled balls hidden in the bottoms of our beds and the ledges underneath and beside the heating duct covers, which I’ve unscrewed and pried away from the walls. Most important, I still keep this notebook, your letter, securely hidden. I don’t know what I would do if I couldn’t write to you. I don’t think I could stay mentally alive. This is my only drug. The books in my bag were confiscated, and my envelope with the pages of Zeal’s next issue. They have not been given back although I’ve asked for them every day. When I can’t write, or wind yarn any longer, I say the rosary. At least I’ve got that. It’s soothing, the mindless repetition, the smooth beads, the Mother of Infinite Mercy whose cool hands and blue robe I imagine while I am saying the prayers. Only I have to wonder: Is her mouth duct-taped shut? Is she going to answer? Will Kateri? Is anyone listening?
October 9
Maybe they were listening. An astounding thing happens. It is really more than I can stand and the strangeness of it electrifies me. I get mail. I am making my usual corridor stroll up the one thousand and six alternating blue and tan linoleum tiles set in one hundred and sixty-seven rows of six with leftover spaces filled by strips that come out to, I figure, about four tiles in all as they are very thin strips. I am walking down my side of the twenty-two-bedroom ward, past the ten rooms, on each side, then the central nursing station and elevator/lobby/door-to-stairs, and then on past the other rooms, which are always closed and so just numbers to me. Midway back in my walk, the twenty-ninth pass of my morning, I pause at the desk to chat up one of the younger nurses. The elevator opens behind me. Someone brushes my flimsy robe. I look to my left and there stands Hiro, holding the mail out at arm’s length. He puts a rubber-banded stack of envelopes into the hands of the nurse and then turns away without looking at or acknowledging me.
I wait until I am back in my room before I put my hand into the pocket of my robe and in amazement draw forth a letter. A letter. My roommate sees the tip of the envelope. She looks down at her yarn ball quickly, but I catch the glint of one eye. I walk into the bathroom and run water while I open the letter, which at first I am positive is from Phil, and I read.
The letter does not say: I love you more than life—my life or any life—and I am coming to get you. Stay strong.
It does not say: Go to the stairs at 4 a.m. and I will be waiting with a group of people I trust to break you out of that place and take you with me.
What it does say is this: Phil turned you in. Be careful and watch for me. I love you, my darling girl.
The note is written in my Songmaker mom’s handwriting.
Later on, I tear the note into a thousand bits and flush the pieces down the toilet, all except for the line I love you, my darling girl. I crawl into bed, breathing hard, my heart dead, my breath skipping, burning my lungs. Phil was the one who betrayed us. Angel Phil. I press the little piece of paper to my cheek and shut my eyes. I don’t cry. Crying’s for the little things, I guess. For all the night and the next day I stay catatonic, then on the second day I sit up, weak and dizzy, and eat my rotting breakfast and swallow my vitamin. That day, I blur out, winding yarn. On the third day, with a vast effort of will, and with deep regret, I flush my happy pill. And I think to myself that maybe Sera’s wrong. Maybe she doesn’t know as much as she thinks she knows. Without the first part of the note to look at, I begin to wonder if I even read those words at all. Phil’s fake ring stays on my finger, and I try to forget.