Future Home of the Living God(52)
“Could I please have some lip balm?”
“I don’t have any. Ask your nurse,” she snaps. Her eyes are telling me to back off. “She’s right behind you.”
“You need something?”
It’s the Slider, whose approach was so quiet and unnerving that I jump a little in my skin.
I use my meekest voice. “I’m sorry. I just wanted some lip balm. Or maybe Vaseline.”
The Slider’s mouth twists. “We’re not a spa. We’re trying to keep you alive so you can have your baby safely. Here, not out there.” She tips her head savagely toward the window at the end of the hall, the shatterproof glass.
“There are lots of women dying out there, who don’t turn themselves in. Your babies aren’t easy to deliver.” She opens a cabinet, reaches behind some files, pulls a small plastic tub from what must be a secret stash.
“Thanks.” I put it in the pocket of my robe and keep my fist jammed around it. The Slider has her own obscure reasons for trying to scare us. There is no reason you’ll be any more difficult to deliver than a regular baby, that I know of anyway. Still, her comment nags at me. She gets to me. Even if we escape, I have no idea where we’ll go, how we will elude recapture once we’re out. I’ve always heard that convicts who plan long-term and elaborate escapes from prison are, on the whole, easy to recapture and rarely stay free more than a couple of weeks. It’s the afterward, the impossibility of hiding anywhere you haven’t already been—that’s the hard thing.
The little tub turns out to be menthol rub. It’s useless, but we take turns smelling it. Sera doesn’t bring the lunch tray, but maybe she’s on duty for dinner. We fall asleep for the afternoon in our dim, serene, horribly ugly but deceptively safe little room. My sleep during the day is always deep and dramatic. I have vivid dreams that seem so real they could be visions or events. Today, Grandma Virginia visits me again, and in the dream she helps measure my rope. “Take a rest,” she says. “Anweb. I’ll do some.” Her crooked little fingers jump and fly along the cords. “Watch out for the husky one,” she says. “She’s worse than the Slider.” She means Orielee, the one I was beginning to trust. And sure enough, when we wake up, Orielee’s come to change the linen on an unscheduled day and at a very odd time. So it is just luck that we decided to hide the rope in the heat duct before we went to sleep.
Cheerful, bustling, Orielee tears off the sheets and shakes the pillows out of their cases. She pretends to clean under the mattresses, examining them minutely, making sure the seams are sewn, the undersides intact. She checks our little closet, patting it all over inside, and she opens and shuts the window curtains as if some sort of contraband might fall out. She goes into the bathroom, and I hear the clank of ceramic as she opens the toilet tank. The only place she doesn’t check is the heating vent. I screwed it back on, as usual, with the nail file, then hid the nail file. She finds it wedged behind the bathroom mirror—not actually a glass mirror, but a polished piece of stainless steel.
“I’m going to have to take this,” she says, emerging from the bathroom. Her voice is sweetly regretful, but contains a partly hidden glee, and I’m relieved that I never did entirely trust her. Orielee twists the nail file in the air.
“How come you were hiding this?”
“Where’d you get that?” I say. “I could use a nail file.”
Orielee pockets the file. But she steps near and tries, casually, to spot the condition of my fingernails. My hands are spread on the blanket and my fingernails show—ragged, torn. The file was never worth using to shape them.
“Maybe it belonged to Agnes,” I tell her. “Please, can’t I have it? I need something for these!” I wiggle my fingers at her. I feel a twinge of betrayal at blaming Agnes, but then I think how much she’d have wanted to help us escape. I think of her blood-red, chipped, sexy nails. Without the file, what will I use to screw and unscrew the heating vent plate? I try not to think about this until Orielee’s left the room, and once she does, I look at Spider Nun, miming dismay. She looks back at me, her mouth a delicate bow. She holds out her hand, fingers splayed as though to show off a brand-new manicure. She’s let the nails of both of her pointer fingers grow long, saving them somehow even during the weaving, or maybe using them to knot or cut bits of yarn. I am skeptical, but later that night, when all is quiet, she adeptly uses her finger to screw and then unscrew the vent plate.
I laugh. “What I wouldn’t give to have your nails!”
She just smiles again. Sera didn’t come at dinner, either, and I’m just hoping she’s on in the morning and can make it to our room. We work all night, me and my friend Spider Nun. I like watching her, like just being around her. I wonder if I will ever know her name.
October 17
Morning, and Sera still doesn’t come. I am worried that the routine here is disorienting me, even though I’ve become adept at getting rid of my vitamins. We have only eight feet left to do on the rope. But I’m so terrified that we will be discovered and our rope confiscated that I decide this must be the last night we work. I now convince myself that a slight drop at the end is less hazardous than losing our chance to escape altogether. And Spider Nun is looking so terribly worn out, so weak and so skinny, that I am afraid if we wait much longer she won’t have the strength to lower herself down the side of the building. Before noon, the Slider comes in and jabs us, takes our blood, pee, more nail clippings, swabs from our mouths and noses. She weighs us and listens to our babies, jotting long notes into her computer. The Slider hardly speaks to us while she is performing these tasks, but I’m happy because I’m hoping that if she is on today and Geri is on tonight, then Jessie will be on tomorrow after midnight. The nineteenth. The date in Eddy’s letter.