Broken Wings 2 - Midnight Flight

by Andrews, V. C.

  “Yes, I'm sorry about these transitional outfits. They do have that unpleasant odor.” Dr. Foreman sounded sympathetic. She also made it sound as if there were no other choice. I finally saw the three rottweilers soften their lips into a smile.

  “But why are we wearing diapers?” Robin asked.

  “Because, my dear, you are being reborn. Unfortunately, none of you have shown enough maturity to be considered anything but infants, and until you do, that's how you will be treated,” Dr. Foreman said firmly, losing the smile. Then she blossomed into another to add, “Believe me, my dear, you'll be grateful you have them on.”

  The slight smiles on the three young women behind her widened almost into laughter when she said that.

  “That's cold,” Teal said. “And disgusting. I feel like some old lady with bladder trouble. I want my clothing back. They were expensive, especially the designer jeans. You have no right to take them away from me. Why can't we all have our clothes back?” she whined, now sounding more like a spoiled child than a defiant teenager.

  “I've already given that answer. One thing you will learn and learn very quickly here, Teal, is if I or anyone else has to repeat something to you, it's because you don't or won't listen, and that will result in a demerit.”

  “I don't care about any demerits. I want my clothing!” Teal shouted back. Her voice echoed off the cement walls and then died as if her words were smashed to bits, the letters splattered and then raining down to the dank concrete floor.

  Dr. Foreman took a step toward her. “Oh, but you will care, my dear. That will be one of the significant changes in you very soon,” she said slowly, her voice so full of chill, I imagined the words turning to ice in the air between them. Even the cold smile disappeared.

  “I want to go home,” Teal cried back at her. “Right now.”

  “Do you? Unfortunately for you, for all of you, no one wants you back, Teal. In fact, I'm the only one who wants you.”

  “How long do I have to stay here, live on your ranch, and milk cows or whatever?” Teal was definitely someone who couldn't stand being bossed around.

  “That's entirely up to you,” Dr. Foreman replied. “Now then, there will be no more questions.” She turned to Robin and me. “No more questions from any of you. You will all just listen and you will do what you are told to do. Listen well, girls,” she added, her cold smile returning to those lips. “Be keen, girls, be keen. Your comfort and happiness depend on it like they never have before.”

  She stepped back, glanced at the young women behind her, who looked excited about her firmness. I wouldn't admit it, of course, but they frightened me. I wondered if Robin's and Teal's hearts were pounding as hard as mine was now, despite the brave face masks they wore.

  We were all brought here more or less against our will. Dr. Foreman was probably not wrong about that. We had no one out there to help us, no one to call, no one to come for us. I couldn't help feeling that I was dangling in space, holding on to a thin piece of spidery web that this strange woman, sometimes sounding nice, sometimes sounding scary, held at the other end. If she decided to let go, I, as well as Robin and Teal, would fall into some darker place. What else could we do but listen?

  “Now, so there are no misunderstandings and no whining like we're hearing,” Dr. Foreman said, glaring at Teal again, “let me be clear about what you should expect after you leave here. At my home you will find there are no radios, no magazines, no CDs, and especially no television for anyone until she has earned the right to leisure time. The only books permitted are the books related to your subjects, not that any of you look like you read very much,” she added with a tightening at the right corner of her mouth.

  “No one will have any phone privileges until she earns twenty merit plus points. That means no one can call you as well—not, from what I know of each of your histories, that anyone would want to call you.”

  “We really are like prisoners,” Teal complained, and quickly looked down.

  "Since that wasn't put in the form of a question, I will let it pass without penalizing you another demerit. If you are like prisoners, as you say, it's because you have imprisoned yourselves. You have put bars on your own windows and built the walls between yourselves and the rest of humanity. I am your best hope to remove those bars, to crumble those walls. Right now, you see me only as a disciplinarian, but in time, very soon, you will learn to appreciate what I have to offer you.

  “It's a lot like Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller,” she said, looking off. She smiled at some image of herself, and even that smile was disturbing enough to make my stomach feel as if I had just drunk a gallon of sour milk. “For in truth, you all can't really speak, can't really hear, can't really see. You're locked up inside your own troubled bodies, and I will free you. Yes, I will.”

  There was a long silence. My throat was dry. My stomach continued to churn and I felt the growing pressure of having to go to the bathroom. I trembled, but I had to ask. I raised my hand, hoping she would permit it.

  “I said no questions,” she declared.

  “But. . .”

  She raised her head and the very air seemed to freeze around us. If I uttered another sound, lightning might sizzle my brain, I thought. I bit down on my lower lip. She smiled again.

  “I don't want to leave you thinking that all that awaits you is hard work, rules, and restrictions. We will have wonderful sessions together, my group therapy, during which time you will all have this, this terribly dark curtain of pain and anger lifted from your eyes. Believe me, girls, that will happen and you will be grateful. I've seen it so many times before on the faces of my girls. My girls,” she repeated, her eyes glossing over as if she could see them all parading before her, hugging her like high school graduates at their diploma ceremony.

  She was quiet again. We could hear a drip, drip, drip of something in the plumbing above and behind us. Her eyes slowly brightened, the gloss changing to a thin layer of ice. She stared at us so long, I felt uncomfortable and saw both Teal and Robin squirming a bit on their stools as well.

  “Part of your work and your life at my school will be your confronting your own fears. One of the best ways to do that is to be out in nature. Nature has a way of tearing away all the conflicting, confusing things that have distorted our vision of ourselves. In nature you can make no rationalizations, no excuses, fall upon your knees and beg for mercy. You either become strong or perish. Everything out there teaches us that lesson and it's a wonderful lesson, one that we tend to forget in the world we call civilized. We'll help you regain that wisdom. Or, I should say, nature will.”

  Nature? I thought. What was she talking about, camping trips? Sleeping in a tent? Maybe Teal wasn't so off. Maybe this was like the Girl Scouts.

  “Now then,” Dr. Foreman said, pulling herself up and stepping back. “Unfortunately, I must conclude our little talk with a severe warning. Any signs of insubordination, even nasty looks and evidence of an attitude, will result in demerits. Profanity will be punished severely. If any of you get two demerits in one day, or fall two points or more below the minus ten I have generously given you, or finally do something so terrible that it is off the charts, she will be sent to our Ice Room to chill out, as you kids like to say these days.”

  Ice Room? What was that?

  She looked around the cement room, once again as if she could hear my thoughts. “This place is a first-​class hotel room compared to our Ice Room.” She didn't make it sound like a threat either, but it clearly put the shivers into Teal and Robin as quickly as it did in me. Not describing it any further left it to each of our imaginations, and I was sure we each came up with our worst fears.

  “And now, my dears,” she said again, sounding as if we were all at a grand tea party, “it's time for you to be introduced to your buddies. They are three of my graduates, three of whom I am very, very proud. They have earned the right to assist me.”

  The girls beamed with joy at her compliments and gazed at her adoring
ly. I didn't know why yet, but it made my nerve endings sizzle to see the way they all looked up to her. I had the feeling she could ask one or all of them to open their wrists, and they would instantly obey.

  As Dr. Foreman continued, she looked at them with a mother's pride. “I call them your buddies because they are here to give you the benefit of their experience. They will be in charge of your daily life, your daily development, and since they have experienced my school firsthand, they have real insight into what goes on in a new girl's mind. Depend on them, listen to them, and most of all, obey them.”

  She turned back to us. “Even though they are your buddies, you are to treat them as respectfully and obediently as you would me. In order to establish that, and to help you understand how far they have grown and what they have become now, you are to address them only as m 'lady, for that is truly who they are, ladies.”

  Teal couldn't help a guffaw, her laughter spurting out of her lips like something she was unable to keep from coming up. It was like a small explosion.

  “If you don't tighten your lips this instant,” Dr. Foreman snarled at her, “you'll be starting at a minus fifteen with the Ice Room as your initiation to my school.”

  Teal's smile evaporated.

  After a long silence, Dr. Foreman stepped to the side and introduced M'Lady One, who was the young woman who had escorted me off the plane. She stepped forward and waited, still at attention. M'Lady Two, who stepped up beside her, was a far more attractive woman with light brown hair, a perfect nose, and a far more feminine mouth. She wasn't as tall, perhaps only five feet five, but because of her firm military posture, she didn't look much shorter. She had a nice figure, well proportioned, that couldn't be disguised even in the blah uniform.

  M'Lady Three was the stoutest and shortest. I thought she was barely five feet tall. She had shoulders like a football player and hard, sharply cut facial features. Her dark eyes were too far apart and her short, dull brown hair was trimmed farther back on her forehead than that of the other two. When she opened her mouth, I saw she had crooked teeth, especially on the bottom.

  “A new student does nothing without permission until she is told she may do so,” M'Lady One recited.

  M'Lady Two continued, “That means even going to the bathroom. A new student does not speak unless given permission to do so.”

  M'Lady Three picked up immediately when M'Lady Two stopped. She had the deepest, coarsest voice. “A new student learns that in the real world nothing comes to you because it's supposed to come to you. You earn everything; you are entitled to nothing. This is reality. Therefore, we will have reality checks periodically to determine whether or not you have earned what you want, what you have.”

  “This means everything,” they all recited. They spoke like some chorus that had performed these speeches many, many times, all speaking without much emotion, except for the underlying and continuous threat.

  “A new student knows that complaints earn demerits. Cheating, laziness, slacking off, any of that earns demerits,” M'Lady Two said.

  “And demerits put you in the Ice Room,” they all chorused.

  “Thank you, m'ladies,” Dr. Foreman said. They looked at her as if they were desperate for approval, then they stepped back.

  I raised my hand and she looked at me so long, I thought she was going to simply ignore it. Finally, she asked me what I wanted.

  “I need to go to the bathroom,” I said.

  The three buddies smiled simultaneously as if they were of one face.

  “After all this, that is what you ask? Have you heard nothing?”

  “But I need to go,” I cried, now unashamed to admit it.

  “Your needs are no longer what is of primary importance. We are now going to think first of the group's needs.”

  “But. . .”

  “You're here because you are selfish, and that will be the first demon we will destroy. I promise you that,” Dr. Foreman said. “Now then, I have one more request of you all that you must fulfill before we can go any further.”

  She turned to the buddies and each stepped forward, M'Lady One coming to me, M'Lady Two going to Robin, and M'Lady Three to Teal. They handed each of us a small composition notebook and a pen.

  “What is this?” Teal muttered. “Homework, already?”

  “That's a demerit,” Dr. Foreman said, pointing at her with a long, thin finger. “You didn't have permission to speak. One more and you're in the Ice Room.”

  Teal looked away. I could see, however, that she was fighting back tears, tears of rage and fear.

  “Now then,” Dr. Foreman said, "as a second part of your orientation, I want each of you to write her story. Tell me everything you can about yourself, what you remember as a child, where you lived, the friends you had or thought you had, the teachers you remember. I am very interested in how you see yourself, what you expect you will eventually do with your life. I want the notebooks filled with details, exact details of every thing you remember as important to you. I am particularly interested in your fears, so I want you to give lots of thought to that. All of us, including me, have something we fear. It's natural or, perhaps, it's something we have inherited or developed because of who we are, where we have lived, whom we have known. Don't dare leave that out.

  “If you lie and I find out you have lied in this introductory history, you will be fined ten full demerit points. Remember, I know much about you. This is both a test of your veracity and a chance for you to think about yourselves.”

  We looked at each other in disbelief. Write our histories? Surely, this was a joke.

  “I see you are not taking me seriously,” Dr. Foreman said. “I assure you that you will all remain here until you are all finished. Until then, no one will get anything to drink or eat, nor will anyone”—she centered on me—“use the bathroom. That's academic anyway since there is no bathroom,” she added dryly.

  I felt my face flush. No bathroom? Reminding me 1 had to go built the pressure inside me. I felt myself breaking out into a sweat, my heart pounding. Didn't the other two have to go? If they did, they didn't show it.

  “Finally, let me remind you that no one is to speak to anyone during this exercise. One of your buddies will monitor you, and should anyone speak, you will all remain here one hour longer for every word uttered.”

  Then, as suddenly as she finished speaking, she smiled warmly at us and in loving tones said, “Welcome, girls. Welcome to my school. I truly hope this will be a lifesaving experience for you all.”

  With that she turned and walked out, her heels clicking and echoing around us until she was gone and it was deadly silent.

  It was as if all clocks had stopped. Nothing beat anymore.

  Not even our own hearts.

  Broken Wings 2 - Midnight Flight

  Dr. Foreman's Funny Farm

  A wo of the so-​called buddies left with Dr. Foreman, but M'Lady Three remained behind, her arms folded, her back against the door, glaring at us, the corners of her mouth dipped with annoyance at what I was sure she considered baby-​sitting duty.

  “This is so stupid,” Teal muttered.

  “Did someone speak?” M'Lady Three chimed. Like a hungry cat she was so eager to pounce.

  We all looked down ashamed of our fear. That was when I saw that someone probably feeling as desperate as we did had carved the word help into my old desk. I felt like adding my own cry of rage. I would carve in betrayed. When I looked up again, I saw Robin open her composition notebook and begin writing. She shrugged at me as if to say, what else can we do? Humor her. Teal, on the other hand, remained stubborn, her head in her hands, the notebook still closed. I opened mine.

  My life story?

  Where do I begin? I was born in Atlanta. My daddy was an auto garage tool salesman and my mama worked as a waitress in one dump after another, drinking up most of what she made and sometimes not coming home until morning. It was one thing to remember it all, to think about it, but another to actually put it in wri
ting. It made me more angry than ashamed to see it in black and white. Perhaps that was Dr. Foreman's purpose: to get us to hate who we were, who we are. I suppose I couldn't blame her. Why else would we work on changing ourselves?

  It was funny though how tears came into my eyes after I began to describe our apartment in that rat-​infested building, described my room, the crippled kitchen with the stove that worked when it was in the mood, and the living room with the threadbare rug where Daddy sat and watched television alone so many nights. Why would I cry over and long for a return to the life I used to hate? Why would I want to be back in that two-​by-​four room of mine where I could hear pipes groaning at night like someone with a bellyache, and people in other apartments yelling at each other and clawing the walls the way prisoners going mad might?

  I wasn't in a good place to grow up. Even as a little girl, I knew bad things happened in our building. Someone I only knew as Mr. Rotter died of a drug overdose in the apartment directly below ours. It was the first time I saw a dead person. I stood on the stairway and watched them taking him out on a stretcher, the sheet over his whole body. The police said the apartment stank. He had been dead for nearly a week, but he had no relatives in Atlanta. Only in his midthirties, he was already dead.

  That was when I first understood what Daddy meant when he said we were living in a cemetery. The doors of the apartments should look more like tombstones and read their names and born in 19__; died in 20__.

  Rest in peace because that's the only peace you 'II have.

  No wonder I didn't want to come home nights or stay there on weekends. No wonder I took advantage of Mama being at work and staying out to all hours and Daddy being on the road, away from home. I shouldn't have been blamed for that. Anyone living like I was living, seeing the things I saw, would have done the same thing.

  The only excitement and happiness I had were what I had with my friends. So we smoked and shoplifted and drank at parties. So what? We didn't hurt people badly, did we? Well, maybe we hurt ourselves somewhat, but we weren't on anyone's Most Wanted list. Teachers barely tolerated us, were happy when we didn't bother them, and swept us along like so much dust from one room to another, one teacher to another, as if everyone was to share the burden.