by Abby Bardi
As I cried, I thought about how poor Alice had gone to set up some big rescue or intervention for me, and how it was not going to work because I had absolutely no intention of going into rehab, and how poor old Mary Fred was just lying there and she didn't seem any better—then I thought, wait. Wait. Maybe I can make a deal. What if the whole problem here was that I was strung out, and God was punishing me? It was just the sort of thing that God as I understood God would do. He was up there on a cloud in His mustard-stained undershirt, lying in a deck chair drinking a vodka collins and wondering exactly what He could do to fuck with people down here onearth. He had seen the whole car accident thing as a way to get to me—of course—and had rigged it up to bring me to my knees. And I was, in fact, literally on my knees, beside the bed. “Are You happy now?” I sniveled out loud. “Is this what You wanted?” I wiped my nose on my sleeve. “Okay,” I said, “okay, here it is. This is a test—this is just a test. I'm going to make a deal with You. You wake her up now, You make her well again, and I'll go into rehab like Alice wants me to. You do this for me now and I'll say I'm sorry. Not that I doubted You, because I will continue to doubt You, but I'm sorry that I thought you were just a sadistic slob whose only pleasure was tormenting the poor human beings on this stupid planet. And I'm sorry I made fun of Your undershirt. You wake her up right now, do You hear me?” I sat waiting, looking at Mary Fred, but her face didn't change. She just lay there, breathing quietly, still pale and ghostly. I kept waiting, like an idiot, and getting sadder and sadder, like I was spinning in the center of all the tragedy of the world. I spun down and down into it, into the void, the total sorrow and pointlessness of all of it. After a while, I laid my head down on the bed and sobbed some more until I fell asleep.
When I woke up, I raised my head and found her eyes on me.
REVELATIONS
“What isn't fair?” I think I said. It didn't feel like I had opened my eyes, but now I was looking at different things than I had seen a moment ago. I had been in a meadow with my brothers, and now I was looking at Uncle Roy, who was staring back at me like he was seeing the heavenly host. He was kneeling on the floor like he was saying his prayers, and at first I didn't know where we were, but wherever it was, it seemed perfectly normal to me. It wasn't until later that I realized that I was in a hospital, of all places, and there was nothing normal about Uncle Roy praying. “Did you say something wasn't fair, Uncle Roy?” I guess I must have closed my eyes then, because suddenly I was in the vegetable garden at the Compound, and Little Freddie was helping me weed.
When I opened my eyes again, Uncle Roy was still there, but he was standing next to the bed I was lying in, and Alice stood next to him. A big man with glasses and a white coat leaned over me, holding my wrist and talking. “Can you hear me?” he kept saying. I could hear him just fine, but I couldn't seem to answer.
“She said something a minute ago,” Uncle Roy said to Alice. His voice was all excited. “I heard her.”
“What did she say?” Alice asked. Her throat sounded tight, like she was choking.
“I don't know, I couldn't really hear. But she definitely said something.” I closed my eyes again, and when I opened them, Uncle Roy had his arm around Alice, and it looked like they were crying. The big man was still hovering over me. “You're in Intensive Care,” he said. “You've had an accident, but you're going to be just fine.”
Then I was in the church at the Outpost, and the Reverend Thigpen was there, and he was preaching a sermon about Lackers, about how we couldn't trust them because they hadn't truly repented of their sin, and then suddenly he started singing a song and dancing around the church, though when I woke up later and remembered it, I knew he would never sing “We Like to Party,” a song that I had heard a lot at the bowling alley, and he certainly wouldn't have been wearing a big straw hat. Then I was back in the vegetable garden, surrounded by giant tomatoes, green peppers, and cucumbers that were bigger than I was. They were closing in on me, and I had to hack them all down with a machete. Little Freddie was running up ahead of me, and I tried to run after him, but my feet wouldn't move. There was some kind of golden light in front of me, and I tried to cast myself into its arms, like the Reverend Smith always said to do when the time came, but then it turned into a bus and I was on the way to school with Heather. Suddenly, we were standing at the bus stop waiting to go home, and then I was falling down a well, down and down, and just before I was about to splash into the water, I opened my eyes and saw Alice sitting there beside me.
“Oh, Bob, look, her eyes are open again,” she said. The big man in the white coat came back and put his arm around her, and the two of them smiled down at me like they had just given birth to me.
“Hurts,” I said. Then I thought for a minute and said “Hurts” again.
“Oh, Bob, she's talking. Mary Fred, what did you say?”
“It's okay, Mary Fred, you're in the hospital. We're taking good care of you, and you'll be fine. You're going to be just fine,” he said again, in case I hadn't believed him the first time.
I tried to get up, but I couldn't move, it was like my whole body had turned to jelly, and there were all kinds of tubes hooked up to me, coming out of my hand and my nose. I tried to brush the nose one away, but the big man gently put it back and patted my hand kindly like a grandmother. “Alice,” I said, looking at her. She looked very beautiful, her face pulled all tight and her hair standing out around it. It was good to see her. I was hoping to find everyone I knew standing behind her, like we had all gone to the World Beyond and everything was the holiest of holies, but all I could see in the background was a nurse. I could feel her poking my legs, so I was sure they were still attached to me, and I was glad about that since I had always liked them. I hadn't remembered yet about what had happened to me—it was like my mind was giving the rest of me a little vacation before we had to get back to work.
“Oh, Mary Fred,” Alice said, her eyes tearing up. “Oh, Mary Fred.” That was evidently all she could say for the moment, but it seemed like enough.
I must have fallen asleep then, because when I opened my eyes, Uncle Roy was sitting next to me again. “Uncle Roy,” I said, though it came out as kind of a mumble.
“Hey, honey.” He leaned over to me. There was a weird smile on his face, like he had borrowed it from someone else. “Are you back with us?”
“Mmmn,” I said.
“Oh, Mary Fred, thank God.” That seemed like such astrange thing for Uncle Roy to say that I thought I must be in another dream, but then he said, “Do you remember the chicken? The chicken you put by my plate?”
I nodded.
He looked relieved, like he was afraid I had forgotten everything that had ever happened to me. I hadn't.
“Do you need anything?” he asked. “Are you hungry? Thirsty? Can I get you something?”
“Coke,” I said.
“You want a Coke?”
I nodded. I don't think I'd ever had Coke before, but it had always looked like it would taste good. Uncle Roy ran out the door and came back a minute later with a red can and a glass. I tried to sit up to drink but I could only lie flat, so he poured a little of it into my mouth. It tasted like something you'd wash your horse with, but it made me feel better. Then before I knew it, Alice and the big man were back, Uncle Roy was gone, and some people in green jackets were sticking me with needles. Then Heather was there, then she wasn't.
I don't know how many days passed like this. Sometimes there was light outside my window, sometimes it was dark. Each time I came back to the hospital room from wherever I'd been, the Outpost, the Compound, the garden, the school, I found someone else sitting beside me smiling and trying to get me to talk. I began staying awake for longer periods of time, though I still felt all weird and gooey, like I was made out of mush. At one point when I woke up, a nurse was saying, “Your cousins are here.” I looked up expecting to see Bobby and Linda from the Anderson side, but it was Jack and Todd, my bowling partners. The nurse was l
ooking at me funny like she was wondering why my cousins were brown and I wasn't.
“We had to say we were your cousins,” Todd said. “Theywon't let anyone in but relatives.” They told me they had missed me and that they had brought me a present. I couldn't raise my arms or anything but they held out a black canvas bag and opened it. Jack took a big pink bowling ball out of the bag. “This is for when you get better,” he said, winking at me. He kissed my hand, the one that didn't have wires in it, like he was some kind of prince, and then when I opened my eyes again, Uncle Roy was sitting there. He was holding the same hand Jack had just kissed, though maybe that had been hours before, or even days, I had no way of knowing.
“Mary Fred,” he was saying. Maybe he had been saying it over and over for some time. “Oh, there you are. Listen, honey, I have to tell you something. I'm, uh, I have to go away for a little while. I'll be gone for about a month, maybe more. It's really important or I wouldn't leave while you're still in here, but I have to do it, and I just wanted to make sure you understood. Do you understand?”
“Mmmn,” I said, though I meant to say yes. I wasn't sure I understood what he was saying, but I could tell it mattered to him so I tried to look like I got it. “Have a good trip,” I tried to say.
“What?”
I said it again, and this time I think he heard me. “Oh, thanks, honey. Listen, I just want you to know—” I waited to see what he wanted me to know, but he never finished the sentence, just bent over and kissed me on the forehead. When I thought about it later, it seemed to me that this was not a very Roy-like thing to do.
It might have been the next day when they moved me into a bigger room with fewer machines in it. Every few hours someone would come in and try to get me to eat something. They would explain to me that if I would eat, they would take the thing out of my hand, and they would give me some dessert.But I was never hungry. So I just lay there as people came in and out. This room had a TV and even though I knew I shouldn't watch it—I mean, I had no excuse since it wasn't as if Heather was there insisting—I didn't turn it off. Once I saw pictures of some kids I recognized from school on the news, but the rest of the time it was the same old shows I had watched at Alice's. I flipped from channel to channel, looking for things like Judge Judy and even Jenny Jones. When I found them, it made me feel safer somehow, like nothing had changed.
I started staying awake for most of the day, and Heather began showing up every afternoon. She said she wasn't back in school yet, that somebody or other wouldn't let her go back because it was too dramatic, or something like that, and she was taking medicine so she would feel better. We didn't talk much. She would pull a chair next to my bed, or sometimes she would curl up on the bed with me, and we would watch TV just like we used to.
Finally one day, the big man in the white coat, whose name was Dr. Greenberg, said I was so much better that they were going to send me home. For a moment when he said the word “home” I wasn't sure where he meant, but it turned out he meant Alice's house. The next day, Alice and Heather packed up the little toys and cards and balloons and flower pots and Beanie Babies that were all over the room, and we got into Alice's car and drove home.
Dr. Greenberg stopped by that evening to see how I was. Someone, I had no idea who, had given me a big pink stuffed dog, and since I was told to stay in bed, I just lay there and held him. (Later I found out the dog was a present from Roy.) Alice asked me if I wanted her to put a TV in my room, but I knew she would have had to go out and buy one, since the onein the living room was too big to move, so I said no, though the truth was, I would have liked it.
Instead, I tried to read from the Book for a while, but there was something about it that made me feel sad and afraid. Maybe it was because there was a whole chapter in it about the Big Cat, and I didn't want to think about that. According to the Book, I was supposed to be in the World Beyond right now, not lying here in Alice's guest room surrounded by Beanie Babies. I don't know if I was mad, exactly, but I felt like accusing someone of something, but I didn't know who or what.
I started reading books from the bookshelf instead, picture books about lost dogs, and one called Green Eggs and Ham that I liked a lot, and then some longer stories about a place called Oz. I liked the Oz books the best. At night when I slept, I began to dream about Dorothy, and about Jack Pumpkin-head, Ozma, and Billina the chicken, who reminded me of one of the chickens we'd had at the Compound. I guess the books were supposed to go in a certain order, but I didn't know what it was, so I read them all the wrong way round. It didn't seem to matter though. I also read some books about a girl named Nancy Drew, and I liked those too, especially one about gypsies. I had never realized that books were just like people's dreams, and once I found myself wondering if that was all The Book of Fred was, a big dream that somebody had had once and written down.
Finally one morning, I knew I was well enough to get out of bed. I wasn't up to cooking and cleaning, I could tell, but I knew I could walk, so I stood up, went to the bathroom (I hated using a bedpan), and made my way down the stairs. When Heather saw me, she burst into tears, and I had to spend the next half hour comforting her. I told her I hadn't meant to upset her, and she said she was sorry to be such a big dork about it, but it still took her a long time to stop crying. Alicecame home right then. Dr. Greenberg was with her, and they made me lie on the sofa, and Alice bundled the moon and star blanket around me and fixed me tea and toast like all I had was a bad cold.
It was weird being there without Uncle Roy, but Dr. Greenberg came to dinner almost every night and sat in Roy's seat. I asked Alice one time exactly where Uncle Roy had gone and it was only later that I realized that she hadn't really answered me. Heather told me he had gone to some kind of camp to get better. I asked what was wrong with him and she said she didn't know, but that Alice said not to be concerned, that it was no big deal, so I let it go at that and tried not to feel worried. I found myself thinking about the Littles a lot, too, since they had been in my dreams most of the time, and wondering where they were and how they were doing. I decided that as soon as I was well, I would figure out a way to go visit them, and that gave me something to look forward to. In general, I felt better every day, and pretty soon I was walking around easily, though my innards still hurt a lot, and I wanted to get back to doing some chores, but Alice wouldn't hear of it. I noticed that the house had gotten a little messier but I guessed there was nothing I could do about it, since everyone yelled at me if I so much as picked up a feather duster.
So Heather and I just sat around doing nothing. She seemed to like that, since it was what she was used to, but it was hard for me. I was always thinking of reasons I needed to leap up and get something, but I still couldn't move very fast, and if I bent the wrong way, I would get a big stab of hurt somewhere inside, so mostly I lay on the sofa, and she relaxed in her favorite chair, and all the shows we had ever watched on TV paraded in front of us like they were our old friends and had come to visit.
This went on for probably two or three whole weeks, maybe longer. With no real schedule besides the TV guide, I'd lost track of time. Then one day, everything changed. I remember it was a Tuesday and it was exactly four o'clock in the afternoon. The phone rang and Heather picked it up, talked for a minute, said, “She's still at work,” and hung up. “That was Diane,” she said. “She said it was important.” A second later the phone rang again. “It's for you,” Heather said, handing it to me and giving me a funny look. I said hello into the phone and someone said hello back to me. It was Mama.
Talking to Mama was the weirdest thing. It had been so long since I had heard her voice that she sounded like someone I didn't know instead of the most familiar person in the world. I felt so excited to hear her that I put my hand on my chest to stop my heart from beating right through it. She sounded tired, sad, even a little mad, and she had a dry crackle in her voice like a fire that was just starting. She'd never had a very joyous voice, but now she sounded flat, like something had happen
ed that made her all gray inside. We talked for a while and I listened to her voice as if it was music, so when I hung up and Heather asked me what she had wanted, I wasn't entirely sure. “I think she said she's coming to get me,” I said.
“She's what?” Heather burst into tears again. Whatever medicine they were giving her, I didn't think it was working very well. “Oh, God, M.F., no, no, she can't. You live here. With us.”
I didn't say anything for a while, just went over and sat on the edge of Heather's chair and held her hand, patted her head, and whatever else I could think of.
“Tell me you're not going,” Heather said, looking up at me with big sad wet eyes.
“Heather, she's my mama. I have to go.”
“But isn't she in jail?”
I tried hard to recall everything Mama had said. “She got off with probation. She said Papa's still in jail but she's free as a bird.” I remembered those words, that she was free as a bird.
“Are the Littles with her?”
“No, but she says we're going to get them back somehow.”
“But where would you go?”
“I don't know, Heather. If she said, I don't remember. The Outpost I guess. It looked like the Compound was, uh, was not, you know . . .”
“But what about school? What about the soup kitchen, and bowling?”
I told her I didn't think we'd be doing any of those things very soon anyway, since neither of us was feeling very well.
“But what will I do without you?”
She started crying again, and I put my arms around her till luckily Alice came home and started fussing about, making her lie down and giving her some kind of pill. When Heather had calmed down a little, Alice sat next to me on the couch. “I talked to Diane,” she said, a real serious, anxious look on her face. “Did your mother call you?”
