by Lee Taylor
The ship passed under the bridge and we ran over to the other side to give our final farewell. Lisa whistled. She had one of those loud, guy-type whistles. The sailor who almost fell overboard whistled back a catcall. Lisa’s whole face lit up and she whistled again and again until the ship crossed under the Chicago Skyway and headed for the 95th Street bridge. All the while Sharon and I sang “I’ve just seen a face. I can’t forget the time or place where we just met…” and we waved and waved. So did the sailors. Everyone seemed happy, especially Lisa.
“You gotta be able to stay overnight, now. That ship was a definite sign,” Sharon said. “First we meet that German sailor and then there’s a German ship. Something wonderful’s going to happen. I can feel it.”
I said, “Maybe that guy we met is our connection to the Beatles or something.”
“And maybe he really does know the Beatles and he can get our letters right to them,” Sharon chimed in.
“Oh, come on, what are the chances of that?” Lisa taunted.
“Well, why not? You said so yourself that they met in Germany at the Kaiserkeller Club,” I said.
“Yeah, but I made that up for my story.”
“So, that doesn’t mean that it couldn’t be true. What about Flash Gordon? Somebody made him up and look, now we send rockets to the moon. The next thing you know we’ll find out that the evil Ming has a battle station up there.”
“Carly, you—”
Sharon interrupted, “I think she’s right and sometimes you just have to have faith. Right? Isn’t that what Sister Martha says when she can’t answer a question. That we just have to trust in God. Well, I for one am trusting.”
“Me too,” I said.
We stared at Lisa, waiting for her answer.
“Okay, I guess so, but we have to ask Ronald tonight to be sure, and that means that you have to stay overnight ‘cause we need three people for him to answer. He never shows up when it’s just Sharon and me.”
Ronald was our angel or our devil (we couldn’t quite figure him out) who answered our questions. We couldn’t afford a real Ouija board so we made one out of cardboard and a Coke bottle cap. The alphabet was written in a half-circle in the center, with a YES and a NO in either corner. We kept the board in our trunk so that Lisa’s mother wouldn’t find it. She thought the Ouija board was a passageway to Satan himself. So, whenever we had a real burning question about our future, we’d pull out the board, lock Sharon’s bedroom door and ask Ronald. He always had the right answer.
After the bridge we decided to walk straight over to South Chicago Community Hospital where my mother worked. We needed to make sure that I could spend the night at Sharon’s house. There couldn’t be any problems with it now, and besides, we wanted to start setting things up as soon as we could.
My mom ran the hospital switchboard from ten in the morning to four in the afternoon Monday through Friday. She took the job right after Dad got a promotion and some steady hours.
Dad was a Chicago cop.
Once we arrived at the hospital, Sharon, Lisa and I squeezed ourselves into the stuffy, green room where Mom, with the help of another woman, directed every incoming and outgoing call, plus any internal calls and emergencies made throughout the entire hospital. Unfortunately, Mom was the only one working. The other woman was on a break.
Mom was a petite woman, no more than five-three, with bright red hair that lay in a soft flip on her shoulders. She couldn’t weigh more than a hundred and five pounds dressed in her warmest winter clothes. Dad could pick her up with one arm, twirl her around and carry her for hours if he had to. She always had a kind word for even the meanest person and her deep-blue eyes sparkled whenever she smiled.
“You gotta let Carly stay, Mrs. Rockett. We won’t be able to sleep without her,” Sharon said in between Mom’s transferring of a call. I liked to watch Mom work. It seemed like such a nice job. I told her once that I wanted to grow up and be a switchboard operator. She told me that I was being silly. A switchboard operator was not something you wanted to be; it was something you were forced to be. I didn’t understand her answer.
“You girls are always plotting something. What is it this time?” Mom asked with that distrustful tone to her voice that I knew so well. If there was even a hint of a lie, Mom could detect it in a heartbeat.
I was just about to answer her in my purest voice, when a light flashed up on her board and she switched the key on her panel, pulled up a chord with a metal plug on the end and stuck it into the blinking spot on the board. “South Chicago Community Hospital…I’m connecting.” Mom pulled up a second plug and stuck that into a different hole on the board. Now the two people could speak to each other. It all seemed very complicated, but Mom said once you got the hang of it, working a switchboard was a snap.
“I don’t like you girls sleeping outside at night. It’s dangerous. You never know who’s around. They could—”
A light flashed again. It was so annoying to talk to her while she was working. Each sentence was a struggle, like listening to someone who stuttered.
“How can I direct your call?” Mom said into her headset. “Sure, no problem whatsoever,” she said, smiling at the voice in the phone. Mom finished her transfer and turned back to us.
“That was one of the student nurses. Her wedding’s coming up right after graduation and she’s so excited that she must call her boyfriend ten times a day. It’s cute. Now, what do you girls want?” Mom asked, still smiling. I was glad that the nurse wanted to make a call. She put Mom in a better mood, but then the nurses always put her in a better mood. She really liked them, especially the students.
Once, while I was having lunch with Mom in the cafeteria, I overheard one of the nurses say that the switchboard operators were their best friends because they would put their calls through even though it was against hospital rules. The rules stated that the nurses, especially student nurses, could only use the pay phones for personal calls, but they rarely did. Not when they had a best friend like my mom working at the switchboard.
“I’m going to get married as soon as I get out of high school,” Sharon said.
Mom smiled.
“Don’t you think that’s kind of young to be getting married?” Mom asked.
“Oh, no. Paul will be twenty-eight by then and that’s just the right age for a man.”
“I was thinking about you.”
“Me? No, Mrs. Rockett, my mother was sixteen when she married my father. I’m only waiting until after graduation because that’s when we plan on going to England. I can’t get there any sooner or I’d marry him now.”
“At thirteen?”
“It’s legal to get married in Georgia when you’re thirteen,” Lisa said.
“You girls still play with dolls.”
“Not anymore. We threw them away. We’re all grown up now,” Sharon said as she flipped her hair off her shoulders and pushed out her chest. Mom’s eyes flashed down on Sharon’s newly sprouted breasts, but they didn’t seem to cause as much of an impact on her as they did on the altar boys in church. Ever since Sharon grew breasts, daily communion was never quite the same.
“Just like that? That’s all it takes?” Mom was grinning now and looking directly at Sharon, listening to her every word. I liked that about my mom. She listened.
“Yep, just like that,” Sharon said. “I wear a bra and Lisa got her period last month. Mine should be coming any day now. I’m feeling very crampy.”
Mom laughed and tried to say something but before she could, the switchboard lit up again. She had to calm herself in order to speak.
While she answered one call after another I was distracted by some voices out in the hallway. Two nurses walked out of the hospital administrator’s office. The nurses laughed and joked with one another, but I couldn’t understand them. I thought they must be exchange students. Mom said that the hospital brought in several nurses from the Philippines. One of the girls smiled at me. I smiled back. She had the most shiny blac
k hair I had ever seen. She was so pretty that a couple men stared at her from down the hallway. She ignored them and continued laughing at something the other girl had said.
“Okay, you can stay, but keep inside the tent,” Mom warned. “Don’t be walking around in the dark. Your dad wouldn’t like it. There’s no telling who could be out there. And—” Mom’s switchboard lit up again. This time it was a hospital emergency, a Code Blue, and Mom had to announce it over the loud speaker. The two nurses ran down the hall. Everyone was in a panic. Mom didn’t like us to be around during a Code Blue so we left before she had any more warnings to give us.
We walked straight back to Sharon’s and set up the tent for my sleep-over birthday party. While we were out in the side yard, our German sailor walked out on Pauline’s front porch. It was going to be a perfect night, after all.
My name is Merlita Gargullo.
The only thing the men in America wanted to know was “did I have a boyfriend?”—then they would tell me how pretty I was. I didn’t care. I just wanted to return home and date the boyfriends I already had, but I had agreed to a two-year nurses exchange program and I was stuck.
I didn’t want to ever leave Mindoro Island in the Philippines, but I knew my father, a doctor, would be very proud of me if I did. And so, I went.
Once in Chicago, they put me into a small two-story apartment, something called a townhouse. It was crowded with five American students, two Filipino nurses, and one bathroom. The Filipino nurses were nice to me and made me feel comfortable. The American girls weren’t very friendly. They thought we were spies for Josephine Chan, the director of nursing, just because she was Filipino. How silly! Also, they didn’t like the smell of our food, and didn’t understand our customs, like cleaning up after yourself, but that was all right. I didn’t like some of their customs. Like their need for pizza. What kind of a person would eat cold, smelly pizza for breakfast? It made me sick sometimes just to look at it.
I had decided that I could never last two years, so each night I prayed for guidance. Then, after a wonderful Fourth of July party with some new friends, I began to feel a little more comfortable. Maybe it was better to have friends in both worlds. Especially Americans who liked to dance to rock’n’roll. Music was the universal language. There were no cultural lines when the rhythm was pounding and feet were tapping. Everyone could communicate. It was great fun.
I thought maybe I would even marry an American man, a not-so-tall American man, who was a musician. I would have liked to sing with him and teach our children about music. Of course, I would have had only two children, not like my family. Nine is too many even for America. But my plans were not to be. Richard Speck, a soft-spoken, tall man erased those dreams.
Each time he left the room we tried to tell the American girls that he was evil, that we should scream, or throw something out of a window, but they argued away our logic. They said he only wanted money and would not harm us; they knew how to handle him.
Richard Speck carried me out of the room with my hands and feet bound. I could not struggle, could not fight back when the knife went into my neck for the first time. I could only cry out that it hurt. “Masakit!” I yelled, but the American girls could not understand me.
Seven
September 8, 1987
“You want to get something to eat?” Mike asks on our way out of the prison. Compassion colors his voice. Mother Mike always trying to comfort the child.
“Here’s the thing, I just spent the last few hours lying on a scratchy sofa locked up with a thousand murderers while some lunatic woman forced tea down my throat. All the while I’m puking up everything that’s in me and now you want to know if I’m hungry? No, I’m not hungry. I’m sick. Sick to my stomach. I don’t want food. I want a bed. I just want to go back to the motel. Okay?”
Even though Chicago isn’t that far away, the film office provides us with motel rooms and last night Mike decided we should take them.
“Don’t jump down my throat. I’m not the bad guy here. He’s locked up tight for the rest of time. I just thought…want to talk about it?”
“About what? About Speck? No. Not now. Not ever again. All I want to do is soak in a hot tub.”
A wide grin flashes across Mike’s face. “I like the visual. A little champagne, some candles, easy listening on the radio, me giving you a back massage. Might make you feel better.”
“You never give up, do you?”
“Why should I?”
“Because, I’m not your type,” I tell him without emotion. My stomach still churns with acid…hate.
“But that’s where you’re wrong. We’re like Fred and Ginger, Bogie and Bacall, Lancelot and Guinevere or better still Antony and Cleopatra.”
“That’s a strange mix. For one thing, most of those characters were pumped up by the Hollywood fantasy machine. And Cleopatra was a love-struck-dumb-shit who lost her empire because of Antony and then killed herself when she couldn’t have the bastard.”
“Ahh, but for what reason? Love.”
We get into my Corvette and I start the engine. I can’t wait to get away from Mike. He’s in one of his Camelot moods. Says he saw the movie eighteen times when he was a kid. He and his sister followed it from theater to theater the year it was released. He can recite lines for most all the characters, lyrics from the score, and even knows how to block it for the stage. Played Lancelot while he was studying acting at the Goodman. While I was in rehab. Sometimes he’d show-up at my door in costume and sing to me. If Ever I Would Leave You, was his ballad of choice. Got me every time. I was weak then. Gave in to his charm. Not anymore. Not today.
“You’re crazy, you know that? Who would love somebody enough to give up everything, even their life? That kind of deranged love doesn’t exist anymore. Haven’t you heard? There’s only one kind of love now…the love of money. Greed is in. Love is out. Isn’t that why I’m stuck inside a prison for the next few weeks? The job is worth a lot of money…I believe I’m quoting here.”
“Okay, so maybe I was wrong about taking this movie. I didn’t know it was going to make you sick. You’re usually the one who can go up to the slime of the world and ask them if they want to be in a movie. When we did Color of Money you signed most of those hard-ass dudes yourself, and liked it. Got some kind of charge out of dealing with tough-guys. I thought this was just another job for you. I never knew you met Speck when you were a kid, and I didn’t know he was inside Stateville until we were standing outside of the place. It’s just some weird coincidence. So maybe they don’t keep him locked up every single day. It was probably some special deal that he was in that tunnel when we were. It’ll never happen again. He’s a killer. They don’t get to just walk around in there. Now about that bathtub…” Mike reaches over and caresses my cheek. His hand feels warm against my skin. It would be so easy to let him in, let him love me, especially now. This minute. To cry on his shoulder. I’m almost tempted to let it happen. But what good can come out of it. More hurt feelings.
I push him away.
On the drive back to the motel, Mike rattles on and on about how good the day went. “All things considered we signed up a lot of nasty-looking characters. Some of them were fairly cool. Wouldn’t want to run into them out on the street, but all the better for the movie. Studio’s gonna love ‘em. Captain Bob’s a friendly guy, don’t you think? And that Vivian—”
His one-sided conversation just proves how naive he really is, with his head up in the sky somewhere; never seeing what he’s looking at, always shading it with perfume and roses. I can’t stand to listen to him. I drive faster. Mike doesn’t notice because he’s too busy convincing himself that he did the right thing by taking this job.
We pull up in front of our motel, a Triple-A classic with green metal chairs out front and a rectangular pool jutting out into the overcrowded parking lot. The pool is enclosed by a chain-link fence, where pubescent boys torment their skinny little sisters, while their already sun-ravaged mothers douse
themselves in yet another coat of Coppertone and scream ignored threats over the continual sound of splashing.
I turn off the engine, grab my stuff and get out of the car. Mike sits there for a moment as if he’s waiting for some kind of apology for my bad behavior. I don’t have one. I ignore him and walk to my room.
Can’t stand to be in my own skin. Feel dirty. Feel sick.
Once inside, I turn on all the lights and double lock the door. I lean up against the back of the door to give the room the once-over.
He stood right next to you, Carly. Could you smell him? So close. His breath. Was there whiskey on his breath? I remember the whiskey.
“No,” I yell out, covering my ears. They’re early today. “Not now. Go away. I’m not ready for you.”
I stand right where I am, hesitant to enter for fear that someone may be hiding under the bed, in the closet or behind the shower curtain.
The shaking starts. I go through the room like a cop entering a crime scene, carrying whatever weapon I can find. Today it’s my full bottle of Jack Daniel’s.
His hands, Carly. He has such strong hands.
I thought I had gotten over all of this fear. Worked hard on coming to grips with my neurosis. Pushed through the terror, gotten a handle on dark thoughts. But seeing Speck up close again just reminded me of what a moron I’ve been. How those shrinks work on your mind and fool you into thinking that you’re cured, corrected like a grade school spelling test. That you can go out and live a normal life. As if a normal life is the end-all to existence.
After a detailed scoping out of my room, and confident no one is hiding in a dresser drawer, I open the bottle and dump a few shots into one of those motel room glasses. I down most of it even before I can take off my shoes as I head for the tub.
I begged him not to hurt me, Carly. But he kept forcing the knife in again and again.
