“Smoking is bad for you, Cora. Very bad.”
“I know. But I want them.”
“You have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease! Smoking is not good for you!” He stomped his foot again.
“I don’t have but one or two a day.”
“Do you know what could happen to me if they found out?”
“I won’t tell nobody.”
“No! It is wrong! You are a very sick woman. I would never forgive myself if something happened to you.” He picked up the scale and started gathering up his things. “Besides, I need this job. I can’t afford to lose it.” He made for the door.
“You listen here. I am a grown-up woman! I’m a paying customer here, not a prisoner. I can do whatever I want. All they got to do is clean my room and make sure I don’t fall down dead and rot two weeks before somebody finds me. Other than that, I’m on my own.”
It might not of been the whole truth, but he paused with his hand on the door, and I felt the tide turning. I gave him a shit-eating smile and said, humble as could be, “I’m begging for mercy. There ain’t much left in this life that makes me happy. I’m craving it. You know what that’s like, don’t you?”
He let out a big sigh and set his things down. He looked at me a long time before he held out his hand and said, “Give me the money.”
I almost did a jig right there on the spot. I hoofed it over to my underwear drawer where I have an envelope with five twenty-dollar bills Glenda gave me in case of emergency. It crossed my mind, with all the funny business going on, that I shouldn’t let Marcos know where I kept my money, but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings by acting like I didn’t trust him. Besides, I wanted those cigarettes.
“Could you get me a few other things while you’re at it?” I asked as I handed the money over. “Some potato chips and Doritos? The hot kind. Maybe a couple of those cupcake things with the squiggles on them?”
“There I draw the line!”
“It won’t hurt nothing. How’d you like to eat this slop they serve here day in, day out?”
“You are taking advantage of me. Besides, what about your new figure?”
He made his eyebrows go up and down, but I wasn’t falling for that trick. “What if your poor mother was in a place like this?” I asked. “Wouldn’t you want to know someone was watching out for her?”
He came over and stood toe to toe with me. He brought his face right up to mine until the tips of our noses touched and his big brown eyes were staring into mine. He huffs a lot, like me. I guess we both have a hard time breathing.
“Señora Sledge, you have no shame. For this, I love you.”
I gave him a pretend slap on the face, then pinched his earlobe.
He grabbed my hand, kissed the ends of my fingers, then clucked his tongue. “Look at this,” he said, holding up my first two fingers, which are iodine color because of my smoking. “And you ask me to buy you cigarettes!”
“Wait ‘til you’re my age. You’re going to be just the same.”
“No! Never!” He held up his hands. He had big, fat fingers with hair on each knuckle. No stains, I had to give him that.
“I’d kill for one right now,” I said, and looked at him real pitiful. “I’m having a nicotine fit.”
“Devil! You are very naughty.” He shook one of those sausage fingers in my face. “Lucky for you, I too am a devil. I crave one myself. Come.”
He waved me over to the bathroom, pulled me inside, shut the door, put the toilet seat down, and patted it for me to sit down. “Here, be comfortable.” He stepped over into the bathtub, slid open the window, and took a pack of Salems out of his smock.
My heart sank. “Is that all you have? Menthols?”
“Coralita, please. You are very rude. Did you know that? Do you want the cigarette or not? Because I can easily go smoke by myself in the break room.”
“It’s like sucking a mint through somebody’s asshole.”
It’s the same thing I used to say to Abel, who started smoking menthols just so I wouldn’t steal them. Marcos laughed so sudden a wad of spit flew out of his mouth. “Aye!” he said, wiping off his lips real daintylike. He lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out the window before he handed it to me.
“What brand do you smoke, my queen?”
I had two cigarettes left, but I was saving them in case Vitus came over again. That night he’d dropped by was the last one I’d had, and let me tell you, menthol or not, I couldn’t wait for the first drag. My whole body was so keyed up, my hands were shaking. I sucked in a big lungful and felt it rinse down through my body like a warm shower. Everything melted. I let out a big sigh of relief.
“Marlboros,” I answered when I’d had a few puffs. I relaxed against the back of the toilet. “I tried some of those fancy cigarettes when they came out, Virginia Slims and those that are different colors, but they were too skinny and tasted like toilet paper.”
“Marlboros? Disgusting.” Marcos stuck out his tongue like he tasted something nasty. He had his elbow up on the windowsill where I keep my shampoo and soap. He smoked in little sips that whistled through his teeth. “They are no good. The worst. Why do you smoke them?”
“I just always have.” That cigarette was really hitting the spot. “Plus red’s my favorite color.”
“Mine, too. Here. Put the ash here.”
He tipped his cigarette in the sink and ran some water. I did like he said.
“I want some of them magazines, too, when you go to the store. National Enquirer, or the Star.” I still had three-quarters of the cigarette left, but I was already worried about finishing it.
“You are spoiled. A princess. Did your husband treat you well?”
“Waited on me hand and foot. My wish was his command.”
Marcos sighed and put his hand over his heart. He looked out the window. Someone was sweeping—long, lazy strokes. “You must have loved him very much.”
“I got used to him. All those years, we lived together as man and wife. Had three kids together, raised them up. You couldn’t of asked for a better husband or father. The kids loved him to death.” I took a long drag. “Hard as I tried, and good as I knew he was, I just couldn’t work up a whole lot of enthusiasm. That’s the God’s honest truth.” I was sipping at the cigarette now, just like Marcos, trying to make it last. “There’s been times I hated my own self so bad because of it, but that didn’t do no good, either.” You don’t know how good it felt to finally say those things. There’s something about Marcos that brought it out in me.
“Why?” he asked. “Why you don’t love him?”
I shrugged. “Long story.” The cigarette made me feel cocky and coldhearted. Too bad it was almost gone. “What about your other patients? Aren’t they waiting for you?”
He tipped his head back and smoked the last drag down to the filter. His nose holes are real big, and when he smokes they get even bigger. You could slip your fist in one, no problem. He blew the smoke straight up in the air, like a fountain.
“With some of them I’m in and out. Like that.” He snapped his fingers. “But with my special patients, like you, it takes time.” He winked. “I make up the time on the others. Hello, good-bye, I’m gone.”
He held his cigarette under the tap, then snapped his fingers and held out his hand for mine. The snap was so loud my eardrums almost busted.
“I’m not done yet.”
“That’s it. Finito. There’s nothing left.”
I wanted another one, but thought I’d better not push my luck. I handed the butt over. “Now, I want to ask you something,” I said while he ran water on it. “About being that way. I need to ask you a question.”
He wrapped the two wet butts in a wad of toilet paper. “When you stand up, we put these in the toilet.” He started washing his hands like a surgeon, every little inch of them, with the bar of Dove I use on my face.
“
What is it, Cora? What do you want to know?” he asked while he scrubbed.
“Don’t take offense, now,” I warned him.
He shook his hands over the sink and looked around for the towel.
“All these pretty ladies here, the nurses and the ones who make up the rooms and work in the kitchen, all these cute little girls, don’t you want to get to know some of them?” I was thinking how so many of them were Mexican like Marcos, and how it’d be natural for them to get together. “Don’t you like women? Are you afraid of them?” I was curious as hell. “How did you get to be the way you are? You know, with men and all?”
He pulled the towel off the back of the door, where my hot-water bottle hung along with a pair of underpants I’d rinsed out. I have a problem with my bladder. He took his sweet time drying every finger all the way up to his wrists, all the time acting like I hadn’t asked him a question, like I wasn’t even in the room. He shook the towel out and hung it up neat, straightening it in a prissy way.
“My mother was the queen of my life!” he bellowed when he turned toward me. “There will never be another woman like her. Women—” He kissed the back of his hand, then he turned it over and kissed his wrist. “Women are the rulers of the world! I get on my knees in front of them.” He clasped his hands like he was praying. “My wife is the most beautiful woman in the world!”
“Your wife?” I gasped. “You have a wife?”
He nodded, real serious, and puffed his chest out. “A beautiful wife and a beautiful son. I would die for them.”
My tongue dangled out of my mouth. “Where are they?” I gasped.
“In Paree.” That’s how he said it. “My wife is a dancer. My son lives with his mother.”
“Well, don’t you want to be with them? What about your boy?”
Marcos shrugged and sucked his teeth. He looked at his fingernails. “We have our own lives. My son knows I will always be his father.”
“Well, I just can’t believe it! How old is he? What’s his name?”
“Marcos!” He shook his head like I was the most ignorant person on earth. “He’s seven years old.” He picked up the wad of cigarettes and motioned for me to get up. “And now the interview is over. I must go.”
“But what about these others? These men?” I tried to hoist myself off the toilet. I have to rock back and forth two or three times to get some momentum. “How can you have a wife”—I grabbed hold of the sink and pulled so hard it nearly came off the wall—“and still do these things with men?”
“It is not the same. With these men, it is different. They are my heart, my body. They are blood to me. Water. Now please, Coralita. Move, so I can throw this away. I don’t enjoy holding these stinking wet things.”
He raised the lid and tossed in the butts. While the water swirled I looked at him. My Lord, I thought. Now I’ve seen everything. He wiped his hands again, patted his pocket to make sure he had his cigarettes, and reached for the door.
“Is there someone you love?” I asked when the sound of the flushing stopped. “Somebody special?”
Marcos looked at the floor. The pores on his face were big. You could tell he used to have pimples. “Yes,” he answered, almost under his breath. “There is someone I love.”
He didn’t seem real happy about it.
“Who?”
He was puffing again. The bathroom was little and we were close together. “A boy, a beautiful boy,” he said. “Someone younger.”
He tried to reach around me to open the door, but I stood my ground. “Where?” I demanded. “Where is he?”
He scowled. “Here. He is at The Palisades.”
My mouth fell open. “He lives here?”
He huffed with disgust. “No! He works here.”
“Who?” I demanded, and this time I stomped my foot. “What’s his name?”
Marcos reached around me and jerked open the door. He jostled past me like I was just a rock in the road. I didn’t appreciate it one bit. When he got out in the bedroom, he spun around and looked at me. A grin spread from ear to ear.
An ugly man with a beautiful smile can break your heart.
“Renato. His name is Renato.”
The way he said that name stopped me in my tracks. It took my breath away. The RRRR rolled like a big cat purring, and the long AHHH was the sound you make when something feels really, really good—use your imagination to know what I mean. That last part, the TOE, was like a kiss good-bye, the last kiss. So sad, and so pretty at the same time. You could feel the sex in it.
My eyes narrowed down to peepholes. “What’s his name?” I repeated, just to hear it again.
“Re-na-to.” He broke it up into three pieces, his tongue and big blubbery lips handling that word like it was a naked body. The hair on the back of my neck prickled.
“Is he Mexican, too?”
A cloud passed over Marcos’s face. “I waste my time with you,” he said, flapping his hand at me. “You are always rude.”
“I’m just asking.”
“No. He is Filipino.”
“How old is he?”
“Twenty.”
That set me back, but since Marcos was already huffy, I held my tongue about the boy’s age.
“And you love him?”
“Yes,” Marcos said in a grim way, like talking hurt him. “Renato is mi vida. My life.”
“Well, I just don’t get it.”
“Then you don’t understand love.”
He started gathering up his things: the scale, the hookah, the stethoscope, and the blood pressure cuff. He was right, I didn’t understand it at all. You’d think after all the years I’ve lived, everything I’ve done and heard and read, I’d have a pretty good idea, but while I stood there thinking about Abel and my kids, what I really felt and what I was supposed to feel, wanted to feel, I saw that at eighty-two years old I have no better idea about love than I had at fourteen.
“All right,” Marcos said when he was all packed up. “Enough. Adiós, señora. ‘Til we meet again.”
“Don’t go away mad, now. You know you’re my sugar and I love you to death.”
That got a smile out of him. “Wait a minute.” He held up a finger and came over to me. “Close your eyes, open your mouth, and stick out your tongue.”
I did like he said. With my eyes squinched tight, I felt just a little touch on my tongue, then tasted the clove flavor.
“Body of Christ,” he said.
“What the hell are you talking about?” My eyes flew open and there he was.
He held up an itty-bitty bottle no bigger than my little finger, then he touched it to his own tongue. “Shhh,” he said, holding his finger to his lips. “Don’t tell anybody. It’s our little secret.”
“Don’t forget my cigarettes!” I hollered as I watched my twenty-dollar bill walk out that sliding glass door and across the courtyard.
GONE!!!
Some kind of trouble out in the hall woke me up last night. Nurses were yelling, then somebody was running, then there was a lot of banging around—doors slamming and equipment rattling. They must have called the paramedics, because pretty soon the sirens came blaring, and a bunch of feet rushing in, and something rolling, like a gurney. And moans and pleading, and—oh my God, it was like someone falling into the depths of hell. After that I lay listening into the dark. My blood was chilly in my veins and I couldn’t keep my legs still. I was tired, dead beat, but my nerves were jittery, so I took a couple of my pills. That made me feel worse, like my thoughts were taffy somebody was stretching all out of shape.
I got to thinking about all the houses I ever lived in—that first one where I slept up under the eaves next to Ruby and Crystal, with Jasper across the hall and my ma and daddy downstairs. That first apartment me and Abel had when we moved to California. We thought we’d found paradise even though our bed pulled down out of the wall in the living room and
the sink was so close you could lean out of bed and wash your hands. We conceived Kenneth there on those broken-ass springs.
I thought about that tenement in Michigan where we lived during the Depression, and the Quonset hut we moved to out here during the war, and all the ramshackle duplexes and bungalows and cracker boxes we made do in. Then, of course, I got to my own sweet house, the one I always dreamed about, the one we worked for, the only one I ever owned. I know every one of the doorknobs just by feel. I know which corners collect the most hair, how to jiggle the handle to make the toilet stop running, where to knee the back door when it gets stuck in winter. That house saw me through a lot of changes; it watched me grow old. It didn’t care if I woke up in the morning with a song in my heart or if I was cast down to the lowest valley. I thought about how a bed is sacred when you sleep in it night after night for years and decades. So is a room, or a house. Anywhere you did something over and over—stepped out on the porch and called your dog, watched through a window for somebody to come home, washed your face first thing in the morning—those places got special power, and special meaning.
I was standing right there at the wall phone in the kitchen when Ruby called to say our ma had died. Same place I was when Glenda told me she was expecting my first grandchild. That’s where I listened while the doctor explained that Abel’s cancer was everywhere, that there was nothing they could do. “Toad, my goose is cooked,” Abel said the next morning in that very same kitchen while I poured his coffee. He knew it, and so did I. He was damn lucky to stay there right up to the end. I came home to the empty house after we buried him and said to Lulu, “We’re all alone now, girl. It’s just you and me.”
By the time I started thinking about this damn place, this hell they call The Palisades, I was bawling into my pillow and knotting up the bedspread to keep from tearing out my hair. I cursed this place that’s no more than a warehouse, a storage bin where people are tossed until the next shipment comes in. My room even has a number, 136, like a motor lodge or a doctor’s office. After I was done cursing, I started praying. I begged God to take me home. To put me back in my house and let me live my last days there. I asked to die in my own room, in my own bed, in the hollow shaped by my own body, under blankets stitched together by my own hands and fastened with little twists of yarn. Please, God, I prayed. It’s the one thing I want.
Breaking Out of Bedlam Page 5
