He smelled like earwax and was standing way too close. I figured the elevator must be broken. “Now, you listen here,” I said, turning toward him. “I ain’t looking for Keith or Tony. I’m just trying to get this elevator to come so I can go back to my room.”
“They ain’t here.”
“Don’t matter, because I’m not looking for them!” I yelled, just as loud as he had. “I never even heard of them.”
“Who you looking for, then?”
I was trying not to look down at his whang, but it was pretty hard to miss. Marcos told me the old men’s balls got so long they dangled in the water when they sat on the toilet, and for the first time I was inclined to believe him.
“Vitus. Vitus Kovic.”
“Down there.” He pointed toward the end of the hall. “Around the corner.”
It wasn’t doing me no good standing there punching a button that didn’t work while staring at an old man’s stretched-out scrotum, so I headed off. It hurts me to know that Vitus lives in a place like this that smells so bad and looks so dirty. The man I’d been talking to stayed by the elevator, thank God. When I got near that other zombie who was wandering around, he walked straight up to the wall, put his forehead against it, and started snarling and cussing in a low voice. It scared the tar out of me. If my kids could see me now, I thought, locked up in this loony bin with the likes of these two.
I could hardly breathe when I got to the end of the hall. From there I could see down the next corridor, and this one was worse than the first. More than half the bare fluorescent lights were out, and the ones that were working sizzled and flickered like a scene from hell. A lot of the doors to the rooms were open, and TVs blared out, all the racket clamoring at once. I leaned against the emergency exit door, trying to get my breath. A bunch of junk was parked in the hallway—a gurney and two wheelchairs, plus a couple of those carts from the dining hall. Metal folding chairs stood outside a lot of the rooms; a man sat in one not far from me, his legs spread and his hands on his knees.
“You state?” he called out in a froggy voice.
“What’s that?” I gasped as best I could.
“This is the state floor! State residents only! That what you are?”
Right about then I was thinking how nice it’d be to talk to just one normal person. I pushed myself off the wall and started toward the geezer in the chair. My knees felt like they were going to give way any second. The floor was filthy, streaked with all manner of who-knows-what. It hadn’t been mopped in a century. My heart went out to Vitus. What a treat it must be for him to come to my room. To sit there with my nice rug and flowered bedspread and all my things are pretty and clean and sweet smelling compared to what I was seeing now.
“I’m just visiting from downstairs,” I panted to the man in the chair. “Looking for Room 247.”
Men poked their heads out of their rooms. Pretty soon they came out in the hall like lizards crawling from under rocks.
“She ain’t state!” the man in the chair called down the hallway. “She lives down below!”
A fat colored man with red suspenders pulled up a chair next to him and watched me like I was television. Another colored man who was just as skinny as the first was fat came out from across the way and stood behind him. He had oxygen tubes in his nose and dragged a tank on a little cart behind him. Damned if another man, who looked too young to be there, didn’t follow him out and join the crowd. This one was white. Nothing was wrong with his body, but when you looked at his face you could tell something inside his head wasn’t right.
“Get me a chair,” I wheezed. “I need a rest.”
The fat man pointed to a folding chair a few doors down and the younger guy went and fetched it. I fell into it.
“Steady, girl,” the fat man said. “Take it easy.”
They stood in a ring and watched me pant.
“She’s headed down to 247,” the first one croaked. “Kovic’s room.” He had food dripped all down the front of his white T-shirt. I could make out egg yolk, ketchup, and something brown. Gravy, maybe.
“How much farther?” I asked when I could talk again.
“You’re well nigh there,” the big black man said. He had a ring of gray hair around his head. Light from that sorry fluorescent bulb reflected in the bald part on top. The skinny one with the tubes nodded.
“How come I never seen any of you before?” I asked.
They looked around at each other and snickered. “We’re state,” the first one said. He had a thing about it. “Unless we got some extra money coming in from somewhere, we got to eat in our rooms.”
“Some of them old bats looking for men ought to come up here,” I said. “This is happy hunting grounds.”
They giggled and puffed out their chests. Men are the same, no matter how old or sick they get.
“Help me up,” I said, sticking my arms out for them to grab. The young one and the fat one got on each side and hefted me up. The little folding chair creaked and moaned. Lord, I was tired. My feet felt like they’d been run over with a truck. But, truth was, I was dying to see Vitus. Now that I was so close I was downright excited thinking about the look on his face when I waltzed in. I imagined how he’d grin and call me Woozy and find a place for me to sit. Treat me like I treated him when he came to visit. I couldn’t wait. I would have run if I could.
“Well, I gotta be going,” I said. “Til we meet again,” I called out as a joke.
There were little square plaques with the room numbers beside each door, odd on one side, even on the other. They could have been milestones for as long as it took to get from one to the other, but I just kept plodding along, taking it one step at a time. I could feel that group behind me watching. Seemed like I was disappearing down a tunnel that kept getting darker and darker, and the smell got worse, too—the pee so shrill and strong it made my scalp tingle.
When I got within a couple of rooms from Vitus’s, I saw the door was open. Blue light and TV noise spilled out into the hall. He was home! It surprised me how glad I was, how much I’d missed him. Already it seemed like I’d known him all my life. Only two more doors to go! I was racing for the finish line, pushing myself to keep going even though I was ready to fall down flat on the floor. I lunged for the door, caught hold of the jamb, and clung on for dear life, gulping like a fish out of water.
From the doorway I saw the side of a dresser and a small TV sitting on top. All the light came from that. Just beyond the door, a curtain—the kind that hangs from a track on the ceiling in hospitals—hid all but the foot of a bed. There were feet in the bed, covered by a sheet. Someone was watching the TV. The sound was way up loud. Vitus! I took a minute to catch my breath, patted my hair into place, tippy-toed up to the curtain, and peeked around the edge.
I jumped back like I was bit by a snake! I almost screamed bloody murder! It wasn’t Vitus at all but that Daniel, laid out like a corpse! His body was stretched like a rope down the center of the bed and his head was cricked up on the pillow. Spooky blue light from the TV played over the folds in the white sheet that covered him. Those big choppers of his glistened like a bear trap.
He turned his head toward me. “Yeah?” he growled.
“I’m looking for Vitus.”
The room was no bigger than a cell. Another hospital bed was crammed in the space between Daniel’s and the window. The aisle between the two was hardly wide enough for a person to squeeze through. There was a wooden chair in the corner and another dresser at the foot of what I took to be Vitus’s bed. The poor devil. Never in a hundred years had I pictured him in a place like that.
“He ain’t here,” Daniel said when he was done eyeballing me. His head looked so big at the end of that sad little body—like a great white shark head on the body of an anchovy. His eyes shifted back to the TV like I wasn’t even there.
“Well, where is he?”
He was watching wrestling
: those big fat guys in masks throwing each other around, their dinks wiggling like goldfish in their stretchy outfits. Abel used to watch it, too. I cannot for the life of me imagine why a grown man would be interested in something so fake, but Daniel’s eyes were glued to the set. Right when I turned to look, one of them flipped the other over his shoulder. He landed with a thud and a big groan on the mat.
Daniel laughed. A lot of loose stuff rattled around in his chest. He started coughing. “What do you want?” he asked when he finally stopped.
“None of your business.”
“I told you. He’s not here.”
I was at the end of my tether. “Listen here,” I hollered over the noise of the TV. “I come all this way to see him and I need to know where he is!” I felt like I was about to start bawling. “I’m tired as hell! I need to sit down!”
He leered up at me and patted the side of his bed. “Come on over here. Come over here and sit down.”
That about turned my stomach. “Turn that damn thing down and listen to me! I need to know where Vitus is. I didn’t come here to chitchat with you!”
He grinned broader, the old barracuda. The madder I got, the more he seemed to like it. “Hand me that,” he said, pointing with his chin to the remote control on the sheet beside him.
“Get it yourself! I didn’t come here to be your servant.”
His old claw came out from under the sheet and took the remote. He pointed it at the TV and turned the sound down, but not off. “What’s so special about Vitus?” he asked. “What’s he got that I don’t?”
I snorted. “A lot!”
I can hardly bring myself to tell you what he did next. Without taking his eyes off me and leering like a wolf the whole time, he reached through the sheet and started handling himself.
I was so taken aback it took me a minute to get hold of my senses. “I ain’t interested!” I finally barked while he went on kneading and stroking. “If I could get my foot up there, I’d kick that nasty thing off at the root!”
Well, he is the filthiest man alive. “Come on over here,” he whispered in a voice akin to Satan’s. “Have a seat. I been saving a place for you here on my face.” His dirty tongue flicked over his lips.
I turned tail and hotfooted it out of there.
“You’re better off with me!” he yelled as I rushed out the door.
I CAN’T TELL you how I got back to the elevator. It was like I was sleepwalking, or living in somebody else’s body. All I saw were those grinning teeth and that hand moving on the knot in the sheet, all covered with silvery light from the television. I do remember punching the elevator button, and the doors sliding open right away, thank God. I held on to the railing when the elevator started moving, and I remember thinking I’d never be able to get my breath again, that I’d die right there, and the next person would press the button and the doors would slide open and there I’d be, a corpse on the floor. But the elevator bumped to a stop on my floor and I was still alive. I never in my life thought I’d be glad to see that hallway, but when the doors slid open I almost got down on my knees and kissed the grubby linoleum.
I was dog tired. It hit me like a locomotive. The only time I was ever that dead beat was after having my kids. But somebody smiled on me, because sitting right across from the elevator was an empty wheelchair. I dove for it and sat there panting until I could muster enough energy to get the wheels going with my hands. Let me tell you, it ain’t as easy as it looks. I struggled and groaned, but after a few feet it felt like my arms were falling off. I kicked the footrests aside and tried to pull myself along with my feet, but that didn’t help much and it was hard to keep the damn thing on course instead of veering off toward the wall.
I looked down the hall toward the nurses’ station, but nobody was hanging around anymore. All of a sudden everything was too much for me and I commenced to whimpering, then to sniveling, and before long I was bawling outright. I was just so tired and my room was so far away. I had no idea what time it was, but it seemed like way late in the night, two or three o’clock. The more I cried, the more I got to feeling like a motherless child. I was so alone in the world! For all I knew, Vitus was cozied up in some other woman’s room, smoking her cigarettes and watching her TV. Or worse—cuddled up in her bed whispering sweet nothings in her ear. My kids were with their families. My folks were dead. So was Abel. My friends, what few I’d had, were scattered to the wind.
“Help me! Oh, help me! I need help!” I wailed, pitiful as hell, to whoever might hear me.
That mean nurse, Tanya, came out of the nurses’ station and hustled down the hall.
“What in the world is going on?” she said, leaning over me. “What’s the matter? Are you in pain?”
“Oh, yes!” I yelled between sobs. “Yes I am!”
“Where? Where are you hurting?”
I was so desperate I grabbed one of her hands and squeezed it in mine. “Everywhere!” I moaned, looking up at her for mercy.
She pulled her hand back and rested it on her hip. “What’s wrong with you?”
How could I explain? I looked down at the nice clothes I’d put on, all for nothing. “I need to go back to my room,” I squeaked, meek as a mouse. “Would you mind pushing me down there? Room 136.” I pointed in that direction.
She wasn’t so bad, after all. She bent over and fixed the footrests, then lifted my feet up on top of them. While she pushed me, I pulled off my earrings, got my key out of my pocket, smoothed my pants over my legs, and wiped the tears from my face. I was already thinking about how I was going to turn off the light, fall into bed, and try to forget this whole evening ever happened.
“Here we go,” she said when we got to my room. She helped me stand up, which was no easy chore because I didn’t have an ounce of energy left. She got under one arm and grunted and groaned.
“Got your key?” she asked when I was finally on my feet.
I held it up for her to see.
“You need anything else?”
She pulled the wheelchair away from me, turned it around, and got ready to push it back down the hall.
“Listen here,” I said. “I’m sorry about before. You know, down there when you was working. I might of been a little nicer.”
She tipped her head. The little white beads in her hair clicked together.
“Do you sleep with those things in your head?” I couldn’t help but ask her.
“You think I’m going to take them out every night and put them back in every morning?”
“Well, do you?”
“No. I got better things to do.”
She just stood there, looking at me like she was waiting for something, so I said, “Well, anyway, like I said, I’m sorry.” It wasn’t easy to say. She smiled, though, so I went on. “And thank you for pushing me down here.”
“You’re very welcome,” she said, and finally smiled. Not long though. She gave that chair a shove and off she went.
I felt like I’d been halfway around the world. I fit the key in the lock, turned the knob, and pushed the door open.
There he was, sitting in the armchair. The footrest up. The TV on. His hand in the bag of trail mix. Grinning from ear to ear.
“Woozy, my dear, where have you been?” He winked at me and pointed to the sliding glass door. “You left it open,” he whispered.
My heart did a flip-flop.
That word joy, I never thought much of it. But it popped into my mind right then and I wondered at it, how curious it was, made of just three letters, each so different from the other.
You have had it, girl, I thought to myself. You are in big trouble.
LOVE
I only have one page left in this book, so I got to be careful and say only the most important things. When I first saw all those blank pages, I laughed at even the thought that someday I’d fill all of them. Now, will you look at me? Already, here I am.
&nbs
p; Something’s happening inside me. I tried not to think about it, but I can’t deny it anymore. I’m scared to say it, because saying it makes it so. It changes things, so there’s no going back.
But I have to. So here goes.
I love Vitus.
There, I said it. It hit me last night all of a sudden. He’s taken to coming by of an evening again. He brings a little pint of brandy, what he calls a warmer-upper, for us to sip while we visit. While he was watching TV, I looked at the side of his face. A voice in my head said, “There he is, the man you’ve been waiting for.” It was crystal clear. Every cell of my body felt so light I thought I might float up out of that chair and bounce around the ceiling like a balloon. I know without a doubt that I love that man, body and soul.
A lot of people think that old people are just a bunch of dried-up zombies with no feelings left. Well, I am here to tell you that the hunger for love doesn’t go away. Not ever. If anything, it gets stronger. We’ve seen a lot and been through a lot and we’re pretty much stripped down to the basics. Eating, sleeping, and loving. We got less time for messing around. We need love more, real love, because we got less distractions to take our mind off what might be missing. No kids or jobs or busywork. We just want someone to look at us and know who we are.
I got no idea what Vitus is thinking. I can’t tell. He comes here at night and seems real glad to see me. We laugh and joke and have a good time. He might bring me a little something: a packet of crackers or, like last night, a charm shaped like a ballet slipper. I catch him watching me. He smiles when I look up. Calls me Woozy. Tells me I’m really something. He makes himself right at home here in my room and seems real comfortable around me. It’s a warm feeling, like we’re happy just to be together.
But I don’t know if he feels the same as I do. For all I know about foreigners, this is the way they act toward women, all women, and he don’t mean nothing by it.
I aim to find out. The way I feel, if I only have one year, or one month, or just one day, it’s better than nothing. I aim to enjoy every minute. I’m way down here at the bottom of the last page, squeezing everything in with little tiny writing. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I do know I got to work fast.
Breaking Out of Bedlam Page 10
