Put that way, it was pretty clear. I wove my fingers through his and squeezed his hand in mine. “I know, Vitus. You’re right.” I was damn near crying from his little speech, and from the feeling welling up inside me. “All right, then. Let’s do it. Let’s get married. We’ll show everyone. We’ll have the last say.”
NO MORE PUSSYFOOTING
I didn’t waste no time announcing the news. This morning, the very next day after Vitus got down on his knees, I called Glenda. Maybe I wanted to lay it on the line before I could change my mind. Or maybe I was so happy I wanted to tell the world. You decide.
“Guess what!” I said the minute she answered. “I’m getting married to Vitus. You know, the man you don’t like. I hope you change your mind about him because we’re fixing to tie the knot.”
The silence on the other end of the line like to deafened me. “You there?” I finally had to say. “Cat got your tongue?”
Glenda hemmed and hawed and choked and moaned and did everything short of chewing up her own tongue and spitting it back out before she made a human sound. “I just don’t know what to say,” she finally managed.
“Try congratulations. Or I’m so happy for you.”
She still didn’t say nothing. I imagined her sitting in her fancy house staring at the carpet.
“Well, I guess there’s no point sitting here listening to empty space,” I said. “I could do that on my own, right here in my room. If you can’t think of anything to say, that’s your business, but there’s something I need to tell you. Those people need to move out of my house. We’re planning on getting married pronto and we’ll be ready to move in. If you don’t tell them, I will. I need my things, too. All my belongings you packed up and stuck somewhere, I need those right away. Wherever you put them, I want them back. And Lulu. Get her back. I pine for that dog every day and I can’t wait to see her again.”
“That man is influencing you,” Glenda said.
“That just burns me up! You act like I don’t have no mind of my own! For months now, all I been telling you is I want to move back to my house. Nothing changed about that, Vitus or no Vitus.”
She put on her patient, talking-to-an-old-coot voice. “It’s not that easy, Mommy. We looked all over to find you the place where you’re living now, and we were lucky to get you in. The people in your house are a young couple. They have a baby who’s not even a year old—”
“What do I care about a damn baby?” I yelled. “That don’t give them the right to stay there! I ain’t senile and I ain’t crippled! For all you know I could live twenty more years.”
“Well, I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I need to talk to Dean and Kenny.”
“Did the three of you do any paperwork behind my back? Get me committed or give yourself power over my business?”
“We should have. Dean wanted to.”
“Did you do it?”
“No.”
“Good! Then you don’t have a leg to stand on.” I laughed, long and loud. “You listen to me, Glenda. I don’t want no trouble. We’re family, and if we can do this without stepping on each other’s feet, all the better. But if you spite me, I’m going to get me a lawyer and do what I need to do. It’s a lot of trouble, and expensive to boot, but I’m not laying down for the way you’re treating me. You understand?”
It hurt me to talk to my own daughter like that, but my back was against the wall. Pretty soon I heard her blubbering. “I feel like I’m losing you,” she sniffed.
“Why do you have to cry? Why can’t you be glad for me?”
“Because we can’t trust you to take care of yourself! You never have! All you ever did was pop those pills, stuff yourself with as much shitty food as you could get your hands on, lie in bed, and feel sorry for yourself! Daddy did everything for you and once he died you went straight down the toilet—or farther down than you already were, if that’s possible! Why should you change now?”
That was more than I bargained for. I felt like I’d been cracked on the back of the head with a billy club. A million things crossed my mind, a million things I’d like to answer back, but my tongue lay on the floor of my mouth like a dead fish. The strength ran out of the arm that was holding the phone. I dropped the receiver back on the hook.
After a minute or two it rang again. I knew it was Glenda. I would have walked on broken glass before I’d give her the satisfaction of hearing my voice.
That settles it. I’m not pussyfooting around anymore. I’ll do whatever I need to do to get my house back. I’m not going to worry about hurting anybody’s feelings. They want to hear my story, they’re going to hear it. I’m not sugar coating nothing. They wonder why I done the things I did, why I behaved that way, I’m more than glad to tell them. I’m going to finish writing my story here in this book, then to hell with the lot of them.
BROWN INK
I was running a brush through my hair this morning when a knock came on the door that leads out to the hall. I’d only been up long enough to put on my robe, slip in my teeth, and wash my face. Nobody uses that hall door except Glenda, and I wasn’t expecting a visit from her, so I wondered as I crossed the room who the hell would be coming round at that hour of the morning.
When I pulled open the door there was that woman, the boss lady I call Bigbutt, whose name is really Ms. Albert—at least that’s what it says on her name tag. “Good morning,” she said, real businesslike, and bustled right past me into the room.
I stood there in my robe while she helped herself to an armchair and pointed for me to sit down in the other one. I got flustered thinking maybe she was wise to me and Vitus and had come to break things up. Then it occurred to me that she might have got wind of my smoking and was going to tear me a new one over that. She had that makeup slathered on her face like always, and enough perfume to float a battleship. I could hardly draw a breath.
“I’ve come to talk to you about Mrs. Cipriano,” she said.
That little spider monkey? I thought. But of course I didn’t say it out loud. I just stared at Bigbutt, wondering what she had up her sleeve.
“She insists that the fountain pen is hers.”
“I’ve had that pen for years and years,” I said. I didn’t let on that I didn’t know when I got it or where it came from. “That woman was creeping around my room, hunkered down like an ax murderer while I was having a nap. She nabbed that pen right off my dresser and tried to stab me with it. If that wasn’t enough, she made off with my quarters. What more do you need?”
Bigbutt smiled her fake smile. “Well, as a matter of fact, a few other residents have reported Mrs. Cipriano coming into their rooms uninvited. We searched her room and we did find a cache of quarters hidden in a vase.”
“What about my twenties and my crystal? Did you find those?”
She shook her head. “Only the quarters. So we still don’t know who’s been taking things from residents’ rooms.” Her eyes wandered over my room like she might find some of it sitting on my dressing table, or hanging on my chair.
“My things have been disappearing since the day I got to this shithole,” I said.
She hoisted her keister out of the chair and walked it over to the sliding glass door like she wanted me to get a good look at it. Her pants were like blue jeans, only dressier, with a high waist and little white flowers embroidered on the hip pockets—which is a lot of fancywork, believe me, because each pocket is big as a tablecloth. “We’ve contacted Mrs. Cipriano’s family. Did you know she has seven children?”
Like I cared, though I was surprised that shriveled up little body could push out so many people. I pictured all her kids standing in a row with rings of bushy hair around their mouths, like their mother.
“In fact, one of her daughters is in my office right now.” She spun her butt away from me and looked me in the eye. “In fact, I’d appreciate it if you came and had a word with us.”
“I’
m not dressed. I’m in no condition to see anybody,” I sputtered.
“That’s all right. We’ll wait for you. Just come down when you’re ready.”
I DIDN’T SEE any use in objecting. Besides, I had nothing to hide. When I got to the office, there were three of them.
“This is Ms. Hoover,” Bigbutt said. “She’s the owner of The Palisades.” She gestured to a woman who looked like the profile on a cameo, white as snow with done-up hair. Her nose was so high in the air it’s a wonder she could find any oxygen to breathe.
“And this is Mrs. Carranza, Mrs. Cipriano’s daughter.”
That one didn’t need an introduction. She was dark and quick like her mother, with the same nervous hands and sparkly eyes. She was in a right state, shaking in her chair and looking like she wanted to sink her fangs in my neck.
Bigbutt was putting on the dog for the owner. She pranced and puffed and patted her hair into place. “Mrs. Sledge, Mrs. Carranza here says that—”
Before she could say another word, that quivery daughter of the Spider Monkey gave a funny chirp and sprang out of her chair. She grabbed some papers off Bigbutt’s desk and flew at me like a bat.
“What in God’s name are you doing?” I asked, dodging out of her way. “What’s that you’re shoving in my face?”
“Letters!” she squealed. “Letters my mother’s been writing me for years! They’re written in fountain pen! You accused her of stealing! You made a lot of trouble, when all along that pen was hers! Here’s the proof!”
She rattled the papers in my face.
“Your mother was creeping around my room like a cat burglar. Those letters don’t prove nothing. I expect there’s more than one fountain pen in this world.”
“Could you look more closely, Mrs. Sledge?” Bigbutt said. “Look carefully and see if you notice anything.”
I didn’t like the tone of her voice or the way she was looking at me. I took the pages. The sheets were thin, like what a Bible’s printed on. There were no rules on the paper, but the writing went straight across, real regular, line after line. It was hard to picture the Spider Monkey copying all that out.
“Well, her handwriting’s nice, I’ll give her that,” I said.
“What about the ink?” Bigbutt said. “The ink, Mrs. Sledge. It’s brown. Brown ink.”
A jolt went through me. A picture flashed in my head of that section I’d written in my book when I was practicing with the pen. Brown ink from here to kingdom come. I handed the pages back to the Spider Monkey’s daughter like they stung my fingers.
“What color is the ink in the fountain pen you have?” Bigbutt asked.
“I don’t recall,” I stuttered. “Purple, I think.” The three of them watched me like hawks. It occurred to me that I’d never even seen that pen in my top drawer until right after I got my second book. “Yes, that’s it. Dark purple,” I added. “Almost black.”
Bigbutt’s ears pricked up. The Spider Monkey’s daughter clicked her fingernails. The ice queen owner glared. I can stare down a rattle snake, and it’s a good thing because all three sets of eyes were boring holes in me. I had no reason to feel like a criminal, but I started sweating bullets. Something was wrong, dead wrong, but I couldn’t think with those vultures watching me. I hadn’t meant to lie, but that’s what had come out and now I had to stick with it. I wanted to get back to my room and hide that book and pen. If anybody asked about it, I’d say I lost it.
The owner, Mrs. Hoover, pushed off from where she’d been leaning against Bigbutt’s desk and took a step toward me. “Are you all right, Mrs. Sledge?” she asked in her hoity-toity voice. “Is something wrong?”
I took a minute to look her over. She’s making a lot of money off us old folks. I wondered what kind of person would get into that line of business, and what it was like to run a prison for people who’d got to the end of their lives and had everything they ever worked for taken away. Did she ever go up there to the second floor where those state men lived in that stink, using furniture that looked like it’d come through the Blitz? From the looks of the double-breasted jacket, fancy watch, and black pumps she was wearing, it was paying off. She must have seen on my face what was passing through my mind, because all of a sudden her face curled up like it’d been singed.
“Mrs. Sledge?” the ice queen repeated. “Is something wrong?”
“I’m not feeling so good. I need to lie down.”
Truth is, I needed to hightail it out of there. Not only were those three witches getting under my skin, but the breakfast hour was nearly over, and I was hungry enough to gnaw the balls off a bull. I lit out of there like lightning. If anybody would have told me that I’d be covering ground the way I am now, I would have laughed in their face. But I sprinted down to that dining room without hardly noticing, when before I felt like I was trudging halfway around the world dragging a boulder behind me. By the time I got there, most everybody had cleared out. Some of the droolers were waiting to be wheeled back to their rooms. The bus-boys were going around with plastic buckets cleaning up the dirty dishes, and a few lost souls were still sitting at their tables, finishing up the last scraps.
My heart sunk. Vitus’s table was empty. My table was a different story, though. Poison Ivy and Carolyn were sitting down, and four or five other biddies were clustered round, clucking away.
“Here she is,” Ivy said the minute she saw me.
I don’t know why I never noticed it before, but for the first time I realized her hair is a wig! That damn little helmet of hers had slipped forward so it almost covered her eyes, while in the back a patch of her poor old skull showed, sporting a few straggly gray hairs like a mangy dog. She was trembling.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “What’s going on?”
Carolyn Robertson’s wheelchair was right next to me. “She got robbed,” she whispered. “Somebody took all her jewelry.”
Some of the uppity women from Ivy’s exercise class turned on me like a pack of dogs, but knowing that Ivy wore a wig gave me some confidence. At least I got my own hair.
“They walked right into my room and took everything!” Ivy wailed. “It’s worth thousands of dollars! Tens of thousands!”
“That’s too bad,” I said. “But don’t look at me.” A plate of buttered toast was sitting there, untouched. “Anybody mind if I eat this?” I helped myself to a slice.
Ivy’s gang tried to calm her down. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her poor scrawny neck where the wig rode up. It looked like a plucked chicken. The toast was cold and soggy, but I was fit to be tied, so I started in on the second slice.
“My friend had some of his clothes stolen last week,” Carolyn said.
Ivy shut up her bellyaching long enough to stare daggers at Carolyn. “That’s hardly the same thing. This was heirloom jewelry. It’s priceless.”
Carolyn shrugged. She turned her chair around and wheeled off.
I thought it would be a good time to make my getaway, too, so I grabbed those last two pieces of toast and came back here. I sat right down and wrote this, start to finish, while it was all fresh in my mind. Three whole hours! Now I got to hurry up and get out of here, or I’m going to miss lunch, too.
ALICE
Some kind of trouble out in the hall woke me up. 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 being led away to the gallows.
After that I laid here listening into the dark for hours with my eyes open, imagining all kinds of things and feeling my blood run chilly through my veins. I couldn’t sleep for the life of me. My heart kept pounding and I couldn’t keep my legs still. So finally I got up and turned on the light, and now here I sit, at three o’clock in the mor
ning, in my armchair with the throw over my knees and my book in my lap.
So I’ll get on with my story.
TURNED OUT WE never did have to live with that sister of Abel’s. We got married on December 12, 1931. One of his brothers had gone up to Pontiac, Michigan, and got a job in the GM factory. Come up here, there’s work, he told Abel. We had us our last Christmas at home, then we headed up on the train with nothing but one big suitcase apiece. Abel got a job the day after we got there, wet-sanding car doors on the factory floor. We rented a one-bedroom apartment in a fourplex close to downtown. A brick building. We was up top, with a rickety little porch off the kitchen that looked down on the roofs of the warehouses and shops.
White, white, white. There was nothing but snow and ice when we got there in the dead of winter. I’d never been in cold like that, or seen cities like those up North—big, hard cities hunkered down by lakes and rivers. I was only seventeen years old, and there I was married to a man I hardly knew, pregnant with another man’s baby, living in a city I’d never seen the likes of in my life. I looked out on those white fields and roofs, that open gray sky and the bare branches of those leafless trees and said, This is your blank slate, Cora. This is your new life, where nobody knows you from Adam.
Homesick as I was, much as I woke up every morning craving the smells of my own house, the sounds of my family moving around with their morning routines, the back door slamming and the smoke from the stove, my ma standing in the open door, looking off across the yard as she drank her coffee, part of me felt like I was just waking up and looking around, seeing the world for the first time. I longed for everything about Neosho—the cotton-woods that grew down by the water, the smell of alfalfa in the evenings, the creek where I could sink up to my ears and feel the current whiffling past my legs—but I was also relieved to be away from everyone who knew me, from those eyes that would judge and condemn me. I thanked God for those hundreds of miles between me and where I started out, and felt free in a way I’d never imagined. Alone there in Pontiac with Abel, I started to feel the wholeness of myself, who I was and who I might be. I finally could do what I damn well pleased. At least it seemed that way, right at the first.
Breaking Out of Bedlam Page 22
