Forgiveness Road

by Mandy Mikulencak

  Cissy turned her attention to the parched fields that rushed by in a dismal brown blur. In stark contrast were the red, white, and blue decorations on every farmhouse, barn, and small-town Main Street. U.S. flags of all sizes and yards and yards of bunting jumped out in all their glory. Mississippi may have suffered from a lack of rain that summer, but its citizens had a surplus of bicentennial spirit. It struck Cissy that she’d always equate the killing of her daddy with the summer the country turned two hundred.

  Fred had a pleasant smell, perspiration and Ivory soap tangled together, and it was something Cissy thought she’d miss about her time in jail. Today, his uniform stayed crisp while her cotton dress wilted and the backs of her thighs stuck to the vinyl seats. She lifted the hair off her neck and wished she had a ribbon or rubber band for a ponytail. He looked in the rearview mirror and turned away red-faced when she caught his eye.

  “Let’s count the number of flags, Fred. Just to pass the time.” Cissy hoped counting might keep her mind off the god-awful heat and lack of air-conditioning in the police car. She was usually cold, even in summer, so being hot was a strange and uncomfortable change.

  The deputy sighed and shook his head. “Doubt either of us can count that high. Plus, I have to keep my eye on the road.”

  Cissy stayed quiet, thinking he’d rather not talk. It was upsetting considering they’d spent hours over the past week talking about everything and nothing. She really wanted to know more about his hunting pup. She and her sisters had always wanted a dog or cat, but their parents wouldn’t allow pets. They said animals were filthy and carried disease, although both her mama and daddy had dogs and cats growing up. About a year ago, Cissy had benignly pointed out their hypocrisy, which resulted in a severe grounding and two weeks without books.

  Fred must have found the silence just as uncomfortable as talking. He looked at her in the rearview again and asked if he could ask a question.

  “You just did,” she said.

  “Did what?”

  “You asked if you could ask a question, and that was a question.”

  “I’m trying to be serious.” His face flamed and suddenly she worried she’d jeopardized their friendship in some way.

  “I apologize. I’m guessing you have a serious question, then?” She wanted to give him her undivided attention, so she settled back into the seat and drew her legs up, careful to tuck her dress underneath. Her stomach cautioned that serious questions usually had something to do with her daddy, and she wasn’t about to answer those questions, not even for Fred.

  “Are you scared, Miss Pickering?” He choked back the emotion that accompanied the simple words that everyone seemed to ask lately. The sound of the tires through the open window almost drowned it out, but Cissy had heard it.

  “No, I’m not.” It was the truth. And the truth was a gift she wanted to give Fred for making the last two weeks bearable.

  “Not even a little? Being away from your family?”

  She hadn’t thought of the separation from family as something to fear. It made her sad. But she also knew that the word family meant something wholly different now. Even if she were home in her bed, nothing about the house or her sisters or her mama would ever feel the same. She remembered how terrified Bess had looked the morning of the shooting, as if Cissy had it in her to harm any one of them; as if she was a danger to others and the act of killing her daddy had been senseless. How would any of them even act around her? No, she wasn’t afraid of living at the hospital. It would just have to become a different kind of normal.

  “Would I be out of line if I said I worried for you?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “But I wish you wouldn’t. And I wish very much that you’d call me Cissy.”

  Fred said he’d try, but he remained silent for the rest of the drive, not sharing anything else that occupied his thoughts. She didn’t bother him further. He’d given her a gift as well—a connection with someone who cared about her, someone besides her grandmother.

  When they reached the hospital, Cissy couldn’t help but be disappointed. The building looked so ordinary; just a homely, two-story brick box with bars on the windows like eyelashes closed for a long rest. The grounds, however, were something to behold. They must have been immune to the drought because the grass glowed as green as a traffic light. She probably wouldn’t be spending much time outdoors, and the most she could hope for was a room on the second floor so she could watch the gardener caretake the fine expanse of lawn.

  Cissy couldn’t fathom what it’d be like living at the hospital, but it had to be better than the little room at the county jail. The room had been terribly small and windowless, and she could hear the drunks and ne’er-do-wells shouting from their cells on the other side of the building. Even books wouldn’t have been able to keep her mind occupied for much longer. She appreciated the court’s speediness in making its decision.

  When Fred turned off the ignition, he didn’t move or say anything for a minute. She broke the silence by telling him she’d carry her own suitcase.

  “I’m not a little girl. I need to start taking care of myself.”

  He walked around the car and opened her door. “Careful. Don’t hit your head as you get out.”

  At five foot nine, she stood as tall as Fred and he arched his back a little straighter when she got out of the backseat. He allowed her to walk a few steps ahead of him until they entered the building, where he took her elbow and led her over to the nurse at the front reception desk. The temperature dropped a good twenty degrees in the cavernous hall.

  “Ma’am, this here is Miss Pickering. Cissy. You should be expecting her.” His voice cracked like a young boy’s.

  Cissy knew it was time for goodbye and hoped their parting would ease his discomfort somewhat. “Nice knowing you, Deputy Parks.” She held out her hand professional-like, which he shook.

  He whispered, “Just Fred is fine,” before turning and walking down the hall and back out into the heat for the return trip to Biloxi. She regretted not hugging him goodbye, but understood he was a reserved sort of person who embarrassed easily.

  The pudgy nurse behind the desk had eyes as black as a possum’s and deep furrows around her mouth that indicated she didn’t like her job very much. The unhappy woman introduced herself as Nurse Brown and then remarked how tall Cissy was for a young lady.

  “Thank you,” she said, not knowing what else to say. She wanted to say everyone must seem tall to such a squat person, but Grandmother had warned that her smart mouth could open up a world of hurt.

  Nurse Brown led Cissy up a flight of stairs straight out of Gone with the Wind, then down a hall and through several locked doors. She shifted her considerable weight from side to side and made low, puffing noises. Cissy struggled to keep her steps slow and small. Every corridor was sorely in need of a new coat of white paint, yet the tile floor glistened. It reminded her of St. John’s Parochial School, right down to the pine disinfectant tickling her nostrils.

  The final locked door led to a spacious room with tall, multi-paned windows with thick wire mesh in front of them instead of plain old window screens. Dusty streams of sunlight spilled onto a handful of girls sitting at wooden tables covered with paper and crayons. Cissy’s lawyer had said there’d be patients as young as fifteen and as old as twenty-one in the ward. Seeing the other patients for the first time, she could only guess their stay at the hospital gave them the appearance of being very young and just a little lost.

  Two other patients lounged on a brown and orange plaid sofa watching a rerun of The Andy Griffith Show. Nurse Possum Eyes said the recreation area would be where Cissy would spend most of her time except for meals and meetings with the hospital’s psychiatrist, Dr. Guttman. Cissy guessed he’d been tasked with making broken girls whole again, and this made her think of the story about Humpty Dumpty, which didn’t have a happy ending.

  Unlike the rest of the hospital, the white floor tiles in this room suffered from a sad dinginess t
hat matched the walls. Her mama said painting a wall white was telling the world you had no imagination, so the rooms at home were bright yellows, greens, and blues, colors of the Old South, she’d say. Cissy guessed that if her mama ever decided to visit, those hideous walls would be the first thing she’d comment on. In contrast, the uniforms of the hospital staff were bleached bright white and stiff with too much starch, creating an illusion of good posture among the whole lot.

  It didn’t take long for the patients to realize someone new was being admitted. Most of the girls in the room rushed toward Cissy, talking over each other excitedly. They formed a stifling circle around her, offering their names and asking hers. One touched her hair and she flinched away. She suspected that her red hair, whipped wildly into knots from the drive, drew the girls’ attention, or maybe it was the pink sandals, which she regretted wearing on her first day. The utter lack of color at the hospital was making Cissy even more self-conscious.

  She noticed that a small girl with raven black hair sat on the sofa, completely disinterested. Cissy thought to herself only a deaf person could ignore the commotion.

  “Girls, girls,” Nurse Brown shouted. “Go sit down. You can introduce yourselves later.”

  The nurse motioned for Cissy to follow. They shuffled down a narrow hall that reminded her of those in dreams, the kind that get longer and longer no matter how fast a person tried to run down them.

  Her room was at the end of this nightmarish hall, the sixth door on the left and the one closest to the bathroom she’d be sharing with all the other patients in the ward.

  Cissy was startled to see a young man in her room. His black hair was slicked back, although long pieces kept flicking down across his face. His cheeks had a bluish shadow left from missing a day’s shave. He was in an all-white uniform, except for his black shoes, so she knew he was part of the staff.

  “Ma’am,” he said, and nodded her way. And to Nurse Brown, “I was just finishing up. Had to move the desk and chair from another ward.”

  “I’m Cissy Pickering.” She extended a hand and it hung in the air. He looked at Nurse Brown for permission to shake.

  “Lucien. Pleased to meet you,” he said.

  “I know you have some other work you should be doing, Mr. Thibodeaux,” the nurse said sternly.

  The orderly gave a little bow as he left, which made Cissy smile. That is, until Nurse Brown coughed to get her attention.

  “Dinner’s at five-thirty in the cafeteria. One of the girls will show you the way. Oh, and no bringing food back to your room,” she said, leaving Cissy to unpack her suitcase.

  She assessed her meager belongings and realized Fred had forgotten about the cardboard box of books. Perhaps he’d done it on purpose so he’d have a reason to visit her. At least that’s what she hoped.

  “What’s your name?” asked a girl in the doorway. It was the dark-haired patient who’d been watching TV earlier. She couldn’t have been much over five feet tall. Cissy wondered how many times she’d be startled by strangers before day’s end.

  “I’m Cissy Pickering. You look just like Elizabeth Taylor in National Velvet.”

  “I’m Martha,” she said, not offering a last name, and sat on the floor instead of on the wooden chair in the corner.

  Her skirt rode up when she hugged her knees, revealing her panties. Cissy turned away and started transferring her clothes to the small dresser, the sole piece of furniture in the room except the bed and desk and chair.

  “I was looking out the window just as you drove up.” Martha didn’t mention the sheriff’s department car. Just as well. Cissy wasn’t ready to share anything of herself, particularly with a stranger. “I could help you unpack.”

  Cissy considered carefully how to handle this first request without seeming rude. But having someone touch her things made her anxious, so she said, “Thank you very much, but I’m all right.”

  When Martha grew sullen, Cissy worried that she’d offended someone in her first thirty minutes at the hospital. “I do appreciate your kind offer, but I like things just so.”

  “Suit yourself.” Martha hopped up on the desk and squatted. “They look brand-new.”

  “My mama is a particular sort of person,” Cissy said. “She doesn’t believe in hand-me-downs and buys us new outfits each season. I think she liked the look on Daddy’s face when he saw how much she’d spent.”

  “Well, you have an awful lot of pink clothes.”

  “Mama said redheads look good in pink, although purple is my favorite color. But since she packed my suitcase, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”

  Martha let out a small snort that put Cissy at ease. “Mothers have a way of getting their way,” she said.

  Cissy didn’t want to talk anymore about mothers, so she didn’t ask Martha about hers. She also didn’t feel right asking why Martha had been admitted to the hospital and for how long. Those types of conversations demanded time and small talk first. While Cissy didn’t know any crazy people personally, she had a good feeling about Martha. At least the girl made her smile on this very strange day. And it couldn’t hurt to have a friend.

  “Best to avoid Lucien,” Martha said, chewing a thumbnail. “The orderly who was just in here.”

  “Why is that?” Cissy asked.

  Martha seemed surprised that she’d not just agreed and carried on with the unpacking. “Well, first, he’s staff. And we don’t make friends with staff. I’ll be your friend while you get the lay of the land.”

  When Martha didn’t follow up with a second or third point, Cissy was relieved not to hear another warning. The orderly seemed nice enough and she liked to make her own judgments about people.

  “Your mama packed an awful lot of sweaters.” Martha craned her neck as Cissy closed the bottom drawer of the bureau. “It’s July and, believe you me, this place is never cool enough.”

  Cissy paused before deciding it was safe to discuss her temperature regulation problem.

  “When I was little, I sometimes wore two sets of clothes at the same time. The problem was I couldn’t wear multiple pairs of socks and still fit in my shoes. I tried wearing several pairs of socks without shoes, but my feet were still cold.”

  “You’re a hoot.” Martha shook her head and laughed. “My guess is you’ll be stripping off your clothes the first time you sit in that hot recreation room.”

  Cissy knew that wouldn’t be true in her case. Her daddy had made her cold from the inside, and no amount of warmth on the outside was going to change that. She felt she could blame her daddy for this because he didn’t have good boundaries, and people without good boundaries had to take responsibility for it in some fashion. What made her most angry was that he had seemed like a normal daddy in most respects. Before she turned nine, he was always working late. On the rare evenings he was home, they’d read the paper together, or look through the atlas, discussing all the places that Phileas Fogg and Passepartout traveled to in Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days. His hugs were normal hugs, like the ones TV daddies gave their little girls.

  Then later, when Mama or Bess wasn’t looking, he let his hands go to places they shouldn’t have gone. When he started coming to her room at night, he’d ask her to touch him back, that it was as harmless as giving a hug. If he had to ask her to pinky swear not to tell anyone, Cissy sensed it was a long way from harmless.

  “My sisters made a game of it,” Cissy said, shaking off the memory. “For my birthday and Christmas, they’d give me stuff to warm me up, like flannel pajamas, wool slippers, even some very thin nylon socks with so-called amazing warming properties that you’re supposed to wear underneath regular socks.”

  “And did they work?”

  Martha seemed overly interested in something as boring as socks, but Cissy continued.

  “Nah, but I told them they worked. While someone might classify this as a lie, I think words used to protect the feelings of people you love aren’t really lies.” Cissy suspected this type of rea
soning was one of those things that made her peculiar. She didn’t worry about it too much since they were her rules and didn’t have to make sense to other people.

  “I like that rule,” Martha said. “I’ll remember that if you ask me a question and I think my answer will hurt you.”

  “How’s the food here?” Cissy asked, changing the subject. Martha’s directness gave her a funny feeling in her stomach. In fact, she didn’t think she’d be hungry for supper at all.

  Chapter 7

  All patients were given light green cotton pants and smocks, a cross between pajamas and a uniform, but they could wear regular clothes if they wanted, and that’s what Cissy did most days. No matter how many times she asked, no one would tell her why they weren’t allowed to wear street shoes. She felt silly wearing slippers, but since her mama packed mostly pink clothes, at least the pink wool slippers from her sisters matched somewhat.

  At breakfast a few days later, Martha walked in wearing Cissy’s yellow gingham dress. When Cissy wore it, the hem hit right below her knees, but on Martha, it touched the floor.

  “You didn’t ask to wear my things.” She tapped her fork against her tray, first five times in a row, then four, then three.

  “Are you mad?” Martha asked.

  Cissy sensed she didn’t care about her answer. “I guess not.” They were just starting to become friends and she didn’t want to risk sounding selfish. The girl’s friendship made long days seem shorter, and for that Cissy was grateful.

  “You seem mad,” Martha said.

  “Well, I’m just not used to anyone touching my things without permission, and it’s too long for you,” Cissy said. “It’s dragging on the floor. It might get dirty.”

  “Then I’ll walk on my tippy-toes.” Martha dug into her scrambled eggs like she hadn’t eaten in a week.