by LaGreca, Gen
Nicole resisted an impulse to close her eyes again and slip back into her dream world, the only place where she could experience vivid color and effortless movement. What time is it? she wondered, cautiously reaching for her bed stand. Her fingers gently touched a pitcher of water, then a box of candy, the whole of her concern aimed at not toppling— She was startled by something falling to the floor. The plastic cups again, she figured. Her groping hand reached a cool metal object, the talking clock her doctor had given her, and she pressed a button on it.
“Seven thirty-five,” said the obliging clock.
She was thirsty, but how long would it take to find the cups? When she had dropped them yesterday, their retrieval had taken thirty minutes. Perhaps she wasn’t thirsty after all. Today was Monday, the day her doctor said she could go home. Home! She mouthed the word longingly. With her roommate having been discharged the previous day and with the nurses usually busy, she wondered if she could walk to the bathroom without their assistance that morning. After five days, and with all of her secondary injuries virtually healed, she could surely travel four feet. The dancer feared venturing to the bathroom without the watchful eye of another, yet she was determined to make the treacherous journey. She had always relished being alone because it had meant being unencumbered, but now it meant something very different—being helpless and terrified.
She stood up, grabbling in the bedding for her silk robe. She had lost weight, she thought, tying the garment around a vanishing waist. She stopped herself in the act of reaching for the mane of hair that she always pulled to the outside after putting on clothing. In its place was coarse stubble on a still-tender scalp riveted with stitches. She swayed unsteadily. Was it the surgery that had sapped her energy, she wondered, or the constant strain of having to relearn the simplest tasks of living?
She stepped tentatively. With her arms outstretched and groping for obstructions, she felt very . . . blind. She stumbled over something on the floor. Getting down on all fours, she discovered it was the plastic cups. She reached behind her to toss them onto the bed, but it was not there. Pivoting, she tried again. And again. Finally, she located the bed and redirected herself toward the closet and bathroom. Although she yearned for the safety of crawling, she rejected the indignity of it, so she forced herself to her feet, trying to forget that a week ago she could fly across a stage.
She reached the closet, grabbing her clothes and overnight bag. A few steps away, she found the bathroom. Its confined space better matched the limits of her ability. Yet here, too, there were pitfalls. She’d forgotten her towel! Instead of making the pilgrimage back to the bed stand, she used paper towels. Then there were the cans of deodorant and hairspray. One she needed, but the other was a carryover from what seemed like an eon past, when she’d possessed hair to spray. Which was which? She sprayed both into the air so she could sniff them to decide. Uncertain of the color of lipstick she chose or the accuracy of her application, she wore it anyway, determined to resume her normal grooming. After changing into her street clothes, she made the dreaded trip back to her bed, tripping over a chair that seemed to threaten her life.
Nicole sat up in bed, waiting to hear the comforting voice of the only person who gave her hope—her doctor. Breakfast came first. An attendant placed it on her sliding table.
“Good morning, Nicole. How pretty you look. Are you going home today?” asked a passing nurse.
“I’m hoping to.”
“How are you feeling?”
Nicole sensed the familiar undertone of pity evident in everyone who spoke to her.
“I’m fine!” she said with a smile, refusing to be the last act of a Greek tragedy.
“Would you like me to feed you breakfast, dear?”
“I’d like to try eating by myself.”
“Let me slide this tray closer to you. Your toast is at twelve o’clock, your eggs are at six, sausage at nine. You’ve got milk and juice at two and three o’clock. And I’ll put these plastic cups back on the bed stand. Is there anything else you need?”
“Yes, a TV or radio.”
“You know the answer, honey. You’ve got CD players with music and movies.
“I want to hear the news. Can someone read me the newspaper?”
“You’ll have to ask Dr. Lang.”
Nicole had already argued with Dr. Lang about the ban he had imposed on her hearing the news.
“It’s my job to handle the news. Your job right now is to get well,” he had said.
“But I can’t have you hiding things from me,” she had insisted.
“Of course you’ll learn everything, but will you give yourself a few days first? And will you let me tell you?”
Losing her ability to function had been so devastating that she acquiesced. But now she was ready to hear the news and would insist that Dr. Lang tell her.
“I’m going to check on the other patients, Nicole. Call if you need me,” said the nurse.
“Thank you.”
The smell of breakfast nauseated Nicole, yet she knew she needed food. Her plate was a mysterious landscape of hills and valleys on which her fork must somehow land. How tempting it was to discard the utensil and eat with her hands like an infant! She sighed. A week ago her life was filled with theater performances, television appearances, movie offers. Now the whole of her awareness was reduced to a toddler’s world of learning to walk and eat. She might have to sink to the level of a toddler, she thought, but she was not going all the way down to the level of infant. She clung to her fork as to the last vestige of her dignity.
Her first attempt at spearing her food brought nothing to her mouth but the empty tines. Her second attempt brought a morsel of eggs. Success! Her third attempt brought too much food, spilling the eggs on her blouse. She fumbled for the water pitcher on her bed stand but hit something metallic that crashed to the floor. Damn! Was it the little talking clock she liked, the gift from her doctor? She removed pieces of egg from her silk blouse, and then wiped the area with a napkin. Was there a spot? She could not tell.
The difficulties of the morning proved too much for the dainty ballerina, who had dedicated her life to graceful, precise movements. She felt a familiar impulse of her childhood, a driving urge to run away from an intolerable situation. But she could not flee from the new, dark tunnel of her existence as she had fled from a series of foster homes. In desperate protest against helplessness and fear, the new trespassers in her life, she slid her food away and cried. The tears suddenly, violently gushed down her face.
When you grow up, you’ll be in charge, little one. She heard the distant words of a voice from her childhood, the one reassuring message that had made her tumultuous younger years tolerable and filled the future with hope. Prior to her injury, the only other time she had felt so helpless and cried so inconsolably was when she was eight, clinging to the voluminous robe of Sister Luke at St. Jude’s Parish. The nun had stroked the hair of Cathleen Hughes, who would later become Nicole Hudson, and whispered the simple words that were to sustain her through childhood: When you grow up, you’ll be in charge, little one.
After her mother had left her on the steps of St. Jude’s Parish, eight-year-old Cathleen Hughes had walked through the dimly lit chapel. She passed the old convent behind the church and entered an adjacent building where the nuns maintained a soup kitchen and daytime shelter for the homeless. There, amid the stench of the unwashed bodies and alcoholic breath of the shelter’s inhabitants, the little girl found the person whom she was looking for, the person who had comforted her before, an elderly nun with a stern voice softened by caring eyes: Sister Luke.
“My mother left me here,” the child said simply.
Scanning the shopping bag of clothing that the child carried with her, Sister Luke’s eyes moistened. In the days that followed, the nun placed a bed and nightstand for the child in a small, windowless room that had served as a closet in the convent. The child soon developed a happy routine. She awoke, made her bed, did her assi
gned chores, attended school, took classes at Madame Maximova’s School of Ballet, and then returned to the convent for more chores and bed. She was like a butterfly, a sweet presence that buzzed about, busy with its own affairs and careful not to disturb anyone, least it be shooed away.
When Cathleen’s mother failed to appear after a few days, Sister Luke investigated. “Your mother moved away and left no forwarding address.”
A calm face accepted the news. The child met abandonment with resourcefulness. She filled the vacancy left by her mother with the business of her life. She had an understanding with Sister Luke: Provided that she attended to school, religious services, and chores, she could do as she pleased with the rest of her time, which of course meant going to Madame Maximova’s. For the first time, the child’s life was undisturbed by the violent, unprovoked—and terribly frightening—rages of a troubled mother. Rather than being shattered by her mother’s disappearance, the child seemed content with her new surroundings. She did not notice the austerity of the convent, only its serenity. She did not think of her unadorned room as gloomy, only as peaceful, even comfortable, compared with sleeping in the dirty vestibule of her mother’s residence on nights when she had been locked out.
Cathleen somehow managed to avoid the emotional minefield that blasted the lives of untold thousands of other abandoned children. An uncanny self-sufficiency rescued her from helplessness. Her quiet, instinctive dislike for her mother kept her out of the quicksand that had so readily swallowed other children. In her own way, the child had abandoned the mother long before. From this came the mental armament that shaped her character and determined her future.
She did not pine for her mother’s helpless screams and angry rages. She did not miss embraces never received. She did not yearn for the staggering creature who gave her nothing. And she did not blame herself for her mother’s disappearance or agonize over whether the woman would come back. She was not crushed over losing a booby prize. Cathleen never spoke of her mother again. Only once did she intimate her feelings to Sister Luke: “When I play the sleeping princess in the ballet, I can have her mother and father.” If two words could sum up the calm practicality with which Cathleen responded to her mother’s disappearance, they would be That’s that.
The fondness that she never felt for her mother stirred inside her for Sister Luke. “One day you’re going to be a great ballerina, little one, like the dancers here,” said the nun, on the day she gave Cathleen a book about the ballet. The child turned the pages of the treasured volume and stared in amazement at the stunning color photographs of ballerinas on stage. In a spontaneous, unprecedented burst of affection, she threw her arms around the nun and kissed her. In an equally uncharacteristic display, the austere Sister Luke embraced the child. The book’s glossy cover soon became worn from the untold times that Cathleen held the volume under the old lamp by her bedside, read its majestic descriptions of famous ballets, lovingly studied every detail of its pictures, and dreamed of the future.
“I’ve tried everything to find your mother, little one. She’s disappeared from the face of the Earth,” declared Sister Luke one day. “I have no choice, you know; I have to report this to the authorities.”
Cathleen did not understand what this meant or why it touched the nun’s face with sadness, until the day when two officials from the Department of Child Welfare appeared in the church to take her away. St. Jude’s Parish, it seemed, was not a facility for rearing children. It had no counselors, no program, no dormitory, no license—only a warm bed and a caring nun who permitted a child to dream. The tears Cathleen did not shed for her mother were unleashed in a fury that day. The two male officers employed all of their strength to pry the child’s arms from their viselike grip around Sister Luke’s waist.
“No, no!” the child screamed, twisting violently and kicking the officers who carried her away. Her shrieks roared through the huge, hollow inside of the church. “I don’t want to go! Let me stay! Let me stay!”
The stern voice of Sister Luke quivered, too. “When you grow up, you’ll be in charge, little one. You’ll be a great ballerina, and you’ll do as you please.”
For the next five years, until at thirteen she assumed the name of Nicole Hudson and ran away to San Francisco, Cathleen lived more like a vagabond than ever before. She felt as if she were being shuffled from one train to another, all parked and going nowhere, in the vacant depot called foster care.
Cathleen’s case irked the social workers because their placements did not stick. If she were sent too far from Madame Maximova’s, she would invariably run away. Like a homing pigeon once fed on kindness, she would fly back to her sanctuary at St. Jude’s for a temporary respite before being recaptured.
“We can apply for a special allowance for the foster family, so they can send you to dance lessons near the home,” offered one caseworker. “We’re only supposed to request special allowances for the handicapped, but let me talk to my supervisor.” The special allowance never came. Cathleen was not handicapped, and there was no extra boost for the gifted.
Many families found her intolerable. She did not dawdle in conversation at the dinner table; she did not hug or kiss; she had no interest in television or children’s games. “I don’t like kids. They’re boring,” she declared at age ten. When she was not engaged in dancing or schoolwork, she would lose herself in the sweet mustiness of library shelves, devouring literature, especially plays, which swept her into the mysterious enchantment of the stage. While the other children in the household were listening to rock music or playing video games, Cathleen would be in her room reciting the lines of Lady Macbeth, Joan of Arc, or other great roles from the classics. She passionately mouthed lines only partly understood and liberally mispronounced, because she liked the sense they gave her of immensely important things occurring on the stage.
Cathleen was returned many times to the child welfare agency. Her folder was one of the thickest. It stated that she was withdrawn, antisocial, maladjusted. At some point she became legally eligible for adoption. Being an unusually beautiful child, with finely etched features, giant blue eyes, and luxurious, flowing blond hair, she piqued the interest of many families. However, once they became acquainted with her oddly distant manner, there were no takers at the auction.
When Cathleen was thirteen, something unprecedented occurred. The Flemings, an affluent Westchester family, offered her foster care specifically because of her interest in dancing. The Flemings thought that Cathleen would provide companionship for their own daughter, Rita, who also studied ballet. Besides, helping a needy child was “the Christian thing to do,” said the stately teacher, Mr. Fleming, who was being considered by a prestigious private school for the post of headmaster. Cathleen did not mind Mr. Fleming’s flaunting her at social gatherings and his associates’ whispering about “that girl from the slums whom Fleming has so generously taken in,” because she and Rita were allowed to attend dance classes in New York’s finest studios.
Rita was shocked by the disciplined dance practice, the grueling hours, and the austere dedication of Cathleen. When Rita’s feet hurt, she stopped practicing. When she received a phone call, she left the barre. When there were boys to meet, Rita skipped practice. She was revolted by Cathleen’s battlefield-blistered feet. “Lighten up, girl. Dancing’s not supposed to be a holy crusade,” Rita said to Cathleen one day. “So what if you get a step wrong? Why do you have to repeat it fifty times? You’ll be burned out before you’re fifteen.”
Both girls auditioned for the leading role, a dancer’s part, in their school’s annual theatrical production. Cathleen, the superior dancer and actress, was chosen, and Rita became her understudy. Cathleen was thrilled. This would be her first stage appearance! She loved the part and plunged herself into rehearsals. A quiet excitement punctuated her formerly distant manner. She laughed at the dinner table, volunteered to help Rita’s younger brother with his homework, and at bedtime even kissed the surprised Mrs. Fleming.
&n
bsp; The girls said nothing to each other of the role, Cathleen out of sensitivity for Rita’s disappointment, Rita out of an unbearable resentment. In Cathleen’s absence, however, Miss Fleming threw a tantrum. If her parents had not taken in that stray creature, Cathleen, their real daughter would have gotten the part! In the week following the auditions, Rita could not eat, sleep, attend class, or speak to her parents. Her life was in shambles. Mr. Fleming called Cathleen into his study.
“We’ve provided you with an excellent opportunity, Cathleen, probably the best you’ll ever have, to live in a real home with a real family. We’ve shared our blessings with you because you were needy.” Mr. Fleming paused, expecting a display of appreciation.
Cathleen waited silently, facing him across his desk.
“I think you know how much Rita would like to have the leading role in her school play. Because she’s part of your family now, I thought you might want to do her a good turn by . . . stepping down.”
“But I don’t want to step down, Mr. Fleming. I was chosen for the part.”
The dignified face flushed. “Look, Cathleen, without our generosity, you would never have gotten into our school or known about our theater production. We’ve given you so much. I’m suggesting one good deed from you to help someone who’s treated you like a sister. It would build your character.”
“But Mr. Fleming, how would it build my character to give Rita a part that she wasn’t chosen for?” Cathleen asked simply.
Mr. Fleming picked up a pencil and tapped it irritably. “We’ve grown so fond of you, Cathleen. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to be difficult.” He looked at the unmoved face before him and broke the pencil in half. “I mean, you wouldn’t want us to have to . . .”
