Command of Silence

by Paulette Callen

  “I’ve a mind to arrest you right now. Never mind waiting for Dora. How did you know? What do you know, anyway?”

  “Do you read Sherlock Holmes, Leo?”

  “Jesus, here we go again.”

  “There’s one story where the great detective solves the case because of what the dog did in the night.”

  “Okay. I’ll bite. What did the goddamn dog do?”

  “Nothing. He didn’t do anything.”

  “That’s it. You’re under arrest. Are you going to tell me—”

  “You need to call Ray. She should be at the hospital to talk to Miriam and to Anna. The kid’s going to need a lot of help.”

  “Why don’t you call Ray yourself?”

  “I don’t have…I’m not feeling…” The spinning began so abruptly that I clutched the bar.

  “What are those people doing?”

  Leo just smiled at me. The lion’s smile. I was the hyena. I had to get to a phone. But the spinning accelerated and people surrounded me and I couldn’t go anywhere.

  Chapter 22

  “This is a play. A game.” Her voice is reassuring. “Ceremonial. Ray likes a ceremony to cement integration. You know. Celebrate it. Mark it.”

  We didn’t want to integrate.

  “Of course we do, don’t we?” She is Mary Poppins, encouraging me to take my medicine. “Ray wants this. All of this is just symbolic anyway, you know. Role playing. Psycho drama. You know how she is. Integration begins with a little dying. Rivers to ocean and all that. But we don’t really die. You know what she says.”

  She says little rivers to big river.

  “Let’s not quibble,” she says coldly. “Ready?”

  I feel the knife and see the smile dawning on her face and realize the bargain we made—not exactly a bargain—we engaged to play the game where she stabs me and I die. A game.

  Too many realities for the mind to grasp come to a point in that smile as she cuts again, deeply, this time—the killing cut, for the blood gurgles like muddy water up through the neck of a slim pipe, warm, spilling over my hands as I try to hold my abdomen together. I lose feeling in my extremities and go light in the head. Blank spots yawn and crescents shimmer in my visual field. I hope Ray can hear me.

  Call an ambulance. Game over. I give up. I want to live. I’ll tell them I did it so you won’t be blamed.

  I think of the pain when they will move me and sew me, stick me and fill me with foreign fluids; I’ll feel the pain in every part of me, but I’ll live, and I feel myself going under and the medics will get here or they won’t; I’ll wake up in pain, or I won’t wake up at all.

  People in robes gather, like medieval religious. Someone lets a child run into the room. My bed is slick with blood. My blood this time. The child screams and screams and runs back out. I am angry they had been so careless. My anger floats, disembodied.

  I can hear Ray is arguing with a nurse, just outside the door: “You are so appalled at what this child did? You should be appalled at what was done to her! She saved herself. The only way she could. If you can’t get your head around that, then get on a different ward. In fact, I’ll see to it.”

  No, that’s a memory. That’s not here.

  I am still conscious, still not on a stretcher. No one is sewing me up. But I am now connected to an IV. Clear, rose-colored fluid drips into my vein. Not enough to save me, just prolong things. Why bother with it, I wonder. Now, Ray is angry. At me. The others are all smiling, watching me die. Dora’s smile glitters, the knife still in her hand, though her work is done. I keep bleeding. This can’t last forever. I will run out of blood, my veins will fill with rosewater. I’ll be dead, but I won’t dehydrate. This is wildly funny, but nobody laughs.

  In the thickening dark, I go over it all again, how I got here, and I feel no regret. We found Anna and the one who took her. I won’t be able to get them Charlotte. They will never find her without me. But I am not afraid to die. It will be a relief.

  The spinning accelerates to a whirlpool sucking me down into cold black and evil. I don’t mind dying, but I will not go THERE. Ray would not want me to go there. The place worse than death. Dora has the knife and the cold glittering smile. She can kill me, but she can’t make me go there.

  I say, “No.” I look into her eyes. Basilisks, I always thought they would be. To look into them would be to surely die. But now I look, straight, without flinching, and they are just eyes like my own, and I say, I am the firstborn.

  She drops the Poppins face and hisses, “Are you sure about that? The firstborn is dead. This is something they and your precious dyke shrink are afraid to tell you. The firstborn is dead. You are just a shell for the rest of us. I am the strongest. I deserve to keep it.”

  Little river to big river. I am the big river. I am the firstborn. I am not the one to die or even pretend to die.

  “Go back.”

  Dora’s smile falters.

  “Go back,” I say again, with more strength than I should have left, given the soaking bed, the blood dripping everywhere. It is always like this. So much blood everywhere. Blood fills my mouth, my nose, eyes and ears. I drown in it, choke on it. “Leave me in peace.”

  The room is darker, the robed figures now only shadows. How long does it take to die?

  Saturday

  Chapter 23

  I heard my name from a distance and wondered from which side someone would be calling me. There was no one on the other side I cared to see, assuming there was another side. I had never really accepted that there was. The voice was getting closer and clearer, and the room was getting lighter. There were fewer people. Is this death? “Is this death?”

  “You are alive,Isadora.”My name again.And again,repeated patiently, like someone tugging a line so as not to hurt the fish on the end of it. “Isadora. Isadora.”

  Now, I recognized the voice. “I’m bleeding, Ray. No one will help me. There is always so much blood.”

  “You aren’t bleeding. There is no blood.”

  The room came back in pieces. Now the robes were white. And now only one. And it is not a robe, it is a white coat. Ray is sitting on a straight-backed chair close to the bed to my right, leaning in toward me, her elbows on her knees. She looks tired, worried, not angry. They did take me to the hospital then. They must have changed the rosewater for blood. The pieces fill in around Ray and the doctor standing over me on my left. Yes, this is a hospital room.

  “Isadora, you are not bleeding. You were hallucinating.”

  “Did I die?”

  “No, you had a psychotic episode. You are safe. You are not bleeding and you are not dead.”

  I still feel the cuts and the warmth of my own blood flowing.

  I licked my lips and brought my fingers to my tongue, just to check. No blood.

  “Isadora, look at your arms.”

  I was in a hospital gown, a sheet pulled up to my waist. Gingerly, not wanting to disturb the IV connection, I lifted my left arm, but there was no IV, nor in my right arm. I looked up and saw no bottles or IV bags hanging anywhere. The doctor managed a weak smile. She was fresh-faced, terribly young. She reached for my arm but Ray shook her head and she dropped her hand. “Look at your arms, Isadora.” I pulled up my sleeve and saw my skin, unmarked. But Dora hadn’t cut my arms. She cut my stomach. I lifted up the sheet and used it as cover while I pulled up the papery gown to reveal my midriff. No cuts. No blood.

  “She’ll be all right now. Could we be alone, please?”

  Baby doctor did not seem at all reluctant to leave. When the door closed behind her, Ray said, “Forgive me, Isadora. It was too soon. I thought you could handle it. But, of course, you did handle it. You brought Anna back to her family. Isadora, you were brilliant. I just wish the toll for you had not been so high.”

  “Not so high. I didn’t die.”

  “No, you didn’t die.” She unclasped and reclasped her hands in a quiet gesture of triumph and relief.

  “Ray, if I hadn’t…”

/>   “Hadn’t what, Isadora? Tell me what happened.”

  “Dora tried to kill me.”

  She didn’t say anything and for once I could not read her face.

  “Could she? If I hadn’t come back, would I have died? Would she have been the only one left?”

  “I don’t know. I would never have rested till I got you back.”

  “What if I weren’t…here anymore to get back? She said we were integrating and at first…but then I knew she was lying. She said the firstborn was dead. Has always been dead.”

  Ray studied me thoughtfully. She was not in her usual suit, but a silk shirt and blue V-neck sweater. A bit casual for her for a Friday. Ray dressed expensively, impeccably. She said as soon as she got money she spent it on the most expensive clothes she could afford, because she was tired of people mistaking her for a cleaning lady.

  The door opened and Leo stuck his head in. “I hear she’s back.”

  Ray nodded to him to come in and he did, closing the door behind him.

  “What happened?” I asked Leo.

  He stood at the foot of the bed, looking even worse than the last time I had seen him, except he was wearing a clean shirt. Maybe he kept an extra in his car. “You started crying and fell off your bar stool. I knew you hadn’t had enough tonic and lime for that, so Feeney and I hauled you out to the car and brought you here.”

  “Where is this?” The taste of blood was almost overpowering. I checked my tongue again with a finger. Ray noticed, but didn’t say anything.

  “The Nutley hospital.”

  “Is Anna—”

  “She’s just down the hall,” said Ray.

  “How is—”

  “They want to keep her here another day. She’s dehydrated. I brought Georgina with me.”

  Georgina Dobson was a child psychiatrist. She specialized in abused children. Ray brought her in a few years ago to work with June, Bethy and Sula. Because of their sessions with her, Bethy and June had fused. Sula and Bethy-June still saw her once in a while.

  A plump woman in a flowered dress walked in. “Hello. How are you?”

  “More embarrassed than anything,” I said to Georgina Dobson.

  “Speaking of…” Ray smiled at her and said, “Lieutenant, this is Dr. Dobson.”

  She nodded at Leo. “We met in the cafeteria this morning.” She came to the left of my bed and smiled warmly down at me.

  Georgina is about sixty-five with snow white gramma hair, she calls it, blue eyes that really do twinkle, and a gramma smile. “You did a wonderful, remarkable thing. Come in and talk to me about it sometime. Not therapy. We’ll just chat over a pot of tea.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  She squeezed both eyes in a double wink, smiled at Ray and Leo on her way out. Anna was in the best of care.

  I raised my head to focus on the disheveled lieutenant still poised awkwardly at the foot of my bed. “I’m sorry Leo. You shouldn’t have to take care of me.”

  “Cops get wounded on the job, kiddo, and we take care of ’em. Don’t apologize. You did good.”

  I tried to pull myself up to a sitting position. Ray pushed the button to raise the head of my bed. “How long have I been here?” The window seemed to glow rather brightly behind the closed blinds. “What time is it?”

  “Nine o’clock.”

  “But...” I looked at the window.

  “Nine o’clock in the morning.”

  “Oh, good grief! Where are my clothes? I have to go. I have to talk to Claudia.”

  “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Leo took a step forward. He was grinning at me. “I’m only the officer in charge. If I could just get a clue.”

  “Drive me back to New York and I’ll tell you.”

  Ray gave me a stern look. “I’ll check you out if you promise me two things. One, you will come to my office tomorrow morning at ten o’clock. We have some work to do.”

  “Tomorrow is Sunday.”

  “Then, make it eleven.”

  “Okay. What else?”

  “Eat something. Leo, get her something she can eat in the car.” Leo nodded. “Are you going to stay with her for awhile?”

  “As long as she lets me.”

  “All right, I’ll check you out. On my way down to see Anna.” Ray patted the bed next to my hand and left the room.

  “I’ll eat.” The blood taste was gone from my mouth. usually couldn’t eat till I’d had some strong coffee to wash it out. “Where are my clothes?” I asked again. I didn’t feel like throwing off the sheet and exposing my bottom, but before I could insist that Leo leave as well, we heard a timid rap on the door.

  Leo opened it to Miriam, who spared just a glance for the lieutenant. Word traveled fast that I had come out of bo-bo land, wherever the hell I’d been. Well, it was hell. The hell that can only be created with help from a person who wants you dead. The bad bitch and I had a showdown coming. It was time. Miriam, looking positively rosy, came close to the left side of my bed and reached for my hand. Hester was back and at the ready, offering her hand with the graciousness of at least a duchess. Hester loves this stuff.

  Miriam clasped Hester’s hand in both of hers, brought it slowly to her cheek and held it there, reverently. Then she placed her hand back on top of the sheet and without a single word, turned and left.

  “Russians! You gotta love ’em!”

  “Hester?” Leo asked.

  “Yep. A little worse for wear, I must say. What a freak show! Leo! Is that a blue shirt? Solving a case makes you really push the fashion envelope. Well, gent, you need to leave the room so a lady can get her britches on. Where are they? My clothes? Let me get dressed already!”

  He left grinning and Hester went to the closet. The only thing in there was a brown paper bag. She looked inside and wrinkled her nose.

  I suggested, Why don’t you let Cootie do this. He won’t care.

  “Oh, brilliant. The little grubmeister is good for something.”

  Cootie dressed and swaggered out. He found Leo and Ray in the hall engaged in low-voiced conversation. “Yo! Lawman, Ray-man-adana. The chicks want to get the show on the road, and I am your trav ling com PAN yun.”

  Ray waved us off saying, “I’ll take care of the paperwork. You go ahead. But tomorrow, eleven sharp.”

  “Right. See ya.”

  Leo and Cootie made their way down a couple of hallways following the EXIT signs to an elevator, past the reception desk and out through the glass doors to a parking lot.

  “Cooter! Are you going tell me what the hell is going on?”

  Cootie was behaving remarkably well, listening to me instead of charging ahead with his own agenda. He didn’t even demand a Coke. He felt bad about losing his grip along with everybody else.

  “Yeah, Lawman, but you gotta, like, give her a little slack.”

  “Like, I haven’t?”

  “Well, I’ll tell you, but she’s gotta handle something first. You’re going to have to sort of, like, wait in the lobby.”

  “Wait in what lobby?”

  “First, her lobby. She needs to go home and change clothes. The chicks aren’t like me. They don’t like grubbing it.”

  “You look fine. Feeney got there as soon as she hit the barroom floor and we picked her up right away. Five second rule, you know.”

  “I know. It’s a chick thing. Never put something on again till it’s been washed, ironed, disinfected, autoclaved, nuked and Simonized. If you get my meaning.”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  Cootie was never reluctant to eat and made no protest at all when Leo stopped at the first deli he saw on his way out of town. He came back to the car with a bag full of sandwiches, chips, coffee and Cokes, and three packages of Sunny Doodles.

  Chapter 24

  Leo dropped Cootie off at our apartment. I think he was glad to be rid of him. Cootie had talked his arm off and littered his front seat with sandwich wrappers, cellophane and empty soda cans. But now Leo knew what I knew and why I
had to talk to Claudia. He didn’t like the scenario Cootie narrated for him, but he understood it.

  As soon as I stepped into my apartment, I felt it. An anxiety that was almost overwhelming. More like a feeling of dread. I did not want to dwell on it or let it control me, so I forced myself to the phone, called information and got the number for the Heartwood Buddhist Center. I dialed it and asked to speak to the Abbess.

  When I hung up the receiver, it was suddenly clear to me what I was reacting to. I had had the same feeling in the asylum when they put me in a room for the first time with one-way glass and I sensed people watching me. The realization came too late. Before I could turn around my world went dark.

  We all woke up, but it was Hester who felt the hard, cold floor beneath her and the bag over her head, tape over her mouth, her hands tied behind her back and her feet bound—not for the first time, but the first time as an adult. Except for the sore spot on the back of her head, she didn’t seem to have any other bruises. She wiggled around and sat up. Conditioned not to make noise, knowing that would only bring on greater pain or a longer time tied up, locked up or whatever was being done to her at the moment, she kept still and waited. Hester had the body, but we were all there except Hawk—and Dora, whose habit is to take to the gyre at the first sign of real trouble. Her coming out with the snake was an anomaly, born out of a desire for self-preservation. She didn’t want to end up at the bottom of the well drowning in a couple feet of fetid water. So we owe her that one. Olive was the first to speak. What the hell is going on here?

  I assume that’s a rhetorical question, I said.

  More or less.

  Hester was trying her wrist bindings to see how tight they were. They were tight. She tried to loosen her feet, but they were tied securely as well. Then she lay back down on the floor and rubbed against the bag on her head. It was porous, but still, it was not so easy to breathe with her mouth taped. Again, we’d been here, or somewhere similar to here, before. It then occurred to me with a shock that I, Isadora, had not been here before. I had always been pushed back into the gyre, and one of the others had come forward. In that realization, I had a new respect and sympathy for my alters. They could all feel it.