Part 17 (1/2)

He was wearing a white coat, and I could see a stethoscope poking out of his pocket. I thought it must be somebody I knew dressed up as a doctor.

I had meant to cover my legs if anybody came in, but now I saw it was too late, so I let them stick out, just as they were, disgusting and ugly.

”That's me,” I thought. ”That's what I am.”

”You remember me, don't you, Esther?”

I squinted at the boy's face through the crack of my good eye. The other eye hadn't opened yet, but the eye doctor said it would be all right in a few days.

The boy looked at me as if I were some exciting new zoo animal and he was about to burst out laughing.

”You remember me, don't you, Esther?” He spoke slowly, the way one speaks to a dull child. ”I'm George Bakewell. I go to your church. You dated my roommate once at Amherst.”

I thought I placed the boy's face then. It hovered dimly at the rim of memory--the sort of face to which I would never bother to attach a name.

”What are you doing here?”

”I'm houseman at this hospital.”

How could this George Bakewell have become a doctor so suddenly? I wondered. He didn't really know me, either. He just wanted to see what a girl who was crazy enough to kill herself looked like.

I turned my face to the wall.

”Get out,” I said. ”Get the h.e.l.l out and don't come back.”

”I want to see a mirror.”

The nurse hummed busily as she opened one drawer after another, stuffing the new underclothes and blouses and skirts and pajamas my mother had bought me into the black patent leather overnight case.

”Why can't I see a mirror?”

I had been dressed in a sheath, striped gray and white, like mattress ticking, with a wide, s.h.i.+ny red belt, and they had propped me up in an armchair.

”Why can't I?”

”Because you better not.” The nurse shut the lid of the overnight case with a little snap.

”Why?”

”Because you don't look very pretty.”

”Oh, just let me see.”

The nurse sighed and opened the top bureau drawer. She took out a large mirror in a wooden frame that matched the wood of the bureau and handed it to me.

At first I didn't see what the trouble was. It wasn't a mirror at all, but a picture.

You couldn't tell whether the person in the picture was a man or a woman, because their hair was shaved off and sprouted in bristly chicken-feather tufts all over their head. One side of the person's face was purple, and bulged out in a shapeless way, shading to green along the edges, and then to a sallow yellow. The person's mouth was pale brown, with a rose-colored sore at either corner.

The most startling thing about the face was its supernatural conglomeration of bright colors.

I smiled.

The mouth in the mirror cracked into a grin.

A minute after the crash another nurse ran in. She took one look at the broken mirror, and at me, standing over the blind, white pieces, and hustled the young nurse out of the room.

”Didn't I tell tell you,” I could hear her say. you,” I could hear her say.

”But I only...”

”Didn't I tell tell you!” you!”

I listened with mild interest. Anybody could drop a mirror. I didn't see why they should get so stirred up.

The other, older nurse came back into the room. She stood there, arms folded, staring hard at me.

”Seven years' bad luck.”

”What?”

”I said,” the nurse raised her voice, as if speaking to a deaf person, ”seven years' bad luck. ”seven years' bad luck. ” ”

The young nurse returned with a dustpan and brush and began to sweep up the glittery splinters.

”That's only a superst.i.tion,” I said then.

”Huh!” The second nurse addressed herself to the nurse on her hands and knees as if I wasn't there. ”At you-know-where they'll take care of her!” her!”

From the back window of the ambulance I could see street after familiar street funneling off into a summery green distance. My mother sat on one side of me, and my brother on the other.

I had pretended I didn't know why they were moving me from the hospital in my home town to a city hospital, to see what they would say.

”They want you to be in a special ward,” my mother said. ”They don't have that sort of ward at our hospital.”

”I liked it where I was.”

My mother's mouth tightened. ”You should have behaved better, then.”

”What?”

”You shouldn't have broken that mirror. Then maybe they'd have let you stay.”

But of course I knew the mirror had nothing to do with it.

I sat in bed with the covers up to my neck.

”Why can't I get up? I'm not sick.”

”Ward rounds,” the nurse said. ”You can get up after ward rounds.” She shoved the bed curtains back and revealed a fat young Italian woman in the next bed.