Part 17 (2/2)

The Italian woman had a ma.s.s of tight black curls, starting at her forehead, that rose in a mountainous pompadour and cascaded down her back. Whenever she moved, the huge arrangement of hair moved with her, as if made of stiff black paper.

The woman looked at me and giggled. ”Why are you here?” She didn't wait for an answer. ”I'm here on account of my French-Canadian mother-in-law.” She giggled again. ”My husband knows I can't stand her, and still he said she could come and visit us, and when she came, my tongue stuck out of my head, I couldn't stop it. They ran me into Emergency and then they put me up here,” she lowered her voice, ”along with the nuts.” Then she said, ”What's the matter with you?”

I turned her my full face, with the bulging purple and green eye. ”I tried to kill myself.”

The woman stared at me. Then, hastily, she s.n.a.t.c.hed up a movie magazine from her bed table and pretended to be reading.

The swinging door opposite my bed flew open, and a whole troop of young boys and girls in white coats came in, with an older, gray-haired man. They were all smiling with bright, artificial smiles. They grouped themselves at the foot of my bed.

”And how are you feeling this morning, Miss Greenwood?”

I tried to decide which one of them had spoken. I hate saying anything to a group of people. When I talk to a group of people I always have to single out one and talk to him, and all the while I am talking I feel the others are peering at me and taking unfair advantage. I also hate people to ask cheerfully how you are when they know you're feeling like h.e.l.l and expect you to say ”Fine.”

”I feel lousy.”

”Lousy. Hmm,” somebody said, and a boy ducked his head with a little smile. Somebody else scribbled something on a clipboard. Then somebody pulled a straight, solemn face and said, ” And why do you feel lousy?”

I thought some of the boys and girls in that bright group might well be friends of Buddy Willard. They would know I knew him, and they would be curious to see me, and afterward they would gossip about me among themselves. I wanted to be where n.o.body I knew could ever come.

”I can't sleep...”

They interrupted me. ”But the nurse says you slept last night.” I looked around the crescent of fresh, strange faces.

”I can't read.” I raised my voice. ”I can't eat.” It occurred to me I'd been eating ravenously ever since I came to.

The people in the group had turned from me and were murmuring in low voices to each other. Finally, the gray-haired man stepped out.

”Thank you, Miss Greenwood. You will be seen by one of the staff doctors presently.”

Then the group moved on to the bed of the Italian woman.

”And how are you feeling today, Mrs....” somebody said, and the name sounded long and full of I's, like Mrs. Tomolillo.

Mrs. Tomolillo giggled. ”Oh, I'm fine, doctor. I'm just fine.” Then she lowered her voice and whispered something I couldn't hear. One or two people in the group glanced in my direction. Then somebody said, ” All right, Mrs. Tomolillo,” and somebody stepped out and pulled the bed curtain between us like a white wall.

I sat on one end of a wooden bench in the gra.s.sy square between the four brick walls of the hospital. My mother, in her purple cartwheel dress, sat at the other end. She had her head propped in her hand, index finger on her cheek and thumb under her chin.

Mrs. Tomolillo was sitting with some dark-haired laughing Italian on the next bench down. Every time my mother moved, Mrs. Tomolillo imitated her. Now Mrs. Tomolillo was sitting with her index finger on her cheek and her thumb under her chin, and her head tilted wistfully to one side.

”Don't move,” I told my mother in a low voice. ”That woman's imitating you.”

My mother turned to glance round, but quick as a wink, Mrs. Tomolillo dropped her fat white hands in her lap and started talking vigorously to her friends.

”Why no, she's not,” my mother said. ”She's not even paying any attention to us.”

But the minute my mother turned round to me again, Mrs. Tomolillo matched the tips of her fingers together the way my mother had just done and cast a black, mocking look at me.

The lawn was white with doctors.

All the time my mother and I had been sitting there, in the narrow cone of sun that shone down between the tall brick walls, doctors had been coming up to me and introducing themselves. ”I'm Doctor Soandso, I'm Doctor Soandso.”

Some of them looked so young I knew they couldn't be proper doctors, and one of them had a queer name that sounded just like Doctor Syphilis, so I began to look out for suspicious, fake names, and sure enough, a dark-haired fellow who looked very like Doctor Gordon, except that he had black skin where Doctor Gordon's skin was white, came up and said, ”I'm Doctor Pancreas,” and shook my hand.

After introducing themselves, the doctors all stood within listening distance, only I couldn't tell my mother that they were taking down every word we said without their hearing me, so I leaned over and whispered into her ear.

My mother drew back sharply.

”Oh, Esther, I wish you would cooperate. They say you don't cooperate. They say you won't talk to any of the doctors or make anything in Occupational Therapy....”

”I've got to get out of here,” I told her meaningly. ”Then I'd be all right. You got me in here,” I said. ”You get me out.”

I thought if only I could persuade my mother to get me out of the hospital I could work on her sympathies, like that boy with brain disease in the play, and convince her what was the best thing to do.

To my surprise, my mother said, ” All right, I'll try to get you out--even if only to a better place. If I try to get you out,” she laid a hand on my knee, ”promise you'll be good?”

I spun round and glared straight at Doctor Syphilis, who stood at my elbow taking notes on a tiny, almost invisible pad. ”I promise,” I said in a loud, conspicuous voice.

The Negro wheeled the food cart into the patients' dining room. The Psychiatric Ward at the hospital was very small--just two corridors in an L-shape, lined with rooms, and an alcove of beds behind the OT shop, where I was, and a little area with a table and a few seats by a window in the corner of the L, which was our lounge and dining room.

Usually it was a shrunken old white man that brought our food, but today it was a Negro. The Negro was with a woman in blue stiletto heels, and she was telling him what to do. The Negro kept grinning and chuckling in a silly way.

Then he carried a tray over to our table with three lidded tin tureens on it, and started banging the tureens down. The woman left the room, locking the door behind her. All the time the Negro was banging down the tureens and then the dinted silver and the thick, white china plates, he gawped at us with big, rolling eyes.

I could tell we were his first crazy people.

n.o.body at the table made a move to take the lids off the tin tureens, and the nurse stood back to see if any of us would take the lids off before she came to do it. Usually Mrs. Tomolillo had taken the lids off and dished out everybody's food like a little mother, but then they sent her home, and n.o.body seemed to want to take her place.

I was starving, so I lifted the lid off the first bowl.

”That's very nice of you, Esther,” the nurse said pleasantly. ”Would you like to take some beans and pa.s.s them round to the others?”

I dished myself out a helping of green string beans and turned to pa.s.s the tureen to the enormous red-headed woman at my right. This was the first time the red-headed woman had been allowed up to the table. I had seen her once, at the very end of the L-shaped corridor, standing in front of an open door with bars on the square, inset windows.

She had been yelling and laughing in a rude way and slapping her thighs at the pa.s.sing doctors, and the white-jacketed attendant who took care of the people in that end of the ward was leaning against the hall radiator, laughing himself sick.

The red-headed woman s.n.a.t.c.hed the tureen from me and upended it on her plate. Beans mountained up in front of her and scattered over onto her lap and onto the floor like stiff, green straws.

”Oh, Mrs. Mole!” the nurse said in a sad voice. ”I think you better eat in your room today.”

And she returned most of the beans to the tureen and gave it to the person next to Mrs. Mole and led Mrs. Mole off. All the way down the hall to her room, Mrs. Mole kept turning round and making leering faces at us, and ugly, oinking noises.

The Negro had come back and was starting to collect the empty plates of people who hadn't dished out any beans yet.

”We're not done,” I told him. ”You can just wait.”

”Mah, mah!” The Negro widened his eyes in mock wonder. He glanced round. The nurse had not yet returned from locking up Mrs. Mole. The Negro made me an insolent bow. ”Miss Mucky-Muck,” he said under his breath.

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