Chicago Stories: West of Western (13 page)

Seraphy took the glasses to the kitchen and returned to the doorway, watching her patient sleep. God, she looked like a child of eight or ten. AIDS was eating her alive. Seraphy's headache had returned and she was furious. Sister Ann had some explaining to do.

Chapter 11

Maria had been
asleep for an hour and Seraphy was glancing through St. Augustine's
Confessions
when Sister Ann called.

“Hello.” She tossed the
Confessions
back onto the table where she'd found it.

“You can pick me up in half an hour.”

“You have some explaining to do.”

“I'll be waiting.”

Seraphy bared her teeth as she slid the phone back in her pocket. The woman was a pain in the ass. What was it about bloody do-gooders that they felt entitled to demand everyone else's time and consideration?

Maria didn't look like she'd wake any time soon. Seraphy's olfactory nerves had surrendered some time ago and no longer registered the smell of death lurking around her bed. Straightening the sheet, she carefully tucked it in and added a light blanket from the dresser. Though her nursing stint was nearly at an end and she really, really wanted out of there, she found herself reluctant to leave the girl. The place was a pit. There must be something someone could do. Anywhere would be better for her than this squalor, and Sister Ann sure as hell wasn't competent to take care of a dying child. Seraphy muttered as she pulled on her boots, then checked Maria again before leaving for the ER. She couldn't get the old biddy home soon enough and pry an explanation out of her.

At the hospital, Sister Ann teetered inside the glass entry, a vision in her dirty purple sweat suit and snowy white ankle cast, a mangy red coat draped casually around her shoulders. As soon as she spied the red Jeep, she shoved the door open with her crutch and was halfway to the curb before Seraphy could get out to help.

“Nice crutches,” Seraphy commented, holding the door open with her right hand and steadying Sister Ann with her left.

“Yeah.” Sister Ann balanced on one crutch, half lunged, half-hopped up into the Cherokee. She grunted as Seraphy shoved her not-too-gently back onto the seat, then reached down and hauled her left leg with its heavy cast up into the vehicle.

“Huh. You need a newer car. This Yuppie-mobile's a pain to get into. You get Maria fed all right?”

“You're welcome,” Seraphy said, “I like my car, thank you, and yes, I got the child fed. Just what do you think you're doing keeping her there? And why the hell didn't you tell me she was that sick?”

“Didn't have anybody else. No choice, why make things more complicated?” Sister Ann ignored Seraphy's anger, yanked the seat belt out as far as it would go, and clicked it fastened. “Blasted American car companies, never make these things long enough for real people,” she said. “Hand me those crutches and I'll slide ‘em into the back. We can talk back at the house. What are you waiting for? Get a move on.”

Temporarily speechless, Seraphy climbed in and slammed the door. Neither spoke on the short drive home. As they pulled up in front of her two-flat, Sister Ann reached for the door.

“No you don't,” said Seraphy. “I have a few questions and you owe me some answers.” She engaged the child lock.

“Lemme the fuck out. I got to see to Maria.”

“I get some answers or you stay right here till the cows come home,” Seraphy grinned and leaned back in her seat. Sister Ann released her seat belt and tried the door again.

“Yeah, okay. Inside, after I see Maria.”

“All right, but I'm not leaving without knowing what's going on.”

Once inside, Sister Ann headed for the bedroom without stopping to take off her coat. “She looks okay,” she said from the doorway and turned to her rescuer, still at the front door. “I'd offer you some coffee but I don't keep it.” Clumsy on her newly-acquired crutches, she made her way back toward the living room. When she reached the couch, she tossed the crutches on the floor and fell against the couch so hard it slid back and thudded against the wall.

“So,” she said, “how did you get on with Maria?”

“She drank the formula.”

“Take off your coat and sit down. She give you any trouble? She can be a pain.”

Seraphy hesitated, then shucked off her jacket and perched on the edge of a straight chair. After being outside, the living room still felt chilly and the stench was worse than ever.

“I think she's the bravest child I've ever seen. It took an hour for her to get the formula down, and it hurt her mouth every time the straw touched it.”

“Her lips split sometimes, and she's got sores in her mouth. That's from thrush and Kaposi's.” Sister Ann's voice was harsh and as she said the words, pain washed over her face, deepening the lines around her eyes and dragging her mouth down. “You know what that means? I hope you used the gloves?”

“I think I know and yes, I used the gloves and put everything but the glass in the red trash can.” So she does care, even if she doesn't want to show it, Seraphy thought, watching Sister Ann's face. Maybe even cares too much. That would explain the tough talk. She's trying to keep herself together. “How come she's here? She needs to be in a hospital. Look at this place. You can't take care of her. You don't have any meds, any equipment. Don't you even care that she could die?”

“
Could
die? Ha. She
is
dying.” Sister Ann pinned Seraphy with her gray nun's eyes. “Don't get self-righteous with me, Chickie. You don‘t know anything.” Sister Ann slumped back against the couch and all the air went out of her, instantly aging her ten years. “I found her on my doorstep one night the end of September. She said her father threw her out, literally threw her. It was hot that day, then a Canadian front came through and it turned cold after dark. Maria was half-frozen, bruised and coughing and I took her in just for the night, thinking I'd get her sorted out the next day. But next morning she was feverish and I couldn't wake her up, so I called 911 and they took her to Norwegian to the ER. They called me a couple of days later to tell me the girl could come home.” Biting her lips, she stared down at her feet as she replayed the scene in her mind. “Seems Maria hadn't told them anything.”

“Nice.” Seraphy noticed that Sister Ann's speech changed when she talked about Maria. Less confrontational and more cohesive, but filled with a bone-deep sadness. “And?”

Sister Ann was still concentrating on her feet. “When I went to bring her home . . .” she sighed, letting the memory go with the breath. “I, um, I knew something was wrong. I didn't even know her full name, but she'd come to me for help. I thought she probably had a fight with her parents or something like that. If it was more difficult, abuse or whatever, I know some people at Catholic Charities and I thought I'd give them a call and they'd take her off my hands.”

“Sounds right to me,” Seraphy said.

“But it wasn't that easy. I got to the hospital and the doctor pulled me into his office and said we had to talk, all very grim. He was angry that I hadn't told the paramedics the girl had AIDS, said I could have exposed everyone. He wanted to know who her doctor was, and what we were planning to do about the pregnancy.”

“Christ.”

“AIDS, and pregnant.” Sister Ann's face stilled and tears shimmered in her eyes as she recalled the room, the doctor, heard the words. “I didn't know what to tell him. I didn't know anything about the girl, not even her name. I didn't know why she'd come to my doorstep, but something told me I had to take care of her. I didn't stop to think, the words just came out of my mouth. I told him Maria had just come to me the day before, after her parents had been killed in a car accident, and I didn't know anything about her health. They thought I was her grandmother, and I didn't tell them different.”

“What? Were you nuts? You didn't know anything about her.”

“I knew enough. I knew the girl had AIDS, not HIV, but full-blown AIDS, and pneumonia, and God knew what else. I knew she was pregnant.”

“But still—”

“I knew then, the doctor made it crystal clear, that she was dying, and sooner rather than later. And most of all, I knew she had nowhere else to go and had come to me for sanctuary.” Sister Ann paused and took a deep breath. “I had no choice.”

“What do you mean, no choice?”

“You know what that means, sanctuary? She came to me for
sanctuary
. If you know anything about that, you know I couldn't turn her away.” She sighed and buried her face in her hands. “I didn't know then how hard it would be.”

“But how—you can't—you're not a nurse. You don't even have AIDS meds—anti-virals, any of that stuff.”

“No. No reason to.” Sister Ann looked up. “The doctor told me Maria was very close to death, too many months of malnutrition and AIDS without any treatment—her lungs are gone, her liver's shot, and her kidneys. She's got the kind of Kaposi's that eats you from the inside.” The old woman moved restlessly, straightening her good leg. “He told me it was impossible, but they'd do what they could, wanted me to sign permission to treat and so on, and I did. But when she woke up, Maria fought the nurses and wouldn't accept treatment, said it's against her religion. She was crying, begging to leave.” Her hands fluttered helplessly. “So I tore up the permission papers, told the hospital we were leaving, and brought her home.”

Seraphy got up and walked around, visualizing the scene at the hospital. The sick girl begging to leave, confronted by frustrated, angry doctors. A defiant Sister Ann looking like the neighborhood bag lady and probably snarling like some left-over 1970s revolutionary. Defending her young.

“Okay,” she stopped pacing and turned. “I got a taste of her stubbornness. No hospital. But surely there are social services available to help?”

“Obviously you've never been poor and alone, Chickie,” Sister Ann chuckled. “Those services can be more harmful than helpful in cases like Maria's.”

“Harmful?”

“Yeah.” Sister Ann lunged forward and used the crutches to haul herself up to a standing position. She stood swaying. “So I checked Maria out of the hospital, and she seemed to get a bit better, but refused to take any more meds.”

“She's, what? Thirteen?” Seraphy confronted her from across the room. “She's a child.”

“Fourteen. Old enough to know what she believes. Listen. She told me she'd known she was sick for a while but managed not to let her parents know about that or about the pregnancy. It was Tito, she said, and the same fucking child molester gave her AIDS. She claims he's her one true love and all that shit. I didn't tell her he's dead. The bastard couldn't care less when she went to him for help, denied he had HIV, claimed she must have gotten it from somebody else. Said he liked riding bareback and if she got knocked up he couldn't help it, he was so
manly
.” Sister Ann hung on her crutches like old clothes on a clothesline, her face gray and worn, her eyes flashing hatred. “Manly!” She spit.

“Holy shit.” Seraphy's mouth dropped. “Tito?” Wasn't that the name of the Lobo shot on the sidewalk? “The same Tito that got shot?”

“Yes, some good Samaritan took care of that little problem. But Maria . . . it gets worse. Maria was just hanging on, telling everybody she had the flu or whatever, but she was pregnant and eventually her sibs noticed and told her parents. Her father's a piece of work, runs one of those weird storefront churches. He threw her out.”

“He what?” Seraphy, daughter of a man who adored his daughters, couldn't believe that could happen. Maria must have misunderstood. “I don't believe it. Nobody would—”

Falling back onto the couch again, Sister Ann kicked at the crutches. “Threw. Her. Out. Literally picked her up and tossed her out the door, ranting some bit from the Bible about cutting off the hand, etc.”

“Jesus H. Christ! And she came to you?” Seraphy felt pinpricks flash across her chest. She wanted to find the bastard and kill him. She suddenly felt new appreciation for the ex-nun. “And you took her in? Knowing she had AIDS?”

“She came to me eventually, and I took her in,” she nodded. “What else could I do? Pregnant girl at the door? Cold night and nowhere else to go? It's not exactly the first time something like that happened. Remember Bethlehem?”

Seraphy blinked.

“It hasn't been easy. Lots of complications. Maria won't go to the doctor again. The doctor at Norwegian told me the baby was dying. Maria's dying. She's only got a few weeks at the most, probably less. A lot less if the baby dies or she goes into labor.”

“What about her mother? She's a minor. Her mother could sign her into care.”

“You have no idea what these people are like,” Sister Ann said, shaking her head. “I tried to talk to them. Her father called her a whore, and her mother is completely subject to him. Even if that weren't the case, that sect they belong to forbids what they call ‘interference with God's will.’ Maria's a believer, too.”

“She's still a minor. We can go to the courts and get an order,” Seraphy said, not noticing the ‘we.’

“Cool it, Chickie.” The old woman shook her head. “Think before you jump. If I go to court, the first thing they'll do is take Maria away from me and either send her home to her parents or, if they still won't take her, and they won't, dump her in a juvenile facility. Big ward, alone among rows of strangers. Clean, decent, competent, impersonal care. Not the care Maria needs most. She's dying, Seraphy, and she wants to die where there's someone to love her.”

“What about the baby? Don't we have to try to save the baby?” Seraphy paced back and forth as she talked, too shaken to stand still.

“The baby's got AIDS and it's barely alive. If it's still alive. As Maria's liver and kidneys shut down, so will the baby's. If they took him by Caesarian now, he'd die. And Maria wouldn't survive the surgery.”

Seraphy stopped, facing Sister Ann. “So what can we do?” She swallowed. “What do you want me to do?”

Sister Ann smiled a smile that held no joy. “Since Tito's already dead, there's nothing you
can
do, Seraphy Pelligrini. As the fathers said, watch and pray. And stay out of my way.”