Harry Sue (20 page)

Beau says, when an old con just up and dies, they handcuff his wrists together and put him in leg irons. They wheel him on a stretcher down the cell block, put him in an ambulance, and don't declare him dead until they get to the hospital.

They do it that way so they won't have to count him as dying in prison, see? It makes their records look better.

Most cons don't have funerals. The hacks just take a picture of the body with the handcuffs and leg irons still on. Then they bury him in the prison graveyard, unless somebody cares enough to collect him.

It could not have been that way with Garnett. I
just know it. There would have been too much blood. Young blood. He was only twenty-seven when he got shanked by a tat-sleeved shower hawk.

And it was my fault, too, because I should have told the judge that my dad had no impulse control. He was probably bumpin' his gums all over the place soon as they locked him in his cell. He didn't know how to collect road dogs. Probably what he did was nut up and eyeball a hack or drop a dime on the first con who got in his face. Poor Garnett.

And Mary Bell. She wouldn't have been so tired all the time if she didn't have a child to account for. Swing shift wouldn't have made her crank up if she ever got some decent sleep without a little crumb snatcher pestering her all the time to read and play games and all.

Those were the thoughts that haunted me when I couldn't sleep. They rattled after me in Granny's old house until I thought I was the one who would nut up.

After J-Cat hit me, dreams of Garnett and Mary Bell chased me all over, like two squirrels scampering up and down the walnut trees back of the house, only this time I couldn't escape them. I couldn't wake up. Morning wouldn't come.

And even after I began to hear, I still couldn't move. I still couldn't see. I didn't know they were keeping me that way for a reason, so my poor bones
could pull back together one more time, so my swollen head would stay still.

I thought,
So this is my punishment.

And it seemed right that I was struck down.

I couldn't keep track of anything: not time, not the people who were always coming or going, not even the pain that flared up like a match being held to different parts of my body.

I was in the special-handling unit. Shoe. The hole. No light. No words. Nothing but pain. Crazy maker. Nut up. Bug. Ding wing. Category J.

For once, I didn't fight it. I just gave up.

First voice I could recognize was Mrs. Mead's.

“I'll be fine right here, Anna,” she said. “The natural light is what makes it so nice to knit. I've done the death watch before, dear. My husband had four heart attacks before he finally succumbed. I can tell you from experience that a constant stream of communication is what pulls them back from the void. Harry Sue and I are going to have a little chat. About flowers.”

… I'm partial to natives myself, dear, but there are some non-invasive exotics that I feel are truly worth sharing, particularly when you're gravely ill.

My, how she went on. Sometimes, J-Cat was in the room. I could feel her touching me. I couldn't
stop it. She used some kind of cream, hot and thick, and rubbed it on my hands, pressing until she found the space between my bones and my muscles, pressing until I wanted to scream.

But afterward I paid attention to how good it felt, clean and free, like I was floating on a cloud.

… and I've discovered a whole new way of enjoying peonies.
Paeonia suffruticosa.
Tree peonies! They have stiff woody stems. No more lying on the ground to bloom. They'll stand up straight and tall. I've ordered three fuchsia sunsets for the garden….

There was a new buzzing noise in the room, above my head, different from the machines that whirred around me.

And Baba's voice: “It will be too bright, Anna, you can't leave it on all night.”

“I want her to see it in her dreams. I want her to know I'm communicating with her.”

… Fortunately I was able to dig them up and overwinter them last year. But I'll never put them in the basement again. Good heavens, the earwigs! I thought it was an invasion…. No, all potted geraniums will remain in the garage from now on….

And then I had the strangest dream. Aunt Em came to visit. Only she looked just like my grandmother on my mom's side, who died before Mom was sent up.

I wanted to ask her, “Aunt Em, would you still take Dorothy back if you knew the real
story? About what she did to the witches and all? Would it matter that Dorothy didn't mean for it to happen?”

But it didn't seem right to upset her. And anyway, I couldn't make the words.

… It's always potatoes and peas on Good Friday. Any sooner than that and they'll rot in the ground. And if you didn't set your garlic in November, don't bother, dear. All you'll get is a lot of pretty top growth and a bulb the size of a lima bean….

And then Homer was at my ear. “Lower, Baba,” he said. “This is just between me and Harry Sue.”

I felt his curls brush my cheek.
Who would push his hair back now?

“You know I hate hospitals, Harry Sue, but I'm your dog, aren't I? Not just on the outs, but on the inside, too. Open your eyes, Harry Sue. That J-Cat's left a message for you.”

… There is nothing more frustrating than blossom rot. I've spent more of my mad money than I care to count on those home remedies. In the end, I've given up on the tender things. What you need are the rot-resistant varieties, my dear….

One morning, I felt the heat of her words on my face … and I smelled sunshine … and when I opened my eyes, I was blinded by a brilliant light.

And the thought came to me:

This is it. My eternal reward.

But then I began to focus. The hospital room came into view.

Over my bed hung letters, hot, flashing, orange neon letters. They spelled out:

LIVE

Most cons would say the time I did at Ottawa County General and after, at St. Mary Free Bed's Rehabilitation Hospital, was a catnap. Six months. That's not even serious change. But that was hard time, Fish, learning things any crumb snatcher should know. Like how to twirl spaghetti on your fork and how to pronounce words with
ch
or
ph
in them.

Living in that bed, it seemed like I was taking J-Cat's cure whether I wanted to or not. I was going back in time to before the fall. Like I woke up and I was five again, learning to put sentences together, learning to add numbers, learning to read all over again.

Life on the outs went on at a furious pace while
I lay in the hospital having the wires in my head uncrossed. Sink and Dip went home to mommy, Granny got stripped of her license and a catnap for neglect. She's doing all her time at the minimum-security facility down in Brownfield on account of her age.

Needless to say, I won't be visiting.

J-Cat lost her job as a home health aide for the county due to a history of disrespecting authority, and Baba's term as a substitute art teacher was up in the spring. So they decided to go into the child-care business together.

“I wanted to call it Deadwood Day Care, seeing as we got gimps and half-wits from front to back,” she told me on her daily visit to make me practice flexion and build up the sorry excuse for muscles that were left in my body. “But Baba said it wasn't a good marketing concept.”

And when he's not thinking up inventions, Homer Price comes down the ladder to serve good time with J-Cat and Baba in exchange for teaching the crumb snatchers all about the trajectory of a spitball.

Remember when I thought my poor old heart had broken for good on that sprint over to Baba's house? Well, I was wrong. That was the water gushing out of Moonie Pie's swollen lungs. I guess I didn't burn through all my luck during that fall. Either that, or knowing the circumstances of my crazy
life, the celestial beings have given me more than my fair share. Soon as I'm ready, I'm due back at the Marshfield EMS to get me another certificate.

When the time came for me to get sprung from St. Mary's, I got a couple of sound offers for a place to flop. Ariel Dinkins said she'd take me in until Mary Bell had done her time, but so did J-Cat and Baba.

“I won't bring in as much as a day-care kid,” I warned them.

“We got a mind you can work off the rest,” J-Cat said. “Helping Baba in the kitchen.”

“Telling stories to the children,” Baba said, putting his arms around me. “They don't like Anna so much. She gets off track.”

What with all the medical bills and the doctor visits, the social worker said it would be easier if they got legal guardianship over me until Mary Bell was back in the picture.

So as soon as they thought I could make the trip, we headed north to Gillikins, the joint that Homer and his girlfriends at the Wisconsin State Lottery had discovered was where Mary Bell was doing her time.

As you might imagine, I had mixed feelings about seeing Mary Bell. Seems like everybody had an opinion about what she'd been up to. I guess I didn't know who to believe. The time had come for me to get my information from the source. Every con and conette gets to make a list of the people who can visit. Fish, don't even bother adding those who cannot respect authority. I'm no expert in that department myself, but there is a look in the Harry Sue catalog for such instances. I've only called upon it once or twice since it seems to want to slide right off my face. It's a mixture of fear and stupidity with a little awe around the edges. It is a look that says,
Yes, indeed, O great and powerful Oz!

I figured seeing Mary Bell was worth conjuring up the look.

I had never seen a prison for real, and I have to say that Gillikins and my imagination did not keep company on the subject. As we drove up, it looked like a big school or a hospital, with bushes and flowers and signs telling you where to park. But then, schools don't have fifteen-foot fences with razor ribbon hanging all over them, either.

And when we went inside, it reminded me more of an airport than a prison. Not that I've ever seen an airport for real, but I do have a television.

“Now don't forget to pee right before you go in,” J-Cat said for the fourteenth time. “They're not gonna let you pee once you get in there. If you got to pee, it's over.”

I don't really have any problems in that area, so I figured she was talking more to herself than to me. Baba had everything together in a file: my birth certificate, their foster-care papers and driver's licenses. Then there were the papers Mary Bell needed to sign
and
all the papers we had to fill out just to get in. Seems like it would've been easier to commit a crime.

Soon as we walked in the main entrance, Baba took my hand and we went up to a counter where a lady hack made sure everything was in order.

“Thank you,” she said, stamping one of the
papers and handing the file back to Baba. “Have a nice visit.”

She handed us a key on a chain with a big piece of wood on the end. “Everything in the lockers,” she said, “except two dollars in change.”

Baba already had the two dollars in his pants pocket. We could use that for the vending machines, he said. He found the locker with the same number as our piece of wood.

“Empty those pockets, Anna,” he told J-Cat.

“I know the rules!”

After that, we found three plastic chairs against the wall and waited in silence. You didn't have to be there long to know the drill. The room was filled with waiting people: old people, crumb snatchers, T-Jones. Every so often the lady at the counter would say, “Visitor for Christina Switt will proceed to the security checkpoint.”

Some group or other would pull themselves together and go to the metal detectors at the far end of the room. The rest of us shifted around a lot. I just couldn't get comfortable. J-Cat had bought me a new green blouse and shorts for the occasion, and they were making me itch something terrible. Every person I looked at, from the tired dusty visitors waiting to go through the metal detector to the man who was repairing the vending machine in the waiting area, might have seen Mary Bell since I had. Seemed like they were all looking at me funny.
Would she?

“Visitors for Mary Bell Clotkin will proceed to the security checkpoint.”

Baba took my hand and squeezed it. We stood up. The metal detector wasn't so hard. We put our change in a cup and went through. Then a man waved a wand over us just to make sure that machine hadn't missed anything. Big glass doors opened with a swoosh and we were in another room. Seemed like everything here was made of glass. I could see half a dozen hacks behind glass in a room filled with computers and other machines.

“Will you look at that,” J-Cat said, pinching my arm. “It's like command central.”

We had talked about this part in the car. Baba had talked, mostly to J-Cat.

“They have good reason to search us, Anna.
Your
job is to do as they ask.”

“But I'm ticklish.”

“Then don't come in.”

“I'll behave,” she said, crossing her arms and hunching down in her seat. I meant right then to tell her about the “Yes, indeed, O great and powerful Oz” look, but she turned up the volume on the radio and we went on to something else.

I didn't like the lady hack touching me one bit, but it didn't matter so much when I told myself why. I'd had a fair amount of practice pretending I was somewhere else when the place I was seemed unbearable. So I let that guard look into my shoes
and socks and then run her hands up and down my legs and my sides.