The Heroines (8 page)

T
hey moved me into the Unit that night. I awoke the next morning to the sound of curtain rings being flung back, and the sun stabbing my eyes. Groggy and dry-mouthed, I had no idea where I was. Four layers of white and pale green sheets enveloped me. A thin white curtain encircled my bed. As I always did, I touched my breasts to see if they’d grown overnight. Then everything came flooding back, Mother’s betrayal foremost. A sharp pain pierced my throat as I caught my breath, about to cry. I felt absolutely bereft, as if a spirit had possessed me, then escaped with my soul. My head and neck ached from Conor’s rough capture, and my inner thighs and tailbone were horse-sore. The faces of the cop, doctor, and the nurses who had pitied and stared at me the night before flooded my head. I pulled the soft sheets to my chin, shuddering to think that they had seen my body in its underdeveloped state. As attention-starved as I may have felt, this was not the notice I sought.

Somebody pulled aside the sheet hanging around my bed, then hurried to clumsily tie back the sheer gold curtains in front of the windows. She spun around, hands on her hips, and I read her tag and saw her name was Florence, and she was a nurse’s aide. The creases around her mouth and eyes made her look as if she were chronically inhaling a cigarette. She was skinny as a twelve-year-old, and when she smiled, a gold cap flashed where one of her canines should be. A turquoise hairnet held back frosted hair, dark at the roots.

“Feeling better?” She had a deep, masculine voice and a Southern accent.

I shrugged, deciding to pretend to have lost the power of speech. Once, at theater camp, we’d had to carry on a conversation for ten minutes without speaking. I’d kept going for forty. I licked my dry lips and reached for a cup of water on the nightstand. I was utterly parched.

“I suppose you know the good news, darlin’,” she said. “Your rape test come back negative.”

I bugged out my eyes in a
Duh!
expression. Their very suspicion that Conor might have raped me enraged me. He wasn’t like that. My understanding of rape had advanced somewhat since a friend and I had looked up its definition in the dictionary: the taking of a woman by force. I’d figured out since then that sex was involved. I might have been “taken by force,” but I was still a virgin. But what perplexed me more was that I’d found something thrilling in the abduction. However much Conor had frightened me, my time in the woods with him was paradise compared to what had happened to me since. I’d actually felt moments of real happiness, riding on Conor’s horse. I wondered if this was the sort of happiness Franny sought, but it seemed like she was looking for something else, something inside herself.

“You ain’t surprised. Well, I wasn’t neither.” She walked over and released a tray from the side of my bed and lowered it in front of me. She smelled like cigarettes and lemony Jean Naté bath splash. Her long fingernails were painted tangerine. “I done told them you didn’t have the look. Seen plenty of little girls who met the boogeyman in the woods. Those girls was spooked, all right.”

I wanted to ask her about those girls. Like most children of the era, I’d been well instructed not to take candy from strangers, to beware of the boogeyman. Mother’s prohibition against nighttime woods-wandering had some of that flavor. But they were all wildly vague warnings. Nobody ever showed up offering me Dum-Dum suckers or Snickers bars. The very notion of an adult handing out candy when it wasn’t Halloween seemed far-fetched. They never told you what this odd stranger wanted in exchange for the confection. I always pictured the bad man in a black hat, wearing a somber suit, driving a shiny sedan. There’d never been a Celtic-king-on-horseback version.

Florence picked up my arm with her cold, leathery hand and flipped up my wrist to take my pulse. I could see that she was studying my palm. She coughed into her other hand and wiped it on her pants leg. After a minute of glancing at my palm and at her Mickey Mouse watch, Florence dropped my wrist and mumbled, “Interesting.” She went to the door and rolled in a food cart, then pulled a tray from the middle shelf. “Had to do them tests, though. Your mama’s just like any mama. Wanted to be sure no man done got inside her baby.”

It was getting harder for me to maintain my silence. For one, I wasn’t a baby. For two, my mother was in no way like any other mother. I glowered at Florence as she lowered the tray onto the shelf in front of me.

“Old silent treatment, huh?” With a loud
tsk,
she rearranged the items on my tray: a little house-shaped milk carton, a Styrofoam cup of juice, and a bowl of cornflakes. “If you know what’s good for you, you won’t be playing dumb for no Nurse Eleanor. She loves provoking the silent ones. Then she can just poke ‘em with a needle and really keep ‘em quiet. Dr. Keller’s different. He’ll invent a diagnosis, especially if you won’t talk to him. The next thing you know”—she made a circle with her hands and placed them on her head—”it’s zappity-doo-dah!”

“Are they going to shock me?”

“Not yet, but could be. If you don’t play it right.”

I couldn’t tell if she was telling the truth. She opened my carton of milk and poured it over the cornflakes as if I were two years old. The orange flakes disappeared in the milk, then floated back up, each cupping a drop of milk. I watched them slowly sink beneath the milk, taking my appetite with them.

“This is like the holding pen, see?” She made circles of her hands, then looked through them as if they were binoculars. She seemed to think the mime was necessary, that English wasn’t enough to get the message through my head. “Observation. They’re waiting to see if you try something funny.”

“Like stab somebody with a plastic spoon?”

“Plan on sticking with that Celtic king story?”

“You’re not even a nurse.”

“Florence been here longer than all them nurses and doctors combined. They used to call all the girls hysterical. Now they’re all schizo. I seen the way the wind blows. Keller’s in around two hours a week. Eleanor’s the one calling the shots. She’s World War II. He’s capital
M
Modern. Back in her day, they locked the crazy soldiers up and the nurses sat on the other side of the bars, tossing them food every few hours. He’s all about making sure you’re here for as long as your insurance pays.”

I wasn’t sure what my insurance would cover, so all I could say was, “I’m not crazy.”

“I know you ain’t crazy. Bet you a million bucks so does Keller, especially if your mama has high-end insurance. But you gotta play the game. Don’t get all in a huff. Eleanor, she don’t believe in talk therapy and all that. She just thinks y’all are just spoiled. Need a good kick in the ass is—”

“Florence!” A nurse stood at the door, tapping her watch face with a pen. She’d snuck up on us with her thick-soled nurse shoes. She was stout, with round full breasts and plump biceps. Tight salt-and-pepper curls were pinned beneath a white cadet’s cap. She wore a silver pin on her lapel that read “U.S.,” and her nametag said “Eleanor.” Her authoritative vibe immediately repelled me, yet she had the pudginess of an old fat cop, not a fit soldier. “The other girls are waiting.” She bustled across the room and readjusted the curtains so they hung with matching swoops. “Back in the Army, Penny, even the curtains had to be regulation!” She laughed as if this were a great joke, her false cheer readily transparent. I wondered immediately why she was trying to butter me up.

Florence ran to her cart and backed out the door, giving me a big wink, her eye disappearing into her wrinkled skin. Escaping Conor suddenly felt like a cakewalk compared to this place. Florence was right. I’d have to tell the adults what they wanted to hear. Since I’d left Conor in the woods, nothing had happened on my terms. I’d been rebelling in a stupid way. If I didn’t wise up, I’d never see Conor again, and I could be stuck here a long time.

“Is Florence a former patient?” I asked.

Eleanor laughed, caught off guard. “You’re feeling better.”

“Much!” I reached for my cup of juice. A healthy appetite probably signified a healthy head around there. The juice was made from powder, pulpless and sugary Tang. I gulped it down. “Is my mother here?”

“She’s speaking with Dr. Keller at the moment.”

“What about?”

Eleanor wrapped a blood pressure band around my arm and pumped the rubber bulb. The band tightened, pulling my arm hair. “About what?”

Eleanor looked at the gauge. “Pressure’s normal.”

I dug my nails into my forearm to shut myself up. If I kept asking the same question, they’d call me hysterical. She’d heard me. I could wait. She unwrapped the blood pressure armband and dropped it in her pocket. When she leaned close to press the circle of her stethoscope to my chest, I smelled the coffee on her breath, felt her pillowy breasts on my arm. The pores on her nose were a million red pinpricks. White bobby pins held the salt-and-pepper curls beneath her cap. Her closeness made me shrink back into the pillow.

Eleanor looked at her watch and then held it to her ear. My silence finally registered, so she said, “They’re looking over the paperwork. Ah, here she is at last!” Her tone made it sound as if Mother were late for an appointment.

Mother walked in the room and gave me a desperate look. I felt a wave of shame and pity for her, an amazing sensation considering I blamed her for my circumstances. From the circles under her eyes, I could tell she hadn’t slept. Her long braid hung over her shoulder, and she sported a peasant skirt and a men’s T-shirt that hung to her hips. Mother never bothered to press a tube of lipstick to her lips. Her tanned and freckled face looked exhausted, and she wore her leather peace sign, which even though the Vietnam War waged on, seemed outdated in 1974. She always wore it in oppositional environments: protest marches when Chicago cops were present and visits from her mother. I experienced that hyper-self-conscious constellation of emotions unique to thirteen-year-old daughters of oddball mothers. Shame. Sadness. Love. Anger. Hate.

“Would you leave me alone with my daughter, please?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Eleanor snapped like a sarcastic high-ranking officer addressing a subordinate. She lifted her chin and glided out of the room like a great ship with white sails.

Mother put her hand on my forehead. I closed my eyes to avoid looking into hers.

“Did you sleep well?”

“I think they drugged me.”

“Nonsense! Dr. Keller said they do that only in extreme cases. Thank God the tests were negative!”

“I told you they would be! Why wouldn’t you believe me?”

“Penny, we don’t have much time. Dr. Keller’s on his way.”

“Better check the hallway,” I whispered. “That Eleanor’s a snoop.”

Mother went to the door and looked out, pulling it shut behind her. “Now you have to tell me more about this Celtic king.”

“Ask Deirdre. It’s her husband.”

“I can’t. If I say anything, then she’ll know she’s a Heroine.”

“Oh, so
now
you admit that Deirdre’s real!”

She ignored my challenge. “This is very bad. A Hero’s come looking for a Heroine! It’s the worst possible scenario.”

“When can I go home? I’m supposed to meet him today.”

“You can never meet him again.”

“He needs my help to capture Deirdre!”

“You will absolutely not go near him. And you will not betray Deirdre!”

“You care more about her than you do about me.”

“Nonsense.”

“What are you going to do? Lock me in my room for the rest of my life?”

Mother swallowed and smoothed her hands down her skirt. She raised her chin and nodded her head. She kept nodding, as if the repetitive, up-and-down movement would affirm what she said next. “You’ll be staying here a couple days.”

“In the loony bin? You can’t make me!”

“It’s too risky for you to be back at home with that man running around.”

“Send me somewhere. To Grandma and Grandpa’s.”

“They’re in France.”

“But I’m not crazy!” I shouted like a crazy person.

“Are they gonna find THC in your bloodstream, Penny?”

“I dunno.”

“You told me you weren’t smoking pot anymore. That it was just that once.”

“A few hits with Albie aren’t going to kill me.”

“Well, that’ll seal the deal!” She threw up her arms, reminding me of Grandmother Entwhistle. “You can blame yourself for being here, not me.”

I could kick myself for getting high with Albie the day before, for going along out of boredom again.

“Talking things over with someone will do you some good. Everybody benefits from that. Dr. Keller said there are wonderful groups here.”

“Right. You want me to tell Dr. Keller that Madame Bovary lived with us? Or should I tell him how you slapped me?”

“Don’t—” Mother pressed the heels of her hands to her skull. “You need a haven, Penny. At least until I figure out how to deal with Deirdre.”

“Can’t commit
her,
huh?”

“I’m not committing you. I’ve checked into things.” She glanced at the door and leaned closer. “If I sign you in, I can sign you out anytime. The doctor’s insisting that if I take you home against medical advice, we’ll lose our insurance.”