Woman On The Edge Of Time (32 page)

“I’m sorry I bothered the two of you. I guess you were planning to be alone,” Connie said to Jackrabbit, his long body curled up.

“It’s like my naming. Every time I take a step, I start jagging. I want to go back where I was. Not really. But I need Luci today, I need a clear interseeing of who I am and what I was wanting. I feel lost, a little bottomed.”

“You don’t want to go on defense?”

“Fasure I do. I put in for it. Only, after I make a decision, I feel thinned. As if I just lost eight other selves.” He sighed, writhing restlessly on the bed and casting a baleful glance at Luciente in tense discussion at the TV set.

When Luciente turned to them, she was frowning lightly. “Everybody agrees your pass is urgent. But no one is confident you can learn to control body temperature in a week. Marat recommends acute appendicitis, a common health problem in your time. It wasn’t always accompanied by fever and could be easily faked.”

“No good!” Connie said. “They wouldn’t think it was such a big emergency. Why take me off ward? They’d wait till the doctor came in. Weekend is the time to get out, because they’re understaffed. And, Luciente, appendicitis, it’s not contagious. They never believe us anyhow when we say we’re in pain.”

“Zo, what about a head injury? Faking unconsciousness is easy. I could teach you to go into delta in a few lessons.”

“Let me think.” Connie turned and almost tripped over an object leaning on the wall. “What’s that?”

“Careful! It’s a weapon. I didn’t get a chance to turn it in today. We had practice at noon.”

Connie detoured it carefully. “I’m trying to think. Maybe.”

Luciente’s kenner spoke in a loud, demanding voice. “Corydora here. Thought you were planning to test those results from Tennessee.”

“Tonight. I’ll do it tonight after supper.”

“Thought we were having a town meeting about the Shaping controversy.”

“Fasure. Will do it between supper and the meeting. I set everything up.” Luciente spoke calmly. Connie could sense she was feeling great pressure. As she spoke into her kenner she stood there flatfooted, with her legs as if braced, and looked from Jackrabbit to her with level measuring gaze. Immediately she flicked her kenner and spoke. “Morningstar, can you take Dawn to have her teeth checked? I’m caught to my neck.” Then she spoke to Dawn. “My appleblossom, Morningstar is taking you to Goat Hill. I will see you at supper and tomorrow we’ll work together in the upper fields.”

Suddenly Connie saw her mother’s mother: a peasant woman dressed in black with her hair pulled back tight as if to punish it. With eight children, with close to forty grandchildren, with cows and pigs and chickens, she stood with that calm weighing expression as crisis after crisis broke over her. Everyone would be fed, everybody would be comforted, everyone would be healed, to each would be given a piece of herself. Luciente had some of that in her, Connie thought, but with more control and less ultimate despair.

“I think I want to learn how to play dead … or knocked out anyhow. I’ll let you know for sure tomorrow.”

“I’ll ask Magdalena how best to teach you,” Luciente said, and smiled at Jackrabbit. “In about an hour I’ll ask her. Tomorrow morning, Connie sweetness, graze me and we’ll start.”

Embarrassed, Connie immediately broke contact.

“Tina, please. Watch for us. I want to talk to Sybil for a minute only. Momentito?”

Tina nodded, looking them over curiously. Perhaps she thought they were lovers. Anyhow, she stood near the door watching for attendants, while Connie whispered to Sybil, “Would you stage a fight with me?”

Sybil touched Connie’s cheek lightly. “Why not?”

“They’ll give it to you afterward. They’ll come down on you.”

“Maybe they’ll send me off this ward. Outside I know the rules. I’m an old hand.”

“Maybe they’ll just do you sooner.”

“Maybe the saddest person will be the last to be ‘done.’ Like death row.”

She began spending all the time she could safely steal with Luciente, studying control of her own nervous system. In the morning Luciente was walking with Bee and White Oak, pausing at the big board in the square in front of the meetinghouse to read the newest notices, poems, proposals, and complaints.

ANYONE WHO DOESN’T CLEAN DIVING GEAR DESERVES TO DROWN!

Do you value yourself lower than zucchini? Vote the
SHAPERS!

Class starting in bacterial fertilizers, Tuesday 8
P.M.
, Amilcar Cabral greenhouse.

Cellist wanted, antique music quartet. See Puccini, Goat Hill.

WANDERING PLAYERS
: Goose Creek players visiting this week. Thursday:
THE ROBBER BARONS
(historical satire); Friday:
WHO KNOWS HOW IT GROWS
(Shaping drama); Saturday:
WHEN TIME FRAYED
(drama of battle at Space Station Beta).

“What’s all this business about Shaping?” Connie asked as they read the notices.

“The Shapers want to intervene genetically,” Bee rumbled. “Now we only spot problems, watch for birth defects, genes linked with disease susceptibility.”

“The Shapers want to breed for selected traits,” Luciente said. “It’s a grandcil-level fight.”

“What do you think?” she asked curiously.

White Oak said, “Oh, we three are all Mixers. That’s the
other side. We don’t think people can know objectively how people should become. We think it’s a power surge.”

Luciente pointed. “Look, there’s my notice. Two people signed up last night. But we need at least five.”

Connie read the notice. “Why do you want to learn Chinese?”

“They do interesting work in my field. On my next sabbatical, I’m going to travel there.”

“Bee, will you go too?”

“Not so. I traveled too much when I was involved in reparations to former colonies. I never want to move my body again! I got so weary. No, on sabbatical I want to follow a line of research our base decided against—foolishly.”

She turned to Luciente. “Will you really go off to China without him?”

“How not? For half a year. Person won’t run away.”

“Ah, but without you to argue with day and night, my brain will turn into a jellyfish. You’ll come back and find me a Shaper. Who’ll keep me politically correct, who’ll chew me over?”

White Oak had begun to warble a song that Connie had heard people singing lately all over the village:

Bee sang in his deep bass voice and Luciente sang fancy alto harmony until they were up to the door of the base where they all worked.

Bee and White Oak went inside, still singing, while Luciente squatted down on the patch of grass outside to give her a lesson.

Later White Oak came out to join them and they all went to work in the upper fields where the experimental gardens of zucchini and short-season lima beans were growing. They stopped by the children’s house to invite Dawn along, and White Oak took a baby for the ride and the sunshine. As they checked the plants and made measurements and notes, Luciente continued her lessons to Connie. Dawn had become curious about the past and kept interrupting with questions until Luciente said firmly, “Keep quiet now or leave, Dawn. Connie must fix on escaping from the bad place that holds per against per will. Next week, if Connie escapes, person will answer all the questions you can ask.”

Dawn shut up. Connie said, “That’s the first time I heard anyone say no—you know, discipline a child here.”

“I have to explain. Dawn must comprend the situation. And per questions will be given time.”

She felt as if she, not Dawn, was pulling on Luciente, yanking her back and forth, and pestering her like a yapping puppy. She understood that what she was trying to master was simple indeed; something every six-year-old learned to do at will. In fact, that summer a child on naming had hurt himself badly on a rock pile and had remained in a form of hibernation until help came, slowing his bodily processes so that he was barely alive. That every six-year-old could zip in and out of delta and slow delta did nothing for Connie’s temper. Grimly she plodded through her lessons.

Luciente checked the time. “Noon I meet Bolivar. We are eating a sandwich by the river and communing—or trying to!” Luciente gave a wry grin.

“Do you like per better, Mommy?” Dawn asked, cocking her head.

“I’m trying. Bumpy fasure, but I’m trying. So is Bolivar. But it’s like dog and cat.”

“What do you talk about?” White Oak asked.

“Childhood,” Luciente said with another thin grin. “It’s the only thing we have found in common, besides Jackrabbit, so far.”

“Half the people I see are yawning today,” Connie said.

“Oh!” Luciente groaned. “We were up till past midnight arguing the Shaping question. We had coffee twice. We’re taking a night off to catch up on sleep and then meeting again tomorrow night to argue out our village posit. Barbarossa and Luxembourg are on the other side, grasp,” she said to White Oak. “Got to work on them.”

She stashed Dolly’s ten dollars between the upper and lower sole in her shoe and persuaded Valente to loan her a needle and thread to take in her dresses. On another ward her sewing would be considered a good sign—a feminine interest in making her clothes fit would have earned her points—but here no one cared. Only Valente’s kindness determined that she could get what she needed to fix her clothes so that people would not stare. People on the street.

How she had dreaded leaving her tiny apartment in El Barrio for the grimy simmering streets! She had been crazy then. She would crawl, crawl on her hands and knees down Lexington, to be free.

Saturday night she made her two extra dresses into a small bundle along with her few necessities and at eight she began pushing it out the window through the grating to fall on the privet hedge below. She had to spend ten minutes forcing it through the bars. She hated to think what the dresses would look like by the time she recovered them. Just don’t let it rain! It hadn’t rained in two weeks. While she was wiggling the package through, Sybil carried on at the nursing station, where she caused a small commotion, not quite enough to be punished but sufficient to absorb the attention of the Saturday night attendant.

“Why can’t we socialize with other wards? On my old ward, every few weeks at least we had a nice social visit with another ward. We had Kool-Aid and cookies. Here we don’t have anything.
We can’t even see movies. We don’t get occupational therapy. We don’t attend dance therapy. We don’t even take part in industrial therapy. Last time I was here, I worked in the laundry. Why not this time? This is exactly like a back ward, that’s what it’s like. We don’t even have group therapy! We must be the only functional patients in the entire hospital who don’t go to group therapy at least once a week!” Sybil posed with grande dame haughtiness, arching her brows, her voice, her shoulders, extending a regal arm in bold gestures, and managing to steal a glimpse of Connie’s progress.

Connie had finished with the package and run into the bathroom, where she took out of her brassiere a small piece of metal she and Sybil had worked loose from Sybil’s bed. Slowly she cut into her thigh until it began to bleed and then she caught the blood in a small paper cup from meds they had carefully preserved. She thinned the blood just a little with water to keep it from coagulating too quickly and then she ran back out, dropping the metal weapon on Sybil’s bed. Then she put the paper cup of blood near the leg of the bed. Sybil at once stopped her tirade, making a Bette Davis exit back along the ward.

“Good night, Lady Sybil,” the night attendant yelled. “We’ll give you a stiff one tonight”

Connie stepped in Sybil’s path and ran against her.

“Watch where you’re going, you fat cretin,” Sybil said.

“Watch who you’re pushing, you skinny witch! Shooting your mouth off all the time. Think you’re better than the rest of us. But you’re just a crazy bitch!”

“You tell her,” the night attendant called, laughing.

“Your language is like the rest of you, out of the gutter!” Sybil shrieked.

“At least I don’t pretend I can fly. They put you through shock so many times you got burnt toast for brains!”

“Ooooooo!” Sybil flew at Connie. She seized the five-inch metal span and waved it aloft, where everyone could see. Then she began striking at Connie with the span. Some of the blows landed and really hurt Connie fought back with her fists and nails, flailing at Sybil. Tina Ortiz turned and came running down the ward, to mix in. Finally Sybil struck her in the side of the head, pulling the punch as best she could. Connie toppled
at once, falling beside the bed and groping for the blood, pouring it into her ear, jamming her fingers hard up her nose into the tender mucous membrane so that her nose too began to bleed. Then she went into the state of unconsciousness she had been practicing. She could hear but was otherwise out. Sybil kicked the paper cup away under the bed as the night nurse and the attendant and Tina arrived, Tina screaming, “Jesús y María, you killed her, you white bitch!” They hypoed Sybil and then Tina. Skip had pushed open the door from the men’s ward and he was screaming in horror.

They turned her over and prodded her and then strapped down Sybil, already fading from the sedation. They moved Connie up on her bed. The night nurse lifted her eyelids and peered, slapped her cheeks. “Well, I guess we better get an orderly to take her down to x-ray. I suppose it might be a fracture. Who’s on night duty? Probably Dr. Clausen. That New York smart ass Redding will have our hides if something happens to one of his precious brains, I’ll tell you. Put a bunch of the most violent hard cases in the hospital in here without enough security and what do you expect? I better give a call and see if Dr. Clausen’s asleep. In the meantime go wake up the orderly. Tell him to take her down to the x-ray till we see if we got anybody to operate it. Oh, shit! Why couldn’t they do this on a Monday night? Damn animals! Give them all an extra shot.”