Broken Wings 02 Midnight Flight (4 page)

put the shivers into Teal and Robin as quickly as it did
in me. Not describing it any further left it to each of
our imaginations, and I was sure we each came up
with our worst fears.
"And now, my dears," she said again, sounding
as if we were all at a grand tea party, "it's time for you
to be introduced to your buddies. They are three of my
graduates. three of whom I am very, very proud. They
have earned the right to assist me."
The girls beamed with joy at her compliments
and gazed at her adoringly.
I
didn't know why vet, but
it made my nerve endings sizzle to see the way they
all looked up to her. I had the feeling she could ask
one or all of them to open their wrists, and they would
instantly obey.
As Dr. Foreman continued, she looked at them
with a mother's pride. "I call them your buddies
because they are here to give you the benefit of their experience. They will be in charge of your daily life, your daily development, and since they have experienced my school firsthand, they have real insight into what goes on in a new girl's mind. Depend
on them, listen to them, and most of all, obey them." She turned back to us. "Even though they are
your buddies, you are to treat them as respectfully and
obediently as you would me. In order to establish that,
and to help you understand how far they have grown
and what they have become now, you are to address
them only as inMlady for that is truly who they are.
ladies."
Teal couldn't help a guffaw, her laughter
spurting out of her lips like something she was unable
to keep from coming up. It was like a small explosion. "If you don't tighten your lips this instant." Dr.
Foreman snarled at her. "you'll be starting at a minus
fifteen with the Ice Room as your initiation to my
school."
Teal's smile evaporated.
After a long silence. Dr. Foreman stepped to the
side and introduced M'Lady One, who was the young
woman who had escorted me off the plane. She
stepped forward and waited, still at attention. M'Lady
Two, who stepped up beside her, was a far more attractive woman with light brown hair, a perfect nose, and a far more feminine mouth. She wasn't as tall, perhaps only five feet five, but because of her firm military posture, she didn't look much shorter. She had a nice figure, well proportioned, that couldn't
be disguised even in the blah uniform.
M'Lady Three was the stoutest and shortest. I
thought she was barely five feet tall. She had
shoulders like a football player and hard, sharply cut
facial features. Her dark eyes were too far apart and
her short, dull brown hair was trimmed farther back
on her forehead than that of the other two. When she
opened her mouth, I saw she had crooked teeth,
especially on the bottom.
"A new student does nothing without
permission until she is told she may do so," M'Lady
One recited.
M'Lady Two continued. "That means even
going to the bathroom. A new student does not speak
unless given permission to do so."
M'Lady Three picked up immediately when
M'Lady Two stopped. She had the deepest, coarsest
voice. "A new student learns that in the real world
nothing comes to you because it's supposed to come
to you. You earn everything: you are entitled to nothing. This is reality. Therefore, we will have reality checks periodically to determine whether or
not you have earned what you want, what you have." This means everything," they all recited. They
spoke like some chorus that had performed these
speeches many, many times, all speaking without
much emotion, except for the underlying and
continuous threat.
"A new student knows that complaints earn
demerits. Cheating, laziness, slacking off, any of that
earns demerits." M'Lady Two said.
"And demerits put you in the Ice Room," they
all chorused.
"Thank you. Mladies," Dr. Foreman said. They
looked at her as if they were desperate for approval,
then they stepped back.
I raised my hand and she looked at me so long.
I thought she was going to simply ignore it. Finally,
she asked me what I wanted.
"I need to go to the bathroom," I said. The three buddies smiled simultaneously as if
they were of one face.
"After all this, that is what you ask? Have you
heard nothing?" But
I
need to go," I cried, now
unashamed to admit it.
"Your needs are no longer what is of primary
importance. We are now going to think first of the
group's needs."
"But..."
"You're here because you are selfish, and that
will be the first demon we will destroy.
I
promise you
that." Dr. Foreman said. "Now then.
I
have one more
request of you all that you must fulfill before we can
go any further."
She turned to the buddies and each stepped
forward. M'Lady One coming to me. Mlady Two
going to Robin. and M'Lady Three to Teal. They
handed each of us a small composition notebook and a
pen.
"What is this?" Teal muttered, "Homework,
already?"
"That's
a
demerit." Dr. Foreman said, pointing
at her with
a
long, thin finger. "You didn't have
permission to speak. One more and you're in the Ice
Room."
Teal looked away. I could see, however, that
she was fighting back tears, tears of rage and fear. "Now then." Dr. Foreman said. "as a second
part of your orientation.
I
want each of you to write
her story. Tell me everything you can about yourself, what you remember as a child, where you lived, the friends you had or thought you had, the teachers you remember.
I
am very interested in how you see yourself, what you expect you will eventually do with your life. I want the notebooks filled with details, exact details of every thing you remember as important to you.
I
am particularly interested in your fears. so
I
want you to give lots of thought to that. All of us, including me, have something we fear. It's natural or, perhaps, it's something we have inherited or developed because of who we are, where we have lived, whom we have known. Don't dare leave that
out.
"If you lie and
I
find out you have lied in this
introductory history, you will be fined ten full demerit
points. Remember,
I
know much about you. This is
both a test of your veracity and
a
chance for you to
think about yourselves."
We looked at each other in disbelief. Write our
histories? Surely, this was a joke.
"I see you are not taking me seriously," Dr.
Foreman said. "I assure you that you will all remain
here until you are all finished. Until then, no one will
get anything to drink or eat, nor will anyone"-- she
centered on me--"use the bathroom. That's academic
anyway since there is no bathroom." she added dryly.
I
felt my face flush. No bathroom? Reminding
me
I
had to go built the pressure inside me.
I
felt
myself breaking out into a sweat, my heart pounding.
Didn't the other two have to go? If they did, they
didn't show it.
"Finally, let me remind you that no one is to
speak to anyone during this exercise. One of your
buddies will monitor you, and should anyone speak,
you will all remain here one hour longer for every
word uttered."
Then, as suddenly as she finished speaking, she
smiled warmly at us and in loving tones said.
"Welcome. girls. Welcome to my school. I truly hope
this will be a lifesaving experience for you all." With that she turned and walked out, her heels
clicking and echoing around us until she was gone and
it was deadly silent.
It was as if all clocks had stopped. Nothing beat
anymore. Not even our
own
hearts.

2
Dr. Foreman's Funny Farm
.
Two
of the so-called
buddies left
with Dr.

Foreman. but M'Lady Three remained behind, her arms folded, her back against the door, glaring at us, the corners of her mouth dipped with annoyance at what
I
was sure she considered baby-sitting duty,

Like
a
hungry
cat
she was so eager to pounce. We all looked down ashamed of our fear. That
was when I saw that someone probably feeling as
desperate as we did had carved the word help into my
old desk. I felt like adding my own cry of rage.
I
would carve in betrayed. When I looked up again.
I
saw Robin open her composition notebook and begin
writing. She shrugged at me as if to say, what else can
we do? Humor her. Teal, on the other
hand,
remained
stubborn, her
head
in her hands, the notebook still
closed. I opened mine.
My life story?
Where
do
I begin?
I
was born in Atlanta. My
daddy was an auto garage tool salesman and my
mama worked as a waitress in one dump after another, drinking up mast of what she made and sometimes not coming home until morning. It was one thing to remember it all, to think about it, but another to actually put it in writing. It made me more angry than ashamed to see it in black and white. Perhaps that was Dr. Foreman's purpose: to get us to hate who we were, who we are. I suppose I couldn't blame her. Why else
would we work on changing ourselves?
It was funny though how tears came into my
eyes after I began to describe our apartment in that
rat-infested building, described my room. the crippled
kitchen with the stove that worked when it was in the
mood, and the living room with the threadbare rug
where Daddy sat and watched television alone so
many nights. Why would I cry over and long for a
return to the life I used to hate? Why would I want to
be back in that two-by-four room of mine where I
could hear pipes groaning at night like someone with
a bellyache, and people in other apartments yelling at
each other and clawing the walls the way prisoners
going mad might?
I wasn't in a good place to grow up. Even as a
little girl. I knew bad things happened in our building.
Someone I only knew as Mr. Ratter died of a drug
overdose in the apartment directly below ours. It was the first time I saw a dead person. I stood on the stairway and watched them taking him out an a stretcher, the sheet over his whole body. The police said the apartment stank. He had been dead for nearly a week, but he had no relatives in Atlanta. Only in his
mid-thirties, he was already dead.
That was when I first understood what Daddy
meant when he said we were living in a cemetery. The
doors of the apartments should look more like
tombstones and read their names and born in
19__,
died 20__. Rest its peace because that's the only
peace you'll have.
No wonder
I
didn't want to come home nights
or stay there on weekends. No wonder I took
advantage of Mama being at work and staying out to
all hours and Daddy being on the road, away from
home. I shouldn't have been blamed for that. Anyone
living like I was living, seeing the things I saw, would
have done the same thing.
The only excitement and happiness I had were
what I had with my friends. So we smoked and
shoplifted and drank at parties. So what? We didn't
hurt people badly, did we? Well, maybe we hurt
ourselves somewhat, but we weren't on anyone's Most
Wanted list. Teachers barely tolerated us, were happy when we didn't bother them, and swept us along like so much dust from one room to another, one teacher
to another, as if everyone was to share the burden. Yes. I wrote in the notebook, it's true I did get
arrested more than once. I was put on probation. I did
violate it and I was in danger of going to a real prison.
Yes. I knew why Daddy felt he had to place me with
my uncle and aunt after Mama ran off with someone
and deserted us. but I also knew my aunt and uncle
never wanted me
and
were surely relieved when
I
got
myself in
new
trouble
and ran
away. My
aunt
could
claim she was right about me: I was hopeless and now
she had a good excuse for getting rid of me forever. I described it all, how I was cornered into
hurting that boy, how I was arrested for it and decided
to run
off,
how disappointed I was in Mama when I
found her in that clinic, and how betrayed I felt when
my uncle tricked me and got me taken here.
I
was
never as mean to anyone as they were to me. I wrote.
I
don't deserve this.
As to my fears, I couldn't come up with much
except what I had feared when I was
a
little girl and
could actually hear the rats scratching their way
through the walls, visiting different apartments as
if
the whole place were a mall for rats who could shop in this one's kitchen cabinets
and
then another and pass the news on to the world of rats out there:
Come to Phoebe Elder's home. Her mother is a slob. Lots to eat on the floor and counters, and she's so out of it most nights in a drunken coma, she won't even know
we're there.
I used to curl up in my bed, wrapping the
blanket so tightly around myself it was
a
wonder I
didn't smother to death. Some nights
I
sobbed myself
to sleep. Some nights I woke up positive a rat
had
crawled over my legs or sniffed my hair.
I
would
throw off my blanket and turn on the lamp, but
thankfully,
I
never saw one in my room. That
didn't
mean
I
didn't believe they had been there. however.
I
imagined their tiny footprints everywhere, and
sometimes. I was sure I saw
a
pair of beady little eves
watching me from some crack in the wall.
I
had no idea how much I had written in the
notebook when I raised my head. I saw Teal had given
in, and she
and
Robin were still reluctantly at it
themselves.
Then
I heard the door open and saw
M'Lady Two hand M'Lady Three
a
tumbler of ice
water. Teal and Robin also watched her drinking it.
She seemed to take longer and slurp it for our benefit.
She spilled what she hadn't finished
on
the floor and looked
at
us with a smile so spiteful it made anger
simmer my blood into a rolling boil.
I
squirmed in my seat. My need to pee had
become impossible to ignore. Soon there would be no
way to keep it from happening.
It
brought new tears to
my eyes, tears that escaped my lids.
I
embraced
myself and rocked as
I
moaned.
M'Lady Three got up and walked toward me.
"What's wrong with you?"
"I
have to pee, badly."
"So pee. You're wearing a diaper. We'll change
you afterward."
I
looked up at her in shock.
I
could
see she was serious.
It
put me into
a
small panic. and
when
I
looked at Teal, she seemed angrier about it
than I could be. Then she nodded at me, her eyes
small, urging me to call her bluff, Only
I
knew it
wasn't a bluff. Robin looked down, ashamed for me. M'Lady Three turned back to the door and then
I let it go. It dripped off the chair. She looked back.
smiling. Then she opened the door and shouted. "Get
up a diaper. Baby One had an accident."
I heard some laughter outside.
I was crying harder now, the tears of shame and
rage sliding off my cheeks as if my skin had turned to
ice, my fists at my sides, my nails digging into my
palms.
"Bitch," Teal shouted at M'Lady Three. Her smile faded. "One word without specific
permission. One extra hour for all of you to spend in
here," she pronounced like a judge laying the death
sentence on some convicted murderer.
M'Lady One returned with a new diaper for me.
Teal and Robin watched with disgust
and
rage. Then
Teal stood up
and
just let go. Robin smiled and did
the same. M'Lady One and M'Lady Three looked
at
each other, then M'Lady Three smiled back at Teal
and Robin.
"Gee, girls. sorry." she moaned as if she really
cared. "but we had only one extra diaper." Her phony
smile vanished, Now sit down
and
shut up." she
snapped at them. Their faces of defiance quickly
changed into faces of disgust and panic. "Sit down or
we'll keep you here two more hours for every minute
you're standing."
Without any other choice, they
did
what they
were told, both grimacing with discomfort.
I
returned
to my seat and held up my completely filled
composition book. M'Lady One took it and flipped
through the pages. Then she took the pen and left. Robin and Teal started to write faster, the need
to get out of here that much greater,
M'Lady Three shook her head and smiled at
them gleefully. "That's better. girls. The faster you all
learn that obeying orders makes things easier for you,
the better off you'll be."
When Robin and Teal were finished, they lifted
their notebooks and M'Lady Three took them,
checked them, and went to the door. She handed them
to M'Lady Two and looked at us.
"After your hour's punishment, we'll be
learning the school prayer," she said. and left. "I'm taking this off." Robin said, standing
immediately and removing the wet diaper. Teal did
the same.
"They're crazy. That doctor's crazy. I'm not
staying here," Teal vowed.
"Really? What do you intend to do? Catch a cab
home?" Robin asked,
"I don't know, Something."
"You better not let them hear you talking or
they'll tack on more time." I warned them.
'Don't tell me what to do! I don't give a damn! I
won't..." Teal stopped and slammed her lips shut when
she heard the door opening.
MLady Three returned. "Lucky for you two, we found two extra diapers," she sang. She gave one to Robin and one to Teal. "Put them on and keep
quiet," she ordered, and left again.
I watched them change. We all walked about
like caged animals, looking at each other as if one
word would set us clawing ourselves as well as the
walls, then we glared at the door. Teal tried it and of
course it was locked.
"What if they just leave us here forever? Who
would even know?" Robin queried. "There's no other
way out." Teal and
I
looked at each other.
"My parents would eventually find out. They
can't do that. They wouldn't dare. My mother would
sue the panties off that Dr. Foreplay or whatever she
calls herself," Teal said.
"Right, your parents are worried sick over you.
That's why they had you sent here."
"Shut up. You don't know anything about me or
my family." "Who wants to?" Robin mumbled. All
I
could think about was getting out of here.
Soon we'd be at each other's throat, but the hands of
whatever clock we were on were arthritic or
something. It seemed like much longer than another
hour before the door opened and the three so-called
buddies returned.
"Everyone stand in front of her desk." M'Lady
One ordered, We did so, all of us thinking the same
thing: we'll do anything to get out of here, "Okay,
here is the school prayer. You are to recite it every
morning and you are to recite it until you get it
perfect. We'll stay here as long as we have to until all
three of you have it memorized."
M'Lady Two came forward. "Repeat after me. 'I
am nothing.
I
am less than nothing. I am a burden to
my family and to my country.
I
must hate myself to
death and
I
must change.
I
must thank Dr. Foreman
for every punishment
I
receive.'"
Teal grimaced. "That's a prayer?"
"It's stupid," Robin agreed.
"Suit yourselves. Girls. We're comfortable,"
M'Lady Two said, and started out.
"Wait a minute!"
I
cried.
She paused.
"1 can't stand it in here anymore."
She looked at Rabin
and
Teal.
^-
All right. How does it go again?" Teal asked. M'Lady Two smiled and repeated it for us.
None of us got it right the first time, so she repeated it
and again we mumbled it as accurately as we could.
They demanded we speak louder. Teal made
an
error and we were stopped
and
told to start again.
I
thought she wasn't going to do it, but she did and, of course, made a small mistake. All three of us were tired and groggy and uncomfortable.
It
was so hard to concentrate on words we hated anyway. Finally, we had it right almost to the end. when
I
left out a word and they jumped on me. Again we recited it and again one of us
made
a small error. Eventually, we had it
perfect and they agreed we had done so.
"Orientation is over," M'Lady Three declared,
slapping her hands together. "We can move out and
take you to Dr. Foreman's School, Remember." she
added before we started. no talking without
permission."
We marched out of the room. I don't think I was
ever happier to leave a place than
I
was leaving there.
Even the hot evening air seemed a relief. A dirty,
white, windowless van was parked in front of the
building. The rear doors were opened and we were
told to climb in. There was nothing to sit on, just the
metal floor of the van. A solid wall separated the back
of the van from the driver. All three of us hesitated.
It
smelled like some farm animals had been transported
in it only minutes ago. The odor of animal manure
was strong.
Teal raised her hand.
"What?" M'Lady Three asked. We understood
now that M'Lady Three was assigned to Teal; M'Lady
Two to Rabin, and of course, M'Lady One to me. "There are no windows in there. How long is
the trip? We'll suffocate."
"The trip is as long as it takes to get to the
school. Get in. It will be longer
if
you waste time. We
might." M'Lady Three said, smiling at the other two,