Guests on Earth (19 page)

“Gentlemen,” Dr. Bennett began, “this is an unusual situation. You have brought us a new patient, remanded by the court.”

“Sent by Judge Ervin hisself,” the deep voice agreed. “She up and wrote him a damn letter, damnedest thing I ever heard of. So then he taken her out of jail and sends her over here.” The man made a sound of disgust. “Seems like he knowed this Dr. Carroll in college or something.”

“I’d like to read that letter,” Dr. Schwartz remarked.

“It’s in her file, I’m sure,” the other man said, “which I might as well give you right now.”

“Dr. Carroll has stepped down as head of this hospital,” Dr. Bennett said in a smooth, formal voice, “though he remains closely involved, as a member of our governing board. However, as he is in Florida for the winter, Highland Hospital will be pleased to honor the judge’s request for a thorough evaluation and treatment or whatever.” There was a creaking sound as he stood up.

“Excuse me, Dr. Bennett.” Dr. Schwartz’s voice surprised me in its firmness. “I am sure you’ve got other, much more important fish to fry. But as the Director of Psychiatry for adolescent girls at Highland Hospital, I shall be in charge of Miss Feeney, and I am personally requesting that you listen to her history as presented in these transfer papers from Samarcand Manor, the reformatory where she was incarcerated before being sent to jail in Statesville, thence to us. I want you to understand exactly what we will be dealing with.”

“Yes, Gail.” I heard the sigh and then the creaking noise as he sat back down. I imagined him glancing at his watch; with Dr. Bennett, the schedule was everything.

“Thank you,” Dr. Schwartz said crisply, rustling the papers. “My goodness, this is quite a file for such a young person. Since your time with us is so limited, Dr. Bennett, I shall try to concentrate upon only the most pertinent facts, at this point. Let’s see . . .” At length, she began:

“Name, Annie Jenkins Feeney, age seventeen. No fixed address; ward of the state. Birthplace unknown. Over-sexed female adolescent of the high moron type; a moral imbecile. Mother, Catherine Jenkins Feeney, died in the Virginia State Mental Hospital in Staunton, Virginia. Girl raised by father Kirvin Feeney, drunkard, tinker, and carpenter, primarily at Pocosin, N.C., until his death. Girl then taken into the good Christian home of her aunt and uncle, Mary Ellen and Royster Biggs of Warsaw, North Carolina. After two years of defiance, rude behavior, and disruption including arrests for drunken and disorderly conduct, girl ran off with a Negro, finally apprehended in a Blue Ridge tourist cabin. Whereupon Mr. and Mrs. Biggs were forced to seek the services of the state. Girl declared “unmanageable . . . incorrigible . . . dual personality.” Dr. Schwartz was clearly skimming along now. “Morally defective . . . suspected of prostitution . . . my goodness!” she exclaimed before going on. “Girl admitted to Samarcand Manor where necessary therapeutic sterilization was performed for the public good. Gentlemen, this is outrageous!”

“Now wait a cotton-picking minute, Doctor,” came the deep voice. “You gotta understand, these morons breed like mink. And she had ran off with a Negro, remember that. The duty of the state is to protect the race.”

“Oh, is that so?”

I could just imagine Dr. Schwartz’s face, the way she drew her mouth into tight straight line.

“Yes ma’am,” came the milder voice. “Working in a high-class situation like the present, you may never have encountered such a type, meaning no disrespect, of course. But in our line of work, we deal with plenty of them, believe me, and I want to make you aware that this particular girl, this Jinx Feeney, is a special case. I have never seen such a one as her, I’m here to tell you. It’s been one reckless act of defiance after another. Why, she even set her mattress on fire over at Samarcand! That’s how she got herself out of the reformatory and into prison. That’s the history here. I urge you to be careful, doctor, that’s all. Never trust her. This girl has unusual language and musical abilities, physical coordination, and great cleverness, but she has no sense of right and wrong, and no soul either. Mark my words. No matter how much she fooled the judge, Jinx Feeney is a dangerous girl.”

They hate her, I realized, chilled. They really hate her.

“Wait a minute. What did you just call her? “Dr. Schwartz asked. “Not Annie, but . . . ?”

“ ‘Jinx,’ ” he said. “That’s what she goes by, and believe me, it’s appropriate.”

“Thank you, gentlemen, for these insights.” It was Dr. Bennett’s rising good-bye tone. “It sounds to me as if you will, indeed, have your capable hands full, Dr. Schwartz, and even your famous compassion may be tested. Girl trouble is not my bailiwick, of course, so I shall leave you to it. Gentlemen, we thank you for your services, and wish you a good day.”

It was over. A rush of cold air poured into the parlor in the men’s wake.

Dr. Morris came back downstairs. “She’s sleeping now,” she told Dr. Schwartz. “Out like a light.”

“I’m sure she’s exhausted,” Dr. Schwartz said. “I’m exhausted myself, just from reading her file! But we’d best get on back, hadn’t we, Maureen? I’ve already missed two appointments this afternoon.”

“I wonder if it’s wise to leave her here like this, Gail.”

“We are not operating a prison,” Dr. Schwartz said lightly. “And Mr. Dobson was right, you know. This is her last chance. She ought to be on her best behavior. Besides, the other girls will be back within the hour. In fact, I’ll try to intercept Evalina.”

“I still think the girl should have been placed in the adolescent wing.”

“She’s too experienced, and too smart,” Dr. Schwartz said. “As well as thoroughly sexualized, from the sound of it. Besides, Jinx Feeney will not be with us long, unless I miss my guess entirely. Despite that nickname, her luck may be about to change.”

“Be careful, Gail,” Mrs. Morris said, the last bit of conversation I overheard. “Don’t forget what that awful man said. Sometime you really may be too trusting for your own good.”

“Well, you’re one to talk!” Dr. Schwartz exclaimed.

The door closed behind them.

A
FEW MINUTES
l
ater, I found our old beat-up pot with a lid and popped some popcorn in it, then dumped it into the basket and took it upstairs. I knocked on our new resident’s door.

“Come in.” That odd little voice.

I pushed the door open to find her sitting straight up in bed, cross-legged and obviously wide awake. Had she really been sleeping?

Or had she fooled Mrs. Morris . . . and if so, why?

“Ooh, I thought I smelled popcorn!” she said. “I was just sitting here hoping it wasn’t a dream and hoping I was going to get some of it. I’m about to starve.”

“Didn’t you have any lunch?”

She gave a disgusted snort. “Hell no! Them cops wouldn’t stop for nothing. They like to starved me to death, I’m telling you. They done it on purpose.”

Warily, I thrust the basket across the bed; after all I’d heard, I was a little bit scared of her. She grabbed the basket and started eating the popcorn ravenously. She didn’t look at all like I’d thought she would. I had expected a large, belligerent person, but this girl was a waif: pale, wiry, freckled, with a mass of curly red hair and light green eyes, small and hard, shaped like almonds.

She looked up from the popcorn once to ask, “Have y’all got anything to drink?”

“Sure.” I ran back down to the kitchen where I poured her a tall glass of milk, then carried it carefully up the steps. The girl drank half of it in one long swallow. She licked her top lip and looked me square in the eye.

“I’m Jinx,” she said.

“I’m Evalina,” I said.

She nodded. “Are you a lady or a girl?”

I had to smile. “A lady, I guess.” I was ten years older than she.

“Are you a nurse?”

“No, I’m a patient,” I said. “Or a resident, I guess I should say, on my way to getting out of the hospital. I’ve got a job playing the piano for their programs.”

She lit up. “I can sing,” she said. “Dance, too.”

“Well, you just might get a chance to do that,” I told her. “They’re big on that here.”

Still sitting straight up on the bed like an advertisement for perfect posture, Jinx stared at me intently. “You are going to be my friend,” she said. “I need one. I have to make friends and have increased socialization and pass a lot of tests to get out of here. And not set fire to my bed and not hit anybody. You think I can do it?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“You want some of this popcorn?”

“Sure.” I perched gingerly upon the edge of her bed, and we finished it up together.

J
INX WAS DYING
t
o tell her own story, which was completely different from the police record I had overheard in the alcove at Graystone, though in a way, both stories were true. Her mother, had she lived, might have offered another; certainly her aunt and uncle had stuck to their own angry narrative. Perhaps any life is such: different stories like different strands, each distinct in itself, each true, yet wound together to form one rope, one life. I couldn’t say. I don’t know why they all told them to me, either. Dr. Schwartz suggested that I’m a good listener—maybe that’s like being a good accompanist.

Anyhow, this is Jinx’s version.

Though born into a “good family,” Jinx’s mother was “never right,” causing that family no end of trouble and embarrassment before she ran away with the Irish tinker and musician Kirvin Feeney, traveling all over the South in his specially built wagon, like a little house, pulled by two horses named Dan and Grace, stopping only for their child Annie Jenkins’s birth. So Jinx’s earliest and happiest memories are of life in the tinker truck, pulling out all the little hand-built drawers one by one, hundreds of drawers, each containing its own nails or bolts or tools; sitting on her mother’s lap before a campfire deep in the woods; feeding hay to the greedy horses, who grabbed it right out of her little hands; and kneeling down to drink from running creeks. Her mother used to laugh a lot in those days and sing endless songs to the tune of Kirvin’s fiddle. Those were the good times, before old Dan died and Grace went lame and a rich widow, one of Kirvin’s favorite customers over the years, up and gave them a place to stay.

The old white frame house sat deep in the pinewoods at the edge of blackwater swamp. Jinx had her own room with no bed but a mattress on the floor with a velvet crazy quilt flung across it and a sky-blue chest of drawers where she kept the little dolls that her mother crocheted for her, an entire village of little dolls. She cannot remember the kitchen, where no one ever cooked, or the parlor, where no one ever sat.

What she does remember is her father’s workroom, the shed beside the house where people came to get things repaired, such as engines and threshers and stoves and hand mills and even radios—or the handles of pots and pans, or the blades of knives or saws, or anything that needed sharpening. Her daddy could fix anything. While they waited, men played cards or checkers at the long table he had made of a single board from the big tree that fell out by the icehouse. Or they gossiped and talked or played music with Daddy joining in, for it was always easy to get him to quit working and fiddle a tune. Even as a tiny tot, Jinx learned to sing “Danny Boy” and to dance a jig with the best of them. Liquor was sold from under the floorboard, where it was hidden when certain people were present. The liquor was brought by a black man named Noah Dellinger and his son, Orlando, who became Jinx’s best and only friend, a skinny, solemn boy who could play the banjo like nobody’s business, joining right in with the men.

By the time she was three or four, Jinx knew to stay out in the workroom and not in the house where her mother spoke often to those who were not there, sometimes obeying their instructions to set off on a little trip with her daughter—hitchhiking into town, say—which Jinx enjoyed—or all the way to Edenton; or moving into an abandoned bread truck out in the woods where there was nothing to eat but blackberries. Jinx stopped going when she grew old enough to resist. Then her mother went off traveling alone, and then she was put into a hospital somewhere up in Virginia. Jinx knew her mother died there, but instead she likes to imagine her still riding on a bus, looking out the window at the passing scenery.

Kirvin Feeney had girlfriends, nice girlfriends who cooked sometimes, or cleaned up, and gave Jinx clothes and taught her to dance and wear makeup when she was just a little girl, a “little fancy girl” they called her. Everybody got a kick out of her. The only problem was that these women tended to leave pretty quick once they realized they were not going to change her daddy. Though Jinx went to school for a while, she soon stopped trying. It was hard to get there, and it was more fun to hang around the shop with the men anyway. The older she got, the nicer they were.

Soon she was going off with some of them to do things that were mostly fun anyway and didn’t mean a damn thing to her anyhow. If Kirvin Feeney knew about these things, he never said so, but his health was so bad by then that he had pretty much stopped working, and he must have been glad for the kerosene and coffee and food that she supplied, though finally he wouldn’t eat hardly anything, living on grits and liquor brought around by Orlando Dellinger and his daddy, the only ones of all that crowd who continued to come to the house at the end.

Jinx was sent to live with her mother’s sister, whom she had never even seen. This was her aunt, Mary Ellen, and her uncle, Royster Biggs, who ran a big hog farm out in the country near Warsaw, North Carolina. The man from the state drove her over there. The highway ran straight as a ruler across the dry red land that lay flat in every direction, laid out in different kinds of fields like some kind of big board game.

Her aunt and uncle’s two-story brick house sat out in the middle of a yellow field as if it had been dropped there. Out behind the house were the hog barns, long low structures, lots of them, and several big scummy ponds that looked suspicious. “Damn,” the man said. “I can smell it already.” He rolled up his window, which did not help. To the left sat a brick garage that was nearly as large as the house, with space for five vehicles. A gleaming white Cadillac with fins was pulled up in front of the house. The door of the house opened up, and there stood her uncle and aunt, who looked like hogs themselves.