Specter (9780307823403) (6 page)

“Ask your husband. See what he thinks.”

“Poor old Carlos. When he gets home from his job, he heads straight for the table. And when his stomach is full, he plops himself in front of the TV and snores and snoozes until it’s time for bed. What would he do with a couple of noisy kids around the house?” The hearty laughter that bubbles out is so contagious that I have to smile. “I guess you’re not exactly a couple of noisy kids, are you?” she adds.

“Do you have room for us in your house?” I ask.

“Oh, sure,” she says. “That’s no problem.”

For the first time Julie speaks up. She crawls to the foot of the bed and sits cross-legged, tucking down her oversize hospital gown, which twists around her. “Do you have a real house?”

“You bet,” Mrs. Cardenas says. “It’s not the kind to go on the cover of a magazine, but it looks good to me. It’s a wooden house and it’s painted white, and there’s a green trim around the windows and lots of oleander in the front yard.”

“What color?”

“Pink,” she says. “That nice, bright pink that’s like the inside of a watermelon in the middle of July. And my dining room is fancy because I’ve got my grandmother’s hand-carved table, and a red glass bowl full of those silk fruits I made in a crafts class at the center. And my Aunt Lila crocheted doilies for the backs and arms of the red plush chairs in the living room, so it looks good, too.”

“What’s a doily?” Julie asks.

“It’s a little fancy white thing,” Mrs. Cardenas says. She thinks for a moment. “Well, you’ll just have to see for yourself. I’m not that good at describing things.”

“Yes, you are,” I tell her. “I can see your rooms, and I like them.”

“I didn’t tell you about the porch, and that’s the best part. Along the front of the house is a porch with a white rosebush climbing up one side. I can
sit on my porch and look down to Woodlawn Lake. The joggers run around the lake in the early mornings and when the day cools down near evening time, little boys and girls come to the casting pond and throw in their lines.” She smiles, and this smile is for herself. “It’s a nice place to live.”

“It’s a real house,” Julie murmurs.

For a few minutes each of us shuts out the others. I try to picture myself in this house, but I keep moving through the living room to the back, searching for a quiet room, a place where I can be alone to sleep.

Mrs. Cardenas gives herself a little shake and hops from the bed. “Well,” she says, “I gotta get home, or Carlos will sit down at the table before dinner is ready, and he won’t like that at all.”

She picks up Julie’s ice cream cup. “I’ll ask Carlos what he thinks.”

“Will you talk to Dr. Cruz, too? He can give you all the information.”

“Maybe it would work. Maybe not. I’ll think about it.” But her eyes, as she smiles at me are not counting the pros and cons. They are the eyes of a friend.

Later, when the darkened room shows only the slim strip of light from under the door, I linger before going to sleep. This is my private part of the day, and I cling to it jealously. Julie’s breathing is a steady snuffle, a muffled metronome. Occasional footsteps click in the hallway, and nasal voices hum garbled words down at the nurses’ station.

It’s now I can tuck my unwanted body between the sheets and leave through the gateways of my mind.

I can smell the soft earth around the pole beans in the yard of my home in the hills. I finger the silky tassels of corn, budding on the young stalks. A lone bee burrows into the moon-dipped pollen of the ligustrum bushes, ignoring me as I silently, invisibly glide to the main house, slipping through the wall, resting my cheek against the smoothly polished wood molding around the front entrance.

Thick, yellow light pours from the open door of Dr. Martin’s office, but I’m not tempted to step inside and see his balding head bent over the perpetual stack of papers on his desk. I’m here to keep strong the bonds between me and the home I have always known, and that bond is strongest in my own room.

My bed is so tidy, so sterile. I sit on it, tucking my legs under me, wishing I could rumple the faded chenille spread, dent the pillow with my presence.

Holley Jo rolls her hair on big pink sponge rollers. She doesn’t use the mirror propped against her desk. Her history book is open against the mirror, and she mumbles to herself as she reads. Exam time. I had forgotten. End of term, end of school, panic of endless facts poured into our brains. I wish I could help her. We always studied together. Question and answer. It was a good system.

We did so much together. “Two little pea pods,” Carlotta used to call us, and we’d giggle because she got her clichés so mixed up.

I smile as I remember the time Holley Jo and I were thirteen and decided to become fashion models. We practiced walking with chins held high, noses uptilted, in a gliding kind of step we thought models would use. “We’re perfect,” Holley Jo said, so we went into town to the JCPenney store and walked through their fashion department, hoping people would think we were real models. People did stare, especially when Holley Jo, with her head so high she couldn’t see where she was going, fell over a stroller, and I landed on top of her.

And I think of the time she got a part in the sophomore play. It wasn’t a very big part, and all she had to do was say a few lines and munch one or two potato chips that were set out for hors d’oeuvres. I helped her memorize her lines as Gwendolyn until I was sick of them, but she was terrified she’d forget them on opening night.

“You won’t forget,” I insisted.

“I will! I know I will!”

“I’ll stand in the wings,” I said. “If you forget your lines, I’ll whisper them to you.”

It took a push to get her onstage. I remember that. But she came in on cue. Just one thing was wrong. She forgot to reach for a potato chip.

“Potato chips!” I whispered as loudly as I dared. “Don’t forget the potato chips!”

“Potato chips?” she murmured, picking up the bowl and staring at it.

“Won’t you sit down, Gwendolyn?” one of the characters said.

Holley Jo did, still holding the bowl of potato chips, which she proceeded to put in her lap, eating the chips like crazy, until the bowl was empty. She didn’t forget her lines, but sometimes it was hard to understand what she was saying.

I lean back against the wall and watch her. Holley Jo, I miss you. But I may be coming to see you. Dr. Lynn said she’d take me. I’ve changed since we were last together. I hope you’ll look at me—the real Dina, the inside Dina. I don’t want to see the shock of my body in your eyes.

The window is open, and the warm breeze that lifts the curtains carries the fragrance of newly cut grass. There is a cricket underneath the window, punctuating Holley Jo’s monotonous murmuring. I’m content now, and I’m sleepy.

I am always surprised when morning comes. There were days when mornings seemed to bring pain and nausea and firm voices saying, “You’re doing fine, Dina.” Slowly the gentle mornings followed. This is one of them, and I greet it with relief.

The rattling carts; the slapping, hurrying feet; the chattering voices are filling the hall. But there’s another sound, a closer sound.

Julie is humming. It’s nasal and thin, but I can recognize the tune: “As Long As He Needs Me.” I try not to move. I don’t want to disturb her. This was the song that her mother sang, and in her own way Julie must be mourning her mother.

But the door slams open, and Mrs. Marsh sails in, popping thermometers in our mouths, taking pulses,
and pulling the curtain between our beds so definitively I look to see if there’s a rule printed on it.

“You can get up and shower by yourself today, Julie,” she says. “Remember the red button on the wall of the bathroom if you need me.”

“Don’t dawdle,” Mrs. Marsh tells me. “The breakfast trays will be here in fifteen minutes.” She leaves a wake of quivering air currents that take a few moments to settle.

“If you want to use my shampoo, it’s on the shelf,” I tell Julie.

“You go first,” Julie says. “I’m always poky, and I don’t much like breakfast anyway.”

So I shower and shampoo and towel-dry my hair in record time. Over my pink cotton underpants, standard regulation at the home, I put on a fresh hospital gown. I’d like to wear my own nightgowns, but there’s no one who can do my laundry for me.

It’s Julie’s turn next, and she’s right. She is poky. The trays come, and I nibble at the stuff I like best. The bacon, the fruit cup. Why do they serve those bowls of gluey white lukewarm cereal? Who eats it? Hundreds of patients get it on their trays. All of them send it back. Bowls and bowls of gluey white stuff returned to the hospital kitchens.

There is a knock, and Dr. Cruz comes in. He’s early. “I like to see you smiling,” he says. He stands at the foot of the bed. “How’s it going?”

“Pretty good. I’m so glad to be off those chemotherapy shots. I hate the awful way they made me feel.” I watch his face carefully. “When I’m an
outpatient and come back to the hospital for whatever you’re going to do to me, I won’t have to get those shots again, will I?”

“Each time you come in, we’ll give you a blood test, check your lymph nodes, and do a progress report,” he answers. “While you’re in remission, you won’t need those shots. If necessary, the chemotherapist might give you medication by pill.”

I groan. “What good will any of that really do?”

“We want to keep you in a state of remission. Eventually, we want to cure you.”

“With promises.”

He rubs an invisible spot on his left thumb. “Dina, I made you a promise that’s going to be hard to keep. I find that it’s difficult to find a foster home for you. Finding people who will take care of both you and Julie is going to be almost impossible. And we can’t keep you here. Other patients need the beds.”

“What does a person have to do to be a foster parent?”

“It’s not difficult. The people who apply have to be checked and approved, of course. And the agency keeps checking on them. But being a foster parent—especially to someone who needs medical care—is a big responsibility, and not many people want to take it on. There’s an older couple in Balcones Heights who’ve helped us out before. I was counting on them, but they turned me down. She’s having trouble with arthritis and says she isn’t up to taking care of anyone now.”

So I tell him about Mrs. Cardenas.

He looks hopeful. “I’ll leave a message for Mrs. Cardenas to call me as soon as she comes in.”

“I think she’ll be good for Julie. Julie needs someone to mother her.”

“Julie.” He looks over at her empty, rumpled bed. “So many patients come through this hospital. We give them whatever care we can, and it’s good care. But we can’t follow through on everyone. Who knows what Julie needs? We don’t have time to find out.”

Dr. Cruz glances at Julie’s bed again. “She hasn’t touched her breakfast tray. Where is she?”

“Taking a shower,” I answer. Then I realize that I haven’t heard the sound of the water running for quite a while.

I jump out of bed, not caring that all I’ve got on is this dumb hospital gown with nothing but ties in the back. I clutch it together with one hand, and with the other I hammer on the bathroom door. “Julie! Come on out and eat your breakfast!”

No one answers. I try to turn the knob, but it resists. “Julie!” I call. “Don’t lock the door. Julie! Answer me!”

Dr. Cruz is at my side. “These doors don’t lock,” he says. He takes the knob and tries to turn it, pushing against the door. “She’s holding it shut,” he grunts and gives a harder turn to the knob.

I can see he’s afraid of forcing the door with so much strength that he’d risk knocking Julie to the tile floor.

“Julie,” he says, “let go. I’m coming in the door, and I don’t want you to get hurt.”

The door suddenly flies open. Julie has backed away, and is standing there naked, clutching her towel in front of her.

“Get her a clean gown from the closet,” Dr. Cruz tells me, and quietly he adds, “Julie, what’s the matter?”

“I heard what you said.” Her voice is shrill. “You
said no one would take us together. I don’t want to go someplace by myself.”

I bring the gown, edging past Dr. Cruz, who is keeping the bathroom door open by standing against it. I hold it out so Julie can slip her hands into it, and I move around her to tie the tapes in the back.

For a moment I stare. Then I close my eyes, trying to breathe evenly. There are welts on Julie’s back and buttocks, diagonal and horizontal slashes that look as though she’s been whipped.

“Dr. Cruz!”

“Just a minute, Dina,” he says, and he turns to Julie. “Climb back in bed and eat your breakfast. You didn’t hear all our conversation, or you’d know we haven’t given up.”

Julie’s mood changes abruptly. She obediently walks past him and toward her bed.

“Dr. Cruz! I have to talk to you!” I whisper.

“Not in the bathroom,” he answers. “Get your robe and come out in the hall.”

“I’ll be right back,” I tell Julie, feeling as though I need to reassure her every time I step out of her sight.

She simply nods and dips her spoon in the fruit cup.

I struggle into my robe, fumbling with the tie, and run barefooted into the hall, tugging the door shut behind me.

“Her back!” I whisper, although I’m sure she can’t hear me. “It’s awful! Someone has beaten Julie!”

He nods. “We know. Her doctor saw that when he first examined her.”

“But—” I don’t really know what I want to ask.

“There’s no point now in trying to find out who did it, if that’s what is bothering you,” he says. “Her parents are dead. The person responsible isn’t going to do it again.”

“It’s terrible to think about someone doing that to a little girl.” I rest against the wall. “Isn’t there anything we can do?”

“Yes,” he says. “You can be her friend. Let her lean on you for a little while.”

I stand up straight and scowl at him. “Don’t lay this on me. What’s she going to do when she gets dependent on me and suddenly I’m not around to pick up her problems for her?”

“I said for just a little while. Remember, it was your idea in the first place.”