The Stone Angel (29 page)

The stranger tries to take my other arm, but I strike his hand down.

“Don’t touch me! Get away from me, you.”

“Okay, okay,” he says helplessly, stepping back. “I only wanted to help, that’s all—”

“How can you be so snippy, Mother?” Doris protests. “After all, Mr. Lees saved your life.”

This ridiculous statement almost makes me laugh, but then, looking into this strange man’s eyes, an additional memory returns, something more of what he spoke to me last evening, and I to him, and the statement no longer seems so ridiculous. Impulsively, hardly knowing what I’m doing, I reach out and touch his wrist.

“I didn’t mean to speak crossly. I—I’m sorry about your boy.”

Having spoken so, I feel lightened and eased. He looks surprised and shaken, yet somehow restored.

“It’s all right—I knew you never meant it,” he says. “And—thanks, about the other. That goes for me, too.”

I can only nod silently, moved by his tact in front of Marvin and Doris.

“Well, I guess I’ll be going,” he says awkwardly. “Unless you’d like me to give you a hand after all.”

“I can manage,” Marvin says brusquely. “You needn’t bother.”

And so the man goes away, back to his own house and life. I am not sorry to see him go, for I couldn’t have borne to speak another word to him, and yet I am left with the feeling that it was a kind of mercy I encountered him, even though this gain is mingled mysteriously with the sense of loss which I felt earlier this morning.

“What did you mean?” Marvin said. “What boy?”

“Oh—it was nothing. Something he said. I’ve forgotten. How can I get up those steps, Marvin?”

“Hang on,” he says. “We’ll manage.”

He tugs and pulls, sweats and strains, teeters me aloft. I’m dizzy, only half aware as we mount the steps, one and one and one, interminably. Marvin’s arms are
like a steel brace around me. He’s very strong. But we’ll never make the top. That I do know.

“Oh, I can’t—”

“Only a little way more. Try.”

At last I open my eyes. We’re in the car, and I’m swaddled with blankets and pillows.

“Now—I suppose it’ll be straight to that place—”

“No,” Marvin says slowly, his eyes on the road. “Too late for that now. It’ll be a miracle if you don’t get pneumonia. You’ll have to go into the hospital. The doctor said there’d be no question of anything else now.”

“I’m quite all right,” I cry. “I’m just a little tired, that’s all. There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m not going into any hospital.”

“We didn’t want to say,” he says apologetically, “but if you’re going to kick up such a fuss about the hospital, I guess you’ll have to know.”

And then he tells me what was on the X-ray plates. It’s unimportant, really, only a name. It could be anything. If it hadn’t been that, it would have been something else. Yet, hearing it, I’m repelled and stunned.

Odd. Only now do I see that what’s going to happen can’t be delayed indefinitely.

    Lord, how the world has shrunk. Now it’s only one enormous room, full of high white iron cots, each narrow, and in each one a female body of some sort. I didn’t want a public ward, but Marvin said the doctor told him there was no room anywhere else. I wonder. I just wonder. If I’d been someone with position, one of those silken dowagers with primped-up hair like you see on the society page, then they’d have found room quickly enough, I’d
stake my life on that. This ward must have thirty beds or more. It’s bedlam. I lie here on my slab of a bed, the sheet drawn up to my chin, my belly like a hill of gelatine under the covers, quivering a little with each breath. My feet are stuck straight up to ward off cramps. I’m like an exhibition in a museum. Any may saunter past and pause to peer at me. Admission free.

I close my eyes and gain for a moment the illusion of privacy. But the noise is fierce. A constant jingle and ring of curtains being pulled open or closed along the overhead rods. Each bed can be shut off, given its own small cubicle, but they won’t allow you the privilege at night. I asked the nurse to curtain off my bed, and she refused, saying I needed the fresh air, and, besides, the night nurse liked to be able to see everyone. So you sleep here as you would in a barracks or a potter’s field, cheek-by-jowl with heaven knows who all.

Nurses in white and aides in blue patter to and fro, always with trolleys, little clanking trains freighted with bedpans or pitchers of apple juice or trays of food or paper cups of pills which they hand to you as though you were a child at a birthday party, receiving your ration of candies. The pill nurse has a jolly booming voice that rubs me the wrong way.

“Mrs.—Mrs. Shipley, is it? Now let’s see what we have for you tonight. A big pink one and a teeny yellow. Here you are.”

“I don’t want them. I’ve no need. I can’t abide pills. They stick in my throat.”

“Ho-ho,” she laughs, like Santa Claus. “Well, you can get these down, I’m sure, with a good big swallow of water. Doctor said you were to have them, so we can’t do
anything about it, can we? Come on, there’s a good girl—”

I’d stab her to the very heart, if I had a weapon and the strength to do it. I’d good-girl her, the impudent creature.

“I don’t want them.” My eyes are burning and heavy, the tears being close to the surface, but I won’t let her see. “I don’t even know what they are. You needn’t shove them at me like that. I’ll spit them out.”

“I can’t spend all night here,” she says. “I’ve got forty patients to do. Come on, now. Just take them. One’s a two-ninety-two, and the other’s a sleeping pill, that’s all.”

I open my mouth to speak and she flips the pills in, like a boy shooting marbles. Perforce, I swallow. They do stick in my throat. I knew they would. I gag.

“Here—have some water.” She shoves the glass at me. Then, treacle-voiced once more, “That wasn’t so bad, after all, was it?”

I he here and feel the pain beating its wings against my rib cage. Gradually, the assault grows feebler, and I relax. At last the lights go off, but all around me in the not-quite-dark I can hear the noise of women breathing. Some snore raspingly. Some whimper in their sleep. Some neigh a little, with whatever pain or discomfort is their particular portion. A wisp of a voice sings in German, off-key. Near me, someone prays aloud. The nurse’s heels tap softly, like a knocking at a door. And endlessly, the breathing and the voices flutter like birds caught inside a building.

The drug is swirling me downward into the cold depths of a sea.

Temperature, Mrs. Shipley. That’s it. Wake up and open your mouth. There—”

I’m hauled out of sleep, like a fish in a net.

“What is it? What’s all this? Who’re you?”

Even though I see she wears a uniform, at first I’m not quite certain where I am. Then I know. They’ve caught me. They’ve put me here and I can’t get out. Then, as I remember why, the pain returns all of a surge, a sudden visitation, and I grab at the nurse’s hand.

“Oh—”

“Hurts, eh? Well, Doctor Corby said you were to have a two-ninety-two whenever you need it. Can you just hang on a few minutes, my dear, and I’ll get something for you.”

She’s spoken so placidly, and said “my dear” so unaffectedly, that I’m certain she means her promise. She’s not the pill nurse. This woman’s different, ample, with specks of gray in her brown hair. She’s not condescending.
How I like her matter-of-factness. But it weakens me, all the same, and undermines my nerve, as always when I’m sympathized with, and I find I’m shamefully clinging to her arm and crying and cannot seem to stop.

She puts an arm on my shaking shoulders.

“There, there. It’ll be all right. You just wait a minute. I’ll get you something right away.”

She brings the garish pink pill and I seize it from her and gulp it down. Finally I’m able to compose myself.

“Thanks, nurse. You’re very good.”

“It’s my job,” she says briskly, but she smiles.

And then I see it really is her job. I needn’t feel beholden. That’s a help. I can’t bear to feel indebted. I can be as grateful as the next person, as long as it’s not forced on me. When she’s gone, I try to sleep again, but I can’t. All around me, people are waking, emitting morning noises, open-mouthed yawns, rustling of bedclothes, gaseous belches, volcanic wind from various bowels.

The woman in the next bed is humming and from time to time she bursts into senseless song.

“Loo, loo—” she sings.

She’s so scrawny, it’s a wonder she can stand up at all, but she eases herself cautiously out of bed and walks bent over, holding her hands to her abdomen, as though afraid something would become dislodged there if she didn’t take care to hold it in place. She’s just skin and bone, a hag from the illustrations to a frightening fairy tale. She can’t be more than five feet tall, and when she’s bent she looks a dwarf woman, such a measly little creature that if she shriveled a trace more she’d disappear altogether.

“Well, what kind of a night did you have?” she asks. “Kinda disturbed, eh?”

Her voice has that insufferable brightness that I loathe. I’m not in the mood for her cheerfulness. I wish to heaven she’d go away and leave me alone.

“I scarcely slept a wink,” I reply. “Who could, in this place, with all the moaning and groaning that goes on? You might as well try to sleep in a railway station.”

“You was the one doing most of the talking,” she says. “I heard you. You was up twice, and the nurse had to put you back.”

I look at her coldly. “You must be mistaken. I never said a word. I was right here in this bed all night. I certainly never moved a muscle.”

“That’s what you think,” she says. “Mrs. Reilly will bear me out.”

She shrieks across to a bed opposite.

“Oh, Mrs. Reilly, are you awake, dear? You heard this lady last night, didn’t you? Wasn’t she up and down? A regular jack-in-the-box, wasn’t that a fact?”

A mountain of flesh stirs slightly in the crumpled bed, but when the voice emerges it is clear and musical with a marked Irish accent—so much at odds with the swaying mound of her body that I’m fascinated and can’t help staring.

“I heard her, the poor lady. I did, surely.”

Then I realize what it is she’s saying. It can’t be true. I have no recollection. I feel there is some hidden malice in this tiny crone who stands at the foot of my bed. What’s it to her, anyway? She’s lying. I know it,

“You’re wrong. I lay here half the night, wide awake, listening. I couldn’t get to sleep at all, for the racket. Is someone German?”

“That’s her, Mrs. Dobereiner,” the creature hisses, pointing across the way. “She don’t speak much English,
but she sings a treat. A regular meadowlark. I wisht she could sing so we could get the sense of it, though. A lotta foreigners around these days, ain’t there?”

She leans and screeches. “We’re just saying how we like to hear you sing, Mrs. Dobereiner.”

She evidently believes that if she talks loudly enough, it will pierce the wall of language.

“Sing
, you know—” she yells. “Loo, loo—”

She breaks off and shakes her head in my direction.

“She gets pretty down sometimes,” she says in an unnecessary whisper. “Not being able to make herself understood, you know. It’d try the patience of a saint. Well, too bad you didn’t get a good night. It makes all the difference, a good night’s sleep, don’t it?”

“I’ll never be able to sleep, with so many around,” I say irritably. “Never in this world. They had to put me in this place, Marvin said, because they had no semi-privates. I’ll not sleep at all, I can tell you that.”

“Semi-privates?” she says sharply. “Well, lucky for you if you could afford it, that’s all I can say. Me, I couldn’t go there if they had ten million semi-privates this very minute. Marvin’s your son? I seen him yesterday. Fine-looking fellow. You’re lucky. I got no one like that.”

“No children?”

“Never had a one, although not through lack of wanting them. It’s God’s will, I guess. We’ve neither chick nor child, Tom and me.”

“Tom? Oh—you’re the one I heard last night, that kept asking if Tom was there.”

“More than likely,” she says calmly. “I wouldn’t put it past me. I’m used to him there at night. I oughta be. We been married fifty-two years this August. I’m seventy.
Wed at eighteen. What’s your man’s name? John, ain’t it?”

I can only gape at her, and she chortles. “See? Told you I heard you in the night. Believe me now?”

I turn my face away. There is nowhere to be alone here. The curtains are perpetually open. I put a hand over my face and the little creature hops alongside my head.

“Hey—don’t take on so,” she says. “I never meant no harm. Is he—he’s not living, then? I’m real sorry. I never meant to make you feel that bad.”

She means well, I suppose. The hospital gown she wears comes only to her knees—a child’s size, it looks, and her bony blue-veined shanks protrude. Like bleached flour sacking it is, that gown, tied with tapes at the back of her neck, and it flaps open as she bends to peer at the card on the foot of my bed, revealing buttocks dented and hollowed with leanness. I almost have to laugh, until I realize I’m wearing the same kind of gown myself.

“I see you’re Mrs. Shipley,” she says. “Might as well get acquainted. I’m Mrs. Jardine. Elva Jardine. That there’s Mrs. Dobereiner, like I said, and Mrs. Reilly’s the big lady there.”

She bends close to me.

“Did you ever see such weight in all your born days? They had to bring her in on a wheelchair, and it took three orderlies to hoist her into the bed. It’s her glands, I should imagine. A real cross to bear, if you ask me. Tom was always saying to me—Elva, you’re light as a feather, you oughta get some meat on your bones. But now I’m glad, I’ll tell the cock-eyed world. You ain’t exactly skinny yourself, Mrs. Shipley, but you’re not a patch on her.”