Bogeywoman (14 page)

“How d’you know all that?” “I ast.”
My head swam
—my dreambox bobbed emptily on the waves, like a bait float. “Why’d you ask?” (Emily Nix Peabody, refusal was her middle name, never asked anything she didn’t really want to know.) “She’s old but she’s so purty. I never saw anyone like her before.” “What’s she famous for? Is she a dreambox mechanic?” “I din’t ask.” “Didn’t ask!” I stared at Emily so severely that she added, “Prolly,” in a small scared voice. “She’s from Europe,” Emily recollected, “… or somewheres …” I suddenly recalled, for my
part, I was here to save my see-through princess, not to bully her. My ears itched hotly for shame.

Yes I was here to feed my fifty-one-pound princess as well as to milk her. I loved her, I always meant to fatten her up, no mistake about that. “Hey Em. Don’t you ever want to put sumpm in your mouth?” I asked, “just to suck it? not to eat it?” She wrinkled her little spotty-toadstool nose. “Sure,” I said, “like some things just say
put me in your mouth
as soon as you look at em. You don’t know what I mean? Honest?”

I looked around the room for the perfect thing. Kitchens are good for suckable stuff, bakelite spoon handles and pyrex thermometers and marble pestles. Even a writing desk has silky pens and crunchy pencils, but a room in the bughouse is a desert to the mouth, everything fixed down or flimsy white plastic made to throw away. All I saw were the maraschino cherry buttons of Emily’s
I
CHOCOLATE
bathrobe—thank godzilla nurses have pets, I thought, though it’s kind of awkward to suck another girl’s bathrobe buttons, even if you’re a
Unbeknownst to her—especially when she’s wearing the thing. Emily and me, we weren’t that close, but we weren’t that innocent either, I couldn’t just suck her buttons I mean.

And all of a sudden I saw it, just what I needed: Emily’s pink pearl plastic three-piece toilet set, maybe the one thing she had from home, with a shoehorn of suckable handle on the hairbrush, an ordinary L-shaped comb, and a mirror like a wreath of pinky lips that twisted to a pink scepter, positively mouthwatering, at one end. “Yum,” I said, picking up the pink comb and smoking it rakishly. I handed the hairbrush to Emily. I wanted her to notice that mirror handle herself and ask for it. But no, refusal was her middle name. “I wanna smoke like you,” she piped up. “Sure, okay,” I shrugged, and gave her the comb
and took back the hairbrush, but then I smoked its fat handle like a big pink cigar. Use your imagination, Peabody, I was trying to say. We smoked her hair set peacefully for a time. Two little kites of spit started glinting in Emily’s mouth corners and I thought I was onto sumpm big.

“Next you gotta try bubblegum,” I said, since it’s pink and you don’t swallow it. I mean, Emily was all of eleven years old. I poisonally despise bubblegum. “Hey,” Emily whispered, “let’s smoke real cigarettes.” “Real cigarettes?” I echoed uneasily. What could I say?—my Pall Malls and matches were in plain view, squaring the front of my overalls. “Real cigarettes? What for?”

I repeat: we teenage mental patients weren’t given to foiling each other’s stupid schemes. Heads were for dreambox mechanics to fix. We were young and set in our ways; it was our job to be crazy, not to be fixed. Time would change us, not our doctors in their wildest dreams, if we were in their wildest dreams, which I doubt. I mean, mental patience is a culture like the one it’s wrapped in; insanity is like sanity, it can’t stay the same or it rots. Fresh bad ideas were not to be sniffed at. And anyhow, everybody smokes in a mental hospital; it’s like drinking wine in France. If my see-through princess wanted a cigarette, it was my job to whip out the smokes, but I didn’t. Not just yet.

“You’re not even twelve years old,” I said. “You’re gonna puke if you smoke. You puke all the time anyway. That’s why you’re here. You can’t afford to lose even one more calorie or you’ll croak.” “I smoked awready,” Emily said, “my brother Barney showed me.” “Brother Barney,” I sneered, “what an example. When was this?” “They let him home for Christmas when I was ten.” (Barney was in reform school.) “I bet he pushed one in your mouth and made you smoke.” Emily was no snitch, but she didn’t deny it. Instead she said proudly: “We smoked Kools.”
“Okay, I’ll give you a cigarette if you promise not to throw up.” “Okay.” “Swear.” “I swear.”

I believed her. In fact, suddenly I was afraid she would choke back her puke or die trying, for this was another way of being pure. Things were getting out of hand, it was like she was going down the laundry chute headfirst again, and this was not what I’d had in mind for my see-through princess at all.

“Also, you have to eat a coddy,” I stipulated. “I’ll throw up.” “So smoke
and
eat a coddy and you won’t throw up.
You swore
.”

There was a nub of logic there and you could see her circling it, circling it, looking for a place to land. Luckily I had a coddy on me as I often did in those days. I took a puck of damp white napkin out of my pocket and spread it open and there was my rusty round coddy, fifteen cents at the snack bar in the lobby, and next to it I laid a cellophane two-pack of saltines, a squirt-tube of mustard, a Pall Mall and my 250-wrapper Mr. Peanut lighter, not available in any store.

“You gotta eat, Peabody, or you’ll never get out of here,” I said. No, that argument was lame, for none of us Bug Motels exactly wanted out of here. “I mean out of this room,” I added. “Okay.” “Swear.” “I swear.” She took up the coddy in one hand and the cigarette in the other, and I picked up my lighter.

And now I ignited and she nibbled and puffed, gulped and hacked and fizzed and choked. The cigarette smoke steamed out of the yellow baby-bird angles of her beak, curled like chicken feathers around those agonized calluses where the rough little lips came together, and all at once two worms of sumpm worm-white gleamed in the corners of her mouth, regurgitated coddy I guess—

I turned my back on her and grabbed the first thing that stuck out—which turned out to be the most disgusting object a person could bump into, an old dry sink on the wall that could
have been a urinal, that’s how it looked. I threw back my head and gasped for air and accidentally caught sight of Emily in the mirror over the sink. She was waxier white than the pillow behind her, a little cloud of smoke floated over her face and her ugly-cute forehead was dented with worry.

“You don’t have to eat anything,” I gave in, “I can’t save you if you’re gonna do like that.” “S’purty good,” she said meekly, “kinda dry.” “Aw spit it out,” I said, “or I might puke myself.” “S’kinda sharp. I mean it tastes kinda sharp, when I’m chewing and the smoke goes up my nose. Like chewing needles or sumpm.” “Oooo, that does sound good. Much better than poop,” I said bitterly. “I thought you liked poop,” Emily said. “I said
everybody
liked poop, not me.” “Ain’t you everybody? One of em I mean?” “I guess so,” I sighed.

“You could still save me,” Emily said plaintively, the way a kid wheedles you to keep playing. Only, old Emily would never say I could save her just to keep me playing. I sneaked a glance at her in the mirror. Her cute-ugly mug was peaceful against the white pillow. The back of her hand smeared over her mouth in an almost satisfied way. “Whatcha do with that coddy?” I demanded. “I eat it.” “Aw come on, Emily!” “Yeah. Honest. It was good.”

I squinted at her suspiciously. Her fingers, as short and skinny as birthday candles, lay on the coverlet and half a cigarette still stuck up from them, fuming. There were ashes in every direction: black smears on the pillowcases, pale gray drifts down the front of her
I
CHOCOLATE
bathrobe. But nothing worse.

“You didn’t puke?” “Unh-unh.
I swore.
” “You’re not really going to smoke that thing to the end, are you, Emily?” “I like it with a coddy.” “You swear you ate that coddy? I’m going to get you another one and see.” “Don’t go. Pretty please don’t go. Let’s play Old Maid.”

Old Maid! I remembered the last time Margaret and me played
Old Maid: when Merlin got called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and they put us on the B&O to New York all by ourselves. Grandpa Koderer gave the porter five dollars to keep an eye on us but everyone forgot we would be alone on the ferry. We were thrilled. First we exhausted our quarters in the car-deck candy machine. The water looked heavy and black like motor oil and when we were staring into it, eating Caramel Creams, Margaret’s hat fell in. This was so pleasant that some of our cards “blew away” too. At last we watched the Old Maid’s pruny face float, curl, sink. So the deck was ruined. On Central Park West we had colds and Aunt Henrietta Schapiro sat on the bed and taught us Hearts and that was the end of Old Maid. Poor dears. You’re more than half orphans now
.

“Don’t go. Let’s play Old Maid.” Why couldn’t I stop? “Only if you eat a coddy,” I bullied. “I ain’t hungry no more. Don’t go.” “Swear you’ll eat a coddy and I’ll come right back.” “I swear. But don’t go. They won’t let you in,” she said, and the bottom lip of her little buggy mouth trembled.

“Don’t worry, I can get in anytime I want. I’ll stay till you stop eating coddies, I swear. Hey, wanna split a Hollywood Bar?” She gave me a sickish smile—her lip curled back on her bucked bad teeth in friendly, bashful disgust. “Unh-unh. Too—maybe,” she said.

The door hadn’t quite hissed shut behind me when I hit the dayroom, running. “Gimme fifteen cents,” I panted at the Bug Motels’ card table, “I got her to eat a coddy.” The whole place was smoking like an Indian encampment. There were around ninety little aluminum foil ashtrays in that room, and every ashtray had its mental patient. O, Bertie and Dion sat together in
the whirly, cobwebby light, in a rubble of gum wrappers and potato chip bags, slapping their cards against the table. “Come on, gimme fifteen cents,” I repeated, “she ate a coddy, the whole thing.” Laughter burped out of the TV.

Bertie lazily shoved a dollar at me. “Who ya talking about—Emily? She ate?” “She ate a coddy.” “So what do you need fifteen cents for?” “Another coddy.” “You think she’s gonna eat another one?” “She swore.” “Cheese, Koderer, you’re doing better than Buzzey, maybe you should open up your own bughouse,” Bertie said with a smile. I squinted at him to see if he meant it. Probably not, but I didn’t care. I was Sigmund Food crossed with Margaret Meat, maybe I’d be Doctor Zuk someday after all.

“So how’d you do it?” O spooky-fluted, one eye narrowing at me in suspicion, the other hidden under the blueblack dip of her forelock. I wondered then, I wonder now, why a dark billow of hair over one eye makes a woman look dangerous, like a pirate’s eye-patch, but beautiful too. O watched me with her other smudgy eye that was telling me,
Walk the plank
. “How’d you get her to eat?” she asked again, without smiling. She was bristling mad, I could tell, and suddenly I didn’t care to go into that just now. “Tell you later,” I huffed, snatching up the dollar.

“Hey, pick me up a coddy too,” Dion said, “while you’re down there. And a pack of Tareytons.” Another dollar fluttered to the table. “Get me a coddy and a chocolate snowball and ten pieces of Bazooka,” someone else chimed in. “Five pretzels. And a strawberry turkish taffy for Mrs. Wilmot.” “A dime’s worth of banana BB bats and a pack of peanut butter crackers.” Pretty soon half the nuts in the dayroom were putting in their orders. “Forget it,” I shouted, “I’m just buying for the Bug Motels.” “Yeah, all you grown-up mental patients ever do is sit on your fat asses and watch TV and fart,” Bertie tactfully assisted me, “go get your own stuff.” “That doesn’t represent my views,” I
announced to the dayroom, since I was Sigmund Food crossed with Margaret Meat, “I just have an urgent mission to execute.” Under my breath: “Damn you, Bertie, don’t stir up the mental patients, I’m in a hurry and this could be a matter of life or death.” Bertie laughed. “We might grow up into mental patients ourselves,” I hissed. “We
are
mental patients,” O reminded me. “Yeah, well we’re not hopeless cases yet,” I said.