Celia's Song (16 page)

Celia goes in and comes out again, stops at the maw of the room
holding the accusing eyes of the child. She hands Jacob a sheet and says, “Wet it, get it good and wet, then freeze it in this bag. Don't touch it with anything but these here two bags. Here, put your hands in the bags. Don't breathe on it. Put it in the freezer. You got that, Jacob? Do you understand me? Tell me you understand.” He hears her voice coming at him, strident and sharp as it punches its way through the thick darkness of the hall.

Jacob lets a “Yes” slide out from his constricted throat.

Her nephew is in a conundrum. He looks like he's seen the dead rise from the grave. Why in the world is he looking in on this grisly scene, if he doesn't have the strength to accept what he sees?

The sheet has weight. It helps him feel real. He focuses on its weight; its reality grounds him as he heads for the kitchen. He breathes out, away from the sheet, when he can't hold his breath anymore. The sink is clean. It smells of alcohol. These women are not taking any chances. He puts the sheet in the sink, soaks it, rinses it, then drops it in the bag and stuffs it into the freezer without touching it. There's too much food in the way. He puts the sheet back in the water, adds more alcohol. He rearranges the food, clearing the basket. He wets a rag with the alcohol and cleans the basket, then stuffs the sheet back in a new bag, and places it carefully in the freezer.

Ned watches him. Jacob is moving about in the kitchen like he's in the middle of a nightmare, not at all like he is awake and
trying to save a child's life. Something is up with that boy, Ned thinks, forgetting that he knows what is up with him.

Jacob doesn't want to feel this guilty. He fetches a chair. Maybe if he does not permit himself to sleep until the little girl is better, the guilt will ease its grip on him. Maybe he could tell her that, and her eyes would not accuse him anymore. She might not survive, Judy had said. Jacob decides that she will. He places a stool very carefully just outside the door. He does not want to disturb the women in case they come out and he sees the little girl aiming her eyes at him again.

Not long after he sits, Stacey opens the door and tells him to fetch another sheet. He does. All night long he boils sheets, then freezes and fetches them.

EVERY NOW AND THEN
, Celia feels a wave of nausea pass through her. She wants to beat herself up for threatening to be sick, but it isn't her who keeps conjuring the desire to vomit. It is her body, operating independently of her need to stay well. There is nothing to be done about it. Her guts can't accept that this could happen to
a child whose grandmother is there with her. Her stomach cannot allow that this has happened to a child whose mother is connected to her, to her mother, to their grandmother. Shelley is thin, halfstarved. They must not have fed her. Celia's weight grows unbearable; every ounce of once-comfortable fat is tormented by the emaciated body of the little girl. Her bones ache. She shifts, hoping this will relieve her of the pain. She had liked the presence her fat gave her, but now the weight sours inside, shrinks her large presence to a withered worm that wanders loose in her belly, teasing her stomach's nerves. She glances at Stacey, who is focused on cleaning each wound with hydrogen peroxide. Celia marvels at how focused Stacey is. She imagines that Stacey does not think of how many wounds there are to clean, how hopeless it is to bother because this child is likely not going to make it. No. Stacey has been asked to clean the wounds and, with delicacy and precision, that is exactly what she will do all night and all day if need be. She will dab each wound in its turn without doubting the sanity of what she is doing. Not for a second. Stacey is stalwart and Celia loves her for it.

Every now and then Momma looks at Rena, raises an eyebrow, and signals Rena to give the child a breath through a mask she is wearing on her face.

Rena can barely stand to tend this child, Celia can see it. She looks like she wants to bring up her last meal. Rena is tough, not as sentimental as Celia. It frightens Celia to see her frail.

Judy does not think that anything they do will work; and so, between ministrations, she says this to the women: “Burn victims this bad need to be put in a germ-free tent, chilled, undergo skin grafts, and given oxygen in very controlled doses. This room is not sanitary, cleaning it out with juniper is not enough. If this child survives tonight, and if she gets through the pain, she will likely die of infection.” Every second they spend trying to save her will
be damned in the eyes of the law as proof of negligence, criminal negligence, because it was obvious the child had been raped, burned, and beaten. The law requires that they report this. Even if she survives, the scars will be there forever, and they will still be required by law to report it. Judy tries every which way to convince the women to take Shelley to a hospital, but Momma is stubborn. She keeps asking, “What next, Judy? What next?” Judy is exhausted and cannot think of anything more to do.

The sheets they are using are being boiled in juniper berries and washed in alcohol, but Judy does not believe this is enough. “Germs can get through the cloth,” she explains. Celia wonders what kind of world this woman comes from that she cannot see that the women are not going to do anything but try to nurse Shelley back to health.

“Shut up. Shut the fuck up. If you are going to do this, then do it. Or go home.”

Rena hears Celia swear and take on an angry tone for the first time and she laughs. Stacey, Momma, and Judy stare at Celia as if they have just seen their kitchen table do a jig. Martha doesn't seem to notice that this is the first time anyone has heard Celia swear.

Celia touches her mouth and says, “How did all that gravel find its way in there?” Stacey, Momma, Judy, and Rena laugh the kind of relieving laugh that jiggles away the hours of tension.

When they stop laughing, Celia asks Judy if the sheets they used to make the tents were made of plastic or cloth. Plastic is her answer. “Doesn't Ned have a roll in his garage left over from when he did the roof on the addition?” Celia asks.

Judy gets excited. “Ned has a roll of plastic?” They send Ned out to the garage to get it. Judy cuts off the first six feet, throws it aside, then cuts more, holding it away from her face. She shapes it and engineers the overlapping flap. Ned busies himself constructing the four poles for the tent. They cut four holes in the first layer of plastic so that they can keep an eye on Shelley or reach in when they need to, then they cover the plastic with another layer.

Jacob helps Ned erect the structure and attaches it to the bed. Both men work without looking at one another, without speaking. Words make breath and they dare not breathe on the child. Judy reminds them not to breathe on Shelley and Celia tells them it's best that they don't even look at her, but Jacob does not need this last instruction. Together, Ned and Jacob finish the structure.

The child's grandmother continues to urge Shelley to hang in there, to keep fighting. “We are making you a tent,” Momma soothes. “Do you like your little tent? Shelley, you're on a camping trip in Momma's kitchen.” Celia is not entirely sure what the child has to hang in there for, but she hangs in there all night long anyway. Rena drips Pedialyte into the child's mouth, drop by tiny drop, every swallow of the fluid making the child convulse. Rena begins to feel like a kind of cruel taskmaster, but she does not stop. Celia believes Judy. She believes the child needs glucose, a sanitary room, and surgical instruments, but she also believes that those sterile
things alone will not be enough.

Later into the night, Celia and Judy have found their way, plodding on next to the women who are praying for forgiveness and continuing to minister to the child. Just about the time Celia and Judy have reconciled to doing what they have to do, Shelley's frail body begins to quiver.

“She is in pain, Judy. Terrible pain.” Momma's voice cracks when she says this. It crackles like dead leaves on a drought-ridden autumn day. It rakes the room and crunches on the ears of the women with its desperation. Celia does not remember her mother sounding this vulnerable or desperate.

“Oh, God. She needs …” Judy starts in with her doctor, hospital, and the law sermon.

“No lectures, Judy,” Momma says. Celia can see her mother's intense rage boiling to the surface. Judy hears the warning in Momma's voice and backs down.

“I have painkillers. Can she swallow them? Will she choke?” Stacey's voice is textured with the same desperation as her mother's. The women in the room want to scream at someone. They are standing at the edge of the same desperation. Thick desperation swims through the room and into their bodies; one more doubt threatens to swallow them.

“We can crush the pill and jell it, then slide it on the end of a tongue depressor to open her throat. The gelatin will dissolve. Won't it, Rena?”

“Yes, it should. It's worth a try.” Only it is Celia who answers. Judy crushes the painkiller and brings it to Stacey who has been busily preparing the gelatin on the stove. Stacey has put some distance between the absurdity of what they are doing and the possibility of it working. She knows Judy cannot do this.

“We aren't as barbaric as you believe, Judy.”

“I don't …”

“Yeah, you do. And right now that's okay. We just have a different slant on how this business of healing works. That's all.” Celia speaks without the slightest hint of accusation in her tone.

Judy sighs. These women could well be right; she thinks about the hanging herbs, the all-night vigils, the talking to the child, all these things are part of what modern medicine's proponents refer to as magic, witchcraft, voodoo. Judy has seen them work in less serious circumstances. Every now and then she thinks these things are missing in Western society's healing practices, but when
push comes to shove she wants to see surgical steel and antibiotics, not juniper-drenched cold cotton sheets and jellied painkillers. She wants to hear “scalpel,” not “fight for yourself, child, Gramma is here.” She wants to see clean pastel walls, not moonlight flooding a jerry-rigged tent for a wounded child. The picture of Rena breathing for the child every time her breath gets too shallow or her pulse too slow horrifies Judy, but she isn't exactly sure in what the horror lies. How can Rena watch the quivering little body with all its burns, then shrug, lean down, breathe, drip Pedialyte, watch, shrug again, lean down, breathe again? How can Rena do this all night and look so ordinary, like she is doing nothing more than tying the child's shoelaces and getting ready to pick berries?

“How do you do it, Stacey? We went to the same schools. How do you reconcile the science we were taught to this?”

“I went to our school with several pounds of doubt. Tons of it, in fact. You did not. We need to have some doubt right now. Look at what we're doing, not how we're doing it. We are patching a child who has been tortured by one of our own. Someone of us birthed the child who became the beast who did this. We didn't see it coming. We didn't watch that child, didn't see the twists
inside the boy who became this hateful man. We need to have some grave doubts, not about what we are doing now, but what we have been doing. We need to doubt who we have become, because Shelley needs to be healed. And we need you, Judy.”

The gelatin is cool and ready. They combine it with the painkiller carefully in the bowl of a spoon.

They return to the tent with the jellied painkiller. Judy reaches into her bag and takes out a sterilized tongue depressor. She looks at it before she tears open its wrapping. She nearly laughs. This will be the first sterilized instrument used on Shelley tonight. Her hands are out of control, they shake so badly she cannot feed it to the child, so she hands it to Momma. Gramma Martha instructs the little girl to open her mouth. Shelley's lips part enough to let Momma place a bit of the jelly mix at the back of her throat. The child convulses. With another tongue depressor, Rena pokes the little jelly farther back into her throat. Shelley's throat reflexively swallows. Momma and Rena continue until Shelley has swallowed all the pain-killing jelly prepared for her. Throughout the procedure, Martha has kept talking to her granddaughter. Shelley smiles a Madonna smirk, but quickly drifts off to sleep.

“We need help,” Momma says. She explains her plan for a twentyfour-hour watch on the child. “Judy, you go to sleep now.”

“We can ask the women who belong to that healing circle to help,” Celia offers.

“We need help, not a bunch of holy rollers screaming rage at their mothers,” Momma answers.

“They do stick together,” Stacey offers, trying to soften her mother's bias.

“Alice goes there,” Celia murmurs defensively. She is not in the mood for her mother's unfairness to Alice and the healing circle. She wants to argue with Momma, but to do so she would have to admit that she has gone there too. She knows that the circle is not
about disclaiming anyone's mother, but this is not a good time for Celia to bring up her participation in the group.

“They might call the cops,” Martha warns.

The women turn, surprised to hear Martha say anything but encouraging words to her grandchild. Celia knows this is also untrue. As a self-help group they are not bound to report anyone. She can't think of any way to promote engaging their help without telling Momma she belongs to the group. Celia lets the suggestion fall flat, and the women order the vigil among themselves without further chatter.