Into the Free (15 page)

CHAPTER 23

I wake up in the hospital. I am back in Room Three, only this time, I’m the patient instead of Mama. In place of a water pitcher, a tiny Christmas tree is propped in the windowsill. Paper cutouts hang from the branches and a bright-blue angel is nested on top. I think of my sweet gum tree. My fall. And my angel. Then I realize that nurse Diana, the nice one who gave me that cold Coca-Cola the night Jack died, the one who promised to be available but then disappeared, is sitting in the cozy chair, which is still in the room from our earlier stay.

“It’s about time you woke up,” she says sweetly. “You slept right through Christmas!”

“Christmas?” I ask. “How is that possible?” I try to count the time in my head.

“It’s been three days,” she says. “We have all been very worried.”

“Where’s Mama?”

Diana’s expression shifts and she says, “What do you think of this darling little Christmas tree? Can you believe Hilda brought this in here for you? She sure did. The most thoughtful thing Hilda’s ever done for anybody, Millie. I think you got to her.”

I try not to look at Diana’s sad green eyes as I prop myself up on the stack of white pillows. That’s when I realize I have a cast on my arm. I also have bandages wrapped around my chest. I reach to feel my face. Stitches. I know from all the beatings Jack delivered to Mama that broken bones and split skin will heal. But I wonder why I can’t feel any pain.

“Don’t move, Millie,” Diana says, grabbing my attention. “You had quite a fall. More than thirty feet! Dr. Jacobson says you could’ve broken every bone in your body! No one around here’s ever seen such a thing.”

I try to process what she’s saying. She adjusts my blanket and continues.

“You’ve been talking in your sleep. Thanking someone for catching you. For saving you. Doctor said it’s just the effects of the morphine.”

I think of River, how some of the gypsies believe he’d been chosen by God to do great things when he survived his fall into the river. But for the first time, River doesn’t stick in my mind for long.

“Where’s Mama?” I ask again, determined to find out what has happened during the time I’ve missed.

Once again, Diana doesn’t answer. She walks to the window and stares out at the street. It looks to be about midday, and the sunlight catches tears cornered in her eyes.

“Where is my mother?” I ask again.

“Millie,” she says, touching the delicate blue angel wings and looking up to the heavens for help, “your mother passed away. Yesterday. I’m so sorry, Millie. I’m so very, very sorry.”

I want to cry. Or scream. I want to jump out of the third floor window and make this fall really count. But no matter how badly I want to do all of these things, I can’t do anything at all. Just like the night on my grandparents’ porch when I asked them to save Mama and they closed the door on me. Just like the time I stayed hidden while Jack cut Mama’s neck with a knife. Just like the day I crouched under the porch with an armadillo while Jack beat Mama nearly to death in the kitchen above me. I am too afraid. I can’t move at all.

“Millie?” Diana comes to my side. “None of this has been fair. I’ve seen a lot. A lot. But this …” She brushes my hair back from my forehead and squeezes my free hand even tighter. “I can’t understand this. I just have to believe you’ve got a very special role in this world.”

I want to swim away in the round green pools of Diana’s eyes. To drift out beyond the sphere of life. Instead, I go, without resistance, to the place Mama always chose. The valley.

The next morning, I wake to find Diana still by my side. “Wake up, Millie,” she says, rubbing my arm gently and talking in her soft, soothing voice. I wake in a bit of a daze, not sure if Mama and Jack are really both dead, or if I have dreamed it all. But then Diana says, “I need to get you ready for the funeral. Mr. Tucker has made all of the arrangements. They’re going to do a joint service. Your mother and father together.”

I feel as if a fissure has opened beneath me, pulling away everything in my life. All of a sudden, I am completely alone in the world. I want River to come back to Iti Taloa and take me away with the gypsies. But even that seems like a dream. It’s been eight months since I’ve seen him, kissed him. Six since I read his letter. For all I know, he’s never coming back. I’m starting to wonder if he ever existed in the first place.

Wishing for River is a waste. It doesn’t matter how much I want him here with me. He’s gone. Long gone. I have no choice but to get out of bed and attend my parents’ funeral. Without him.

“I’m going to help you get through this, Millie,” Diana says with resolve, as if she’s spent time thinking about me. “I promise. I won’t leave your side. ”

The gravity of Jack’s and Mama’s deaths has pulled me so far beneath the world of the living that I can barely move. Diana helps me move to the side of the bed and I finally understand Mama’s pain. It isn’t the broken bones or the busted skin that hurts. It’s the shattered spirit that deals unbearable anguish. “I’m not going.”

Diana exhales. “Come on, Millie,” she says softly. “It won’t be easy, but you can do this.”

I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to do anything. But I’m too tired to argue, so I let Diana lift me out of bed. She has bought me a new black dress, and I help her slip it around my broken arm. I prop myself up in the wheelchair as she runs a brush through my hair. She sweeps it up in the back with a silver clip. She gives me special black socks to cover my swollen feet. My shoes will not fit.

“You look beautiful,” she says, holding a mirror to my face. But I barely recognize myself. I have a thick bandage wrapped around my forehead, and a straight line of stitches sewn across my left cheek. My lips are swollen and cracked. My nose is blue, and my eyes are ringed with scrapes and scratches. I look like Mama, the night Jack left her to die. It feels odd to see myself like this. I imagine Mama must have felt the same way when she was pulled off the kitchen floor.

I certainly don’t look beautiful, but I try to be grateful that Diana wants to convince me otherwise. “Thanks,” I say, smoothing my one good arm over the soft black fabric of the dress. “Mama made me a new dress once. It was blue. For a dance. No one’s ever given me a store-bought dress. I like it. I mean, I never really needed one. Mama did people’s laundry, so I got tons of things. Good stuff. Too small for other people.”

Diana nods politely, but I notice her face twitch when I admit I’ve never had a new dress. “Let me make sure the driver’s ready downstairs.” She hands me a magazine and says she’ll be right back.

She leaves the door cracked, and I glance at the cover of the magazine. It shows a family gathered together for Christmas dinner. A big goose sits at the center of the table, surrounded by steaming sweet potatoes, green beans, and a ham patterned with cloves and a glaze of honey. All around the table, people sit. A black-and-white dog begs for bits, and a decorated tree fills the corner of the room.

I toss the magazine back onto the bed, sit in the wheelchair, and stare at the tiny Christmas tree, thinking about the angel and the man who caught my fall. Was it Mr. Tucker, the rodeo manager? Mr. Reggio, the rough-edged neighbor? Mr. Sutton, the respectable planter?

For some reason, I can’t shake the idea that it was Sloth. But Sloth is dead. Buried and gone. Seeing his ghost is one thing. Believing he caught me when I fell is another thing entirely. Maybe hitting my head has confused me. But I feel certain someone caught me. Memories and facts are getting all muddled together in a morphine-blurred swirl, and I can’t figure it out.

A chorus of voices floats down the hall. Diana has returned, bringing a crew of singing nurses with her. “Merry Christmas to you. Merry Christmas to you. Merry Christmas, dear Millie. Merry Christmas to you!” They each hold wrapped gifts and cards. Nurse Hilda, the burly nurse with the harsh voice, speaks first: “I guess it’s never too late for a Christmas miracle.” Everyone laughs. Although I haven’t cried since Diana told me of Mama’s death, the tears come now.

“You better stop that right now. You’ll ruin your stitches,” Hilda says, quick to wipe her own tear before it falls down her cheek. She hands me a gift and says, “Maybe this’ll cheer you up.”

I think back to Christmas mornings with Mama and Jack. Mama always made sure I had something nice to open each year. Jack would sit in his chair, smoking a Pall Mall and drinking whiskey. Then he’d stuff his mouth full of Mail Pouch tobacco, like he was trying to swallow a hard-boiled egg. Whole. Mama would sing holiday hymns, like “O Holy Night” and “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” I never had many gifts, but I’d unwrap each one, slowly, trying to make the magic last.

I always loved Christmas. We’d invite Sloth. We’d all share a big hen and stuffing and pecan pie for dessert. It was never the perfect picture you see in magazines, but it was close enough to perfect for me.

But this is different from other years. Not only has Christmas already come and gone, but all these strangers have shown up just to let me know things are going to be okay. “Well, what are you waiting for?” Hilda yells. “Don’t be a lady. Rip it!” This draws more laughter from the crowd. I struggle with my broken arm, so she opens it for me, anxious to show me the special treat.

It’s a framed newspaper clipping of Jack and Mama’s wedding photo. There is no article beneath, just a simple caption:
Jack Briar Reynolds and Marie Evangeline Applewhite, Married June 6, 1924.

I have never seen this picture before. Mama and Jack look young and beautiful, as if there really was a time when they were happy together. “Where did you find this?” I ask between tears.

“Let’s just say I have connections,” Hilda says, standing the framed photo up on the windowsill beneath the tree.

I continue unwrapping gifts from the blonde nurse who stutters, the redheaded dolt who threatened to call the cops on me, the orderlies who helped feed and bathe Mama during her short stay, and even one from Dr. Jacobson. A tube of pink lipstick, a box of creamy chocolates, a dainty floral broach, a silver vanity set, and a leather journal with a pen.

I focus on the crinkling sound of paper being crumpled, the slicing sound of it being torn. I put all of my energy into watching light reflect from the shiny wrappers. The ribbons, tied in fancy bows, slip between my fingers, smooth and soft. I think of Mama, and I cry.

“Enough of all this,” Hilda says. “Let’s drink up!” She pours everyone little paper cups of frothy eggnog and asks Diana to make a toast. I know she is trying to make the best of the situation. I appreciate the attempt. “To Millie,” she says.

“And to miracles,” adds Hilda.

“And to Mama,” I add. We drink the eggnog, and we wipe our tears.

“Oh, goodness,” Diana says, “We’ve really got to go. We’ll be late.” She grabs one last gift from her oversized handbag and places it under the tree. “We’ll save this one for later,” she says with a wink.

Hilda grabs the chair and wheels me down the hall. Diana walks ahead, opening doors and calling the elevator—the only one in town. The three of us ride together, me stretched across the backseat of a sedan, my arm propped up against the window, Hilda and Diana squeezed tight against the driver. The wind blares, and I worry for a moment they may be taking me to East.

The barren trees flash by, and I call out to them in the silence of my own mind, “Save me.” Just as in my dream, they sing out, “In the spring. In the spring. We will save you in the spring.”

I don’t know if it’s the morphine, or the exhaustion, or just the effort to cling to a promise of something magic, something safe, something bigger than me and Mama and Jack. But I want it to be real. The singing trees. The helping hand of Mother Nature. An angel swooping down to catch my fall.

“Please tell me. What happened to Mama?” I ask Diana and Hilda.

They look at each other, neither wanting to take the question.

“Did she kill herself?” I ask.

“We’ll talk about it later, Millie. Let’s just take one step at a time right now,” Diana says.

I need to know, but I am so tired. The medicine and the pain and the gifts and the grief and the world have worn me down. Maybe Diana is right. Maybe I am handling all I can right now. I close my eyes and hope the trees will sing me to sleep. I want to dream it all away.

My mind is snapped back when the road turns to gravel, and I figure we have reached the funeral home. I open my eyes. We aren’t at the funeral home at all. We have turned into the rodeo arena. The place where Jack took his final fall. The world I visited only once, on the day of Jack’s death. A place where rules are broken and women are strong and monsters become heroes. “Here?” I ask. “The funeral is here? Not at a church or a funeral home?”