The Memory Thief (32 page)

The men looked away, embarrassed. But one of them spoke as he stared out the window. “I respect your comments, Susan, but
these are your personal feelings and not at all a professional diagnosis. It’s your choice, Bethlehem. We’re doctors; we don’t
rely on visitors to heal our patients.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Bethie said, her eyes holding Dr. Vaughn’s. “I’m not going home. I’m supposed to see my sister.”

“What do you mean?” he asked. “ ‘Supposed to’?”

“Just that I’ve spent my whole life behind her. I used to think it was because she was better than me. Prettier. Smarter.
More lovable. I used to think her greatness pressed down on me like a boot on my forehead.” She stood up and handed the clipboard
back to Dr. Vaughn. She pulled at her shirt, till the collar rose and covered most of her hives. “But I was behind my sister
because I needed to back her up. A part of me always knew she’d fall.” She smiled softly and forced her eyes to hold back
tears. She walked to the door and opened it. “Let’s go see Hannah.”

They led her to an elevator and told her to proceed to floor six and register at the front counter. Bethie stood inside the
elevator, waiting to rise to Hannah’s floor. She whispered, “Legion, Legion, Legion.” Only this time it was more than just
a story. It was a prayer. She felt the floor rise beneath her, knew she came closer to her sister with every second.
Legion
, she prayed. So that the story could be Hannah’s. So
the many
would be sent away. So that Hannah, finally, would be healed.

The hallway glowed with the sick blue of too many fluorescent lights. Bethie sat with another clipboard and more paperwork
to complete. She didn’t see any patients. She didn’t hear them. She saw only door after door down a long hallway. All of them
shut. All of them without windows.

A janitor’s cart wheeled by. With her pregnant nose she could smell the mingling of old Clorox with the mildew of the mop.
She could smell the dirty water that was sloshing around in the bucket. When her stomach lurched, she looked up and searched
for a distraction. Her eyes found a picture on the wall across from her. It was a cheap hotel painting. Every corner filled
with some element of a glossy paradise. A sailboat. An ocean. An innocent child with a sand bucket in her hand.

A woman walked toward her. “Bethlehem?”

“Yes.”

“I’m ready to let you in.”

Bethie rose, felt her legs tease her with the thought of buckling. Or running. But she pushed them in front of her. Step after
step down the long hallway, all the way to the very last door. The woman used a key to open the door. Bethie stood behind
her.

The woman motioned her forward. “Just you.”

Bethie sucked in her breath and held it. She let the hives sting every inch of her skin and didn’t fight it. She felt her
old stutter, long since beaten back, swim forward and threaten to freeze the tip of her tongue. Then she stepped—slowly, slowly—into
the great white room.

At the time, there was too much adrenaline pumping through her. Too much sting racing across the skin on her neck. Too much
banging inside the walls of her heart. Too much prayer inside her mind. She didn’t care about the details or worry over them.
Like the white cinder block of a room. That perfect square that was around her sister. Without one picture. Without even one
glossy idea of paradise. Or like the open bathroom corner. With its metal toilet and open stall shower. Such an insult to
the modesty Hannah was raised to revere.

No, the adrenaline rushing through Bethie’s veins, the boom throbbing inside her heart, focused on one thing. Hannah. With
her shoulder-length hair. With her too-thin shoulders rising beneath a white tunic. With her milky skin, paler than Bethie
remembered.

“Hannah,” Bethie whispered. “Hannah? It’s me. Bethie.”

Hannah looked at Bethie, coolly, vacantly. Bethie stepped toward her.
She reached out slowly, touched the cuff of her sleeve, and choked back a sob. “Sister?”

“Go,” Hannah whispered. “Get out of here.”

Bethie shook her head. “I came to visit you.”

“Go.”

Bethie sighed, pushed the air out hard between her pursed lips. She remembered what Dr. Vaughn had told her. To focus on the
simple, happy times of their past together. She decided to try again. “Guess what I remembered the other day? All those times
we snuck over to our neighbor’s house when we were little. Just so we could watch that tiny TV they had in the garage. Remember
how we’d fight about whether to watch the motorcycle show, with that cop always driving fast and dangerous, or that cartoon
with the little orange people? What was that called? I can’t remember for the life of me. Mother never found out about that.
She still brags about us never owning a TV. She has no idea how many shows we watched, all because the Franklins never locked
their garage.”

Hannah didn’t move. She hardly breathed. Bethie watched her silently for a minute and couldn’t decide whether Hannah had heard
her or not. She shrugged. “I don’t think I’m doing this right, Hannah. I’m supposed to visit with you, chat about old times
together. But what I really want is for you to look at me. I’d love to see your face. Don’t you want to see me?”

Hannah turned toward her, her eyes wide and scared. She shook her head slowly. “I’m not supposed to,” she whispered.

“What do you mean?”

“They don’t let me,” she said, and pointed to the camera on the wall. “I’m only allowed to see her now,” she said, as she
pointed to the empty chair. “Everything else is supposed to be what’s real. Just these white walls. Just this empty room.
I’m not supposed to see visions anymore, except the ones they want. So I’m sorry, Bethie, but you gotta go now. I don’t want
to get in trouble.”

“But I’m—”

“Shhhh,” Hannah whispered, as she covered her ears with her hands. She closed her eyes tightly. “When I open my eyes, you
will disappear.”

She opened her eyes, saw Bethie, and quickly shut them. Opened her eyes. Then shut them tightly. Again. And again.

“What are you doing?” Bethie asked.

“Making you disappear. I’ve learned how, finally. Things might appear whenever they want, but I’ve learned if I focus enough,
if I close my eyes and try hard enough, I can do it. I can see what’s real.”

She opened her eyes, saw Bethie.

“I’m still here. I’m not a vision.” Bethie noticed the tremble in Hannah’s lips, the fear that spread across her face. “Let’s
just talk. Like we used to.”

“If you’re not a vision, there’s only one more thing you could be…” Hannah ran and stood behind the empty chair in the corner.
She angled the chair until a chip in the white paint that exposed a little circle of blue faced Bethie.

“What are you doing?” Bethie asked. “Legion brought me here. Didn’t they tell you? Legion?” Bethie called out. “Tell Hannah
I’m real. That you brought me here.” She waited for an answer, but the intercom stayed silent. “Legion?” she called out once
more, and then shook her head. “Damn it, Hannah, just touch me. You’ll see I’m real.”

“The real Bethie never cussed,” Hannah said triumphantly. “Except with her eyes.”

Bethie laughed bitterly and held her hand out. “Just put your hand in mine, like the way we used to walk to the bus together
when we were babies.”

“That won’t prove anything. Haints aren’t afraid of flesh and blood.”

“What can I do?”

“See that blue?” Hannah said, as she pointed to the small circle on the empty chair. “If you’re really Bethie, alive and in
the flesh, you can touch it without fear.”

Bethie looked at the empty chair. She didn’t understand the test. She didn’t know the story about the chipped blue paint on
the old plantation. But she walked to the chair and laid her palm over the blue. “I am not a vision. I am not a haint. I’m
your sister.”

Hannah nodded slowly, as she stared at Bethie’s hand covering the blue. Quick tears sprang from her eyes. “Bethie,” she cried.

Bethie walked to Hannah and hugged her carefully. It wasn’t the way she had dreamed it. The joyous crashing of arms around
one another, the laughing into each other’s tangled hair. Hannah stood very still, while Bethie wrapped her arms around her
and gently held her. Like a mother holding a sick child.

“I’ve missed you,” Bethie whispered, when she gained control over her voice.

“I’m sorry. It’s been so long. But I still should have known you. I don’t know why—”

“Shhh,” Bethie said. “It’s all right.”

Hannah pulled away quickly. “Talk to me.” She didn’t say it friendly. Like from one sister to another. And she didn’t say
it rudely. Like any other lonely Yank might. She said it hungrily. Like a baby needing milk. Or else it will cry. Or else
it will scream.

Bethie started with simple, sweet memories. Like how they played with the porcelain dolls together in the Mission Room. Hannah
sat, hugging her knees to her chest, bottling up every word that spilled out of Bethie’s mouth. Sometimes she repeated them
softly, and marveled at how good it felt. To feel something brand-new inside her mouth. Someone else’s words.
Real
ones.

Hannah memorized the shape of Bethie’s mouth as her words fell out. She memorized the rise and fall of her tone. Bethie’s
punchy syllables, a clue to days long past, when every sound she spoke was a struggle, a giant effort to release. Hannah loved
it, just as she always had, when the strict rhythm of Bethie’s words melted into something smoother, more musical, as she
laughed.

Bethie was telling a story about the time they made apple butter in the fall. Bethie had turned up the stove’s heat when Mother
wasn’t looking. She was tired of waiting and anxious to taste something sweet. But she scorched the whole batch. Bethie laughed
softly, and Hannah smiled as she listened.

“We ate it burnt,” Bethie said. “Remember? We pretended we liked it, so Mother wouldn’t feel bad.”

Hannah nodded.

“Ten minutes left for visitation,” Legion called out from the intercom.

Bethie had to look away from Hannah’s face. From the knowledge they both had in that moment. That it might be years before
they saw each other again.

Hannah covered her face with her hands and moaned. “I wish I was a slanteye.”

Bethie laughed loudly. “What a thing to say right now.”

“I mean it,” Hannah said firmly. “If I was a slanteye, I would of escaped it.”

“Escaped what?”

“Being Leah.”

“You
aren’t
Leah.”

“You don’t have her in you, like I do. All growing up I heard what people said. She’s
in me
, Bethie. And I’m ruined now. Just like Mother said Leah was. Once she was in that hospital, Mother said there was no return
for her.”

“You’re not ruined.”

“Look at me! Look at this place!” Hannah cried out. “I
am
Leah. I
am
ruined.”

“No,” Bethie said, her eyes screaming cusswords like they used to on the bus. “You’re not ruined. You’re
empty
. There’s a real difference between the two.”

Hannah shook her head and looked toward the wall.

“You think I don’t know?” Bethie whispered darkly. “Oh, sister, did you miss my childhood so completely? Were you that lost
in your perfect days, your smart, pretty, glory days? From my first memory of speaking, I felt the
ruin
inside my mouth. From that first taste of the vinegar Mother poured over my tongue—remember? From that first taste, how do
you think I felt about myself?
Ruined
. I couldn’t even say my own name. I couldn’t even tell the bus driver
my name
. And all the things that girls, girls like you, took for granted, I had no hope for. Things like giving a class book report.
Making a phone call to a friend. Meeting a boy, and shyly whispering
Hello
. All of that was
ruined
for me. So I quit. I forced my tongue to be still. I forced my mouth to be empty. And I felt like you do now. I felt ruined.”
Bethie stepped toward Hannah, searched her face, until their eyes met.

“Sorry,” Hannah whispered.

“Shhh,” Bethie said, as she laid a finger gently over Hannah’s mouth. “I’m about to tell you something very important. Everyone
thinks I outgrew it. What did Mother call my years of signing? The ‘Rest Period.’ Everyone thinks that Rest Period gave my
mind and mouth time to catch up to one another. Time to grow and develop without stress.” Bethie shook her head. “You’re all
wrong.”

“Then what?” Hannah asked.

“Do you remember the waterfall, way off the trail? I used to walk there at night. Nobody was around. Nobody could see me.
I would sit by that waterfall and hear the roar of free water tumbling easy and powerful off the mountain. One night, I opened
my mouth to speak, for the first time in years. The waterfall was too loud, so I couldn’t hear my words. But I felt them. Big and clumsy and full inside my mouth. The Rest Period hadn’t done a thing to help me. I kept going back. And since
I couldn’t hear myself, I paid attention to the way my lips and tongue worked together. To the way some words rolled out like
silk. While others seemed to cling to the backs of my teeth. And I kept going back, every night.”

“What happened?”

“I was never one for learning scripture like you. You could remember whole passages to my short
Jesus wept
verse. But words from Job returned to me by that waterfall.
He stretched out the north over empty space… He hung this whole earth on the face of Nothing
.”

Bethie reached for Hannah’s hands and grabbed them. “Don’t miss it, sister. Emptiness is the miracle canvas. The whole earth,
everything we see, every word I speak, all hung on Nothing.”

“Miracles?” Hannah laughed bitterly and shook her head. “Not for me. Not after the choices I’ve made. And certainly not in
this place. I believe in the miracles of
old
, Bethie, just like we were raised to. But I’m no patriarch. I’m no prophet. And even if I were—if I were Jonah and this place
was my great fish—all my prayers would never get me out.”