But finally Gloria’s shift was done. I never thought I’d be sorry to see her linebacker’s shoulders sway off down the hall until the night nurse, Miss Kniffin, led me to my quietroom, took away my gown and whanged the steel door home behind me. Wait don’t leave me! Just lemme (Blam. Clank-the outer door guard. Then nothing.) Not that I couldn’t pace in my quietroom, that was one good thing about emptiness, you could pace it off, round and round and round the padded hole. But now I had to face it, live alone with it, stark naked. I did have a social disease, I mean my coochie was not itself, could not be itself although it appeared to be itself, in fact looked exactly like its usual hideous self, scraggy black hair pasted to white skin like swamp grass sucked tight against a clay bank when the water drops.
I threw myself on the soft floor, peered into that darkness between my thighs and everything looked the same in the bad light, no there was some kind of brown trash down there where the whips of hair rooted in skin, I scratched at it with the bitty edge I had left of one fingernail and managed to pry some off and hold it up to the gray twilight-good godzilla! it walked across my fingertip. I saw, just barely, its lacy nippers waving. Crab was no figure of ayrabber speech, then, these were crustaceans of some microscopic universe whose entire Chesapeake shore could fit between my legs. I scrambled to my feet and paced even more wildly, for the yellowed old padding I was lying on looked a lot like the ancient mattress in the ayrabbers’ stall. I had to get rid of these bugs before I infested this place, if I hadn’t already-I couldn’t lie down-no one could know-lemme die first. But what was the cure for crabs if you couldn’t tell a doctor? And even supposing you could find a doc who wouldn’t rat on you to your dreambox adjustor, how were you to collar this expert unless they let you out of here?
I made a wild leap for the quietroom window. It was five feet above the spot where I bounced off the wall, and probably too small for my head, even if I could hold on tight enough to butt a hole in the glass. Still it felt good to bounce off the wall and I did it again, and again. Satisfying noise of my little pieces rearranging themselves, like a sack of potatoes thrown down from a barn loft. Then suddenly I found myself dangling from the padding three feet up-how was I doing this? It must be that superhuman strength of mental patients you hear about: I was four feet up, then five-godzilla knew what my toes and fingers were sticking to, but somehow I stayed up. And six and nine and finally I squinted through the woozy glass.
Seventy feet down, at the bottom of so many fathoms of clear black jelly, streetlights came on like burning heads of hair, and at their feet, the tops of cars bulged silently in and out of view. The ayrabbers’ barn doors were still open; under the jelly of night the hole behind them was lit up like a palace. I pressed my forehead to the cool glass-Lemme outa here I screamed-reared back a little, getting ready to butt it. The door opened behind me and I let go.
“Ow… ow…” Naked and flat on my back. “You are hurt?” “Cheese… what gives you that idea?” “You fall.” “Hump no, I jumped.” “How you get up there? What you are holding on?” That voice dried and cured in the smoke of five hundred thousand Gypsygirl cigarettes was at last a little impressed. “It’s that old, ouch, superhuman strength of the mental patient,” I croaked, and rolled back my head until I could see as far as the door. Could it really be madame-too-beautiful-on-her-horse? It was. “What are you doing here!” I growled. Because of the crabs I wasn’t even glad to see her. Thank godzilla there was no more light than the undersea glow from the green linoleum corridor, all the same I bunched myself in a sitting position, pulled my infested thighs discreetly together, threw an arm across my nuzzies. Sumpm hit me softly in the shoulder. A hospital gown. I got up and tied it on. “How come you’re here at night?” I mumbled rudely, not even caring anymore that she never answered a question from a mental peon-and then to my amazement she replied: “I like night duty. I’m not so crazy for sleep like some people. I like to watch sun come up. For a week, maybe two, I will do it…” I hardly dared read the message I could see so clearly between her words, but there it was: Because you are here, Miss Bogeywoman. She’s here because of me. Of me!
“So,” said Doctor Zuk. “Maybe you would like a little to talk?” “Sure,” I said uneasily. I must say the whole thing struck me as highly irregular. Yes there was that furtive conservatism of the mental patient setting in, and then I was in a rotten mood on account of that itch, that itch at the x spot sucking everything down to its level. To think that just last week I’d thrown myself at her feet for this chance, kissed her imaginary ankles, and she’d kicked me into the imaginary gutter. Next she had betrayed me to the fuddies, landed me in a quietroom, I’ll never speak to that Zuk hag again I’d been thinking. And now here she was, inviting me-to talk!
“Could we, er, walk and talk?” I proposed, “I got this restlessness.” “Ach, choleria, in these shoes?” She pointed at her silver sandals. She wore no nylons under her dress. It was the middle of summer but this seemed raw to me, even nasty. I stared at the erosion cracks along her heels. There too she looked her age, as old as the hills and crags. “O all right,” I mumbled, and followed her down the hall. We ended up in a converted broom closet where nurse’s aides sometimes played cards. It was the usual Rohring Rohring hole in the wall, cracked plaster, exposed pipes, distant guts gurgling, roaches traversing the woodwork. She twisted a key in the lock behind us and we were alone. The first thing she did was toss her key ring on the rickety tabletop in a heap. When her knee touched it, the table tilted down two inches on its gimpy legs and the keys slid to one edge. I pulled my chair closer. I tried to keep my shifty eyes off those keys. One hand pressed my itchy crotch, hard.
HOW LOVE GOT ME OUT OF THERE
“So, er, uh, any hope of getting back to East Six? Lemme outa here! I been Quiet long enough,” I blurted, like a common ordinary mental patient. She tilted her spiky head and shrugged. “Why you are telling me this? Don’t get funny idea like I am your dreambox mechanic. You want something? Be grown-up woman. Talk to Dr. Feuffer.” “You kept me busy for the fuddies,” I accused. She smiled a little, as at a charming memory. “Ach, you have beg for it. And your face! How you like it when that iron door gets shut the first time, BOOMS! However, like people say in country where I come from, God he fastens one gate and opens a thousand. Perhaps there is open gate someplace and you don’t see?”
“I might have to push one open with that superhuman strength of the mental patient,” I grumbled. “Is all for your education, my dear,” she said blandly, “you are talented person, a thousand gates, where is the sport? For you, God closes a thousand gates and opens one.”