Three months later when he returned Otha was barely human. She sat in a corner and laced the air around her. Every day or so someone would come by and tell her to stop. She thought to herself that she would have stopped by now if it was such a simple matter, but because they didn’t realize this she often let a smile break onto her dull face. This always seemed to anger them and they would tell her to stop again and again, then drag her to a room somewhere to try some new horror on her body. They shoved her in ice water for so long that she contracted a fever when she got out that turned into pneumonia, which would have killed her if the janitor hadn’t gotten one of the orderlies to take her to the hospital room. Another month in a bed while some flurry of strength kept her breathing until she was returned to the shared room. Next they wheeled her into a small tiled cell and shoved sour rubber into her mouth and exploded rockets in her brain. She forgot to use the facilities for two days, after which they sent her back to the ice water, for a shorter vigil this time.
When the young man reappeared he told her his name was Dr. Glass. He was wearing spectacles this time, which Otha suspected were more to make him look older than for any true ophthalmologic need. He did not apologize for his two month delay except to say that they had been very busy in this section of the hospital. Otha took every ounce of strength from not only her body, but from any God in the stars to keep her hands still. She managed it for five whole minutes. When they began again he glanced at them as if he had not been aware of their stillness. She talked about her children again. He nodded and said that they were going to try a new approach, that he would see her in a few days.
Days. The next day Otha’s blood was taken and she was moved to a small room with only one other woman. She was given better food and the light was dimmed when it was time to sleep. She was given a larger room to walk around in at midday to keep her blood flowing. Then she was injected with something at the end of the second day that sent her into convulsions on the floor. The next day Dr. Glass arrived, looked at her chart and made some notations. That evening they gave her the injection again and she spasmed, but to a lesser degree than the day before. Dr. Glass saw her every other day and brought other men in to see her as well. Sometime during the third week her face and hands had swollen and puffed out. Her joints began to ache and the veins in her right and left arms collapsed, so they gave her the injection in her left thigh. Shortly after he left, swirls of rainbow light spun before Otha’s eyes. The walls seemed to breathe, then sweat black ink, which became oiled branches that crowded all of the air.
When Dr. Glass came back an hour and a half later, his head was a balloon floating above his body. When Otha asked why she was seeing such things, he told her that she was very brave and that she would be better soon. They gave the injections every evening thereafter until one night around three in the morning the Devil came to visit Otha while she worked.
He tapped on the door and then walked straight through it. His image fluttered in and out for a moment, like fighting through static to find a station on a radio. When he took form, he was holding a United States Postal Service bag, with a canvas strap that crossed his heart. Otha still dreamt in lace and eggshell silk, in top stitching and embroidered edges, and so the Devil’s face was a patchwork quilt, with scraps of fabric from years of collecting and saving and sewing. There was a cotton bird print where his left eye should be and a zebra wool over his right. He smiled a thin swatch of teal and black check, and slipped two envelopes between her moving palms. In this new room no one tried to stop Otha’s hands; they flew, long and dark, over her plum face, spinning lace webs over her head.
In spite of his observances Otha worked. She realized in that moment, that in the months she had been there, no one on earth knew what her hands were doing. She hadn’t known either except that she had felt compelled to move them as if she were lacing at Miss Barbara’s. Now as the Devil looked down at her work, she could see it as well. Reams and reams of lace filled the room, dangled out the window and unfurled into the sky. Her fingers had not moved in vain. She had been making lace out of night air and moonbeams, pine scent and starlight. She had made it frantically, feverishly. There was a piece made from morning dew and the tears of her son, another out of mother love. The stretch of sky and the corners of the ceiling above was her tat. She saw it reach out and cover a bit of the sky. It was a thin blanket of intricate cream, softening the rude sun. It was meant to calm the oceans and filter the oil from the skies. It was a net to save the planet, to catch the earth in her downward spiral and hold her safe. There was only a fragment of it finished, but its beauty was breathtaking; delicate, sparkling perfection. It was her offering to life.
Otha had to admit that it felt good to know that at least one other person could see what she had been doing, could see the importance of her work, even if that person was the Devil.
“Ma’am,” the Devil asked, “are you going to sign for this?”
“Yes, of course,” Otha said and set down her work. It was a special delivery. Why hadn’t she seen that before? She reached out and his pen arranged itself between her fingers and she watched her signature spreading beneath her, while he rested in the doorway.
“What’s it say?” he asked. “Don’t see many with postage like that.”
Then Otha felt the envelope flap tearing between her forefinger and thumb. The letter floated above her, the words moving like lice across the page. She saw that it was a list of names, alphabetically placed in a column. Halfway down she saw Otha Jennings written there. Then she looked up at the top. It was a death announcement, and the list grew longer and longer until it hit the floor and rolled onto the Devil’s foot. He smiled as it lit like a fuse and leapt into flames. It caught the edge of the moonbeam lace; in seconds it had burned all that she had woven that night, then for the last month; it was racing out the window until Otha grabbed the tail of the fire and, burning her hands, threw it to the ground and crushed it between her toes.
“Doesn’t matter. It still won’t hold,” the Devil said as he crooked his hat to the side. “It won’t hold against the fire in the sky.” She heard the comfortable gait of his step as he sifted through the closed door and left the room.
She began to work again in earnest. Night air and ephemeral light woven into the lace, into her Rapunzel lace rope that would save her and the world. The only difference now was that Otha knew she would lose.
OTHA JENNINGS remained in the Colored ward of Dearing State Mental Hospital for eight years until she was transferred to Kindred Mental Hospital in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in July of 1945, where she met her death. She received one visit from her son and daughter during her stay, after which she requested that no family members be allowed into the visiting area, especially her son. Her chart claimed that she was amiable and never a trouble. It said that she was, above all things, very quiet.
Chapter 18
Chauncy Rankin walked bare-chested along the back pathway towards Ruby’s house, his soiled shirt and suit jacket slung over his arm, the rain soaking the weave of his slacks, his good shoes collecting mud. He marched straight towards Bell land. It was only two miles out of the way, but he figured he’d be home in time for the mourning meal and Junie hadn’t really been his favorite great-uncle anyway.