Woman on the Edge of Time

“Oh!” Luciente groaned. “We were up till past midnight arguing the Shaping question. We had coffee twice. We’re taking a night off to catch up on sleep and then meeting again tomorrow night to argue out our village posit. Barbarossa and Luxembourg are on the other side, grasp,” she said to White Oak. “Got to work on them.”

She stashed Dolly’s ten dollars between the upper and lower sole in her shoe and persuaded Valente to loan her a needle and thread to take in her dresses. On another ward her sewing would be considered a good sign—a feminine interest in making her clothes fit would have earned her points—but here no one cared. Only Valente’s kindness determined that she could get what she needed to fix her clothes so that people would not stare. People on the street.

How she had dreaded leaving her tiny apartment in El Barrio for the grimy simmering streets! She had been crazy then. She would crawl, crawl on her hands and knees down Lexington, to be free.

Saturday night she made her two extra dresses into a small bundle along with her few necessities and at eight she began pushing it out the window through the grating to fall on the privet hedge below. She had to spend ten minutes forcing it through the bars. She hated to think what the dresses would look like by the time she recovered them. Just don’t let it rain! It hadn’t rained in two weeks. While she was wiggling the package through, Sybil carried on at the nursing station, where she caused a small commotion, not quite enough to be punished but sufficient to absorb the attention of the Saturday night attendant.

“Why can’t we socialize with other wards? On my old ward, every few weeks at least we had a nice social visit with another ward. We had Kool-Aid and cookies. Here we don’t have anything. We can’t even see movies. We don’t get occupational therapy. We don’t attend dance therapy. We don’t even take part in industrial therapy. Last time I was here, I worked in the laundry. Why not this time? This is exactly like a back ward, that’s what it’s like. We don’t even have group therapy! We must be the only functional patients in the entire hospital who don’t go to group therapy at least once a week!” Sybil posed with grande dame haughtiness, arching her brows, her voice, her shoulders, extending a regal arm in bold gestures, and managing to steal a glimpse of Connie’s progress.

Connie had finished with the package and run into the bathroom, where she took out of her brassiere a small piece of metal she and Sybil had worked loose from Sybil’s bed. Slowly she cut into her thigh until it began to bleed and then she caught the blood in a small paper cup from meds they had carefully preserved. She thinned the blood just a little with water to keep it from coagulating too quickly and then she ran back out, dropping the metal weapon on Sybil’s bed. Then she put the paper cup of blood near the leg of the bed. Sybil at once stopped her tirade, making a Bette Davis exit back along the ward.

“Good night, Lady Sybil,” the night attendant yelled. “We’ll give you a stiff one tonight”

Connie stepped in Sybil’s path and ran against her.

“Watch where you’re going, you fat cretin,” Sybil said.

“Watch who you’re pushing, you skinny witch! Shooting your mouth off all the time. Think you’re better than the rest of us. But you’re just a crazy bitch!”

“You tell her,” the night attendant called, laughing.

“Your language is like the rest of you, out of the gutter!” Sybil shrieked.

“At least I don’t pretend I can fly. They put you through shock so many times you got burnt toast for brains!”

“Ooooooo!” Sybil flew at Connie. She seized the five-inch metal span and waved it aloft, where everyone could see. Then she began striking at Connie with the span. Some of the blows landed and really hurt Connie fought back with her fists and nails, flailing at Sybil. Tina Ortiz turned and came running down the ward, to mix in. Finally Sybil struck her in the side of the head, pulling the punch as best she could. Connie toppled at once, falling beside the bed and groping for the blood, pouring it into her ear, jamming her fingers hard up her nose into the tender mucous membrane so that her nose too began to bleed. Then she went into the state of unconsciousness she had been practicing. She could hear but was otherwise out. Sybil kicked the paper cup away under the bed as the night nurse and the attendant and Tina arrived, Tina screaming, “Jesús y María, you killed her, you white bitch!” They hypoed Sybil and then Tina. Skip had pushed open the door from the men’s ward and he was screaming in horror.