Woman on the Edge of Time

“Ah, I don’t know herbs from weeds.” She thought of Luciente feeding her that wild greenery and her mouth opened to tell Sybil. She shut it, then after a moment said, “My grandmother knew weeds to heal with. But even my parents made fun of that. It wasn’t modern and scientific–like going in the hospital and dying of an infection!”

“Imagine, college girls studying witchcraft. She said there was a class in a women’s school. I never heard of such a thing. If only I could have attended college, Consuelo … I am self‑educated. I wanted to go to school, wanted it a great deal.”

“Me too. I went for almost two years.”

“I started part time. In night school. But it was expensive. I’d have to come home quite late at night, and then get up early to go to work … . I should have continued, Consuelo. I should have had the discipline!”

“It takes more than discipline. It takes money. It takes good public transportation.”

“I wonder who teaches them witchcraft. Imagine”–Sybil’s voice caressed her ear, tickling like a warm tongue–“a secret network of covens all over New York! Imagine the bars crumbling on the windows. Imagine the doctors fainting in the halls! The locks melting and running like thin soup to the floor!”

“Don’t dawdle over your lunch, girls. Come on, make it snappy.” The orderly Tony urged them along, swinging the keys in time to his transistor. He wrapped himself in music all day to insulate himself from the hospital, the patients, the boredom. “Turn ditum, you just march it along.”

“We can imagine all we like. But we got to do something real,” Connie said plaintively. “I’m just trying to create some space by kissing up to them.”

Sybil shook her head at the expression. “If we can figure out a way, I’m willing.”

Dolly buzzed in, all in yellow. “Hi, Connie doll. Listen, I talked to Daddy. He says maybe he’ll let you visit. How about that?” She kissed Connie, wrapping her in a cloud of perfume. “He says for sure him and Adele are going to visit you here.”

“What, they need him to sign another permission?”

“He says he wants to see you. The hospital told him you’re better. Look, I brought you a real chic wig. Black, the way you said you wanted. Pues, Tнa? Give me a smile.”

Valente and Sybil and Miss Green and even Tina, nodding out a little on the bed’s edge, gathered around Dolly and her. Most of Dolly’s precious visit got wasted on the wig. The wig was put on and she was commanded, among oohing and ahing, to stare at herself. Her bleary bloodshot eyes, her chapped and bitten lips, her hospital ashiness looked out from under sleek hair curled and combed just so, black and elegant. The wig felt heavy and she sat bearing it up on her short neck like a crown.

“Dolly, please!” She clutched her niece’s arm. “Get me out of here. Let me come home to visit you. I don’t want to spend Thanksgiving here. Please talk to them about letting me come home to you for Thanksgiving. I’ll cook for you, hermana mнa. Remember how I used to? We’ll get Nita and have a real Thanksgiving!”

“Maybe, Connie. I got a convention coming up. I need the green stuff.”

“On Thanksgiving itself? I wouldn’t get in your way. I could sit in the library. I could take Nita to the movies. Or the zoo. I could take Nita to Central Park Zoo and we could give the monkeys peanuts.”

“Not to worry, Connie. Daddy says maybe you can visit him. You talk to Daddy. I wish I didn’t have to work the holidays, but that’s business. But now you look ten years younger!”

When Tina was taken off for testing, Sybil sat on her bed and sighed. “Good try with your niece. But it’s true, that wig has some use. It covers the funny hole. You wouldn’t get far without someone noticing that.”

“What good does it do if I can’t get out of here?”

She was standing in line at the nursing station the next night. “Nurse, please can I call my brother? I got the change right here.”

“Where do you want to call?”

“Bound Brook, New Jersey.”

“Calling out of state, you can’t do that.”

“But I got the change. Just to my brother. Look, see, please, he’s on my visiting list.”

“Has he been around?”

“No, but he promised.”

“Why do you want to call him?”

Your life was everybody’s business to rummage through. “I just want to talk about how his family is. To tell him I’m better. Maybe to talk about if they won’t come and see me at Thanksgiving.”

“Okay. But no trouble. I don’t want you pestering your family from here.”

There was a terrible line by the phone, nine people ahead of her. Talking to Luis was no pleasure anytime, but she had to work on him about Thanksgiving. They had to let her out for the holiday, they just had to. She didn’t give a wink for a stuffed bird; they could stuff it with dollar bills and eat it with a sauce of Arpege. But she had to grasp the chance to run, before they operated on her. That one chance skinnier than a hair, than one of her own lost black hairs.