Woman on the Edge of Time

On that Wednesday she was sitting there hopefully, but Fargo was deep in gossip with another black attendant. Connie had gone up once for a light–the only way inmates could get a match was to beg for one–and had been told to wait a minute, honey, half an hour ago. Four other patients were waiting too with small requests. She knew better than to approach again. On her lap was spread yesterday’s paper, a present from Fargo for cleaning up vomit, but she had read through it, including births and deaths and legal notices. Mrs. Martнnez approached her, eyes meeting hers and then downcast in a gesture that reminded her suddenly of Luciente’s orange cat. Several weeks had passed since she had been in contact with the future, although almost daily she felt Luciente’s presence asking to be let through. Here in the violent ward she was afraid to allow contact, for she had to watch her step. She was never alone, not even in the toilets without doors, never away from surveillance.

Mrs. Martinez stood almost in front of her but a little to one side and fixed her eyes longingly on the newspaper, met her gaze questioningly, then glanced away. For months Mrs. Martнnez had not spoken. The attendants treated her as a piece of furniture. Many of the withdrawn had their own ways of speaking without words to anyone who was open, and Connie never had much trouble figuring out what Mrs. Martinez wanted. She handed over the paper. “Sure, I’m done reading it. But give it back, okay? For me to sit on.” A paper like that made a good pillow and she had no intention of abandoning it.

Mrs. Martнnez smiled, her eyes thanked Connie, and carefully, as if bearing off a baby, she took the paper away to the corner to pore over. Connie determined to keep an eye on Martinez and make sure nobody strong‑armed the paper from her. Martinez would long ago have been transferred from this acute ward to a chronic ward and left to rot there, except that her husband was on a D.A.’s staff and came up to see her the last Sunday in every month with her children–never allowed inside, although she would stand at the window and weep and weep and hold out her hands to them. He would sign her out for holidays, but always, after a month or two, he would bring her back.

Connie was watching Martinez turn the pages slowly, when two orderlies brought in a woman handcuffed to a stretcher, trundling her past roaring muffled protest. A sheet was tied over her and only her hair was visible, long auburn hair clotted now with fresh blood. Her voice rose out of the sheet, her voice soared like a furious eagle flapping auburn wings.

“Sybil!” Connie cried out and half rose. Then she shut up. Give nothing away. She watched them wrestle Sybil into seclusion and heard the thump as they threw her against the wall. Her tall, bony body would be snapping its vertebrae, bucking with rage, until the dose took and she could no longer move.

Sitting quietly, Connie clasped her hands in her lap. Sybil was here. A slow warmth trickled through her. She had been lonely here, for few of the women on L‑6 had energy left to relate, in their anguish of dealing with mommy, daddy, death, and the raw stuff of fear. She hoped the orderlies had not beaten her friend badly and that Sybil would simmer down and get out of seclusion soon. She had to try to get a message to Sybil through the locked door. Patients were not allowed to communicate with those in the isolation cells.

Her last time here they had met, and in the strange twilit childhood of the asylum with its advancements and demotions, its privileges and punishments, its dreary air of grade school, they had twice been confined in the same ward long enough to become friends. Each patient rose and dropped through the dim rings of hell gaining and losing privileges, sent down to the violent wards, ordered to electroshock, filed away among the living cancers of the chronic wards, rewarded by convalescent status, allowed to do unpaid housework and go to dance therapy; but twice they had come to rest on the same step and they had talked and talked and talked their hearts to each other.

Patience was the only virtue that counted here. “Patients survive on patience,” she imagined embroidering on a little sampler, like “Dios Bendiga Nuestro Hogar.” A week wormed through her soul before they let Sybil on the ward.

That morning she sat away from the station for privacy. When Sybil entered, looking tall and drawn, Connie did not greet her except with her eyes. It did not do to presume too much or to impose. Sometimes the mad behaved toward each other with delicate courtesy. She did not want to intrude on a desperate inner battle or mind loop. Sybil met her gaze, strolled the length of the ward in wary reconnaissance, then let her long body down beside her.

“Hi, old darling! When shall we two meet again? In thunder, lightning, or in rain?”

“It looks like a good day to me, Sybil, seeing you again.”

“We’re two witches, I mean. With a coven, think what we could do!”