Woman on the Edge of Time

She lay tied with straps to a bed, staring up at a bare bulb, shot up with meds. Thorazine? It felt worse, heavier. A massive dose. Hospital tranks hit her like a bulldozer when she had taken nothing for a long time. Prolixin? Whenever she sank into unconsciousness, she was tortured by clamps on her hips, her breasts, she was trapped in her old Chicago flat in a fire. The flames licked her skin. Her lungs filled with choking smoke. She tried and tried to pull clear of something that had fallen on her, to escape. She could not move.

Her body ached. All of her head ached. Geraldo and his carnal Slick had beaten her twice: once right after she had broken Geraldo’s nose, and again on the way to Bellevue in his car. Her ribs hurt terribly on the right side and she suspected one or two might be broken. Probably Geraldo had kicked her as she lay on the floor. In the car she had come to and he had begun punching her again in the face and chest and arms. He had beaten her until Dolly begged him to stop and began to weep and threatened to jump out of the car.

Each breath she drew stabbed her. How could she get the hospital to x-ray her for a broken rib? So far no one had heard a word she said, which of course was not unusual. Geraldo was so damned smart—bringing her to Bellevue, for instance, instead of to Met, on Ninety-sixth. Bellevue had records on her from before. He pretended she had attacked him and Dolly at Dolly’s apartment on Rivington. He would take no chance that they might not accept her as a crazy woman.

The doctor had not even interviewed her but had talked exclusively to Geraldo, exchanging only a word or two with Dolly. Geraldo had Dolly gripped by the elbow, her face still swollen. Dolly had lied. Dolly had sold her into Bellevue, and for what? For her own skin, already polluted? For the nose of her precious pimp? For the opportunity to fuck more johns? How could Dolly sit there sniveling and nod when the doctor asked if Connie had done that to her face?

Connie writhed on the bed, pinned down with just enough play to let her wriggle. They had pushed her into restraint, shot her up immediately. She had been screaming—okay! Did they think you had to be crazy to protest being locked up? Yes, they did. They said reluctance to be hospitalized was a sign of sickness, assuming you were sick, in one of these no-win circles. The last time she had not fought; she had come willingly with the caseworker, believing in her sickness. She had come humbly, rotten with self-hatred and weary of her life.

Her left calf began to cramp. She wanted to shriek with the sharp pain. She longed to knead the calf in her hands. The hard ball of muscle formed and held rigid. If she screamed they might never release her from restraint. They had forgotten her, locked her away in this broom closet to starve. She had pissed on herself. What could she do? Now she lay in her own wet stink. Cold at first, creepy cold, now warm from her body. And stinking.

She turned her head, craning to watch the slit in the door. Wide and low, like a mouth. If only she saw an attendant look in, she could signal. Her back festered between her shoulder blades, where it had been burned by the stove. The two attendants had put her neatly into restraint, the injection entering her veins like molten lead. Folding a sheet warm from the machine in the laundry room—flip, flip, bang, fold. Already the processing had begun. The attendant at check-in had held by one corner her worn red plastic purse mended with tape, held it like something dirty, a piece of garbage from the streets. Casually the woman arrayed her fragile possessions on the counter and, with a gesture like emptying an ashtray, dropped them into an envelope and locked them away.

Her purse, her keys, her scrap of brown paper on which she had been figuring April’s budget, her rent receipt, the ballpoint pen with the name of a stationery company that she had found in the subway, her black plastic comb, her old loved compact with the raised peacock figure that Claud had given her for her birthday, selecting with his sensitive fingers the “look” of the design, her dime-store red lipstick that she wore only for best against the day when it would be used up and she would lack the money for another—unless Dolly gave her a lipstick. Dolly! Who had betrayed her. Who had abandoned her. Who had sold her into bondage. At the desk her counters of identity had been taken: welfare ID, Medicaid, old library card, photos of Dolly with Nita, of Angelina as a baby, at one held by her father, Eddie, at two with herself, at three holding Claud’s hand with that grin like a canoe—the way she had drawn mouths. There were no pictures of Angelina at four, or afterward.