Shadows Falling: The Lost #2 Page 8

10

  At first I ignored everything and everyone around me, for weeks perhaps; I do not really know how much time went by. From the impression I got from the staff around me and the way they were wary of me and the way they spoke under their breath when they thought I was asleep, it seemed clear that I was in turn either extremely violent or extremely passive. It must have seemed like a strange pendulum in my moods to them, but I was simply too tired at times to be my normal, passionate self. I couldn’t muster the energy to be wicked, so I sulked for a while, and then I struck out at them, only vocally of course, because I was nearly always strapped down to my bed or chair.

  Escape was impossible. Besides the straps that bound my hands and arms, there were bars on my window and locks on my door. The lock I felt sure I could pick if I could only get to it—I used to skulk about Old Babba’s door when she bolted me out, and made her nervous by finding ways back in—but the smallness of the room seemed immense to someone tied to the other end of it. The bars were too close together, even for my narrow frame. And the medicines they forced down my throat made me too tired to plot. They were full of poison in one form or another, I was sure of it.

  So tired…

  And then I realized that was the key. These past years I had been training myself to stay awake, so as not to leave Solomon. I had made sleep my enemy. Now it would be my ally and my way of escaping this place!

  My little body revolted. My head ached. I was unaccustomed to long bouts of slumber; I had trained my body to revive itself every hour, at least. I could not seem to relax.

  And there was a doctor. There was a doctor who fancied my brain.

  “She’s so very interesting, isn’t she?” he mused one day to another doctor. They lurked over my bed like vultures. I feigned sleep.

  “She has no one then? Alone completely? No one to miss her should something go wrong?”

  “That’s right. Her addition to science could be invaluable.”

  At first I thought they meant to slice me up and dissect me in order to learn more about me and why I did the things I did. I was not scared, only curious at how far they would go in their plan.

  “Lobotomies are a risky business. What if it doesn’t cure her but makes her worse?” the first doctor mused.

  “Is that even possible?” the other joked and they both laughed.

  Stupid men. “What a couple of asses,” I thought.

  “All joshing aside, my good man, she is an interesting case.”

  “Mmm,” the other agreed, slowly. I could practically see him stroking his beard, though my eyes were still closed. I could smell his dreadful hair pomade. He probably combed it through his sparse whiskers. I coughed. Maybe even bathed in it. “Has the electroshock had no effect then?”

  “Haven’t tried it yet. Perhaps we combine the two? She is a difficult case, after all. Two birds with one stone, so to speak, eh? Or two stones with one bird, I suppose I should say.”

  Again, they chuckled. I didn’t much care what they decided, so long as they went away.

  It was impossible to fall asleep with those idiots near.

  Do you know what they say about electroshock therapy, dear little reader of mine?

  At this, I startle and nearly drop the journal. This is the first time she has ever addressed me, and I could not have been more surprised if she called me by name. I am disturbed and feel uneasy.

  Sylvia Plath I think said it best. I read her later. Much later.

  “By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me. I sizzled in his blue volts like a desert prophet. The nights snapped out of sight like a lizard’s eyelid: A world of bald white days in a shadeless socket. A vulturous boredom pinned me in this tree. If he were I, he would do what I did.”

  Of course, you do not know Sylvia yet, but you will.

  You do not know me either, do you?

  You poor, pitiful thing.

  I can’t help but feel insulted, silly as it sounds. I snap shut the diary and untangle my legs from my perch. I should put away the books I pulled from their shelves willy-nilly, but I don’t. I leave to find Mr. Connelly. I have questions I wonder if he might have the answers to.

  He is speaking in whispers to the mutton-chopped man, and when they see me approaching, they stop.

  “And did you find Dante entertaining enough?” the librarian asks me, brightly.

  I am instantly suspicious of their little tete-a-tete. “What were you speaking of just now?” I keep my tone as bright as his on purpose, as I answer his question with a question.

  “Ah, a sharp young thing,” he nudges Mr. Connelly.

  “Her?” Mr. Connelly pretends to eye me judgmentally and with an expression of feigned boredom. “She’s quite obnoxious actually.”

  “Flattery will get you nowhere. Did you ask him about Rose?” I decide to jump right in and quit beating around the bush.

  “I did.” Connelly takes his cigarette from his breast pocket and lights it, calmly. “If she’s been here, he didn’t see her.”

  “Ah, well, she’s a sneaky thing,” I mutter. “Do you want to leave then?”

  He puffs on his cigarette a moment and eyes me, thoughtfully. “I suppose I do. We should get you back to hospital. I don’t want to be accused of kidnapping.”

  “I’m not a kid.” I stand up straighter.

  “Mmm.” The corners of his mouth turn up again, in that maddening way I’ve come to learn is what he does when he’s trying (not very hard) not to laugh at me. “Come along then, Grandmother.”

  We barely say a parting word to the librarian, who is urging us to return again someday.

  “It’s these braids,” I protest, descending the stairs outside. “They make me look fourteen.”

  “I have the same problem when I do my hair that way,” he teases. He opens the door to his magnificent chariot for me, and I climb in.

  It has begun to rain lightly, a drizzle, and it splashes on the windshield in airy plops. Dancing splashes of water skitter and skate across the car like water skippers. I watch Connelly as he circles the Rolls-Royce: his hat askew, giving him a rakish appearance, his new cigarette in his mouth, those nice-looking lips hugging it.

  Goodness, Lizzie! I give myself a mental shake. What schoolgirl, idiotic thoughts!

  He is rather nice to look at though. Even my practical self has to admit it. But he’s entangled with a lunatic. Well, the best ones always are, I expect.

  Being so young, they went slowly with me, and carefully. Oh yes, one must be careful if you are remove bits of bone and brain and matter. Of course, I don’t recall it really; I’m only relaying what I was told after by the nurses. They read from my charts in dull, clipped voices. I didn’t feel any different, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Did I want to be different? What was so wrong with me anyway?

  I was just a little girl!

  Recovering, I remember feeling very blurry. The world outside my little window was smudged. Everything in my room was smudged. I held my hand up to my face, and it was smudged. Blurred. Like it had rained upon my life and someone had smeared the colors: a bad watercolor painting. It got a little better later, but for the most part, life still looks like that to me, years later.

  I sat there by my window, staring lethargically out, and the doctors came and went. I ignored them. They were pleased. I was not. I was becoming bored with them. Sleeping was coming easier, but I was not traveling. I was awaking in the same place in which I had fallen asleep, and it was maddening. I tried to sleep for longer and longer periods, and sometimes I would dream of being in some far off land, some distant or future time, and then I would wake. One morning a nurse shook me awake for my pills right in the middle of a lovely dream, when it had taken me so long to fall asleep. I was so angry; I slapped her hard and pulled out a chunk of her hair.

  The doctors concluded my lobotomy was not a success. They became bored of me and left me tied for hours in bed.

  One night I had an excruciating headache. I thought it was because
of what they had done to me, and I pressed my fingers to my temple and rubbed the spot where they had taken out the bone fragments. It throbbed and ached and felt hot to the touch. I thought they had damaged me, but it turns out they must have heightened my abilities. That night I finally traveled.

  Old Babba had always known what my family was: Lost. She told me the barest bits of what I needed to know. She had “the sight,” a vague term people coined back then to explain visions or over active imaginations. At first I thought she was batty, an old lunatic, but then I began to see that for the most part, her mutterings made sense, and her predictions always came true. Once, when she was in a talkative mood and both of us feeling passive, I asked her where my family was. She eyed me warily but obliged me by falling into one of her strange trances. It was as though she talked in her sleep when she did this. (I’d seen it before when villagers came to her to ask their futures. I would duplicate it later, faking of course, during the sideshow when it was my turn to tell fortunes). She murmured about a place called Italy, a villa near the sea, and a number: 1571. Why hadn’t I gone with them when they left? I didn’t know, but I certainly meant to find out. She had enough truth in her visions to know that my family was gone for good, and that hopefully she’d lose me in the same way someday. I never paid too much attention to her mutterings until I woke under that table in India; then I knew I really was something special.

  Traveling again, leaving Bedlam, was bittersweet. I knew I had left Solomon behind for good, and there would be no reconciliation. I would never see him again. If I traveled to the future, he would be dead. If I traveled to the past, he would yet to be born.

  I woke in a cornfield. A little boy, younger than I by a couple of years, was staring at me. He was sitting cross-legged and chewing on a piece of straw. He barely blinked when I opened my eyes. We stared at each other. Finally, he spoke first.

  “My pa don’t like no hobos, even if you is a girl.”

  “I’m not a hobo,” I said. I didn’t know what one was, but I was certain I wasn’t. “Who are you?”

  “None yer business. You better scat!”

  “I don’t have anywhere to go.”

  The boy sighed. He had an old man’s sigh, deep and full of years. “Fine. Come home with me if you want, but you ain’t gettin’ any food.”

  I brushed off my dress which was really just the hospital’s old dressing gown, my knobby knees sticking out, and followed him. I was barefoot, and I kept stepping on hard rocks and prickly weeds. We moved through the cornfield like it was a maze. I hoped he knew where he was going.

  “Ma ain’t gonna like you neither,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “She just won’t, that’s all. Where’s yer family?”

  “I don’t know. Dead, I guess.”

  He nodded and plucked a fresh weed out of the ground for chewing. “You sure? Cuz I don’t want them showin’ up, too. I’m gonna get in enough trouble just bringing you home with me. I don’t need no scrawny brothers or sisters or nuttin’, okay?”

  I was silent.

  He stopped and sighed again. “Okay?” he repeated, slowly, like I was a dumb animal.

  “I don’t know what that means,” I mumbled. My English was good enough, but I didn’t know this word. His accent was so strange.

  “What? Okay? It mean, you know,” he paused. “Well, I don’t know how to explain it! You not from around here? You talk funny.”

  “I do not. You do.”

  “Fine. Anyway, we’re here.”

  I stopped short and stared. It was a small house, dingy white. There were three huge dogs chained up to a tree and a bony woman sitting on the porch, shelling peas. There was a rundown automobile nearby (though I didn’t know what in the world it was at the time. I’d never seen a car). There was a naked baby playing in the dirt, and a girl about fifteen was swinging on the gate. She stared at me and quit swinging.

  “Who’s that, Daniel?” the woman asked, warily. “Who are you, girl?”

  “Rose.”

  “What do you want? We ain’t got nothin’ to spare.”

  The boy, Daniel, looked at me triumphantly. “I told her so, Ma. She don’t listen.”

  “Then she’ll fit in real good ‘round here,” the girl on the gate said. “Nobody listens to nobody here.”

  The mother gave her a look that could have curdled cream. “Pipe down, Louise. Go get yer dad. It’s time for supper. We ain’t got nothin’ to spare,” she repeated, turning back to me.

  “I’m eatin’ at Bobby’s, Ma. You can give Rose my share,” Louise said over her shoulder as she left.

  The mother sighed as she got up from the porch and picked up her bowl of peas. “Fine. Be gone by tomorrow. I’ll give you a ride to town.”

  The thought of riding on that bony woman’s back to town gave me the shivers. What a strange place I’d landed in. Still, it was better than the hospital, so I went in the house willingly enough.

  It was dark, but that was nothing new to me. The place was dusty, but I was never one to care about that. There was a smell of something cooking, and I followed the mother into her kitchen.

  “Wash up then,” she ordered. I watched her throw the peas in some boiling water on top of a large oven. I stared at it curiously: the oven, I mean. I couldn’t see the fire, and I was curious about the heat source. I wanted to reach out and touch it, but the mother looked like she wouldn’t want me to.

  “Is the river close?” I mumbled.

  “Not particularly. You’re a funny one. Use the sink,” she gestured towards the place near the oven.

  I waited until Daniel passed me by and used it first. The water came gushing out of a pipe right into his hands. I held my hands under it eagerly. It was cold, but it felt nice enough.

  The father arrived, a big man, dirty from working in the fields all day and ill-tempered. Probably from being married to a shrew, I figured. He grunted when introduced to me. We sat down at the table and ate our supper. There was bread and meat and the peas and a jar of peaches. It wasn’t the best food, but I was hungry enough to eat, especially the bread. I stuffed a whole piece in my mouth, and the mother moved the plate out of my reach with a glare. She didn’t scare me, and I glared back.

  That night I slept in a bed with Louise, who had come back from her beau, Bobby. She nearly talked me to death, like I was some sort of friend or sister or something, until I told her to shut up or I’d smother her with a pillow. I think she thought I was joking because she laughed, but I wasn’t joking, and I didn’t laugh with her, and she abruptly shut up.

  The next morning the mother made us all line up for prayers, and when I wouldn’t say them she tried to turn me over her knee for a swat. It was unsuccessful, and she ended up looking a fool, panting and angrier than a hornet. I laughed in her red face and went outside. Louise and Daniel looked after me with expressions that almost looked reverent.

  I was sitting by the car (to me it was just an odd pile of metal) when it suddenly sprang to life. It roared and sputtered and moved, and I screamed. I wanted to run away but my legs wouldn’t obey me, and so I just sat there, screaming until the father came out from the pile of metal and yelled at me to stop.

  “Get her out of here!” the mother demanded, letting the screen slam shut behind her. The naked baby was on her hip.

  The man opened a door in the metal thing and came toward me, and when I realized what he meant to do, I screamed louder and kicked him hard. He grabbed my wrists with one meaty hand and my kicking ankles with the other. I tried to bite, but he shook me like a dog. I felt my teeth knock together with such force I wondered if I broke any. He tossed me in the growling thing, and I hit my head. I thought he meant to cook me in there, like it was some sort of giant oven, and I was not going to die that way. Like the witch from the gingerbread cottage. Would he throw in wood and fire next? I pushed on the door, but it wouldn’t open the way it had for him. Was there a magic word? Was there a key or a secret latch? I fumbled until I found
it and pushed and pulled until it gave way and the door swung open. My body fell out. The father came around again, and the whole ordeal started over. This time the mother brought out a frying pan.

  “You want me to knock her in the head, Bert?” She held it over her head with one hand, while she balanced the baby with the other.

  “Naw, she’ll behave,” the father grunted. “If she don’t, we’ll grind her up and feed her to the pigs. Ain’t nobody to miss her, the goddamn little lunatic.”

  I figured he wouldn’t really grind me up, but I stopped fighting. To my surprise, he followed me in the big steel container, and then it began to move. I put my hand on the window of the steel thing and stared at Daniel as we moved away. He stared back, and he got smaller and smaller in the distance until he was gone forever.

  11

  Such a strange little girl, I thought, as I put the diary down. Our own car, well, Mr. Connelly’s car, was moving along too. Our hearts in synch, Rose and I were traveling down different paths in different times, she terrified and I not. I had asked Connelly if he minded me reading it in the car instead of conversing and he had chuckled.

  “I’ll try to get over your silence though it stings my heart a bit,” he said.

  “I could read aloud if you miss my voice so much,” I offered, cheekily.

  “All right then, little one. Enlighten me on Rose.”

  So I hear Rose’s story in my own voice all the way back to Bedlam.

  Being only eleven, I wasn’t worried about every danger being in this predicament put me in. I wasn’t scared at all of the father, though I should have been, but I was wholly unhinged over the contraption we were in. I saw the cornfield where I had met Daniel go whizzing by at a frightening speed. I felt every rock and gravel and pebble as they were trampled beneath our steel feet. I felt as though I was in Death’s coach, the carriage to Hell with invisible horses that pulled us along at breakneck speed. I was certain of it.

  “Where are you taking me?” I asked, hugging my knees to my chest. My hospital gown was becoming threadbare after its night in the cornfield and its subsequent wearing.