Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy [1]
“The chair’s warm,” Dolly said after a few minutes. “Get me a handkerchief.”
Connie brought toilet paper from the hall bathroom—she had nothing else—and carefully locked the outside door again. Then she put some of the good Dominican coffee she saved for special into the drip pot and set water to boil in a kettle.
“It’s cold in here,” Dolly whimpered.
“I’ll make it warmer.” She lit the oven and turned on the burners. “Soon it’ll be like that hothouse of yours … . Geraldo beat you?”
Dolly opened her mouth wide, gaping. “Loo … Loo …”
As gently as she could she poked into Dolly’s bloody mouth. Her own flesh cringed.
Dolly jerked away. “He broke a tooth, didn’t he? That dirty rotten pimp! Will I lose a tooth?”
“I think you have one broken and maybe another loose. But who am I to say? I’m no dentist. You’re still bleeding!”
“He’s crazy, that pig! He wants to mess me up. Connie, how come you wouldn’t let me in? I was screaming in the hall forever.”
“It wasn’t five minutes … .”
“I thought I heard voices. Is somebody here?” Dolly looked toward the other room, the bedroom.
“Who would be here? I had the TV on.”
“It hurts so much. Give me something to kill the pain.”
“Aspirin?”
“Oh, come on. It hurts!”
“Hija mía, how would I have anything?” Connie lifted her hands to show them empty, always empty.
“Those pills they made you take, from the State.”
“Let me give you ice.” Dolly had heard her talking with Luciente: therefore he existed. Or Dolly had heard her talking to herself. Dolly had said the chair was warm: she had been sitting in the other chair, in front of the plate from her supper of eggs and beans. She must not think about it now, with Dolly suffering. His story was unbelievable! No, don’t think about it. She wrapped ice cubes in a kitchen towel and brought them to Dolly. “That prescription ran out a year ago.” Not that she had taken the tranquilizers. She had sold the pills for a little extra money, for a piece of pork or chicken once a week, soap to wash with. She found it hard to believe anybody would take that poison intentionally, but you could peddle any kind of pill in El Barrio. Still, there had been the nuisance of going down to Bellevue, since she had been living near Dolly’s when she had been sent away and never could get her case transferred.
“Consuelo!” Dolly leaned her swollen cheek on Connie’s shoulder. “Everything hurts! I’m scared. He punched me in the belly, hard.”
“Why do you stay with him? What good is he? With your daughter, why have such a cabrón hanging around?”
Dolly gave her the mocking glance that would greet any comment she might make for the rest of her life on the subject of the welfare of children; or did she imagine it? “Consuelo, I feel so sick. I feel lousy through and through. I have to lie down. Oh, if he makes me lose this baby, I’ll kill him!”
As she supported her niece’s weight into the bedroom she felt a flash of fear or perhaps of hope that Luciente would still be there. But the tiny room held only her swaybacked bed, the chair with her alarm clock on it, the dresser, the wine jug full of dried flowers, the airshaft window incompletely covered with old curtains from better days. She undressed Dolly tenderly as a baby, but her niece groaned and cursed and wept more. The satin polka dot shirt was streaked with blood and blood had soaked through her black satin brassiere with the nipples cut out. “But it won’t show on your nice bra,” Connie promised as Dolly mourned her clothes, her body, her skin. Bruises had already clotted under the velvety skin of Dolly’s belly, her soft arms, her collarbone.
“Mira! Is there blood on my panties? See if he made me bleed there.”
“You aren’t bleeding there, I promise. Get under the covers. Oye, Dolly, it isn’t that easy to lose a baby! In the sixth month, if he beat you, maybe. But in the second month that baby is better protected than you are.” She put the alarm on the floor and sat in the straight chair beside the bed to hold Dolly’s limp hand.