Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy [168]
At lunch of macaroni and a little cheese she said to Sybil, “No trust? After all this time you don’t know me?”
“How can I know my friend when I see her kowtowing to the Inquisition?” Sybil sipped her milk as if it were wine, looking down her arched and bony nose.
“We’re at war, Sybil, don’t you see that?”
“Some war! More like a massacre.” Sybil snorted. “Soon to be burned at the stake—the small stake. More cost-effective, as the grand master says.”
“It’s a war, Sybil … . If I could get out on furlough, I know I could run for it. The city’s so close here. Once off this ward, we’d have it made! People come in and out of this building all day, outpatients, volunteers. If only I could make it to the elevators!”
“There’s a lot more coming and going, yes,” Sybil said thoughtfully, “but also more personnel. I have not yet seen the nursing station empty.”
“You’ve been watching too.”
Sybil smiled. “The volunteers, some are college girls. The hippie one who comes in Thursdays, Mary Ellen? Nurse Roditis told her that, quote, I think I’m a witch and go around hexing people, unquote. Mary Ellen came and asked me, quote, if I was into herbs.”
“So what did you say?” She felt close to her friend.
“I said I was into this ward, although unwillingly. But I’m interested in herbs and have done some healing with them.”
“Was she making fun of you?”
Sybil shook her head. “She told me lots of college students are interested in herbs. We discussed valerian, thyme, rosemary, comfrey. Finally she asked if I really was a witch, and when I assured her, she seemed quite pleased. She said several of her friends are ‘into’ witchcraft. She said she’s trying to secure permission for one of her friends to meet me.”
“You don’t think she was … laughing inside the way they do?”
“No, Consuelo. She’d read an herbal and cured a leg infection with lovage compresses. We had the most civilized conversation I’ve had in ages. Except for yourself, of course. I was worried about you when they had that device in your head.”
“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