Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy [4]
“Puta, get up and go with Dr. Medias, or I’ll have him do it on you right in that witch’s bed. Move!”
“No! No!” Dolly was thrashing around in bed, screaming and sobbing. Geraldo stepped into the bedroom, out of Connie’s line of sight. She tried to roll to her feet. The scrawny doctor sat on the edge of a kitchen chair. He was in his fifties. His clothes were new and conservative, his manner was tense, and his foot tapped, tapped. Slick was leaning against the outer door smoking a joint and grinning.
Connie asked in Spanish, “You are really a doctor?”
“Of course.” He did not look at her but replied as softly as she spoke. At his accent her eyes narrowed.
“Where are you a doctor?” She rolled on one elbow and tried to rise. “My back hurts me, it’s burned so bad. You’re Mexican.”
“What is it to you?”
“Where are you from?”
“Mexico City.”
“No. From Chihuahua, no?”
“Leave me alone, woman. You ask for trouble.”
“From you? You have enough troubles. Practicing medicine without a license. Why do you want to hurt us? My parents too came from Chihuahua.”
“Chihuahua can sink in a pit!”
“Her father’s a businessman in New Jersey. He has a big nursery business. Did that stinking pimp tell you? D’you do this thing, her father will make trouble for you, it’s the truth.”
Dolly let out a long, terrified wail that scraped on the inside of Connie’s skull. She had not heard such a desperate scream since she had been in the bughouse. Geraldo called Dr. Medias. Medias rose slowly to his feet and fumbled for a bag he had set beside the chair. Connie pulled herself up by the table leg, kicked him as hard as she could in the shin, and ran into the bedroom. She must stop them!
Dolly’s mouth was bleeding again. Blood ran over the tattered nightgown Connie had dressed her in, onto the pillow. Dolly was trying to thrash free of Geraldo, who held her pinned. He would kill her! With his treachery he would kill Dolly and her baby too. Dolly would bleed to death in that bed.
Connie seized a bottle from the corner, the wine bottle that had once contained a half gallon of California burgundy and now held dried flowers and grasses, from a rare picnic with Dolly, Nita, Luis (Dolly’s father and her brother) and his current family. With the nostalgic grasses scattering, she waved the jug and ran at Geraldo. He did not let go of Dolly quickly enough to defend himself. She smashed the wine jug right into his face. His nose flattened like a squashed bug on a windshield. He fell back against the wall, bellowing rage in no language. She raised the jug to hit him again, but her arms were caught behind her. She twisted. Someone struck her hard in the nape and she tried to turn. The fist caught her again and she went out.
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