Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy [53]
Finally an event: time to line up for lunch. They shuffled into line, they wandered about as the attendants made them stand straight. They waited and waited for the door to unlock. All the wards in G building went to lunch downstairs, but on a staggered schedule. Glenda, with a face swollen from Sharma’s attack, came and stood next to her. Waited to see if she would speak.
Connie asked, “Does your face hurt?”
“She never does. All the best plastic.”
“I know Sharma didn’t really mean what she said.”
“Something to tell you. She went along the hall—the attendants took her.”
She waited. She knew Glenda was talking about herself and had something pressing to say.
“Come on now,” Mrs. Richard was braying. She was afraid of the patients and they all sensed it. “Close up that line. Come on now! A straight line!”
“She saw your friend with her feet sticking out.”
“Sybil?” She immediately flashed on her body under a sheet, the long auburn hair flying out. “What were they doing with Sybil?”
“Taking her to be burned. Saint Joan. She told me to tell you she was sorry about your friend.”
“Shock? They were taking Sybil for shock?”
“They burn it out. Then they fill it with cement.” Glenda peered into her face, then fled away farther back into the line.
She wanted to lie down. She wanted to crawl under a table. Would Sybil know her afterward? Sometimes after shock inmates didn’t remember friends or lovers. She felt low and mean. Sybil had had shock before. “They’ve done everything but hang me,” Sybil said. Sybil would fight them; but they were knocking her out, they were running the savage bolts through her soul. Sybil unconscious was merely another helpless woman.
Deliberately, quietly she got out of line and sat down on her cot. Mrs. Richard trotted after her, her small mouth pursing up in a pout of alarm. “Mrs. Ramos, get back in line. It’s time for your lunch.”
“Why should I stand there for twenty minutes waiting?” She tried to speak with quiet dignity but the medication slurred her tongue. “The medication makes me dizzy. I’ll wait here.”
She read fear in the eyes of Mrs. Richard, who hated the patients, whose hands shook slightly whenever she had to touch one of them, who gave out a sour stench of fear that roused Connie like the smell of gas escaping from the open cocks of a stove. “Mrs. Ramos, you’re confused. You’re very confused. It’s time to line up for your lunch.”
“Why do we have to stand around? It’s just garbage when we get it. Who wants to stand in line for garbage like that?” She tried to speak distinctly but was disgusted to hear her thick tongue slurring the words as if she were drunk.
“Come along now! Get back in line. You’re not cooperating! All the others are waiting in line for their lunch.”
Actually Glenda had stepped out and was wandering among the cots. Connie waited to see what Mrs. Richard would do, expecting her to call the nurse and bundle her back in line. But her little rebellion had to be punished. They threw her into seclusion. Lying on the floor, she felt like a fool. But how could she go down to lunch like a sheep while Sybil burned?
She slept awhile, hot fitful sleep. The room stank of old shit. She did not look around for fear of finding it. She banged on the door, hoping they would come and let her use the bathroom, but no one appeared.
She was sitting in the Boca de Oro, Comidas Chinas y Criollas, a small Cuban-Chinese restaurant with family-sized booths on 116th Street. She and Claud liked to go there. Angie was never much of an eater and in restaurants she inclined more to whining than to eating. But Angie liked the Boca de Oro, partly for the plain buttered noodles the waiter would serve her without making a big scene, and partly for a mural she liked. Connie told Claud he was lucky he