Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy [68]
“What is all that stuff?”
“States of consciousness. Types of feeling.”
“How can you teach somebody to feel? From a book you can learn the multiplication tables. But how can you teach love?”
“But every mother always has. Or failed to.” Seeing something in Connie’s face, Magdalena went on quickly. “We educate the senses, the imagination, the social being, the muscles, the nervous system, the intuition, the sense of beauty—as well as memory and intellect. Anyhow, we try!” She laughed again, that laugh that picked immediately at Luciente and made her grin too. “People here in our bony skulls”—lightly Magdalena rapped on Connie’s forehead—“how easy to feel isolate. We want to root that forebrain back into a net of connecting.” She turned back to Luciente, smiling broadly. “Here comes Jackrabbit with Dawn. By the road, your child grows better and better at the arts of defense. You’ll be feathered when you see the next demo!”
Long-limbed rangy Jackrabbit came loping through an archway, making high neighing sounds. A brown-skinned girl with dark braids clung to his neck, laughing with a wide-open mouth that showed her small teeth. Avid teeth flashed. Arms hung on tight She clung to his neck and laughed and laughed and kicked his ribs with her bare feet. She was about seven, wearing a lavender summer tunic, and she had a scab on her small round, her heavily tanned, her kissable knee. How she laughed, like dry bells, like bells partly muffled, how she laughed: her golden-brown eyes met Connie’s. Connie’s heart turned in her chest. Her heart sharpened into a dagger and stopped.
“Angelina!” she cried out, and her voice burst from her like a bubble of blood from her mouth. Then she was back in the isolation cell, flat against one wall as if she had been thrown there. She held both hands against her striving chest.
Angelina! Or any brown-skinned girl child of seven or so with golden-brown eyes. How did she know what Angelina would look like after three years? She wouldn’t be barefoot in Scarsdale.
Suddenly she assented with all her soul to Angelina in Mattapoisett, to Angelina hidden forever one hundred fifty years into the future, even if she should never see her again. For the first time her heart assented to Luciente, to Bee, to Magdalena. Yes, you can have my child, you can keep my child. Even with your obscenities and your talking cats. She will be strong there, well fed, well housed, well taught, she will grow up much better and stronger and smarter than I. I assent, I give you my battered body as recompense and my rotten heart. Take her, keep her! I want to believe she is mine. I give her to Luciente to mother, with gladness I give her. She will never be broken as I was. She will be strange, but she will be glad and strong and she will not be afraid. She will have enough. She will have pride. She will love her own brown skin and be loved for her strength and her good work. She will walk in strength like a man and never sell her body and she will nurse her babies like a woman and live in love like a garden, like that children’s house of many colors. People of the rainbow with its end fixed in earth, I give her to you!
EIGHT
That Monday one of Dr. Redding’s attendants, a stooped, paunchy man with burst capillaries in his nose that marked an alcoholic, came to fetch Connie. As the nurse shuffled the papers to sign her out to the attendant, she could feel the palpable envy around her. It did not matter what she was going to: she was going off ward. Nurse Wright started to grab a coat for her but the attendant said, “Don’t bother. It’s raining cats and dogs. I’ll taken ’em through the tunnel.”
Nurse Wright pursed her lips. “You’d better take a coat anyhow. Somebody else might have to bring the patient back.”
The coat was so long it hung to her midcalves and the sleeves concealed her hands, but she knew better than to complain. She plodded after the