A Big Dose of Lucky Page 6
She shrugs. “Snack? Drink? There’s a vending machine on the second floor. Table outside. Or coffee shop downstairs.” She looks at her watch. “Now thirteen minutes.”
I put my bucket in the closet and walk to the door under the lit-up red Exit sign at the end of the hallway.
Outside, the sun is strong. It’s the middle of a warm summer morning, a whiff of pine in the air, when I sit on the bench at the picnic table. Tomorrow I’ll come prepared and buy a Pepsi. Or maybe a bag of Ruffles potato chips from the store next to the hostel. I take off my sneakers and socks and wiggle my toes, run them through the grass that grows in a scrappy patch under the table.
The door bangs open and out come two boys, men almost, wearing dark-blue jackets, the uniform of hospital orderlies. One is freckly with a blond crew cut, and the other one has light-brown skin and nearly black hair that hangs down around his neck.
Suddenly they’re at the table with me, laughing boys unwrapping sandwiches and opening thermoses with tops that turn into cups. The dark one has black coffee, steaming hot and fragrant. The other one has a bright-red drink with ice cubes floating in it.
“You want a Hawaiian punch?” the blond says to me.
“Uh, no, no thanks,” I say.
But he makes a fist and conks me gently on the chin. “Get it?” he says. “Hawaiian punch?”
I nod, but I don’t get it. What’s the Hawaiian part?
“You’re new here, aren’t you?” says the dark-haired one.
I nod. Not a chance I’m going to talk. I try to see his watch, thinking how I’ve come out here without knowing how many minutes are ticking by.
But he’s moving his arm, telling his friend a story about the patient in room 409, an old man with a broken hip whose wife visits from morning until night because the old man doesn’t speak English and she—
I stand up. Maybe it has been thirteen minutes already or twenty-five or longer even.
“What, we’re boring you?” says the dark-haired boy, who I think is maybe Mexican.
“No!” My mouth is dry and I’m flustered, trying to pull out my one leg that’s still stuck between the bench and the table.
“That must be a record!” says the blond boy, laughing, punching his friend’s arm. “Driving away a girl in under two minutes. We come out here every day, and every day he kills off another babe.”
I know he’s teasing, but I’m blushing.
“Aw, come on, sister,” says the dark-haired boy. “What did I do wrong?”
I shake my head—nothing. I try to smile, but my lips are stuck to my gums and I probably look like a mad dog. Plus, I still have to go.
“Leave her alone, Frankie,” says the blond. “She’s got Kowalski waiting.”
“Yes,” I whisper. “I’m late.” I slide my feet back into my shoes. Now I have to walk from the table to the door, trying to look like a normal person, but I’m itching to run like a bunny with a weasel on its tail.
They had name tags pinned to their pockets. Kevin is the blond, and the other one is Frankie. The first brown boy I’ve ever talked to.
WHAT I LEARN FROM BEING A CLEANER
That I will never be a cleaner.
But I do improve.
I’m busy nearly every minute, with no time to think about why I’m really there. The part about finding out who I am? How am I supposed to do that?
BLEACH IS A GIRL’S BEST FRIEND
If you splash it around, the smell makes everyone think you’ve cleaned, even if you haven’t exactly reached into the dim little crannies.
AND BACK AT THE HOSTEL
This feeling I have must be homesickness. I’m itchy at work, and I’m itchy in my room. Nothing quite fits, just like charity clothes. Every night there’s a new stranger or two in my room, all very friendly, so the itching isn’t because I’m brown. But it’s one thing being naked in front of girls you’ve known all your life, like sisters. It is completely different when you’re in a room with grown-ups you will only know for a few hours.
I still like it better than being alone. Alone is a hard thing to be. There is not enough inside my own head to fill all the hours it would take to live alone. Especially without books.
THE SECOND TIME I SEE FRANKIE
I’m refilling my bucket on the fourth floor, in what Berna calls the utility closet. They’ve got the children’s ward on one side of the nursing station and the old people’s on the other. First and Last, Berna calls the fourth floor.
Frankie goes past, pushing a lady in a wheelchair. She’s got silky white hair clipped with a pearly barrette.
“Hey!” He flicks on the chair brake and adjusts a shawl around the lady’s knees. “How about we say hello to this shiny new person?”
He means me. I’m instantly fidgeting, wiping my hands on my smock, shifting the bucket.
The old woman smiles vaguely, and Frankie pats her shoulder. Both of them watch me while the water keeps running. Frankie’s eyes shift to the water splashing into the bucket.
“Oh!” I spin around and turn off the tap half a second from too late.
Frankie grins and the old lady chuckles.
“Close call,” she says.
“This is Mrs. Galway,” says Frankie. “And I’m Frankie. I didn’t catch your name?”
“Don’t you mind him,” says Mrs. Galway. “He’s quick to spot a pretty girl, this one.”
“That’s why I’m hanging with you, Mrs. G!” Frankie releases the chair brake and pushes off, whistling. But he turns around and winks over his shoulder. Straight through my rib cage like a pea through a straw.
Did she just call me pretty? That’s the nicest thing anyone has said maybe in my whole life.
MY FIRST SATURDAY NIGHT IN THE WORLD
I’m putting my cleaning smock into the hamper in the change room. Berna is there too, just starting her shift, taking off high-heeled shoes with shiny buckles on the toes. She’s wearing black stockings with a crisscross pattern. She keeps running shoes here in a locker, and loose cotton pants to wear with her smock.
“You look fancy,” I say.
She smiles at me. “I have a date later.”
“A date?”
“With a fella. We go dancing on Saturday nights. At the Swing Royale.”
Today is Saturday. Tonight is Saturday night. One week since the afternoon when I walked to Pitt’s Drugs and Sundries by myself and met those boys and—
“You got a fella?” says Berna. “You like to dance?”
“I…I never tried it,” I say. Except in the common room with the other girls when we turned on the radio and pretended we were Beatlemaniacs. Never with a boy!
“You got to try! You want me to find you a fella?”
“No, no, I’m not…Thanks anyway.” I wave. “Have fun tonight!”
In the Home on Saturdays, we’d usually lie on Tess’s bed, looking at her smuggled-in fashion magazines. Glamour or Vogue for Dot and Sara, so they could show us what we should be wearing to church the next morning instead of our neatly ironed Sunday blouses. Miniskirts, fringed vests, purple eye shadow, huge hoop earrings. Give Reverend Messervey a heart attack!
So on the way back to the hostel, I go into a store that sells cigars and newspapers. I buy a Seventeen magazine. The theme this month is Planning a Party! I sit on Bed 3 and turn the pages slowly, imagining a jungle party or a Shakespeare party or a pancake party. Suddenly I miss the Sevens so much my eyes are swamped. Where are they all? Have they got to where they’re going? Will I ever know? Since not one single person on the planet knows where I am.
Including me.
OPERATION UNDER WAY
At my job, I have two keys. Not for the supply cupboard, because I have not been proven trustworthy yet. I have to find Mrs. Kowalski if I run out of toilet cleaner or sponges. But I have a key that works for every bathroom—public, patient or staff. And I have a key that opens the closets that hold bedding and toilet paper.
And also, I find out today, the closet where they keep exact
ly what I’ve been hoping to find.
It’s right after my lunch—meaning crackers and peanut butter eaten at the picnic table outside. And there’s Frankie, rolling a rack of files into the elevator. He pushes the button before I do, so we go down to SB.
“Sub-basement,” he says. “Sub means ‘under,’ like in subway or submarine. Here, it’s lower than the basement. With the rats.”
“Not really though,” I say. “Right?”
He laughs, and I still don’t know for sure about the rats.
“What have you got there?” I say, trying to ignore the rat idea.
“Files going to the graveyard,” he says.
“What?”
“Inactive,” he says. “No longer in service. Patients not seen in ten years or more.”
“Oh.” I get a slight tingle in the back of my neck. “Hey, let me hold the door for you.”
Elevator B always lands half an inch out of sync with the floor, so the wheels of the rolling rack are caught for a second. I help Frankie get it over the bump and follow him down the corridor, one of the wheels making a wheee noise. We get to a little alcove and a door marked RECORDS.
“Open it, would you?” Frankie is behind the rack. “The smaller key, the one you use for closets.”
I use it, thinking yes, yes, yes, my heart going all flipperty.
“Get the light,” he says. “Inside on the left.”
The rack doesn’t fit through the door, so Frankie has to shift the boxes one by one. Time for me to go.
“Thanks for the help,” Frankie says. “Catch you later.”
And he winks.
Am I blushing and warm-necked in the elevator because I’ve found the records room, or because this boy, this man nearly, has brown eyes that look right at me? Eyes that shine right at me?
Well, both, if I’m telling the truth. But getting the file I want is easier to think about. Now I know where to look and I have the key. Why do they keep old files? Who cares why? One of them may be exactly what I’m looking for. How much people traffic is there in the sub-basement? I will watch. And I will come back as soon as I have a chance. I touch the key on its chain. I see Frankie’s wink again.
I CONSIDER MY SOURCES ON BOYS
Tess, who sneaks out to meet a boy but never tells us anything.
Sara, who is smart and really good at designing stuff but dumb as heck when it comes to picking a boy.
And that’s it. I have to turn to the orphans in books. Anne Shirley from Green Gables wastes all the years she’s at school being mad at Gilbert Blythe for calling her Carrots. She could have been friends with him way sooner, even though it’s a better book with her being relentlessly stubborn while Gilbert secretly loves her. Jane Eyre also wastes a lot of her book not being with Mr. Rochester because in this case he’s the stubborn one and won’t explain the creepy woman in the attic.
But those are olden-days stories, and those girls are white. Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights doesn’t really stand a chance because the lily-white Earnshaws think of him as a gypsy and an imp of Satan. Even with “eyes full of black fire,” his love for Catherine is pretty much doomed.
Maybe there are different rules for orphans with brown skin.
THINKING IT OVER
I lie in my bed, knowing I’m going to look in that room tomorrow, but also knowing that I might not want to know what I find. I have been just fine not knowing up till now.
What if my mother was a crazy person? Or she was murdered? Or tried to kill me? Or maybe she was wayward and Reverend Messervey at St. Jerome’s was right, that most of us—the Necessitous Girls—were the issues of errant behavior. I had to look up errant the first time he said it in a sermon, along with wanton and wayward and immoral. He used us as examples of what happens to young people who disobey their parents. We were an excuse to urge the congregation to do charitable work. “We need not look beyond our own doorstep, sisters and brothers. We need not go to India or China or heathen Africa. We have miserable children of shame right here in our own community. Ask yourselves, ‘Do they not need the charity that we might else spend on foreign soil? What can we offer to relieve their anguish? How can we guide them to rise above…?’ blah, blah, blah.”
But isn’t it a dead mother and father that make an orphan? So why did the reverend assume they were all wayward before dying?
Can there be anything more dreadful than my mother’s death waiting in the records room? In which case, am I better off not knowing? If I don’t know something about my own past, it’s as good as it not having happened. How can it matter—or even be true—if it hasn’t affected me?
BED 2 SNORES
I roll over and put my head under the pillow, and one more thought sneaks through the cracks in the night. I suppose the unknown has affected me just by being unknown. It changed me from who I might have been to who I am. Where I am. In the dark.
CLEANING THE RECORDS ROOM
It won’t fool Mrs. Kowalski if she comes this way, but it’s all I can think of. Carrying a bottle of Mr. Clean and a rag, I push open the door. It’s bigger than a closet but not exactly a room. Jam-packed. Shelves from floor to ceiling in three rows except where there are filing cabinets. Faded labels are stuck to drawers; bigger labels are stuck to the ends of the shelving units. Boxes and boxes and boxes of forgotten files and more forgotten files.
I fiddle on the light switch and close the door. The door fits tightly, so I hope no light can leak out around the edges. I recognize the boxes that Frankie delivered yesterday, stacked right there beside the door, making it hard to move around. This could take some time, more than I’ve got when I’m supposed to be mopping the third-floor hallway. I forgot to check the clock. How many seconds in five minutes? I start to count inside my head.
I take a deep breath and sneeze. Dust.
There turns out to be a bit of a system, even if it wasn’t always followed. There is a filing-cabinet drawer or a carton for each year, though the cartons are not stacked up in order—1944, 1945, 1951…I find a drawer labeled 1948. That’s me. Or maybe…should I be looking in 1947, when my mother would have been pregnant? But my birth was 1948. The record of me being in the hospital would be in 1948, right?
My first three hundred seconds get me that far.
I come back during my break. It’s raining outside, so my choice is the cafeteria or here.
For nine hundred seconds.
Each file in the drawer has a sticker on the spine showing a capital letter. I jump to the F section. Luckily, not as popular as C or D. Fox comes after Foster and before Fuchs. There’s a real person named Fuchs? That’s a terrible name!
I have the file in my hand. Fox.
SIX
THE VERY THING I’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR
No different from all the other folders. Nothing to explain the electricity that shoots up my arms. Except that the name under the purple F sticker on the corner is FOX, SHERRY.
Sherry.
I say it out loud. “Sherry.”
It’s pretty. Soft.
Is this my mother? Sherry Fox.
WHAT’S IN THE FILE
I hurry through the pages, trying to figure it all out. Sherry Fox’s pregnancy is here in my hands! What parts matter the most? There’s no time to puzzle out these illegible scribbles, abbreviations, initials. Notes, I guess, from her visits each month. What I want is how to find her, not how much she weighed on a particular date.
Here! An intake sheet that Sherry Fox filled out when she first became a patient. Her handwriting is round and careful, like script written by one of the Littles.
NAME: Sherry Fox
BIRTH DATE: October 5, 1921
WEIGHT: 126 lbs.
Wow, so long ago! So, doing the math…she was twenty-eight when she had me. If she were still alive, she’d be forty-three years old.
ADDRESS: Lot 9, Salt Dock Road
That’s all I need. I put that page aside and look at the next one.
ROBERT R. MACINTYRE, M.D.
ST. JOSEPH'S HOSPITAL, PARRY SOUND, ONT.
A.B. cases:
Judith anderson
R. connor
Sherry Fox
P. Golia
Deborah Munro
Patty Nelson
Harriet Thomas
WHAT I TAKE WITH ME, FOLDED INTO MY UNDERPANTS
The page with Sherry Fox’s own writing, showing her age and weight and address.
The typewritten list of names that includes Sherry Fox.
On the main floor, I go out through the door and stand there getting drizzled on for one hundred seconds. I have about three minutes left of my break. I let my legs take me, running, along the sidewalk beside the hospital. I’m cuckoo. Where am I going? And what if the papers fall out of my undies? I turn around and race back, all of me wet and shivery. Not from cold, but from having the astounding new knowledge of my mother’s name. I race to the change room and zip the precious papers into my sweater pocket. I use a sleeve to dry off my arms and face. I race to my cart, wondering if everyone can see on my face that I am now in possession of the beginnings of an identity. For the rest of my shift I am the most vigorous cleaner that ever wielded a mop on the floor of St. Joseph’s Hospital.
THE LIST
After work, I wear my sweater out of the hospital, feeling as if the left pocket is pulsating or sending out flares. How much trouble would I be in if anyone knew that I’d stolen the papers?
The rain has stopped, leaving polka-dot puddles. I walk, stomping almost, away from St. Joe’s and Church Street, toward the harbor. I turn onto James Street and see an enormous iron bridge way overhead, with water bubbling through a dam below. The bridge is for trains, I realize, spying the rails from underneath. The water beyond is calm, divided by long jetties where dozens of boats are anchored, their tall masts like a forest of birch trees. The water gleams dark green below the clouded sky. I wonder if there are rules about looking at the boats, so I keep my distance. People can act funny when coloreds get too close, I’m finding out. A couple of seagulls dive for something just beyond the nearest dock, coming up empty time after time.