Finding Casey (23 page)

While she was gone, I thought about the Princess, lost in the dark woods. The monster that had taken her from the guard had zapped her with a bolt of lightning, and her legs wouldn't work. She tried to speak, but the words came out jumbled. Later, he forced her to drink a bitter tea. He wanted her to eat food, too, but she refused until one day the hunger was so strong that she would have eaten acorns raw, poison, but she didn't do that because she wanted to see the king and the queen again. Eating is the first step to finding my way back, she told herself. Cold oats or beans, I can't escape if I'm weak. “You should eat,” I whispered to Aspen. “You have to wake up and eat or else the princess will be stuck with the monster forever.”

When the nurse came in later that night, Carolyn, one I hadn't met before, she said, “I'm supposed to put in Aspen's feeding tube.”

“I thought Susie was our nurse today.”

“She's at dinner,” Carolyn said. “It won't take a minute. I've done a million of these.” She gloved up and unwrapped a plastic package with tubing.

“What is that?” I asked.

“It's a flexible tube that goes into her nose and down into her stomach.”

“Will it hurt?”

She snorted. “Your daughter's in a coma. She can't feel anything.”

“Will a feeding tube make her wake up?” I asked.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” she said. It didn't take very long. Now Aspen had four tubes total, breathing, pee, IV, and feeding.

Five days ago she was playing in the snow. Catching snowflakes. Our dog Curly ran beside her trying to bite them. That had made her laugh so hard. She stayed outdoors until I dragged her in, and then she didn't want dinner, only to sleep. She shivered like she couldn't get warm. Then her nose ran, she got a fever, then the seizure, and no more waking up. Coming to the hospital was a blur to me, rocking chairs, numbers, ice baths, CT crashing; now I had to add to that list bad blood counts and losing weight and the feeding tube. Every day I prayed to Our Creator to make things better, but it wasn't helping. Seth always said,
Believe in good things and good things will happen
, but I knew it wasn't true, it was a saying to make Frances and Caleb and Old St. John stay through the winter and work harder. If you go you can't come back, he said, and that made them stay because where else would they go in the winter? Old St. John sometimes went into town and came back with a bottle and drank until he was as stupid as me. That made Seth laugh, but if Frances had done it, he wouldn't have laughed, and he would have yelled at her, maybe hit her, and for sure made her fast and do a sweat.

I hated sweats. Not the darkness, the heat. Smelling poisons coming from other people's bodies. Being naked, trying to stand the heat longer than I wanted to. If you got too hot and had to go outside of the sweat lodge you were supposed to yell, “All my relations!” to make your ancestors and relatives send you the strength to go back in. Seth said that was the Way, and We Were All Family, but I knew that was a lie. My people from
Before
were dead and I only had one relation, Aspen. Today's shower had felt so good. I was clean and dressed in new clothes, but tomorrow they would be dirty, and then what? Wash them in the bathroom sink? The restroom is for patients only.

Later, Susie the nurse came in with a big shot and this creamy-colored stuff inside. “Hello, darlin',” she said to Aspen.

“Is that medicine?” I asked.

“No, sweetie, this is nutrition. I'm going to put it in her NG tube. Come watch. I'll show you how and then you can do it.”

Susie was the nice nurse. For two days we had her, and then it was Leilah, not as nice. Carolyn in between when the nurses were on breaks. I watched Susie press the plunger on the shot and the creamy nutrition disappeared down the tube. “How long until she gains weight?” I asked.

Susie smiled at me. “Everything takes time, Laurel. Why don't you go get something to eat yourself?”

“I already ate today,” I said, remembering the doughnuts. Also, it wasn't even three thirty, which meant I had to wait until the cafeteria closed at four.

“You need to keep your strength up so you don't end up in the bed next to Aspen,” Susie said.

That was another saying, because there wasn't any bed next to Aspen's. If there had been, I would have lain down in it and watched her forever. I always remembered to smile at Susie. “Thank you, Susie,” I said.

“You're welcome. Don't you look nice today?” she said, as she gathered up her supplies and left. “That shirt is a good color for you.”

“Thank you,” I said. When she left the room I looked at myself in the mirror in the bathroom I wasn't allowed to use. Blue plaid, soft cotton, size small, brand of Levi's. Yes, the shirt was pretty.

Not me.

___________

All day my thoughts were hiking up and down so many ideas.
Is, as, said, sad, die.
I couldn't shut them off. If I started to fall asleep, I'd startle myself awake from some strange kind of dream place, where dolphins leapt and people with no faces were laughing. When I tried to put the pictures together in my mind, I got angry that I couldn't. Anger scared me so bad, because what good ever came of anger? None. Only
rage
and
age
and
nag
inside that word. I remembered those times Abel got so mad at me costing money or me crying because I was lonely. Early on when we were in the California forest, I wasn't as good at shutting up as I am now. It took me a while to learn how to stop thinking, to go into a quiet place in my mind and stay there until things were safe again. But in the hospital, there was no one to be quiet for and my mind kind of went wherever it wanted.

Years ago, I'd hear Abel yelling at Seth about the Outside World, or how he'd gotten ripped off by someone he sold drugs to. He'd stomp around our camp, throw things, break things, make this roaring sound that meant he was so mad that he had to take it out on something or someone and eventually that someone was me. He'd slap me until I was curled up into a ball with my hands over my face, and then he'd pull me to my feet and throw me against the shack wall or onto the shack floor. Hands around my neck, squeezing. Knees on my legs, opening. Afterwards, when he was calm, almost sleepy, I'd whisper, “May I go home now?”

He'd laugh the same way Seth does now. He'd say, “I'm going to explain this to you one more time, so you had better listen. By staying with me you keep me from hurting other girls. That's your purpose on Earth. God chose you for me. God put you in my path. God wants you to stay.”

I'd cry and sleep. Cry and sleep. Pretty soon I just stopped
asking. When I stopped asking, I thought he would be nicer to me. But that didn't happen until I was pregnant, and even then I knew if he wasn't hurting me, he was Outside of camp, finding another girl to hurt until I wasn't pregnant anymore.

Every day that Seth didn't come to the hospital I felt better in one way and worse in another. What if Aspen died? Where would I go after they took her body away? What purpose did I have if I wasn't a mother? Should I ask Seth if he would give me another baby? No, that wouldn't help, because the baby would be someone else, not Aspen. I told her new parts of the Princess of Leaves story because I had so much time to think and I hated thinking. The day she was born, when I had to push her out and cut the cord myself, that was when the story began. That was the day I knew that the reason people told stories was because stories made things standable, or whatever the right word was; Mrs. Clemmons would know. The princess was lost and hurting, but eventually, if I told the whole story, she would find her way back.

“Wake up, Aspen,” I whispered to my little girl. “Without you, there isn't any reason for the princess to try.”

The doctors knew a lot, and I tried to believe they could make her better, but what if they didn't know everything? They said Aspen couldn't hear a word I said, she was in a coma. Maybe she would hear me deep in her sleeping and when she woke up, she'd tell me, so I went on with the story. Not too long after, I noticed Mrs. Clemmons standing in the doorway, listening. We didn't look at each other, but I knew she was there.

Days after the monster had knocked out the good soldier and taken the princess, the monster did a terrible thing. He took out his weapon and stole the princess's voice so she couldn't call
for help. He didn't care about her singing voice, not one bit, and the cut he made stole her voice. Then he took her to his horse and put her across the horse's back as if she was a saddle blanket. He made her drink another bitter cup of tea, which she knew now was a sleeping potion, and when the princess woke up, she was in a forest of the tallest trees she'd ever seen. The trees were a beautiful red color, and so tall she couldn't see the tops of them. Instead of leaves they had needles and lace, a whole new kind of pretty to look at, but so different from trees with leaves she didn't like them at first. This was the monster's lair. One day the princess woke to see that the monster was no longer alone. He had a twin brother. They were building a castle to keep her in. “Where are the turrets and windows?” the princess asked in what was left of her voice, which was low and raspy, like when the wind pushes a tree branch against a window,
skree, skree,
a terrible, scraping sound. Inside scraping is
crap
and
pain
and
raping
, so that makes sense.

“Keep your mouth shut,” the monster who had taken her said, but the princess couldn't have said anything more if she tried. The cut on her neck was long and ragged, not deep enough to kill her, but deep enough to take away her songs forever. She had to hold her skin together, because when she tried to speak, it started bleeding again. Already she understood her singing was in his knife. She knew she had to get it back, but how? Two monsters against one princess is not an easy fight. She told herself, a princess without a voice isn't the worst thing. You must concentrate on staying in the world, so you can find your way back to the king and queen, to let them know you're all right and that you love them. But the princess knew if she were to ever get to that day, there were going to be many tasks she had to complete, none of them easy. That day, if it was coming, was a
long, long way off. So she shut her eyes and she tried to sleep, and when the monsters came and woke her, she pretended she was sitting by the fire in her castle room. The first monster liked to tie her up and do terrible things to her, things she didn't even know could be done to a person. After a couple of days of that, the monster's brother went away, and when he came back, he had a potion that he used to glue her skin back together. He wrapped the cut with white fabric spun from a thousand silkworms, and he told her not to speak, and she obeyed, not in her heart, not really, but in her deeds. That's because sometimes you have to pledge yourself to a bad king in order to save the good one.

“Laurel,” Mrs. Clemmons said. “The doctors tell me that Aspen's spiked a fever. They want to switch her antibiotic. Is that all right with you?”

I looked at her and said, “There was nothing the king and queen wouldn't give for their daughter to be safely returned to them. They would live like paupers to have their daughter safe at home where she belonged. Their hearts would be broken.”

Mrs. Clemmons nodded.

“The question Aspen always asks at this point is, ‘But a heart can't break, can it, Mommy?' “

“What do you tell her?” Mrs. Clemmons asked.

“I tell her the truth. Everyone has a broken heart at one time or another. You know why? Because without the cracks, how else can love find its way in? I'm sorry, but it's better to know the truth. When a heart breaks, it does hurt. Not the way a bone does when it needs a cast. Mostly it aches. When something aches all the time, it can grow so sore that it feels as if the parts that make everything work have come apart. That's what happens. That's what my heart will do if Aspen leaves me. She
has to get well. I don't care what medicine the doctors give her. Just make her wake up.”

“I'll tell them,” Mrs. Clemmons said.

As he hobbled his way toward the castle, the guard went over what he might say when he returned without the princess. He knew he had to make up a story or be hanged. As he limped back to the castle, these are a few of the stories he concocted:

The princess demanded to go into the forest to collect acorns from the tallest tree with branches stretching out over the cliff-side. I held her by the shoulders to keep her safe. I kept my weapon nearby, but the princess spied the river flowing down the ravine, and once she saw the silvery water, she demanded to climb down to it and gather the leaves floating on the surface. I told her just as you instructed me to do, “One day we'll go, but today is not that day,” but she leaped into the water and the current carried her away. Look at me, my clothing wet, my face scratched, I have a broken leg and my ankle cannot support me. Though I cannot swim, I waded into the water and searched, but found no sight of her. I accept whatever punishment you deem appropriate.

Or perhaps this story: Sire, I regret to tell you that a man I've not seen before stole your daughter. He took my weapon, my chain mail, and beat me until I was down. Then he took the princess. But do not fear, for it was a case of love at first sight. Once the stranger heard her singing, he became a man possessed. He swept her up onto the back of the blackest horse I've ever seen. He spurred his horse and away they galloped, his silver horseshoes sparking, in the direction of the darkest forest. I'm certain he was a prince.

___________

Mrs. Clemmons brought me another dinner. Pizza, salad in a Styrofoam container (ruining the earth, not biodegradable), and two bottles of orange juice that tasted too sweet so I didn't drink them.

“Would it be all right if I ate my dinner with you?” she asked before she took out her containers (look for the number 1 on the bottom, that means recyclable) or even sat down.