Chapter 17
Chapter 17
After that, all anyone could talk about was Rose. When Honor America Day disintegrated into a smoke-out in front of the Lincoln Memorial and naked protesters waded through pot smoke and tear gas in the reflecting pool, everyone took it as a sign that Rose was an inevitable force of history.
“If Rose was there, she’d be blowing grass with Blossom on her hip,” Jasmine said.
“Blossom would probably be blowing grass, too,” Iris said.
It had taken three adults and a needle in her arm to make Rose go to the hospital, they said. If she’d been up north she’d be taking over administration buildings and throwing banners out their windows reading They Can’t Kill Us All . Everyone agreed: Rose was an obnoxious loudmouth, but she was also the one thing none of them were—strong. Even Briony seemed to have nice things to say about Rose now that she wasn’t around.
The next night, Diane and Mrs. Deckle drove them downtown to the Fourth of July fireworks with its mob of Ozzies and Harriets in their red, white, and blue outfits, shaking miniature flags, cheering for the Shriners in their tiny cars and the veterans sitting in the backs of big convertibles, waving carefully like they were trying it out for the very first time. A marching band played the “Marines’ Hymn,” and an American Legionnaire in a wheelchair with a sign reading It’s Your Country—Love It or Leave It! got sustained applause. After the silence and seclusion of Wellwood House it felt too loud, too crowded, too chaotic for the girls, so they clustered by the seawall, far from the streetlights. Jasmine pointed at the lit windows of Flagler Hospital.
“She’s in there right now,” she said. “She and Blossom are watching the same fireworks we’re watching.”
None of them wanted to be Rose, but all of them were proud to know her.
They all knew she probably wouldn’t come home on Sunday (although with Rose you never knew), but on Monday morning everyone waited for her to come home the way mothers waited for their sons to come back from the War.
“Do you think they’ll let her bring Blossom?” Tansy asked.
“I don’t think anyone ‘lets’ Rose do anything,” Ginger said. Even Ginger was in on it by now. “I think Rose does what Rose wants.”
They were all hungry to see a baby. Just the thought of having Blossom in their arms gave them a buzz. Blossom was what this was all about. She was the end result of all the sore backs, and sleepless nights, and morning sickness, and gas.
Everything sounded like a car pulling up outside. Girls in the Cong kept stopping what they were doing to waddle to the front windows. Rose must have come home a million times by dinner. But she never arrived.
“Tomorrow,” Jasmine pronounced. “I feel that Rose will bring Blossom back Tuesday.”
She was half right.
***
Iris saw her first. Tuesday afternoon she was out back, working on her tan, when she spotted Nurse Kent smuggling Rose down the path into the Barn. She immediately came reporting back to the Cong.
“What did Blossom look like?” Daisy asked. “Did she let you hold her?”
“Nurse didn’t let her stop,” Iris said. “She just stuffed Rose inside.”
“She could have been bundled up real tight?” Iris said. “Babies are little, y’all.”
Fern went straight to Nurse Kent, who told her it was impossible to visit Rose.
“Out of the question,” she said. “She’s resting. She doesn’t need you girls bothering her.”
Zinnia, Fern, and Holly spent so much of their kitchen shift standing at the window staring at the Barn that Hagar threatened to take a hot spoon and scoop out their eyes if they didn’t get back to work.
After dinner, they assembled in their room.
“What if she leaves and we never see her again?” Holly asked.
“She wouldn’t leave without her lava lamp,” Zinnia said.
“We could sneak out and tap on her window before Miss Wellwood locks up tonight?” Fern said.
“You don’t even know which window’s hers,” Zinnia said.
“She’s the only one in the Barn,” Fern said.
“You’ll see her at Wednesday clinic,” Zinnia said. “She won’t leave before then.”
“No way,” Fern said. “We need to see her now.”
“Well,” Zinnia said. “You can’t.”
“Here you go,” Holly said.
Holly held out a plain silver house key.
“Nurse Kent uses it on the side door,” she said.
“How’d you get that?” Fern asked.
“No one pays any attention to me,” Holly said. “They all think I’m stupid.”
They sat around the Cong that night, half watching some underwater movie while Nurse Kent smoked and read magazines in her overnight room. After lights out, Fern crept downstairs. She slid the key slowly into the lock on the side door and it turned smoothly. She swung the door open and slipped outside.
Fern hauled herself across the backyard as fast as she could, praying no one looked out the windows. As she got closer to the tree line, she picked out Decima’s shadow, sitting under the trees. Her tail didn’t pound the grass, she didn’t stand or move, she just watched, her fixed, unblinking stare making Fern’s skin tingle.
“I’m sorry,” Fern whispered to her as she passed.
All the venetian blinds in the Barn were closed. Rose might have been the only girl inside, but it still seemed reckless to start randomly knocking on windows. Then Fern realized only one window-unit air conditioner was on. She stood in its intolerably hot exhaust and tapped on the glass.
Nothing happened. She turned her tapping into knocking, and suddenly the door of the bungalow opened so fast Fern almost bolted.
“Come on,” Rose whispered from the doorstep.
Fern walked to her as fast as she could. They stepped inside the dark reception area, and Rose closed the door behind her. The air was A/C-cool and Fern felt sweat crusting her skin. She started talking in the dark.
“You’re back! Are you okay? How was it? Did it hurt? Do you remember anything? How’s Blossom? Is she the most beautiful baby in the world? Is she still in the hospital? We were worried! Everyone wants to see her. Even Ginger.”
Rose snapped on the desk lamp and sat in Nurse Kent’s chair.
“They took her,” she said.
Fern didn’t understand.
“She’s still at the hospital?”
“No.”
Rose’s throat sounded dry.
“Well,” Fern said. “When do we see her?”
“Never.”
“Never?” Fern asked, confused.
Rose looked up from behind the lamp, and her face looked like skin stretched over bone.
“Get this through your thick skull, you dumb shit,” she rasped. “They took the baby.”
Fern had never heard Rose call Blossom “the baby” before.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean.” Rose didn’t take her eyes off Fern. “They took my daughter. Because I told them to. Because I begged them to. Because I’m just like everyone else.”
Fern felt something come unplugged inside her brain.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“I told them I was taking Blossom home,” Rose said. “And they said I wasn’t thinking straight. They said they’d put me on the locked ward until I came to my senses. I told them to go to hell and they took her out of my arms and she started to cry and the woman from the adoption agency couldn’t get her to stop, and I said ‘Let me,’ but they acted like I didn’t exist and they took her away like they’re going to take all our babies away and there’s nothing we can do about it. Don’t you understand, stupid? They’re stronger than us.”
“But,” Fern said, because this didn’t make any sense, “you didn’t sign the papers.”
“They wheeled me down to the locked ward,” Rose said. “They said my wanting to keep Blossom was proof I couldn’t make rational decisions. They said a girl my age couldn’t raise a baby. They said it was for my own good. They said if I didn’t sign the papers by Monday the judge would declare me incompetent and I’d be on that ward until they decided I was no longer a danger to myself or others.
“They put me in a room with a girl who looked like she was forty. She had gray hairs and they had her so doped up she talked real slow, but she talked straight. Turns out she’d come in the week the Beatles broke up. Don’t you get it? She’d only been in there three months and she looked like an old hag. She said she wasn’t getting out for a year and a half. She told me I was stupid because if I hadn’t been declared incompetent yet I could still get away, but once they wrote that in my file it was all over. She said if all I had to do was sign a paper for a baby I didn’t want anyway then maybe I really was crazy.”
Rose’s hands lay on the desk, twisting over themselves, wringing each other.
“You’ve never heard what it’s like on the locked ward at night,” Rose said. “The next morning I begged them to let me sign. I begged so hard. The woman from the adoption agency came and I wrote my name where she told me. I asked if I could see Blossom one more time to tell her I loved her and to say goodbye and the woman from the agency didn’t say a word. She just packed up her stupid little briefcase and left me alone in that room and I was so scared they weren’t going to come back and get me that when Diane came in the door I hugged her like she wasn’t the one who did this to me in the first place. But it wasn’t just her. It was all of them. They’re all Wellwood’s little soldiers.”
Fern couldn’t help herself. She’d had so much wrapped up in Blossom that the words just jumped out of her mouth.
“How could you?”
Rose’s eyes were skinned raw.
“I was scared!” she screamed. “I was scared they’d lock me up and dope me up and I’d never get out again. I’m supposed to be her mother and I didn’t even hold out forty-eight hours and she’ll grow up and never know I loved her. She’ll never know I existed. She’ll think I threw her away like trash.”
But Fern wasn’t listening to Rose anymore. She knew how to fix this.
“We have the book!” she said, leaning over the reception desk. “Rose, listen, Decima is right outside! We can learn the spells to get her back.”
Rose looked at Fern like she was stupid.
“And go where?” she asked. Then she repeated it, like hammering in nails. “And. Go. Where.”
Then Fern saw it, too. How far could Rose and Blossom go with no bread, no job, no place to stay? Rose was as trapped as Holly. Until they were eighteen, adults moved them around like checkers, stuck them wherever they wanted, made them do whatever they wanted, made them give away their babies if they wanted. No one cared what they wanted. And that’s just how it was.
The lamplight gleamed off Rose’s wet eyes. Something slipped down one cheek and fell to the desk. Rose ground the heel of her hand into her eye socket then stared at the wetness.
“I don’t deserve to cry,” she said.
She slapped herself across the face so hard Fern jumped.
“I don’t deserve to cry.”
Rose slapped herself across the other cheek, leaving it red. She raised her right hand again but it was shaking too hard; she put it down on the desk and held it in place with her left. Still staring at them, she spoke.
“It’s too late,” she said. “They’re going to take our babies and give them to strangers and there’s nothing we can do to stop them. We can’t protect Blossom. We can’t protect Holly. We can’t even protect ourselves.”
Fern sat, not moving, heart hammering against the inside of her ribs. She didn’t want to see Rose weak. If they could break Rose, none of them stood a chance.
“Fern,” Rose said, voice thin. “That dog’s still here?”
The lamp light made shadows around her eyes.
“Yeah,” Fern said.
Rose took a ragged breath.
“Then help me,” she said.
“How?” Fern asked.
“They took my Blossom,” she said. “She was a part of me, and I need her so bad or I won’t ever feel like a whole person again but that will never happen.”
Fern could smell Rose’s stale sweat and unwashed hair.
“So now I’ll hurt them,” Rose said. “I’ll hurt them real bad. Will you come with me to see that witch?”
***
They stood in front of Decima. The dog stared straight ahead, not moving. Fern looked back at the Home, waiting for lights to snap on in Miss Wellwood’s office or the floodlights to come on in the backyard. Overhead, the clipped fingernail of the moon hung in the sky.
“Giddyap, little doggie,” Rose said to Decima. “Take me to your leader.”
Nothing happened for a moment, then Decima stood, turned, and trotted into the woods. Rose followed. Fern looked back at the house and found their window. She thought she saw Holly’s pale face pressed to it. She raised one hand, then followed Rose.
Every time she looked back there were more branches between her and the Home, until finally all she saw were branches. The ground rose and fell in gullies and hummocks, and Rose’s white T-shirt floated up and down them in the dark up ahead. No matter how fast Fern waddled, Rose walked faster. Fern kept her eyes on the ghost of Rose’s back as they stumbled through the trees, following Decima.
The sound of them crashing through the undergrowth drowned out all other noises. Sometimes she’d get close to Rose and could hear her panting and muttering angrily under her breath, cursing herself, driving herself on. Sometimes Rose disappeared into the dark up ahead.
A conviction settled on her that someone was pacing them, moving parallel to them, watching them from the shadows. A bush rustled off to her left and Fern tried to catch up with Rose. She didn’t want to be here. She wanted to be home in bed. Sweat sheeted down her face and tickled her belly. She needed to rest, but Decima didn’t stop, so Rose didn’t stop, so Fern couldn’t stop either.
Something caught the edges of her hearing and Rose’s T-shirt stopped, hovered, and started moving forward again. The new noise became clearer, some kind of giant, higher-pitched cricket, but its sound traveled up and down too fast. Something moved and Fern saw the shadows of everything shifting softly around her and realized the tree trunks were now illuminated faintly on one side.
A long slide and a metallic bang that Fern recognized: a van door sliding shut. At the same moment, the noise of the giant cricket organized itself into a banjo. They followed Decima out of the trees into a clearing with a campfire, and banjo music surrounded them for a moment before it stumbled to a halt. And they stumbled to a halt. And Fern saw where they were.
They’d found the people in the woods. The hippies, the Mansonites, the cult, the killers.
Sitting around a fire—dark shapes and shadows, firelight cupping the side of someone’s face, someone’s shoulders, a pair of hands. One of them climbed to their feet, massive and dark, outlined against the flames. At first Fern thought they held a banjo, then the woman’s low voice spoke.
“I think,” the woman said, “you’d better tell us what the hell you’re doing out here.”
Which was when Fern realized she was holding a rifle.