Chapter 41
ONE DAY LEFT
“It’s impossible,” Hess whispered, her cheeks wet and raw.
I was speechless.
“Do you really think…” Hess paused, as if afraid to expose the thought to air. “Do you think she could still be alive?”
The tape hadn’t been entirely coherent—some of it I was still parsing in my mind—but it seemed possible. She had made herself disappear, or at least she had planned to, all those years ago. She could still be out there somewhere.
I pulled out my laptop and searched for records of an Ernestine Arwood over the last sixty years. I found what had eluded me these past few months—her birth certificate, social security enrollment, some public assistance her aunt and uncle had taken for caring for her.
I went deeper, using databases I sometimes used for work. These hopped over firewalls to secure state records; most of the state systems were ancient at best, and it wasn’t too hard to do if you knew the right code.
I got a hit on a ’92 hospital stay in Arkansas, but the date of birth didn’t match Belle’s—born in ’41, died in ’93. The woman’s race was identified as Black.
After combing through a few more dead ends, I finally found something.
A record of an Ernestine Arwood admitted to a state-run mental health facility in New Orleans in 2000.
Hess gasped behind my shoulder. “Could that be her?”
I flicked through the documents and found a date of birth: 10.29.49. “It’s not the right date, but it’s the right year. She might have lied to them.” I searched for an accompanying photo, but the record was brief. Date of admittance and date of discharge. She’d stayed three months.
“We should call,” I said, picking up my phone.
“They’re not going to give you any information without verifying your identity in person. I had some issues when Martha was sick because I’m not a blood relative.”
“Old Crone” from The Cursed Woman started to play in my head:
If I could be an old wom’n
I’d shimmy down to N’awlins
Make friends with the spirits
Sing to all who’d hear it
’Til my hair turn’d gray and broke
Like the Spanish moss hangin’ from the oak
We drove all night on kudzu-lined highways and arrived in the city with the morning light.
New Orleans felt lower to the land, like I was closer to the earth’s pulsing, sentient core.
People drank in the streets and bared themselves with abandon, as if this was a liminal place where the usual rules didn’t apply.
I felt safer here, like I could exist without constantly looking over my shoulder.
At the treatment facility, after proving my relationship to the patient, a case manager took us to his office where the walls were lined with file boxes and his computer looked older than me.
He handed us a thin file with the tab marked “Arwood, E” in fat black marker.
“She spent a few months with us about ten years ago, before my time. I’m afraid there’s no one on staff who was working then.
We get a lot of turnover.” He pulled out a VHS tape.
“Her stay coincided with a grant geared toward making video records of patients.” He tapped the tape.
“This is her video file. I can’t let you take it off the premises, but you can watch it here if you’d like. ”
Hess and I agreed, and he showed us how to work the ancient television in the corner of his office. He said he’d give us some privacy and walked out. I pulled the tape from its sleeve and pushed it gently into the player.
The screen suddenly illuminated in gray and yellow tones, and a blurred woman appeared with her back to the camera. A low sound came from the speakers, and I turned up the volume, so that the voice suddenly filled the room with its smoked honey.
The woman was singing.
Hess gasped and pressed her fingers to her lips. I leaned toward the screen.
A voice from behind the camera asked the woman to turn around, but she ignored them and kept on singing. It was hard to make out the exact words of the song, but the feeling of it was like hunching inside yourself and searching for comfort, music meant to soothe your own soul.
The camera moved toward the woman and then circled around so that she was finally facing the lens.
I had never imagined my mother as an old woman. She was perpetually frozen in her early thirties, her skin smooth and her eyes bright.
This woman’s face was hollowed and rough, like the people I saw living on the street in Phoenix. But her eyes still blazed, the fire behind them untamed. She was not just older; she was more feral, a person left to her own devices and no longer afraid of what she might lose.
Hess stared at the screen, her eyes shining. She reached out, as if they might touch.
I didn’t know how to react, except that I felt like a kaleidoscope. With each twist of reality, I was pulled apart and then reassembled into a new configuration.
The video ended, but neither of us moved or spoke. After a while, the case manager returned and handed Hess a Kleenex from the box on his desk. She dabbed her cheeks and asked, “What happened to her after she left?”
He frowned slightly. “We do everything we can to keep track of our patients, including assigning them a case manager. But this is a volatile, high-risk population, and they usually drop off the radar.” He pulled the file back and studied it.
“In this instance, the case manager lost track of her almost immediately, and she never resurfaced in our system.”
After Hess asked a few more questions that led nowhere, we walked out into the parking lot, and the light stung my eyes. The air was too soupy to breathe. I took out my phone and looked at the time. It was almost six. According to my birth certificate, I was born at 9:03 p.m.
Three hours left.
When I stepped from the stairs, my shoe sank a few inches into the swamp of the asphalt before I yanked it back. I looked over at Hess, who was pacing back and forth on her phone in front of the building.
I tested the asphalt again, and it sucked my sneaker down like quicksand.
I scanned around, mapping different routes away from the clinic that could avoid the asphalt-covered roads, but they surrounded us.
There was no way out. I imagined staying in this same spot for the rest of my short life: sleeping, eating, peeing, dreaming on this hard, safe concrete stair.
I felt a hand on my shoulder and startled.
“Rhea? Are you all right?” Hess asked.
I was suddenly afraid that if I opened my mouth, my words wouldn’t make sense, so I nodded and grimaced as if I was too overwhelmed to speak.
Hess nodded sympathetically. “I called a friend in the Nashville Police Department about filing a missing person’s report. He said there are organizations we can contact to get the word out with her real name and a recent picture. If she’s out there, we’re going to find her.”
There was something about Hess’s face, the way she seemed so forceful and confident, that felt like she was acting out the part of a determined woman, like it was some elaborate performance.
I just couldn’t believe it; none of it felt real. “We don’t know that was her,” I said before I could stop myself.
Hess’s brow furrowed. “What are you talking about? Of course that was her.”
“But how could she survive a plane crash? It doesn’t make any sense.”
Hess sighed. “I know it seems impossible, but I am certain that was her, honey. That was her voice. She even used her real name.”
Her tone was patronizing, as if she’d already decided I was insane.
“Don’t talk to me like I’m crazy,” I snapped.
Hess paled. “I’m sorry, that was not my intention.”
Even if it was her, I had no idea how she’d stopped the curse. “I just… I think I need to go for a walk. I need to clear my head.”
She took a step toward me. “I know this is overwhelming—I’m still trying to wrap my mind around it myself.” She took another step. “Why don’t we go back to the rental? We should eat something anyway.”
“No, I need to be alone.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” She took another step, and I realized she could grab me if she reached out.
She’s going to take you somewhere. Maybe even back into that facility. This is not safe.
I took a few steps back. “What are you trying to do? I can take a walk if I want.”
Hess moved even closer. “Rhea, honey, I’m not trying to do anything. I’m with you. I’m on your side.”
Lies.
“Why would I believe anything you say? You’ve been lying our entire relationship.”
Go. Go now.
I turned to leave, and Hess grabbed my arm, pulling me back.
“Wait, Rhea, please—” But I yanked it away, leaping onto the asphalt and streaking across the parking lot, the muck sticking to my shoes.
I made it to the grass on the other side without getting stuck, and then through another short stretch of asphalt to the other side of the street.
I heard Hess call out my name from behind, and I took a sharp left into a maze of tourist-filled streets.
A crowd staggered toward me clutching boozy slushies with stacks of glinting plastic beads around their necks.
I tried to make myself invisible, flattening my body against the side of a decaying brick building, but I needn’t have made the effort.
Their eyes were glazed and unfocused as they passed.
Another mass headed my way, this one so large they were forcing other people into the street, and I ducked down a narrow alleyway to the right.
I followed the alleys for a while, enjoying the silence.
Sewage smells mixed with the odors spilling from the backs of the restaurants I passed—fried dough, stewed shrimp, Cajun spice.
I passed a building vibrating with the chaotic rhythms of jazz, and I put my hand up to the brick to feel the pulse.
If only it was possible to live this way, to creep along the backside of the world and be able to experience its pleasures, protected and unseen.