Читать книгу Such a Pretty Girl - Nadina LaSpina - Страница 16

5

THE REAL WORLD

“One thing you’ll do when you’re discharged is go to high school,” the hospital social worker kept telling me. And I did, when I finally left the hospital, if only for a few months, the last few months of my senior year. I went to Grover Cleveland High School in Brooklyn, wheelchair-accessible by 1960s standards. Access was through the basement and there was an elevator to get to the classrooms. Though I’d learned to walk with braces and crutches as well as I could, I had trouble with distances. So I used the wheelchair most of the time in school.

A dozen or so of us rode the “handicapped bus” every day and, when we didn’t have classes, we sat around in the “handicapped homeroom” with our teacher, Mr. Maloney. I quickly made friends with my disabled fellow students. I also quickly fell in love—with Frankie. He’d had polio but walked with braces and crutches much better than I did. Tall, with curly brown hair and deep-set eyes, he was the handsomest boy in the world. But he didn’t seem interested in me.

“What’s wrong with you?” Audrey shouted on the phone when I told her about Frankie. “Why do you have to fall in love with a handicapped boy? Why can’t you get a crush on a normal student?”

One day, Frankie and I found ourselves alone in homeroom. Everyone else was in class, and Mr. Maloney had gone to the rest room. I kept my eyes somewhere in the middle of page 57 of the biography of Madame Marie Curie and pretended I couldn’t feel Frankie’s eyes on me. Then he was beside me, his arm around my shoulders, his warm breath on my face and his lips finding mine. I kissed him back with all the passion and awkwardness of young love.

On the bus going home that day, Frankie sat next to me. I was beaming. I wanted everybody to know we were now “an item.” But that’s not what Frankie had in mind.

“You’re a beautiful girl. Even though you’re handicapped, you look good enough to attract normal guys. You know, I’ve gone out with two normal girls already. Don’t get me wrong… I really like you. You’re the most beautiful handicapped girl I know. But why should we settle for each other when we can both do better?”

I wanted to say, Frankie, I don’t think I could do better. You’re the handsomest boy I know, period. But who was I to argue? I tried to ignore Frankie after that revelation, and I stopped talking about him with Audrey. I never told her about his kiss.

Thanks to Mr. Maloney’s recommendation, I was admitted to St. John’s University in Jamaica, Queens. The Office of Vocational Rehabilitation, a governmental agency that assisted disabled people in becoming employable, approved payment of full tuition. My father was so proud, he told everyone.

To be closer to the college, we moved to Queens. My father bought a house in Bayside. He’d worked hard to save enough for a down payment. “La nostra casetta,” he called it, “our little house.” My mother loved the backyard, where she planted rosebushes.

My father promised to buy me a car so I’d be able to drive from our new house to St. John’s, which wasn’t far. I’d been learning to drive with hand controls. The device, which could be applied to any car, was surprisingly simple. All I had to do was pull up on the lever to accelerate and push down to brake.

Audrey was accepted at Hofstra University, on Long Island. Hofstra had a better reputation than St. John’s, and was known to be easier to navigate in a wheelchair. Her parents would be paying Audrey’s tuition, higher than St. John’s, undoubtedly. She had gotten a car on her birthday: a Mustang—bright blue, to match her eyes.

“I’m so glad you live in Queens now,” she said the first time she drove to visit me. “I don’t think I’d trust myself to drive to Brooklyn.” But she looked so sure of herself behind that wheel, she probably could have driven not only to Brooklyn but to Manhattan and even to the Bronx. She came over two or three times a week. She’d blow the horn and I’d come out of the house and get in her car.

We rode around for hours. Northern Boulevard, Utopia Parkway, cruising along, back and forth. If we were in the mood to speed, we’d get on the Long Island Expressway, then get off at one exit, make a left turn, and get back on. Seeing us in the car, no one could tell we were handicapped. We were two hot chicks, a blonde and a brunette, out joyriding. Guys on the street whistled when we stopped at a light; from other cars, some men blew us kisses, while others made lewd remarks—the kind of behavior women in consciousness-raising groups around the country were calling offensive and demeaning.

Not us. Audrey and I soaked in every lustful look. We savored every obscene word.

I thought we were just having fun. But then Audrey would say, “All I have to do is park, get the chair out, and they’ll run the other way so fast! We’re both beautiful… we could have it all. Why do we have to be handicapped?”

I didn’t have an answer to that question, but I don’t think she expected one. She went on: “I don’t want to live as a handicapped woman. I want to be a real woman; I want a real life; I want happiness. Don’t you?” She did expect an answer to that.

I didn’t know how to argue with her. I nodded in sad agreement. Of course I wanted a real life. Of course I wanted happiness.

“Why do we have to be handicapped?” Audrey asked again. And sometimes she sighed and said, “We’d be better off dead.”

Whenever people said “better off dead” when talking about disability, I tried to shield myself by pretending I didn’t hear. But I couldn’t with Audrey.

“I hate when you say that! I don’t like the way we’re treated, but I don’t want us to be dead. That’s really scary!”

“Chicken!” Audrey muttered.

I got my own car when I started college. It was a brown secondhand Mercury, the best my father could afford. Audrey still came by on weekends, or on days when neither one of us had classes, to take me for a ride.

“My car is the kind people look at, and when they look at the car, they see us,” she said.

I was glad my car wasn’t the kind people looked at. I didn’t want to be distracted by people’s looks. I wanted to fully enjoy the freedom I experienced behind the wheel. It was the same sensation I experienced when rolling in my wheelchair, multiplied ten times, a hundred times. In my car, I was completely independent. There were no steps, no stairs, no barriers on the road. Once in the car, I never needed anyone’s help, never needed to be pushed or lifted. I was equal to every other driver in every other car. I could go anywhere, go everywhere. With nothing to stop me. On my own. On my way.

In college, I began to understand what Audrey had been going through trying to fit into “the real world.” There was no “handicapped homeroom” at St. John’s. If there were disabled students, I didn’t see them.

I was eager to make friends. But none of the college students seemed interested in me. The guys ignored me. The girls were nice enough, smiled and asked how I was or if I needed help. Sometimes I sat in the lounge with girls I knew from my classes and listened to them talking about their boyfriends. They never tried to include me in those conversations. Sometimes they looked at me, as if suddenly realizing I was there, looked at one another, and stopped talking. Just like the neighbor girls back in Sicily.

I spent the long breaks between classes in the ladies’ room, or sitting in my parked car if the weather was good. I’d started smoking, thinking it would help me fit in. But I never liked it. I lit a cigarette, took a few puffs, and put it out.

I was exhausted all the time. Since the campus was not very accessible, I left my wheelchair in the car and walked with my braces and crutches. I struggled up and down steps. I walked slowly in the long corridors, praying I wouldn’t get knocked down by a student hurrying to get to class. I fell at times, nearly dying of embarrassment. Halfway through the semester, I fell going up the steps to the library and hurt more than my pride. I broke my knee and ended up in a hospital in Queens.

This hospital was nothing like HSS. There were no children or teenagers. I was the only girl on the floor. The men there—the orderlies, the janitors, the interns, and some of the patients—all seemed quite appreciative of my youth and prettiness. I mentioned that to Audrey when I called her to tell her what had happened.

“Of course, they don’t know you’re handicapped; they think you just have a broken leg.”

I didn’t care what they thought. After being ignored by the college men at St. John’s, it felt good to get some male attention. I flirted shamelessly.

I was in the hospital for just five days. The last night I was there, I woke up from a deep sleep, to see a man standing at my bedside. He had pulled the curtain halfway around my bed. But the light coming in from the open door was enough for me to recognize the good-looking orderly I’d flirted with in the evening. His penis was out of his pants. It seemed huge. He was holding it in one hand and his other hand was at his mouth, his index finger pressing against his tightly closed lips.

I was too shocked to utter a word. He smiled at me when he realized I was going to keep quiet, but he kept his index finger in front of his lips. He was stroking his penis faster now. I watched, not sure whether to be frightened or fascinated. Then he grabbed his penis with both hands, arched his back, and semen squirted over my bed.

Oh no! How was I going to explain the sticky sheet to the nurses? He smiled as he put his shrunken penis back in his pants, pulled up his zipper, and went out the door.

I was discharged the next morning. The bed was left unmade. No one noticed the spots on the sheet. I called Audrey as soon as I got home.

“He didn’t make you take it in your mouth?”

“No!”

“Or even in your hand?”

“No!”

“Would you have done it?”

“Audrey! Of course not! I didn’t want him to do what he did!”

“But you didn’t scream. You could have screamed.”

She was right. Why hadn’t I screamed? Had I liked watching him? Would I have taken his penis in my hand had he asked? I had flirted with him, after all.

“That’s true; I could have screamed.”

“Oh, no, you don’t have to feel guilty on top of it.” Audrey’s voice was suddenly soft and comforting. “It’s okay. Men usually don’t even see us. They don’t think of us as women because we’re handicapped. So we have to be glad for any attention we get.”

I went back to St. John’s in my wheelchair, with a cast on my leg. I needed help getting the chair in and out of the car. I waited by many doors, sometimes in rain and snow, for someone to get me up the steps. Certain buildings I just couldn’t get into. I couldn’t use many of the rest rooms. But at least I could zoom up and down the corridors and didn’t have to be afraid of getting knocked over.

Because I wasn’t exhausted all the time, I was able to try harder at making friends. I became more outgoing. I didn’t wait to be included in conversations, but joined in at the right moment with an appropriate remark. Men weren’t standing in line to ask me out on a date, but they seemed to notice me now. I didn’t have to wait long before someone volunteered to get me up or down steps.

One guy often appeared at the right time, when I needed help. I figured we had the same schedule. He was nice-looking, with dark hair and brown eyes. His name was Paul.

“Ready to earn your brownie points?” I joked as he grabbed the push handles of my chair.

“How about a kiss instead?”

“Okay. But you’ll have to take an IOU, because I’m late for class.”

I kept using the wheelchair after the cast came off. If asked why I wasn’t walking, I had lots of excuses: I was afraid to fall again; the weather was nasty; my leg still hurt. I didn’t mention that when using the wheelchair, I had more energy for socializing.

I made friends with a girl from my English class, Jenny. We had lunch together at least twice a week. She was pretty and popular, and had a gorgeous boyfriend named Tom. Jenny loved to talk about their relationship, which was a stormy one—lots of fights and reconciliations. I listened patiently, nodding a lot and being as sympathetic as a friend should be.

Once, after a long lunch, which ended with Jenny crying over her strawberry ice cream while I patted her arm with sisterly affection, she asked, “Aren’t you glad you don’t have to deal with this stuff?”

“What stuff?”

“You know, this boyfriend stuff!”

“Well, since I don’t have a boyfriend right now, I don’t have to deal with it. But I’m sure I will in the future.”

She looked at me as if I were speaking a foreign language. “Do you think you’ll ever get a boyfriend?”

Like everyone else, Jenny believed relationships were not possible for me. She had generously told me about hers, so I could have some vicarious experience. We left the cafeteria without speaking.

I stopped having lunch with Jenny and started having lunch with Anna. She was friends with Paul, the guy who was collecting IOUs from me. She’d come along one day as Paul was getting me up the steps to the library, and she casually grabbed the footrests of my chair to help. Anna was the opposite of Jenny—not that pretty, and though she had friends, male and female, she wasn’t popular and didn’t have a boyfriend. Nor did she show much interest in being popular or having a boyfriend. We talked about serious issues—civil rights, women’s liberation, the war in Vietnam… I was reluctant to end our conversations.

Anna also loved folk music, and we planned to go to a concert together. “Maybe we can ask Paul to join us. Does he like folk music?”

Anna didn’t answer.

“Paul, your friend, do you know if he likes folk music?”

She was looking at me as if I’d turned into a Martian.

“Yes, he does,” she whispered finally.

“Well? Do you think he would go with us?”

She sighed. “It’s not fair.”

I was puzzled. “What’s not fair?”

“It’s not fair that you’re handicapped.”

“You’re telling me!” I laughed.

“It’s not fair for you, and it’s not fair for Paul, who’s in love with you.”

“Paul is in love with me?”

I was astounded. Other than a little teasing, there had been no sign of any love interest. He showed up at the right time to help me get in and out of inaccessible buildings—that was all. The IOUs for kisses had remained unclaimed.

“How do you know Paul’s in love with me?”

“We’re friends. He confides in me.” She sounded burdened. “It’s very painful for him, you know, to be in love with you, knowing nothing can come of it. I understand him so well. I know all about love that cannot be. I was once in love with a priest.”

What the hell was she talking about? Love that cannot be? In love with a priest? Oh, yes, of course. Like being in love with a cripple. Knowing nothing can come of it.

“I understand him so well,” she repeated, and sighed. “Poor Paul!”

I couldn’t stand it. “Come on! You don’t expect me to feel sorry for him!”

“Well, you could try to be more considerate of his feelings. The priest I was in love with tried to stay away from me…”

I’d had more than I could take. “I don’t want to know about the priest, Anna. Good-bye.”

I called Audrey from a pay phone. She was home from school that day. “I can’t believe this!” she kept saying as she listened to my story. When I stopped talking, she asked, “Do you have any more classes?”

“American history at three.”

“Cut it. Get in your car and drive out here.”

“I don’t know…”

“Drive out here,” she insisted. “I’ve got a story, too, very similar to yours. You’re not going to believe it.”

She was waiting for me in her car. She pulled out of her driveway and motioned for me to pull in. I parked, got out on my crutches, and went to sit in her car. She told me her story while driving around the neighborhood. I listened as I looked for signs of the coming spring: daffodils ready to bloom in front of one house, violets around the lawn of another…

“What are you looking at? Are you listening to me?” She got annoyed when she didn’t have my undivided attention. Her story was better than mine. I’d learned about Paul’s love from a third party. She’d learned from the guy himself, who confessed his love for her and his anguish at knowing nothing could come of it.

“To me, you’re like a nun,” he had declared.

And Audrey had replied, “I can’t be a nun! I’m Jewish!”

That struck me as outrageously funny. I started laughing and couldn’t stop. Audrey was soon laughing, too, so hard that she couldn’t drive anymore. She parked the car on a quiet street, in front of someone’s newly planted lawn, and we both grew hysterical, laughing harder and harder, hitting each other, then hugging, shaking and hiccupping, mascara-stained tears running down our cheeks. Until we weren’t even sure if we were laughing or crying.

Later that day, I called my mother to tell her I would be spending the night at Audrey’s. Then we got all made-up and dressed to kill. She wore a skintight electric blue sweater and I wore a skintight hot-pink one—one of hers. We put both our chairs in her car, which was always a feat, and drove out to a club that had no steps. She parked in the “No Parking” zone in front of the door.

“You’ll get a ticket,” I said.

“Fuck it!”

“You have a foul mouth.”

“I know.” She laughed.

While struggling to get our chairs out of the car, we couldn’t help but notice a group of young people on the sidewalk—staring at us. I tried to concentrate on securing my leg rests. Audrey, sitting straight in her chair, pushed her long blond hair back with a flick of her hand, raised her head defiantly, and stared back.

“Like the show? Wanna give us a round of applause?”

I knew she was in top form.

We’d been to that club before, but we’d never attracted so much attention as that night. Was it the skintight sweaters, the way we were moving to the music in our wheelchairs, or the vibes we were sending out?

Audrey started it. “If I wasn’t handicapped, you could come home with me and fuck me all night,” I heard her say to a guy with longish blond hair who’d bought her a drink. He must have whispered “Let’s do it anyway,” because she said, “Oh no, believe me, you don’t want to risk falling in love with me! It would be very painful for you because nothing can come of it. A handicapped girl is like a nun.”

I caught up quickly. I wrapped my arm around the arm of the guy who had just handed me a drink and whispered, “Isn’t it a shame I’m handicapped? I could be dancing with you, rubbing my breasts against you…”

“Do you give money to the telethon?” Audrey was asking.

“If you give enough money, we’ll get cured, and then you’ll want us to be your girlfriends,” I chimed in.

We kept the game going all night—or at least until our bladders got too full. Accessible rest rooms were unheard of. When we couldn’t hold it anymore, we had to leave.

“I’m gonna wet my pants in five seconds,” Audrey whispered as we rolled out the door.

There was a ticket stuck under her windshield wiper. She left it there. Once in the car, our chairs folded and jammed into the back, she handed me the jar she kept under the seat for emergencies.

“Don’t you want to go first?” I asked.

“Too late for me.”

I saw her pants were all wet. I peed in the jar, emptied it out the door, and we headed back to her house.

Audrey’s mother had opened the foldaway bed for me. I got undressed quickly, took off my braces, and lay down. I was tired. I needed to get at least a few hours’ sleep. I wanted to drive to St. John’s in the morning and not miss my nine o’clock English class. I unfolded the blanket Audrey’s mother had left for me and got under it.

But Audrey kept moving around in her wheelchair, not at all eager to get in bed. She was still wearing her sexy electric blue sweater but had taken off her wet pants and underpants and sat there bare-assed. From her hips to her knees, her thighs, lacking muscles, formed a soft flattened V against the wheelchair seat. Her skinny legs, lined with pink scars, dangled, her bare feet, not quite reaching the footrests, pointing straight forward from surgically fused ankles. We both made a point of looking at our naked bodies in the mirror only from the waist up, but we were so familiar with each other’s bodies. Looking at Audrey’s legs now was like seeing my own in a mirror.

She was fumbling with her jewelry box, which she had taken out of the bottom drawer of her dresser and unlocked with a tiny key.

“Want to see what I’ve got?” She didn’t sound mischievous, which she usually did when she asked that question.

“Sure.” I was too sleepy to show much enthusiasm.

She took out a pill bottle and held it up to me. There were quite a few pills in it, judging by the sound it made when Audrey shook it.

“What are they?”

She twisted the cap off and let some pills fall into her palm. She smiled as she stuck her hand in front of my face. It was full of red capsules.

“What are they?” I asked again.

“Se-con-als.” She enunciated each syllable.

“Sleeping pills?”

She nodded, still smiling.

“Where did you get them?”

“From my mother. I ask her for one now and then, saying I can’t sleep. And I steal one or two when I get the chance. I’ve been hoarding them for months.” She spread them all out on her bed and started counting.

“How many do you think I’ll have to take to die?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t think I have enough yet.” She shook her head.

Though still exhausted, I wasn’t sleepy anymore. “Would you really do it, Audrey?”

“Do you want to live, just to be treated like a leper?” She was good at answering a question with a question.

“The guys at the club weren’t treating us like lepers, Audrey.”

“Did any of them ask you for a date?” She had a point there. “Men notice us because we’re beautiful and act sexy. But that just makes us more freakish, don’t you see? When they’re attracted to us, men feel like they’re not normal, and they resent us for that. I guess if we were homely, things would be simpler.”

She was playing with the pills, scooping them back into the bottle, then making them fall out onto the bed again.

“Oh, come on, Audrey! You make it sound like we don’t have a right to be attractive. The way I see it, if men resent us, it’s their problem.” I pulled the blanket over my shoulders.

She sneered at me. “Oh, yeah? It’s their problem? But we’re the ones who will never have a real relationship, get married, have a family, be happy…”

I’d been learning about the women’s liberation movement, had even read Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, so I proclaimed, “I don’t need a man to be happy.”

“Oh, excuse me! Are you going to become a lesbian? I doubt it would be any easier with women.”

“Nothing wrong with being a lesbian, but that’s not what I meant, Audrey.”

“Oh, forgive me; I forgot. You’re going to have a career! You think that when you graduate, they’ll be waiting for you with all kinds of job offers. That’s why you study all the time. Are you going to make the dean’s list?”

I didn’t answer. Instead, I asked again, “Would you really do it, Audrey?”

She had put all the pills back in the bottle and was putting it back in her jewelry box.

“What do you think?” Again she answered with a question. “Do you think I’m chicken, like you?”

I did make the dean’s list. Audrey’s average was barely above a D.

What’s the use? Why waste the time? That was Audrey’s attitude. Was she right? Was I wasting my time trying to get good grades? What job prospects were there for handicapped girls? I had decided to major in English. According to Audrey, I wanted to prove I’d gotten over my “language difficulty.” And I was minoring in Italian—to show some loyalty to my native tongue, again according to Audrey.

My father was thrilled when he got the letter of congratulations. He had it engraved onto a gold-colored metal plate and mounted. He hung it up on the living room wall. Anyone who entered our house was escorted straight to it. “Leggi qua! Read here!” my father ordered. And they had to read the whole letter, couldn’t just read the first sentence, say “How wonderful,” and walk away. If the visitor couldn’t read English, my father translated the whole letter, adding a few superlatives here and there. Though embarrassed, I was happy to see that my father was proud of me.

But I knew my success in college didn’t make up for my not being “cured.” I saw the sadness in my father’s eyes whenever he looked at me struggling with my braces and crutches. I noticed the angry way he handled my wheelchair when getting it in or out of the car—as if he wanted to smash it on the ground. I knew I was not to blame; still, I felt I had failed him.

My father didn’t tell me how he found the new doctor. I knew he had been calling hospitals. We went to see him, and he said a series of muscle transplants might help. Since the muscles used to bend my legs were stronger than those needed to straighten them, they could be repositioned, so I could use them to lock my knees and stand. This type of surgery worked best on children, but with a lot of therapy, I might be able to get rid of the braces. No guarantee, of course.

Following the examination, his secretary explained that though the hospital expenses would be covered by Blue Cross, the doctor’s fee was a little high. “No problem,” my father said, interrupting her. He told her that he would make up the difference, work overtime if he had to.

What could I say? That I didn’t want to get cut up anymore? That I wanted to take the Shakespeare course the next semester? Wasn’t I happy to be given the chance to get rid of the braces? Wasn’t I grateful to my father? I went into the hospital in the fall of 1966, as cheerful as ever.

The hospital was drab compared to HSS. Very few of the patients were young. The few who were never stayed long. They had broken bones, mostly. None were disabled like me.

Usually, in my room were women in their nineties with broken hips, who slept constantly. A few times, I rang my bell to call a nurse, suspecting my roommate was dead. But the nurses knew I needed urgent care only if I’d just had surgery. The best I could hope for was a “Can I help you?” over the intercom.

“I think my roommate passed away!”

“Okay, I’ll be there in a minute!” the voice on the intercom told me. I knew it would be at least a half hour. Luckily, no one died.

I read to pass the time, anything from Shakespeare to Harold Robbins, from Rolling Stone to True Confessions, and watched the soaps on TV.

I was in and out of that hospital for almost a year. I missed a year of college. I missed two big NYC demonstrations against the war. I didn’t go to San Francisco during the Summer of Love. I did wear flowers in my hair, which was probably all I would have done had I been out of the hospital. I had transplant after transplant—four or five or six. My mind erased the memories of pain associated with the surgeries. Pleasant memories of my time there were retained: my mother spoon-feeding me her tiny meatballs in broth; my father reciting poetry in Sicilian; Sarah, my Blythedale counselor, visiting me and playing her guitar.

Other memories of that hospital would have been better forgotten: being pushed in my chair to therapy by an orderly and feeling his hard penis pressing against my back and the nape of my neck; waking up in the middle of the night because my breasts were being fondled or a man’s hand was between my thighs.

I was young and enjoyed male attention, especially since outside of the hospital I didn’t get much. Often I flirted without realizing I was doing it. I flirted with the orderlies, the X-ray technicians, the interns. Then, when they did things that shocked and humiliated me, I didn’t know how to react and resist. I passively submitted, feeling it was my fault.

A cute intern often stopped by my room to tell me how beautiful I was. He asked what I was reading or what I was watching on TV. He said he wanted to take me out on a date when I got out of the hospital. I smiled a lot, told him he was cute.

One night, I woke up from a deep sleep—especially deep due to the sleeping pills the nurses generously and indiscriminately handed out every night. The intern was by my bed. My young body was responding to the skillful movements of his hands. Then he was on top of me, and before I knew what was happening, he was penetrating me.

When he was done, he lay on top of me for a few minutes, and I lay quietly under the weight of his body. Then he got up and left. I pulled a tissue out of the box on my nightstand and wiped between my legs. There was blood mixed with his sticky semen. My blood. He had gotten all the way inside me. I definitely was not a virgin anymore.

Was it rape? Or was there consent? I didn’t scream. I responded to his caresses while half- asleep. And I had been flirting with him. Was it “free love”? Or was I a slut? Everyone said I was such a nice girl, a cheerful girl. Such a good patient.

A scalpel or a penis. What was the difference? I’d gotten used to strangers touching me, handling me, manipulating me, doctors cutting me up, over and over again, inflicting pain. Pain or pleasure. What was the difference? Did it matter what they did to me? After all, what claim could I have on this defective, damaged, disabled body? Wasn’t I supposed to be grateful to the doctors who were trying to fix it? Wasn’t I supposed to be grateful to any man for any attention I could get?

After the intern’s nocturnal visit, I tried to call Audrey. I needed the comfort of her voice. I wanted her to tell me I wouldn’t get pregnant. I hadn’t seen the intern put on a condom, but it was dark in the room. Surely a doctor would have been careful. Still, I worried. To whom could I confide but my blood sister? I couldn’t upset my mother. And I was afraid anyone else would have blamed me for what had happened.

Audrey hadn’t been to see me at all. And we hadn’t been talking on the phone as much. I assumed she was busy in college. When I called her house, her mother answered.

She sounded surprised to hear my voice. “Audrey? Audrey’s in the hospital.”

In the hospital? What hospital? What for? Audrey was all done with hospitalizations. Her parents had long ago stopped being obsessed with the cure. Why was Audrey in the hospital? Her mother seemed reluctant to answer.

“Do you have a phone in your room? I’ll tell Audrey to call you as soon as she feels better.”

I gave her my room number and hung up. Only then did I remember the red pills. I doubled over in my chair, as if I’d been punched in the gut. Oh no! I should have warned her mother. But how could I have ratted on Audrey? She showed me the pills because we were blood sisters and she trusted me.

“Oh, please, Audrey, don’t die,” I repeated over and over. “I don’t want you to die. I don’t want you to leave me.”

Her mother had said she would have Audrey call me. That meant she wasn’t going to die. But why wasn’t she calling me? I waited for three days, too afraid to call her mother again. I hardly left my room, because I didn’t want to miss Audrey’s call. But then, when the call came at nine in the morning, I was so sure it was my mother, who always called at that time, I answered in Italian. “Pronto.”

“I fucked it up, but I’ll do better next time.” Audrey’s voice sounded weak and hoarse.

I couldn’t talk. I held the receiver with both hands and cried.