For the rest of the day, I am one minute anxious about what Dr. Townsend told me, and the next perturbed. I don’t want to believe what he said is true. And why should I assume it is? He doesn’t know everything. I know he just had an article published in some big medical journal, because the staff are tripping over themselves to congratulate him, but even that doesn’t prove Dr. Townsend knows everything. I asked him if he knows why I see colors when I hear sounds, and he answered it is tangling in my brain. It’s like crossed wires, he said, and it is abnormal. But he didn’t tell me why, only how. Crossed wires. Why are they crossed? I don’t think he knows.
That night after lights-out and after the rest of the room is asleep, I share with Belle that Dr. Townsend is now monitoring how often I am with her, and that he’s expecting me to use my free time in other ways.
“I need to spend less time with you or he’ll move you to a different room,” I tell her.
“I was actually going to suggest you not spend so much time with me, so that the staff doesn’t suspect we’re up to something,” Belle replies, and I immediately wonder if she really had been going to suggest that.
“You are planning our escape, aren’t you?” I cannot help but ask. “You swear to me you are?”
“Of course!” Belle says in a big-sister kind of voice. “My plan is working. I cornered Rudy just today in a linen closet and gave him a kiss to knock his socks off. I pretended that I was embarrassed at being so taken with him and unable to control myself. He was like clay in my hands.”
“Which linen closet?” I need to know if she really did yank Rudy into a closet and kiss him. I need to know beyond a doubt that Belle is telling me the truth. About everything.
“Don’t worry!” Belle laughs. “I was careful. Nobody saw us.”
She thinks only that I fear she was observed. I must choose to believe her. I just have to. What other option do I have?
“It’s almost June,” I say a second later. “I only have six weeks left before the baby comes. We can’t wait much longer, Belle.”
“I know, I know. I’ve got it. You fret too much.” She turns over in her bed, the conversation finished.
•••
May turns to June, and I begin to fear that when Belle and I escape, I will be so close to delivering the baby that we won’t be able to get away fast enough. I feel immense. I am starting to waddle when I walk. And where will we go after getting the money in San Jose? How will we even get to San Jose? Do I have enough savings in my cigar box for bus tickets and food for both of us until we get there? If the authorities are dispatched to look for us, will they search the bus depots?
During my hours in the dayroom, which I am careful to spend separately from Belle, I now look at maps of California in an atlasin the library, studying and memorizing towns far from Sonoma County that we could flee to quietly with the money and where I could safely deliver. I tell Belle about these places—Redding, Eureka, Klamath, and other towns across the border in Oregon—but Belle seems uninterested in where we go when we get out. The thrill of planning our escape is all she cares about.
I start to miss my mother in fresh new ways the first days of June, especially since I no longer have Belle’s constant attention to distract me from my fears of the coming delivery. I hadn’t often imagined what it might be like to bear a child, but those few times that I had, I’d always pictured Momma there with me, holding my hand or putting a cold cloth on my head, encouraging me with kind words, eager to meet her first grandchild. I’d pictured a pacing husband on the other side of where she and I were. I never supposed there wouldn’t be a husband. This thought and my mother’s absence keep me awake at night, along with the anxiety of awaiting Belle’s pronouncement that the moment of our escape is at hand.
But the worst of my worries soon starts to haunt me. I already observed that two women in the room across the hall had been sent to the surgery for a “procedure” and had come back the next day with incisions low on their abdomens. I would look up the wordsalpingectomyin a dictionary in the dayroom library if there was one. As there isn’t, and as Nurse Andrews is of no help, and since Belle hasn’t any idea what one is, I decide to ask Dr. Townsend at one of my sessions why this keeps happening.
Dr. Townsend has just unboxed his portable gramophone for the day’s therapy, and he regards me for a moment before answering. “I don’t discuss someone’s medical condition with other people, Rosie,” he says. “You should be glad I don’t. I haven’t discussed your medical history with another resident, and the only time I disclosed someone else’s with you was when I gave youmuch-needed advice regarding Belle. I was doing you a favor. It’s not something we usually do here.”
“But none of these women had tummy troubles before, and—”
But Dr. Townsend cuts me off. “Your only concern should be your own health,” he says as he reaches to his right to take the cover off the electroshock apparatus. His tone is curt, his expression one of irritation as he prepares his devices. He isn’t making progress in his efforts to halt the colors, and I can tell this morning that this annoys him. He sets the dial on the electroshock machine to the highest setting yet.
I leave the session half an hour later with tearstained cheeks and welts on my hands from where the electric bands burned me.
That night in our beds, I tell Belle that Dr. Townsend refused to explain what the procedure is that women on our floor keep having.
“I’ll find out from Norman what it is,” Belle says. “He’ll know.”
“Norman?” I say in a startled whisper.
“I can get him to tell me. I know what he likes.”
“What... what are you...” But I can’t find the words to ask Belle what she is up to with the orderly.
“Norman’s just my backup plan in case Rudy falls through.”
“Belle!”
“But he won’t! He won’t. It’s close now. I’m sure of it. We’ll be out of here in no time.”
“The baby will be here in less than a month,” I remind her.
“We’re almost there. Don’t worry.”
