Flannery squinted and looked around, tried to pull herself up, but her bones were too busted and sore. She wanted to call out, but her jaw froze halfway and lit a fire inside her ears, spreading to her head.
They had put her in a six-bed ward with other mothers. That was almost the worst part of it all. Then Mark strolled into the room with her delivery doctor, the distinguished Dr. Vickers from over at the university. Her husband was telling the good doctor how careless and godless she’d been with the pregnancy.
“My wife,” Mark said to the doctor standing at the end of her hospital bed, “refused to take care of herself. Tripped because she insisted on wearing those damn high-heel slippers even though her feet couldn’t fit into them anymore. Took up with the devil with some vodka nipping too.” Mark looked pitifully down and clasped his hands in prayer.
Vodka, she thought, muddled. No. There was no place for vodka in Kentucky. But Mark kept a flask of it, sipped from it quite a bit. She’d seen him take up the habit lately, doing it at first light, even. Flannery couldn’t stand the smell of the cough-syrupy liquor, the nose of the sickly bitter tang she found on Mark’s breath that he claimed could never be detected.
Honey Bee’d always said that a Kentuckian, a gentleman, would never rendezvous with vodka, never light the Southern tongue with potato juice.
Honey Bee, she mouthed, aching for his strong, protective arms.
Flannery moved her feet, wiggled her toes, trying to feel. Lifting her head slightly, she looked to see if she had on the slippers. Weak, unable to, she collapsed back into the pillow.
“Shameless,” Mark said to the doctor.
Flannery tried to find her voice to deny it all, but could only manage raspy squeaks.
“You know how it is, lad,” Dr. Vickers groused quietly. “Some of these hens aren’t made to sit on the soft nest.” The old doctor squeezed Mark’s shoulder and then looked over his spectacles down at the bed and chided Flannery. “Mrs. Hamilton,” he gruffed, “as your doctor I must say it is a woman’s duty to take care of her husband and children. A good wife must first be a godly woman—must care for the vessel that carries the child. Even the wildest creature knows this,” he preached to her failures.
Flannery turned her face away from the man, trying to bury it and her shame into the thin, lumpy hospital pillow. But the very worst was when she finally saw the babies, their babies.
Two women rested in iron beds across from her, their eyes filling with horror and pointed blame, shooting daggers her way. Cradled in their arms lay content, sleeping newborns.
Flannery lifted a wanting arm, wishing she could for one second, hold the babes, cradle them to her breast.
One of the mothers covered her baby’s head with her hand, shielding the infant from Flannery’s disgrace, as if it might infect her newborn.
“Mrs. Hamilton”—the doctor tapped her shoulder—“did you hear me? . . . Twins, a boy and a girl . . .”
A boy and a girl? Flannery slowly cut her eyes back up at the doctor who hovered close above her face. “Patricia and Peter,” she said, faintly calling the names she and Mark had decided on long ago when they’d gone over all the birth possibilities. A girl would be named after her sister, and a boy for Mark’s dad. “Where are they, my Patricia and my Peter? Where are my babies?” she asked unbelieving into his foggy cloud of speech. Flannery turned her head back to the mothers across from her.
The doctor mumbled something about the babies, something fleeting about her “body not being suitable for carrying babies anymore . . . lost . . . something had been torn, gone missing inside.”
She moved her hand down to her stomach, felt the flatness under the bandages, a fiery pain rippling, a loss that stabbed its finality deeper. “Missing?”
“No children for you . . .” his words muddled. “The Cesarean section . . . Your husband signed consent . . . Sterilized,” he lit more forcefully, and his spittle landed on her cheek. “For your own good.”
Flannery tried to speak, lift herself up, but her tongue thickened, her head felt too swimmy. “What do you mean? What . . . s-sterilized?” The cold question lay lodged in her throat.
The doctor’s face blurred as he leaned sideways and whispered to her husband. “You did the right thing. My sympathies to you, Mr. Hamilton. I’m sorry for your losses.”
“My babies. My poor, poor babies. Gone to my Heavenly Lord too soon.” Mark shook his head. “Gone to be with my saintly mother.”
But Flannery couldn’t hear them anymore. Her own thunderous screams, the pounding of her fists against the bedrails roared up hot into her ears.
Mark and the doctor placed her in a locked ward for a month. Kept her long enough that when the nurse came in with the medicine tray, Flannery’s hands took on a mind of their own and trembled as if they spoke for her, reaching out in silence.
Flannery spent most days sitting in a chair beside her hospital bed in the dark, dingy room waiting for her medicine. She loved the yellow ones better than the white ones that they’d given her the week before. The only thing that really stuck out from it all was the pills. The yellow ones made her float high, high, higher until she was up in Heaven with her babies.
One day the nurse took two Valiums from the tiny paper container filled with pills and handed them to her. Flannery didn’t wait for the water.
Lifting Flannery’s right arm, the old nurse inspected it. “Mrs. Hamilton, are you poking yourself again? You are. What did I tell you? If you keep this up, you’re gonna be here till the ’60s, forever.”
Flannery shook her head no, and then nodded a yes. She didn’t want to tell the nurse she needed to forget. She needed to forget for a while how everything was gone. But when she felt the pain, she had hope, a safe province to retreat to without fear of Mark taking it away. Absently, Flannery rubbed the wound.
“Where is it?” The nurse fumbled around Flannery’s lap until she found the pencil that had made the marks.
She ripped it from the pocket of Flannery’s gown. The flimsy covering was brushed aside, exposing another puncture wound on Flannery’s leg.
“Good night!” the nurse said with an equal measure of wonder and disgust. “You’re a crazy one all right. And already up to three pills, and still, this . . .” She smacked the side of Flannery’s leg several times, left it red and smarting, then wagged a nicotine-stained finger in her face. “He’ll have you on the blue ones if you don’t stop doing this kind of thing to yourself.”
“I like yellow,” Flannery said softly.
“You’re a bother.” The nurse shook her head. “Batty,” she muttered, then gave Flannery another pill. “This should keep you outta my hair for a while.”
Yes, the yellow ones. Like floating on a yellow river, Flannery thought. Yellow is my favorite color. Better than the white ones. Yellow. Yellow. Yellow. Flannery wanted to clap out the word in a cheer. Instead she greedily swallowed the pill and pulled the baggy hospital gown back over her knees. Leaning back into the chair, she closed her eyes, dismissing the nurse. In a while everything was sweet from her peak of Yellow.
They held her in the psych ward three more weeks. She was sure Mark would’ve left her there forever if Mama hadn’t found him out. By the time Mama rescued her, Flannery had left her lapping, sunny Yellow river for Blue. Bigger Bluer skies.
CHAPTER 23
Flannery hated that Hollis could make her feel weak and scared, take her back into her old fears so easily. She had needed years to regain some control, to feel any wanting for a life after Mark and the babies. She glared hard at Hollis, pushing up the muster to light back.
“It’s not right to leave it all like this. Something bad had to have happened to them,” she said stonily, rolling down the car window for air.
Hollis gripped the steering wheel and cut his eyes at her. “Lot of things in this world ain’t right. And I’m going to right this my way, peaches. I aim to give my brother a fine burial, and, if you’re smart, you’ll give your sister a decent one too. Let it rest now.”