Holding Wonder

"The sky's still there," she reported to Ruth who lay, eyes closed, flatly pillowless on the bed. "And the Mescalita Mountains, still as bare and rocky as they ever were. And the old umbrella tree has grown back from the roots. I knew they couldn't get rid of it by chopping it down. It's a thicket now, almost head high, and full of blossoms. Smell the lilac-like?" "No." Ruth let the one word out grudgingly.
"I've dreamed of the smell," said Thiela. "It still means spring to me. I remember gathering big handsful of the blossoms and getting as drunk as a bee on the smell." She sighed and laughed. "But handsful or not, there were always plenty of flowers left to change into chinaberries to use in wars in the summed And did you ever bite down on a softening chinaberry?" "No." Ruth refused to move anything but her tongue.
"I did once and I thought I was going to die because it was so squishy, mealy, nasty! Tasted just like my Aunt Sophronia!"
"Tasted like your aunt!" Ruth's eyes flipped to Thiela in outrage.
"Yes," Thiela laughed at having roused her. "Aunt Sophronia was called the Weed Woman. She concocted the awfullest things you ever tasted out of all sorts of weeds she gathered from the ditch banks-right out there, they were. You know, of course, that they used a corner of our old ranch to build this hospital-research unit on. They took over the whole ranch when they established the Space Base here in our county." She sobered and sighed. "I never dreamed that I'd be here in Suspension some day with all of everything-" She shook back her hair. "Anyway, Aunt Sophronia used to make up those horrible messes and managed to pour them down us kids in the spring for tonics and summer for blood thinners and fall for blood thickeners and in winter just to empty her bottles for the spring crop of weeds." Thiela melted on down to the floor and leaned back against the wall. "My blood could use a little thickening about now," she whispered as she crept, hampered by gown and robe, on her hands and knees back to her bed. She climbed into it wearily, "Ruth, how long has it been?"
"I don't know," said Ruth.
"They say we age very little in Suspension," said Thiela. "And Gove and the kids are as close as yesterday to me still. Time-" She fell silent, watching the light drain out of the room. Her eyelids drooped, trembled, stilled and suddenly opened. "Ruth! We're going to sleep! Just think! We're going to real sleep! And we'll wake up in a real morning after a real night!" She sat up and hugged her knees to her chest, laying her cheek on them. "To sleep!"
"Perchance to dream." Ruth's voice was flat. She turned her face away from Thiela. "Dreams. Dreams! Oh, Thiela! I'm scared! I don't want to sleep. I don't want to!"
"Maybe it's only the dreams in Suspension," comforted Thiela. "Maybe after the Gwen-shot and with real sleep-"
Ruth's head rolled on the white sheet, but she didn't answer.
Thiela was suddenly awake in the night. "Out of suspension again? So soon?" she thought confusedly. Then she sat upright in bed. "Asleep!" she whispered, delighted. "Oh! Asleep! Awake!"
Then the sound came-the cry, the anguish, the agony vocalized. Her heart lurched and she crumpled the sheet to her chest with her spasmed hands. Then she was unsteadily out of bed and shaking Ruth's writhing shoulders with both hands. "Wake up!" she cried over the tensely twanging moan that scraped her bones. "Wake up, Rut!!" But Ruth had become so lost in her anguished dreaming that she twisted out of Thiela's hands, her ghastly vocalizing aching Thiela's ears. One flailing arm swept Thiela from her feet and she scuttled on all fours, terrified, to the far side of the bed, groping for the call bell.
Then there was light and voices and comings and goings and a painful awaking
for Ruth.
The next evening Thiela cried to Ruth, "What's the use of having days and nights again if you don't use them?"
"I won't sleep," said Ruth, the words ragged with repetition. "I won't sleep."
"You'll have to, sometime," said Thiela. "If you'd only let them try to help you. If you don't sleep-"
"I won't sleep. I won't sleep."
"Oh, God!" Thiela whispered into her cupped hands. "Help me to help-" She slid to the side of the bed. "We could go see Eileen and Glenda," she suggested. "They say we can walk that far if we feel like it."
"I won't sleep," reiterated Ruth.
"You're not sparkling as a conversationalist tonight," sighed Thiela. She put a quick hand on Ruth's arm to be sure she didn't misunderstand. "Like Aunt Sophronia," she went on. "She had only one topic of conversation-weeds. She was always loudly on the defensive, of course. She maintained that weeds were like old maids-unclaimed treasures. She never actually killed anyone with her brews-at least I don't think so, though some claimed she eased Old Man Ornsdorff out of life a trifle earlier than-" She broke off, conscious of a change in the silent figure on the bed. She took a deep breath and went on as though she hadn't noticed the sharpened attention.
"I remember some fellow from the State U spent a lot of time with her one summer. He said lots of weeds and herbs have traces and sometimes more than traces of chemicals used in medicines. That's why the Weed Woman's concoctions worked sometimes.
"The day before he left, he leaned on the corral fence and watched a Servicer launching. That was a Servicer for the first space platform, you know. Even then the Base was being built, but they hadn't taken all of the ranch yet. Well, he laughed and said, `Look!' There was Aunt Sophronia coming down the lane, her dress-skirt gathered up by one hand into a bag for a big bunch of weeds. She held her load so high that it showed her bare knees with her cotton stockings rolled down over the white elastic she tied on for garters. Her other hand was dragging a big branch of sagebrush. You boil their leaves down to a solution, if you can stand the stench, and comb it through your hair daily and it'll never turn gray. Anyway, the fellow said, `Look, the Weed Woman and a Servicer launching. Can you get a bigger contrast?"
"But he got his Master's degree with a thesis on folk medicine. That thesis was almost pure Aunt Sophronia except that he eliminated the double negatives. Probably ruined a few recipes in so doing, too." Thiela smiled a softy reminiscent smile. Ruth was flaccid again, her face turned away. "He sent her a microcopy of the thesis. She couldn't-or wouldn't understand what it was-so she gave it to me and I put it with my other treasures. Let's see-two quail eggs, a snake vertebra, an Apache tear-unpolished-and a piece of pine gum. It was the first microcopy I'd ever seen and it fascinated me. Of course we had no viewer, but I'd hold it up to the light and squint and pretend I could see the pictures of the red-tops and the sore-eye weeds and the wet-a-beds. What awful names we had for pretty flowers. It didn't matter-weeds, you know.
"And the bladder vines. We used to tromple on them and shriek when we heard the pods break. It was thrillingly dangerous because they were poison and if
one drop or their juice hit you in the left nostril, you'd die. We all knew that for gospel truth. Left nostril, of course, because that is the side your heart is on."
"Sleeping potions-" Ruth's voice jerked out the words almost with a question
mark on the end. "I suppose so." Thiela eased herself back into her own bed. "It's been so long. I'd even forgotten Aunt Sophronia until the umbrella blossoms reminded me. It comes back in bits and snippits. But I remember Aunt Sophronia had a remedy for whatever ailed you."
"Whatever?" Ruth turned fretfully away. "Well, I'd hesitate to stack her stuff up against this Research Unit and the Pain, but she'd be in there whaling away at the problem with both hands." Of course, Ruth finally went to sleep and woke in a state beyond screaming and so near to madness that Thiela bit toothmarks into her own underlip as she