Fern opened her eyes. She was on her back on the hard wooden floor. Martha was sitting up, staring straight ahead, perspiration standing out on her upper lip. Fern caught her breath and stood up slowly, feeling the bruises already stiffening her back and arms. She sat again on the edge of the bed, and stroked Martha’s hand. It was cool and damp. She gathered the stiff child to her and rocked her back and forth until she could feel Martha relax. Fern laid her back down on the bed, and Martha’s eyes closed. Soon she was softly snoring the sleep of childhood. In fear and wonderment, Fern sat and watched her sleep.
CHAPTER 15
Leon sat on the couch in a sullen pose, arms and legs crossed, chin resting on his chest. He felt like his space had been invaded, like something personally his was being exposed. He didn’t want to share the miracle of Martha with these three strange men who now sat at her kitchen table, along with Martha and Dr. Withins. He felt the situation being taken out of his hands. Shit, that’s what I want, isn’t it? Maybe, maybe not.
The tests they were giving her were stupid. “Tell me what this pattern looks like to you, Martha,” and “Can you describe your mother for me as you remember her?” and “Did you love your father?” and “What was the first thing you noticed the other day when all of a sudden you felt better?” Silly stuff. When she talked about Leon, his face reddened, and he picked at the couch, trying to ignore them. That stuff is private, dammit!
There were only three things she said that interested Leon. Her dreams about the yellow eyes and snapping teeth he thought were a bit bizarre, but maybe she’d been scared by a dog when she was little or something. Once in a while he had dreams of spiders crawling on him. After all, nightmares are normal. He also thought it was interesting that she remembered her mother as being small, when everybody knew that old Fern was as big as a house. She hardly remembered her father at all.
The only other thing she said that impressed Leon was also what made him so nervous, made him fidget as he sat there listening. She said she loved him, and hoped he would stay with her forever. Christ! He didn’t need an old lady to be dependent upon him. He was only twenty-four years old! He liked her all right, but boy, to be with her for . . . oh Christ. He’d have to talk to her about that. A couple of months, Dr. Withins had said. He could do a couple of months.
They sat at the table, drinking coffee and talking to Martha for almost three hours. When they finally left, Leon walked them to the doctor’s van. One of the doctors, the tallest one, said he’d like to come back to talk with her some more. There appeared, he said, to be some kind of a psychological block that occurred in her childhood, and was just recently removed, restoring her to normalcy. He wanted to find out as much as he could, because it could be of tremendous benefit to the psychiatric community.
Leon couldn’t be less interested. He just nodded, told the doctor to come back anytime, and yawned. It was bedtime.
Then they urged Leon to stay with her, at least until they had a better idea of what happened, both then and now. He agreed, then waved as they drove off.
He went back into the house and went to bed. Martha tidied up the kitchen and joined him. They lay together in silence; then Leon spoke, softly.
“Tell me more about those dreams you have. About the yellow eyes.”
“I don’t have them since you’re here.”
“You mean ‘I haven’t had them since you’ve been here.’ ”
“I haven’t had them since you’ve been here.”
“Sometimes I dream about spiders.”
“Spiders? Spiders are nothing. They’re quiet, they just crawl around. These eyes have jaws that snap and growl and come at me.”
“Hmmm. Well, I’m glad you don’t have them anymore.”
“Me too.”
“Martha?” He looked at her face, silhouetted in profile against the faint starlight outside. “I can’t stay with you forever.”
“I know. I just wish.”
He turned his gaze back to the black expanse that would have been the ceiling if he could have seen it. “I know. I wish sometimes, too.”
“Well, we’ll just do till we don’t.”
He smiled. “Okay. But when I go, you’ll be all right?”
She was silent for a long time. Long enough for Leon to count his heartbeats in the quiet, long enough for him to think she had fallen asleep. When she finally spoke, it startled him. “I don’t know,” she said. “I think so.”
He put his arm under her head and snuggled his body close to hers. She felt him fall asleep, one muscle at a time, but she kept blinking to stay awake, suddenly afraid of the nightmare, the one dream that was as real to her as Leon was. Eventually, she drifted off, but her dreams had a presence, a lurking danger pacing the sidelines, ever present, always just out of sight. Even in her sleep, she wondered what it was, where it was, and if it would be with her always.
CHAPTER 16
Doc Pearson took the stethoscope out of his ears and hooked it around his neck. He motioned to Fern that she could dress Martha again, while he sat at his desk and made notes. This was a puzzler. The child had apparently suffered some major trauma, and had totally withdrawn. Only time would tell what kind of permanent damage had been done.
Fern sat in the chair next to the doctor’s desk and pulled Martha into her lap. The child looked straight ahead, rarely blinking, seemingly oblivious to the world around her.
“She’s perfectly healthy, Fern. I can find nothing wrong with her at all. Her reflexes are fine; her eyes look good. If it was something wrong with her brain, it would have come on slowly; there would have been symptoms. I think it’s been some kind of a shock, a trauma, but what would be so horrible as to induce this type of trance is beyond me. Does she eat?”
“When I feed her.”
“With your experience in healing, surely you’ve seen people in shock before.”
“Yes.”
“Well, the body goes into a survival stance. Sometimes the feet and hands get cold because all the blood is reserved for the vital organs. What Martha needs is to be kept warm, and she needs lots of loving. I think she’ll come out of it just fine, but she’ll need lots of care.”
“Could a . . . could a dog, or a wolf or something do this to her?”
“I suppose it’s possible. Sure, if she’d been attacked. I don’t see any marks on her.”
“No, I know—it’s just that when I tried to look inside, I saw . . .” She saw the skeptical look on Doc’s face. “Nothing, it was just an idea.”
“Keep her warm and pay a lot of attention to her, Fern. I think she’ll be all right. Bring her back next week.”
By the next week Martha was walking by herself. The week after that she began feeding herself with her hands. It was two years before she was again toilet trained, and Doc Pearson said the brain damage was permanent. There was only a slight ability to learn. Severely retarded, as a result of a trauma. Fern grew to accept it.
Harry did not. Harry looked into homes for the retarded and spoke daily of taking Martha to one of them, insisting on it, but Fern wouldn’t even listen. She wiped the saliva that drooled from the corner of Martha’s mouth and talked softly in her ear. They began to fight bitterly over the situation, Harry’s voice rising in temper, Fern trying to quiet him down, telling him that it was love and care she needed.
Harry hated the sight of Martha, and razzed and jeered every time she learned something new. When she began to dress herself, she would tend to button her dress wrong or put it on inside out, and Harry would stomp out of the house, shouting that the sight of her made him sick, and something had to be done, because he couldn’t live the rest of his life looking at a retard.