Storms 01 - Family Storms

information and a dollar fifty will get you on the bus.”
    “But that’s all it costs.”
    “Duh. That was your father’s opinion of knowledge,” she had told me.
    It was almost impossible now to remember Mama from those early days, when she would have more sober hours than not. Before she began drinking for the day, her eyes were still clear; she was still standing straight and had a look of determination in her face. But that got to be less and less the rule and more the exception.
    Sometimes I thought maybe an alien had gotten into her. The alien didn’t have any of the self-pride and self-respect Mama used to have. Maybe Mama wasn’t dead. Maybe just the alien in her had died on the highway, and she would wake up and come back to me. I was looking at the door of the ward just the way Mama used to look out at the ocean for that boat that would save us, hoping that she would suddenly just appear, smiling.
    “It’s going to be all right now,” she would say. “We’ll be fine, Sasha. I’m back.”
    I blinked when a tall woman dressed in a fashionable designer turquoise pantsuit with gold epaulets stepped into the doorway and caused my dream Mama to pop like a bubble.
    This woman had thick light brown hair styled at shoulder length and carried a purse that matched her outfit. The nail polish on her long nails even matched her outfit. She gazed into the ward, looking carefully at each patient until her eyes came around to me. Once she saw me, she seemedto freeze, her eyes locked on me, her soft, puffy lips just slightly open. Whom was she trying to look like, Angelina Jolie?
    I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She had the look of a movie star, her makeup perfect, her complexion rich and peachy. But she looked somehow more important than a movie star. The regal way she held herself gave her an aura of authority, control, and power. The diamond ring on her left hand was so large that it seized on the ray of light spilling in from the nearest window and then seemed to brighten and become even more dazzling. She wore what looked like diamond teardrop earrings, too, and a necklace of small pearls.
    A long moment passed before she stepped into the ward, and when she did, she stepped in as though she were trying to be careful, as careful as someone navigating a floor of mud. Maybe she thought the patients in the ward were contagious. She did look as if she was holding her breath. I waited when she paused at my bed.
    “Are you Sasha Fawne Porter?” she asked.
    She couldn’t be someone from Social Services, I thought. Could she? Who else would be looking for me? Who else would know my full name?
    “Yes,” I said.
    She nodded, opened her purse, and took out a very thin handkerchief to dab away something on her right eye. I saw nothing. Maybe she was wiping away imaginary germs. Why would there be a tear?
    She focused on the area under the blanket where my cast was located.
    “Are you in a lot of pain?” she asked, nodding at my legs.
    “Only if I move too much,” I said.
    “I’m so sorry.”
    I looked at her and wondered why she was so sorry. “Are you with Social services?” I asked, and she widened her eyes.
    “Hardly,” she said. She hesitated, and then she said, “I’m Jordan March. Mrs. Donald March.”
    The way she told me her name—announced it, I should say—caused me to scan my brain, searching for something in my memory that would tell me who she was. Had I seen her on a magazine cover? Was she really a movie star or on television, someone who visited patients in hospitals as an act of charity? Why would she think I would know who she was?
    “It’s your right leg that was broken?” she asked.
    I pulled back the blanket to show her the cast. “My femur,” I said, remembering Dr. Decker’s description. “At the head.”
    “Yes, I know.”
    How did she know? Was she a special nurse? Or maybe she was a doctor. But she didn’t call herself Dr. March. Would a doctor talk like that?
    “You don’t have any other broken bones, right?”
    “No.” If she were a doctor, she would have known that, I thought.
    “But you’re badly banged up,” she concluded, her gaze fixed on my black-and-blue arms.
    “I have a slight concussion, too. And my neck hurts, soit’s hard to raise my head.” I don’t know why I wanted to tell her everything. Maybe it was because there was no one else really asking me.
    “Oh, dear, you poor, poor child.”
    Poor is right,
I thought.
    I watched her look