Storms 01 - Family Storms

home?
    Soon, though, instead of enjoying hearing Jackie describe her family and home life, I became sadder. Look at all I had been missing and would miss forever now. What sort of a woman could I become? I’d be like someone without any past. How could I ever do what Jackie was doing, describe my parents, where I lived? I’d be like so many of those homeless people I saw at the beach, pan-handling or trying to sell something to survive. Their faces were caverns of despair, their eyes empty, a smile as hard to find as a decent meal or a place to stay the night. The sound of other people laughing was painful to them and to me. If one day we weren’t there, no one would care; no one would look for us. Sometimes I wished the tide would come farther in and wash us all away. I was sure manypeople who saw us and shook their heads wished the same thing.
    As I looked around my nice hospital room, I wondered where I would go from there. One day, the doctors would tell me I was recuperated enough to be discharged, but discharged to where? An orphanage? Some foster home? When I thought about that, I almost wished Daddy would come rushing back to get me, even if it was just to get himself some money. At least I’d be with someone who was supposed to care about me.
    Late on the third morning, Mrs. March appeared and told Jackie she had arranged for me to be brought down to the morgue.
    Jackie’s face lost color, and she turned sharply toward me. “Are you sure?”
    “I know it’s very, very unpleasant,” Mrs. March said, “but she wants to say good-bye. Am I right, Sasha? We don’t have to do this if you’ve changed your mind, and Jackie’s right to be concerned for you. It’s ugly.”
    “I don’t care. I want to see her,” I said. Mama could never be ugly to me, I thought.
    “Then you will.”
    She stepped out and returned with an aide and a wheelchair. I was helped into it, and the four of us went to the elevator. No one spoke all the way down to the morgue. My heart was pounding, and my eyes were filling with tears so quickly I had trouble seeing as we went down the corridor and through a pair of doors. A man in a white lab coat was waiting for us just inside and had me wheeled sharply to the right to avoid seeing anything else.
    We entered a cold room. I saw no bodies, just what looked like a giant file cabinet.
    “You stay with her, Jackie,” Mrs. March said. “We’ll hang back here.”
    I looked at her and the aide. He didn’t seem unhappy about that, and she looked as if she was trembling. It got me trembling. Jackie wheeled me deeper in and up to a cabinet. The man in the lab coat looked at me, and then he pulled on the handle and slid Mama out. She was under a sheet. He lifted it, and something inside me shattered like a windowpane.
    It didn’t look anything like Mama, and for a moment, I hoped it wasn’t her. Maybe she was still alive somewhere in the hospital. Maybe there had been a terrible mix-up. I looked at Jackie, and she shook her head. It was no good to pretend, to lie to myself. I knew it was Mama.
    Tears were trickling down my cheeks. “Mama,” I whispered. “I love you. I’ll always love you.”
    I reached out to touch her face and then recoiled when I felt how hard and cold it was. Suddenly, I was very nauseous and began to dry-heave. Jackie whisked me around and away. The aide stepped forward.
    “Let’s get her back upstairs,” Mrs. March said. “Quickly.”
    I kept my eyes closed and my head back until I was upstairs and in my bed. Then I slowly looked up at the ceiling.
    Jackie rubbed my arm softly. “Don’t think of her down there,” she said. “That was no longer your mother. Think of her as being in a better place now, where she is always warm and happy and safe, okay?”
    “Okay,” I said in a voice so small I thought I had become three years old again. I closed my eyes and fell asleep.
    Days passed. Mrs. March sent me more presents, more magazines and movies and boxes of candy. I could tell from the way other nurses looked when they gazed in at me that I was quite a curiosity. I had no visitors other than the doctors and my private nurses. I was sure that by now there were all sorts of stories about me. Despite Jackie and the gifts, I felt more and more as if I were in prison or in some cave in a human zoo.
    Jackie tried to help me feel better about it. She got me into a wheelchair whenever she could and pushed me down to a small patio to get some air and