Who Do You Think You Are

the nurse said. “You’re spelling today. It’s lovely weather outside.” She bent to the old woman’s ear. “Can you spell weather?”
    This nurse showed her gums when she smiled, which was all the time; she had an air of nearly demented hilarity.
    “Weather,” said the old woman. She strained forward, grunting, to get the word. Rose thought she might be going to have a bowel movement. “W-E-A-T-H-E-R.”
    That reminded her.
    “Whether. W-H-E-T-H-E-R.”
    So far so good.
    “Now you say something to her,” the nurse said to Rose.
    The words in Rose’s mind were for a moment all obscene or despairing.
    But without prompting came another.
    “Forest. F-O-R-E-S-T.”
    “Celebrate,” said Rose suddenly.
    “C-E-L-E-B-R-A-T-E.”
    You had to listen very hard to make out what the old woman was saying, because she had lost much of the power to shape sounds. What she said seemed not to come from her mouth or her throat, but from deep in her lungs and belly.
    “Isn’t she a wonder,” the nurse said. “She can’t see and that’s the only way we can tell she can hear. Like if you say, ‘Here’s your dinner .’ she won’t pay any attention to it, but she might start spelling dinner,
    “Dinner,” she said, to illustrate, and the old woman picked it up. “D-I-N-N …” Sometimes a long wait, a long wait between letters.
    It seemed she had only the thinnest thread to follow, meandering through that emptiness or confusion that nobody on this side can do more than guess at. But she didn’t lose it, she followed it through to the end, however tricky the word might be, or cumbersome. Finished. Then she was sitting waiting; waiting, in the middle of her sightless eventless day, till up from somewhere popped another word. She would encompass it, bend all her energy to master it. Rose wondered what the words were like, when she held them in her mind. Did they carry their usual meaning, or any meaning at all? Were they like words in dreams or in the minds of young children, each one marvelous and distinct and alive as a new animal? This one limp and clear, like a jellyfish, that one hard and mean and secretive, like a horned snail. They could be austere and comical as top hats, or smooth and lively and flattering as ribbons. A parade of private visitors, not over yet.
    S OMETHING WOKE ROSE early the next morning. She was sleeping in the little porch, the only place in Flo’s house where the smell was bearable. The sky was milky and brightening. The trees across the river due to be cut down soon, to make room for a trailer park—were hunched against the dawn sky like shaggy dark animals, like buffalo. Rose had been dreaming. She had been having a dream obviously connected with her tour of the Home the day before.
    Someone was taking her through a large building where there were people in cages. Everything was dim and cobwebby at first, and Rose was protesting that this seemed a poor arrangement. But as she went on the cages got larger and more elaborate, they were like enormous wicker birdcages, Victorian birdcages, fancifully shaped and decorated. Food was being offered to the people in the cages and Rose examined it, saw that it was choice; chocolate mousse, trifle, Black Forest Cake. Then in one of the cages Rose spotted Flo, who was handsomely seated on a throne-like chair, spelling out words in a clear authoritative voice (what the words were, Rose, wakening, could not remember) and looking pleased with herself, for showing powers she had kept secret till now.
    Rose listened to hear Flo breathing, stirring, in her rubble-lined room. She heard nothing. What if Flo had died? Suppose she had died at the very moment she was making her radiant, satisfied appearance in Rose’s dream? Rose hurried out of bed, ran barefoot to Flo’s room. The bed there was empty. She went into the kitchen and found Flo sitting at the table, dressed to go out, wearing the navy blue summer coat and matching turban hat she had worn to Brian’s and Phoebe’s wedding. The coat was rumpled and in need of cleaning, the turban was crooked.
    “Now I’m ready for to go,” Flo said.
    “Go where?”
    “Out there,” said Flo, jerking her head. “Out to the whattayacallit.
    The Poorhouse.”
    “The Home,” said Rose. “You don’t have to go today.”
    “They hired you to take me, now you get a move on and take me,”
    Flo said.
    “I’m not hired. I’m Rose. I’ll make you a cup of tea.”
    “You can make it. I won’t