ask any questions about Nadine’s past, present, future, or her international-looking mail. Word circulated quickly from old employees to new arrivals that Nadine Osnac was not a friendly woman. Anyone who had sought detailed conversations with her, or who had shown interest in sharing the table while she was sitting there, had met only with cold silence and a blank stare out to the Psych ward. Josette, however, still occasionally ventured a social invitation, since they were both from the same country and all.
“Some of the girls are going to the city after work,” Josette was saying. “A little banboch to celebrate Ms. Hinds’ discharge tomorrow.”
“No thanks,” Nadine said, departing from the table a bit more abruptly than usual.
That same afternoon, Ms. Hinds began throwing things across her small private room, one of the few in the ward. Nadine nearly took a flower vase in the face as she rushed in to help. Unlike most of the patients in the ward, who were middle-aged or older, Ms. Hinds was a twenty-fiveyear-old nonsmoker.
When Nadine arrived, Ms. Hinds was thrashing about so much that the nurses, worried that she would yank out the metal tube inserted in her neck and suffocate, were trying to pin her down to put restraints on her arms and legs. Nadine quickly joined in the struggle, assigning herself Ms. Hinds’ right arm, pockmarked from weeks of IVs in hard-to-conquer veins.
“Where’s Doctor Vega?” Josette shouted as she caught one of Ms. Hinds’ random kicks in her chest. Nadine lost her grip on the IV arm. She was looking closely at Ms. Hinds’ face, her eyes tightly shut beneath where her eyebrows used to be, her thinner lower lip protruding defiantly past her upper one as though she were preparing to spit long distance in a contest, her whole body hairless under the cerulean-blue hospital gown, which came with neither a bonnet nor a hat to protect her now completely bald head.
“The doctor’s on his way,” one of the male nurses said. He had a firm hold of Ms. Hinds’ left leg, but couldn’t pin it down to the bed long enough to restrain it.
“Leave her alone,” Nadine shouted to the others.
One by one, the nurses each took a few steps back, releasing Ms. Hinds’ extremities. With her need to struggle suddenly gone, Ms. Hinds curled into a fetal position and sank into the middle of the bed.
“Let me be alone with her,” Nadine said in a much softer voice.
The others lingered a while, as if not wanting to leave, but they had other patients to see to, so, one at a time, they backed out the door.
Nadine lowered the bed rail to give Ms. Hinds a sense of freedom, even if limited.
“Ms. Hinds, is there something you want?” she asked.
Ms. Hinds opened her mouth wide, trying to force air past her lips, but all that came out was the hiss of oxygen and mucus filtering through the tube in her neck.
Nadine looked over at the night table, where there should have been a pad and pen, but Ms. Hinds had knocked them onto the floor with the magazines her parents had brought for her. She walked over and picked up the pad and pen and pushed them toward Ms. Hinds, who was still lying in a ball in the middle of the bed.
Looking puzzled, Ms. Hinds turned her face toward Nadine, slowly unwrapping her body from around itself.
“I’m here, Ms. Hinds,” Nadine said, now holding the pad within a few inches of Ms. Hinds’ face. “Go ahead.”
Ms. Hinds held out the gaunt fingers of her right hand. The fingers came apart slowly; then Ms. Hinds extended the whole hand, grabbing the pad. She had to force herself to sit up in order to write and she grimaced as she did so, trying to maintain her grip on the pad and slide up against the pillow Nadine propped behind her back.
Ms. Hinds scribbled down a few quick words, then held up the pad for Nadine to read. At first Nadine could not understand the handwriting. It was unsteady and hurried and the words ran together, but Nadine sounded them out, one letter at a time, with some encouragement from Ms. Hinds, who slowly moved her head up and down when Nadine guessed correctly.
“I can’t speak,” Nadine made out.
“That’s right,” Nadine said. “You can’t.”
Looking even more perplexed at Nadine’s unsympathetic reaction, Ms. Hinds grabbed the pad from Nadine’s hand and scribbled, “I’m a teacher.”
“I know,” Nadine said.
“WHY SEND ME HOME LIKE THIS?” Ms. Hinds scribbled next.
“Because we have done all we can for you here,” Nadine said. “Now you must work with a speech therapist. You can get an artificial larynx, a voice box. The speech therapist will help you.”
“Feel like a basenji,” Ms. Hinds wrote, her face sinking closer to her chest.
“What’s a b-a-s-e-n-j-i?” Nadine asked, spelling out the word.
“A dog,” Ms. Hinds wrote. “Doesn’t bark.”
“A dog that doesn’t bark?” Nadine asked. “What kind of dog is that?”
“Exists,” Ms. Hinds wrote, as she bit down hard on her quivering lower lip.
That night at home, Nadine found herself more exhausted than usual. With the television news as white noise, she dialed Eric’s home phone number, hoping she was finally ready to hear his voice for more than the twenty-five seconds her answering machine allowed. He should be home resting now, she thought, preparing to start his second job as a night janitor at Medgar Evers College.
Her mind was suddenly blank. What would she say? She was trying to think of something frivolous, a line of small talk, when she heard the message that his number had been changed to one that was unlisted.
She quickly hung up and redialed, only to get the same message. After dialing a few more times, she decided to call her parents instead.
Ten years ago her parents had sold everything they owned and moved from what passed for a lower-middle- class neighborhood to one on the edge of a slum, in order to send her to nursing school abroad. Ten years ago she’d dreamed of seeing the world, of making her own way in it. These were the intangibles she’d proposed to her mother, the kindergarten teacher, and her father, the camion driver, in the guise of a nursing career. This was what they’d sacrificed everything for. But she always knew that she would repay them. And she had, with half her salary every month, and sometimes more. In return, what she got was the chance to parent them rather than have them parent her. Calling them, however, on the rare occasions that she actually called rather than received their calls, always made her wish to be the one guarded, rather than the guardian, to be reassured now and then that some wounds could heal, that some decisions would not haunt her forever.
“Manman,” her voice immediately dropped to a whisper when her mother’s came over the phone line, squealing with happiness.
For every decibel Nadine’s voice dropped, her mother’s rose. “My love, we were so worried about you. How are you? We have not heard your voice in so long.”
“I’m fine, Manman,” she said.
“You sound low. You sound down. We have to start planning again when you can come or when we can come see you, as soon as Papa can travel.”
“How is Papa?” she asked.
“He’s right here. Let me put him on. He’ll be very glad to hear you.”
Suddenly her father was on the phone, his tone calmer but excited in his own way. “We were waiting so long for this call, cherie.”
“I know, Papa. I’ve been working really hard.”
They never spoke of difficult things during these phone calls, of money or illnesses or doctors’ visits. Papa always downplayed his aches and pains, which her mother would highlight in the letters. Events were relayed briefly, a list of accomplishments, no discussion of failures or losses, which could spoil moods for days, weeks, and months, until the next phone call.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” Her mother took back the phone. Nadine could imagine her skipping around their living room like a child’s ball bouncing. “Is there anyone in your life?”
“No, Manman,” she said.
“Don’t wait too long,” her mother said. “You don’t want to be old alone.”
“All right, Manman.”
“Papa and I saw a kolibri today.” Her mother liked moving from one subject to another. Her parents loved birds, especially hummingbirds, and never failed to report a sighting to her. Since every schoolboy made it his mission to slingshot hummingbirds to death, she was amazed that there were any left in Port-au-Prince, especially in her
