Vilma tears open the crackers and eats. The baby calms down. She finds a seat a short distance from the waiting room in a quieter section. The only people walking through this area are the nurses’ aids taking their break and whispering into their phones. A black-and-white picture of Judy Garland hangs on the wall facing Vilma. The actress wears heavy eyeliner and a cigarette dangles lazily from her hand. She leans against Mickey Rooney, her face worn and tired. Vilma wonders who decided this picture of a trash-looking Dorothy would be the feel-good decoration for a hospital. Vilma can see her own reflection in the framed picture. She’s still angry at her short cut, a display of rage after Rogelio told her about the surgery. The baby kicks again. She tries to nudge the ravenous thing away from what feels like her ribs. She can barely breathe. How much longer does she have to endure it before this creature leaves her?
An old woman sits right next to Vilma although there are plenty of empty seats around her. The woman wears worn bedroom slippers from which her toes poke out. Her toenails are long and stained black. The oversized denim jacket that covers her multiple shirts is much too big for her small frame. The woman clasps tightly to the chair as if she’s on a ride.
“You shouldn’t be here,” the woman says. “This is a bad place for a baby.”
The woman’s voice sounds familiar in a way that Vilma can’t quite place. Her breath smells of eggs. The stench is so strong and Vilma can feel her nausea rising.
“I don’t care. I don’t care about this baby or this stupid hospital,” Vilma says, annoyed. “He said he would take care of us. I should have known. Trapped with this freaking thing inside me.”
Vilma’s ankles throb from standing too long. She should move but she won’t. The old woman’s breathing is as labored as Vilma’s. They both sit staring at the picture of Judy Garland for a long time.
Rogelio’s surgeon wears black sneakers. When he walks toward her and the old lady, the sneakers make a squeaking sound.
“There was so much scar tissue, my instrument bent,” the surgeon says. Vilma tries to picture that, a knife bending inside Rogelio’s chest.
“Your husband aged me twenty years,” the surgeon says with a chuckle. Vilma doesn’t laugh. “You can both see him in recovery soon.”
“She’s not with me,” Vilma says. The doctor doesn’t hear her. He continues telling her details from the surgery she doesn’t understand. When the doctor leaves, the old lady mutters to herself. Vilma gets up and the old lady stays looking at the photo.
The sight of his tears sickens her. He was supposed to be tending to her, not the other way around.
“Please don’t leave me,” Rogelio says. He won’t stop.
“We can get a cot for you,” the nurse offers, and now it’s official. Vilma will spend the night in the hospital.
Vilma swore she would never get sucked into the sameness. Rogelio was fun at first. They did the wildest things. Then he kept eating everything. She couldn’t stand to hear him chew with his mouth open.
The cot is uncomfortable and her stomach won’t stop making noises. Rogelio is out cold, high on drugs she can’t even pronounce. Vilma stands and walks to the vending machine. The empty waiting room feels off. She inserts a couple of dollar bills and selects a Snickers bar.
Who made this decision to live this life? she thinks. How did she fall down this hole? Vilma walks up to the Judy Garland photo, and with her finger smears a little bit of chocolate on Judy’s face. There’s a sound of shuffling behind her.
“Don’t you have a home?” Vilma snaps. She doesn’t like being spied on. Doesn’t want to continue to smell the sourness of this stranger’s body. She doesn’t want any of this—the hospital, that stupid cot, this greedy parasite inside her, and this moment right now.
“I know what to do,” the old woman says.
She reaches out and touches Vilma’s belly.
“A hospital isn’t a place for a baby,” she says.
Vilma’s stomach no longer growls with hunger. Instead, there’s a stillness so unsettling that Vilma gasps.
The old woman just smiles.
Parakeets
KEVIN BROCKMEIER
Not long ago there lived a man with three pet parakeets: the first appareled in jewel tones of green and yellow, the second with a blue brow that faded into a creamy purple breast, and the third an albino with a beanbag- like belly. Every day from dawn to dusk their chattering permeated the man’s sunroom, all blond wood and arched windows. It was the most calming space in the house, his sunroom, but for a single perplexing defect—a frigid patch against the back wall, roughly the size of a water tank. How was it, the man wondered, that even in high summer, at three thirty in the afternoon, when his shirt was pasted to his back with sweat, he would feel an alarming chill whenever he passed behind the sofa and to the immediate left of his credenza? Sometimes, walking in or out of the room, he would pause before he had emerged from the temperature well just to appreciate the sense of disorientation it caused him: two-thirds of his body warm and comfortable, yet the ice lopping off an arm or a leg, a slice of his foot, the escarpment of his shoulder. One day the man was polishing his hardwoods when, to access a section of the floor, he moved the birdcage into the cold patch. A silence enshrouded the birds. Their feathers flattened. Whether through tiredness or simple absentmindedness, the man neglected to restore the cage
