To get around this, Shirlee has you ask for stuff that Shirlee wants. Shirlee loves old-time Elvis Presley shit. Buddy Holly shit. I put that on the list, and Shirlee pockets the music when it arrives. No muss. No fuss. And no big accumulation of toxic crap in the room.
The navy folks, they say they can't expense poetry books. If some public watchdog saw an item like Leaves of Grass on some Freedom of Information document, there would be hell to pay. So Shirlee buys my books out of her own pocket. And I pay her off with Elvis CDs I order but don't want. Most nights, Shirlee wants to educate me about current events, like who's dropping bombs on what country and who's the new boy singer every girl wants to fuck.
Instead, I want to know the stuff Shirlee can't say. The stuff I've started to forget—like how does rain feel on your skin? Or stuff I never knew—like how to French-kiss?
We talk back and forth through an intercom. This means pushing a button when you speak, then letting go to hear the other person. Even now, when I try to imagine Shirlee's face, all I can picture is the little wire-mesh speaker on the wall next to the bed.
All the time, Shirlee's asking, how did I get here?
And I tell her: It was all my dad's brilliant idea.
Shirlee's always after me to shave my legs. Order a tanning bed. Ride my stationary bicycle a thousand miles to nowhere. Shirlee tells me, her voice from the wire-mesh speaker says, “You only lose it once.”
Me, I'm twenty-two years old and still a virgin. Until today, it looked pretty certain I'd always be a virgin.
Still, I'm not too much a social retard. Residents get to watch television. They get to surf the Internet. Of course, you can't send any messages out. You can lurk in chat rooms, reading all the action, but you can't contribute. You can read the postings on a bulletin board, but you can't respond. No, the government needs to keep you a National Security secret.
And Shirlee, her voice from the wire-mesh speaker, she says, “How did your old man get you put here?”
It was my senior year in high school when people around me started to die. They died the same way my folks had died ten years before.
My high-school English teacher, Miss Frasure, one day she's holding a paper I wrote, telling the whole class how good it is, the next day she's wearing sunglasses inside. Saying the light hurts her eyes. She's chewing those orange-flavored aspirin the school nurse gives out to girls on the rag. Instead of teaching, she turns out the lights and shows the class a movie called How to Field Dress Wild Game. The movie's not even in color. It's just the only reel of film left on the shelf in the audiovisual room.
That's the last day they see Miss Frasure.
The next day, half the kids I know ask the school nurse for those orange-flavored aspirin. Instead of English class, we get sent to the school library for an hour of quiet study. Half the class say they can't focus their eyes to read a book. Behind a bookshelf, I let a boy named Raymon kiss me on the mouth. As long as he keeps saying I'm beautiful, I let him put one hand up inside my shirt.
The next day, Raymon doesn't come to school.
On the third day, my grandma goes to the emergency room, saying her head hurts so bad that everything looks black around the edges. She's going blind. I skip school to sit in the hospital waiting room. I'm reading a copy of National Geographic magazine, the pages all soft with wrinkles, sitting in a plastic chair crowded around with crying babies and old people, when a man comes into the waiting room wheeling a gurney. He's wearing white coveralls and a gauze surgical mask.
The man has a buzzed haircut, and through the gauze mask he tells the whole room to get out. They need to evacuate this part of the hospital, he says. I go to ask if my grandma's okay, and the man grabs me around one skinny arm. The man's wearing latex gloves. While the old people and crying babies hurry down the hallway, edging past the gurney, this man holds me in the waiting room, asking if I'm Lisa Noonan, age seventeen, currently residing at 3438 West Crestwood Drive.
From the gurney, the man takes a blue bundle sealed in clear plastic and tears it open. Inside is a blue container suit, all plastic and nylon with zippers sewn up and down the front and back of it.
I ask again, about my grandma.
And the man with the gurney shakes out the blue container suit. He says to put it on, and we'll go see Grandma in Intensive Care. The suit, he says, is for my grandma's protection, and he holds it by the shoulders so I can step inside. A container suit is three layers of plastic, each layer sealed with zippers. It has built-in gloves and feet and a pointed hood with a window of clear plastic to see out. The most outside zipper goes up the back and locks, so you're trapped inside.
When I step out of my tennis shoes, the man picks them up with his latex gloves and seals them inside a plastic bag.
At school, the rumor was Miss Frasure's had a CAT scan that showed a brain tumor. The tumor was the size of a lemon, filled with some piss-yellow fluid. According to gossip, the tumor was still growing.
Just before I pull the hood shut, the gurney man gives me a little blue pill and says to let it dissolve under my tongue.
The pill tastes sweet. So sweet my mouth fills with spit I have to swallow.
The man says to get up on the gurney. He says
