The Speed of Mercy by Christy Conlin (good books for high schoolers txt) 📕

remember, to remember where it was hidden, that she had kept it safe, that Isaiah had given her the key and she was keeping it safe. Dianne was not breathing. No breath coming from the mouth of this old lady, her hair hanging cape-like down over her shoulders, her necklace resting between her breasts on this chest that did not rise or fall, the swell and fall of breath gone now, a tide receded forever. Thin salty creeks coursing down Stella’s hot cheeks, scorching on her cracked lips, wet and salty on her leathery tongue. Dianne hadn’t stood a chance, not with her efforts to care for Stella taking all she had left. Stella’s tears dripping on Dianne’s fingers, yellowed from her years of smoking, her wild, steely hair matted and tangled around her shoulders. Stella knew this was a sleep she would not awake from. Dianne would never again walk at the centre, or sit on the bench on the bank of the inscrutable river, the paupers’ graveyard behind them. Stella would never hear this strange, splendid old creature sing again, but even as she thought this, Dianne’s voice filled her mind. Her banjo, her low, gruff, sweet spirit of a voice:

I’m travelling through this world below

There is no sickness, no toil, nor danger

In that bright land to which I go

I’m just going over Jordan

I’m just going over home.

Stella didn’t know how much time had passed when there were footsteps outside, on the back verandah. One knock. Three more. Then the door opened. She heard a high loud voice and Seraphina loomed over her. And behind her Grace. And behind them, men in uniforms who approached Stella and she screamed. She clung to Dianne, stiff now, cold now, silent.

Seraphina wept. “I’m so sorry. I had to get help. I told them the angels were calling out from the sea and from the sky. It was my duty to save you and I can’t save you and you can’t remember and so I had to go to Grace and Mal for they will try to help you. I have failed. I hope you’ll have mercy on me, Stella. I don’t have the words.” Seraphina’s head dropped and her arms flailed at her side, fanning dark broken lines of shadow on the floor.

Stella in her delirium was roused by a ripple of anger, reviving her enough to croak and spit at Seraphina in a slow voice: “They’ll find me now. And I have betrayed Cynthia by not remembering. But why is it my job to remember?”

Seraphina rocked back and forth. Grace put her hands to her mouth.

Stella speaks.

Stella roars.

Fire raged in Stella’s throat and in her gut, and flames shot from her fingertips. Her eyes were glowing embers. Grace shrank back and Stella roared again and again and again until a dark curtain fell over her, extinguishing the blaze in her eyes and in her body, enveloping her words, filling her mouth, and there was nothing but deep thick quiet as Stella fainted and fell to the floor at Grace’s feet.

Goodbye Uterus, Farewell Cervix.

The Fierce Old Lady Within.

Now

I don’t know how long I’ve been in the hospital. I do know that Nurse Calvin does mean well, in her own stiff, deformed fashion.

Nurse Calvin clears her throat once, twice, three times. I have never seen her so nervous. She licks her lips and speaks: “You’ve certainly had good care here. The Valley Regional is a good hospital. They had you on intravenous antibiotics for a whole week, Stella Sprague. You’re a wreck. Look at your hair! You could have died from that infection. What were you thinking, breaking into that cottage?”

I don’t explain, even though I could now. Periwinkle is my family cottage. It’s my cottage. All those years of wondering where my voice was, and it was there, inside, still needing to be coaxed out, but it’s here now. But what good is it? It doesn’t matter if you can speak. It doesn’t make any difference. Words don’t make it better. It’s easier to just listen to Nurse Calvin, exhaling all her proclamations, until she’s emptied out, an empty bag that will refill again, and again and again.

Nurse Calvin points to the windowsill. There is a banjo beside a potted rose. “I brought you Dianne’s new banjo. It finally came. I thought you might want it. And I put some cards there from Fred and Bob, and Charlotte Pacific. I see Grace has been in with some flowers and a card.” Nurse Calvin’s voice breaks and she looks away, patting her hair, composing herself. “Fred and Bob have been very upset with you gone. They mope about all day with that cat. I had to delay my retirement for a few months to keep things steady, what with all the uproar. What a shock to the system this all is. The boys don’t seem to comprehend that Dianne isn’t coming back. It’s a pity. And speaking of, that box of things over there that Dianne kept for all those years, she left for you with your name on it. We had to clear out her room, you see. She surely didn’t have much. But she had a will, of all things. Never estimate an old lady. Anyway, what’s yours is in the box, a bunch of junk. And you know you’ll have to go to the group home. It doesn’t have to be Mountain Top but you’ll have to go somewhere. We couldn’t hold your bed for you. I know Eugene has been in and told you. I just felt it was my duty, before I retire, to come and tell you myself. To say goodbye, seeing you missed my farewell barbeque and all. I appreciated the table decorations you and Dianne made. I kept them.”

“I understand.”

That’s all I say.

Nurse Calvin’s eyes widen. She’s thrown off her game. Despite Dianne dying and me almost dying from my blood infection, and then having