Ellie's Crows Read online

  “What? Tell me this isn’t better than that guru guy when we all sat around with Paper Mache pyramids on our heads.”

  Ellie smiled. Abby had fun, no matter what.

  “Besides, weren’t those positively the best organically grown strawberries with farm-fresh whipped cream from ‘penicillin and hormone-free’ Jersey cows you’ve ever had in your life?”

  Ellie laughed. “What now?”

  Abby consulted the schedule leaflet. “Naptime.” They made their way to their sleeping bags and got comfortable.

  “Rest,” the flower-child woman from yesterday said as she milled about. “Rest.” She stopped and gazed down at Ellie.

  Ellie shaded her eyes from the sun. “What?”

  “I know you.” The woman knelt down, touched Ellie on the forehead then her chin, and smiled. “I thought so,” she said, before meandering on. “We’ve met before. And you were a non-believer then, too.”

  Ellie sighed.

  First on the agenda after the nap, meditation. Ellie had just fallen asleep. “I’ll do mine here,” she told Abby. “You go on ahead.”

  Abby laughed. “No way, you’re not leaving me alone. You see that lady over there.”

  Ellie turned.

  “Well, she ain’t no lady, if you know what I mean.”

  Ellie stared.

  “I was behind her in line at the Porta-Pottie, and guess who left the seat up. It’s a sure sign.”

  Ellie laughed. You could never tell if Abby was joking or not, aside from the time she fell off Bubba and right away said….

  The meditation was guided imagery. “Breathe.”

  Ellie sighed. What was it with people, always wanting to tell you how to breathe?

  “Breathe in through the nose and out through the nose. Visualize a golden yellow energy flowing through your being. Breathe….”

  Ellie breathed, and heard a faint caw.

  “Now close your eyes….”

  Why, Ellie wondered? Why close your eyes? Why remove one’s self from the physical world? She turned when she heard another caw, this one fainter than the first, different in tone, and gasped. “Oh my God. Lolita!” Her favorite crow was being swarmed by yellow jackets. Why on earth? Ellie jumped up, had to weave her way through the maze of women, and started running.

  “Leave her alone! Leave her alone!” she screamed in her mind. “Leave her alone!”

  The yellow jackets swirled and swirled, circling poor Lolita as she tried again and again to fly away, only to be attacked repeatedly - the buzz deafening as Ellie reached her. “Get! Get!” she shouted, batting at them with her hands. “Get!” She grabbed Lolita, her caw frantic and weakening, clutched her to her chest while swishing the yellow jackets, and remembered something long ago. “Get!” An attack, a former life, as a queen stood watching. The injustice. She hurried to the makeshift showers, gripped the handle, and with Lolita still clutched to her chest, turned the cold water on full blast. It drenched them both; Lolita’s heart beat hard and fast inside her sleek shiny chest.

  “There now,” Ellie said. “You’re okay. They’re gone, you’re okay. Be still. Be still….”

  It was then Ellie noticed the crowd of women assembled all around her, watching, some with mouths agape, some with their hands clenched, in fear, in wonder, in pain, worry. And Abby, with tears in her eyes for Lolita.

  The flower-child woman stepped forward, an expression of curiosity and anguish on her face. Ellie stared at her through the cascading water.

  “I’m sorry,” Ellie said, an apology for ruining the meditation, for their having to witness the violent display, disrupting everything, for signing up, for being there. “I’m different. I don’t belong here. I’m not just a woman. I’m….”

  “Alone,” the woman said. “You are alone. You are alone because you choose to be. Where was her flock? Where is yours?”

  Ellie swallowed hard and looked around. They were standing in front of her. The raped, the beaten, the mothers, the daughters…the dying, the surviving.

  When the woman reached for Lolita, Ellie hesitated, and handed her over.

  “Welcome home, our sister,” the woman said, handing Lolita to Abby and embracing Ellie. “Welcome home.”

  * * *

  Grandma Betty rang for the aide. It was a fifteen-minute wait, a rather quick response compared to usual. “A pain pill,” Grandma Betty said. “I need a pain pill.” A horrible searing pain was working its way up and down her arm.

  “Which arm?”

  “My right,” Grandma Betty was careful to say. The last time she said the left, they carted her off to the hospital in an ambulance. “It’s my right.”

  A half-hour later, the night nurse came in, took her pulse, then her blood pressure, 210 over 90, and said she’d be right back. Another trip to the emergency room. “For what?” Grandma Betty said. “I can die here just the same as there. A pain pill, please! My arm is killing me. No! No nitro, please! Please!” Grandma Betty spit the pill out.

  The nurse returned with a nitroglycerine patch. “I’m sorry, Betty,” she said, adhering it to her chest, the aide holding down both of Grandma Betty’s hands.

  “You’re hurting me! You’re hurting me! Let me go!”

  “Relax, Betty. You’ll be back before you know it.”

  “I don’t want to go! I don’t want to come back! Where’s my granddaughter? Call my granddaughter! I insist you call my granddaughter! I have rights! You can’t treat me like this! Nurse! Nurse!”

  * * *

  Lolita plucked a dandelion and flew away ceremoniously; a peace dove with an olive branch in her beak. Her flock could be heard cawing far in the distance, and then closer and closer in their approach, until they were all around them. The evening meal, the evening meditation was about to begin.

  “Communion.”

  “Communion…?”

  Ellie stared. She wasn’t Catholic, Protestant either. Neither was Abby. She quickly scanned the brochure. Was this retreat church related? How’d she miss that?

  It wasn’t.

  The communion was a form of intinction; a sacrament of bread dipped in wine. But not the body of Christ, his blood. This symbolic body, this blood, was womankind. “For sadly, my sisters, it is on this night, Saturday, that a travesty takes place. A mockery of the Sabbath. It is on this night most women are beaten and raped, murdered and maimed. It is on this night that their cries can be heard in the wind. It is on this night, for them, Mother Nature herself weeps. Let us join hands.”

  ~ 4 ~

  Ellie dreamt, or thought she’d dreamt, that in the middle of the night when all was still, she’d snuck out to the barricade, called Diablo’s name, and melted into his arms. “What’s going on, babe?” he’d said. “You wanting to feel like a woman?” She woke angry with herself, and angry with him.

  But it was only a dream. It had to be. Diablo never called her “babe.” Not only that, if it was actually real and not a dream - Abby would have yanked her right back at the start. Those were the rules; no bailing out at these retreats, no giving up, no giving in. “Walk this way…. Walk this way….” They were on a quest. It wasn’t just the women on Oprah searching for their womanhood. There was a pilgrimage going on right here in the outskirts of little ole Sebago, population 52,000.

  Ellie studied her right hand in the moonlight. She hadn’t realized till hours after the attack, but she too had been stung, and numerous times. “Mud,” one of the women had said. “You need mud.”

  “No, Aloe.”

  “Baking Soda.”

  “Calamine.”

  “Peppermint Oil.”

  Ellie used water. Cold water, and when it warmed from the fever of her flesh, more cold water. Until finally, the swelling subsided, along with the pain.

  Grandma Betty called her name. “Ellie…. Ellie....”

  Ellie stared into the wind. “Abby. Abby, listen. Do you hear that?”

  “What?”

  “Listen.”

  “Ellie.
” She heard Grandma Betty call her name again. “Don’t come see me. I’m gone.”

  “Gone?” Ellie sat up in her sleeping bag.

  Abby looked at her. “Who’s gone?”

  “Grandma Betty. She says she’s gone.”

  Abby frowned. “Gone where?”

  “I don’t know. Gone, gone. Where else?”

  Abby yawned. “You’re dreaming. Go back to sleep.”

  Ellie looked at her. Another dream? Of course. Why else would she think she could hear Grandma Betty so far away? Or that Abby would either for that matter. Ellie herself had never heard voices before, let alone Abby. It was only yesterday that Abby rolled her eyes in utter disbelief when some woman started talking about “corresponding” with her dead husband.

  “Go to sleep.”

  Hours later, when Willenbrook officially ended, with all the women hugging, exchanging addresses and phone numbers and bidding one another good-bye, some farewell, Abby headed for the barn, and Ellie the nursing home.

  Grandma Betty was indeed gone.

  “They took her to the hospital,” one of the aides said, walking into the room and finding Ellie sitting there, obviously in some kind of shock, what with the way she just kept looking around the ceiling.

  “The hospital? Why?”

  “Her heart. She’s fine though. They say she’s coming back tomorrow.”

  Ellie sighed. Grandma Betty hated the hospital even worse than the nursing home. She could only imagine the mood she was in, the fit she threw. Ellie gathered a few of her grandmother’s things, things she knew she’d want, and drove to the hospital. She’d promised Diablo she’d come straight to his apartment from the nursing home, but that would have to wait. She didn’t want her grandmother any more upset than she probably was already.

  Ellie entered the hospital room smiling, best foot forward, and stopped cold. Grandma Betty was strapped to her bed, restraining gauze everywhere. Oh God, Ellie thought as she stepped

  closer, tell me they didn’t drug her.

  Sure enough.

  “Kemoran.”

  “Kemoran…? But she’s allergic to Kemoran.”

  “Not according to her chart. Why, what happens to her?”

  “It knocks her out. That and when it wears off, she becomes disoriented.”

  The nurse concurred, hence, why they’d had to restrain her. An orderly had caught her trying to climb out of bed, asked where she was going, and she said she’d just phoned for a taxi and was headed for the American Legion Hall. That there was a big dance there tonight, and….

  Ellie smiled. That was Grandma Betty all right. Rumor had it she could party for days on end. “Would you please call her doctor and get him to remove the Kemoran. She’ll ask for it again, and when she’s had enough in her….”

  The nurse made a notation on her clipboard. “I’ll phone him shortly.”

  Ellie looked at her. “When is the next dosage due?”

  “Well.” The nurse scanned the chart. “She just had her third shot about an hour ago.”

  Ellie stared. Three? “Could you phone the doctor now please, before…?”

  The woman heaved a sigh. “Sure.”

  Ellie thanked her and walked back into the room. Grandma Betty never even stirred. “Grandma.” Ellie leaned close. “I’m going to go home for a while, but I’ll be back. I brought your tissue.” Her grandmother hated hospital tissue. “I brought your comb and your powder and your lipstick. And I brought your housecoat and slippers, too. Okay?” She studied her grandmother’s face, searched her closed eyes, her hands, anything for a sign that she’d heard, understood. Nothing. “I’ll see you later, Okay?” She kissed her on the cheek and felt her grandmother twitch, hesitated, and then walked out. She needn’t look back from the door for fear she’d never see her again. There was no way Grandma Betty would die in a hospital. It wasn’t in the cards.

  “Ellie.”

  Ellie turned, somewhat startled.

  Her grandmother lay still.

  “You’re a good granddaughter.”

  Ellie stared, knew she’d heard what she heard, would have sworn she heard what she heard. But how? Her grandmother just lay there.

  “Ellie.”

  Ellie glanced past Grandma Betty and almost fainted with relief. It was the woman in the next bed talking. A woman she’d never met, and yet…. “Your grandmother told me all about you yesterday. She said you were going to come and straighten everyone out here and get them to send her home.”

  Ellie smiled, but in the midst of that smile, she gazed at her grandmother lying there, helpless and waiting, depending on her, and here came the tears. “I’ll be back,” she said.

  The woman nodded. “I know. Your Grandma knows, too.”

  Ellie waved, too choked up to speak, and out in the car, broke down completely.

  * * *

  Diablo opened the door and just stood there. He loved Ellie. There was no denying that. But at the same time…. “Well, you’re only three hours late,” he said, stepping back for her to enter and following her with his eyes. “What’s your excuse this time?”

  “None,” Ellie said, plopping herself down on his couch. “None. I went to the nursing home, then the hospital, then the barn.”

  “I see,” Diablo said.

  “Damian has a puncture wound, three of them in fact.”

  Diablo closed the door and gave her that aggravated look he had down pat.

  “Diablo, don’t,” she said. “All right?”

  He held his hands out, implying he wasn’t doing a thing.

  “I’m sorry. Okay?”

  Diablo walked past her into the kitchen, grabbed a beer out of the fridge and with an angry twist, popped the lid and threw it into the garbage can.

  “Fine,” Ellie said. When he got into one of these moods, there was no talking to him. “I’ll see you later.”

  Diablo hailed his beer, a sarcastic good-bye of sorts, and Ellie walked out.

  She’d had every intention of going straight to Diablo’s from the hospital, which would have put her there a little earlier. But when she’d had to drive right past the barn and Abby’s car was still there, which didn’t make any sense, since she said she was only stopping for a minute on the way home….

  By evening, Grandma Betty showed signs of withdrawal and was somewhere in between the confused, frightened, and borderline paranoia stage. “These people are mean here, Ellie. Don’t let them treat me this way. They want to put a tube in me. You’d better go talk to them.”

  “I will, Grandma,” Ellie said. “I will.”

  “They want to send me to the hospital. I told them I’m not going.”

  Ellie nodded. She obviously thought she was back at the nursing home.

  “Don’t let them send me there, okay? Promise me you won’t let them send me there.”

  “I promise,” Ellie said.

  Grandma Betty pulled hard against the restraints on her wrists. “I don’t know what’s happening, Ellie. Do you know what’s happening?”

  Ellie hesitated. “About what, Grandma?”

  “This house. The way it is.” Grandma Betty looked around the room. “Did you ever see such a mess? How’d it get this way?”

  “I don’t know, Grandma,” Ellie said.

  “Me neither.” Grandma Betty leaned her head back. “But I’ll tell you what, Ellie. I’m too old, and too tired to clean it anymore.”

  “Me, too,” Ellie said, agreeing with her, which was always a good thing to do when she got like this. “Me, too.”

  ~ 5 ~

  Later in the day, Ellie went over Damian’s stall from top to bottom. There were no nails sticking out, no splinters, nothing hidden in the sawdust. Nothing anywhere. So how did he get the puncture wounds? And three at that?

  Abby held onto his halter while Ellie dabbed ointment on the affected areas. “Do you think you should call Dr. Oakley?”

  Ellie shook her head at first, then shrugged and sighed. If she waited for him to
just show up, which he did sometimes, depending on what was going on in the barn, she wouldn’t have to pay for the farm call. And with money so tight…. “I think I’ll just hang around for awhile.”

  “You sure? Do you want me to stay?”

  “No. Thanks.” They weren’t alone. There was a lesson in progress, some people just finishing up, some regulars due to come, and no real reason for Abby to stay. “You go on.” Abby and her husband were having company for dinner, and she had yet to decide the main course.

  “That’s the beauty of being a vegetarian,” she’d said earlier, day two of her being a vegetarian third time around. “The entrée could be the peas, and who’d know otherwise?”

  Ellie smiled. “Don’t forget to save me some of the Tiramisu.”

  Abby nodded, and took a closer look at the one puncture wound lowest on Damian’s hip. “Do you think he’ll get proud flesh?”

  “Go,” Ellie said. “Just go, okay. Doomsayer.”

  Abby smiled, stopped to chuck Bubba on the nose when passing his stall, and was gone.

  Ellie stared at Damian, wondering if maybe she should take him for a walk. He wasn’t stocking-up; a condition where the legs swell, but could very well start. She hooked the lead shank onto his halter and led him outside. It was dusk. No sign of the crows.

  Damian pushed up against her, rooting for a carrot. She didn’t have any. “Tomorrow. I’ll bring you some tomorrow.” She led him down the path and over to the south-side paddocks. She stopped to let him graze a little, then walked him up and around the foaling barn and then down behind the utility shed, and was just starting back up toward the main barn, when she saw Victor, the owner’s infamous husband.