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    Blood Orange

            ...Can’t you just picture it, Aniela? Me, walking down the aisle, in this beautiful gown made by... Dior, I believe it is? His gowns are brilliant, though that tight waist may be a bit of a struggle... Ah well, nothing a Polish woman can’t handle, hmm?

            Sister, you must begin thinking about taking a husband as well; someone who will care for you in this...state. You are twenty-three, after all. Aleksy and I will hold off our wedding until you return, dear sister. And you will return. I believe it, and so must you.

    Awaiting your safe return,

    Cecylia


            Aniela blew a bit of blonde hair out of her eyes as she stared at the magazine clipping just below Cecylia’s signature. The satin corset encased the boning that seemed to hold the entire dress together, and the tulle fabric of the skirt ran in ruffles. Looks like my fifteenth birthday cake, she thought, scrunching her nose. This reflex startled her, as the polio that infected her killed even the subtlest of movements.

            How did Cecylia expect her to think of getting married at a time like this? Her family’s values were so warped. This was 1957, for God’s sake; time for women to start doing what they had to do to make it on their own. Besides, what kind of husband would want a wife who couldn’t cook or clean?

            Aniela willed her hands to move. Just a lift. Just enough to flick the letter off the table. The letter remained on the metal stand, mocking her as one corner flitted in the breeze of her frustrated breath.

            “Nothing,” she whispered. “Nothing. Again. Three months of nic.”

            Polio was a lower class disease. How could she, the daughter of a senator, be subject to something normal people called their final suffering? Zaleski had guaranteed a better life for her family, and that is precisely what they had. While everyone was eating mush and stepping around sidewalks filled with defecate, Aniela had her own room and a full bed, with those who begged for better conditions serving at her feet. Her feet, which barely moved during the day, except for standing in front of her closet to examine the many jewels and lavish dresses she could not wear in front of the “commoners.” She was rich in secret—but rich, nonetheless.

    Blood-orange

    (source)

            “Miss Malec? Your lunch is here.”

            Aniela turned her head toward the voice of Feliks, the hospital’s newest inpatient nurse. She had always had Agneta deliver her lunch, and this change made her nervous. Any change made her nervous. She could remember her father begging Zaleski to let them keep their life at the chateau as members of the Party, even after her mother was disloyal to him. They lived in separate wings of the home; different existences under the same roof. But even this could not alter their need for consistency—any change to their routine way of life was turned away, as if they were trying to repeat history over and over again.

            “Where is Agneta? Where is my nurse?”

            He seemed to dismiss her question as he placed the tray on the bedside table. “Here you are, Miss. Kielbasa and onions with potatoes.”

            Aniela’s nostrils flared as she looked down at the tray. “Where is my blood orange, boy?”

            He cringed at her sarcastically casual tone. “Miss Malec, I’m sorry, but the citrus fruit is being rationed. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen one—”

            “I have had a blood orange with my lunch every single day since I have been here to cleanse my pallet of the cold, disgusting slop you excuse for meals. I demand you bring me my dessert, or my father will hear of this and put you back into the factories where you belong!”

            The boy stared at her in disbelief before being scoffed out of the room. Aniela tried to calm herself down as visions of the iron lung passed through her conscious. Huffing a breath from her nose, she turned to the tray, glaring at the food in front of her. It will be frozen by the time he comes back, she thought. Though Feliks was about her age, he was just another servant to her. Just another boy she could push around which, in all honesty, made her feel great. At home, even.

            “Here you are—again—Miss Malec. I went to the market and got a bushel full of the finest blood oranges in stock.” He dropped the orange onto her tray noisily as a bead of sweat trickled down from his mahogany hair.

            This service was different. He took the fork and knife up off the tray and sat down in the wooden chair by the head of the bed. Leaning over her slightly, he cut the kielbasa into small pieces, just as her mother had when she was small. “I could do it on my own, you know,” she sneered. “If it weren’t for this damn inconvenience...”

            “Miss, if you could keep your mouth open, please? I’d like to feed you your lunch.”

            He had the power over her at this moment. The space between her lips and the fork was the reminder that without him, she could very well starve. She needed him, as much as she hated to admit it.

            Aniela sneered as his hand reached behind her back, lifting her gently toward the fork in his hand. She cursed her body as the back of her head rose from the backboard, wishing she could rise herself and give him a disciplinary smack across the cheek.

            Mother speaks of you everyday, Ani. She wishes to come see you, but it has been difficult getting away from our home nowadays. It isn’t good here, Ani. It is dangerous and sickly outside these doors. You are safe.

            Mother is standing over me as I write this—she says she misses you very much.  Things will get better from here. I miss you. Please come home.

    -C.

           

            It was an effort to fall asleep. Even after five months, the moans of the patients in the ward just outside her door were still startling her out of her sleep. Cries of horror rang throughout the halls, slipping underneath the door and piercing Aniela’s ears. The weakness showed on her face as she slipped into a dream, and she could feel her limbs free up as she saw herself cradling her precious jewels and gowns, admiring herself in a handheld mirror as her servants prepared a feast at her bedside.

            “Miss—I mean, Aniela?”

            Her eyes flashed open, and her body felt heavy and lifeless once again. “What is so important that it couldn’t wait until after I stopped dreaming?”

             “It seems you have a visitor,” Feliks looked from her to the window. It wasn’t much more vibrant outside as the white walls of the hospital—fog settled in among the trees, and she hadn’t felt the sun in ages, it seemed. She took a deep breath as Feliks supported her back, raising her up to see over the windowsill.

            “M-matka?”

            It was she. Five months had gone by, and she hadn’t heard or seen her mother’s face since the day she left home. She was a bit overdressed to be standing in the middle of a courtyard; her best pearls hung around her neck, complimenting the light pink dress suit she had worn to many of her father’s campaign conferences. Her heels dug into the ground, rising up out of the dew-covered grass as she saw Aniela’s face. The iron fence broke the gentle green of the gardens behind her, preventing her from the possibility of feeling her mother’s touch. Though she was but twenty meters away from her, Aniela felt further away from family and her own life at this very moment. They shared a glance before Feliks came around to the side of the bed.

            “Your medicine.” He lifted the tablespoon of syrupy medication to her lips. She took it in absent-mindedly, spitting it out as she became conscious of the taste.

            “Ja pierdole! What is this?! Are you trying to poison me already?! We haven’t even tried to fix—”

            “It’s just an experimental medicine, Aniela. The first of it’s kind. You’re very lucky to be able to afford this; most of the patients here won’t be able to even get near paying for a cure.”

            A cure? “Sorry, we don’t add the cherry flavoring to this one,” he chuckled, giving her another spoonful. “It’s better than the awful booster injections Salk invented, at least!”

            Aniela suddenly felt a twinge of fear. The world was so different now, and had gotten worse in her absence. Part of her wanted to stay in that room forever; at least she was guaranteed a bed.

            She could hear the minister repeating last rights down the hall—two, three...Lord...four times. Stay away, she begged, though part of her wished he would see her soon. Staving him away was the proper thing to do. Stay far away.

            Aniela looked back at her mother. Imagine, she mused, my mother’s prized pearls could pay for at least ten people’s return home.

            “Some man—Sabin, I believe—developed this only a few months ago. It’s in the experimental stage, so it’s not proven to work just yet. We figured, since this is an experimental facility...”

            “So you’re not sure it will work?”

            “Unfortunately,” Feliks wiped a bit of the black syrup from her bottom lip. “But we have high hopes.” He placed his hand on hers, and although she couldn’t feel it, her mind still warmed up to his touch. “You just have to believe you can make it through this.”

            Aniela looked toward her mother once again, giving her a weak smile and nod, dismissing her from the pathetic sight of her own daughter. “Like Mother always says, there’s nothing a Polish woman can’t handle,” Aniela joked, forcing a half-smile as she watched her mother walk away. She pulled her eyes away to meet Feliks’ and, for the first time since she was a young girl, Aniela blushed. She desired to pull away, but soon the warm sensation in her cheeks was a welcome one. Her instincts told her to smack him for coming in contact with her, but her body forced her to remain under his skin, perhaps in an effort to let him under hers.

           

            Thursday. Squinting at the schedule hung on the wall, Aniela let out a frustrated sigh. She didn’t understand why psychiatry appointments were necessary. There was nothing wrong with her mind; all she had was a fever and the inability to move her limbs. She was perfectly stable, as far as mentality went.

            “Good morning, Aniela!”

            An overly enthusiastic woman walked through the door, clipboard and pen in hand. “And how are we today?”

            The woman’s fat nose distracted Aniela for a moment. “...Just fine. Yes, everything’s great here.”

            ”Good, good... Is there anything you’d like to talk about today? It has been a while since we’ve really talked, and I don’t seem to have a lot of notes on you after being here for eight months—“

            “I am just fine, Doctor. Really.”

            Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Feliks peering into the room.

            The doctor ran through routine questions, asking of her comfort level, how her breathing was, and if she’d begun to feel anything in her fingers or toes. “Fine.” This bed is too lumpy. “Perfect.” No matter how hard I must breathe, you will not get me into that giant tin can. “No.” What good were they, anyhow? The answers were flat and timely, suggesting mental competence. Just leave me be.

            “Well, things seem to be going very well with you. We have high hopes for you, Miss Malec.”

            Hopes. Hadn’t they exhausted them yet? Prayer could not save her. If the good Lord made it so, so it would be. If his will was to cripple her, then it must have been a test. After all, she had always had it easy—inhumanely easy. This was anything but easy. It would make her worthy of something greater beyond the bonds of a disabled reality. Again, she thought, another vain hope.

            Feliks nodded to the doctor and squeezed his way past her through the door. Aniela watched him with suspicious but gentle eyes as he took up a chair next to her bed.

            “How are you, Aniela?”

            “Fine, Feliks. And yourself?”

            “No, no,” he smiled at her, his warm brown eyes lighting up at this new game. “Talk. Really talk. As a friend.”

            “Just as I said, I am completely and totally fine.” She was going to give him the least amount of information to work with, and he knew that. He pushed her further still. “Tell me about your days here. What’s happened to you?”

            “Why do you ask me such things? You’ve been here the entire time, idiota.”

            “Yes, I know,” he laughed. “Just describe it to me through your eyes.”

            Furrowing her brows, she searched through her perceptions of a typical day. “Well, I sit here, unable to move. Breathing hurts and is harder to do each day. I can’t sleep, and most of the time I am unable to think. I eat what tastes like the bark of a tree and spears of grass for every meal, and there are times when I am hungry and there is no meal to call for. I am cold, and I hate this room. I hate the white walls, the cheap vinyl flooring, that ridiculous abstract painting of God knows what. I do not wish to be here.”

            “I apologize for the lack of interior decoration, Miss Aniela,” Feliks chuckled. “Is that all that has you troubled? It’s an easy fix...”

             “I miss my home, my dresses... I miss having everything I want in one place. I’ve done the same thing every day for eight months now, and I can’t take it anymore. I can live without being able to move as long as it is back home where I belong.”

            “In the arms of wealth, am I correct?”

            “That’s what I am used to, Feliks. I am wealth. That is what has defined my family for centuries, and our president has been gracious enough to allow us to remain who we are and what we are. Status is everything.”

            Feliks set down his clipboard and slid a bit closer to Aniela’s side, looking at her as if he’d known her for years. “What feelings do you get when you put on those clothes? When you tell others what to do, even? What do you feel?”

            She smiled to herself, imagining the lavish life she had before she got into the ambulance eight months ago. She saw herself in bed, ordering her servants to bring her food, jewelry, and fabrics for her custom-made dresses. Aniela was a mid-century monarch—she could get whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted.

            As her memories grew stronger, however, she realized that her normal life wasn’t much different than her time in the hospital. She’d hardly spent any time with her mother or sister, exiling herself to her room, showering her existence with every bit of gluttonous behavior she could possibly imagine: dining on the finest pastries from Poland’s most esteemed bakers, watching in silence as her servants scrubbed the decadent frosting off the floor after dropping the ones she didn’t like. Not once did she move from her bed. As far as her servants were concerned, she was already paralyzed—inhuman.

            “I don’t really know,” she breathed. “I feel...power. I was taught that was happiness. My father chased after it, my mother constantly craved it, and my sister married for it. It was somewhat satisfying. Who has servants nowadays, really? I was—am—privileged. I’d be a fool to throw my father’s benefits away...wouldn’t I?”

            He wouldn’t answer. “Feliks, I have never lived on my own before. All my life I have had others do my bidding. I lay in bed, as content as a pig in warm muck, every single day. But I lay here now, and it is torture! Even when I do not have legs to stand on or arms to reach with, I still have more than anyone else could ever have at this very moment. I have so much more.”

            “Who is he?” Feliks said softly, casting his eyes down at his folded hands.

            “Who is who?”

            “The man that you love,” Feliks looked her dead in the eye. The usual smile on his face was gone, and Aniela could almost feel the tension in his lips. “Who are your friends, Aniela,” he continued sternly, his voice growing louder by the second. “Where is your family? What do you do for them?”

            No one. No one. Not here. Nothing. Each timely answer she had planned began with a “no.”

            “Come on, Aniela, don’t be stupid.”

            Her nostrils flared as she mustered all of the air her weak lungs could take in. “I am not stupid! How dare you insult me in such a way! You are here to serve me and make me feel better.”

            “I am not here to serve you, much to your surprise,” he sneered. “If that’s what you think of me, then find someone else to fool, Your Highness!” Feliks stormed toward the door, swinging it open to the mass of beds in the ward. “See this? This is what you deserve to be living in. Everyone in here is grateful to even have a bed to sleep in after being shunned by their families!” His breath was heavy as he looked upon Aniela, whose mouth had fallen open in shock. “While they lay in the iron lung, just praying for some sort of miracle that may never come, you sit here in the most privileged of situations, worrying over things like a damn blood orange! What is the matter with you?!”

            Aniela felt her throat closing up and began to panic as she watched a little redheaded girl’s chest rise and fall underneath the metal monstrosity. She let her tears flow freely, hoping that this would be enough for Feliks.

            And it was. He calmed himself and came back to her side. “Anyone with as much of a stubborn footing as you must believe in something. Pardon my wording,” he smiled, “but I can see that you stand for yourself, and won’t let others get in your way. That is strength, and that strength comes with consciousness. Please,” he begged, “just look at what you had at the chateau. Sure, you had amazing gowns and jewelry, but who did you share them with?”

            Aniela felt her stomach churn in embarrassment. “My mother hasn’t even put her own shoes on in thirty years,” she thought aloud. “Is...is that what I have become? A mindless puppet for others to dress?”

            Feliks picked up her immobile hand. It was the first time any man had ever reached out for her. A twinge of warmth shot up where she believed her arm to be. “You may need people, but everyone does. You have the potential to be great on your own—without wealth, without servants, just you. You just have to believe you can be.”

            Aniela was entranced by the feeling of his hand on her own. She could not feel it, but a fluttering in her chest told her it was there. “Here, only three more doses until the prescription is complete. This won’t do much if you don’t believe, though. Keep those blue eyes looking upwards.” He tilted the spoon into her mouth, and she took it without sputtering, without a blink away from him. She took it in, hope and all.

            “Lunch time, Aniela.”

            She smiled toward Feliks as he brought her the very same tray, in the very same bed, in the very same room she’d inhabited for nine months. “Thank you, boy,” she teased him. She looked down at the tray and, once again, there was something missing.

            “Boy, where is my blood orange?”

            Feliks winked at her, pulling it out of his lab coat pocket. He placed it on the tray and slid the bedside table over her lap. As he did so, the intercom called him to the nurse’s station. “I’ll be right back.”

            “Promise?” A bit clingy, Aniela, she thought, but good.

            He gently placed a hand under her chin. “Promise.”

           

            It was a lovely day. There was no fog in the trees, and the warmth of the sun reflected off of the windowsill onto her plate. Just below, she could see her mother, watching her as she had been doing each Sunday of each week. They exchanged a glance, and Aniela returned to her meal. It’s taking him awfully long to return, she thought.

            Closing her eyes, Aniela imagined her hand reaching out toward the blood orange. Just be, she prayed. Po prostu.

            She opened her eyes and looked out the window at her mother. Doctors and nurses were rushing out to her, as she had fainted in the courtyard lawn.

            Aniela rose off her back to see more of the scene. “Matka?!” she shouted. Just as she was about to leap out of bed, she felt something cool in her hand. She turned to the tray and saw the blood orange in her hand, slightly punctured from the pressure of her fingernails. The red juices flowed from the fruit onto her fingers, forming rivers in the microscopic valleys of her own skin. She took it to her mouth, watching as her arm rose smoothly with no conscious thought. She took the orange to her own lips and, with wide eyes began to gently drink the juices that flowed from the most spectacular blood orange she had ever been able to grasp.

     

     

     

     

     

    Tags » Short Story
    • 20 February 2012
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    Currently a student at Emerson College, Class of 2014. BA Writing, Literature and Publishing. Specializing in Creative Writing, Book Design, and Editorial.

  • About Amber Cunningham

    Currently a student at Emerson College, Class of 2014. BA Writing, Literature and Publishing. Specializing in Creative Writing, Book Design, and Editorial.

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