The Font
By Jay Bonansinga
It’s said that the most powerful force in nature is a mother’s love for her offspring. Throughout the ages, some women have held the secret power to affect change, to do something when things go awry. Sometimes, though, it takes a sacrifice to make a wish come true.
It’s my first night on the job, and it’s finally dark and quiet. Now I can go about my work.
I push the cart down the main hallway, past the big, black directory with the little white plastic letters. The directory is behind a glass case, and some of the letters have fallen, landing on the sill at the bottom like dead bugs. I read the line near the top, the one that says 430……….DR. R BT DONEL VY, and my eyes well up a little, ‘cause I can’t help thinking about my sweet Jenny hunting down that same room last week. My darling daughter with the newborn waiting for her at Braxton General Hospital. I swallow back the fear and continue on.
I’ve got work to do.
The elevator is at the end of the hall. I trundle the cart on board and the doors close behind me. I press 4 and feel the car surge.
I’ve got rubber gloves and a flashlight, and a heavy duty cloth sack I got at the feed and seed store. That’s about all I’ll need tonight. The cart is full of all sorts of other cleaning products—Bon Ami and Sparkle and 409—but I won’t need any of them. I only have one thing to clean and I know just exactly how I’m going to clean it.
I guess that’s how I got this job so darn quick. I’m a good cleaning lady, amongst other things. Been doing it for pretty close to thirty years—first with the school system, then with Mighty Maids for the last ten years or so. Supported our family after Earl got sick. Put Jenny through two years of junior college. I’m a good cleaning lady, and I only need to work here for one night.
The elevator doors open.
The fourth floor stretches in front of me—dark and silent as a church—and I see the door to Dr. Donlevy’s. So many friends of Jenny’s in and out of there over the years. Pregnancies. Miscarriages. Infections. Women’s problems, as Earl used to say. And my little Jenny, always standing by her girlfriends, watching their kids, helping out with prayers and casseroles. My sweet daughter, my only child. Stricken with the brain fever only three days ago, after delivering that precious baby girl.
The doctors said it was a postpartum diabetic coma. Said there was nothing we could do but wait. I’m not a patient woman. I guess none of the gals in my family have been particularly patient. I’m told my great-great grandmother got into lots of trouble meddling in other folks’ business. I don’t care. I have to do something.
There’s a marble sculpture in the hallway kitty corner from Dr. Donlevy’s office. It’s filled with water, a fountain bubbling softly now. I brought my own water. It’s in a large Tupperware tub underneath some towels on the bottom shelf of my cart. I have to do this.
I push the cart over to the fountain, get down on my hands and knees, and put my rubber gloves on. The water’s only maybe six inches deep, and I dip my hands into it almost as though I’m dipping into a font of holy water at mass. Only this is a different kind of holy water, a different sort of font. This is a font of women’s problems.
What I’m doing might be considered crazy to some. I’m not a superstitious woman. But then again: A person cannot ignore their ancestry.
It takes only a few minutes to clean the basin of the fountain. The rubber gloves fit me like a second skin. The fingertips grip just fine. I’m thinking about Jenny the whole time. Each handful that I scoop out of the water: other gals’ heartaches, other gals’ prayers and longings. One with uterine cancer, another with fibroid tumors, another with pre-natal diabetes. I’m thinking about Jenny, and I’m thinking about my mother’s side of the family, and my great-granny from Salem, the way she died, nobody wishing anything but harm for her poor soul. I’ll be damned if it isn’t getting harder to see on account of the tears in my eyes.
I finally get the fountain clean. I use the flashlight to get the last few stragglers, and then I stow the cloth sack back on the cart. It must weigh as much as a frozen turkey now. I peel off the gloves and my bones creak as I lever myself to my feet. My old body’s seen better days. It doesn’t matter. I’ve had a good life. Jenny’s got a lot of life left to live. And a girl yet.
I’m ready.
My cart feels heavier now as I urge it back to the elevator. My heart’s beating as I shove it on board, then press B for basement. I need privacy for what comes next. The doors close and the elevator rattles. There is no recipe for this part. These kinds of things aren’t written down. I want my baby to wake up so badly. I want her to live. I’m ready to do this.
The doors finally open up upon the musty, closed-in darkness of an empty cellar. A place of cobwebs and soot and the rumbling of furnaces. I flip on the flashlight. The beam sparkles.
There’s a dry space in the corner by the circuit breakers. I park the cart there and crouch down with my sack full of wishes. I draw a circle in the dust because that’s what you’re supposed to do in a ritual like this. I collected the tub full of amniotic fluid last week. The day before Jenny gave birth. I took it from the bathtub where she broke water, the contractions gripping her like the jaws of a beast around her swollen belly.
I pause.
Then I open my wrist with a paring knife, the cold sensation coursing up the tendons of my arm. In the dim light, the threads of deep scarlet fill the amniotic fluid like strands of silk. I’m sobbing now. I position my head so the tears will dribble into the pink liquid.
The last ingredient comes from the sack. I barely have enough strength to untie the top and lift it over the cauldron, and I whisper secret words—words taught to me by my mother, who learned them from her mother, who learned them from hers—as I pour the contents of the sack into the tub.
Pennies.
Hundreds of them, maybe thousands, tossed into a marble fountain in the corridor of a doctor’s office. Each one a wish to end some crisis, a wish for some woman’s safety. The Sisterhood of toil and trouble.
I watch them splash and plink into the tub of Jenny’s amniotic water, the dull copper-shimmer flickering in my eyes, putting me to sleep. Pennies.
In ancient times they put pennies on the eyes of the dead to pay for their passage into the afterlife. I want my daughter to live.
I watch the last penny flutter to the bottom of the tub as the darkness engulfs me.
Water is one of the four basic elements of the universe.
At the bottom of a Tupperware tub, my wish joins the others as I finally collapse, closing the circle.
I’ve always been a good cleaning lady.
