Daisy was a seasonal event. She came before Thanksgiving and stayed through Christmas every year. Some years she came for her birthday in May as well.
She always got a single. “Would anybody like to share?” the head nurse asked at our weekly Hall Meeting one November morning. It was a tense moment. Georgina and I, who already shared, were free to enjoy the confusion.
“Me! Me!” Somebody who was a Martian’s girlfriend and also had a little penis of her own, which she was eager to show off, raised a hand; nobody wanted to share with her.
“I would if somebody would want to but of course nobody would want to so I wouldn’t want to force somebody to want to.” This was Cynthia, who’d started talking like that after six months of shock.
Polly to the rescue: “I’ll share with you, Cynthia.”
But that didn’t solve the problem, because Polly was in a double herself. Her roommate was a new anorexic named Janet who was scheduled for force feedings the moment she dropped below seventy-five.
Lisa leaned toward me. “I watched her on the scale yesterday: seventy-eight,” she said loudly. “She’ll be on the tube by the weekend.”
“Seventy-eight is the perfect weight,” said Janet. She’d said the same about eighty-three and seventy-nine, though, so nobody wanted to share with her, either.
In the end a couple of catatonics were teamed up and Daisy’s room was ready for her arrival on November fifteenth.
Daisy had two passions: laxatives and chicken. Every morning she presented herself at the nursing station and drummed her fingers, pale and stained with nicotine, on the counter, impatient for laxatives.
“I want my Colace,” she would hiss. “I want my Ex-Lax.”
If someone was standing near her, she would jab her elbow into that person’s side or step on her foot. Daisy hated anyone to be near her.
Twice a week her squat potato-face father brought a whole chicken roasted by her mother and wrapped in aluminum foil. Daisy would hold the chicken in her lap and fondle it through the foil, darting her eyes around the room, eager for her father to leave so she could get going on the chicken. But Daisy’s father wanted to stay as long as possible, because he was in love with Daisy.
Lisa explained it. “He can’t believe he produced her. He wants to fuck her to make sure she’s real.”
“But she smells,” Polly objected. She smelled, of course, like chicken and shit.
“She didn’t always smell,” said Lisa.
I thought Lisa was right, because I’d noticed that Daisy was sexy. Even though she smelled and glowered and hissed and poked, she had a spark the rest of us lacked. She wore shorts and tank tops to display her pale wiry limbs, and when she ambled down the hall in the morning to get her laxatives, she swung her ass in insouciant half-circles.
The Martian’s girlfriend was in love with her too. She followed her down the hall crooning, “Want to see my penis?” To which Daisy would hiss, “I shit on your penis.”
Nobody had ever been in Daisy’s room. Lisa was determined to get in. She had a plan.
“Man, am I constipated,” she said for three days. “Wow.” On the fourth day she got some Ex-Lax out of the head nurse. “Didn’t work,” she reported the next morning. “Got anything stronger?”
“How about castor oil?” said the head nurse. She was overworked.
“This place is a fascist snake pit,” said Lisa. “Give me a double dose of Ex-Lax.”
Now she had six Ex-Lax and she was ready to bargain. She stood in front of Daisy’s door.
“Hey, Daisy,” she called. “Hey, Daisy.” She kicked the door.
“Fuck off,” said Daisy.
“Hey, Daisy.”
Daisy hissed.
Lisa leaned close to the door. “I got something you want,” she said.
“Bullshit,” said Daisy. Then she opened the door.
Georgina and I had been watching from down the hall. When Daisy opened the door we craned our necks, but it was too dark in Daisy’s room to see anything. When the door shut behind Lisa, a strange sweet smell wafted briefly into the hall.
Lisa didn’t come out for a long time. We gave up waiting and went over to the cafeteria for lunch.
Lisa gave her report during the evening news. She stood in front of the TV and spoke loud enough to drown out Walter Cronkite.
“Daisy’s room is full of chicken,” she said. “She eats chicken in there. She has a special method she showed me. She peels all the meat off because she likes to keep the carcasses whole. Even the wings—she peels the meat off them. Then she puts the carcass on the floor next to the last carcass. She has about nine now. She says when she’s got fourteen it’s time to leave.”
“Did she give you any chicken?” I asked.
“I didn’t want any of her disgusting chicken.”
“Why does she do it?” Georgina asked.
“Hey, man,” said Lisa, “I don’t know everything.”
“What about the laxatives?” Polly wanted to know.
“Needs ’em. Needs ’em because of all the chicken.”
“There’s more to this than meets the eye,” said Georgina.
“Listen! I got access,” said Lisa. The discussion degenerated quickly after that.
Within the week there was more news about Daisy. Her father had bought her an apartment for Christmas. “A love nest,” Lisa called it.
Daisy was pleased with herself and spent more time out of her room, hoping that someone would ask her about the apartment. Georgina obliged.
“How big is the apartment, Daisy?”
“One bedroom, L-shaped living room, eat-in chicken.”
“You mean eat-in kitchen?”
“That’s what I said, asshole.”
“Where’s the apartment, Daisy?”
“Near the Mass. General.”
“On the way to the airport, like?”
“Near the Mass. General.” Daisy didn’t want to admit it was on the way to the airport.
“What do you like best about it?”
Daisy shut her eyes and paused, relishing her favorite part. “The sign.”
“What does the sign say?”
“ ‘If you lived here, you’d be home now.’ ” She clenched her hands with excitement. “See, every day people will drive past and read that sign and think, ‘Yeah, if I lived here I’d be home now,’ and I will be home. Motherfuckers.”
Daisy left early that year, to spend Christmas in her apartment.
“She’ll be back,” said Lisa. But Lisa for once was wrong.
One afternoon in May we were called to a special Hall Meeting.
“Girls,” said the head nurse, “I have some sad news.” We all leaned forward. “Daisy committed suicide yesterday.”
“Was she in her apartment?” asked Georgina.
“Did she shoot herself?” asked Polly.
“Who’s Daisy? Do I know Daisy?” asked the Martian’s girlfriend.
“Did she leave a note?” I asked.
“The details aren’t important,” said the head nurse.
“It was her birthday, wasn’t it?” asked Lisa. The head nurse nodded.
We all observed a moment of silence for Daisy.