View From a Kite Read Free

disappointment for her. Try to be friendly whenever you see her. She needs cheering up.”
    Black-veiled Sisters, wearing grey wool skirts and cardigans, white blouses, and massive crucifixes hung round their necks, and priests in the usual black-on-black and Leonard Cohen haircuts come to comfort her. Occasionally you can hear low moans coming from her room. But she keeps her door closed, always, and never looks any of us in the face. Makes being friendly quite a challenge.
    â€œGood morning, Sister,” we chirp when we see her, and she sometimes makes a muffled little bleat into her collar in return.
    Across from Sister was Louise, until last week. She was thirteen and she was from a reserve on the mainland. She didn’t look sick; she was plump and—until you heard the brutal, bladed cough she dragged up from the basement of her chest—you’d have thought she’d been misdiagnosed. Mary extracted most of her life story the first day she was here. Took her about ten minutes and most of my chocolate nut clusters.
    â€œShe says she’s only staying for a couple of months, until the weather warms up some. Then her parents are taking her to some island off the coast where she’ll be magically cured.
    She says it only works for natives; it’s some special deal with the Virgin Mary. She says lots of her relatives have been cured there.”
    â€œSo why won’t it work for us?”
    â€œPower of faith, baby. You got to believe.”
    â€œI believe she’ll be back here next year hacking out the rest of her lungs.”
    After some thought, though, I reconsidered, and I tried— shamelessly—to cozy up to Louise to get a little more information. I was curious about this Lourdes of the Island, but she’d obviously run into too much skepticism because she clammed up on me. I’d ruined my chances with my narrow-minded attitude; a mistake, I’ve decided, I will not make the next time something like this comes along. There was quite a little scene when her grandparents walked in, packed up her stuff, and took her home. The doctor was furious, the nurses cluck-clucked and fussed. Seems Louise wasn’t testing positive anymore so they couldn’t send the cops to drag her back. Her local doctor had promised to see that she continued to take her pills.
    â€œWe’ve had this problem before,” a nurse’s aide confided.
    â€œDo they always end up back here?” I wanted to know.
    â€œWell—not always.”
    â€œSo what, so they die?”
    â€œOh, no. Heavens, no!”
    â€œThen sometimes they get cured, right?”
    â€œWell, they were probably on the mend anyway. I don’t really know. I’m not a Catholic.”
    â€œNeither am I, but I think there’s something here the medical profession should look into. Why should I spend another six or seven months of my life here when Louise is gone off to be cured? If what’s-his-name of Navarre could convert to get his hands on Paris, I could surely do it for an early release.”
    â€œWe don’t know she’ll be cured.”
    â€œLouise does. Her family does. You should be researching this. I’m willing to volunteer right now.”
    No one took me seriously.
    It was at that point that I started my research into cures for tuberculosis—other than the accepted-party-line cures, that is.
    The guy who invented the saxophone, a Belgian by the name of—naturally—Sax, claimed that playing his invention strengthened the lungs and should be used to treat TB. His son, Sax Jr., wrote and published a booklet called “The Gymnastic of the Lungs, Instrumental Music Considered from The Hygienic Point of View” in 1865.
    Where can I lay my hands on a saxophone? And do you have to have some innate musical ability? That could be a problem.
    Next door, to my left, is cranky old Mrs. Cyr. She’s deaf and it drives her crazy not to know everything that