The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

Dodo breaks both ankles, his hip, and his right fibula in the fall. He spends a week handcuffed to a bed in the Pottstown hospital before he is transferred to the Pennhurst State Hospital for the Insane and Feeble-Minded. As he’s rolled through the sanatorium for the first time, his senses are afflicted by an overwhelming odor that signifies “[c]ruelty. Anger. Powerful loneliness. And death” (147).

He lies in traction in a steel crib in the overcrowded Ward C-1, which contains 90 beds. Dodo calls the patient nearest to him Monkey Pants because the child’s cerebral palsy causes him to have contorted posture. His fellow patient chuckles at the nickname and teaches Dodo the essential rules of survival at Pennhurst: “Play dumb. Be stupid. Don’t say a word. It’s the only way” (153). The ward’s other patients are all men, and they poke and prod at the newcomer. Monkey Pants tries to take their attention away from Dodo by soiling himself.

Moshe comes to the Ringing Rocks ice skating rink for a place to think. Chona is in a hospital in Reading, and the doctors don’t know if she’ll ever awaken from her coma. The state has taken Dodo. The three visited Ringing Rocks together once, and Chona had said that feeling the rocks’ vibration helped Dodo.