At intervals the full moon appeared through thin clouds, lighting the scene of devastation around us. Gus pushed us toward the light, which we could now see was a lamp in the upper windows of the convent. A few minutes later, the light receded, and we realized we were caught in a whirlpool of debris that was now taking us away from our destination. When it carried us back nearer the light again, Gus, with a mighty effort, propelled our raft out of the whirlpool, but in doing so lost his grip and floated away from us. Oh, Margaret, I will never forget that moment, not as long as I live. I called his name in anguish, and a few seconds later, I heard his answering cry from out of the darkness. He was alive! But his calls slowly grew fainter and fainter, along with the hope in my heart.
We reached the safety of the convent, where the nuns and other refugees pulled us to safety through the upper-story windows. The good sisters gave us dry clothes, although I confess that at that point I no longer cared if I lived or died. I prayed for Gus’s safety through that long black night.
The next morning, Sunday, the water had receded, and the convent stood alone amid the desolation of broken timbers and wreckage. A great and eerie silence descended. There was no keening, no lamenting, no wailing in grief as one would expect after misfortune of this magnitude. The survivors were all too numb to mourn properly. We picked our way through mountains of rubble toward the medical college, and there we were joyfully reunited with Gus, whom providence had sent a floating door to carry him to safety.
And now, Margaret, having laid out this tale of tragedy beyond measure, I resolve to never speak of it again. My dear sister, I remain forever,
Your loving Sophronia Finch
I put the letter back, my stomach heaving. No wonder Aggie could not speak of it. I realized I had been insensitive to her terrible trauma and resolved to treat her gently from then on. And I told myself I would never think of Galveston again. But of course the more you tell yourself you won’t think of something, the more you end up thinking about it. Like it or not.
The next day I overheard a couple of worried discussions between my parents. Then Dr. Walker arrived, a tall, somber individual afforded great respect in our house and habitually clothed in funereal black. Typically we children scattered on his arrival like an ant colony when you poked it with a twig, as he invariably stuck some kind of cold metal instrument into your ears or mouth, or applied an icy stethoscope to your chest. (According to family lore, when I was afflicted with croup at age three, I asked to borrow his stethoscope to listen to my teddy bear’s heart, which request he frostily declined. Since I have no memory of this, I can’t defend myself one way or the other.)
The doctor and Aggie and Mother congregated in my room and shooed me out, shutting the door firmly in my face. I lingered at the keyhole for want of something better to do. From inside, I could hear a series of muffled commands.
“Open wide and say ‘ah.’”
“Ahhhhh.”
“Now take some deep breaths through your mouth.”
Since I was not on the receiving end of the exam, I found it all much more interesting than usual. When I heard his bag snap shut, I knew it was time to skedaddle.
Mother and Dr. Walker walked downstairs to the parlor. Mother was wringing her hands and, in her distraction, did not notice me lurking in the hall.
“Calm yourself, Mrs. Tate,” the doctor said. “I can find nothing physically wrong with her except a mild degree of anemia. This is easily treated by driving iron nails into several apples, letting them sit for a few days, and then making sure she eats one every day at breakfast. Do this for six weeks, and the anemia will be cured. No, the main problem here is a severe case of neurasthenia, also known as nervous prostration. Her nerves have borne a severe shock, and curing this will likely take months, not weeks. Try to provide her with soothing pastimes to calm her mind, such as sewing, and quiet music, and nonstimulating books. But I caution you not to give her novels—no, no, novels tend to excite the imagination and foment the mind, the exact opposite of the effect we are seeking in this case.”
Really? Was this why Mother was always trying to pry Mr. Dickens and Miss Alcott from my hands, to replace them with knitting and sewing?
“No, no,” he went on, “I find a steady, improving, educational biography to be useful in such cases, the longer the better. You will find such reading material to be just what the doctor ordered.” He followed this remark with a strange rusty cough. It took me a moment to identify the parched sound as a laugh, the creaking laugh of a man with a dreadful sense of humor.
He went on. “I will provide her with a stimulating tonic of coca leaf tea for the mornings, along with a soothing draft of laudanum for bedtime. Be mindful that she does not reverse them. And now, I bid you good day.”
Mother followed Dr. Walker out to his buggy, spouting effusive thanks.
I ran upstairs to my—our—room. Aggie was fully dressed and lying on my—her—bed. She stared unmoving at the ceiling.
“Am I dying?” she said listlessly.
“Aggie!” I was shocked to the core. “Of course not.”
“What does the doctor say?”
“He says you have anemia, and we’re to give you iron apples. He says you’ve had a shock, and he’s prescribing dull biographies for you to read.”
She propped herself on an elbow and stared at me with a flutter of curiosity. “Really? He sounds like a quack to me.”
“No, no, he’s the best doctor in town.”
“That’s not saying much. I’ll bet he’s the only doctor in town.”
“Well, yes. But he’s also prescribing you some medicine to make you feel better.”
“Okay,” she said, and flopped back on the bed.
I volunteered for apple duty. Mother was so pleased that I was “showing an interest” that I didn’t correct her and tell her I was actually viewing the whole thing as a sort of experiment. Once a week I drove several large two-penny nails into seven apples, and every morning I extracted the nails from one of them, the pale pulp now stained a rusty brown. In the interest of Science, I filched a slice. It was like licking a cast-iron pipe.
Aggie slowly improved, but then we almost had a setback when she said one morning, “I had a terrible dream last night. I dreamed there was a coral snake in the room.”
“It’s not a coral snake,” I said before I could stop myself. Oops. I clapped a hand over my mouth.
“What do you mean?” she said, looking at me curiously.
“Nuffin’.”
Dr. Walker’s tonics proved to be helpful, but then the most helpful thing of all happened: She received a letter from Galveston that improved her mood overnight. She didn’t share the contents with us but we figured it had to be from her parents. Months would pass before we’d find out just how wrong we were.
The day following the letter, I got home from school and found her up and dressed with her hair in a silly elaborate coiffure, taking a general interest in her surroundings.
“Hello, Aggie,” I said, all politeness. “You look like you’re feeling better.”
“What,” she said, “is that thing?”
“What thing?”
“That thing on the dresser,” she said, pointing at Sir Isaac Newton.
“Oh. That thing, as you call it, is a black-spotted newt. He’s an amphibium, as I’m sure you can probably tell, of the family Salamandridae, genus Diemyctylus.”
“Why are you speaking that gibberish?”
This shocked and offended me. “Gibberish? It’s hardly gibberish. It’s Latin. It’s what they call the Linnean Binomial Nomenclature. It’s the way we Scientists classify the whole natural world.”
She did not look impressed.
“Watch this,” I said. “I’ll feed him a fly. I’ve got some dead ones in a tin, and I tie them on a thread, which isn’t easy, believe me, and then I dangle them over him to stimulate his appetite. He doesn’t seem all that interested if they’re not moving.”
“That�
�s disgusting. Get rid of it.”
My goodness. A rapid recovery and a tart tongue to boot. “He’s mine,” I said, “and I’m studying him. You better not touch him.”
“Never.” She shuddered.
Poor Sir Isaac. What did the world have against him? And with such an adverse reaction from Aggie, good thing she thought the snake was only a dream.
That night, after climbing into our bed and pallet, I said, “So what’s in that funny-looking case in the wardrobe?”
“You better not touch it.”
“Okay, but what’s in it? Is it a concertina? It’s some kind of musical instrument, right?”
“That proves how little you know. Be quiet and go to sleep.”
“Not until you tell me what it is.”
She sighed. “It’s a type-writing machine, and you better not touch it. I’ll tell your mother if you do.”
“Gosh.” As far as I knew, there was precisely one of these newfangled devices in town, owned by the Fentress Indicator, our local paper. You rolled a piece of paper into it and then tapped out your message on the keys, almost like playing the piano. The results were marvelous, the print as neat as a page in a book.
“Will you show it to me sometime?”
“No. Go to sleep.”
“Why did you bring it?”
“Shut up and go to sleep.”
Well, honestly, there was no keeping me away from it after that. The next day while she was taking a bath, I pulled open the wardrobe door and studied the position of the case to make sure that I—crafty Calpurnia!—could return it to the exact same spot. I lifted it out, amazed at its weight. Gad, it weighed a ton. Breathless with anticipation, I unlatched the lid. It had apparently survived the Flood in pristine condition, black and gleaming and complicated, with the name UNDERWOOD in handsome gold print across the top. Each letter of the alphabet had its own round key, but they were all out of order in a terrible jumble. How could you possibly find the one you wanted? The many complicated levers and dials made me afraid to touch it. Why had she brought it? Surely it worked, and surely she knew how to use it; nobody in their right mind would lug something so cumbersome all the way across the state if they didn’t mean to use it. I carefully closed the lid and left it exactly as I’d found it.
The next morning, Aggie joined us at the breakfast table. J.B. stared at her with curiosity and said through a mouthful of flapjack, “Who’s that lady?”
“That’s your cousin Agatha,” I said. “Please don’t talk with your mouth full.”
“What’s a cousin?”
“Well, you know Aunt Sophronia and Uncle Gus?”
“No.”
“Yes, you do. There’s a picture of them on the piano.”
J.B. stared at me blankly, and I realized that even the simplest explanation of genealogy was beyond his tender years.
“Never mind, J.B. She’s going to stay with us for a while. A big wind blew her house down, and she has nowhere else to live.”
He grew animated and said, “You mean like the pigs and the wolf?”
“It wasn’t a wolf, J.B. It was a big wind, a storm. You know what a storm is.”
But this news did not interest a six-year-old. He turned his attention back to his breakfast.
To celebrate his homecoming, and to make up for the fact that he had missed our birthdays, Father eventually called us into his room one by one. He made a short speech about his own good fortune, and how lucky he was to have a family, whole and safe and well, then quizzed us about our behavior during his absence.
“Were you a good girl, Calpurnia, while I was gone?”
“Uh, mostly, Father, yes.”
“And did you do as Mother asked you while I was gone?”
“Uh, yes, Father, I mostly did.”
He pondered my responses as if trying to make a decision. “In that case, I have a special present for this special occasion. Hold out your hand.”
Instead of a nickel or even a dime, he placed a surprisingly heavy coin in my palm. I peered at it, and the coin shimmered with a warm light. It was a five-dollar Liberty gold piece, the head of the queen of Liberty on one side, the eagle and shield on the other, more money than I’d ever seen in my life. A fortune! And all mine!
“I don’t want you to spend this frivolously,” he said.
I immediately thought of the books I could buy and not have to beg from Mrs. Whipple at the Lockhart library, watching her face go all pruney whenever I requested something she deemed “inappropriate reading for a young girl.”
Father said, “Think of it as an investment in your future.”
I thought of all the scientific equipment I could buy, perhaps even a thirdhand microscope of my own.
“Save it now, and spend it wisely in the future,” he said, “perhaps on your hope chest and your trousseau.”
My what? Bridal linens? Clothes? Was he kidding? I searched his face for signs of joshing but there were none. I couldn’t believe it. How had this happened? How could I be so misunderstood by my own father? I was a foreigner in my own home, a citizen of some other tribe, a member of some other genus.
He looked puzzled, waiting for some kind of response.
Words failed me. All I could stammer out was, “Thank you, Father.”
“You’re very welcome. Please send Travis in on your way out.” I plunged the coin deep into my pinafore and left the room with a wounded heart. That he could know so little about his only daughter.
Travis, Lamar, and Sul Ross stood lined up in the hallway. Travis took one look at me and whispered, “Are we in trouble?”
“No, it’s good news.”
“So why do you look like that?”
“Never mind. He wants to see you next.”
I retreated to my room and stewed in ambivalence, delighted with my coin and dismayed with my father. Had I been adopted? Had my rightful parents—whoever they were—slipped me into the Tate nest like a cuckoo’s egg to be raised by others? Augh, the unfairness of it all. I could only console myself with Granddaddy, and I thanked my lucky stars for him, wishing he were my father instead of my grandfather, who necessarily had a limited say about my life. I pondered the coin, a literal treasure, then wrapped it in a piece of tissue paper and stashed it in the cigar box under the bed.
A week later, Mother, relieved and gladdened that Aggie was emerging from her shell, suggested a trip downtown to the Fentress General Store. She asked me to come along, and I agreed; trips to the store were usually fine entertainment. I wisely left my gold coin at home so as not to be tempted to spend any of it. While they fingered the various muslins and linens and calicoes, I perused the latest Sears Roebuck Catalogue chained to the counter, good for at least a half hour’s diversion. You could buy everything in the world through the catalogue, from overcoats to underwear, from wigs to watches, from pianos to tubas, from snakebite kits to shotguns. You could buy a Singer sewing machine (it’s where we’d gotten ours), or you could buy blouses and skirts and other clothes already made up, saving you the trouble of sewing for yourself. Amazing! You could buy curtains and carpets; you could buy a tractor or even one of the newfangled auto-mobiles, and it would magically arrive on your doorstep a mere three months later. Talk about speedy service! You could also buy such mundane things as huge sacks of flour and sugar and beans. The company had been the savior of many a pioneer housewife living on the plains in some wretched sod hut, anxiously scanning the horizon daily for her delivery.
Mr. Gates, Lula’s father, came in and bought some shotgun shells. He tipped his hat to Mother and said, “Mrs. Tate, you’d best keep an eye out and tell your husband that we’re losing chickens. I can’t tell if it’s a coon or fox or what. I got a shot off the other night, and I thought I got it, but we’re still losing chickens.”
“Thank you, Mr. Gates. I will certainly pass that along to my husband.”
We made our purchases, and with admirable efficiency, the clerk wrapped them in brown paper and secured them with
coarse twine. We had turned to go when Mother said, “Oh, wait. I forgot to buy your needles, Calpurnia.”
“My what?”
“Your number-three needles.”
“For what?”
“Your Christmas knitting.”
“My what?” I didn’t like the turn this conversation was taking.
“Stop it. You sound like that wretched Polly. Thank goodness Mr. O’Flanagan took him off our hands. What was your grandfather thinking? No, I’m talking about your Christmas knitting. This year we move on to gloves.”
My heart plummeted. The previous Christmas, I’d been forced to learn how to knit socks for all my male relatives, who seemingly numbered in the thousands. This painful exercise had kept me away from my nature studies for weeks, and I’d resented every minute of it. The results were lumpy, pathetic items that only vaguely resembled socks. Nobody ever wore them, and I couldn’t say I blamed them. But now this?
“Why should I have to knit,” I said, “when you can buy perfectly nice gloves from the Sears Catalogue?” In desperation I trotted back to the counter and started riffling through it. “Look, I can even show you the page. Why would anybody want my gloves, when you can have much nicer ones from Mr. Sears?” I stabbed frantically at the page. “Look at this: ‘Available in all sizes and many pleasing styles and colors.’ And look here: ‘Your Satisfaction Guaranteed.’ That’s what it says, right here.”
Mother’s lips compressed, always a dangerous sign. “That is not the point.”
“What is the point?” I said, a sudden flash of anger overwhelming my normally excellent judgment about not asking such insolent questions.
Noticing the clerk displaying an excessive interest in this exchange, Mother threw him a grim smile, took me firmly by the elbow, and pulled me out the door. I won’t go so far as to say she yanked me into the street but it was pretty darned close. Aggie scuttled along behind with our parcels, a smirk on her lips.
The Curious World of Calpurnia Tate Page 10