Of Better Blood

by Moger, Susan;

  “Why didn’t you?” I was honestly curious.

  Stella sighed. “I could not. Maybe I die trying, but I will stand and walk.”

  Maybe I die trying, but I will stand and walk.

  Tears filled my eyes.

  “And you, Rowan,” she said, “you will too.”

  Stella and I became friends. We encouraged each other on the rings suspended from ropes that helped us strengthen our arms. We staggered and fell on crutches until we got the hang of them. We strapped steel and leather braces on our weak legs for an hour every day. Using crutches with the brace on was hard work, but we cheered for each other and Dr. Friedlander used us to teach the younger kids how to do it.

  “You’ll make a good nurse one day,” he said to me after one of our demonstrations. “You have a knack few people have around polio patients.”

  “I have a good teacher,” I said.

  “I’m serious. In five years you’ll be walking without these”—he tapped my crutches—“and old enough to start nursing school. Think about it.”

  When I left Bellevue and went to the Home, all thoughts of Dr. Friedlander and nursing school were driven out of my head by the effort of surviving. But here at the Expo, the memories are starting to come back. Dorchy is bringing me back to life.

  Chapter 14

  Just before supper, Minnie and Gar join me in the doorway. As a woman walks by pushing a baby in a stroller, Minnie waggles her fingers and the baby smiles.

  Minnie says sadly, “I love babies, but I’ll never have one of my own.”

  “Why not?” I ask. Gar gives me a warning shake of his head.

  Minnie sighs. “A woman came to the house and offered to take me to see a doctor. She came to all the houses in the Falls.”

  “Where is that?” I ask.

  “Down by the river where the poor folks live.” Her eyes flash. “Good folks. All of them.”

  “What did the woman say?”

  “She sat with Mama and me and said she was offering me and other kids in the Falls a chance to get checked out by a doctor. I didn’t want to go, but Mama said I had to because she couldn’t afford a doctor and this one was free. So the woman took me and some other kids from the Falls in a big car. Drove it herself.”

  “How old were you?”

  Minnie shrugs. “Fourteen. She took us to a hospital, and a doctor said I needed an operation that would give me a better chance in life. He gave me gas so it didn’t hurt, and I had ice cream afterward. Chocolate. The next day another woman took us home. But later.” She frowns. “Later a man told me and Mama that the operation keeps me from ever having a baby. I felt so bad to be tricked by those people with their lies and big car and ice cream.” Tears roll down her cheeks. “I was always good with babies. Not like they make out here in the show.”

  “The Unfit Family show and all that Fitter Families blarney is a damn lie.” Anger pulses in Gar’s voice. “I signed on for the money, but I’ll be glad when it ends.”

  “I’m so sorry, Minnie,” I say, patting her hand. How dare those people trick her? And then I wonder, with a shiver of dread, if Father and Julia believe in tricking people into sterilization.

  Later Mr. Ogilvie locks us in. As soon as he’s gone, I reach under my pillow. Another rose. This one is yellow. I throw it into the still-empty pail. Does Aunt Fan know he’s taking her precious roses? Then I unlock our door and open it. A muffled thumping comes from the other end of the hall. Minnie, smoking on her cot, shrinks back against the wall. “Don’t worry.” I pat her shoulder. “Jimmy’s having a seizure. Gar and I will help him.”

  She nods her head, and the tip of her cigarette glows red.

  I grab my crutch and go down the hall to Gar and Jimmy’s room.

  In the light from the small window, Jimmy lies on the floor by his cot. His eyes are rolled back; his mouth is open; blood wells from a cut over his ear. Gar gently turns him on his side and pulls out a handkerchief. “He had a seizure and hit his head. Hold this on the cut.”

  He turns on the flashlight he brought back one night and studies Jimmy’s face. “He’s pale,” Gar says.

  “He’s unconscious.” I mop blood off Jimmy’s cheek and return the handkerchief to the oozing cut.

  “Something’s wrong. He should be coming out of it by now.” Gar strikes another match and holds it in front of Jimmy’s eyes. “See, he’s not blinking. I saw this in France when I was a medic.”

  It’s true that Jimmy’s seizures usually don’t last more than a couple of minutes. “Maybe it’s because he hit his head.”

  Gar sucks in a breath. “I’m going for help. If anybody complains, I’ll tell them I quit the show. It’s a crime to lock up someone sick.”

  He touches my shoulder. “Don’t fret if it takes me awhile. At this hour, I’ll have to go all the way to the midway to get help.”

  After Gar leaves, Minnie comes down the hall to sit with me while I look after Jimmy. He’s shivering and his skin feels cold even in the stored-up heat of the cottage. I cover him with a blanket. His head has stopped bleeding and he’s starting to come out of the seizure, but he isn’t fully awake. I shine the flashlight on his face, and this time he blinks and tries to cover his eyes. I turn it off and say, “He’s fine,” hoping it’s true.

  In the sudden darkness Minnie shrieks. The anguished sound rakes my spine with icy fingers. I force myself to stay calm and flick the light on Jimmy. “See, he’s better already.”

  I smell smoke, just as she screams, “Fire!”

  I point the flashlight beam at the hall. A haze of gray smoke hangs at the far end outside our room. Behind it is the crackling orange glow of fire.

  Minnie is usually careful to put out her cigarettes, but tonight she must have dropped one on the rug. With a sick feeling, I watch the glow get brighter. I bite back a scream of my own and say in an authoritative voice, “Stay with Jimmy, Minnie. Don’t let him see it.”

  I start down the hall into thickening smoke. The straw carpet is burning, sending sparks into the air, blocking the back door Gar unlocked when he left. Coughing, I force myself to keep going. Sparks land on the hall carpet in front of me and flare up. I try to stamp them out, but the fire is moving toward me. Its terrible heat and choking smoke push me back to the front of the cottage.

  A wave of fear breaks inside me. We’re trapped. I have to do something. Now.

  Think. At the Home, we have water buckets, pails of sand, fire extinguishers. Here, nothing. Even our pails are empty at this time of night.

  In Gar and Jimmy’s room the smoke is getting heavier, but Jimmy is sitting up, a good sign. He’s holding his head and coughing, not so good. “What happened?” he asks.

  “You had a seizure and hit your head,” I say matter-of-factly. In the far corner of the room, Minnie hunches over, crying.

  I close the door behind me. It feels like I’m sealing our tomb. Every muscle in my body screams, Get moving. Find a way out!

  Jimmy tries to stand up. “We have to get out,” he says, choking.

  “The fire is blocking the back door,” I say, “but I have an idea.” I climb on Gar’s cot and use the flashlight to break the little locked window, too small to use for escape. Pieces of glass sprinkle my arms. “Fire!” I scream through the opening. “Help! Fire!” Why doesn’t anyone hear me? Come running? Save us? By now smoke and maybe even flames should be visible outside the cottage. Why isn’t Gar back yet?

  For a second, fear paralyzes me. Then anger, hotter than the flames, sweeps that away. How dare the Ogilvies lock us up, trap us like rats, sentence us to death?

  The cot shakes as Minnie scrambles up behind me, drawn by the thin draft of fresh air in this smoky room.

  As I climb down, she howls out the broken window, “Help us!” over and over.

  “Minnie’s louder than you,” Jimmy says between coughs. He’s st
ill lying on the floor.

  “Keep that up, Minnie,” I say when she pauses for breath. “I’m going out in the hall now. Keep the bedroom door closed.”

  “Get us out,” Jimmy says as I crawl past him. His panic ignites mine.

  When I open the bedroom door a crack, flames flare up higher and brighter. Smoke presses against my face like a hand. Coughing and gagging, I drop to my knees and crawl.

  I pound on the front door and rattle the handle, willing it to open, but it’s locked on my side. I take my crutch and break some of the small glass panes that frame the door. Smoke clogs my nose, throat, lungs. I put my face against a small opening and suck in air. Breathe. I send a thin stream of words—“Fire! Help! Fire!”—out into the night.

  “Where are you?” Jimmy yells from the bedroom.

  I take another precious gulp of air.

  Then some instinct guides my hand through the lowest broken pane. I stretch my hand down. Broken glass along the edge of the frame tears my skin. I reach farther and then farther still. My fingers brush the key sticking out of the lock. I turn it and feel the lock release.

  Run. For a second I imagine opening the door, running outside, escaping. Instead I crawl to the bedroom door and open it. Minnie and Jimmy are huddled on the floor coughing.

  “Follow me! Crawl!”

  The fire’s roar is so loud and the smoke is so thick that I can’t tell if they’re coming or not. I crawl back to the front door, reach up to turn the handle, burning my fingers, and open it. Then, with Minnie and Jimmy pushing me, I fall out onto the porch.

  Behind us the fire leaps up, its breath hot on my legs.

  Chapter 15

  I try to speak, but I can’t open my mouth.

  “Here’s one of them,” says a man and scoops me up as easily as if I were a kitten.

  “That’s her,” Dorchy shouts.

  Air moves across my face as the man carries me, but I can’t inhale it.

  “She’s not breathing.” Dorchy sounds scared. I want to see her, but I can’t open my eyes.

  “We’re too late,” another man says in a matter-of-fact voice.

  No, I just need air.

  “Aw, look at that poor leg,” the first man says. “She’s been through too much to give up.”

  Air. Now.

  “Here.” A wet cloth covers my face. Brandy fumes bite at my nose and throat. “Wake up, Ruthie,” Dorchy yells and yanks the cloth away. “Breathe.” She slaps the cloth over my nose again.

  She knows I hate the name Ruthie. I try to twist my head away from the cloth. She lifts it. Coughing and retching, I struggle for a breath, find one, then another, and another. My eyes open.

  “What were you doing in the cottage?” asks the man holding me. He wears a gray uniform with a New England States Exposition nameplate. His face is streaked black.

  “I told you,” Dorchy says. “She’s with the Unfit Family show. There are four of them that sleep in there. Locked in.”

  I paw at Dorchy’s arm. I have to tell her Jimmy and Minnie got out, but my throat hurts too much to speak.

  “It’s a good thing your friend saw the smoke, dearie,” the man says as he sets me down under a tree. “Rest here for a while. We got here just in time, thanks to her.”

  I take another breath. Dorchy crouches beside me. She hands me a dented tin cup. Light from the fire flickers on her face.

  I swallow. But my throat is so scorched and dry I can’t make a sound.

  A steady thumping starts up from the West Springfield Fire Department truck in front of the cottage. Firemen in black coats pull a hose across the screen porch and aim a stream of water through the front door. Spray lands on my face and legs. A hiss of steam and smells of wet wood and smoke coil over us. The cottage—screens torn off the porch, front door hanging open, smoke pouring out—looks destitute. Unfit.

  Cheers go up as the flames die down. The fire has attracted a crowd almost as big as a midway sideshow.

  I bury my face in my hands. My chest burns and my throat aches.

  Dorchy pats my hand. “They put Jimmy and Minnie in the tent. Bet you’re wondering how I got here. The Ogress brought me along to a lecture the Ogre’s giving at the Rotary pavilion. I was there to hand her brandy when the pain got too bad, doctor’s orders. When I saw the smoke I ran.”

  I choke the words, “Gar isn’t here” and start coughing again. Dorchy goes for more water.

  “I thought you were dead,” she says, holding a tin cup to my mouth. Her voice catches. “Jimmy said they dragged you as far as they could. He says you could have got out, but you went back for him and Minnie.”

  I close my eyes. A pile of bricks is crushing my chest.

  “Why didn’t you leave when you could?” she asks, angry now. “Why did you go back?”

  My first thought—I couldn’t let Father down—I keep to myself. “I had to,” I say, and the words sound watered down, untrue.

  Dorchy shrugs this off. “No, really, why did you go back for them?” she asks.

  At that moment our differences feel like a stone wall between us.

  I shrug. “I had to,” I say again, hoping she’ll leave it there.

  “Well, then you’re a hero,” Dorchy says. “And I’ve got good news about your name.”

  “So do I. It’s not Ruthie.”

  She laughs. “I wanted to make you mad so you’d start breathing. No, this is important.”

  “What is?”

  “Your name comes from the rowan tree.”

  “No, it’s a family name.”

  “Well, your family got it from a tree. And not any old tree. The rowan tree protects people from witchcraft. Didn’t you ever hear the rhyme: ‘Rowan tree, red thread, holds the witches all in dread?’”

  My laugh turns to a cough. When I can speak, I say, “The Colliers aren’t afraid of witches.”

  “Of course not.” Dorchy leans closer, her green eyes burning. “But the rowan tree also protects people from fire.” She sits back, waiting for me to thank her.

  “There you are, Ruthie.” Aunt Fan’s voice sounds muffled, as if she’s speaking through a wadded-up handkerchief. She bends down, eyes blazing. “How did you get out here? Who unlocked your room and the front door?”

  “Aunt Fan,” Gar says. “Let me explain.” He’s breathing hard, and his hands and clothes are soot-streaked. “I unlocked the doors. I used my skills as I saw fit. For Jimmy’s safety.”

  “Safety?” she shrieks. “Don’t you dare use that word with me. You unlocked doors and the cottage burned down.”

  “Begging your pardon,” Gar says, “but I see it differently.”

  “What do you mean?” Her hands twitch at her sides.

  “If those rooms had been locked, we’d have three dead bodies.”

  “What we have is a disaster.” She points at the still smoking, water-soaked cottage. “A destroyed building and the loss of important records. Not to mention a runaway.”

  “A runaway?” Gar sounds puzzled.

  “You,” she says triumphantly.

  “I went for help,” Gar says stubbornly, “and I’d do it again.”

  “You took your time getting back.” Aunt Fan brushes at her dress as spray from the hoses blows over us. “The cottage was practically ashes before the firemen got here.”

  “I went for an ambulance,” Gar says stiffly. “To get help for Jimmy.”

  “Then the other three must have started the fire,” Aunt Fan looks at me. “What was it? A cigarette? Minnie smokes, doesn’t she? Despite it being against the rules? Don’t lie to me. I swear it’s natural selection, that’s what it is.”

  I stand up, leaning on Dorchy. My crutch burned up in the cottage. “It wasn’t any of us.”

  “Then who started it? A cottage doesn’t spontaneously combust.”

&
nbsp; Gar and Dorchy look at me expectantly. Like Aunt Fan they must assume Minnie started the fire with a dropped cigarette.

  “I don’t know.” I can see why they believe it was Minnie, but she is such a creature of habit that I’m suddenly sure that she did not let her cigarette drop on the floor. There has to be another explanation.

  Gar takes my hand. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

  I manage a smile. “It came out all right. We’re all alive.”

  Later, I lie awake on the stage in the tent, wrapped in a blanket roll the Betterment Council ladies brought for us. Minnie sleeps peacefully next to me, but my heart is still racing from the dream that woke me up. In it I was back at Bellevue telling Julia about the fire and how I saved myself and two others.

  In real life Julia came every visiting day with flowers or fruit, sometimes a bag of cookies. She didn’t seem to enjoy being there. She sat stiffly, eyes down so she wouldn’t have to see a nurse carrying a bedpan or a girl with a twisted foot or Stella’s father, waving his arms and speaking Italian. Stella’s parents brought her an overflowing basket of Italian food every week. They also brought wine, until a horrified nurse discovered it.

  I told Julia about the exercises I’d done, equipment I’d mastered, and about reading to the younger patients. Julia always brought two new books with her. One for me and one for the “children,” but she never asked to meet them or watched me read to them.

  For the first months at some point in every visit she would say, “No word from Father, I’m afraid. But letters do take time to come from France.”

  But in January when she said it, I burst out with, “Unless every ship from France since September sank, you’d think one letter would have reached you by now. Maybe he’s dead. Would they tell you if he was?”

  Julia went white and gripped her black briefcase tightly. She opened her mouth to speak, but just then Stella’s mother burst out laughing over a picture Stella was showing her in a book.

  “Come on,” Julia said. “I’ll wheel you down to the sunroom where we can hear ourselves think.”