Net of Jewels

by Ellen Gilchrist

  “I’ve got it. Here, take the baby, will you? Don’t wake him up. Oh, well, never mind.” I handed Jimmy to him, a warm sleepy heavy precious little bundle. I looked down into his beautiful warm face. Oh, God, I began again. If you let anything happen to him, I’ll kill you. Goddamn you for doing this to my baby. I hate fucking mosquitoes so much. I hate this goddamn mosquito-ridden town . . .

  “Rhoda.”

  “Yes.”

  “Hurry up, will you? She’s waiting on us.” I produced the insurance card and the receptionist finished filling out the forms and directed us to a room on the third floor. We followed a yellow line to the elevators and got on and rode up to the third floor and went down a long hall and into a large rectangular room with a single bed and a crib. All this time Jimmy had not awakened. When I laid him down into the crib, I began to cry. “It’s going to ruin his brain,” I wept. “For God’s sake, Malcolm, call my uncle, will you. Why don’t the goddamn bastards hurry up.”

  A nurse came in and dressed the baby in a hospital gown. She was joined by two male nurses carrying a portable scale. They drew blood and weighed and measured him and took his blood pressure and his temperature.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “It’s ninety-nine,” one answered, but the other frowned and I knew they weren’t supposed to tell me. I walked over to where Malcolm was standing by the window with his face drawn up into a knot. He was blaming me for this, that much was clear. He was hating me and blaming me.

  “This isn’t my fault,” I said, walking toward him. The nurses were still in the room. Jimmy was allowing them to do whatever they liked with him. Jimmy always trusted people. He always let people hold or touch him. He was the opposite of Little Malcolm who wouldn’t even let me cuddle him. Little Malcolm was like his father, made of ice and stone. A beautiful golden stony child.

  “Nobody said you did it. I will say this, if that goddamn Jew sends me another bill after this, I’ll stuff it in his mouth. Where is he? I thought he was going to meet you here at five.”

  “I don’t know. He said he’d come.”

  “Well he better get his ass on over here or I’m calling another doctor. That kid’s been sick for weeks. Why did it take so long for this guy to figure out what’s wrong? I told you not to take him to a goddamn Jew to begin with.” He turned back to the window, his face going into one of its silent tirades.

  “He’s the best doctor in town. Everyone said to go to him. It’s your fault we’re in this goddamn town where we don’t know anyone, where nobody knows who we are. You’re the one that had to come here and work for that goddamn paper plant. You could be working for my daddy. It’s your fault that we’re starving to death in this goddamn mosquito-laden swamp. If anything is wrong with him, I’ll never forgive you for this.” I was near him now. I was in range and he turned and took my wrists in both his hands.

  “Don’t start anything in this hospital, Rhoda. Don’t start a fight with that sick baby over there.”

  “We’re through here,” the nurse said. “You can feed him now. I called and told them to bring a tray.”

  “I’m starving,” Malcolm put in. “I haven’t had anything to eat all day. I’m going downstairs and get a sandwich. Do you want me to bring you anything?”

  “No. I’m all right. Well, I guess I might like some coffee if they have any.” I went over to Jimmy’s bed. He was standing up with his hands on the rail, his bright little black eyes looking from his father to me and back again. “Oh, darling,” I said. “Oh, my precious little baby boy.”

  The doctor came while Malcolm was downstairs. Dr. Klein, Dr. Samuel Klein. He took Jimmy out of the crib and sat on the bed holding him. “We’ll do a spinal tap in the morning,” he said. “Then we’ll know.”

  “What will you know?”

  “If the virus is there.”

  “Then what will you do?”

  “There isn’t much we can do. We’ll do what we can. When he begins to respond we can test and see what happened.”

  “What could have happened?”

  “Nothing he won’t outgrow, I think.”

  “You think. What does that mean?”

  “Let’s don’t get excited until we get the tests back.” He handed me the baby. He was leaving. I couldn’t bear for him to leave. I began to weep even harder than I had the first time. Tears rolled down my twenty-four-year-old cheeks. My Revlon pancake makeup ran down all over my linen blouse. Then the baby began to cry. Doctor Klein stiffened, seemed almost to tremble. He called out the door for a nurse, then came to me and began to pat me on the shoulder and the hair. The baby screamed even louder. My makeup and my tears rolled down onto my yellow skirt.

  A man appeared in the door. It was an angel, yes, a godsend from the church of my mother’s father’s. Actually, it was my obstetrician, a tall, gray-headed man my father’s age who was a lay reader at the Episcopal church which I sporadically attended. He was my kind of doctor, a good-looking Christian man who flirted with me and kept me supplied with diet pills. “Doctor Williams.” I ran across the room and threw myself into his arms. “Oh, God, thank God you’re here.”

  “I saw your name on the admittance list. I just came by to see what’s going on. Hello, Sam, nice to see you.”

  “He might have encephalitis,” I said. “It will destroy his brain. He’s going to be an idiot. It’s the baby, Jimmy, not Little Malcolm. We went down to Monroe to see my cousin Sally play the organ and he got it there.”

  “Oh, now, don’t get excited. I’m sure it isn’t all that bad. What’s going on, Sam?”

  “We’re going to do a spinal tap in the morning. He’s been running a low-grade temperature. I don’t think it’s critical if he did pick it up.”

  “His brain’s being eaten by mosquito germs,” I said. “I want my uncle here. I want someone to call my uncle and tell him what’s going on.”

  “Her uncle’s Carl Manning down in Mobile. He’s doing that heart transplant stuff with De Bakey.” The doctor stood up. He directed his conversation toward the pediatrician. Then Malcolm appeared in the door with several nurses hurrying around him into the room.

  “Why don’t you take Rhoda somewhere and get her a drink and calm her down?” the older doctor said. “The baby’s going to be fine, Rhoda. I’ll call your uncle tonight if you want me to.”

  “Not a drink,” Malcolm said. “For God’s sake don’t anyone give her any whiskey.”

  “Well, then take her out to eat.” He turned to me. Took my hands, was so sweet I wanted to cry some more. “Take her somewhere and get her some dinner. The baby will be fine with the nurses, Rhoda. I’ll be in the hospital another hour. I’ll check back by before I leave. Go on, honey, get your pocketbook. Go on down the street and get some dinner.”

  Things settled down after that. Malcolm and I went down the street to a restaurant the hospital staff frequented and had a steak sandwich and some french fries and I even ate some ice cream. The diet pill was beginning to wear off. The food tasted good.

  By the time we got back to the hospital the staff on the third floor had changed. A skinny blonde woman my mother’s age was now in charge. She seemed more benevolent and kind. Maybe Dr. Williams had told her to be nice to me. Maybe he had told her I was crazy. Malcolm left to go relieve Klane and I played with Jimmy for a while on the single bed, then he fell asleep again and I lay down with my clothes on to read. I was reading A Farewell to Arms. I had already read it twice or three times, but I liked Hemingway so much I could read his books over and over, turning to any page to begin. “We had a lovely time that summer,” I began reading. “When I could go out we rode in a carriage to the park. I remember the carriage, the horse going slowly, and up ahead the back of the driver with his varnished high hat, and Catherine Barkley sitting beside me.”

  “Rhoda.” It was Klane, still wearing the dirty slacks and striped cotton blouse she had appeared in from the jail so many hours ago that morning. “I come by to see if I could do anything to
help.” She stepped gingerly into the room. Then walked straight over to the baby’s bed and looked down at him. “What did they find out?”

  “Nothing yet.” I put a bookmark in the book and laid it down upon the bed and got up to go stand beside her. “They don’t know anything . . . if he’s got it, it might injure his brain. It’s an inflammation of the brain. That’s what it means. If he’s got it, there isn’t anything they can do. Just hope for the best.” I took Klane’s arm. I began to cry again.

  “Don’t wake him up,” she said. “Don’t cry, Rhoda. It’s done now. His brain’s okay. He couldn’t be hurt. He’s too sweet. He’s the sweetest little boy I ever saw in my life.” Now tears were in her eyes too. She led me over to the bed and turned it down and fluffed up the pillows. “You get on your nightclothes and get in bed. You’re going to need your strength in the morning. You go on and get into the bed. I’ll sit by him. That’s what I come down here for.”

  “Don’t you have to go home?”

  “No. Delmonica’s there. She’ll take care of things.”

  “I thought you didn’t like her anymore. I thought you said she was flirting with your husband.” Delmonica was Klane’s younger cousin from the Delta who had come to live with her. Last I had heard Klane had kicked Delmonica out for making out with her husband when he got the weekend off from jail and came home to patch the roof.

  “I got Delmonica on my hands whether I like her or not. She ain’t got no place to go home to. Her folks got kicked off the place for voting. They got mixed up with that mess at the Greenville Air Force Base.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “Well, don’t go talking about it now. Go on to sleep. You needs to get your sleep before the morning. No telling what the morning’s going to bring.” She went over to my suitcase and got out my nightgown and handed it to me. She watched while I undressed and put it on, then she put me into the bed and pulled the covers up around me. “Go on to sleep,” she said. “I’m right here.” She turned off the lights and pulled the lounge chair up beside the crib and sat back in it and folded her hands. “What about your children?” I asked. “Who’s taking care of your little girl and boy?”

  “They gone up to the country for the summer. They won’t be back till almost school.”

  “Who’d they go to see?”

  “They went to stay with my momma up on Cockleshell. There’s work for them up there hoeing cotton. You go on to sleep, Rhoda. Don’t talk to me no more.”

  “Okay,” I said. I curled my legs up into my stomach and fell into a deep sleep.

  I woke up once in the night to go to the bathroom. Klane was still there, asleep in the chair beside the crib. I suppose the nurses came in and out, checking on us, but I don’t remember hearing them.

  “Lethargic,” I heard a male nurse say. It was sometime in the early morning. I sat up in the bed and realized I had a nightgown on. I wrapped the sheet around me and got up and began to look for my robe. Two nurses and a resident were hovering over the crib.

  “Your maid said to tell you she’d gone home to see about your husband and your other child,” the resident said. “She said to tell you she’d check with you later.”

  “What are you doing?” I went to stand by the crib. Jimmy was awake, basking in the attention he was getting.

  “You might want to get dressed,” the resident said. “They’ll be in before too long to prep him.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Sure, as fast as I can.” I reached toward the baby but the resident was listening to his heart so I retreated and found my clothes and went into the small bathroom to put them on. The room was large for a hospital room but the bathroom was closet size. Once inside, with the door shut, I could barely get on my underwear. I pulled things on as well as I could and went back into the room. Jimmy was standing now, cooing and being charming to the nurses. The resident was letting him play with his stethoscope. They turned my way. They were all waiting for me.

  “It won’t take too long,” the resident said, “but you probably won’t want to watch. They have to hold him very still, but it won’t hurt him. Just scare him.”

  “What are they going to do?”

  “Prep him for the spinal tap.”

  “Just get him ready.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what? Put a needle in his spine?”

  “They have to take some fluid out of the spinal column to see if its infected with the virus. That’s all.”

  “How much?”

  “A very small amount.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Whatever you have to do.”

  The resident and the nurses left. It was almost an hour and a half later when the next set of nurses came in to the room. By then Jimmy was screaming with hunger and the anxiety he had picked up from me.

  The new nurses came in and lay him down on the crib and began to try to get an intravenous drip into his arm. A small blonde nurse stuck needle after needle into the fat flesh of his small perfect arm but she could not find a vein. On the fourth try, I was starting out of the room to complain at the nurses’ station when Klane’s huge frame reappeared in the door. She was dressed up now, in her Sunday school clothes, a long dark green gabardine dress with a white lace collar and white stockings and polished shoes. She had on long crystal earrings and several bangle bracelets. I had never seen her so dressed up, not even the time she had to go to court.

  “Klane,” I said, and threw myself into her arms. “Thank God you’re here. They keep putting needles in him and they can’t find a vein. They haven’t even started on the spine yet.” She glanced at me, then went to the crib. She reached down into the bed, through the sea of arms, and picked up Jimmy and held him. “You can do it now,” she said. “I’ll hold him. Do it fast if you have to do it. I can hold him still. I know what to do. I worked here all the time when I was young.”

  “Klane Marengo,” one of the nurses said. “Sure. I remember you. You used to be in E.R. on the weekends.”

  “He’s my baby,” she said. “I takes care of him. Go on. Get back. I can hold him. What arm you want that drip in?”

  Then she whispered to him and cuddled him down into her dress and picked up his left arm and held it out for the nurse. She immobilized it somehow and the nurse took the needle and directed it into the vein and strapped the sustaining board on the arm and taped it down. Jimmy was screaming, then sobbing, then still. “I got you,” Klane was saying. “I got you right here at my heart. Ain’t nothing going to hurt little Jimmy. Nothing ever going to hurt my baby.”

  She lay Jimmy down on the bed and the nurses tied him down, and then, suddenly, I had not known it was going to happen, they began to roll the bed out of the room and down the hall toward the operating room. As they went through the door the suspended bottle of intravenous solution fell and broke all over the floor. “Oh, God,” I screamed. “No, you can’t do it again. Don’t do it again.” I began to fight the nurses, fighting to get to the bed but Klane had me in her arms and Malcolm was coming in the door. Somehow between them they got me to the bed and the baby left with his retinue.

  An hour later he was back in the room and Klane was holding him and I was sitting on the bed. “You haven’t been home,” I said. “You haven’t had any sleep. Who’s been going to the jail to feed your husband?”

  “Delmonica’s looking out for him. She took him some food this morning.”

  “I thought you didn’t trust her with him.”

  “I don’t. Well, Jimmy looks like he’s better this morning. I don’t think he’s as sleepy as he was last week. Look here, Rhoda. His eyes are brighter.”

  I got up and went to stand beside her chair. Jimmy looked up at me. He didn’t look any brighter. He looked like my cousin, Baby Gwen Mayhew, with her big brown bedroom eyes we all said had come from her Mexican blood and distant kinship to Ida Lupino. Now I thought they had come from all the mosquitoes in Clarksville, Mississippi, from the long flat flooded Delta fields and the insect-burdened spri
ng and summer air. Yellow fever, typhus, malaria, the scourges of our ancestors, now encephalitis to haunt the future. Inflammation of the mucous membranes of the brain, the cerebral cortex, spine, or brain stem.

  The doctor had come into the room while I was lost in my morbid thoughts. “It’s over, Rhoda. You can take him home this afternoon. I’m going to start him on some new antibiotics. I want you to bring the other child in tomorrow and let us do some blood work. Are you listening?”

  “Yes. Then there’s nothing you can do?”

  “About what? We’re doing everything we can.”

  “If his brain was hurt? You can’t fix that?”

  “I wish you hadn’t read that medical dictionary.” He stared away. “A little knowledge.”

  “A little knowledge what? He’s my baby. I have to know what’s going on. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t think you’re telling me what you know.”

  “What else do you want to know? He’s a fine baby, a fine child. There isn’t anything else to know. The sleepiness will get better. It’s going to take time. We do what we can, Rhoda. That’s all we can do.”

  “All right. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m so bad.”

  “Thanks for your help.” Malcolm put down his magazine and came to the doctor’s side. “We know you’re trying.”

  “Your baby’s all right. This was just a test so we’ll know what’s happened.”

  “Give him here.” I had turned to Klane. She got up and walked toward me. A flat clear light was all across the black marble floor. She walked across it in her majesty and handed Jimmy to me. I took him from her arms. “Thanks,” I said. “Thanks for everything.”

  The next three months we watched and waited. June and July and August came and went. Malcolm got a raise. Hilton got pregnant and almost lost the baby and had to be put to bed for weeks. Karla and Speed went to Mexico for a vacation and came home with souvenirs and stories about tequila. My tan got darker. Jimmy quit sleeping all the time. He still slept too long in the afternoons and fell asleep in the high chair when I fed him, but he seemed better. Every day I said to Klane, “Do you think he’s better?”