by Linda Byler
Kore. Why had they named a child Kore? She was reminded of the story in the Old Testament, the rebellious group who railed against the beloved leader, Moses. A fearful thing, and a grandson named after him. Well, it probably wasn’t intentional. But still.
And last, there was Sallie. Misspelled, in Mam’s opinion. Should be Sally, as it was in the Dick and Jane reader.
Little Sallie, with wisps of pale blond hair. She was over a year old and still not able to make bobbies, those little buttons of hair wrapped around a bendable cracker twisty. Her too pale eyes didn’t focus properly, with one eye wandering. She had always been slow, never crawled like other babies, was almost nine months old before she sat up by herself.
Mam had fussed plenty to Elmer, saying there was, indeed, something wrong with that child. She had urged Susie to take her to a pediatrician, but what else could she do with all these miles between them?
And here she was now, hardly enough hair to cover her scalp, the lazy eye wandering worse than ever, pigeon-toed, clumsy, no speech at all.
Mam felt a stab of fear. Poor child. She couldn’t see how she could ever live to lead a normal life. She was such an odd-looking little thing.
“How is my little Sallie Ann, sitting in the sand?” she chortled.
Then, worried, she directed a look at her oldest daughter, Susie.
“How is she doing?”
A toss of the proud head. “Fine. Sallie is fine. Doctor said.”
Mam in disbelief. “Really?”
“Of course. You think she’s retarded.”
Mam winced, followed immediately by swift denial. “No, no. I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to. I know how you feel. Pediatrician says she’s developing in the low . . .” A wave of her hand. “Whatever it’s called. Can’t think of the word. An eye doctor won’t see her at this age. She’ll need corrective lenses, perhaps surgery. She’s not mentally handicapped, which is the proper term.”
“Good. I’m so glad to hear it. So glad you took her to a good baby doctor.”
After that, she ignored her own concerns about the child, and the Christmas spirit prevailed.
The sons-in-law were friendly, rife with tales of hard work, good beginnings, price of milk holding steady, a future as brilliant as the sun. They talked of unbelievable soil, a climate made for growing corn with the heat and humidity.
Dat raised his eyebrows, skeptical of hay drying.
The barrage of boys descending, first Abner, sailing on the new relationship with the fair Ruthie, enjoying the girls’ questions, their delight in his ability to win her, his attempts at humility thinly disguised.
“About time, you old bachelor.”
“Is she coming to the Christmas dinner?”
“Go get her. We want to meet her, see what she’s like.”
“Is she cute? Do you like her?”
Abner held up a hand.
“She’ll be here tomorrow. You know who she is. You haven’t lived in Kentucky that long.”
“We forget. We don’t think about the girls in this area much. We have other, more important things to think about now. We’re busy farmers’ wives, milking cows, driving the baler, washing milkers.”
“I bet.”
“We do! Every one of us.”
They wore smiles of pride, in spite of the ribbing from Abner. Amos and Samuel greeted their sisters with the direct gaze, the calculating measure of siblings, unspoken questions exchanged in one knowing look.
Susie had to hear about her weight gain. Lynda was wan and thin. Too thin. This too, was noticed, brought into the open.
“Looks like Susie eats your daily portion of fried mush.”
“Hey! Stop it. I had three children. Look at Mam.”
“You keep going, you’ll pass Mam by about fifty pounds by the time you’re her age.”
“You’re mean. Cruel. Rude.”
Laughter lifted the accusation to a softer level, the teasing of well-meaning sisters and brothers raised together in the same house, a large, often unbalanced family, where love and fondness steadied the scales.
The girls eyed Samuel, the good-looking one. My, those haircuts. Almost like an Englisher. Why did Dat let them get away with it? It was a bad example for Allen and Daniel.
They had so much to say. Questions were fired, as if from a cannon, in quick succession. “No girlfriend?” they asked Samuel.
“He wishes,” Abner answered. “The teacher, Lena Zook.”
Samuel denied it, but he had a flaming face to prove the denial invalid.
Dat took all this in, feeling the gratitude, the love, the pride of having his large brood together, all of them healthy, happy. They were raised with imperfections, and he had not always done his share, the farm taking first priority too often. But here they were. Here they all were, plus the happiness of the acquired sons-in-law, the seven grandchildren like miracles.
Coffee flowed from the Adcraft, the two-gallon thermos, set on the countertop, a tea towel on the floor to catch the drips.
No one needed sleep. There was plenty of cold meadow tea for those who didn’t drink coffee.
John was greeted too, but his life was too ordinary to discuss. He was quiet, anyway, never had much to add to the general hubbub.
He played with the grandchildren at a card table in the living room, a DeWalt battery lamp perched on the bureau, the white light illuminating the Candy Land board. Mary and Sylvia Ann were clearly enamored of their tall uncle John. Giggling, picking up the colorful cards, they watched anxiously for the dreaded candy cane that would send them back to the place their little plastic men had started.
Sara Ann was outspoken, never weighing consequences.
“What’s wrong with John, Mam? He looks bleached. His face is so white it’s almost lime green.”
“Oh, the strep throat.” Lifted a finger to her lips, rolled her eyes in John’s direction.
“Why the secret?”
Mam more emphatic. “Sh. He doesn’t like to talk about it.”
Sara Ann shrugged her shoulders. John heard every word, thinking this was not what he wanted to be noticed for.
Mam set out trays of cookies, chocolate walnut fudge, a bowl of fruit with a cream cheese dip in the center. There was a tall blue canister of Planter’s mixed nuts, one of the cashews, and one of honey roasted peanuts.
Every year, Mam bought these gigantic tins of nuts, and only a few handfuls were ever eaten, so she’d feed them to the birds, who would also largely ignore them, till they lay, bleached and useless in the spring sunlight. But it just wasn’t Christmas without the variety of Planter’s nuts.
She was making oyster stew, standing at the kitchen range, the smell of browning butter wafting to the kitchen table, a quart of oysters taken from the refrigerator, then another.
“Mmm. Smells wonderful.”
“We came the whole way from Kentucky for that oyster stew, Mam.”
Benuel, Sara Ann’s husband, was full of gallantries, an eagerness to please. But it grated like sandpaper, now. All the way from Kentucky, all right.
She gave him a benevolent smile, then turned back to the stove to hide her grimace of endurance.
John finished the third game of Candy Land, then came to the long kitchen table, keeping his eyes averted. How many more of his sisters thought he was the color of a lime?
“John, you look so pale.” It was Sara Ann, again.
“I had strep throat, you know.” He shrugged, self-conscious now.
“Strep throat doesn’t last for months. Mam, did you take this boy for tests lately?”
“No. Not lately.”
“He looks awful.”
All eyes turned to John as he picked up a glass of meadow tea, turned to go to the living room, back to the card table and the safety of the DeWalt lamp, away from his sisters, their piercing eyes like vultures, sizing him up.
“You should put him on Plexus.”
“What’s that?”
; “It’s a nutritional supplement program. Something fairly new.”
“Newer than Sisel?”
“What about Relive?”
“No, Plexus is better.”
And so forth. The discussion rolled into the living room, swirled around John, tales of magical healing from Epstein-Barr virus, fibromyalgia, Crohn’s disease, even cancer of the thyroid, leukemia in children.
“You can talk about that stuff all you want. I guarantee it’s all a big money racket.” The conversation screeched to a stunned silence, as all eyes turned toward Abner, the stalwart one, the one with the undisputed knowledge.
“Hey, watch what you say. You don’t know how soon you might need a good supplement,” Susie said, a huge advocate of Plexus herself, religiously swallowing all manner of pills and powders promising instant and long-lasting weight loss. Which, obviously, hadn’t done much so far, but she hadn’t taken them that long. Not really. Besides, if you paid a hundred dollars a month—more than that—you weren’t willing to admit it wasn’t a successful endeavor.
“Abner, you know what? Someone who’s been healthy their life long shouldn’t judge those of us who aren’t.”
“Nothing wrong with you, by the looks of it.”
Susie gave him a look.
“I have adrenal problems. I’m often tired, exhausted by day’s end. No get up and go. That sort of thing.”
“And Plexus helps?”
“Why, of course.”
Mam stirred the oyster stew, tasted with a spoon, added a half teaspoon of salt. She turned to listen to the conversation, watched John’s reaction with narrowed eyes, wondering what he was thinking. She knew, with a mother’s intuition, that he felt a lot worse than he would ever want anyone to know.
She was suspecting Lyme disease, in spite of her husband’s unwillingness to hear her out.
Lyme disease was rampant, especially in Pennsylvania.
Look at the way this boy lived in grassy fields, woods, swampy lowlands. He was always picking ticks from his clothes. He never had a rash or a bull’s-eye, though, that infamous circular splotch of red where a tick had been attached.
All around them, people contracted Lyme disease, visited their family doctor, faithfully ingested a ten-day course of antibiotics, and continued their headlong plunge of misery into a deep tunnel of weakness, fear, stiffness, and pain.
Because of the lack of testing and medical support, many of them took the natural route, swallowing handfuls of herbs, drinking glasses of tinctures in dubious amounts. By all accounts, it was a scourge, a plague of Egypt. So much unexplained misery. There was never enough funding for research.
Mam’s eyes went back to John, as she absorbed the lively pros and cons of expensive herbal supplements. She’d have to ask John. Perhaps he would welcome an arsenal of pills to help him feel better.
Or perhaps he was merely going through a growth spurt.
CHAPTER 7
JOHN ENJOYED THE SISTERS AND THEIR CHILDREN IMMENSELY, IN spite of his ongoing struggle with debilitating weakness. There was no way to explain the waves of tiredness that surged through his body. It was frightening, and there was no rhyme or reason to the pattern.
The day after Christmas the constant movement, the crying babies and yelling children, the musical toys, and the bang of dishes in the sink grated on his ears with noises seemingly magnified times ten. His head ached, filled to bursting capacity with a cacophony of sounds like a fire engine siren.
He knew his grandparents, Uncle John and Aunt Naomi, Uncle Ben and Aunt Sylvia, would be arriving for the sake of the girls, a sort of second Christmas dinner served. There was nothing on earth he wanted less. He couldn’t imagine getting through the day.
His right shoulder was so painful, he sneaked a jar of Unker’s from the medicine cabinet in the bathroom downstairs. Unker’s was a deep, penetrating pain-relief ointment for arthritis, colds, restless legs, aching joints. That was it. It was just aching joints.
Up to his bedroom, the plastic jar in his pocket, he applied a liberal amount, blinking furiously as the menthol scent ripped through his nostrils. He persisted, waiting for the soothing relief the label promised.
His whole room was permeated with the overpowering scent. He crept to his bedroom door and locked it. None of his brothers needed to stick their nosy heads in the door. Or the children.
He tried to block out noise, the chaos that assaulted his senses. He felt a descending cloud of doom, the urge to get away, find total respite from ordinary life. The motion and swirl of intensified color and sound, the kaleidoscope of bewildering action increasingly immobilized his well-being.
The vague thought that he might die came to live solidly in his mind, and stayed. With it came anxiety so real his heartbeat accelerated until his breath came out in short hard gasps, eliminating the shoulder pain, the weakness.
Suddenly, he was thrown into a galaxy of terror. A heartstopping panic held him in its grip, took away the ability to harbor a coherent thought.
This was a primal fear beyond anything he had ever experienced, that went on and on. He grasped the covers for protection, his fingers clawing at pillowcases, unable to grasp a solid object. Afloat in his sea of dread, he washed up on towering, heartstopping crests of gigantic waves, to plunge into deep troughs of hopelessness that only death could stop.
He realized that sweat was pouring from every pore of his skin. His palms were wet, his forehead streaming, his shirt that had been slid off his shoulder bunched and wet, the greasy shoulder broken away, a separate appendage that no longer belonged to him.
The room whirled around him in a dizzying spiral, turning clockwise, diagonally, then horizontally, slowed a few degrees, before spilling him into a world of blackened nothingness, a place where, mercifully, there were no thoughts, no sound, and no chaos.
He awoke to the sound of frenzied banging on a hard surface. He struggled to open his eyes, to answer the person who wanted to talk to him, but was held in the clutches of weakness. A key grated in the lock.
His father burst through the door, pale-faced, his eyes wide with alarm.
“John!”
He hurried to the bed, followed by his mother and sisters, their faces ashen.
“Are you all right?”
“What is that smell?
“Here. Mary, Sylvia Ann, no. Susie, take them downstairs.”
Children were ushered back out the door.
John turned, lay on his back. His eyes opened. A sickening wave of nausea pulled up the contents of his stomach, hurled the whole sordid mess on the gray rug. He heaved and retched. He felt his mother smooth back his hair, hollering at Lydia to get a bucket with water and Lysol.
Miserably, he finished, lay back, breathing fitfully.
His father knelt by his bed, after the rug had been taken away, the floor cleaned. His eyes were kind, concerned, a magnet that drew John’s sobs of misery.
He cried deep sounds of crippling despair, his young shoulders heaving, his body twisting into a fetal position, ashamed of this helpless display of weakness.
“What happened, John? Just tell us what is wrong.”
“Why did you have this jar of Unker’s?”
His mother’s question instilled a deep sense of privacy, a refusal to allow her access to his suffering. The importance of keeping everything to himself overrode everything he had ever been taught about manners, decency.
She didn’t need to know. She’d blab all his symptoms to anyone who would listen, and they would pick up the pieces, carry them home under the microscope of their highly esteemed opinions, sending him to Hershey Hospital, or Harrisburg, for the diagnosis of cancer, a round of chemotherapy, and death. Just when his life was beginning, they’d bring the sentence of death.
So his silence protected him.
The Christmas season ended in dry-mouthed fear, his family whispering in areas of the house that kept their surmising.
“He’s so weird. Why won’t he say what’s wrong?”
“He’s very sick.”
“You think he’s losing his mind? Schizophrenic, maybe?”
Mam was paralyzed with fear. She had no idea what was wrong with John, other than Lyme disease, but didn’t think that would render anyone mute.
Everyone tiptoed now, silent, afraid to think of returning to Kentucky, after all this, leaving the family with the specter of the unknown.
John came downstairs, after showering, ate a dish of Froot Loops cereal, sat on the couch and smiled at little Kore—a weak, hesitant smile, but a show of returned normality.
It was Lydia, the youngest sister, who he confided in, speaking quietly, telling her he had an aching shoulder, had gone to rub Unker’s on it, but must have passed out.
Lydia did not voice an opinion, asked no questions, merely sat holding her baby, listened without making eye contact.
“I have been weak and tired. Dizzy in the morning. It’s . . . sorta hard to do chores. Seems like I get tired easily.”
No verdict, no instructions from Lydia. Merely, “Perhaps a doctor could help.”
John nodded, but was unconvinced.
The leave-taking was hard for the girls, each one being brave in their own way, blinking back tears that hovered at the surface, hiding it all by settling children in car seats, saying, “There you go, sweetie,” handing out pacifiers, bags of pretzels for the toddlers.
The sons-in-law were bright eyed, helpful, eager to return to dearly held farms and animals, hoping the neighbors had had no problem with the milking.
They pitied their wives standing awkwardly as they clung to their mother, eyes bright with swimming tears that finally spilled over.
Benuel wondered if it was too much, if the separation was actually worth the move, then justified it by thinking of Isaac and Rebecca of old. Love between a man and his wife would enable the adhering to one another, to be able to leave family easily. Even nature taught that lesson well.
John stood in the background, his hands in his pockets. Pale-faced, his eyes were dark pools of shame. Lydia looked to see her younger brother standing weakly amid the jostle of strong, healthy siblings in the prime of life. She made her way to him, grasped his shoulders.