“Only works about ten minutes,” Nonnie said, “but them ten minutes is a blessing.”
“I’m sorry I don’t have anything better to offer. You take the Bufferin every four hours?”
“I take it regular enough.”
“No more than every four hours,” Nurse Ann said. “Now about your sugar. I brought more of those urine testing tablets for you. How is that working out?”
“Just fine. The pee always turns blue, so it’s fine.”
“Sometimes it’s green,” I said.
Nonnie cut me a glare. “She don’t know the difference between green and blue,” she said.
“Nonnie,” I said. “You’ve got to tell the honest truth.” I looked at Nurse Ann. “She don’t understand how important it is.”
“Well, Ivy’s right, Mrs. Hart. If your urine’s turning green, you need to be more careful with what you eat. And if it turns orange, then you need to be extremely careful and try to get more exercise. And call me then, because we might need to talk about changing medication. How often are you seeing the green rather than the blue?”
“Hardly never,” Nonnie said.
Nurse Ann looked at me and I felt caught in the middle between them. I shrugged. I’d tell Nurse Ann the truth about Nonnie and her testing when she had her talk with me. Better to talk about Nonnie than myself, anyway. I’d tell her how Nonnie made extra biscuits to eat in the morning. I’d been eating them myself to keep her from having too many and making her sugar go up.
Nurse Ann stood up. “Ivy,” she said, “let’s go sit outside a bit.” She picked up her nurse bag and I followed her outside, feeling like a hog going to slaughter. She led me to the old wooden bench by the side of the house, but I pointed to the chairs under the oak tree. You could hear people talking on that bench. I didn’t want Nonnie or Mary Ella listening in on anything I said.
“Nonnie’s not telling you the truth about them tests on her pee,” I said, sitting down in one of the rickety old chairs. I’d take over the conversation right quick, I thought. Keep it off myself.
“I figured that,” she said. “How often are the results green?”
“Pretty much always. Sometimes half blue and half green, but green more likely than not.”
“And orange?”
“I ain’t never seen it turn orange,” I said. “I’m scared about it doing that. And she don’t always boil them test tubes like she should. She just rinses ’em out sometimes.”
Nurse Ann let out a sigh and looked back toward the house. “Do you know I couldn’t find William when I arrived today? Your grandmother didn’t know where he was.”
“But you found him okay.” I didn’t want her making a big to-do about nothing.
“He needs to be watched more closely.”
I shrugged. What was I supposed to say? Nonnie and Baby William couldn’t last all day at the barn, and me and Mary Ella had to work. We couldn’t be two places at once.
Nurse Ann opened her bag in her lap. “I have some things here for you,” she said, handing me a paper bag. “Look inside and I’ll explain how you use them.”
I opened it up and pulled out a box that said SPERMICIDAL JELLY on the side.
“This is not the kind of jelly you eat,” she said. “It kills sperm. Sperm comes from the boy and that’s what makes babies.”
“I know that.” I wished I was someplace else.
“Now, here”—she opened the box and pulled out a long tube—“is the applicator you use to insert the jelly in your vagina.” She went into a long description of how to do that and I knew my cheeks was red, listening to her. This talk was turning out worse than I expected.
She reached in the bag one more time and brought out little packages that said TROJAN on them. “These are rubbers,” she said. “The boy puts these on. They’re more protective than the jelly. And the best protection is using both of them together.”
“You mean protection from having a baby?” I wished she’d speak plain.
“That’s right.”
I handed the bag back to her. “I don’t need none of this. Mary Ella’s the one you should be talkin’ to. She already got herself a baby and any day she’s gonna end up with another for sure.”
“I’m not worried about Mary Ella right now. I’m worried about you.”
“No need to be. I ain’t doing nothing.”
“Well, just in case, I want you to have these things and I can bring you more if you ever need more.”
I didn’t know why she wasn’t giving these things to Mary Ella. I’d give them to her myself. I’d told Mary Ella about the pulling out being a way to have no more babies, and she just looked off into the blue yonder the way she always did, like she didn’t hear me.
“All right,” I said. Talking about this was making me think about being with Henry Allen tonight and I felt my face go hot again and turned away, not wanting Nurse Ann to see. “Are we done?”
“Yes,” she said, “and I’ll bring more when I come next time. Just in case.”
I felt like she knew what I was thinking about Henry Allen and I stood up. “I got to sweep the yard,” I said.
She looked up at me. “Are you upset about Mrs. Werkman not being your caseworker any longer?”
“Don’t matter,” I said, though I felt an ache inside me. It wasn’t like I loved her or anything, but she knew us so well. I didn’t like nothing about that new lady. Not her swingy gold hair or her nylon stockings or her smile that looked like it was painted on her face. She was a city girl who didn’t know nothing. Lita Jordan met her and said she was nice, but I could tell she was worried, too. Nonnie said, “That girl ain’t nothing but a little mouse all dressed up,” and that was a right perfect description.
“I’m sure her replacement will be just as good,” Nurse Ann said. “I hear she’s young. Maybe she’ll understand a young girl very well.”
“She didn’t say nothing when she was here.”
“She’s learning,” Nurse Ann said. “The first time I visited patients with my supervisor, I was really quiet myself. Now you can’t get me to shut up, right? And sometimes you wish I would.”
I couldn’t help it. I smiled. “Yes, ma’am,” I said, and she laughed.
“You take good care now, Ivy,” she said, and even though she’d embarrassed me clear to kingdom come, I knew she wanted the best for me, and I carried the bag of things I didn’t need into the house to find a place to hide them.
11
Jane
Robert straightened his tie as he came into the kitchen. I was sliding a blueberry pancake off the griddle, and he leaned over to kiss my cheek.
“I bet my beautiful wife is tired this morning,” he said.
“Why do you say that?” I asked, turning off the burners on the stove.
“I think you were up half the night reading.”
“Oh,” I said, “did I wake you when I got up? I couldn’t sleep.” I was working my way through the stack of books I’d borrowed from Charlotte. The books had the same pull on me as a bestselling novel. “Have a seat, darling.” I glanced at the kitchen clock as I carried his plate to the breakfast nook. We had half an hour before either of us had to leave for work and our maid, Angeline, arrived. That was good. We needed some relaxed time together and we hadn’t had much of it in the four days since I started working.
He sat down at the table and I rested one hand on his shoulder as I poured coffee into his cup. I felt like we were in a photograph in a magazine—a picture of domestic bliss.
“There’s a ball at the club in a few weeks.” He pulled out his wallet and laid eight twenties on the table. “Go shopping this weekend while I’m playing golf,” he said. “Buy yourself something fancy. You can knock everybody’s socks off at the party.”
“You’re so sweet,” I said, sitting down across from him.
“I wish you’d shop with some of the wives from the club.” He opened his cloth napkin and put it on his lap. “I know they love doing that. Shoppi
ng together.”
“Maybe soon,” I said noncommittally. One of the wives had stopped by the house to nudge me about joining the Junior League. I told her the truth—right now I didn’t have time because I was working. Then I cringed. She would tell her husband. Her husband would tell other people. And soon the word would be out that Robert Forrester’s wife had to work such long, hard hours that she couldn’t even join the Junior League. “I’ll make a special effort to get to know some of the wives at the ball,” I promised, “but I need to ask Mom to go shopping with me this time. She’s so lonely without me living there.”
He swallowed a bite of pancake. “So, what have you been reading about?”
I poured syrup over my own pancakes. “Well, last night I read about how to interview clients,” I said. “You know, how to put them at ease. How to accept them without judging them. That sort of thing.”
“Bedside Manner 101.” Robert blotted his lips with his napkin. “They should teach that in medical school, but they don’t.”
“I guess a doctor wouldn’t have time for all that listening.”
“Very true.”
“I’m really enjoying it, Robert,” I said. “I like getting to meet so many different people.”
“I’m glad,” he said. “Really.”
“I’m nervous about when my two weeks with Charlotte are up, though. So much responsibility.” I sipped my coffee. “I have to put together a petition for this program Charlotte told me about. Have you heard of the Eugenics Program?” Ever since meeting the Hart girls, I hadn’t been able to put them out of my mind. From the eerie jolt of recognition when Mary Ella showed up in the doorway to the realization that I now held Ivy’s future in my hands, they consumed my thoughts.
“I don’t think so,” Robert said. “I mean, I know eugenics is about improving the human race. Weeding out negative traits and encouraging the positive. But what does that have to do with your work?”
His definition didn’t feel quite right to me. “Social workers can petition the Eugenics Board to get sterilization surgery for their clients,” I said. “But it’s not like it was in Nazi Germany,” I hastened to add. “It’s not like anyone’s trying to improve a race of people.”
Robert frowned at me. “You sound upset,” he said.
He was right, and I studied my plate, trying to figure out what was making me so uncomfortable. “I think it’s the way you defined eugenics,” I said. “You made it sound … I don’t know. Manipulative and controlling.”
“The way you describe this program doesn’t sound like it should be called ‘eugenics,’ then.” He cut his pancake with his fork. “It sounds like it’s just a way to help people limit the size of their families. I think that’s a fine idea.”
That wasn’t quite right, either. “I guess it’s more than that.” I really felt awkward now. “One of the girls Charlotte had sterilized is only seventeen. She has a two-year-old son, and she’s mildly mentally retarded. She has a fifteen-year-old epileptic sister who Charlotte wants to have sterilized, too, and I’m the person who’ll have to arrange it.”
“All of these people are on welfare, right?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Then this sounds like an excellent program, and you’ve changed my opinion of Charlotte.” He drank the last of his orange juice and smiled at me. “Up till now I thought of her as someone who was simply working my wife too hard.”
“Why do you think it’s an excellent program?” I was relieved that he thought so, but I wanted to know why he felt that way.
“Because it prevents more children from living off the government tit, excuse my French.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Robert, that’s really not fair. These kids would starve without—”
“You know my background, Jane,” he said. “You’ve seen the house I grew up in.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the house you grew up in.” His parents still lived in the modest three-bedroom home in Atlanta.
He swallowed a bite of pancake. “I had to work hard for everything I’ve achieved,” he said.
“I know you did.”
“Nobody gave me a handout. I did it all on my own.”
“I know.” I felt as though I’d opened a tap I hadn’t known was there. “But you can’t compare where you came from to where the people I’m working with come from.”
He rubbed the back of his neck, as though the conversation were tiring him. “We don’t do them any favors by giving them money for nothing,” he said, “and the fewer kids they have, the better.”
“Why do you do your charity work every month, then?” I asked. “Why do you treat sick kids for no charge?”
“Because I can’t just look the other way, but I tell you, Jane, most of those kids would have been better off if they’d never been conceived. So I think your Eugenics Program is a great idea.” He looked at his watch. “And now I’ve got to run.” He stood up and folded his napkin on the table. “Our children, however, can’t wait to be conceived.” He leaned over to give me a kiss. “Maybe tonight?”
* * *
During my first three days in the field with Charlotte, I thought I’d seen enough poverty to last a lifetime, but on the fourth day, my eyes were truly opened. We visited a family with ten people living in one room. Another in which the parents had both died of pneumonia and the seventeen-year-old son was struggling to hold the family together. Those children would have to go to foster homes, Charlotte told me as we drove away. We’d have to work on placements for them right away. “While a little boy like William Hart might benefit from a foster placement,” Charlotte said, “these kids are desperate for it.”
“Could we somehow get them enough money and donations to keep them together?” I asked. I hated tearing a family apart.
Charlotte glanced at me. “There you go, getting soft on me again, Mrs. Forrester,” she said with a smile. “We need you, so I hope you can toughen up, but if this job is going to take too much out of you to do it right, now is the time to reconsider.”
“I’ll be fine,” I assured her … and myself.
Charlotte stopped the car to check her map. We were on a thickly wooded dirt road and hadn’t seen another car for twenty minutes. When we were out in the middle of nowhere like this, I wondered how I would manage alone. Charlotte had been doing this alone for a very long time, I reminded myself. If she could do it, so could I.
She drove a short distance farther and pulled to the side of the road. “This looks like as close as we’re going to get to this house,” she said. “I haven’t been here before. The preacher of the local Baptist church told me about the family and asked me to see them. He said they have no electricity and cook in their fireplace.”
“Oh my,” I said, trying to imagine. “How many children?”
“A handicapped father and his wife and three little ones.” She opened her car door and turned her back to me, slipping on her galoshes. I did the same. I now wore my saddle shoes to work. I’d never expected to have a job where I’d wear saddle shoes, much less galoshes, but they made sense for tromping through the fields and woods of Grace County.
“Let’s see what we can see,” Charlotte said, getting out of the car.
The trail reminded me of the wooded footpath to the Harts’ house, until we came to a ramshackle little bridge above a small ravine.
“Good heavens!” Charlotte said, which was exactly what I was thinking. “They don’t pay us enough for this work.” She laughed. “Perhaps we should cross this one at a time?” she said, taking a tentative step onto the bridge. She gripped the railing which ran on only one side of the bridge and which was constructed of branches in all shapes and sizes.
“You’re sure this is the right way?” I wasn’t afraid of crossing the bridge—even if it collapsed, it wasn’t all that far to the shallow ravine below—but I couldn’t imagine a family using the bridge regularly.
“Yes, I was warned about this bridge, if you can call it that.”
Charlotte was halfway across when one of the boards gave way beneath her foot. I watched in horror as her right leg slipped through the hole while her left leg twisted beneath her with a terrible crack. “Oh my God, oh my God!” she cried. “I can’t move. My leg!”
I rushed forward as quickly as I dared on the uneven boards of the bridge. By the time I reached her, I knew we were in terrible trouble. Her left leg was bent at an unnatural angle, her arms outstretched to keep her from completely falling through the gap in the bridge. She looked like a broken marionette.
“Oh, Charlotte!” I said. “Let me help you out of there.”
“Don’t touch my leg!” she said
“I won’t,” I reassured her. I could barely look at her leg. The pain had to be excruciating.
“I’m going to try to lift you out,” I said, wondering how I would manage. “Try to relax and go limp.”
“No, you won’t be able to. You’ll need to go for help.”
“Let me try.” I stood behind her and reached beneath her arms and pulled upward. I felt the strain in my back and worried the entire bridge would give way and toss both of us into the ravine below, but it held. I was amazed at my own strength, and I was able to get her body high enough that she could pull her right leg from the gap. I lowered her as gently as my back would allow, but she still cried out in pain. “Lie down, Charlotte,” I said.
She had no fight in her at all, and she let me help her lie down.
“I need to get help,” I said. “Do you know how close we are to the house?”
She didn’t answer. Her face had gone absolutely white, her eyes closed, and for a frightening moment I thought I might have killed her by lifting her out of the bridge. I felt her wrist for a pulse. It was slow, but it was there. I had a terrible sense of déjà vu, remembering the accident two years ago, but I shook my head to clear it and got to my feet. I had to keep my wits about me. I forced myself to look at her leg, already swollen above her boots. I didn’t dare move it.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I said, making my way across the other side of the bridge and onto the path. The undergrowth was even thicker here, and I moved as quickly as I could, hoping I’d be able to find the family hidden in these woods.
Necessary Lies Page 10