Westminster West

by Jessie Haas

  “Here,” Mother said urgently, and for a moment Sue thought she might actually need the chamber pot. But the nausea passed.

  “I’ll get your nightgown.” Mother opened the closet door, and Sue pushed the red book underneath the mattress.

  Then she was undressed—Mother’s hands were cool—and dressed in her nightgown and slipped between the sheets. A lavender sachet was put into the pillowcase, its clean, sharp scent promoting sleep. Blinds drawn.

  “Any better?” Mother whispered.

  Sue nodded. It felt like a huge motion, like jumping out of the haymow. After a moment she heard the soft click of the door shutting.

  The heavy smell of roasting chicken hung on the air. If she opened her eyes, Sue thought she would be able to see it, like a streak of grease. But after a time it receded, and only the scent of lavender remained.

  When she awakened, it was dark outside, and Mother stood at the edge of the bed, nearly invisible in her calico print dress. Sue could smell mint tea.

  “Are you awake?” Mother asked softly.

  “Yes.”

  “I thought you might like this now.” There was a light chink as Mother set the little porcelain teapot on the bedside table, and next to it one of her thin china teacups in its saucer. “Let me help you sit up.” She tucked a spare pillow behind Sue’s back.

  Sue felt weak, and clean inside, and very light, like a leaf. It was good to hear the tea poured, to hold the china cup by its curlicued handle and touch the delicate rim to her lips. Mother sat on the edge of the bed to watch her drink. They couldn’t see each other’s faces.

  The moment had a piercing sweetness. Mother in the shadows was a mother from a song, no longer her astringent self, but all made up of love and tenderness. Sue felt carried back to much younger days, cared for the way she had been only as a little child. Tears welled, aching, in her eyes, and slowly receded.

  “That better?” Mother asked when most of the tea was gone.

  “Yes,” Sue said. She was aware of keeping her voice thin and weak-sounding, not to forfeit this attention.

  “Clare helped me with supper and dishes,” Mother said. “It’s good for her to help.”

  Sue put cup and saucer on the unseen table with a perilous-sounding clatter. “Was Mrs. Coombs all right?” She had a queasy memory of Mother helping the old lady up the path to her front door, an unpainted house, a small neat dooryard with a wide growth of goldenrod surrounding it. The yard had once been larger, but care of it had been given up.

  Mother sighed. “I wish I thought so, Susan.” It was strange to hear Mother sound unsure. It made Sue feel grown up.

  “What’s the matter with her?”

  “She has a weak heart,” Mother said. “It takes twice the work to make a living on that hill as it does here in the valley. She doesn’t have the strength, and poor Johnny doesn’t have the mind.”

  The words of Father’s diary flashed in Sue’s mind: “Eliza Coombs there with her little boy—Tolman’s wound still troubles him very much.” Now Tolman was dead, and Johnny was grown, taking care of her himself, dragging her over the buggy wheel and ripping her skirt.

  “What will become of them?”

  “I don’t know,” Mother said with a sharp sigh. “If the Lord’s going to provide, He’d better snap to it! There, it’s Sunday, and I’ve said something I shouldn’t. I’m going to bed before the day’s a total loss.”

  9

  WHEN SUE AWAKENED, the sun was high, and breakfast sounds had begun: the coffee grinder and, out in the yard, Mother’s voice. Clare must be helping.

  It’s good for her to help. Sue burrowed into the pillow. Her nausea was gone, but she felt achy and thinned out somehow. She had dreamed all night: marching soldiers, a red calf in the grass. When she dozed, the soldiers marched straight up to the calf; fear that they would trample it snapped her eyes wide open. Then a barn was burning, the calf bawled—

  She awoke again with a jolt. Mother was at the door, her face not dim, half seen and tender, but sharp, full of the day’s cares. She evaluated Sue the way Father looked the horses over in the morning.

  “A day in bed won’t do you a bit of harm.”

  Sue raised up on her elbows, about to protest. It was Monday, washday. Already the water would be heating in the boiler.

  “No,” Mother said, “stay right where you are! If you feel like eating, Clare will bring you breakfast.”

  When Clare came in, it felt like yesterday’s double vision. A flushed face, slightly resentful, shoulders squared against the load: That was usually Sue’s own face, glimpsed in the mirror above Clare’s bureau. With a start that seemed to jolt her stomach Sue saw Clare’s white hands place the tray on the bedside table, her own brown hands reach out for the tea and dark-burned toast.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “The wash—”

  “We’ll manage,” Clare said briskly—just like Mother. Playacting, Sue thought, listening to Clare’s quick steps down the stairs. Clare was always playacting.

  Of course they were encouraged to playact, weren’t they? Everything she’d learned about becoming a woman was a form of disguise. Mask your strength. Lower your voice. Never seem to be angry or to perspire.

  Yet the work, the everlasting work. Wash, sew, cook, preserve, briskly, efficiently, and without ever complaining. All this to be accomplished by the very same person. Tie on a clean apron and take up your work. Take off the apron and pretend you don’t know what the word work means.

  This was a woman’s life in Westminster West, and Father should have known that. He had a mother, who did the same things. But he had been away a long time, with men only. He must have believed that Jane Wilcox’s “mild, sweet expression” told everything about her.

  At noon, flushed, chin high, mouth firm, Clare came with the dinner tray. Now she’s being gallant! Sue thought. But she knew how Clare felt: tired and dreading the afternoon. Washday went on and on.

  All right, she thought, when Clare had taken the tray away. She didn’t feel particularly sick anymore. Time to get up and help. She stood, reaching for her dress. But a wave of darkness rolled up from beneath her eyes, her knees weakened, and she found herself sitting half collapsed on the bed again.

  She waited for her head to clear. Sometimes this happened when she stood up too quickly.

  After a minute she pushed herself upright. At once the floorboards spun and sank. She squeezed her eyes shut. Head … stomach … Lie down. But the pillow was so far away, a long, dizzy plunge.

  Slowly she lowered herself. By the time her cheek touched the pillow her whole body was shaking. She lay on her side for a long time, not daring even to turn over.

  At last she rolled onto her back, inch by inch. The spirit level in her head hesitated. She could almost feel the little bubble quiver, and settle.

  I am sick. A spinning, sinking feeling, as if her head were full of maple keys, fluttering to the ground. Don’t move. Don’t move.

  “… a weakness brought on by exposure to the Southern climate.”

  By midafternoon, when Mother came up, Sue felt a little better, but only the smallest motion was allowed. Any more and she seemed to cross a boundary into sickness. Stay here, the spirit level said. This is the balance point—this narrow range.

  Mother felt her forehead, with a hand that was rough and red and smelled of soap. “No fever. Well, you do see dizziness with the grippe sometimes. I’m sure you’ll feel perfectly well tomorrow.”

  But all night the Grand Army of the Republic passed in review before Sue’s dreaming eyes. The blue legs moved in unison, ranks stretching unbroken to the horizon. The boots tramped steadily, the bayonets pricked the sky, on and on in monstrous uniformity.

  10

  THE NEXT MORNING Sue got herself as far as the hallway. But the ranks of stairs were like the soldiers’ legs. They set off the spinning, and she turned back, leaning on the wall, and lay down again. “I’m sending for Dr. Melton!” Mother said.

  After
breakfast Father came upstairs. “Susie! Not like you to be sick!”

  “And ironing day.” Sue could smell the flatirons heating and hear the brisk clip-clop as Ed rode away on Bright.

  “Clare’s helping,” Father said with a hint of pride.

  “Oh, good!” Sue heard herself say, quick as a knife. “Every girl should learn how to iron!”

  Father drew his mouth down to keep himself from smiling. Sue felt her face go red. She hadn’t meant to say that. It had said itself. The mean, quick-witted person who lived inside her said these things, quicker than she could think of them.

  “Still full of vinegar, anyway,” Father said, almost admiringly. He stood turning his straw hat between his hands. He’d been up and working two hours already, had his breakfast, and now onward, in the perpetual rush to keep up with summer. He had taken this minute out, but what to do with it? “Get better now, all right?”

  Sue’s heart thudded suddenly, so hard she thought he might hear it. They were alone together. The diary was under the mattress, just below her hand and hip. Could she bring it out? Could she possibly just … show it to him? Say, “I found this”? Wait for what he said next?

  Shockingly the vision of his white legs, his dark curling hair passed before her mind’s eye. She felt herself blush.

  “Well, Susie, got to make hay while the sun shines.” His smile deepened the creases beside his eyes. So many smiles, so many long hours squinting under a straw hat, forking the hay and driving the horses across the vast green hill, so many years. Maybe he really had forgotten. How could she remind him? “A man’s head …”

  “Okay,” she started to say. But he was already gone; his footsteps were halfway down the stairs.

  That was like Father, always just out of reach. The kitchen door closed, the horses’ big hooves thudded slowly in the yard, and the mowing machine wheels rumbled. Sue felt a sudden surge of loneliness. She reached under the mattress for the red book and lay with her fingers lightly touching its spine.

  For a long time the house was still. The smell of hot iron and hot cloth, tinged with starch and blueing, drifted in the window, and the sound of voices. Clare. Clare talking with Mother, Clare being reminded to lick her finger and touch it lightly to the flatiron to test its heat. Clare, who before this did only the daintiest of pressing. Clare should learn to iron—that was true. So there was some good in being sick.

  After a while buggy wheels and hoofbeats, Ed’s voice in the yard, sounding light, cheerful, and false. Sue thought, Ed doesn’t like the new doctor. Ed didn’t realize how often his eloquent voice gave him away, or else he didn’t care.

  It was hard to see what Ed objected to, though. Dr. Melton was young and round-eyed and very serious, but his voice was kind, and he managed to conduct a thorough examination without making the process seem immodest. He was interested in the nausea; he probed her head with his fingertips; he looked inside her ears and asked after other symptoms. But all Sue had to report was dizziness.

  At last Dr. Melton sat down in the rocking chair, looking thoughtful. He was sweating. Mother stepped to the door and called for Clare to bring a pitcher of ice water.

  “Well, Mrs. Gorham,” he said after a refreshing sip, “I find no organic cause for your daughter’s malady.”

  Mother was pouring for Sue. The stream of water jerked and missed the glass for a second, slopping onto the bedclothes. “No—no possibility of consumption?”

  A coldness spread down Sue’s back at the word, and Clare sat down on the bed, as if her knees had suddenly loosened.

  “No,” Dr. Melton said firmly. “There’s no reason to suppose anything of the kind. But that doesn’t mean there is no cause for concern. Thousands of young women take to their beds each year with similar complaints and many never resume a normal life.”

  Mother’s eyes widened. “Are you suggesting—”

  “Nerves,” Dr. Melton said simply. “As a girl’s body becomes ready to accept woman’s role, her system becomes more susceptible to the stresses of modern life—”

  “Dr. Melton”—Mother interrupted impatiently—“this is Westminster West. We don’t live a very modern life. Are you sure it isn’t just a touch of the sun?”

  Sue jumped. “… a weakness brought on by exposure to the Southern climate.”

  “It’s possible that the heat of the past few days may have overstressed a delicately balanced system,” Dr. Melton said, a little defensively. Suddenly the bed trembled. Sue glanced up. Clare had turned her face away from Dr. Melton, and she was laughing. Sue pressed her lips thin and flat to hold back her own smile.

  “I must stress the importance of rest. A light, airy room like this one, dainty, nourishing foods, such as fruits and junkets, and plenty of quiet, to allow the nerves time to recover.”

  “Very well.”

  Dr. Melton frowned at the novel on the bedside table.

  “Not so much reading,” he said. “In woman the heart must predominate, not the head. Excessive reading can cause mental imbalance. Those poor girls who are entering colleges now will pay a terrible price. But, Mrs. Gorham, with care and good nursing this vertigo should pass.”

  “Well, thank you for your advice,” Mother said, escorting him out of the room. She closed the door behind him, but Sue and Clare waited to hear footsteps going down the stairs before daring to laugh out loud.

  “Oh, Clary! Did you ever hear anything so ridiculous?”

  “‘A delicately balanced system!’ I nearly said, ‘Do you mean Sue?’”

  Something in Clare’s words was hurtful, but it didn’t matter. For the moment they were as close as they’d ever been. “Doesn’t he know?” Sue said. “Farm girls don’t have nerves. It must have been the sun.”

  “You were out picking currants for a long time,” Clare said hopefully. It was a comfort to be able to sense Clare’s thoughts. Sue had spent her whole life misunderstanding Father and Mother, but Clare she did know.

  “I’m going to get up,” she said, putting her water glass on the tray. Dr. Melton had made the whole thing seem silly, but also a little dangerous, as if merely by feeling faint, she had joined the permanent sisterhood of invalids. She pushed back the covers and stood.

  “Susie!”

  “Thought you had a little more sense!”

  She was back on the pillows, and Mother’s face, Clare’s face were near and anxious. “Are you all right?” Clare asked.

  “I thought … he was so silly. I thought … Did I fall?”

  “Mostly on the bed,” Mother said, tucking the sheet firmly around Sue’s shoulders. “Maybe he wasn’t as silly as he sounded, but I’m bound to say, I don’t know what could have happened to upset your nerves!”

  “Nothing! Nothing’s happened!” Sue felt herself starting to cry. “It’s stupid! I’m not sick!”

  “Of course not. Just rest, dear. Close your eyes.” Mother’s hand was on Sue’s brow, and the cool pressure weighted her eyelids, pushed her down into sleep.

  11

  THAT SLEEP LASTED for days. Sue lay still, her head pressing a narrow dent in the pillow. Much of the time she seemed to dream, but nothing was clear even then—a sense of sharp tossing horns, sometimes, or a high and heavy thing looming over her.

  She must have eaten, she must have used the chamber pot, but afterward she couldn’t remember that. She only remembered opening her eyes to see Mother at the bedside watching intently, Ed reading a book, Clare rubbing cucumber cream into her reddened hands. Voices: Dr. Melton, Dr. Campbell, Reverend Stevens. “No, nothing hurts,” she remembered saying to someone, and it was true. But the world seemed too bright and complex to look at. She wanted to dive deep into sleep, which seemed to contain some knowledge or nourishment she needed.

  After a few days Mother said, “I’m afraid they know and won’t tell me. I’m afraid it is consumption!”

  “Nonsense, Janey!” Aunt Mary Braley. They sounded as if they were at the doorway. “Dr. Campbell would tell you. He’s got no mor
e tact than a turtle, that man!”

  A little choked laugh from Mother. “Aunt Mary! Oh, I’m sorry. I haven’t got my mother anymore. I’ve got to cry to someone. But I don’t understand this business of nerves. That’s for rich city women, isn’t it?”

  Mother’s voice, Aunt Mary’s voice were like thoughts in Sue’s head. Without opening her eyes, she could see the two of them: a big dark bulk for Aunt Mary and Mother little, wiry, and quick.

  “Well now, Janey, we’re more like city women here in Westminster West than we used to be, don’t you think? Seems to me we’re awful genteel. Rhoda Ranney could lift up a barrel of cider and drink from the bung. We’ve declined considerable since those days.”

  “Perhaps we’ve gained in other ways,” Mother suggested.

  “No, Jane, I don’t think you’ve gained s’very much. You’ve got all the work we ever had, and you’ve got to keep your hands nice, too! Be all right if you had two bodies. You could work one and keep the other ready for company! But I’ve yet to meet the woman who could manage that. It’s no wonder the young girls are afraid to try! But there! You said you missed your mother, and I’ve given you a scold. That’s motherly, ain’t it? Go and get done what you need to. I’ll set and watch Sue awhile.”

  Sue lay listening to the humph and rustle of Aunt Mary settling her bulk in the chair. After a moment the old woman asked quietly, “You awake, Susie?”

  Sue opened her eyes.

  “Want I should read to you? I brought a book, but I can’t seem to read to myself. Spent so many years readin’ while I churned, it’s hard for me to get the good of a book settin’ still. I miss the cream sloshin’—used to think I was like some old sailor missin’ the waves!”

  A pause. Aunt Mary sighed largely. “Well, my tongue does run away with me, and that’s a fact! I’ll just set and keep still if I can.”