“I don’t feel no better,” Mama said. She said it like she resented being asked how she felt. It was completely unlike Mama to answer the preacher in that tone of voice.
“Would you like a biscuit?” I said, and passed the plate to Preacher Rice.
Muir seen that Mama wasn’t at herself, and he tried to steer the conversation in another direction. “I like the new electric lights in the church,” he said.
“It makes a big difference,” the preacher said. “Now I can actually read my text at the night service.”
“Lantern light is mellow,” I said.
“It’s a lot easier to read scripture by an electric light,” the preacher said.
“Someday we ought to replace the woodstove in the church with a furnace,” Papa said.
“When the war’s over and the soldiers come home we can add onto the church,” the preacher said. “Maybe we can put in new windows and build a Sunday school building. When this war is over we’ll start a lot of things.”
I wished the preacher hadn’t mentioned the war and the boys coming home. It broke my heart to think Troy wouldn’t be returning except in a casket. I hated for anybody to remind Mama of the war and of Troy.
“Maybe the Depression will come back after the war,” Papa said.
“The economy is booming,” the preacher said. “There may be a slowdown, but there’ll never be a Depression again. I don’t think the Lord will let it happen.”
Mama didn’t say nothing else throughout the meal, and she didn’t hardly eat nothing either. Whatever was wrong with her it had killed her appetite. For dessert we had peaches and vanilla wafers, but she didn’t eat none.
After everybody got up from the table I helped Mama to the living room, and then went back to the kitchen to wash the dishes. When I heard the preacher speak to Mama again a shadow of sick dread passed through me.
“Mrs. Richards, I’ll keep you in my prayers,” the preacher said. “The Lord will look after his own.”
“The Lord didn’t look after Troy,” Mama said.
“It’s hard for us mortals to understand the ways of the Lord,” the preacher said.
“I prayed every day for Troy and it didn’t do no good,” Mama said.
There was quiet in the living room and I felt ice sink through my legs into my feet.
“Julie’s not feeling good,” Papa said.
I dried my hands and hurried into the living room. “Mama needs to rest,” I said. I helped her up and led her to the bedroom. As soon as we was out of the room the preacher started talking about the war again.
When I took Mama to the doctor in April of 1945 he couldn’t find what was giving her the headaches. He said it must be a migraine. It was a migraine that made her confused, made her act strange. Dr. Fauntleroy scratched his head and said if the headaches didn’t go away he’d send her to the hospital in Asheville for x-rays. He give her some pain pills and said he expected the headaches would clear up. By then it was late spring of 1945.
Sharon come down one weekend to visit. I wished she hadn’t come because she reminded Mama of Troy. When she arrived I whispered to her that Mama had been sick and it was important not to upset her.
“I didn’t plan to upset her,” Sharon said.
“I know you didn’t.”
Sharon had brought Mama a box of candy, one of the big samplers that had been hard to get since the war started. “It’s a sign that the war is almost over, that you can get chocolate again,” Sharon said.
“I pray that the war will be over soon,” I said.
“The other boys will be coming home,” Sharon said, and I seen a tear in her eye.
When Sharon give the candy to Mama, Mama nodded and set the box on the table beside her chair. It surprised me that she didn’t thank Sharon. I knowed she’d lost her appetite for almost everything, but Mama had always been the most polite person I’d ever seen.
“How are you feeling, Mrs. Richards?” Sharon said. Mama looked at her without answering. “I hope you’re feeling better.” Mama still didn’t speak and Sharon went on and told her she’d quit working at the dime store and now worked as a sales clerk at Efird’s department store. She said she enjoyed selling clothes, now that the store could get clothes again.
“What are you doing here?” Mama said.
Sharon looked at me and then turned back to Mama. “I’m Sharon,” she said. “Sharon Peace that was engaged . . .” Sharon stopped and turned to me. I thought she was going to cry, and I thought I was going to cry too. It had been several months since she’d come for a visit. But even so I was stunned that Mama would say that to her.
Since we didn’t have a telephone I had to walk down to the store on the highway the next week to call Dr. Fauntleroy and tell him Mama was no better and seemed a little worse. I had to wait a long time before he come to the phone. When I told him how Mama had acted to Sharon he said it was time to take her to Asheville for an x-ray. And when they’d done the x-ray it would be time to bring her back to see him.
“Is she continent?” he said.
“What?”
“Does she wet herself?”
“Only sometimes,” I said.
As soon as the doctor hung up I tried to think how I’d get Mama to Asheville. We could catch the bus at the store, but how was I going to get her to the store? She couldn’t hardly walk without falling. I put another dime in the slot and called Effie in Flat Rock. When she finally answered the phone I told her her and Alvin would have to drive Mama from the house to catch the bus.
“We won’t drive her to the store,” Effie said.
“Why not?” I said. “Somebody has to.”
“Now that we can get gas we’ll drive her to Asheville. Mama’s in no shape to get on and off a bus anyway.”
If Effie had been there, I would have hugged her and kissed her. She must have heard in my voice how scared I was. She must have been scared herself. For all our lives Mama had never been really sick before.
At the hospital in Asheville they put Mama in their machine and took pictures of her head from every side. She’d never had an x-ray before. To calm her down I told her it was just like having your picture made. Except this was a picture of the inside of your head.
“Maybe there ain’t nothing in there,” she said. It was good to see her try to be funny.
After they made the x-ray she talked to the doctor in a white coat who asked her to stand on one foot and then the other. He asked her to look at the point of a pencil and he moved it back and forth from left to right. Then he asked her what day of the week and month it was. When Mama said it was a silly question and she wouldn’t answer it he wrote something down on his clipboard.
When we got Mama home that day she had wet herself. I took a towel and dried the backseat of Alvin’s car the best I could. After that I put a towel in the chair for her to set on. And I found myself washing almost every day, the way you do when you have a baby and lots of diapers and sheets to clean. Three days later I walked down to the store and called Dr. Fauntleroy. I could tell from the way he said hello that he didn’t have good news.
“Annie, as you know, your mother is very sick,” he said.
“She has never been sick before.”
“That may be,” he said. “But she’s sick now. I’m afraid she has a brain tumor.”
“Is it cancer?” I said.
“The x-ray can’t tell if it’s malignant or not.”
My mouth felt dry as sandpaper. My tongue stuck to my lower lip. “How big is it?” I said.
“Almost the size of a large egg. I don’t know how fast it’s growing. She may have had it for some time.”
“What should we do? What can we do?”
“That’s for you and your family to decide. Surgery is the usual option. It could be removed, hoping, if it’s cancer, the malignancy hasn’t spread. If it has spread, there’s not a lot that can be done. Talk it over with your father and the rest of your family and let me know what you decide.”
As I walked home I kept repeating in my mind what Dr. Fauntleroy had said. I was hardly aware of the cars passing me until Carl Whitmire stopped in his pickup truck and offered me a ride to the church. I hope I thanked him when he let me out, but I don’t remember. All I could think of as I walked to the house was of that dark tumor the size of a big egg that showed up on the x-ray.
At the house Mama was laying on the floor in front of the fireplace. I reckon she’d got up to walk to the bedroom where the pee pot was and had fell. It took all the strength I had to get her back into the chair. And then I had to get her up again to change her clothes. I knowed then I could never leave her alone again.
When Papa and Velmer and Muir come home that Friday I told them what the doctor had said about the size of the tumor and about the operation that needed to be done.
“I don’t think that doctor knows what he’s talking about,” Papa said. “What if he’s wrong and they saw open her head for nothing?”
“Something bad is wrong with her,” I said. “Anybody can see that.”
“Did he tell you how likely it was she would be cured?” Muir said.
“He didn’t say.”
“What is the risk of doing nothing?” Velmer said. “Sometimes a tumor will go away.”
“I don’t think this is going away,” I said.
“Julie may be just run down,” Papa said. “What she needs is time to build up her strength. Now that the weather is warmer she’ll get better.”
I know that Papa loved Mama, but for some reason he couldn’t stand to think of her being sick. She’d always took care of him and the rest of us. He refused to consider just how sick she was. I seen he was going to keep pretending it was just something temporary, like a bad cold. It surprised me how stubborn he was about it.
When Effie come that Sunday she said she agreed with me: if there was any chance of helping Mama by operating on her brain and taking out the tumor, then it had to be done.
“What if it left her without any sense?” Papa said.
“It’s the only chance she has to live,” I said.
“Where would they do the operation?” Muir said.
“Dr. Fauntleroy said the best place to take her is to the Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem.”
“That’s a long way off,” Velmer said.
“It’s what has to be done,” I said. I seen that Muir and Velmer had come over to my side. That was four of us against Papa and he had to give in. I think he also seen it would have to be done.
“How will she go there?” Effie said.
“She’ll have to be took there in an ambulance,” I said. “She’s too sick to ride that far in a car.”
That night instead of sleeping Mama kept talking about the old days on Gap Creek. She remembered the awful flood on Christmas when both her and Papa had almost drowned. “There’s water coming in under the door,” she said, and pointed to the door to the front room. It took me a minute to see that she thought she was still back there in Mr. Pendergast’s house.
“There’s no water,” I said. “Look, the floor is dry.”
“If it gets to the hearth, it’ll put out the fire,” she said.
“You’re at home,” I said. “There’s no flood.”
“Hank, where are you?” she called. I bent down and looked into her face, and then she seemed to remember where she was.
“You was just dreaming,” I said.
“Hank left me in the middle of that flood,” she said. “I thought he must have drowneded.”
I put my hand on hers and asked if she wanted a cup of coffee. She shook her head.
Eighteen
It took a while for Dr. Fauntleroy to arrange the operation in Winston-Salem and to schedule an ambulance to take Mama to the hospital there. By then the war with Germany was over. President Roosevelt had died back in April, but I was so concerned about Mama I hadn’t hardly noticed. The day the ambulance come for Mama it rained so hard the road looked like a river. Water stood in pools in the yard. Rain fell out of the sky in sheets. Everything seemed to be washing away.
The ambulance was a kind of gray-green, the color of snot. It backed up to the back porch and one of the attendants stepped out in the mud where we throwed dishwater and scraps for the chickens. He tried to wipe his shoes on the steps. The driver got out too and they opened the back door of the ambulance as rain and runoff from the roof soaked them and they pulled out a stretcher. I led them into the living room where Mama set in her chair.
“Sorry to drip on everything,” one of the men said.
“That’s OK,” I told him.
When Mama seen the men in white coats with the stretcher she give a kind of cry and turned away.
“They’re going to take you to the hospital,” I said. “At the hospital they’re going to make you well.” I’d not told her she was going all the way to Winston-Salem. There was no use to tell her that in her condition.
“No,” Mama said. “I want to stay home.”
“Don’t you want to cure your headache?”
Mama didn’t say no more. She looked away from me toward the fire.
“I’ll be coming with you,” I said. “And I’ll stay with you.”
With the help of Velmer and Muir we finally got Mama onto the stretcher. She looked tiny once she was laying there under the white sheet. She’d fell off more than I’d realized. She’d always been strong and worked so hard, it was hard to believe it was her. Her hair spread out on the pillow. I got my coat and overnight case and followed them out the back door. I held an umbrella over Mama as they slid the stretcher into the ambulance, and then I climbed in and set on a kind of jump seat beside her.
After they closed the door and started driving out of the yard I seen Mama trying to look out the window. She turned to look at the house and yard and the arborvitae tree as we drove away. I think maybe she knowed it was the last time she’d ever see the place. She looked until we went around the bend and the house and barn was out of sight. And then she closed her eyes.
Papa and Velmer and Effie and Alvin followed us in Alvin’s car—Muir had volunteered to stay at the house and take care of the cow and horse and chickens. It was raining so hard you couldn’t hardly see them through the back window. I held Mama’s hand and hoped she’d sleep on the trip. I’d give her one of the pain pills Dr. Fauntleroy had prescribed. The ambulance bounced on the rough muddy road, and Mama opened her eyes and then closed them again.
The trip to Winston-Salem was one of the strangest things I’d ever done. We was going all that way at such an expense and we didn’t even know if it would do any good. I’d never gone that far from home in my life, and neither had Mama. I don’t reckon Mama had ever traveled farther than Asheville. I kept my eyes on Mama but she seemed to be asleep, or half asleep. It was a shame she was taking her first trip and didn’t even know it, or was too sick to enjoy it.
That drive is all a blur to me now, of driving through towns and getting splashed with the spray from big trucks, of winding around and around the curves on the highway down out of the mountains. My ears popped and I thought I was going to throw up as we turned and lurched. I swallowed and set real still to make my stomach settle. I expected all the rocking and turning to wake Mama up, but it didn’t.
When we got down into the foothills it was still raining, but I was sweating. It felt like there was a heater on in the ambulance. The windows got fogged up and I wiped the one closest to me to look out. I wondered if I’d took a fever. It was steamy hot. And then I seen the heat was coming from the outside. As we got down out of the mountains into the flat country it got hotter and hotter. I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand.
We passed through little towns and big towns. We passed towns with water tanks and grain elevators. We passed a pile of sawdust that was burning, and we run alongside a railroad track and passed a train. There was so many soldiers on the train you could see them standing up and looking out the windows. We crossed a long bridge over a
river that was all pimpled with falling rain.
When we finally did get to Winston-Salem it took us forever to wind around the streets to get to the hospital. The place had a special smell that filled every inch of air. It was a scent I knowed but couldn’t name. And then I recognized it was tobacco. There was long brick buildings that was warehouses for tobacco.
When we finally got Mama into a room in the hospital it was after dark. She’d gone to sleep in the ambulance and had not waked up when they wheeled her into the elevator and up to the fourth floor. I waited with her in the room for the doctor, and Papa and the others waited in the hall outside. When the doctor come in I told him Mama was asleep. He looked at her and lifted one of her eyelids. “She’s in a coma,” he said.
The word coma shot through me like a long, cold knife. A coma meant she wouldn’t wake up.
The doctor looked at the papers Dr. Fauntleroy had sent, and the x-rays from Asheville. He frowned and shook his head. “You have waited too long,” he said.
“Can’t you operate?” I said.
“Wouldn’t do any good; she’s already in a coma.”
“We have drove all the way from Henderson County,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” the doctor said.
I asked him if he would talk to Papa. I’d never felt so hopeless. We walked out in the hall where Papa and Velmer was standing, and Effie and Alvin set on a bench nearby. The doctor looked at the charts on the clipboard and then spoke in a very low voice, “Mr. Richards, I’m afraid it is too late to operate; she is already in a coma.”
“She was awake when we left the house,” Papa said.
“Her condition is advancing rapidly,” the doctor said.
“We was told you could operate and take out the brain tumor,” Effie said. She begun to cry. She lifted her glasses and wiped her eyes with a handkerchief.
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