Most times, BJ and Jake had beds in the back of the ward. BJ said them doctors stood around his bed almost ever day talking about him like he weren’t even there. BJ said sometimes he would break wind while they was standing there to teach them a lesson for treating him like that. He said they would go on talking like nothing had happened, but they also crunched up their noses. Most times, BJ acted like nothing had happened neither. Sometimes he would say, “P.U.! Which one of you made that smell?” They just acted like he didn’t say nothing.
BJ told me about a time them doctors stood around his bed. “He’s from West Virginia, isn’t he?” a doctor asked one time. “Perhaps consanguinity is an issue we should investigate. It might benefit our research.” Some of them other doctors started laughing until another in the group gave them the evil eye and they shut up real fast.
Them doctors should have investigated how smart BJ was. They had no idea he figured out all the stuff they said about him.
BJ loved words, and he loved the sound of consanguinity. He had to tell me that big word about five times afore I could recollect it. BJ recollected it just hearing it that one time. He had to know what it meant. The hospital had a dictionary in the little library they had for them kids. BJ went and looked up that big word. He said it meant them doctors thought Mama and Daddy was related, like first cousins or something.
BJ asked Mama why they would say something like that and laugh about it. Gran heard him and shook her head. “People like to make fun of West Virginians by saying they marry relatives,” Mama told BJ. “Generations back, it was a common thing for cousins to marry, and not just in West Virginia. Back then, people didn’t know it could cause the children to be more likely to have diseases that are passed on by parents. From what I hear, it still happens with royal folks in other countries. BJ, when people make jokes about it, they be saying West Virginians is ignorant and stupid because their parents married relatives.”
BJ’s eyes got wide. “Why would they say things like that, Mama? Why do they make fun of people just because of where they be borned? They make fun of Jake, too, just because his skin is darker colored than theirs. I hear them sometimes when they know he’s not listening. I can’t make any sense of it. I ain’t heard none of them making fun of somebody just because their eyes or their hair be a different color.”
“It’s hard to say, BJ,” Mama said. “Do you remember how the chickens we used to have pecked each other?”
“Yep,” BJ answered.
“When they peck on another chicken, they be saying, ‘I’m better’n you, and don’t you forget it.’ Them chickens don’t see that they’s all really the same. They all be chickens—nothing more, nothing less. Some people be like that, too. They pick on other people so’s they can think they’s more important than they really be. I feel sad for people like that. They must not feel very good about theirselves to put down other folks. They’s so busy trying to puff theirselves up that they can’t appreciate and learn from people the good Lord puts in their life.”
BJ tightened his hands into little fists. “Mama,” he said, “I get so mad when they say that stuff. I want to punch them!” He punched the air to make sure we knowed exactly what he meant.
“You could do that, BJ, and it might make you feel better for a while. But you would just be trying to puff yourself up, too.”
“What can I do, then, Mama?”
“It can be more fun to laugh at yourself, BJ. You’re a right smart boy. You’ll figure it out.”
The next time BJ went to the hospital, him and Jake did figure it out. BJ asked Mama iffen him and me could buy a piece of licorice when we stopped at a filling station on the way to Ohio. She said okay and gived us each a penny. I ate mine on the trip, but BJ stuck his in his pocket. When I asked him why, he said he had something special to do with it at the hospital.
When he got to come home a few weeks later, BJ told me what him and Jake did. Nurse Chapel used to come in to wake him and Jake up in the mornings. She would stand by BJ’s bed and say, “How’s our little hillbilly feeling today?” When she finished up with him, she would stand by Jake’s bed and say, “How’s our little colored boy feeling today?” They hated them wake-up calls. She didn’t say nothing like that to them other kids—just “How’s Bill feeling?” or “How’s Fred this morning?”
BJ and Jake snuck in the janitor’s closet and pulled some straws out of a broom. In the playroom, BJ grabbed one of the little tins with eight watercolors that them kids used for painting pictures. BJ always had water and a cup aside his bed, so they didn’t have to grab that from nowhere. They had to be real sneaky to get by the nurses and go into the toddler ward. They grabbed a can of baby powder offen the changing table.
None of the kids in the ward liked Nurse Chapel. BJ and Jake told them what they planned to do. Them kids was happy to help. One of them had a little alarm clock he kept on the stand aside his bed. He set the alarm real early so’s they could all get up afore Nurse Chapel comed in to wake them.
Then a couple of them kids helped BJ and Jake get ready. All of them climbed back up in bed and waited. They couldn’t hardly hold back the giggles that stuck in their throats.
Nurse Chapel walked in the room, all prim and proper like always. After checking the rest of them kids, she walked back to BJ’s and Jake’s beds. First she stopped by BJ. “How’s our little hillbilly doing today?” she asked as she throwed back the cover.
“He’s just fine,” Jake said. He sat straight up in bed. Nurse Chapel screamed. He had broom straw sticking out from a baseball cap to look like blond hair. His face was covered with baby powder and his two front teeth was coated with black licorice to look like he didn’t have no teeth there.
BJ sat up in Jake’s bed and said, “Ain’t you going to ask how your little colored boy’s doing today?” He had painted his face and arms and hands ever color of the rainbow. Nurse Chapel screamed again. All them kids started up laughing.
BJ said Nurse Chapel’s face looked like a red balloon about to bust. She grabbed BJ and Jake by the ears and ow, ow, ow, owwed them down to the bathroom to take a bath. BJ said it was worth it. “Aaaaabsoooooolutely!” That’s the way he said it. Nurse Chapel never did say nothing about them being a hillbilly or a colored boy again.
I had misremembered about that. I been wishing I could ask Mama what to do about them mean girls. Maybe she done already told me.
20
It’s about Aunt Ethel Mae’s headaches and Jake.
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1953
Aunt Ethel Mae has another one of them headaches today. We stayed home from church on account of her feeling so bad. I weren’t too sure iffen maybe she just weren’t too tired from staying up so late last night.
But sometimes she looks real sick. I don’t think you can fake getting pale and sweaty and throwing up.
I asked Uncle William how come Aunt Ethel Mae didn’t see a doctor about all them headaches. He said the coal company don’t have the kind of doctor that she needs. When I asked him what kind of doctor she needed, he said, “Never mind.”
Uncle William did tell me he once took her to the company doctor. They had to wait several months to get her a appointment. His face got all red and he kept a-shaking his head when he talked about it. “They been taking money out of my paycheck ever month since I started working in the mines to help pay for a company doctor. Excepten when you do get sick, they make you wait until you’re well or dead afore you get to see one.”
“What did the company doctor say?” I asked.
He rolled his eyes. “That quack only spent a couple minutes listening to your aunt complain. Then he stuck up his hand in front of her face to tell her to shut up and wrote her a prescription for pills.”
“Did them pills help?”
“They turned her into a zombie.”
I ain’t never heard that weird word afore. “What’s a zombie?” I asked.
“The living dead.”
I got all worried. “Au
nt Ethel Mae died and was alive at the same time?”
“No, no. Not like that.” Uncle William grinned, and he don’t do that often. “I saw this here scary movie at the picture show in Charleston. These dead people comed back alive, but they sure didn’t act like their old selves. Their eyes was all glazed over, and they looked at people but didn’t really see them. It’s like their bodies was alive but their brains wasn’t there. That’s the way your aunt Ethel Mae was on them pills.”
“Are there really and truly zombies?” I asked. I kept thinking about Gran and BJ instead of Aunt Ethel Mae. I wish they would come back alive, but not like that.
Uncle William chuckled deep in his throat like the laugh was swallowed and couldn’t get out. Then he looked me in the face and saw I wasn’t kidding. “No, Lydia, them zombies was just made up by some guy that had too much time on his hands.”
That made me feel better. Then I thought about Aunt Ethel Mae again. “What did you do about them pills?”
“I flushed them down the toilet and filled the bottle with aspirin. After a few days, your aunt said, ‘Them pills don’t do me no more good than aspirin.’ She stopped taking them, so that was the end of that.” He looked at me real stern. “You don’t need to be telling her about them pills going down the toilet, you hear?”
“I won’t.” I crossed my heart to promise. I felt real good that Uncle William shared a secret with me, and a little afeared about that there stern look he gived me.
It sure weren’t easy for us to get BJ all the doctoring care he needed. We was all so happy that BJ was going to have his medical bills paid for, even iffen we had to take him to Ohio. Mama once told me that we never could have knowed that the cost would be higher than any amount of money.
She told me that Jake’s mama said the same thing. Them doctors was busy with their young’uns, so mama and her went to the waiting room to drink coffee and talk. Jake’s mama was real glad to get Jake into a white hospital. They moved up to Ohio from Alabama. Her and her husband and Jake’s big sister was all crowded into her brother’s family’s house. She thought Jake would get better care by being part of a study on blood diseases.
Jake’s mama also expected Negroes to be treated better north of the Mason-Dixon Line. But them Ohio doctors and nurses looked at skin color just the same. It made her wonder iffen Jake would have been better off in Alabama. They had lots of friends. Most of their family lived close by down South, and some of them had sickle-cell. “At least they would have understood,” she told Mama. “The Negro doctors would have treated us with respect and done the best they could to help Jake, even if they didn’t have a nice hospital to work in.”
As it turned out, that hospital in Ohio didn’t do BJ or Jake much good, at least as far as I can tell. After one of his hospital stays, BJ told me Jake wasn’t there. He asked Nurse Chapel iffen she knew how Jake was getting on. Nurse Chapel was setting up things on the nightstand aside his bed and didn’t even look at him. “He passed away a couple of weeks ago,” she said, as iffen she was telling him about the weather outside.
BJ said he got so angry that he felt like he had a hornet’s nest inside of him. He hopped offen the bed and stood between Nurse Chapel and the nightstand. “You tell me right now what happened to him!” he yelled.
“Get back in that bed this instant,” she said, grabbing his shoulder.
BJ shrugged off her hand and kept a-staring hard at her. “No, you tell me now.” He started breathing hard and coughing.
“All right,” she said. “Lower your voice. He contracted the flu. Children with sickle-cell anemia have a harder time fighting off illnesses like that. It took his life. Now get back into bed.”
BJ said them hornets inside of him started buzzing so loud that he didn’t hardly know what he was doing. He kept on shouting, “No, no, no! It’s not fair!” Nurse Chapel grabbed his arms, and he started kicking her. He said he barely remembered what happened next. She pushed a button. Some orderlies runned in and held him in bed while Nurse Chapel gived him a shot to calm him down.
Over the next few days, BJ said they forced him to take pills that made him sleep. Maybe that’s what Uncle William meant about being a zombie.
When BJ comed home, he talked a lot about Jake. He said them doctors might of tried to fog up his brain, but he weren’t never forgetting about his best friend. He knowed he was going to see Jake again someday and they would have a good talk about them doctors and nurses. I didn’t say nothing, but I sure didn’t like to hear him saying things like that.
I think about Jake’s mama sometimes. I wonder iffen she knows what happened to BJ and my mama. It sure seems like they have a lot in common, both of them losing their sons and all.
And I also think about BJ and Jake, causing mischief up there in Heaven, keeping the angels right busy.
21
It’s about Mr. Hinkle’s betrothed.
MONDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1953
I couldn’t sleep last night. I kept thinking about talking to Mr. Hinkle again today and how I still feel like I failed my mama. So I was plumb tuckered out this morning. Afore I went out the door to school, Aunt Ethel Mae called to me. “Lydia, me and William decided you should ought to have yourself a new coat for Christmas. He’s going to take us to Charleston tomorrow and drop us off so us girls can shop.”
I wanted to hug her, but I didn’t know iffen I should. “Thank you, Aunt Ethel Mae,” I told her, wanting to bounce up and down but knowing better.
“You’re right welcome,” she said. “Now get on to school with you.”
I forgot all about being wore out as I walked to school. I was excited about going to Charleston and seeing Christmas lights in all them stores. Maybe the Salvation Army band would be playing Christmas carols. I wondered iffen we might get us some hot chocolate at Kresge’s 5 and 10. I could feel that warm cup with that candy-bar smell in my hands already. They put whipped cream and a bright red cherry on top. Me and Mama and BJ did that one time. Uncle William dropped us off while he went to do some errands. We didn’t have no money for fancy gifts, but BJ said looking at them lights and drinking that hot chocolate was the best gifts ever. I thought so, too.
This time, I was going to get me a brand-spanking-new store-bought coat. I figured out I would like me a blue one. And I could tear my old coat into strips to make a quilt. Then I could still keep Gran close to me.
I had me two knots in my stomach today—one on account of thinking about staying after school and the other on account of being excited about my new coat.
After lunch, someone knocked on the door, and Mr. Hinkle went to answer it. A pretty lady with blond hair and blue-green eyes stood there. She had on this dark green suit and a little hat to match. She looked like some Hollywood movie star and smelled like gardenias. All them boys in my class sat up real straight when they seen her.
“Class,” Mr. Hinkle said, “this is Miss Parker. She and I are engaged to be married.” Miss Parker held up her left hand and showed us the ring. My heart felt real funny, like it sunk lower inside me. I ain’t sure why.
“Miss Parker’s family lives in Charleston, and she’s staying with them over the holidays,” Mr. Hinkle said. “We met when we were students at Ohio State. She’s working in Ohio this year, but she’s going to move back to Charleston next summer. We plan to marry in June, and we hope all of you will come.” The two of them looked all goofy-eyed at each other. Really and truly goofy-eyed. My own teacher!
“I invited her to spend the afternoon with us. Will you help her feel welcome?” Mr. Hinkle asked.
“Good afternoon, Miss Parker,” we all sang. I weren’t too sure about her being in our classroom, even iffen she was Mr. Hinkle’s betrothed.
“I hope you really do have yourself a good afternoon,” Bobby blurted out. His face and ears got all red. We all laughed.
Miss Parker laughed, too. “Why, thank you,” she said. “Mr. Hinkle has said such wonderful things about all of you that I couldn’t wait to meet you.”<
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Us girls sat up straighter, too, when she said that. I felt real proud that Mr. Hinkle had told her about us. She walked around as we done our work. One time she bent down over me as I wrote a story. “Lydia,” she whispered, “I understand you write beautiful stories. Maybe you’ll let me read some of them one day.” Then she stood up straight and walked to somebody else’s desk.
I stared after her. I didn’t hear her call nobody else by their name, and I kept trying to puzzle out how come she knowed mine. I got all atwitter thinking about it. Then I got to wondering about staying after school. Was Mr. Hinkle going to tell me to go on home so he could spend time with Miss Parker? I weren’t too sure what to make of it.
When school let out, I didn’t know iffen I should get up and go with them other kids or stay behind. Mr. Hinkle must have figured out I was all confused.
“Lydia,” he said, “after Miss Parker and I walk the other students outside, we’ll be right back.”
Maggie stuck her tongue out at me.
“That’s enough of that, young lady,” Mr. Hinkle said to Maggie. “I’ll see you after school when we get back from Christmas vacation.”
“Yes, Mr. Hinkle,” Maggie said all sticky-sweet-like.
Mr. Hinkle didn’t see Maggie smile when she walked out the door, but I sure did. I bet she was real glad she was going to get to stay after school with Mr. Hinkle. And I didn’t like it nary one little bit. I ain’t sure why it bothered me so much.
I got out a piece of paper and my pencil. I figured with Miss Parker being here, me and Mr. Hinkle wouldn’t be talking about my mama. I would have me a boring time reading want ads instead of telling him about that trial. I felt right relieved and right disappointed at the same time.
When Mr. Hinkle and Miss Parker come in the classroom, they each pulled a chair up close to my desk. I could feel my eyes get wide as I pushed back as far as I could into my seat.
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