It Happened to Nancy

by Beatrice Sparks

  Shortly after the nurse left, I saw Maria hurrying down the street, looking back at our house occasionally as though we or it was coming after her.

  She left a note on the kitchen table telling Dad where to send her check.

  Tuesday, February 25

  12:40 P.M.

  It’s been two weeks since Maria left, and Dad can’t get another maid to come near our house. Most of the women who do that kind of work in this area are Mexican, and I guess they have a gossip line like in every other town. Dad says we can take care of everything, but he has no idea. This is a biggggggg house, and I’m sure he hasn’t done a dish or cleaned a tub since he’s been here, till now. Besides, who is going to cook and shop and everything? I don’t have the strength, even if Dad would let me…but he won’t.

  Wednesday, February 26

  4:22 P.M.

  Dad’s been working nights and weekends, and it wasn’t bad until Maria left. Now everything has piled up on us till we’re being suffocated. The dishwasher’s broken, and we’ve got ants that we can’t get rid of. I’m trying really hard to not get my laundry mixed up with Dad’s, but…

  Thursday, February 27

  10:02 A.M.

  THIS IS NOT WORKING…Dad doesn’t deserve this! He doesn’t deserve me! I don’t deserve me!

  I’m worried about the white mossy stuff in my mouth…and sores. Dad’s not safe around me. Dr. Marx keeps telling me he is, but…I AM SOOO SCARED. My hair is brittle, breaking off and falling out in handfuls.

  5:27 P.M.

  Adam just called. We talk for hours on the phone each day. He is the only thing that saves my sanity. He’s so worried about me and wants to come over, but I won’t let him. I haven’t told him that I have AIDS. I think he thinks it’s mono…that’s bad enough…but not this! My skin is shriveled as an old old lady’s.

  Friday, February 28

  9:30 P.M.

  I was feeling so lonely and alone. Then Mom flew in, and I fell completely apart. I wasn’t even making sense as I poured out all the things I’ve been trying to keep from her for so long. I’ve been trying to just let her know the good things, but now she knows them all. She kept telling me everything would be all right, but I could hear the wetness and wonder in her voice, sloshing over her words.

  She insists I go back with her as soon as she can get a flight. At first it sounded wonderful, but I can’t go back there! I truly can’t! Maybe I can just go to a hospice till…you know. Dr. Marx suspects how I feel because he makes Dad dole out my pills so that I can’t…maybe I would…maybe I wouldn’t…I’m a Catholic…but I don’t know. I’m sooo scary-looking and even more scary-feeling.

  3:30 A.M.

  Mom and I have talked all night. I guess I’ve never really realized how much I truly love her. After I’d convinced her that I absolutely can’t stay with her, and I can’t live here any longer, she had an awesome idea and called Aunt Thelma, in Idaho. I’ll never forget going up there. It is like the Garden of Eden.

  Aunt Thelma has a large ranch house with a little apartment on the back for her caretaker. It has everything modern, but it’s made to look very rustic. Her caretaker. Melvin, has a twisted hand and foot on his left side, but he can still do everything any other man can do. He ropes the two horses they have and cuts wood and fixes fences and does everything including driving like a maniac over the dusty gravel roads. You can see him coming or going in a whirl of dust two miles away.

  Some nights Aunt Thelma asks him to eat with her, and he tells funny or scary historic stories about pioneers and explorers and early settlers, or animals.

  Mom told Aunt Thelma all the gory details about where I’m at now in my disease and how we’d be very far from a doctor who might want to help me in case we had a problem.

  I went back and forth between being upset with her because she didn’t tell enough, and being upset because she told too much. Oh, how I wished and prayed and hoped Aunt Thelma would let me come and stay there, at least till winter sets in, but it would be so wonderful and white there in the winter. It would be white-cloud heavenly to be there then.

  Aunt Thelma said she’d need to think and pray about it, and she’d let us know in the morning. Aunt Thelma is a very religious lady. She says a prayer of thanksgiving in the morning and asks for help to get her through the day; then she says a prayer of thanks at night for all her blessings during the day. She also gives thanks for the food before each of her three meals. They are beautiful prayers, sort of like the Indians’, always grateful, always positive, always loving and forgiving. I wish that everyone could feel like Aunt Thelma and the Indians.

  4:49 A.M.

  Mom and I went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep, so I came down and read a magazine. It had an article in it about Haitian voodoo and how it really works if people believe in it, but most of the things were negatives. I was tempted to try it, but I think I’ll stick to Aunt Thelma’s kind of positive beliefs.

  My eyes and body are sleepy, but my mind is as wide awake as at Christmas. I can’t wait for Aunt Thelma to call back. Oh, please, please, please, Aunt Thelma, say yes. I know I’ll be a nuisance and a bug, but I’ll try awfully hard to not disrupt your lifestyle or anything. I honestly, truly will.

  Saturday, February 29

  8:24 A.M.

  The phone is ringing. It has to be Aunt Thelma saying yes!

  10:41 A.M.

  Aunt Thelma didn’t call till a couple of minutes ago. I’d waited so long that I was sure it would be no…but it was yes…yes…yes. My heart is beating a hundred miles an hour. She said we’d try it for a couple of weeks and see how things worked out.

  Oh, I will be so good and so kind and so helpful and so cheerful that she won’t want me to ever leave until I…maybe then I can be buried under one of the big old trees like her husband, Uncle Rod, was. Aunt Thelma told Melvin about my having AIDS and said he didn’t seem to mind either.

  Mom says we can leave as soon as she can make the arrangements and have me see Dr. Marx so he can tell me what I should and shouldn’t do to protect Aunt Thelma and Melvin. That in itself is a big responsibility because there is so much I wonder about. Like last week in the Phoenix newspaper there was an article about small-town police needing AIDS protective gear like firemen and EMTs have. I guess that’s important because they don’t know which victims have the HIV virus or hepatitis, and there are lots of bloody situations. I remember the police chief said something like “for lack of a better word, debris from self-inflicted gunshot wounds, or other situations…can be everywhere, and you don’t know if the debris contains a disease that can take your life.” I guess that’s the space-people-looking stuff the people were wearing in the hospital when they cleaned up a room after the death of the AIDS patient—face shields, full-body disposable gowns, gloves, protective eyewear, etc.

  I’ll take everything Dr. Marx has for me to read and maybe he’ll send me some stuff, or tell Dad where he can buy it and send it to me.

  And I will always, every minute that I have rectal ulcers, wear Depends, even though it’s a blow to my ego that is almost unbearable. I don’t want to hurt anyone else, ever, except maybe Delta, who spread the awful rumor about my accident at the movie…her I’d like to give AIDS to. No, no, dear God, I didn’t mean that. Please forgive me. Please erase that thought. I NEED HELP. I NEED HELP.

  How will dumb I ever know what to do and what not to do? Scary things are rattling around inside my skull. They’re bouncing back and forth, banging against my eyeballs and eardrums and the top of my spinal cord.

  Dad just walked into my room and for no reason, I started crying hysterically, completely out of control. It’s not fair. I’m just a kid…I’m just a kid. Dad hugged me so tightly and protectively and comfortingly and lovingly that I started to calm down, but I kept whispering over and over, “I only had sex once in my whole life. How did it happen? I’m just a kid…it’s not fair.”

  I blurted out all my plans too, after college and after I’d become a pediatrici
an, to get married and have children and then grandchildren, with Dad as the patriarch at all the reunions.

  We were both crying on each other. He didn’t know any more what to do or say than I did. Finally he just started saying, “I love you, I love you, I love you,” over and over in small sobbing whispers, and finally I began saying it too. “I love you, I love you, I love you.” It helped.

  Tuesday, March 3

  Aunt Thelma’s

  Dear Self:

  I found you today, and I am so happy. I thought I’d lost you someplace between Dad’s and here. I am soooooooo glad I didn’t. From now on, you’re going to be my only gaggle. Can two geese be a gaggle? I don’t know about that, but I know two girls can be a gaggle. Right? Right! THAT’S US! This could get a little complicated if we’d let it, but we won’t right, no! I am not skitso. I am not a split personality. Oh, let’s worry about that too next never day.

  I’ll catch you up. Aunt Thelma and Melvin met us at the toy airport with toy planes. It was really exciting. With Mom’s luggage and mine and Mom and me and the pilot, we were squeezed in tight. Oh yes, he had a few big sacks full of wheat or potatoes or something for someone to pick up. Neither Mom nor I had ever been in a little prop plane, and it was like Babes in Toyland. Idaho is having a very early spring just for us!

  We flew so low that we almost felt like we could reach out and pet the cows and horses and one little herd of deer we passed. The pilot saw a wolf and swerved the plane so he could chase it for a bit. I felt like part of a National Geographic expedition or something. Mom and I giggled and squealed. When the plane set down and I started to get out, my full skirt blew up. I hope everybody in the world couldn’t see my fat, stuffed underpants. That’s all I need. Everyone in the wide open spaces talking and speculating, here as well as there.

  Gotta go, it’s time for dinner. I wonder what we’ll have, wild-bear steaks, poached possum or mountain oysters…that’s a joke…you know what they are.

  10:15 P.M.

  I thought it would be quiet here at night, so quiet I could hear my heart beat, but it isn’t: crickets are cricketing, frogs in the pond are croaking, birds in their nests are sleepily chirping, an occasional owl is hooting far away and I heard sundry other sounds. All of them are nice, comfortable, sleepy night sounds.

  Aunt Thelma gave me the little upstairs room with one dormer window that comes down to the floor. I love it. I can see this whole side of the planet: mountain, sky, meadow, road, horse pasture, vegetable garden, fruit orchard, horse and cow barn, front lawn, pond, rose garden, old Red Alert, the dog moseying down the path to who knows where, and everything else of importance in this creation.

  10:32 P.M.

  I had to get up to tell you that the little single bed with a lace canopy has a feather mattress! Isn’t that going to be cozy in the winter when it’s cold outside? Don’t worry, Mom put my rubber sheet over it so…you know…

  Ummmm, I bet I’ll be asleep before my head sinks into the pillow.

  Friday, March 6

  8:33 A.M.

  Mom could only stay three days. She said she’d missed so much time she’d be hard put to pay the rent. When she saw my face, she laughed and reminded me of the big apartment house she’d sold a few months ago. That would tide her over for a long time.

  We watched her little yellow plane take off and drift into the sky until it looked just like a butterfly. Then Aunt Thelma said we’d have to hurry home because she had some raspberry jam to make.

  Saturday, March 7

  10:14 P.M.

  You know how I woke up this morning? It was like I was in coo-coo land, I was just lying there sleeping like a baby, and I had this real funny feeling on my chest, kind of soft and warm and semi-scary and weirdish. I began to open one eye just a sliver, and two big yellow, not human eyes were staring down into mine. I clamped my eye shut, thinking I’d been dreaming, but the soft weight was still spread out over my chest, and I could hear breathing and feel in-and-out air. I felt myself get as stiff as a board before I could peek out again. What if a wild animal had come in through my window? Just as I started to pull my head under the comforter, the animal started purring. It purred so loud I could feel the vibrations, and my eyes shot open in spite of myself.

  Wow! What a monster cat! It tapped my cheek with its sheathed paw that felt big as a dog’s paw. Cautiously, I reached my hand out, and it rubbed its head back and forth against my fingers. Then, without an invitation, it tunneled down under the covers with me. We snuggled, it purring its heart out, and me purring my heart out too.

  When I finally went down to breakfast, Aunt Thelma started laughing. “Oh, I see old Cougar’s come home. He’s been gone for three or four days. I guess he got hungry for cookies or something.”

  “He’s not really a cougar, is he?” I whispered respectfully as he rubbed against my legs.

  Aunt Thelma put her paintbrush down and came over and gave us both a hug. She told me that Cougar was just an old tomcat who had wandered up to the house so many years ago that it seemed like he’d been here always. She said he’d been hurt by some bigger animal, and for a long time neither Melvin nor she had thought he’d live. They had to shave most of his body to put splints on two broken legs and get the matted hair out of the big hole in his side, where whatever had taken a big bite out of him, literally. He was so sick they both wondered how he’d ever made it to the house. They fed him with an eye dropper, canned milk straight and vitamins and wheat germ and beaten-up eggs.

  I was so engrossed in the story I almost asked, “Did he make it?” Even though I was sitting cross-legged on the floor, and he was sitting in my lap.

  Aunt Thelma handed me Cougar’s brush, and he loved being brushed as much as I loved doing it.

  After a minute, Aunt Thelma went back to her painting, and I started for the kitchen.

  Aunt Thelma called out after us, “His name is Cougar, because he sort of looks like one and because Melvin thinks it was a cougar that almost did him in.”

  I reached down and hugged my new, very best friend in the world. He reached over and took a soft little playful bite on my cheek. He knew! I knew he knew how much I needed him. Not that he’ll ever take the place of you, dear Self, but now we’re three—isn’t that positively smart?

  I called back to Aunt Thelma, “How often does he run away?”

  I guess she heard the anxiety in my voice, because she laughingly told me that he didn’t do it often, maybe a couple of times a year. Ordinarily he just followed along behind the dog, but he wasn’t friendly. Melvin had trained him to be a watchdog and protect the animals. Oh, Self, aren’t you glad, glad, glad we’ve got Cougar?

  Sunday, March 8

  5 A.M.

  My new world is just beginning to get a good head start on the day. Samuel the Lamanite (the giant rooster, and king of the barnyard) is standing on the wall outside the chicken coop, crowing like the fowl alarm clock he is. I guess maybe some mornings I’ll spell that “foul,” but today I’m glad he woke me and Cougar up. We don’t want to miss a second of the day. I wonder why they call him Samuel the Lamanite; that’s such a funny name. Sometime I’ll ask Aunt Thelma or Melvin.

  Aunt Thelma said Cougar and I can go anywhere that Red Alert will go with us. I hope he’s not a lazy stay-at-home dog, because I want Cougar to show me all the secret, special places on our whole mountain. I’ll fix a lunch of the goodies they both like every time we go, so that maybe they’ll want to go often, even when they don’t really want to go.

  10:22 A.M.

  Melvin has dug a big, deep trench behind the chicken house. It’s so that I can throw my used Depends and stuff away. He’s put a chicken wire fence around it with a gate so that Red Alert and other animals won’t get at them and…I don’t know…I don’t think animals can get AIDS—actually, I know they can’t…I think! That’s another question I want to ask; although I think I know the answer is no. Anyway, this way we’ll all be sure. We have flush toilets and a septic tank, so I
feel pretty secure about not giving it to anyone or anything else. That would truly be more than I could bear…so I not only won’t think about it tomorrow, I just won’t think about it at all, ever!

  12:30 A.M.

  At first, Red Alert, part wolf, part lazy dog, didn’t want to move off his mat under the shade of the big old tree outside Aunt Thelma’s dining room window, but I’d suspected that, so I held out one of his dog treats. He grumbled and slobbered and lollygagged over to get it. I gave it to him and walked a few feet away and held out another one. After about five he had his motor warmed up and seemed happy to take me up the path toward the little Indian Paint Brush waterfall.

  It was so beautiful and wonderful. There was a little meadow of sprouting mustard beneath it, and the fragrance was like nothing else in the world, not sweet like flowers, just clean and fresh and natural-smelling. Maybe someday I’ll bring the big sack of letters the gaggle has written me up there, and I’ll sit in the shade by a big rock and become part of them (the letters, I mean). I haven’t been able to let the kids back into my life until now…but maybe…maybe not.

  7:04 P.M.

  I’m loving it here like no one back home could imagine. I feel so close to nature and to God. This afternoon Aunt Thelma and Melvin dressed up in their very Sunday best. Melvin even wore a suit. I wouldn’t have believed he had one! We bounced along over the gravel roads for an hour and a half to get to the little Ward Church house. It’s really different from the Catholic service, which is all formal and repetitious. It’s just kind of friendly and old-fashioned, with kids on the program and women.

  At dusk Melvin started teaching me to drive his gear-shift old truck with no power steering. Thelma was having fits because I sometimes started looking at something and got off the road into the brush. I’ll be glad when I can drive the truck by myself. I’ll go as fast as the machine can go, mostly off the roads, and the dust clouds will be so big they’ll become one with the ones in the sky.