by Minrose Gwin
“The mother’s sure not going anywhere. Maybe they let the other two go. The baby and father were fine except for a few scratches. The girl just had a broken arm and a big piece of glass in her head.”
“Where’d they put the mother?” asked Dreama.
“At the back of the stage, with the critical.”
Dreama began to thread her way toward the back of the stage. A white nurse came up to them. “What you girls doing, traipsing around over here?”
Glendola pushed Dreama forward. “We’re looking for the McNabb family. They want to pay their respects.”
“They’re all gone except the mother and she’s still critical. Hasn’t even woken up yet.”
“Did they take the baby too?”
“This is no place for a healthy baby. They just now headed for Crosstown, for the boxcars.”
“Doesn’t seem like a boxcar is much of a place either,” said Glendola, her voice steady. “These ladies knew the baby too.”
“Said they’d all be back tomorrow to see the mother.”
Dreama had begun to pull at her hair. Glendola took her by the arm and turned her around.
They proceeded back through the cots, this time Dovey first, Dreama in the middle, and Glendola nipping at Dreama’s heels. Dreama’s crying had become a high-pitched whine. A moan broke from Dovey’s throat. White faces stared up curiously, some bandaged, some creased in pain. One man had stitches running from the outside corner of his eye down to his chin. A woman lay weeping, asking for a drink of water.
As they made their procession, Dovey put down her crutches carefully, trying not to hit any of the cots. Dreama’s whine and Dovey’s moan had congealed into a kind of harmony. Then Glendola chimed in, humming tunelessly. Dovey turned to look. Glendola’s lips had disappeared.
Dovey remained dry-eyed, intent on each hobbling step, each strike of the crutch, trying not to fall, trying to make it back to the colored side of the stage, behind the curtain.
Then, just as they drew near, she tripped on a full bedpan. Dreama reached to grab her but was too late. The tip of the crutch slipped in the urine and Dovey fell sideways, sprawling on top of a man who lay asleep on a cot. He flailed about and sat up, knocking her to the floor, the blanket on his bed covering her so that when she opened her eyes all she could see was white.
She thought she was dead until she heard Glendola call out, “Stretcher!”
Some CCC boys came running down the aisle. Dovey’s ear was to the floor and, when she heard them galloping up the stairs, she thought they were horses coming to trample her. And good riddance too. She was plumb worn out with this world.
12
4:17 P.M.
Jo trudged along behind her father. He carried little Tommy and a satchel of clothes for him. She carried her brother’s bottles and diapers, actually makeshift diapers made from cut towels; they were scratchy with bleach and had already turned his bottom an angry red. She carried the bottles and diapers in a knapsack on her good shoulder, the bandage over her forehead shading her eyes from the late afternoon sun.
They’d been given directions to the boxcars by the Red Cross lady. They headed that way now, passing the houses on Broadway, only minimally damaged, turning west on Main, heading for Crosstown. They passed other families walking, and everyone walked in the same direction. Some Jo’s father knew and spoke to briefly; no one slowed to talk, fearful that one’s assigned boxcar would be given away. They walked by what was left of the hospital with its collapsed roof and blown-out windows. Jo’s father didn’t comment on the ruin. From the back, Mort looked a bit like a stork, his shoulders stooped, his head thrust forward. He looked around with an air of preoccupation, as if he were still searching for Tommy, as if he needed to be somewhere else.
There, in front of the hospital, at the corner of Main and Church, he stopped short and struck his forehead with his palm. “The aunts’ house,” he said. “Why didn’t I think of it?”
He had tried to sell the aunts’ house after Aunt Sister died, but nobody wanted a ramshackle old place with its wandering, pocked screen porch, an old bathroom beyond repair, and the kitchen not much better. Scores of people came through, but nobody made an offer, even after he lowered the price to the ridiculous figure of $3,999. Then they’d received word that the First Baptist Church across the street was raising money for a Sunday school classroom building, so Mort took the place off the market and waited. Then, of course, came the Crash: the banks collapsed and Nash Cunningham, father of seven and grandfather of many more, one fine fall morning climbed up to his study on the second floor of the house next door and blew his brains out, the bullet lodging in the side of the aunts’ house, right above a window outside their upstairs bedroom. The bullet remained beyond anyone’s reach, and nobody was buying anything anyway, not even First Baptist. So the house had sat, for six years now, growing more resolute in its decay, the once-white paint splotched with mildew, the bullet long ago covered over by ivy. Wild cats skittered about, tearing their way onto the screen porch, lolling about in the swing and rockers where the two sisters had once sat and watched the world go by.
Jo wrinkled her nose. “It’s going to be a mess.”
“Better than a boxcar.” Her father tossed the words over his shoulder, grimly. There were tears on his cheeks again. He hadn’t asked about Son, how the coat hanger, which Mort had last seen in his daughter’s hand, had come to be implanted in his son’s chest.
Mort turned and they headed north, up Church Street, skirting a black car flipped on its side like a monstrous dead roach. On her father’s shoulder, little Tommy raised his head, stared bleary-eyed at Jo, then put his head back down into the crook of Mort’s neck.
Brother. The word roiled in Jo’s throat. She wanted, suddenly, to shout it to the twisted tree trunks, the smashed houses, the whole lost town. In the late day sun, the world seemed flung open and shiny, like foil. There was pleasure in it now, and promise. A path through the ruin. She trudged along behind her father. Before the storm, she’d never thought about whether she knew him; now, afterward, she realized she didn’t know him at all. Was it possible to love someone you didn’t know? Well, she most certainly did, she loved her father, and she loved her little brother above all. She loved him fiercely, more than she loved anyone in this whole wide world. Under the knapsack and the cast, she felt as light and insubstantial as a speck of dust, as if their weight alone held her to the earth, as if without them she might lift off and drift up into the sky and disappear.
Only the top half of the aunts’ house was visible from where they stood. They picked their way around the downed magnolia in the front yard and stepped up onto the front stoop. The place was smaller than Jo remembered: insubstantial, as if its weathered boards were made of paper.
The pot sat undisturbed and dreaming in the exact spot it had always sat, though now bare of the spring pansies the aunts would have planted had they been there. When her fingers touched the key, still in its hiding place under the pot, she felt a rush of relief so strong it flooded her eyes. It was the same feeling she had had years ago when she came to the aunts’ house after school, hiding out from Son, filled with the anticipation of being met by two cooing old ladies inviting her into their nest for a while, offering tea and peppermints, sometimes a shortbread or toast. “Sister,” Aunt Fan would say, folding and unfolding her handkerchief, “I expect our guest would enjoy some cinnamon toast with those good fig preserves.” And Jo would nod and breathe in the clouds of camphor and rosewater and glycerin that hovered around the two of them.
She turned the key and pushed down the lever, but the door was stuck. Mort kicked it once, then again, disturbing little Tommy, who thrust his head up and out like a turtle.
Just then two CCC boys passed by and asked if they could help. They put their shoulders to it (what muscles they had, those beautiful boys!) and finally it popped and they almost fell into the house.
When Jo followed her father through the door and into the li
ving room, the house sighed as if it were relieved, as if it too had been waiting for rescue.
The house was deeply sad. Jo felt it the moment she entered the living room. It had been lonely, it complained, it had been blue. What a relief it was to see her! Why had she waited so long?
A piece of the mantel over the fireplace had loosened and sagged, giving the living room wall a downturned mouth. She brushed a cobweb from her cheek but it clung and tickled. She put the knapsack onto the couch, raising a puff of dust, and looked over at her father. The baby’s head was bobbing and he had begun to fuss. Her father wasn’t holding Tommy properly, not supporting his upper back and neck.
She pushed the dusty cushion from Aunt Sister’s rocking chair and sat down. “Give him here, Daddy. Prop him here in my lap and hand me one of those bottles.”
The CCC boys stood in the middle of the room, looking around.
What a sight she must be! Her filthy hair plastered to her head, the bandage a drooping sail covering the top half of her face. She peered out from under her bandage. “Do y’all have time to help us get this house in order?”
“Sure,” one of them said. “We’re all yours.” The other one grinned at her. He had freckles and the reddest head of hair she’d ever seen.
Her father handed Jo the baby. “He’s wet.”
“Well, get me one of those towels then.” Jo said it more sharply than she intended. Had her father never changed a diaper? “I’ve only got one hand.”
She looked at the boys. “There’s brooms and dishcloths in the hall closet. Can you get us some beds ready upstairs? And wipe down the kitchen and bathroom?”
“Yes, ma’am.” The cocky one saluted. “We’ve got some candles for you too.”
Was this how the queen of England felt? Ordering everybody around, making everyone bow and scrape? She pushed the sagging bandage (her crown!) out of her eyes.
THAT NIGHT after the boys had left and her father had gone out for a very long time, returning with a plate of congealed meat and potato salad for her and a jug of water, she settled herself and the baby in Aunt Fan and Aunt Sister’s room. She lit one of the candles the CCC boys had placed on the dresser and laid Tommy on Aunt Fan’s bed because it was the one next to the wall. She took a towel from the stack used for the baby’s diapers and moistened it from the jug of water they’d also left. When she turned to the baby, he was watching her, his golden eyes reflecting the candle glow, lively and interested.
“Ok, dirty boy,” she said, sitting down beside him. She pulled the gown over his head and began to wipe his face, gently patting the scratches. He kicked her in the stomach and began to fuss. She put more water on the towel and went for the creases in his neck, which were filthy with dirt and grime. When she reached his trunk he stopped fussing and began to coo. She pulled up his left arm and wiped the dirt from under his arm. When she pulled up his right arm, there was a complicated gash that took her breath away. How had the doctors and nurses missed it? It looked red and infected; it was caked in blood. She dabbed at it, fearful of starting up the bleeding. Tomorrow she’d have a doctor look at it.
He’d begun to fuss again. There was a discoloration under the gash. A bruise, she thought, the poor thing has a bruise. How lucky he was to be alive, sucked out of their mother’s arms and blown about like a stick of furniture! She dried him from the waist up, pulled a fresh gown from her bag, and put it on so he wouldn’t get cold. Then she pulled off his diaper and washed his bottom, wishing she had some salve for the angry diaper rash. She ended with his toes, pulling the rag between them. The cloth was filthy. She threw it to the floor and put a fresh diaper on.
“Now,” she said, smiling down, “you’re all clean.” He cooed at her again then and shut his eyes. “Good boy,” she said. She covered him and put pillows around him.
Standing in front of the mirror over the dresser, she moistened one of his clean towels with a bit of water and dabbed it over the lower half of her face, then scrubbed her teeth with it. She found a nightgown in a dresser drawer and, with her good right hand, pulled off the unfamiliar dress she’d been given at the theater, tearing the sleeve to get it out of the cast. She washed herself, standing before the mirror with nothing on her top, her wet breasts gleaming. She touched the right one, wondering, if push had come to shove, might she herself have produced some milk for the baby? Might her body have responded to such a desperate need? She considered waking Tommy and putting her breast in his mouth just to see, but then a wave of shame came over her for even thinking such an odd thing and, with her teeth, she quickly tore a sleeve of the gown and drew it over her head. She looked at herself again and saw something about her mouth that reminded her of her mother, a resolute look, something close to stubbornness.
She crawled into Aunt Sister’s bed. (Had she ever in her life been so tired?) She lay first on her good side, then on her back, then on her good side again. Her bad arm ached. The biting ants rummaged, taking a nip here and there. The ghostly aunts tiptoed in, offering toast and tea. They whispered to each other, not of the past but of the future. Something brewing on the horizon. Another storm? Around her the house complained. It had been lonely, it had been sad.
The cats outside on the porch hissed and screamed. Where was her Snowball? Snowball’s kittens? Were they roaming in and out of her own house wondering where she’d gone? Were they wandering the streets starving? Thinking of them, so cast adrift, she began to cry.
At dawn a wren lit in the ivy outside the bedroom window and sang its heart out. A woodpecker pecked at the side of the house where Nash Cunningham’s bullet had lodged. Something skittered in the attic, directly above her head.
She got up and pulled away the pillows and crawled into Aunt Fan’s bed with the baby, wondering why he hadn’t woken for his early morning feeding. He slept on and she rested her cast on his little chest and closed her eyes and waited for him to stir. As she lay there, she planned the day. She would feed Tommy and then wake her father. They would go out to get some breakfast. The Red Cross lady had told them the Kinney Hotel on Main was serving whites. The Palace and Penn’s Café were actually closer, but they were for the colored. She and her father would eat and then they would head to the Lyric to see how her mother was doing and show her the baby, how well he was doing. Her mother would be thrilled beyond anything, despite Son, despite the lost leg. Her eyes would light up in the old way, when she used to go on about poetry: Whitman’s impossibly long lines, Longfellow’s melodies. She would rise up on her cot and give Jo a new Word to Keep. Jo would take care of her mother along with the baby. She, Jo, would take care of everyone. She was certain now that she would become a nurse; this was her calling, this would be her life. She would go out into fields of battle, a brave dot of white against a brutal landscape, dodging bullets, moving among the bruised and broken and torn asunder.
She dozed finally, dreaming of bending over a half-dead soldier, wiping his brow, telling him to hang on.
Little Tommy woke up coughing, alarming her. It was all she could do to take care of a well baby, much less a sick one. She changed him and quickly used the chamber pot the aunts kept in the corner. It was chilly so she wrapped him up in a towel, which he struggled against, then picked him up and started down the stairs to give him his bottle.
The nightgown she wore dragged the floor. She descended the dark stairwell step by slow step, terrified that she would trip and fall. Tommy flailed away in her arm, fretting and straining and coughing.
The milk she’d been given for him was powdered; the Red Cross lady said it wouldn’t spoil if she mixed it with clean water. She wiped off the kitchen table, laid the baby at the back next to the wall where he couldn’t roll off (he was so strong for a little baby, much larger and more unwieldy than she remembered). She poured the fresh water from the jug into a clean bottle, spilling about half of it, and shook up the mixture. She sat down on a kitchen chair and pulled him onto her lap and gave him the bottle. He sucked frantically for a moment, then spit
out the nipple and began to scream. She realized then that his nose was stopped up, that he couldn’t breathe when he took the bottle.
“Oh sweetheart,” she said aloud, and the aunts leaned in. Dear, dear, they whispered. “Daddy?” she called out, and there was silence. She called louder but there was no response. Gone again. Where?
Maybe he’d gone for food. She was hungry, beyond hungry. What would she give right now for a piece of the aunts’ cinnamon toast? A cup of tea?
Tommy took another plunge at the bottle but then turned beet red and began to scream bloody murder. She snatched him up, a bit impatiently she realized, and headed for the bathroom and began rummaging in the medicine cabinet. There was Milk of Magnesia, castor oil, foot powder. And, glory be, a small bottle of paregoric. That, at least, she knew was safe. Hadn’t her mother used it all the time to quiet the baby? But how much? A capful wouldn’t hurt. Juggling him, she managed to use the hand on her bad left side (which hurt like the devil, but what choice did she have?) to unscrew the cap and pour. She sat down on the commode, put him back on her knee, and poured it down his throat. He choked and his eyes popped open. She set him upright and hit the cast against his back, whereupon he screamed louder, kicking now, throwing his head back and sideways. She stood up with him, walking back and forth, trying to calm him.
He screamed on and then fell into an exhausted sleep. She took him upstairs and put him back in the bed. Pillows, remember the pillows. Anything she did wrong, any little thing she forgot to do correctly, something like the pillows to keep him in place, and then, too bad so sad, she would have gone and killed him too, he would be dead like Son. Just like that. She pictured his limp body facedown on the dusty floor, his roly-poly neck twisted at an impossible angle.
She opened the aunts’ closet and chose a dress, a serviceable gray. She tore the sleeve, starting it with her teeth as though she were about to make a meal of it, and put it on, found a belt to draw it higher around her waist so she wouldn’t trip. She didn’t look in the mirror when she was dressed, afraid, not so much that she would see the aunts hovering behind her, but that she herself would have become one of them. She repacked the knapsack.