Net of Jewels

by Ellen Gilchrist

  “I talked to my boss about you,” he said to me. “He let me have extra time to come and get you. He’s really a nice guy. I’m really going to like working for him, I think. It’s going to be a damned hard job though, Rhoda. You have to help me. You have to start acting like a wife. You can’t drink all the time and act like you’re crazy.”

  “I will,” I swore. “I can. I want to. I love you. Come here, get closer to me.” We were in bed, waiting to get up and buy our new station wagon and drive it down to Alexandria and begin our life.

  “I mean it, Rhoda. You have to help me. You have to do your part. I mean it about drinking. We can do it on the weekends but not during the week.”

  “I won’t. I swear I won’t. I won’t do it at all.” I snuggled my head down into his chest. I was so glad to be in his arms. So glad not to be alone. I had a vision of the bottles of diet pills I had hidden in my suitcase. If I took them they made me want to drink. But if I didn’t take them I would get fat and he would never love me, never touch me, would be disgusted by my body.

  “Don’t you think I look good?” I asked. “Did you notice how thin I am? Do you think I feel good?”

  “You’re a lot thinner. You look better. You’re fine.” He lay back against the pillows. “We’d better get up now. I want to get packed. I want to leave as soon as we can.”

  “Do you think I’m thin enough?”

  “You could lose a little around the hips. That wouldn’t hurt.” He got out of bed and began to put his clothes on his perfect flawless body. I hated him. I hated his goddamn little girlfriend, Pepper Allen, who was as thin as a boy, and I hated his perfect body. I got up and began to put on my clothes and get ready to leave. His body might be better than mine but my face was prettier and my daddy was richer and they were my babies.

  “I’m going to be making six hundred dollars a month,” he said. “We have to make a budget. We have to live within our means.”

  “I’m going to get the babies up and feed them before we leave. I’m so excited, Malcolm. I can’t wait to get there.”

  “They’ve never had a plant engineer. I’m going to do the first time-studies ever done in this plant. If it works, they’ll use the program in the other plants. I’ll be gone a lot. You’ll have to amuse yourself. I won’t be there all the time.”

  “I’ll do anything.” I went to him and put my arms around him. “I’ll be so good. I’ll be good at everything. I love you so much. I love you more than words can say.”

  “We have to make a home for these boys. We have to go to church and stay home with them and have a real home.”

  “I want that too. It’s what I want. I want it more than anything.”

  “Okay, go get them up. Let’s get out of here.”

  * * *

  I wanted to stop in Montgomery and see Derry on our way to Alexandria but Malcolm didn’t want to spend the time. He did let me stop and call from a pay phone at a gas station. “Are you better?” I asked her. “Are you okay?”

  “I will be. The arm’s pretty bad. I may not be able to type but I think my face will be like new. Can you come over? I’d like to meet your husband. I’m glad you made up with him, Rhoda. You were so sad when you were here. It made me sad to watch you.”

  “No, he’s impatient to get there. He’s just getting gasoline. Oh, Derry, I can’t believe this happened. I can’t believe it happened to you.”

  “I have bodyguards now. Two bodyguards from the Justice Department. They’re very nice. They live here, even at night. It’s driving Charles crazy, of course. Well, I’m sorry you can’t come by. Keep in touch with me though.”

  “Derry.”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you seen Jim?”

  “Not in a few days. He’s going back to Washington next week. He liked you so much.”

  “Tell him hello for me, will you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Take care of yourself. Maybe I’ll get to see you someday. I hope I do. I hope I see you again.”

  “There’s an organization in Alexandria you might want to get in touch with, Rhoda. The American Friends Service Committee. They’re doing studies to start a tutoring program for poor children. If you have some time on your hands, call them up. They’ll find work for you to do.”

  “Oh, I will. Thanks for telling me that. Well, I’d better hang up. Malcolm’s having a fit. He wants to go.”

  “Where will you spend the night?”

  “I have to go. I really have to go. He’s getting mad.” I hung up the phone and walked back over to the station wagon and got in and tried to quiet the boys down and my husband revved up the motor and pulled out onto the highway and we continued on our way.

  At twelve the next afternoon we drove up into the yard of our new house, a small brick duplex across the street from an apartment development. It was clean and the walls were painted white and although the rooms were small they would do. What furniture Malcolm had managed to salvage from the apartment in Atlanta was arranged haphazardly around the room. A moving van was coming that afternoon from Dunleith with the baby beds and furniture from my room. It was not going to be much compared to the life I had been leading but it would do. It would do as soon as I found someone to take care of the babies. It wasn’t that I didn’t like them or resented them coming unbidden into the world. I just didn’t like to take care of them. It bored me to take care of small children because it’s a boring job. Nature never intended a young woman to be alone in a house with small children. In any simple natural culture women gather in the daytime in groups and the older women care for the children and the younger women find work to do. Nowhere in nature is there anything like the boring life I was fixing to lead in Alexandria, Louisiana. Of course, by the time I had been there forty-eight hours I had found Klane Marengo and for forty dollars a week she was going to come at breakfast and stay until supper and take my boring work off my hands. Daddy had put two thousand dollars into a checking account for me to use for emergencies. The way I figured it, at forty dollars a week I could keep the wolf of motherhood from my door for at least six months. If that wasn’t an emergency, I didn’t know what one was.

  “How do you like it?” Malcolm asked. He was standing in the middle of the half-empty living room holding Little Malcolm in his arms.

  “It’s great. It’s really nice. It was nice of them to get this ready for us. Nothing’s going to happen, Malcolm. We’re going to be okay now. We’re going to love each other from now on.”

  “I hope so. I really hope so. I can’t take much more of this, Rhoda. I can’t take another year like the last ones.”

  “Momma,” Jimmy said. “Hold me, Momma. I’m hungry. I want to eat.” I pulled his fat little happy body into my arms. I kissed his face and arms. We had been in Alexandria for an hour. Who knows, he may already have been bitten by a dozen mosquitoes.

  Part Six

  ALEXANDRIA

  Chapter

  29

  Then it was spring and the town of Alexandria was heavy with the smell of Cape jasmine. Fat white flowers washed clean by rain. Rain fell nearly every afternoon in that tropical plane beside the Quachita River. Torrential rain full of salt from the Gulf of Mexico. It washed away the smell of the paper plant where Malcolm was raging away his days. The smell of jasmine and rain and the babies asleep in their beds and Klane Marengo’s brilliant black skin appearing at my door each morning on her way home from her conjugal visits to the jail.

  “Hi, Klane,” I would say. “How’s it going? What’s going on?”

  “I’m doing okay. How’s the baby?”

  “I don’t know. He’s still asleep.”

  “Was he okay last night?”

  “I guess so. We had a party. God, I got so drunk. We made grasshoppers. You ever had one? Well, he slept all night. He’s still asleep.”

  “You want me to stay late today?” She filled the door frame. She was six feet tall; she must have been of Watusi stock. She was the only maid I had ev
er had who could control Little Malcolm. In return I put up with her undependable hours and let her borrow money from me.

  “You want me to stay late tonight or not?”

  “Yeah, I do. You want to go home first? You could eat breakfast here and sleep awhile.”

  “Nah, they’d wake me up. I’ll come back around noon. Where are they?”

  “They’re still asleep. Come on in. You want some coffee?”

  “I want a ride home. I don’t feel like taking no bus.”

  “Okay. Come on in. I’ll take you as soon as they wake up.”

  “I don’t know if I want to wait around.” She was in the kitchen now, pouring herself some coffee, looking around to see what kind of messes we’d been making. “Where’d you go last night?”

  “We went over to Karla’s to make beef Stroganoff. We made grasshoppers. God, I bet I drank a million of them. You want to do the floors this afternoon? I got to get some more wax if you want to do them.”

  “I might. If I get time.”

  “Well, I got to get the wax if you think you might. Here, have a biscuit. Get some of that jelly over there.” I handed her a plate of toasted biscuits. “You want an egg?” I added. “Scramble you an egg.”

  “Nah, not now. I guess I might go on and stay the morning.” She was stirring sugar and evaporated milk into her coffee. She was spooning jelly onto a biscuit. “But you got to let me get some sleep. You got to keep them off of me. Where’s the baby? I want to look in on him.”

  “Don’t wake them up. I feel terrible, Klane. I really have a hangover.”

  “You been drinking too much. You been drinking every night.”

  “No, I haven’t. It just seems that way.” I raised my eyes, looked out the kitchen window to where the sun was coming out from in between the clouds and lighting up the branches of the crepe myrtle tree. Sunlight glistened on every gray-green branch. How could anything so perfectly balanced and cantilevered and shaded and luminous and gorgeous and beautiful and useful be created, over and over again, everywhere on earth. For a moment I could see infinity, the window, branch, blossoms, clouds, sky, stretching up forever and ever, world without end. I shook it off.

  “You leaving these babies too much. Miss Winchester tole me you was gone all weekend and she didn’t even know where Malcolm was.”

  “He was mad at me. He went to a motel. He tore the phone out of the wall. You know about that.”

  “Well, I’m going back and look in on the baby.” She finished off a second biscuit, folded the crumbs up into a napkin, and laid the plate on the sink.

  “Don’t wake them up.”

  “I won’t. I’m just going to look in at the door.”

  She left the room. I sipped my coffee and thought about the night. Our new friends, Speed and Karla and Robert and Hilton, and Malcolm and me. Getting drunk on grasshoppers and dancing on the sidewalk in our midriff blouses.

  “He’s still asleep,” Klane said, coming to stand in the door. “That medicine’s not doing him no good. You ought to have them change it. You better take him back.”

  “I took him Wednesday. They said he’s doing okay.” She shook her head. “It’s them mosquitoes,” she said. “It’s them mosquitoes that did it.” She came into the room. She began to pick up the plates from the table. “You ought to take him to a different doctor.”

  A wave of melancholy passed through me. Melancholy and helplessness. I took him to the doctor nearly every day. I waited in the waiting room. I bought the medicine and gave it to him. Still he did not get well. He kept on running the fever in the afternoons. What else could I do?

  I went out into the play yard and sat down on the swing. I looked up into the crepe myrtle tree. I considered calling my mother and asking her for something, some money, a new dress, a sofa for the living room. I swung for a while, trying to soothe myself. I began to remember scenes from the night before. Our new friend, Robert Haverty, dancing with me, in the living room, in the den, on the patio and sidewalk. You know I’m in love with you, he said. I have to have you. We were meant for each other. Maybe he was right. Robert was rich. He had inherited a lot of money. He could make the doctors pay attention to me. He could take me to the Caribbean to live. We could leave these messes here and run away. I leaned my head into the swing chain. I had to make it come out right. I had to find some way to be happy.

  “The phone’s for you,” Klane said, coming to the door. “It’s a man.”

  “We wanted to see how you are,” Robert said. “Hilton wants you to meet her in the park. Are your children up?”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “How are you?”

  “I woke up thinking about you. Will you call me later, at the newspaper?”

  “Yes. Where’s Hilton?”

  “In the other room. Go with her to the park. I want our children to play together.”

  “All right.” I put both hands on the receiver. It was so sexy. So dangerous and scary and sexy. He was so bold, such a risk-taker. He wanted us all to be together, then he wanted to be alone with me. He was the man I should have married, the man I should have waited for.

  “Here’s Hilton,” he said. “She wants to talk to you. We’re glad you’re okay.”

  “Oh, Rhoda,” she said. “We had so much fun. Malcolm’s so much fun. He’s the wittiest man I’ve ever met. Robert wants us to go to the park. He thinks the children should have a picnic.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Sure. As soon as I get them up.”

  I went into the babies’ room to see if they were waking. Little Malcolm was beginning to stir. I went over to the bed and touched his head. “Get up, precious,” I whispered. “We’re going to have a picnic in the park.” He stirred, his beautiful little head bumped up and down on the sheet. In the other crib Jimmy was curled up like a snail, so deep in sleep I wasn’t sure I could wake him.

  I left the children’s room and went into my bedroom and opened my jewelry box and took out the bottle of diet pills and swallowed one without water. Then I went into the bathroom and found some aspirins and took two of them and put my mouth under the faucet and drank.

  In half an hour I was in the station wagon driving to the park, the children in the back dressed in blue and white sunsuits with sandals on their feet. I had on yellow shorts and a new white piqué blouse. You never could tell, Robert might decide to come with Hilton to the park. He owned the newspaper. He didn’t have to go to work unless he wanted to.

  That afternoon I took the baby, Jimmy, back to the doctor, a Jewish pediatrician who had gone to Tulane. He was overworked and had little patience with young mothers. He always kept me waiting for at least an hour and never spent more than five minutes with the baby when he finally saw him. This time, however, I made him talk to me.

  “My maid says it’s the mosquitoes.” I took his arm, holding his sleeve so he couldn’t leave the room. “She said he got something from the mosquito bites.”

  “What bites?”

  “He got covered with mosquito bites right before he got sick. He got impetigo from them. Don’t you remember? You gave me some medicine for it. It was in February. Right after that first warm spell. My maid said to tell you it was from the mosquitoes.” He shook my hand from his sleeve, took the chart down from the door, began to read it again. Then he took Jimmy out of my arms and carried him to the examining table and began to stare into his eyes. “I want to put him in the hospital this afternoon and run some tests,” he said. “I may want to do a spinal tap.”

  “A what?”

  “A test for encephalitis. There was an epidemic of it in Monroe last month.”

  “We were in Monroe. We went to see my cousin play the organ.”

  “Could you bring him to the hospital this afternoon? Could you spend the night there with him?”

  “Sure. I can do whatever you want me to. I’ll have to call my husband and my maid. Can I use your phone? You want me to go to the hospital right now?”

  “No. By five is plenty of time. They can
do the blood work and if we need to do the spinal tap I’ll do it in the morning.” He picked up the baby and held him in his arms. He seemed to sniff him. He put his head down next to the baby’s chest.

  “I told you there was something wrong with him,” I said. “He sleeps all day and he always has that fever.”

  “We’ll find it,” he said. “We’ll find what’s wrong.” He looked at me. He met my eyes. Hope filled the room like snow. All the repressed terror and dismay of my young motherhood scrambled to leave me. Light was everywhere. Light and snow. The doctor had my baby in his arms. The doctor would save him.

  “Do you know the Havertys?” I said. “Robert Haverty, who owns the newspaper here?”

  Two hours later we checked into the hospital. Klane had agreed to stay with Little Malcolm and Big Malcolm had come home from the plant to stay with me. The baby slept in my arms. Now my elation was gone and dark worry had come to take its place. Encephalitis. My medical dictionary said it could injure the brain. My baby’s brain could be injured, harmed, maimed. While I was out dancing with my friends my little baby’s brain was being eaten by mosquito-borne germs. While we were listening to my cousin Sally play the organ, mosquitoes had risen up from the swamps and stuck their nasty needles full of poison into my child. I should never have left him for a second. I should not have taken him outside. I should have gone home to my mother where a halfway decent doctor would have found out what was wrong weeks ago. Oh, God, don’t let anything be wrong with his brain, I prayed. If you will get him well, I swear to God I’ll believe in you. I’ll go to church every Sunday until I die. I’ll give them money. I’ll teach Sunday school.

  “Rhoda.” It was Malcolm. He was filling out the entrance forms for the receptionist at the admitting desk.

  “What?”

  “See if you’ve got that insurance card in your purse. The one I gave you last month.”