by Mary Swan
• • •
Bessie had a growth that started to eat away at her from the inside, and from such a big woman she turned into the frailest thing. I went to see her when I could but it was difficult, trailing three small children, the long trip across town. After she died her daughters came and took everything, even the silver spoon she meant for me to have. It was like my own mother dying all over again, and this time I was grown and knew it. Sorrow like a weight I felt on my shoulders.
I am your family, William said. We are your family. Pointing to the room where the children slept. We are everything you need.
… a warm bath, then bleeding, next tartar emetic every 15 minutes until symptoms of collapse are produced, giving brandy if the prostration becomes too great.
The building where we lived was mostly families, except for a few like Old John, all on his own, who roared and shook his walking stick when anyone stepped in his way. The children played in the courtyard all day and into the evening and the sound of their chanting, their calling, was like the sound of hooves, of cart wheels rumbling by, so constant I only noticed when it stopped. Sadie played there most days, though William didn’t know. He thought she would pick up all kinds of things; said, We’re not like them. In some ways it was true, and I thanked God every Saturday night when Harold Ashe came stumbling home, tripping on the steps on the landing, cursing and banging on the door because his fingers had become too thick to fit in his pocket for his key. The thumps and crashes. All the women on their own with sickly children or just too many, hunched over washtubs with cracked red hands.
But in some ways we were just like them, a family with young children and never enough money. It’s no life for a child, cooped up in three small rooms when the sun is shining and voices float up the stairwell. Willie played in the courtyard too, though mostly he liked to sit in his own corner, building things from the scraps of wood and brick that William sometimes brought home. Once I was carrying Tom to the shop and I stopped to tell Sadie I’d be soon back. The children were all in a line, ten of them or twelve, with their arms down at their sides, jumping straight up in the air and one little girl watching, calling out who jumped highest. And every time it was Willie, my Willie, with his eyes closed and his arms stiff at his sides, jumping higher and higher, jumping straight into the air. He’s the fastest runner too, Sadie said. He can run like the wind, he wins all the races. How strange it was, that I hadn’t known that about my own child, that I hadn’t known that Willie, with his calm and thoughtful way, could run like the wind. And though I’d been with my children every day of their lives, though I’d loved them more than I could imagine, I suddenly saw them in a new way, saw things I’d been missing because I’d never thought to look for them, because maybe I’d never really looked, thinking I already knew.
• • •
Sadie was desperate to go to school and William wanted her to go to Mrs. Cook’s, half a mile away. He said he would get the money, he said she should be patient, wait another year, but Sadie, usually so obedient, didn’t stop asking. Though he never raised his voice, sometimes he got quite cross. I waited until he’d finished his meal, set down his fork, wiped his beard. It’s so important to her, I said. And he said what he said to Sadie, that she deserved better than the little school down the road, the children fighting in the street. I reminded him of what he often said, that he’d still be toting bricks if he hadn’t learned to figure so well, and he said he didn’t deny it, but it was surely more important for a boy, who would one day have a family to support. We can’t know, I said. And I said that something could happen to us, that Sadie could be left to make her own way in the world, to take care of her brothers, that surely she’d have a better chance of that with an education. And I asked if he could bear to think of her scrubbing clothes, or minding ten babies in a tiny room. A year, William said, maybe ten months, and I’ll have the money for Mrs. Cook’s, and I asked him if he remembered how long a year was, when he was a child, how long a month. I’ve never asked you for a thing, I said, but I’m asking this now, and in the end he agreed.
Hot irritating applications should be applied to the throat extending to the ears on each side. 2 or 3 layers of flannel saturated with a mixture of kerosene, collodium, turpentine etc. should suffice. Pork and mustard also answer the purpose very well. Also oil of turpentine 3 times per day in teaspoonful doses, mixed with spirits of ether.
I made Sadie a new dress from a skirt of mine that wasn’t too worn, and we bought a slate and the night before William brought home a handful of ribbons for her hair and left them on the table for her to find when she woke. She already knew her numbers and letters, could read some words and write all our names, but the first day she got her knuckles rapped for the shape of her A and I feared that William was right. But it never happened again, or if it did she didn’t say, and soon the teacher had her helping the slowest ones, as she was so far ahead. I missed her terribly, until I got used to it. Lunchtimes were short but when she came home in the afternoons she hugged us all, and then sat down at the table with Willie and showed him what she’d learned that day. Some days it wasn’t much; I helped the little ones with their letters all day, she’d say, or, The bigger boys broke a bench and had to be whipped, and that took a long time. There were days when she’d learned a new poem and she’d stand very still and recite it with her hands folded in front, like they were taught, and her eyes half closed. Sometimes they were poems that I knew and I was sorry again that my books had been sold, for I knew how she would have loved them. Her handwriting was beautifully clear and she liked to leave notes for her father to find, writing Mr. William Heath, Esq. with a great flourish, and drawing hearts in the corners.
What Willie liked best was the arithmetic Sadie taught him, and although his numbers were shaky in the writing he usually had the right answer, and often just by figuring in his head. You must get that from your father, I told him, and he was very like William with his serious air, his way of speaking only when something needed saying. Sometimes I thought I saw two faint lines between his eyebrows. He was like William too in caring to be clean, and I never had to remind him to wash when he came in from outside. The thing William hated most about the brickyard was the way the dust settled on his hair, on every bit of skin, the dirt always under his fingernails. When he began to work in the office he let his fingernails grow rather long, and I supposed it was because he could.
• • •
Charlie Ashe said his mother couldn’t leave her bed and when I opened the door of their room the smell was foul, and Annie barely able to open her eyes. I sent for the doctor and whether because of him or in spite of him, she got better. Sadie asked me, Can women be doctors too? and I said I thought there were a few. That’s what I’ll be, she said, and she wanted to practice on us, give us medicine, and I mixed up a little sugar water. But medicine has to taste bad, she said, and I said we would pretend, and she gave us spoonsful of sugar water and we all made terrible faces. Sometimes she bandaged Tom using bits from the rag bag, around his head and one arm and the other leg tied to splints. Tom who could rarely sit still, I was surprised, but he said she gave him sixpence. Where did you get sixpence, I said, and she said it was from William, for doing so well at school.
My Tom had lovely fair curls and the longest eyelashes and a way of looking at you that made it hard to stay cross. If there was a crash of something breaking or an angry mother at the door, that would be Tom. He’d never been able to sit still, and though he was small for his age he would climb anything, try anything, fight even the biggest boy. He was always coming in with bruises and scrapes and I thought sometimes that if we lived in the country, if we had all that space where he could run and run. I wondered what kind of man he’d make, with his quick temper, his fidgets. But for all the trouble he caused he was a kind boy, always standing up for the picked-on ones, always ready to laugh, and I thought that he’d be all right.
• • •
A man was giving a talk on
Canada; William saw the notice on his way home and had to stand at the back of the crowded room. It’s the place for us, he said. I wish you could have heard. I said I had no intention of living in a cabin in the woods but he said I had the wrong idea, that we could go to one of the towns or a city, smaller than here and cleaner, everything new, even the air. Plenty of work for a man like him, he’d asked about that, and the kind of opportunities that would never come his way where he was. And for the children, he said, just think of that, they could do anything there, be anything; it’s the future. I said we could never afford the passage, and he said he’d worry about that. It was the most he’d said to me in months. William wasn’t much of a talker and I didn’t think I was either; I thought that was one way we were suited to each other. When we married I thought it would be difficult, to live so close with someone, but of course I had days to myself and in truth he was easier than my father, keeping his things tidy and taking off his boots at the door. I told him things, all kinds of things, lying in the dark with my mother’s quilt over us, and he asked me questions but rarely answered mine. I don’t remember, he would say, or, I don’t know, or, I never think of it. When the children were born my days were filled with talk and I babbled to them long before they could answer. William came home late with a pain behind his eyes; he took off his boots and ate his meal and sometimes read a newspaper he’d picked up. In the mornings he drank his tea while I roused the children and brushed and scrubbed them, cutting bread and tying laces and sometimes days went by when we hardly said a word to each other, when he was gone from my thoughts the moment he closed the door.
I was always tired, slept like a stone unless one of the children called out, and then feeling my way back to the bed I was sometimes startled, touching William’s hard shoulder. Once I dreamed that I opened my eyes but was still in the dark; I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. I could hear quiet voices, could hear children crying, my children, and I tried with all my might to reach for them, to make a sound. And then it felt like I sat up with a roar, but William didn’t stir, so perhaps the roaring was somewhere in the dream I’d left. The room was pearly with the light of the first dawn and I could see then, I could move, but I didn’t sleep again.
After having previously evacuated the stomach with ipecac, cauterize the fauces and the trachea with a strong solution of nitrate of silver, by means of a probang pushed into it while the epiglottis is held with a finger of the left hand. Repeat the operation every few hours. In addition a 50% solution of chloral hydrate may be applied with a hair pencil every half hour. The pain caused by it is sometimes severe.
William had no use for religion, and although I had been a churchgoer all my life, when we moved across town it was too far to go back on my own and the new church just wasn’t the same. I gradually got out of the habit, though I was never quite easy about it. Still, it was nice to have a late breakfast all together on a Sunday, and if the weather was fine we sometimes went walking. One Sunday the blossoms were on the trees and William was in good spirits, teasing the children and stopping to rest a hand on my shoulder. Sadie said her throat was scratchy and he said a picnic by the river would fix her right up and we set off all together, Tom riding on William’s shoulders and Sadie carrying our old blanket, me with the eggs I’d been saving and some bread and a bottle of water.
2 leeches are sufficient for a child a year old, 4 for three years & so on. Place them on the trachea when you can watch them, but on the sternum if compelled to leave.
At first Willie held my hand but some boys he knew were standing at the corner and I let him go. He raced on ahead and ran back to us, panting and saying, Was I faster this time? This time? It was the first real day of spring and the streets were filled with families like us and the men touched their caps, the women smiled, and we wished each other good day. Tom babbled on about all he could see far ahead and Willie ran faster and faster, Sadie sang her walking song and there were blossoms on the trees. I thought that any day now I would feel the quickening, and moving through that soft air, I counted my blessings.
Diphtheria is the most insidious of the acute diseases, and children under ten years are particularly vulnerable to infection. Despite all efforts and the best care and treatment, some families will lose every one.
Locket
SHE POLISHES IT only when she is alone in the house, and even then behind the closed door of the bedroom. As if it’s something that must remain secret, the locket she has worn for years beneath the buttons of her dress, an oval lump that anyone might notice, although no one ever has. Not even William, who gave it to her when they were first married, fastened it around her neck, touched the etched, twining leaves with the tip of his finger. Told her that it was the first gift he had ever given. William must know how she wears it now but he has never said, another part of the silence between them that at times seems as vast as the ocean they crossed, sailing away from their first life together.
When she takes the locket off she feels the empty space near her heart, and as she gets older and her fingers thicken and stiffen it takes longer to do the clasp again, longer to feel that first cold touch, to feel it begin to warm. She has seen ornate brooches, pinned to women’s jackets, and in the Reverend’s parlor a design of flowers and leaves under glass. Things made with stiff, woven strands of a loved one’s hair, twisted into unnatural shapes, things that make her shudder. She felt faint in the parlor, watching Mrs. Toller’s nimble fingers flitting over the tea tray, and even though there was something wounded in the brown eyes, even though she knew that something was about to be said, she had to leave, apologies spilling out as she fumbled with the door. Outside her head was spinning and filled with things she didn’t want to see. There is a black space in her mind that has oozed and spread and covered those terrible days. The only thing she really remembers is Annie Ashe placing a tiny paper packet into her empty hand, opening it just enough to show the three curls of hair, so small, so soft, each tied with a bit of thread.
The boat from Liverpool was filled with children, calling out to each other in their clear high voices. Once a little girl sat beside her on a bolted bench; they looked out at the empty sea and she stroked the child’s hair, whispered to her, and the child leaned into her with a small sigh. Then a long-nosed woman came, then William came, and led her away with his strong arm hooked through hers. She lay on her berth, the flutter of new life so faint that even though she knew it was wrong, she could move her mind away from it, pretend it wasn’t there at all. When the boat was finally still, at the dock in the new world, she opened the paper packet, used a hat pin to tease the thread-bound wisps into the oval space inside the locket. Snapped it shut.
There were hard times after, and times that were not so hard, and she dressed herself and brushed her hair, loved her children, the living and the lost, loved her husband. But none of it felt like her own life. Sometimes she remembered the long-nosed woman on the ship, leading the little girl away. Remembered seeing the child’s step hesitate, skip, faster or slower, as she tried to match the pace. That was as close as Naomi could come to the way it felt, her life now lived in that hesitation, in that stuttering moment, trying to match up, to slide back into something, an easy gait. Thinking of it that way didn’t change anything, but she felt a little better knowing there was a way to describe it, her life, if there was ever a reason to, ever a need.
Wednesday’s Child—1888
THREE PEOPLE LOVE me in this world, and that should be enough. One is my mother, and I will never leave her. One is my sister, who is the best of us, the hope of us. Like in the garden. The last is my father, who takes care of us, but doesn’t always see.
There are families in church with children like steps on a stair, and babies, and grandmothers in black bonnets. And there are people who have no one at all. No one could love the tattered woman who mumbles outside Malley’s tavern, and Mr. Envers used to set down his mug of tea and tell my mother it was a terrible thing to outlive everyone, to be all alone.
When we first came to this town Rachel had to write an essay for Miss Alice, about her family. Parents and grandparents, where they came from, what they did. There was a silence at the dinner table and then my father said, That’s no one’s business; no one has any right to ask that. Rachel said that she had to, that it was an essay, and he gave her a look that he didn’t often give, and was silent for the rest of the meal. Later, in the kitchen, my mother told about her own parents, and what she knew of theirs. A ship our great-grandfather had owned, and how he was lost. A curved sword someone had brought back from war. She said it was all true but her voice sounded like a story, like the stories she used to tell when she pulled the covers up over us, smoothed them with her hand.
They came in the evening, in the dark. A brisk knocking at the door. I was at the foot of the stair; my father, in his shirtsleeves, opened it, letting in a whisper of dying leaves along with a rush of cold, sharp-scented air.
Wednesdays at eleven o’clock I go across the road to Dr. Robinson, and I see the week like a hill now, sloping up to a peak and then sliding down again. At first it was like waves building and crashing over my head. People on the street, the dark hallway, the unfamiliar room and the questions. He asked my mother things, asked me things, that were so private I didn’t even have words for them. But now I know what things look like, behind the gleaming door. Dr. Robinson examines my tongue, touches my face with his clean fingers, pulling down the skin beneath my eyes. Holds my wrist and counts without seeming to count. He told my mother that she didn’t always need to come with me, that he could send for her if need be, just across the road. The first time I went alone she watched me from the front porch, and each time I looked back she waved her hand. When I returned she was still there, sitting on the outside chair. She smoothed my hair back and gave me her sad smile and I told her it was fine, that the laughing girl had been there for a little while.
