Little Women and Me

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

  And so I waited, waited through the long hours of dying day turning to deeper dusk and finally full night.

  For some reason, I’d never noticed how many stars there were. The sky was blanketed with them. Finally, when it must have been long after midnight, I peeked over the ledge to see Jo nodding in her chair.

  Now if only Meg and Hannah are asleep, I thought as I stole into the house, careful not to let the door snick shut behind me. I even removed my boots so that the wooden floorboards wouldn’t clack. Then I tiptoed through the house to Beth’s room and stepped softly to the side of her bed.

  It’d be nice to be able to say that she looked peaceful in her sleep, but she didn’t. She made no sound, but she tossed and turned violently as though fighting with something I couldn’t see. Without thinking, I removed my chilled hand from inside my muff and placed it on Beth’s feverish cheek. Almost immediately, she stilled her jerky movements. For a horrible second I thought I’d killed her, but then I saw a peaceful smile on her lips.

  Poor Bethie.

  I would’ve stood there longer, happy to be Beth’s personal refrigeration unit for however long she needed me, forever even, but then I heard Jo make restless noises.

  Oh honestly. Was she already waking again? What was the girl, a vampire?

  Not wanting to risk getting caught, I dove into the half-opened closet, pulling the door nearly shut behind me.

  Oh great, I’m stuck here now, I thought.

  It turned out to be a good thing I was stuck, because I got to hear how good Jo was with Beth when Beth wakened suddenly from some fever dream.

  But then it turned into a bad thing when morning came and with it Dr. Bangs, who had Jo leave the room while Hannah stayed with him and he examined Beth.

  That was when I learned that Beth was far sicker than anyone but Dr. Bangs and Hannah realized.

  It was even more of a nuisance sneaking out of the house than it had been sneaking in. First I had to wait for the doctor and Hannah to leave, then I had to wait for Jo to go to the bathroom, which seemed to take a very long time before she did—the girl was like a camel!

  But I wasn’t. I hadn’t gone in hours and hours.

  So it was with great relief that when Jo left the room, I crossed to the window, stopping briefly to kiss Beth’s forehead before pushing the window open and crawling out.

  Only then did I put on my boots.

  And pee behind a tree in the woods.

  And begin the long journey back to Aunt March’s, where hopefully pretty Amy was occupying her attention enough with her accomplishments that Aunt March wouldn’t notice I’d been absent from breakfast.

  Hopefully, I’d get a nap in at some point today, since I’d be coming back to Beth’s room later on, only this time I’d plan my visit better.

  I did plan my next visit better, and all the ones the entire week after that.

  I would set out at about ten p.m. Then, whenever I saw Jo dozing, I would make sure to stop at the kitchen first to grab some small food item that I could eat when hunger grew to starvation point.

  Sometimes Jo would sleep for longer periods, allowing me more time with Beth. Then I’d watch as she twisted and turned in her sleep. But no matter how violently she moved, she never relinquished her hold on headless and limbless Joanna.

  And sometimes in the mornings, before I had a chance to sneak back out, I would hear Beth trying to sing as she used to love to do, her voice through her sore throat coming out a heartbreakingly agonized croak. Those were almost the hardest moments. The hardest was when it became obvious she no longer recognized anyone, when I would hear her calling Hannah “Amy” or calling Jo “Emily.” In normal times, Jo would no doubt resent the mix-up, while I’d enjoy it, but these weren’t normal times. I wanted nothing more than to hear Beth recognize Jo as Jo, and I was sure Jo felt the same.

  That was the first time I heard Jo and Meg seriously consider writing to Marmee to tell her what was going on. But then Hannah brought in a telegram from Washington saying Papa had taken a turn for the worse and that we shouldn’t expect Marmee for some time. Hannah didn’t think we should worry Marmee when she could do nothing about it.

  There was another morning when I heard the voice of the Hummel woman coming from the living room, apologizing for Beth being sick and asking for a shroud in which to bury her baby, Minna.

  I felt sorry that the baby had died, but a part of me couldn’t help but be angry with her over Beth getting sick.

  Others came to visit too—so many others! Neighbors, the milkman, even the butcher! People I’d never heard of before came to the house, all worried about Beth, taking the risk to come because they loved her so much.

  It would be so easy for kids I knew back home to make fun of Beth for being such a homebody and all her other simple ways—and don’t get me started on her love for the doll Joanna. But she was so good, and yet not in an annoying way. No wonder people couldn’t help but love her. Me, on the other hand? No matter what century I was in, I wondered who would be there if I got sick … or worse … But Beth?

  I pushed the thought away. I didn’t want to think of that anymore.

  But then I had to think about it.

  Because then came the horrible night when, after Jo had fallen asleep, I heard Beth moaning for Marmee. Beth had never called for her since getting sick, at least not when I’d been there. I’m sure she must have wanted to—Beth was the type of girl who would want her mother when sick; they all were—but I’m also sure that of all the people in the world, Beth never wanted to be a burden on anybody.

  Why wasn’t Jo waking and going to her? Beth’s cries sounded so loud to me. Then it occurred to me that Jo must be exhausted from staying awake twenty-three hours a day.

  I couldn’t let Beth go on crying for Marmee that way. I had to do something.

  Pushing the door gently open I crept to Beth’s bedside, took one of her hot hands in one of mine.

  Her eyes fluttered open and then locked on my face.

  “Marmee?” she croaked wonderingly.

  “No—” I started to say, then cut myself off when I saw she really didn’t know the difference.

  “Yes,” I corrected myself, soothing her brow with my free hand. “It’s Marmee. Now I need you to rest and concentrate as hard as you can on getting well. We all love you so much.”

  She breathed a happy sigh. “Could you sing me back to sleep?” she asked.

  Sing? I wished she’d asked for anything but that. Not only would I wake the others, I was an awful singer.

  But it was Beth. How could I refuse her?

  “What would you like me to sing?” I asked.

  “‘Onward Christian Soldiers’? You always like that one.”

  No, I didn’t. I didn’t even know that one!

  So in the quietest voice possible, I sang “The Climb” by Miley Cyrus.

  It was the only song I could think of just then that might be something Beth might like.

  “I don’t know that one,” she said.

  “That’s because you missed church on Sunday,” I said, thinking fast. “It’s a new hymn. The whole town can’t stop singing it.”

  “I like it.” She rolled over with a yawn. “Could you sing it again, Marmee?”

  “Yes,” I said, settling down beside her, wrapping my arms around her and rocking her body. “But you must promise to try and rest now.”

  “I promise.”

  So what could I do? I sang again.

  “I’ve never heard that song either,” came Jo’s voice, surprising me that she was now awake, “and anyway, we don’t even go to church. You know that.”

  “Does it matter?” I eased my hold on Beth’s sleeping body.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Does it matter?” I adjusted the pillows under Beth’s head.

  “You could catch the fever.”

  I bent to kiss Beth’s brow. “Does it matter?”

  Apparently it did matter to Jo and Meg. />
  They understood why I’d snuck in—who didn’t love Beth?—but still they sent me back to Aunt March’s.

  And still I snuck back that night.

  It was the first of December, almost a year since I’d arrived. I’d been fourteen when I got here. I was fifteen now. Back home, Anne would be in the Upper School at Wycroft and the fall term would be nearly done. She and Jackson were probably a couple by now, not that it mattered to me anymore. So much had changed, including me.

  I was in the closet to hear Beth become increasingly incoherent, tossing out words in her troubled sleep that made no sense. And I was there to hear it when Dr. Bangs came to examine Beth, finally saying with a sad sigh that it was time to send for Marmee.

  No!

  Not yet! I was almost sure Beth wasn’t supposed to die yet! Didn’t a whole lot of stuff from the original book still have to happen first? But maybe I was having story amnesia again. Maybe this was when she would die.

  Dr. Bangs said he expected there would be a great change, for better or worse, around midnight. To me it sounded no better than the sort of mumbo jumbo found in horoscopes, but what did I know?

  I heard the others leave the room, Jo going to get a telegram they’d already prepared for such an event, which she’d take into town herself, even though a storm had whipped up outside.

  When the room was at last empty, I emerged and kissed Beth, thinking I’d sneak out myself for a bit. It did get cramped on the floor of the closet. I stretched my aching muscles and then, realizing how hungry I was, went in search of some food. Sure, I might run into Meg or Hannah, but they wouldn’t be nearly as tough about kicking me out of the house as Jo would be if she were still here.

  I was in the kitchen making a snack when Hannah entered.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

  “What does it look like?” I said. “I’m making a snack.”

  “That’s not what I meant and you know it.” Hannah put her hands on her hips and looked at me sternly, but when I coolly gazed back at her, she dropped those hands in defeat. “Ach, you always were the most stubborn.”

  This surprised me. “Not Jo?”

  “You must be joking.” She waved a hand. “It was always you.”

  News to me!

  I wasn’t buying it.

  I was still eating my snack—I didn’t care what it was or what it tasted like with Beth sick, I just needed to put something in my stomach—when Jo returned, breathless.

  She looked at me in disgust.

  “You back again?” she said.

  I shrugged. “I never really left.”

  I prepared to be kicked out again, but before that could happen Laurie showed up.

  He looked just as breathless as Jo as he grabbed her by the elbow and steered her into the living room.

  “I have some news and also something to confess,” he said.

  Figuring I might as well hear this too and figuring that since he hadn’t even greeted me he probably wouldn’t notice my presence, I trailed after them.

  “First the news,” Laurie said. He brought out a telegram.

  Jo scanned it quickly. “It says here that Papa is improving.” She looked up at him, tears of hope in her eyes. “But this is wonderful news!”

  Then she began really crying, telling him how with both parents gone she felt as though God was far away too.

  Laurie comforted her, saying Beth was too good to die, that God would never take someone like her. This bothered me. If God wouldn’t take a good person, then what about all the other good people he’d taken over the last few millennia? Laurie’s argument may have comforted him, but it sounded like a bunch of nonsense to me.

  Apparently Jo thought so too. “But the good and dear always die,” she said.

  Laurie couldn’t find a thing to say to counter this, so he made his confession instead.

  “I took it upon myself to telegraph your mother yesterday to inform her Beth is ill and that she is needed at home. Brooke says she’ll be here later tonight.”

  The look Jo gave him then—I thought I was seeing thunder—and when she flew at him I was sure she intended to beat him up for doing such a thing without permission.

  But then I realized she was hugging him. She was grateful. Laurie must have realized it too, because he tried to kiss her, at which point Jo pulled herself away.

  Idiot. I wouldn’t have pulled away!

  Laurie didn’t seem to mind her reaction, though. Maybe it dawned on him that this wasn’t the best time to put the make on a girl?

  “The last train comes in at two a.m.,” he informed Jo. “I shall be happy to go to the station now and wait for your mother however long it takes.”

  It was when he turned to leave that he saw me standing there.

  “Oh!” He blushed. “What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be staying with Amy at your aunt’s? I could have sworn I saw you there earlier in the day.”

  “Oh, you know Emily.” Jo waved her hand here, but for once it wasn’t in disgust. I figured maybe she was so relieved Marmee was coming, she didn’t care about what I did just then. “Emily just comes and goes as she pleases. I only wish there were some way to help Beth. If only there were some medicine for what she has …”

  A way to help Beth … Some medicine …

  Suddenly I remembered something from science class and an idea occurred to me. I stared at the remainder of the piece of bread in my hand.

  “Do we have any old bread in the house?” I asked Jo urgently. “Something with a bit of mold on it?”

  The sudden thought I’d had was about something I vaguely remembered learning in science once. Hadn’t penicillin been discovered from mold on bread? Maybe that could save Beth!

  “How should I know?” Jo asked, irritable once more. “Ask Hannah.”

  I asked Hannah and she did have some moldy old bread.

  “Here,” I said, returning to Jo with the bread. “When you sit with Beth, please, please get her to eat this.”

  “Moldy bread?” Jo wrinkled her nose. “But why? I should think, if she has any appetite at all, she’d want something other than moldy bread.”

  “Please, Jo,” I pleaded, desperate now. “For once just trust me. I think this might help Beth.”

  The shadow of death hung over the house.

  Even though it was night already and Laurie had left for the train station, it seemed a long wait until midnight, the witching hour that Dr. Bangs had declared should represent a turning point for Beth.

  I was back in the closet, urged there by Jo.

  “Meg’s been through enough this past week,” she’d said, shooing me along, “what with worrying about Beth and running the household. She shouldn’t have to worry about you too right this minute.”

  So back into the closet I’d gone.

  “I am so worried about Beth,” Jo said in a loud whisper, almost like she wanted me to be able to hear them, as she and Meg hovered over Beth’s bed.

  “We need to trust in God,” Meg said, sounding more confident than I suspected she felt, “and Marmee.”

  “You’re right,” Jo agreed.

  Hey! What happened to the girl who agreed with me that God would take a good person as easily as a bad person?

  I sighed. Looked as though I was the only person questioning authority left in the foxhole.

  Then Meg vowed to never complain about anything again if God would only spare Beth.

  Me, I was making no vows to God or anyone else, because I knew I’d never keep them.

  Or maybe I’d make one, just to myself, that if Beth lived through the night I’d never again mock poor headless and limbless Joanna, not even in my own mind. But no, that wasn’t a big enough trade. If Beth lived through the night, I’d do my best to find a way to be a better person.

  “Did you see that?” Meg said in a hushed voice just after the hall clock struck midnight.

  I poked my head out and saw a long shadow fall across Beth’s bed
. It was as though something had come to claim her.

  If I hadn’t been there to see it with my own two eyes I’d never have believed it.

  And then …

  Nothing happened.

  Nothing appeared to change: her face still flushed, her breathing still labored, her body still fighting in its fevered sleep.

  We all settled back into our respective positions to wait, some of us more comfortably than others.

  One o’clock.

  Two o’clock.

  Suddenly Jo leaped from her chair. “Oh, Meg!” she cried. “I think she’s dead!”

  She began to say good-bye then, but Hannah, having no doubt heard her cry, rushed in.

  In the instant before she spoke, I saw the shadow was gone. Somehow, it had receded without any of us noticing.

  “She’s not dead,” Hannah said. “She’s only sleeping. Peacefully. Her fever’s turned.”

  Her fever had turned? Did this mean, then, Beth wasn’t going to die? That I had somehow saved her? But … but … how had I done it? Was it the Miley Cyrus song? The moldy bread?

  Had I invented penicillin?

  Dr. Bangs was sent for.

  “She will pull through, I think,” he said, adding, “this time.”

  I didn’t like his cautious note, but I told myself he was just being careful—malpractice suits and all that. Beth had survived the witching hour, had survived scarlet fever. She’d be fine in time. Thank you, Miley Cyrus! Thank you, moldy bread!

  I could almost feel Jo’s eyes boring through the closed door, almost hear the words in her head as she wondered: Did Emily somehow do this?

  The others began rejoicing then even though Dr. Bangs was giving instructions on what to do once Beth awoke.

  Good thing I was listening!

  There was the sound of bells and then Hannah and Laurie shouting Marmee’s arrival.

  Oh, now she comes home! Talk about anticlimactic.

  But wait a second. If my purpose here had been to save Beth, Beth had been saved.