“I’m glad you’re back,” Netta said. “I’ve been trying to mind the store for you, but I can’t say I know what I’m doing.”
Bea Dot quickly walked out of the barn, eyes down, brushing past Netta and jogging into the house.
“I’m sure you’ve done a fine job,” she heard Will tell Netta. But that was all she heard before she rushed inside and closed the back door behind her. She leaned with her backside on the door knob, her heart racing, her hair line beginning to perspire.
“Bea Dot Ferguson,” she asked, “what can of worms have you opened up now?”
“Doctor’ll be here soon, Tilda. Hang on for me—just a little while longer.”
California wondered whether Matilda heard her. Boiling with fever, her sister had been talking nonsense for the past two days—when she talked at all. Usually Matilda lay on the bed in the front room of her salt block house struggling for air, gurgling as if her lungs were fish bowls.
California removed the rag from Matilda’s forehead, then dunked it in a bucket of cold water. She wrung out the cloth and placed it back on Matilda’s head before wringing out a second one to rub down her arms and legs.
She’d done everything Dr. Arnold had told her—giving Matilda lots of water when she could drink it and keeping her cool with alcohol rubs, at least until she ran out of alcohol. But nothing brought the fever down. California cringed at her sister’s every breath, which sounded as if she were sucking air through a wet sponge. More frightening, though, was her skin, now all gray, as if her body were decomposing before it died.
Please, Lord, let her survive the night
. California wished she had pressured Dr. Arnold for more care.
“Don’t you got no medicine to give her?” she’d asked.
“I wish I did, Cal,” he’d replied, putting his stethoscope in his black bag. The circles under his eyes matched the gray fabric of his vest. “None of my elixirs work on this flu. It’s a stubborn thing, fierce too. Matilda’s best chance is for you to keep her temperature down. If she gets worse, send your nieces for Dr. Washington”.
But Dr. Washington was dead—succumbed to flu two days ago.
She knew the hospital was swamped with patients. All of Savannah was down with flu, and the white folks got Dr. Arnold’s attention first. Still, if he knew how bad Matilda was, maybe he’d come back. But how could she get word to him? Where was the closest telephone? And should she leave her sister to use it?
For the fiftieth time that day, California opened the door to her little white house and peered down the muddy street, hoping to see a motorcar rumbling toward her. But the pot-holed street was empty, not even one person hunched up against the chill, face covered with the gauze mask now required of everyone venturing out of doors. Cal saw few neighbors lately. Those not down with flu had departed with their white employers to keep house or mind children on Tybee Island, hoping the fresh air would protect them.
Matilda needed a hospital, but California couldn’t get her sister admitted. Her only hope was to fetch Dr. Arnold. She alternated her worried gaze from the street to bed, then back. What if Matilda died while she was gone?
“Auntie? Auntie Cal?”
“Coming, baby.” Her nieces lay in the next room having caught the flu from their mother. California closed the front door, picked up the bucket next to Matilda’s bed, and carried it into the children’s room. Sweat dampened her forehead, in spite of the October chill. Her head ached too, right behind her eyes. She knew she needed rest, but she didn’t dare go to sleep.
Poor babies. Lying side by side, they looked weak as newborn kittens. Their flu caught on fast. Inez had just complained of a headache the previous night, and Agnes’s had started that morning. By noon, both were coughing to beat all, and they took to bed without eating any of the greens California had cooked. She couldn’t even get them to sip on some pot liquor.
She lay her palm on Inez’s forehead and whispered another plea to heaven, hoping her prayers hadn’t worn out her welcome with God. She couldn’t help it. Inez’s hot skin could melt an ice box. Agnes’s too. She put one rag on each girl’s head, but she had to rub them down also. How would she do that? She surveyed the room, then pulled open a bureau drawer, where she found her sister’s Sunday petticoat. She plunged it into the cold water and wrung it out before rubbing down Inez’s arms, then Agnes’s.
The room smelled of sickness and sweat, both hers and the girls’. It smelled of kerosene from the lamps and old, cooked turnip greens, still sitting in the pot on the stove. Who had time to wash dishes?
California’s eyes burned with fatigue, but she ignored her body’s yearning for sleep, forcing herself to tend her patients. They were all she had in the world. Them and Miss Bea Dot.
“My head hurt something awful,” Inez said.
“I know, baby doll. This cold cloth will help.”
Would it really?
She rubbed sweat from her forehead and neck before plunging the petticoat back into the water, which stung her raw, cracked knuckles. She’d lit no fire in the stove, trying to keep her patients cool, but the room still grew warmer. What else could she do? Kissing both girls on the forehead felt like kissing a loaf of bread right out of the oven.
“I’ll be right back. Just gone check your mama.”
The bucket grew heavier every time she carried it from one room to the next. Her back ached from leaning and lugging water. Shuffling to the front room, she ran into the door sill and sloshed water on the floor and in her boots. Paying it no mind, she kept moving. “I wear a rut in this floor toting this thing back and forth.”
A knock shot joy to her heart.
“Halleluja,” she said, eyes to the ceiling. She put the bucket down in the middle of the floor and huffed on aching feet to the door. “Coming.”
On the stoop, Penny hugged her crocheted wrap around her shoulders. Her breath puffed out in clouds of steam from the sides of her gauze mask, and her eyes brimmed with worry. She held out a cloth-covered plate. “You all right, Cal?” she asked. “Ain’t seen you all week. Miss Lavinia send you some biscuits.”
“Penny, go get Dr. Arnold,” Cal replied, ignoring the biscuits. “I need him fast.” She looked past Penny into the street. The sun had already set, and everything had turned black and dark blue, except for the yellow balls of light from the street lamps.
“Dr. Arnold?” Penny’s eyes widened over her mask. “He been at the hospital the past two or three days straight. Miss Lavinia say he up to his ears in sick folk.”
“He already been here once.” California felt a stone growing in her gut. “He got to come back. Now Inez and Agnes sick too.”
Penny placed the plate of biscuits on the stoop, then stepped into the street—right into a puddle.
“I need Dr. Arnold to put Tilda in the hospital. Maybe Inez and Agnes too.” California leaned on the door frame. All that talking left her winded, and her head pounded.
“Don’t think you oughta count on that, Cal,” Penny said sadly. “Even some a the white folks being turned away on the hospital front steps.”
Fear gripped California now, so tight she almost couldn’t breathe. “I can’t lose Tilda and the girls, Penny.”
Penny shook her head in sympathy, but she didn’t seem to understand what California was telling her. So Cal stepped out into the damp, into the puddle with Penny, though she didn’t feel the water soaking into her already wet shoes. She clutched Penny’s arm. “You the only person come by in two days. You got to talk to Dr. Arnold for me.”
“He ain’t gone listen to me.” Penny tried to pull away, but Cal kept her grip.
“I can’t go myself because I can’t leave my girls. Please, Penny. Talk to him. Or stay here while I go fetch him.”
Penny arched her spine backward, as if California were exhaling poison. Finally, she wrenched free of Cal’s grip. “I’ll see what I can do.”
California’s fear dropped away then, and the relief made her light headed. “Thank you.”
Leaving Penny in the puddle, she went back into the house, leaving the biscuits on the stoop for stray cats to find. Matilda lay still in her bed, and California relaxed somewhat, seeing her sister sleeping soundly. But after a second she realized why. The gurgling had stopped. California rushed to her sister’s bedside and lay her hand on Matilda’s chest. Nothing. No heartbeat, no rising and falling of trembling breath. Matilda was gone. California dropped to her knees and wailed, sobbing so hard that she fell to her side and lay on the floor like a baby, hating herself for talking to Penny so long, hating Dr. Washington for dying, hating Dr. Arnold for being white, hating the influenza for robbing her of her beloved sister.
She cried and moaned, making her throat raw, provoking a cough. She curled on the floor, coughs interrupting her sobs, until a moment when she paused to take in some air, and a puny voice called to her.
“Auntie.”
California pushed herself onto her hands and knees, then made herself stand. Her weeping had made her head pound heavier, but she forced herself to shuffle into the other room.
“Coming.”
Netta shuffled on socked feet to the kitchen and absently reached into the cupboard for a tea cup. Startled by a tickle on the top of her hand, she yanked the cup out and found a spider web spreading over her knuckles and onto the cup’s lip. Shuddering in disgust, she said, “Leave it to a bachelor to store dishes in a dirty cabinet.”
She pumped water into a tea pot, then heated it on the stove. Next, she filled a bucket halfway with cold water and waited for the tea pot to boil. If she had known about the cobwebs, she’d have never eaten from Will’s dishes. Why hadn’t Bea Dot noticed?
Probably because she crowded her head with thoughts of Will Dunaway. Just yesterday Netta had gone looking for her cousin and found her in Will’s back storage room sniffing his pillow. Oh, she’d tried to lie her way out of the embarrassing situation, saying “I came in here for more coffee, and I thought I smelled something rotten.” Bea Dot had always been transparent.
Lately, she’d become quite the little merchant as well as a postmistress, now that the mailman, in Will’s absence, left a bag of letters at the storefront each day. Bea Dot cheerfully sorted envelopes and handed out letters to the neighboring farmers who came to pick them up. Still, Netta couldn’t help wondering if the store had been owned by a toothless old man, would Bea Dot have been as enthusiastic about minding it?
Netta removed the dishes, cutlery, and pots from the cupboard and laid them out on the table. She found dead bugs on some, and cobwebs stuck to others. Mrs. Dunaway would have been horrified to see the state of Will’s kitchenware. When the teapot sang, Netta poured the hot water into the bucket of cold water before adding soap powder. Then she plunged an old rag into the suds and began scrubbing. She’d been at it fifteen minutes when Bea Dot found her.
“Netta, what in the world are you doing?”
What did it look like she was doing, teaching Sunday school? Netta held up her rag for Bea Dot to see. “Look at the dirt on this rag,” she said. “Will’s drawers and cupboards have cobwebs in them. I can’t believe we eat off the dishes in there.”
She returned to her cleaning while Bea Dot watched with mouth agape, as if she’d never seen soap and water before. Of course, lately she’d been so immersed in her storekeeping that she’d all but abandoned housework. It was all Netta could do to get Bea Dot to wash the supper dishes or do the laundry.
“Are you feeling all right?” Bea Dot asked.
“Of course,” Netta said. What a silly question. A wisp of hair tickled her forehead, so she pushed it back with her wrist.
“Aren’t you cold? Where are your shoes?”
Netta stopped her scrubbing and eyed her feet. She hadn’t seen her ankle bones in weeks. “I can’t get my shoes on, she replied. “My feet are too fat.” She held up her hand. “Look at my fingers.” She clawed them and said, “I can hardly bend them. They tingle just from doing that.”
She plunged the rag into the bucket again and went back to her scrubbing. The cabinet’s interior smelled like dust and soap.
“Are you sure you should be working so hard?”
With her head inside the cupboard, Netta couldn’t help rolling her eyes and screwing up her face. Who else was going to clean this mess? She ignored the question and continued her attack on the compartment’s interior.
“Are you angry about something?”
Netta stopped, sighed, and pulled her head out of the cabinet. Bea Dot’s question reminded her of the many times Ralph checked the irritable bite of her. The discomfort of her pregnancy hardly helped matters.
“No, dear. I’m not angry,” she replied in a softer tone. “Just uncomfortable. I’m sorry I took it out on you.”
“If you’d like, I can bring your rocker into the kitchen where it’s warmer.”
Netta shook her head and swished the rag in the water to rinse off the dirt; then she wrung it out again. “I can’t fit into that chair anymore,” she said. “Besides, I can’t sit still while this kitchen is a filthy mess.”
Bea Dot’s eyebrows came together, and Netta understood the look of confusion. She couldn’t explain her behavior either. All she knew was that she had a compulsion to clean up the wreck of a kitchen.