Four Spirits (42 page)

Were her aunts more like tropical birds or colorful jewels in their bright, tight clothes? In her quiet gray suit, Gloria's mother sat calmly among their flutter. Why should Gloria leave this? She was home. She'd telephone Christine, arrange to visit some later time.

CATHERINE HAD ALWAYS TRIED TO BE FRIENDS WITH HER
body. When she was ten years old and suddenly started falling down, when she was eleven and it became difficult to put one foot in front of the other, when her daddy gave her a stick he had cut from the fence row to use as a walking stick, Catherine spoke lovingly to her legs, told them she knew they were doing their best, told them that they must
try.

Every night after she went to bed she put Jergens lotion on her thighs, knees, shins, calves, feet, just slathered it on to stimulate the circulation. As she smoothed on the lotion, she said “good legs, good legs” to them, as though they were two long cats. Not wanting to worry her parents, she waited till they were asleep before she began the massage. She would whisper to her legs about long walks she had taken with Donny, and how she used to wade in the creeks and let the minnows nibble her toes. She reminded them that she wanted to have a bicycle someday, when her balance was better, and they could do the pedaling, if they were well and strong. What hills they would fly over, what blossoming trees—redbud, dogwood, and mimosa—they would skim under!

Once, when she was coming up the steps, the toe of her saddle oxfords caught the lip of the step and she fell. “Damn,” she said, for the first time. She was twelve, and it was the first time she had ever said a swearword. The first time she had come close to cursing her failing body.

Her daddy was about to take Mommy to the doctor anyway, so he had taken Cat along, too. The doctor looked at the bruise close to her temple and
said that it wasn't serious. “It's your mommy we got to worry about,” he said to her, as though she'd been trying to get undue attention.

She tried, shyly, to tell him more. “Sometimes I can hardly walk,” she whispered. “And I trip, like this time. Daddy gave me a walking stick.” She didn't want her mother to hear.

“You're at the awkward age,” he said. “Do you have your period yet?”

Catherine had said no; she didn't ask what was a period, but whatever it was, she was sure she didn't have it.

“Once you have the curse,” he said, smiling, “you'll get more graceful.”

She'd always liked Dr. Higgins. She felt reassured, but on the way home, in the car, she asked what a period was, and her mother had glanced at her father, and then told her that she would explain later, that they'd have a woman talk.

“Your mother needs to rest now,” her father said.

When they got home, her mother went straight to bed. Catherine went to the kitchen and washed the dishes that had piled up in the sink. Standing up in front of the sink, she didn't have to move much. Her father came in and told her he appreciated her taking over the dish washing. She realized he meant she was to do it from now on.

From now on
till when? she thought but didn't ask.

She stood at the sink carefully washing the dishes till she was stiff. Her pelvis felt like a chair into which the rest of her torso sagged, and her legs were as numb as the dumb legs of a straight-back kitchen chair. The dishes took a long time that night because Cat noticed her grip was becoming uncertain. Several times, a plate or cup would try to slip out of her grasp. She felt relieved when she got to the metal pots and pans. When one of them crashed down against the sink, she knew, even as it fell, that it could not break.

What her mother had was cancer. Cat herself was beginning to get breasts, and she wondered if they, too, would become cancerous. In the bathtub, she told them they were pretty, though one seemed slightly larger than the other. She told them to be good, and not to cause trouble. Getting out of the tub was a terror. She would turn around so that she was on her knees, grasp the side and push herself up. Once she slipped and her cheek smacked the porcelain and then skidded down the back slope of the tub; her nose went underwater. After that she drained all the water from the tub before she tried to get out, even though it meant soap scum would settle back onto her skin.

Finally she told Donny that he needed to be home when she took a bath, that he needed to come in when she called and help her out.

He smiled at her and said he would close his eyes; he promised. He wouldn't peek.

He didn't ask why she couldn't get out of the tub by herself, a thirteen-year-old girl. He knew. Together they conspired to try to keep their secret from their parents. Their mother hardly left the bed now. Usually their father was seeing about the fields or the fences when it was time for Cat to creep down the steps for school. They didn't walk anymore to the bus stop. Donny rode his bicycle all the way to school, with Cat sitting on the seat over the back wheel. The steps up the school bus were far too high, and she didn't want the other children to see that Donny had to help her. One day, when they stood at the top of the five steps from their porch going down to the yard, and they were late, Donny said, “Just let me carry you down.”

“All right,” she said, because she knew it took almost a minute for her to navigate each step.

He had swooped her up and whispered, “Just think of Rhett Butler carrying Scarlett up the steps to rape her.”

The laughter had just burst out of her. Donny and she had never said the word
rape
before. But while he pedaled furiously along the highway, and she could barely hold on, she cursed her body. She cursed her hands, not her increasingly useless legs. She couldn't afford to offend the legs, but the hands ought to be reliable. She cursed her hands because they barely had enough strength to hold on safely, and she didn't want to tell Donny.

Sometimes, when she sat by the fire reading and struggled to turn a page, she saw him staring at her. He couldn't wipe the worry off his face fast enough.

Once in school, Mr. Whitlock, her science teacher, asked her if she would mind carrying a note down the hall to another teacher. She smiled reassuringly, but said, “I have a stomachache today. Maybe somebody else would be better.” He looked at her peculiarly but said nothing in reply.

At the end of the period, he came and stood by her desk. He asked anxiously, “Are you feeling better now, Catherine?” She answered as brightly as anyone could, “Oh yes! Thank you.” But he continued to stare at her. “You're one of our best students,” he said. “Let me know if there's ever anything bothering you. We could talk. I know your mother's ill.”

He was a washed-out-looking man, with clear plastic eyeglass frames and a
girlish, Cupid's bow upper lip. His eyes were so kind that she thought she'd never seen anyone so handsome. Even in college, she sometimes dreamed about Mr. Whitlock.
We could talk,
he always said in her dreams. She had heard that he had gone back to school, gotten a Ph.D. in biology, taught at Florence State in northern Alabama, was the father of five children.

“Thank you,” she had replied, back at the consolidated school. “Could you just give me a hand up?” And he had held out his hand to her, helped her stand, didn't say another word. She tried to walk straight, but just at the door, she lost her balance and swiped against the doorframe. But she didn't fall. She didn't fall.

On the bicycle ride home, a truck came too close to them, and she jerked away. She came off the back of the bicycle into a ditch, and then Donny and the bicycle careened off the road, too. She could see that he didn't have to fall. He'd wrecked to keep her company. The truck driver, a frightened farm woman, had stopped. The woman was crying. When she saw they weren't bleeding, she cried harder.

Donny told her just to let him put the bike in the back, the wheel was bent. To please drive them home. On the way home, she apologized, offered repeatedly to pay to have the bike fixed, thanked God that they weren't seriously hurt.

Then Cat had spoken up. “I may be hurt. Could you take us to the doctor instead? I'd like to talk to him, at least. Just for a precaution. I might be hurt internally.”

Donny put his arm around her. He looked at her like the perfect big brother. “Really, Cat?” he asked.

“No,” the woman said. “We're almost at your place now. We'll let your folks decide if you should go to the doctor.” She turned off the two-lane onto the long driveway back to the house.

When they got to the house, Donny told Cat he would carry her inside.

“I'll leave the bike,” he said to the woman, “so you can have it repaired.”

Then he opened the truck door and slid to the ground. Cat scootched over to the edge of the seat and fell toward his outstretched arms. He turned around, hiked her up, once, higher into his arms, and carried her up the steps. As soon as they got inside, he set her on the sofa.

“I'm going to start lifting weights,” he said ruefully.

“Do,” she said. The glance of conspiracy passed between them. Almost she wished he would speak out. Almost she wished he would ask if they should
tell somebody, and then they would talk about who to tell. But he didn't. He sat down beside her on the green sofa, and they both stared silently straight ahead. They both knew she was getting around with increasing difficulty, but they wouldn't admit it. Not out loud. On the bad mornings, she pretended to be too sick for one reason or another to appear at school. Donny would pick up her homework assignments. She never fell behind.

From the sofa they heard their mother snoring. Sometimes she groaned in her sleep.

“When I catch my breath,” Donny said, “I'll carry you to your bedroom. When it's supper, I'll bring you a plate. I'll clean up the kitchen and fix something for supper. Try to rest.”

“Thank you,” she said.

That night, while she ate her baked beans with cut-up hot dogs, she heard her brother and father talking in the kitchen, over their supper. Although she was propped up in bed, with her dinner plate on her lap, she almost felt she was with them. She could hear Dad and Donny pull out their chairs. Soon, she imagined, Donny would ask in his stiff, polite way
How was your day?

“There's something wrong with Sister,” her brother said. Cat couldn't believe what she was hearing. “Her legs are weak.”

“She spends too much time over them books,” her father said. “Even when she's sick.”

“That's not it,” she heard Donny say. Staring at the tines of her fork piercing a segment of hot dog, she listened intently. She was terrified and grateful. There was a desperate, insistent note in Donny's voice, one she'd never heard before. “There's something making her weaker and weaker.”

“She's not a sissy,” their father answered. “She'll be all right.”

No!
She thought to Donny.
Don't believe it.

“Like Mother?” Donny asked. His voice was shrill. “Like Mother, when you said the lump in her breast was too little to worry about?”

“You speak with respect,” their father said. “Or I'll wear you out. You're not too big.”

“Listen to me!” It sounded as though Donny might cry.

“You always was one to get worked up over nothing.”

She heard Donny's chair scrape back. “All right,” he said. “All right. I'll call the doctor about Sister and make an appointment. I'll ask the science teacher to drive us. He's worried about her, even if you're not. He asked me about her.
He said she couldn't write fast and he gave the class extra time to finish their last test so she could finish.”

Catherine was mortified. Her cheeks flamed with blushing. She hadn't realized that Mr. Whitlock had extended the test time. Plenty of people beside her were still writing, even after he called time.
No!
she thought. Donny was just making that up to impress their father.
Mr. Whitlock hadn't noticed.

“Don,” their father said, and he sounded calm. “Y'all almost got runned over. It's natural to be upset. Just sit down, son. Let's finish our supper. Don't talk loud. You might wake your mother up.”

“I'll
tell
Mother,” Donny said, “if you don't agree to schedule a checkup for Cat.” But his voice was calm.

Cat rested her fork in the baked beans.
Don't be harsh,
she thought. They knew how hard their father worked. Sometimes they talked about all the things he had to do while they were in school. They always ended by saying
He's doing the very best he can
. It was like saying amen at the end of a prayer. They both loved their father.

“I was planning to anyway,” their father said. “But your mother hasn't got too much longer. She's too sick to let on now about Cat. I was trying to wait.”

“How much longer?” Donny asked, and he sounded as though he was five years old.

It was just the question Cat had wanted to ask.
Mother? How long?
And she felt the tears gushing down her cheeks. She tried not to sob so she could hear the answer.

She couldn't hear, but she heard Donny sob and fight for his breath, get up from his chair, run through the living room and outside.

Then she heard the slow, heavy tread of her father coming to her room.

Then he was at the door.

“Catherine,” he said softly. “Are you asleep?”

She closed her eyes and tried to pretend, but her chest was heavy, and the plate was tilting.

“Catherine,” he said, alarmed. “Can't you get your breath?”

She opened her eyes and said, “How's Mother?”

He sat down on the bed, and it dipped deeply under his weight. He took her hand. “Catherine, don't pretend.” He paused. “I tried to pretend your mother would have a miracle. That's what I prayed for. But I have to tell you
and Donny. Dr. Higgins says it won't be long now. He says we ought to go to the hospital where they can keep her more comfortable.”

Catherine cried till she thought she'd choke and vomit. Her father quietly moved the plate of beans and hot dogs and set it on the plank floor. Then he gathered her into his burly arms.