Diary of a Wildflower (4 page)

September, 1920

Luther
finished eighth grade last year like Samuel and Trula did before him, and
that’s as far as you can go in Deep Bottom.  If you want a highschool
education you have to go all the way to Granger, and that’s eighteen miles.

Roxie
is now in charge of taking the eggs to Mr. Call in the mornings, and handling
the money for school supplies.  She starts eighth grade this year and Nell
starts the sixth.  I am in fourth and Charles is in the second. 
Jewel will start next year.  I like my new teacher, Miss Mays.  She
is so pretty, all the boys are in love with her.  She brags on me for how
good I can read and write.  I’m good in grammar too.  I like to say
things right.  Such as saying brought instead of brung.

Most
days before going home, we walk over to Mr. Call’s store to pick up our mail,
if we have any.  Mrs. Call is an official worker for the U.S. Post Office,
and she puts all of our mail in a wooden cubby hole marked W. STARR.  Once
in awhile there’s a letter from Mommie’s kin, the Browns, who live over at
Stormy Ridge, or there might be a catalog or a calendar from a farm supply, or
a newspaper from Bluefield or Richmond when Samuel has the money to buy a
subscription.

Mack
Call works for his daddy doing this or that, and most of the time he is in the
store when we go in.  He’s been real chummy with us since he drove us to
Skylark.  He gives each one of us a piece of penny candy to munch on the
way home.  Then he has a private talk with Nell.

I
ask Nell, “What’s Mack Call got to say to you?”

“Mack? 
Oh, he just likes to talk.  You know Mack.”

But
she won’t look me in the eye.  Something sneaky is going on.

October, 1920

Samuel
answers an ad in the newspaper calling for workers to help build a road in
Richmond the capitol of Virginia.  They write back and tell him to come on
out and give it a try.  So he does.  I will miss him awfully, but I
know he’s happy to be making good wages.  Before long we get two letters
from him.  One is addressed to everybody.  Roxie reads it to us as we
walk home from school.  He tells us he is working hard and eating so much
he’s liable to get fat.  He is staying in a boarding house with some of
the other workers.  Before Christmas, he says the road building company
will quit working for about three months and commence again in the
spring.  He can’t wait to see us in December.  He sends a dollar for
Mommie, a dollar for Dad and a quarter to buy us kids some candy with.

A
second letter is addressed to me – Lorelei Starr, Starr Mountain, Deep Bottom,
Virginia.  It’s the first letter I ever got in my life, and I look at the
envelope for a long time.  It has passed through strangers’ hands all the
way from Richmond.  It’s got a stamp on it and everything.  Samuel
knows what a thrill this is for me, and that’s why he sent it.  Nobody
ever had a sweeter brother.

In
the letter I find that Samuel has another thrill for me.  He wants to
confide in somebody, and I am the one he picked.  He tells me that next
door to the boarding house there lives a girl named Lucille who is as pretty as
a rose.  She is eighteen and went all the way through highschool.  He
says lots of girls in Richmond do that.  He wishes that I had that
chance.  He might take Lucille to a picture show if he can find somebody
to give them a ride.  He asks me not to tell anybody.  He wants it to
be between him and me for now.  I kiss the letter and hug it close to my
heart.

November, 1920

It’s
the first frost of the season, and I wake up in the chill of night to a full
moon shining into the girls sleeping loft, lighting up the room nearly bright
as day.  Nell and Jewel are breathing heavy in the bed with me.  I
look over to the other bed and see that Roxie is by herself.  Trula is not
there.  A sick feeling comes over me because I know where she is. 
She’s with Mack, and I’m pretty sure it’s not the first time she has met him in
the middle of the night.

I
sit up in bed and look out over the mountaintop.  I can see somebody
running there.  Somebody with a bag slung over her shoulder.  I know
it’s Trula.  And there is Mack running to meet her.  She jumps into
his arms in the full light of the moon, and they hug and kiss.  He swings
her around and around, and I can tell they are laughing together.  Tears
come to my eyes.  They are so happy – and so wrong.  Then they step
over the curve of the world and disappear.

If
it wasn’t for Mack’s wife and babies I’d be glad for Trula, but there you have
it.  I lay my head back down and touch the yella ducks that Trula
embroidered on my pillow case when I was little.

Trula
is not back in the morning, nor at night, and not the next day either.  I
know now the bag I saw on her shoulder held all her belongings.  When Dad
understands what has happened, the rest of us just stay out of his way. 
He kicks things and hollers at Mommie that it’s all her fault.

“I
knew no good would come of y’all riding around in automobiles,” says he, “and
going to doctors when you don’t have to.  It wouldn’t happen like this if
Trula had stayed home where

she belongs and not been sucked in by modern ways. 
Carrying on with another woman’s man is worse than stealing.  And I didn’t
raise no thieves!”

Now
our Trula is the talk of Starr Mountain and the valley too.  She and Mack
were seen leaving Deep Bottom in Mr. Call’s car, but nobody knows where they
went.

In
the last of the evening light I find Nell sitting on the bed that is now hers
and Roxie’s, counting pennies.

“Where
did you get that money?” I ask her.

She
does not answer me.

“I
know,” I say.  “Mack Call gave it to you for passing messages to Trula.”

Still
she says nothing.  I just stare at my sister.  She is a stranger to
me.

“Do
you know what you’ve done?” I ask her.

“What
I
have done?” she says, sitting up straight and putting one hand on her
hip.  “I’m not the one who’s messing around with a married man! 
She’s
the nasty one!”

She
glares at me, and for the first time in my life I feel like slapping one of my
sisters.  But I don’t.  Instead I leave the loft and don’t speak to
her for days.  Mommie has nothing in the world to say about Trula, but I
notice she has stored some more white streaks in her hair and some new pleats
in her face.

All
the work Trula used to do now falls on Roxie and Nell, and I have to do some of
what they used to do.  I don’t mind it and Nell deserves it, but not sweet
Rox.  She should not have to work so hard.  Dad makes Luther milk the
cows, but I have to churn the butter.  Jewel can carry the butter to the
little cooling house in the drinking spring, but she’s still too little to help
more than that.

December, 1920

Samuel
comes home to us sick.  Mommie says it’s bronchitis.  He stays in the
boys’ loft coughing like his weak lungs are giving out on him.  He says he
will be good as new after he rests up.  Mommie bathes his feverish face in
cool water and doctors him with groundhog grease, until he begs her NO MORE
PLEASE!  I don’t blame him.  Groundhog grease is the nastiest taste
you ever had in your mouth.  I’d rather be sick than take it.

On
Christmas Day he is feeling better.  I go and sit by his bed, and we talk
about Lucille.  Oh, she is really something, he tells me.  She’s
light-complected and has blond hair, and the daintiest feet you ever saw. 
Her cute little nose wrinkles up when she giggles, so he tries to make her
laugh as often as he can.  Her brother is a school teacher.  Fancy
that.  A school teacher in a big city like Richmond.  What a fine
family it must be.  But with Samuel being so handsome, I am not surprised
Lucille favors him.

While
we are alone, Samuel gives me two dollars.  I have never had so much money
at one time, and I ask him, “What in the world am I going to spend it on?”

He
says, “Don’t waste it on something useless like candy.  Put it away in a
safe place, and one of these days you’ll see something special you want. 
Then you’ll be glad you didn’t spend your two dollars.”

Later
he gets dressed and comes downstairs for Christmas dinner where he gives Mommie
and Dad some money too.  I don’t know how much.  Dad tells him it’s a
fine son that obeys the most important commandment to honor thy father and
mother.  Not like another one of his young’uns, and we all know he is
talking about Trula.  This makes me cry, and Dad tells me to hush up or
he’ll give me something to cry about.

Then
he turns to Roxie and makes her promise she will never do a thing like her
prodigal sister did.  Roxie just nods her head.  I know she can’t
bring herself to say such a thing against Trula out loud.

Dad
says, “That’s my sweet Rox.”

January, 1921

We
have not heard a word from Trula, and my heart is sore with missing her. 
She took care of me till I was big.  Now she is gone.  Dad won’t even
let us mention her name, so if Mack deserts her, she’s got nobody to fall back
on.

Mommie
is still as thin as a weed, and her face is all washed out.  I wonder if
Samuel wasted his money on the doctor.  To make matters worse Nell has
taken to coughing pretty bad, and she’s getting skinny too.  At school she
rests her head on her desk a lot, and when she’s home she has to lie down in
the middle of the day.

Most
of the work falls on me and Roxie now.  I hate doing the washing. 
You have to haul buckets and buckets of water from the spring to the kitchen to
heat on the cooking stove.  Then you have to scrub the clothes on a scrub
board, and your knuckles get red and blistered.  It takes me and Roxie
most of the day on Saturday to do the laundry.  Jewel is learning to look
after Daniel, which is a help.

March, 1921

Samuel
is healthy and happy when he leaves us on a fine Sunday morning.  We won’t
see him again till Christmas.  I will miss him, but I think he is the
lucky one to get to leave here and have something else besides Starr Mountain
to look at from his window, and to have his own money to court his pretty
sweetheart.

The
county nurse comes to the school house to give hygiene lessons to the
girls.  She tells us how to keep ourselves clean all over.  Trula has
already taught me and Roxie and Nell this stuff, and I am thinking that the
boys are the ones who need hygiene lessons.  For instance, somebody should
tell them about sneezing into their hands and wiping it on their
overalls.  Or coming to school with so much dirt in their ears you could
grow corn in there.

Nell
starts coughing during the nurse’s lesson.  After a while she quits, but
before the class is over she starts again.  This time the nurse stops what
she’s saying and looks at Nell.

“Does
blood ever come up when you cough like that?” she asks.

“Yes
ma’am, it does sometimes,” Nell says.

It’s
the first I’ve heard of this.

“And
do you ever wake up sweating in the night?” the nurse wants to know.

Nell
says, “Yes ma’am,” again.

The
nurse says, “Tell Willy and Gertrude I’ll be up to see them soon.”

The
next Saturday Roxie and I are doing the washing in the kitchen and Nell is
resting her head on the kitchen table when we hear someone come into the
house.  Then we hear the nurse’s voice.  We stop what we are doing
and listen.

We
hear the nurse saying, “I want to take Nell to a doctor in Granger.”

We
three go into the big room where Dad and the nurse are sitting in chairs, and
Mommie is perched on the side of the bed.

“’Cause
I’m pretty sure she’s got consumption,” the nurse goes on.

Roxie
starts to cry and puts an arm around Nell.

The
nurse says to Roxie, “Dry up!  Nell is a lucky girl.  These days the
doctors can cure some cases of consumption if they catch it soon enough. 
And if this doctor says to do it, we’ll send her over to Roanoke to the Catawba
Sanitorium right away.”

“I
don’t have money for sanitoriums,” says Dad.

The
nurse says, “It’s no skin offen your nose, Willy Starr.  The state pays.”

Things
happen fast after that.  The county nurse takes Nell to the doctor and he
says that she does have tuberculosis, as he calls it.  That’s the proper
name.  She should be taken to the

sanitorium right away, and we will not be allowed to see her
again until the doctors say she’s not contagious anymore – if that ever
happens.  The nurse tells the rest of us the signs to look for in case we
might have T.B. too.

On
a cold windy Saturday our Nell is fixing to leave us.  She has placed all
her belongings in a feed sack.  She has had little to say since the
nurse’s first visit.  She seems stunned, like she’s had a lick on the
head.  Before she goes I hug her tight and tell her I love her no matter
what, so she understands that I forgive her for helping Mack like she
did.  Dad tells her to behave herself, and Mommie tells her to do everything
she’s told so she can come home soon.