JEWEL (21 page)

Now James belonged to one Eudine Hilburn, late of Dumas, Texas, and so the only thing I could do, the only thing anyone on the face of this earth with any ability to see the obvious could do, was to go to James, hold him as close as I could ever hope to hold my child, and with that hold say good-bye the best way I knew to do.

It was a life we were saving, and with the checks James managed to squeeze out to us, with the money from Billie Jean, with the money from the kindling and the grammar school, even the change from the vegetable stand outside, we’d managed to get here, to this day, a Saturday picnic to celebrate Brenda Kay’s first steps. Five years, when they said she’d live two. Six feet across the front room floor, when they said she’d never walk.

But there was something else I was looking for, too, something I wanted to try out on Leston, and as I packed into the picnic hamper the fried chicken I’d made up the night before, Sunday’s dinner already cooked and ready to eat, I couldn’t help but feel myself a sinner at having on my mind anything other than that picture of Brenda Kay walking across the rug. So we would have beans and rice for dinner tomorrow. We were celebrating, and I was ready to talk to Leston about something I figured on changing our world all for the better. I wanted to talk to my husband, the man who, it seemed for all intents and purposes, had pulled up stakes in this family, given up in the face of his baby daughter and the fact of no jobs.

I stood in the quiet of a Saturday morning kitchen, watched through the window Burton and Wilman throw into the pickup two old inner tubes, patched and repatched, leftovers from when we had the big trucks, while inside I folded cloth napkins so thin you could see right through them, put them in the hamper. Next I set in a jar of pickled okra I’d put up late last year, then bowls filled with potato salad and black-eyed peas and cold cheese grits, each of them covered with sheets of wax paper I’d used at least a half-dozen times apiece and tied off with old bits of twine.

I looked back out the window, the morning sun outside shining through me, and I decided right then I’d try out the word I wanted to use on Leston, even though we’d be out there to celebrate my baby’s walking.

I’d offer him the word, one I hadn’t yet uttered aloud, too afraid of the sound it’d make, at maybe how far off and ridiculous the idea might seem. I decided I’d try the word out on him, because he was my husband, no matter how deep that well he’d fallen into no matter how hard he was gasping for air inside God’s will for his life. He was still my husband, and I was still his wife.

“California, ” I whispered, then tried it again, a little louder, but still so quiet I knew I was the only one could hear, “California.”

“Momma, ” Brenda Kay cried, her voice coming to me from her bedroom upstairs, the room Anne’d had to move from, the room that’d been James’ so long ago. The word came out in the same taut, high pitch it did every time, as though it might be lodged in her throat, her choking every time on the only word she knew, my name.

Burton threw a coil of rope and an old wooden crate into the bed of the pickup, for what I couldn’t say, and Brenda Kay cried out again, “Momma!

” “Jewel, ” Leston said from somewhere in the house. “She’s calling.”

But I let myself say the word once more, felt it there in my mouth soft and foreign and clear.

CHAPTER 13.

IT WAS IN THE READER’S DIGEST I FOUND OUT ABOUT IT. THAT WAS THE only magazine I let come into the house, and I’d kept it a secret, that money I spent on it. Cathe ral was the only one who knew about it, her taking care of Brenda Kay when I was out to the grammar school, us paying her a quarter a week to see after her, watch she didn’t crawl off somewhere we couldn’t get her, spoon-feed her lunch. Oatmeal was Brenda Kay’s favorite.

And there were weeks, too, especially around when we were getting ready to take Brenda Kay for her shots, when we couldn’t even pay her the quarter. But she didn’t complain, never spoke one word out of line about our situation. She’d always quote the same verse to me when those weeks came up, “And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye? For sinners also lend to sinners, to receive as much again, ” she’d say to me, and smile. “Luke chapter six, verse thirty-four, ” she’d say, “the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, ” and she’d turn, head off for home.

The mail came near one-thirty each day, and I was usually home by that time to get it, Cathe ral my only witness as I tore off the crisp brown wrapper, my Reader’s Digest the highlight of the month. Even James’ checks coming to us couldn’t compare, because there was always surrounding those bits of paper the feeling of dread at how hard it was for them to give it, the obligation they had to feel to help save James’ little sister. On occasion there’d be a letter with the check, lways written by Eudine, whose handwriting was the fanciest I’d ever seen, her capital letters big and swirly, her dots big circles floating above the i or j. In the letter she would talk about James’ grades, about her job as a secretary for the athletic director and how her typing capabilities fared, her word per minute rate creeping up slowly, on into the fifties now. But beyond that there was nothing in her letters, just the simple everyday things Eudine must have thought might comfort us.

Even more seldom came photographs, one was of James in his full uniform, standing before a barracks of white corrugated metal. The photo was slightly blurred, and you couldn’t quite make out the look on his face, whether he were smiling or just squinting into the Texas sun full in his face. In another photo stood Eudine and another girl, the two of them as good as twins, grinning at the camera and standing before what seemed the same barracks building. On the back Eudine had written Clarenda and I, out front of the apartment. It was in this way I found out that they were living in a barracks. She’d never made mention of that before, and the check that accompanied it, ten dollars made out to Mrs. Leston Hilburn, seemed even harder to surrender to Billie Jean at the bank.

The Reader’s Digest, though, took me elsewhere, let me think of myself as someone still able to learn a thing or three about the world. I kept the newest issue between the mattresses in my bedroom, and when I went to bed, Leston always staying downstairs to ponder over what all it was we’d lost these few years, I pulled out my magazine, read it by the lamplight, and went to Geneva, Switzerland, or into the childhood of one of our Presidents, or onto the flight deck of an aircraft carrier right before Guadalcanal. When my eyes started to get heavier than I could keep open, I’d tuck the magazine back where it belonged, go downstairs, and touch Leston on the shoulder.

Every night he was at the kitchen sink, staring out the window at the black out there, or at his own reflection cast by the light in the kitchen, I was never able to tell which. And every night he jumped at my touch, whether I called out his name before I let my hand rest on his shoulder or not.

When I was through with the magazines I gave them to Cathe ral, who seemed genuinely to want them, her thin hands holding each issue as if it were a precious photograph, only touching the edges, holding it back and away from her, admiring the paintings on the back.

But the last two issues I hadn’t given up to her, each of them containing an article about what was called “Mongoloids, ” and I was thankful right from the start that someone somewhere’d finally taken out the second word, that the word Idiot and all it carried’d been cut off.

The first story was about an American woman who was born and raised in China by her missionary parents, and how she ended up having a Mongoloid child, and about her moving to the United States with this child. The upshot of the story was that she finally decided to give up the child to a special home in a place called Vineland, New Jersey, and how it was the hardest decision she ever made, but that it was all for the best of the child.

I didn’t much care for the article, because it went against everything I’d tried to make for Brenda Kay a loving household, proper medical treatment, good care while I was out of the house and making money for that treatment. And the woman’s child didn’t seem nearly as bad off as Brenda Kay, nobody said her son would die at two, nobody said he’d never walk.

What made me keep hold of that issue, though, was the note at the end of the article, set off in a little box, “In the next issue, Reader’s Digest reports on a new miracle drug that helps increase IQ in Brain Food for the Backward Child. Don’t miss it! ” I wouldn’t. I didn’t have an idea what made for a backward child, whether that was a Mongoloid or simply a slow child, but I waited, read the article each night, felt more and more apart from that mother while hoping more and more for some deliverance with the next issue. I read the box and its message a hundred times, and when finally the 20th came around, the day my magazine came each month, I made certain I was out of the cafeteria by one, waiting by the mailbox in front of the house by one-twenty.

Mr. Boone, our mailman, drove up in his truck, leaned over and handed me the only piece of mail we got that day, Reader’s Digest. I smiled for him’ nodded, and had the wrapper off even before he’d pulled away.

I sat on the steps, Brenda Kay, I knew, already down for her nap she still slept four or five hours a day when Cathe ral came out.

She stopped, said, “The new one here already, ” but I said nothing, ran my finger down the table of contents on the front, found the page, turned to it.

She left, called out, “Good-bye, Miss Jewel, ” and it was only then I looked up, saw her already out on the road, the thin cotton dress she had on wrinkling in the small spring breeze. “Oh, ” I said, then called out, “Good-bye, Cathe ral.”

She didn’t turn, only lifted one hand above her head, waved, brought it back down.

I looked back to the magazine, found right after an article about the starving people in India what I’d waited for, “Brain Food for the Backward Child.”

I stood, turned to the house and went upstairs to Brenda Kay’s room, slowly opened the door, though I knew I wouldn’t wake her, and closed it behind me. My rocker was in this room now, and I sat in it. I read the article, moving through it slowly, word for word, knowing that once I’d ended it the wait for this news, whatever it was, would be over.

The article was a short one, and only ran onto two pages. It was the story of a Mongoloid boy named David who’d tested in with an IQ of 49, but, after taking medicine from doctors at the Columbia School of Medicine, had it shoot up to 61, and he was reading now, and he was improving.

I had no idea what IQ Brenda Kay would have, didn’t know anything about the Columbia School of Medicine other than that it was in New York City, didn’t have any idea how much more than calcium glucanate shots this whole procedure cost. But what I knew was that something out there was holding hope, and so when I got to the end of the article and saw the boxed message there, I read it with a new and different kind of hope.

Hope that maybe there was something out there could help me fix what was going on in our lives, the burden here.

“Reader’s Digest suggests, ” the message read, “that if you would like more information about care for the retarded child, clip out the coupon below and mail it to, The National Association for Retarded Children, P.

O. Box 1712, Los Angeles, California.”

Below the box was a small form, lines for our address, the name of our child, how old she was.

Of course I stood, left the room for Annie and Billie Jean’s room, went through the top drawer of their dresser, what Billie Jean called the trash drawer, and got one of Annie’s red pencils. I sat on her bed, filled out the form. The next morning, as soon as Cathe ral got there, I left, headed for the five and dime for an envelope, then to the post office, had that coupon on its way to California and whoever it was would have to hand out help from that far away.

Brenda now called out “Momma! ” one more time before I made it up to her room, pushed open the door to see her sitting up in bed, still trying to clap hands.

“My baby, ” I said, and she turned to me, on her face nothing for a moment, then the smile that always started these days out. She was happy, always happy, and for at least that much I was glad. There’d been more than enough ear infections, me pouring warm oil down into her ear and trying my best to make her lie still for a while, this going on every other month or so. And there were the shots, and how since she was seven months old she would let out a wail when the needle broke skin, her voice thick and dark coming up from her throat, her eyes squeezed shut in the pain of it. There was no difference in how she took them even to this day, always that cry, me having to turn my head, unable to watch while Dr. Beaudry and I both held her down. And there were still plenty of mornings when I’d come in here to find she’d wet or messed in the bed, and there’d be that extra chore to start out with, the weight of having an infant these five years, what I’d never counted on, feeding by hand, carrying her wherever we went, my baby drooling for years on end. But she was happy no matter what, it seemed, once she’d been given the shots she seemed to forget they ever existed, once the ear infections i were gone, she’d slowly crawl out the door if we didn’t stop her. This morning she was dry.

“Now let’s go on to the toilet, ” I said, and I took her by the hands, sort of half-lifted, half-dragged her to the edge of the bed. She put her bare feet down, toes still twisted up and bunched together in a way Dr. Basket’d informed us they’d be for the rest of her life.

But she was walking now, and with her holding tight to both my hands, she stepped across the floor, me behind and above her, making certain she didn’t fall.

She knew the way to the toilet, out her bedroom door and to the left and the end of the hall, though if I were to say to her Go left, or Go to the end of the hall, it’d mean nothing. She only knew where to go, how to get there, fine enough with me. “Momma, ” she said as we went, “Momma, Momma.”

When we reached the door into the bathroom, Leston came out of our bedroom. He had on one of his old workshirts, a pair of blue jeans and suspenders on, what he wore every day. But he’d combed his hair wet, slicked back on the top and sides. He smelled of Old Spice, the bottle he had in his dresser years old. He hadn’t opened it in maybe two or three years, since back when he went to church with us all Sunday mornings.