The Star Garden (15 page)

Elsa studied both her hands. “It could be a spot there. My stomach, sometimes.”

“I never got spots,” I said. “Backaches, that’s what I had.”

Elsa rubbed her back. “It hurts a little,” she said. “Does it hurt a great deal, when the baby comes?”

I tried not to glance at April, but the two of us locked eyes almost like clockwork. “Well,” I said, “it’s different for everyone. It’s hard. But it doesn’t last forever. If you can think about the work you’re doing and just go to doing it, it gets done quicker.”

“Oh. Like laundry. I hate laundry,” Elsa said. Then the three of us laughed enough to wake Granny. Elsa sputtered, trying to regain her composure. “They made me do so much laundry at the convent I thought I would perish from my cracked and tortured hands.”

April got up and went stocking footed to the pantry shelf, returning with a can. “Here,” she said, “rub your hands with teat salve. Mama doesn’t keep a milk cow but this is good for plenty of skin ailments.”

We passed that can of salve around, along with more cups of tea, and then put that bread in the oven to bake for supper. Elsa rose from closing the oven door and kissed my cheek, hugging me warmly.

The bustle in this house has not slowed one bit, what with April’s brood of three. Her boy Vallary is a pistol, and he, Ezra, and Zachary are wilder together than my two ever thought about being. Spurred on by the number of new faces, Savannah and Albert’s children from youngest to oldest have all but moved in here and shirked their chores, having to be gotten home by Mary Pearl or their brother Clover, regularly. Little wonder that by the end of the year of nineteen and aught six, my patience with the number of people in the house was wearing thinner than the gravy made from my last ration of flour, and when April announced she and Morris were taking their family home, I was not truly unhappy to see them go. She begged me to go along. I was sorely ready for some peace and quiet, but I needed feed and supplies more than I needed quiet, so I will be accompanying them to town.

Gilbert will be riding along, too, for he wants to see his girl again. I have asked him when I can meet her, as I’m not looking forward to yet another surprise wedding, but he only says soon, and then goes to talking about the cows we’ve got swelling with calves or the size of the moon, or some other thing. Gilbert is pulling at that spare mule that belongs to Wells Fargo, and the thing is giving him quite a time. Finally, we put him and the ornery critter up front ahead of the rest, and he moves along just fine as you please. Must be used to being the lead, and I know some animals never can do aught but what they learned the first time. Mary Pearl is also coming to town, intent on seeing Aubrey and the house he proposes to buy for a home. She’s more than lonesome lately, and put out by Elsa’s conversation, which has pretty much been about Charlie since she got here.

Charlie and Elsa are staying put at the ranch, along with Chess and Granny, and I reckon the two young people will be glad for at least some measure of quiet privacy, the both of them having camped amongst the bunch in the book room and parlor floors, at far ends from each other for a week now. Granny mostly sleeps around the clock, and Chess stays busy, so things should be all right for the new married pair. After plenty of talking last night, we made them promise they will not pay a call on Rudolfo until I get home with Gilbert, so the bunch of us can go together for strength.

Last night we came to an arrangement where Elsa and Charlie can use the plaza and one of the other rooms for their own kitchen and then take Charlie’s old bedroom and the book room for a small apartment. While I’m gone, Charlie is going to move all my books to the parlor and fix them up some quarters. I figure soon enough they’ll be getting their own house, but we’ll wait until the big
confrontatión
with Elsa’s papa to see how far away it may need to be. I looked toward him as we drove away, but his eyes were only on her. Charlie Horse, his papa called him when he was first born. The boy was skinning his knees one minute, shaving his face and married the next.

April’s house was just as lovely as ever, and thankfully, she is not suffering as much with the baby coming now. We settled right in as if the party had only changed locations.

Two days after we got to town, both April’s girls, Patricia and Lorelei, woke in the night with fever. Patricia held her neck and said her tongue hurt. I rocked her and held her, while April tried her best to comfort Lorelei. The little one cried weakly, and when the sun was up, Morris went to fetch a doctor.

Influenza has stricken the babies. Patricia barely eats, and Lorelei eats but vomits. By the next day, Morris was down in bed, too, and the third day, Val-lary came downstairs with sore ears and throat, and now Gilbert is coughing and crouping. It seems we wait each day to see who will come down next. April, Mary Pearl, and I are tending everyone, with the help of April’s maid Lizzie. Toward afternoon all the sick ones seemed to be sleeping at last, and so I made April lie down, too. I was planning to get to town and buy a few things but I was met at the front of the house by two men in long black coats looking like they were a matched pair of undertakers. They nailed a big sign to the door that said it all in one word:
QUARANTINED.
The house is locked up like a prison with us inside for no less than four weeks.

I told them I had a ranch to run, chickens to feed, old folks to care for. But one doctor said that if I left, I’d take the influenza to the old folks and they’d likely die. No matter that I still felt well, he said, it had been microscopically determined that people could carry the sickness and spread it like dysentery or trail fever. Someone could bring us things from any store we wished, as long as we waited until the baskets were delivered and the messenger left before opening the door. I can’t say why this all made me feel somewhat ashamed, but it did, as if we’d done something criminal or vulgar, and were being shut off from the rest of town like we were unclean.

Fortunately, we are allowed to send letters, and so Mary Pearl has kept up letters with Aubrey and with her folks back home. Then, one day as she was sitting at April’s desk and busily writing, she asked me to keep a secret, and she told me she wrote away to the college for artists in Illinois at a place called Wheaton. I didn’t like keeping secrets from her folks, but she said she was convinced that if the teachers will let her into that school, she’ll tell her mama and papa, and things would be all right, and if they didn’t, she’d take it as a sign she should stay home and marry and keep house, forgetting her other dreams. Mary Pearl insisted if her mama knew she was applying to the school, she’d be here in an hour with more speeches about betrothal and all.

Mary Pearl sent them five small drawings she had done with pencil and paper. One of them she figured was her best shot, though it was on lined letter paper turned sideways. To me, any big fancy college wouldn’t give her a second thought for sending something like that but I didn’t know if I should say that or keep quiet. I told her to ask April for a nice piece of paper, and then just take some time and draw it over again. So she spent a couple of hours, pronounced it not as good as the first one, but enclosed them both, so the teachers can choose whichever one they like.

Well, after the littlest children had been sick a week, they were starting to be well enough to be restless in bed, and we had a time corralling them. Just when it seemed the rest of us would miss the beating that half the family was getting by the illness, though, April woke one morning in a terrible state with fever. I was plenty worried about her, for I had been sick once with fever and it cost me a babe. I sat by her putting cooling compresses on her most of the morning. I felt ragged myself, but not sick, just tired, and so there was only Mary Pearl, Lizzie, and myself tending things, until that afternoon Lizzie took to her bed. Morris put on a robe and tried to help, and we made soup and boiled sheets from morning to night while he kept the children still.

By the next day, though, I reckoned I had done too much lifting, as my arms ached deep inside the bones, my head shook with misery, causing my teeth to rattle, and after fixing breakfast for those that could eat, I could barely lift a single spoon to wash it. Mary Pearl told me to go upstairs and lie down, and that she was going to send for help from the doctor who’d penned us up. I don’t know how the girl did it, but I do know that before long I heard strange voices and footsteps, and I was ordered to stay in bed by a woman in a dark blue uniform.

I could hardly argue with her. My throat burned day and night like I’d swallowed a branding iron. Every hair on my head throbbed, my eyes felt glued shut, my feet shivered and no blankets could keep me warm. In between fretting over April being tended so she’d keep her unborn child, I sank into the sickness for I don’t know how long. I had fierce dreams of being trampled by horses, having birds pick at my skin while carrying April’s unborn baby in my arms, trying to run to save it, and not able to move because my feet were clamped in leg-hold animal traps. I knew these night visions were from the bone aches of sickness, but I’d awaken feeling tortured and afraid to sleep, then immediately fall asleep and eventually drift into some other terrible nightmare. It seemed days passed, while I struggled to breathe, asking the faceless forms that passed me if others were well, but receiving no answers, and sleeping first in shallow spells and then frighteningly deep periods, as if my bed were half a step from my grave.

Seems waking from the depths of the influenza meant coughing my lights out. I couldn’t remember being so aggravated by coughing since I was little, and though the fever was gone along with the aches and stomach disorder, the need to stay absolutely still to avoid coughing kept me in bed. I tried to get information on the health of the rest of the family from the doctor and the nurse that stopped in the room, but when they said anything, it was only a few vague words clouded with sanctimony.

At last, I awakened and decided to get out of bed, driven by hunger and an empty water glass which had mercifully remained clean and filled for no telling how many days. I knew it was daylight outside, but I had slept long after dawn, and dreamed of someone calling me with a voice that echoed from a long way off. I rose and dressed myself, putting on two pairs of stockings without shoes, which seemed too much effort to bear.

As I ventured into the hallway, the house itself seemed to sigh. I tiptoed from door to door finding no one. By the head of the stairway I heard children’s voices quietly whining and someone hushing them. At the fourth step I had to stop for a coughing jag, then I headed on toward the voices. They had come from the parlor, and I made my way there, growing more troubled about the curtained windows, the fearful, unnatural silence in a house I thought was sheltering eight people.

I found Morris sitting with Vallary, Patricia, and Lorelei all in his lap. He wore a dark blue coat like I’ve seen in store windows downtown, the kind for “gentlemen of leisure” which I always thought meant rich and lazy. Apparently even a working man like Morris might own a sort of coat to wear indoors rather than putting on a shirt and collar. The children seemed happy enough, not crying or anything, although instead of April, a nurse in a uniform was standing over the trio of babes with a large spoon and a brown bottle. Morris was trying to cajole the children into taking the medicine by promising them favors and candy. He smiled when he saw me.

“Oh, Mama Elliot, you are up! What happy news. See, children, I told you we will
all
be well soon enough.” Then, with the same smile on his face, which I saw in a moment was only for the children’s peace of mind, he said, “The last and healthiest young person in this house has now been taken by the mean old influenza. They’ve set up temporary nursing in the dining room.” His face grew darkly serious and his eyes bored into mine. “If you have the strength, I’m sure Miss Mary Pearl would love to see you. She is in there.”

Dining room? What in heaven’s name was the girl doing tending someone in the dining room? Was it April? I felt the floor sway under my feet, and held on to a nearby table for strength. I didn’t ask what he meant, but immediately went to the dining room where instead of a table, a bed had been set. Thick as a fringe, a line of people surrounded it, all softly murmuring. I searched for Mary Pearl amongst the crowd, and was surprised to see Savannah, Albert, and even Aubrey Hanna and April standing in the circle of nurses and doctors.

“Savannah?” I said. “What’s happened?”

She turned and flew to my side. “Sarah, you shouldn’t be out of bed. I told them not to wake you, but Albert said she’d want to see you. Sit down here.” Albert fetched a chair and no one had to tell me again to take it, as I was purely worn out, traveling this far from my own sickbed.

“Savannah, Albert,” I said, surprised at the raspy sound of my own voice, “you and Aubrey shouldn’t be here. You’ll catch this awful sickness. Where is Mary Pearl?”

One of the doctors came and whispered with that soft, serious tone that never brings anything pleasant, “Mrs. Elliot, you may see her briefly, but it will be to her own good for the girl not to know of the gravity of her illness. We believe her passing to be imminent. Her parents have been summoned despite the quarantine.”

The bed was a pretty, four-poster arrangement with a feather bed a foot thick, quilts and lacy counterpanes piled high upon it. From that great mound of bedding a tiny head poked, resting small and dark on a pale calico pillow. It took me a moment to recognize Mary Pearl, so shrunken and drawn and pale her face had become. Her breath came slow and shallow, rattling and raspy, and each one seemed to be an effort that took her whole frame to make. She grimaced and struggled for air as if the blankets were strangling her. She couldn’t open her eyes when I spoke her name, but reached a hand from under the covers, and I took it immediately. There was no strength in her at all, and while I couldn’t believe what the doctor had said, I saw that the fight had gone out of her.