The Plague and I Read online

  We had to get in and immerse ourselves all but the head while he counted ten, slowly. Then, as we got out, shivering and baleful, he rubbed most of the skin off our little blue bodies with one of the big English towels. These towels must have been made of a very cheap grade of hemp for, in addition to their terrible roughness, they had occasional little spikes, which brought loud screams from the victim.

  Gammy used to get up every morning at five o’clock with us, not because she thought it was healthful, but so she could stand in the upper hall and moan, “Darsie Bard, you’re driving those poor little cheeldrun right into consumption,” as Daddy herded us from our warm beds and into the icy bath. Perfect Health For All had become Daddy’s goal, so Gammy had closed the lid on leprosy as being too unlikely and catarrh as being too common, and had taken out consumption, given it a good shaking and erected it over our heads again.

  After the baths Mary and I put on middies and black bloomers while Cleve put on his knickers and shirt and then we all went sullenly downstairs. Our rooms were on the third floor. On the second floor we were joined by our sister Dede, who was too young for the cold baths, and Mother, who didn’t care for any of it and was sleepy. Up the stairs from the first floor came the loud and sturdy rhythm of “Our Director March.” It was record No. 1 of the Victor Exercise Records. “Hurry up!” Daddy called from the front hall, where he and Gammy waited. We straggled into line just as the nasal-voiced man on the record began, “Hands on hips, feet together. Head up, shoulders back! At the count of one, raise the arms. . . .” The music began “Daaaaaaa, da da, dada, da . . . daaaaa, da, da, da. . . .” We were off.

  Gammy watched us for a while, then with a “poor little things” went out to the kitchen to make either mush or batter cakes. It was a toss up which was the worst. The mush, always oatmeal, was gray and gluey, and the batter cakes, large and nicely browned on the outside, tasted as though they had been basted together over a wool batt. We could look forward to these delicacies as we ran around the block after the exercises.

  On Saturday mornings after the cold baths Daddy substituted tennis for the exercises. Striding briskly ahead he led his reluctant children through the quiet early morning streets to a park, about ten blocks away, where there were tennis courts which were always free at that ungodly hour. Daddy taught us a good backhand stroke, to keep score, and to place our balls. He also taught us by means of a smart blow on the behind with his tennis racket that, even with Daddy as a partner, when playing doubles both partners play the game instead of one leaning heavily on the net with his mouth open and thoughts on the warm bed so recently left. Daddy grimly explained that beating each other over the head with our rackets after every set was not good sportsmanship either. He taught us to jump the net and to shake hands after the game. We often accompanied the handshake with a stuck-out tongue or vomiting motions, which Daddy, who had a sense of humor, ignored.

  Two years later Mary and I were runners-up in the St. Nicholas School for Girls tennis championship matches and, though our tennis game left much to be desired, we created a sensation with our good sportsmanship and our net jumping. Cleve is still a fine tennis player, but I’m not sure he adheres to those old park manners.

  After the tennis we had breakfast and then went down for our gym and swimming classes. I think my innate hatred for all exercise and all gym teachers was bred in those early years at the YWCA. The teachers were always big mannish women with short hair and sadistic tendencies. They made us climb ropes clear to the ceiling and slide down again, which burned our hands and put permanent scars on our black sateen bloomers. They put the big brown leather horse up so high that if we did manage to straddle it from a running jump, we fell on our faces on the other side. They called us awkward and lazy and slow. They roared “Higher! HIGHER! HIGHER!” when we were jumping and scared us so that we took off on the wrong foot and made little wiggling hops instead of the long sweeping leaps they demanded.

  They made us line up for roll call with hands on hips, feet together, heads to the left. As our names were roared we had to step smartly out of line, face the front, say, “Here,” step back and face left again. Somebody always made a mistake and we would have to start over. There were about fifteen little girls in the class and sometimes all we did for two hours was to step smartly out, face the front and say, “Here.” We complained a lot to Gammy about the gym teachers and she was a most sympathetic listener. “Young Women’s Christian Association, bah,” Gammy would snort, as she slipped us big strong cups of coffee.

  Cleve didn’t have much trouble with his gym classes for the very simple reason that he never went. He dutifully checked in every Saturday morning at the YMCA but not at the gymnasium. He reported to the reading room where he sat quietly looking at magazines until time for swimming. After the swim he met us for lunch, unless he felt like walking on the waterfront, which he often did. Cleve was always like that. He did exactly as he pleased without any fuss.

  When he was in the Fifth B he didn’t like his teacher so he didn’t go to school. We lived in the country then and rode to school on a bus and Cleve got up every morning and got on the bus but he wouldn’t get off. He stayed on and rode back and forth with the bus driver for the entire semester. I guess the teacher thought we had moved away. The next semester he liked the teacher so he got off the bus and went to school.

  We learned this from the bus driver some years later, when he had become our laundry man and used to spend hours in the kitchen drinking coffee and listening to Gammy tell about the waste that went on in our house. For proof she would show him big opened but uneaten jars of jam that she had made by dumping together all left-over fruit, jams, jellies, applesauce, honey, peanut butter and candy and boiling it into a dark brown gummy mass. “Gammy Jam” we called it and wouldn’t touch it. When the bus driver told Gammy about Cleve not going to school Gammy said, “Everybody in this house does just as he pleases,” and she held up a big jar of the uneaten jam. “Look at that, perfectly good jam but not a soul will touch it. Yes sir, we all do as we please in this house.”

  After eating lunch at the YWCA cafeteria, Mary and I took our dancing lessons and every Saturday we came home and told Daddy about our dancing teacher’s legs. “Daddy, her legs are as hard as rocks,” we told him. “You should come down and feel them.” He always laughed at this and we didn’t see why.

  On Sundays we took bird walks. Daddy bought a book on Western birds with colored pictures and, armed with this, his field glasses, a notebook, several dogs and his quarreling disinterested children, he would walk for hours along the Lake Washington Boulevard. “There is a flicker,” Daddy would say suddenly, looking through his field glasses into a densely wooded area. We would all stop short, bumping, jostling and stamping on each other’s toes. After the shoving and slapping had subsided we took turns with the glasses, focusing them on the ground or on a distant leaf. We seldom saw anything, but we pretended we did because we moved along faster that way.

  The bird walks had become part of the health program because of the walking, but they had originally been started as the last lap in a mental program, which had been in full swing since we were born. As soon as a baby was born Daddy would begin by holding objects in front of its eyes to see if and how they focused. At an early age we had all been tested for color blindness, balance, focusing, etc., and as soon as we could talk we began having intelligence tests. “What is the opposite of black?” Daddy would ask. “White,” we’d snap back in unison. “Of high?”—“Low.” “Of up?”—“Down.” “Repeat these numbers after me,” he would say, listing about twenty-seven numbers. “Give me a synonym for house.” “Dwelling.” “For woman.” “Female.” “For macaroni.” “Spaghetti.” “For beautiful.” “Pretty.” “If a boy is walking ten miles an hour and leaves the house at two o’clock. . . .”

  Sometimes on the bird walks we would try to get him to play the old mental games. “Let’s play numbers or what Johnny has in his pocket,” we’d beg, but Daddy was no
longer interested. Health was the thing now and he made us jump the logs that lay in our paths and grab branches and swing over streams.

  The health program went on until Daddy died three years later. A year or so after he died I suddenly began to bloom and to turn into a large, fat, healthy girl, which just goes to show that either Daddy’s health program brought results or a watched pot never boils.

  This sudden swelling was a bitter thing for me and I feverishly thumbed through magazines and clipped out coupons and sent for books on reducing. Then, of a school morning I would push away the big bowl of lumpy oatmeal, which Gammy clunked down in front of me, and she would wail, “Reducing! Reducing! These fool girls. First thing you know, Betsy, you’ll have consumption.” What a pity that she wasn’t alive when I did get tuberculosis. It would have been such a satisfaction to her!

  When she slapped down a bowl of oatmeal in front of my brother Cleve, who wasn’t reducing but hated oatmeal, Cleve would say defiantly, “I want eggs.” At that time, as I remember, he was wearing, in the privacy of the home, a black silk stocking cap to keep his curly hair smooth. He wore it low on his forehead and if made him look like a torpedo. This torpedo look, coupled with his defiance, made him seem quite dangerous and Gammy usually broke down and fried him an egg. First, however, she gave him the treatment. “I am cooking your mother an egg,” she would say impressively as she pushed the oatmeal back in front of Cleve. She acted as if she had laid the one egg herself and that it was the only thing that would sustain life in Mother.

  “Miss Kurshible’s Reducing Diet says that for breakfast I should have an egg, a thin slice of gluten bread and a small ripe pomegranate,” I would read off importantly from my latest reducing diet. “I don’t care what that old Miss Kurshible says, all I want’s an egg and I’ll cook it myself!” Cleve would shout, starting to get out of his chair. “No need for shouting,” Gammy would say with tight lips. “I’ll cook you and Betsy your eggs.” Whereupon she would get out a frying pan, fill it half full of drippings, heat it until blue smoke filled the kitchen, then drop in the eggs, always managing to get in several pieces of shell. The eggs exploded when they hit the grease and Gammy would scream accusingly, as she moved the frying pan off the heat and covered it with a large lid. In a few minutes she would serve us on ice cold plates, the greasy, rubbery eggs, completely encased in a grayish white covering and resting uneasily on hard toast.

  While we tackled this delicacy, Gammy would take a tablespoon of the oatmeal from one of the untouched bowls, put it on a saucer, pour skimmed milk on it and eat it. She always ate from saucers, and left-over food whenever possible. There was no reason for it except that she didn’t think eating was healthy and some odd quirk in Gammy’s nature enjoyed the frugality of such proceedings.

  It was another quirk which made her so mean with her eggs. We lived in the country and had chickens and there were always pans of fat brown eggs sitting around the kitchen. But according to Gammy eggs were for supper and for adults and by eggs she meant one egg. Only “hawgs” ate two eggs. There was a charming man who lived near us who told Gammy unblushingly and quite casually, during one of her egg arguments with us children, that sometimes he ate ten eggs at a sitting. He was a delightful neighbor and very handsome but Gammy never forgave him. “There goes a perfect pig,” she’d mutter as she watched him drive past in the morning. “Ten eggs,” she’d mutter as he waved gaily to her.

  As Gammy was always so much against “big eaters” with their “food eyes” I thought she would be delighted to have me go on a reducing diet, and I think she would have, if all of the diets hadn’t required so many eggs. “An negg every morning for breakfast?” she read incredulously from the “Twenty Day Wonder Diet”—“And ANOTHER egg for lunch?” She was horrified. “Give it up, Betsy,” she said pushing her glasses up on her forehead. “It’s just a fad some fool woman thought up and it will end in consumption.”

  It did too but not for years and years and not from reducing, cold baths or cheating at croquet. I’m not sure about eggs.

  II

  I Have a Little Shadow—Who Don’t?

  I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.

  —Robert Louis Stevenson

  IN ADDITION TO good health, my family possessed a great capacity for happiness. We managed to be happy eating Gammy’s dreadful food or Mother’s delicious cooking; in spite of cold baths and health programs; with Gammy’s awful forebodings about the future hanging over our heads; in private school or public; in very large or medium-sized houses; with dull bores or bright friends; with or without money; keeping warm by burning books (chiefly large thick collections of sermons, left us by some of the many defunct religious members of the family) or anthracite coal in the furnace; in love or just thrown over; in or out of employment; being good sports or cheats; fat or thin; young or old; in the city or in the country; with or without lights; with or without husbands.

  This enjoyment of life, no matter what, was Mother’s idea and she taught us early to despise “saddos” (sorry-for-themselves) and to make the best of things. How she managed this with Gammy around busily making the worst of everything is beyond my powers of comprehension. It could have been that Mother realized that as children’s whole lives are made up of threats of one kind or another—“Just wait until Daddy gets home”; “Step on a crack and break your mother’s back”; “Eat another piece of cake and you’ll burst”—we wouldn’t take Gammy’s morbid prophecies very seriously, which we didn’t.

  When I finally got tuberculosis, thus achieving the goal Gammy had set for me so early in life, we were all being happy and making the best of things in a brown shingled house in the University district of Seattle, Washington. Mary and Cleve were married and Gammy had died several years before, so at that time “we” meant Mother, me, my ten- and nine-year-old daughters Anne and Joan, my younger sisters Dede and Alison, an adopted sister Madge and as many other people as we could jam inside the bulging walls.

  During the seven years that Anne and Joan and I had lived in Seattle, people had arrived from Alaska with meagre letters of introduction from Cleve, who had made a trip there. Old mining friends of Daddy’s had come and had stayed months. People had come to spend the night and had stayed weeks. One girl came for the weekend and stayed five years.

  Madge was brought to the house one Sunday evening along with about forty other people, introduced as a friend of somebody’s roommate. She played the piano, was instantly recognized as one of us and a week later moved in and was adopted permanently as a member of the family. Having no family of her own Madge was very grateful for our love and companionship but even more grateful that none of us were tone deaf or very neat and that we were all nasty in the morning and usually up when she got home from her work as a pianist with a dance band at two a.m. or thereabouts. Madge never got any sleep, moved through life in a perpetual fog, had a lovely slow deep voice and a dry biting wit, told dandy fortunes with cards, played the piano magnificently and through her work as a musician met many unusual people, among whom was a shoplifter who showed Madge her wedding dress and said, “Now tomorrow I gotta go down and steal the veil.”

  Our casually increasing household was such a source of amazement to a dear little neighbor who had a well-ordered life and only one child, that she used to hurry over on Sunday mornings to count us and see who or what had been added.

  We still tease Mother about the time Mary tiptoed into her room at two a.m. and hissed in the dark, “Move over, Sydney, I’m going to sleep with you.” Mother obligingly moved over and then asked in her gentle voice, “Who is it, please?”

  In this friendly crowded house illness was unwelcome. We were poor and had many bills and a glass of water and an aspirin had to fix any ailment. “Thank God, we’re all so healthy!” we said during the depression when we had meatloaf three hundred and forty-two times running. “At least we have our health,” we used to say laughingly when the Po
wer Company turned off the lights.

  Now I was ashamed because suddenly I didn’t seem to have my health. In January I began having a series of heavy colds, one right after the other. They would begin as head colds and I’d stay in bed and drink water and take aspirin for a day. Then the cold would move down into my chest and because my eyes and nose had stopped running I’d decide I was well and go back to work.

  At work I’d notice vague pleurisy pains in my back so I’d move out of draughts and take more aspirin. If my cough was deep and shattering I’d get some cough medicine from a reliable druggist and after a while the cold would be gone. For a few weeks I would be apparently all right and then bang, another cold. I couldn’t figure out where they were coming from or why, but I did know that each one left me thinner and tireder. In fact my tiredness became so constant that I ceased to notice it and thought that I felt well and had energy when actually I was merely not as tired as usual.

  By spring I began getting up in the morning feeling dead tired and after dressing, drinking a cup of coffee and smoking a cigarette, I would feel like going back to bed instead of straining at the leash to begin the day’s activities. By having another cup of coffee and a cigarette when I got to work and another cup of coffee and cigarette at ten o’clock, I managed to scoop up enough energy so that I felt quite brisk by noon. During the afternoon my energy receded rapidly until by four o’clock I used to be so tired that I would go out to the rest room and stretch out on a hard wooden bench for a blissful five minutes of rest.

  I couldn’t understand it. My job was hard but it was interesting and I liked the people I worked with, but every day I had to force myself to go to work. On weekends when I gardened, cleaned house and took the children for walks, I felt quite well so I reasoned that my lassitude had something to do with my job and everything would straighten out when I had my vacation.