CHAPTER 18
•October 1918•
Maggie
Empty school desks are all around me as the morning bell rings. It’s been only five days since the parade, and the influenza that was at the army bases is everywhere now. At first, there were just a few sick people here and there. But by the third day every classroom was missing someone. Seven of my classmates were home sick yesterday, and there are five more absent today, including Sally. Ruby, two rows away, eyes the empty desk next to mine. A boy named Stanley usually sits there. I nod toward the seat, beckoning her to come sit by me. She looks toward the door and hesitates. Miss Darby was called out of the room and hasn’t come back yet.
“She won’t care,” I say. At least I don’t think our teacher will mind if Ruby comes to sit with the few of us remaining in the classroom. Ruby slowly makes her way to me. A boy ahead of me turns to us as she sits down. His name is Wendell, and he has enormous teeth. The other boys like to tease Wendell about his horse mouth, as they call it. But the fellows who mock him the most aren’t in class today. He’s easily the smartest boy in our class.
“They’re going to close the school today,” he says. “I heard two teachers talking about it in the hallway. They’re sending us home.”
“For how long?” Ruby says. She sounds afraid.
Wendell shrugs. A boy whose name is Chester says everything is being closed. All the schools. The churches. The theaters. Parks. Any place where a crowd would gather. His father, who is a custodian for the city, heard the officials at city hall talking about it. It’s as bad here in Philadelphia as it is in Boston and New York and Washington, D.C. Worse, maybe.
“My neighbor said there are no more beds at any of our hospitals,” says a girl named Louise, turning toward us from her seat. “He stood in line with his sick wife and waited for two hours before the nurses told him that he’d have to carry her back home. And they didn’t give her any medicine.”
“That’s because there is no medicine,” says Wendell.
“How can there be no medicine at a hospital?” Chester says. “It’s a hospital!”
“There is no medicine forthis,” Wendell says.
“It’s like one of Egypt’s plagues,” Louise says.
“I hear you cough up your insides,” a boy says from behind me.
“I hear your lungs turn to tar and then you choke on them,” says another one.
Ruby shudders next to me. “Stop it,” she whispers, but I don’t think anyone hears her.
“You can’t choke on your lungs,” Wendell says. “That’s impossible.”
“How do you know? You’re not a doctor.”
“You don’t have to be a doctor to know you can’t choke on your lungs.”
There is a little flurry of debate about this to which Ruby says, louder this time, “Stop!”
Everyone is quiet for about two seconds. “My dad says the morgue is full,” Chester continues. “The city undertakers are being told tocome get the bodies to make room for more, but they won’t come get them.”
At this, all the heads in the room swing in my direction.
“Is that true?” Chester asks me.
I have no idea if it is or isn’t. I know there is only so much space in the embalming room. Only so many tables. Mama has forbidden me to go back there, so I can’t say for sure that we’ve no room for more. “I think we might be full,” I venture. It both scares me and thrills me to say it because it’s the first time since we moved here that I have everyone’s attention.
“How many have you got?” Chester tries to sound nonchalant, but I hear the tremor of dread in his voice.
I don’t know how many bodies are in Uncle Fred’s embalming room. I haven’t seen Uncle Fred in three days. He’s been up before the sun, and he doesn’t come through the house to his room until after I’m in bed. Yesterday Uncle Fred hired a man named Patek to help him move the bodies and transport them to the graveyards because Dora decided it wasn’t safe for Charlie to help him anymore.
“Have you seen them?” one of the boys says. “Did they choke on their lungs?”
“I’m not allowed right now where the bodies are,” I say, very aware that I can’t provide the assurance that none of the deceased have choked on their own lungs. The smartest person in our class says that’s impossible. If any of us could provide the proof that Wendell is right, it should be me. For the first time ever, I feel like it’s to my advantage that I’m the daughter and niece of undertakers, and yet I can’t give my classmates what they want.
There is silence for a few moments as they contemplate the fact that I might have been a fount of information if children weren’t always kept away from everything important.
“Why is this happening?” Ruby says quietly to no one.
