CHAPTER 20
Willa
Flossie’s brother has the flu. I went to her apartment yesterday, and she told me she’s not allowed to let anyone in. She’s not allowed at my house because her mother is afraid of all Uncle Fred’s dead bodies. We played for a little while on her stoop with her Humpty Dumpty Circus Set. It has twenty pieces, with a giraffe and a polar bear and an alligator I was afraid to touch. But it wasn’t much fun, and she’s supposed to stay near her house in case her mother needs her, so we ran out of things to do.
When I came home and told Mama about Flossie’s brother, she said I can’t go back over there until Flossie’s brother is better, even though I didn’t even go inside.
So there’s no school, but I’m not allowed to play at Flossie’s place and she’s not allowed to play at mine.
Gretchen, the German girl I don’t play with, has the flu, too.
There’s nothing to do here at the house, and everything is closed, like there’s a snowstorm. Evie just reads her books, so she doesn’t care. Maggie will sometimes play with me, but she’s cross because she’s not allowed past the kitchen door into the business anymore. There aredead people inside the viewing parlor now, and Uncle Fred ran out of caskets again. The place where he usually gets them hasn’t had any for days. The cabinetmaker down the street is working to make some, but he says he only has two hands. The bodies in the parlor are just wrapped up in sheets and blankets. Two days ago when the kitchen door was left open a bit, I saw men bringing one in. There was black blood where the nose is. I didn’t like seeing it. That night I had a nightmare that everyone had black blood coming out of their noses and nobody could stop it. I woke up before I found out if it was coming out of my nose, too.
Yesterday Mama told us we were going to go to Grandma and Grandpa Adler’s to stay with them until the flu is gone. But then today Mama said she’d changed her mind. She said she’d thought about it and decided Uncle Fred would be too lonely here by himself and he doesn’t have his housekeeper anymore, so he wouldn’t have anyone to cook for him and do his laundry. She cried when she told us, though.
“That’s because that isn’t the real reason we’re not going,” Maggie told me later.
The three of us were in the sitting room working on sums. Mama said just because there isn’t school doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be learning.
“Grandma Adler said we can’t come because of Aunt Jane’s baby,” Maggie went on. “We might bring the flu to Quakertown and give it to Baby Curtis.”
“But we don’t have the flu,” I said.
And Maggie said, “The first couple days after people catch it, they don’t know they have it.”
Evie told her to please be quiet. Maggie said she didn’t have to be quiet—it was the truth.
“But Willa doesn’t need to be hearing all that,” Evie said. “And you shouldn’t have listened in on Mama’s telephone call to Grandma. You don’t know that she said we couldn’t come because we might bring the flu.”
“Yes, I do,” Maggie insisted. “I could tell that’s what Grandma said by what Mama said.”
I know I wouldn’t give that baby the flu. I don’t have it. I don’t feel sick. I think Maggie is wrong. I think if you catch something, you know it.
Mama is sad today that we’re not going to Quakertown, and I’m a little sad, too. I think Uncle Fred should fix his own dinners and wash his own socks.
“It’s not that hard,” I told Mama. It’s not. I’m only seven and I know how to make a sandwich.
“He’s so busy because of the flu,” Mama said, wiping her eyes with her sleeve. “He barely has time to sleep. We should stay and help him.”
So we’re not going.
Mama had some ladies from the church visit her this afternoon. They had gone to a big meeting on Walnut Street. A lot of people aren’t happy with the mayor because he let the flu come, and they want to do something about it. I was listening to them talking to her. She invited them in for tea, and they sat in the sitting room. I sat on the stairs to listen because I had nothing else to do. The ladies said that at that meeting they’d all decided they needed to find a way to help.
“The school and church cafeterias have been turned into soup kitchens, and volunteers are making food for people who are too sick to cook their own meals,” one of the ladies said.
And Mama said that was a good idea.
“Mrs. Bright,” another lady said, “might you be willing to take some of this food down to a few people on the south side who have no one to take care of them? We have a list of names and addresses. There are so many poor souls down there who are suffering alone. Could you spare a few hours from your day to do this work of mercy? We’ll provide the soup and a surgical mask.”
I thought Mama would say no. She is always telling me and my sisters to be careful and not to be around any coughing people right now and to stay away, stay away, stay away from Uncle Fred’s dead bodies. But she said she would go.
And the church lady said someone would be by in the morningwith jars of soup. All Mama had to do was take the food to the people on the list and then bring the jars back to the church in the afternoon, and the next day it would happen all over again. They told her she might need to take a cab, though, because the streetcars might not be running. Mama said she’d find a way to get there.
“It’s so nice to have you and your family at the church, Mrs. Bright,” the lady said. She said Mama was such a kind person and what beautiful girls she had and how proud her own mama must be of her that she would put the needs of others first, just like Jesus.
Mama just said, “Thank you” and “Would you care for a second cup?”
They didn’t have time for a second cup. They had other ladies to visit, because they had lots of names and lots of lists.
