CHAPTER 24
Evelyn
Mama’s instructions when she and Maggie left for South Street were that Willa and I should not bother Uncle Fred and that we were to stay upstairs. She’d cocked her head toward the part of the house that was the funeral parlor, where we were forbidden to enter now anyway, and said, “It’s very busy in there this morning.”
That meant more bodies were being delivered and Uncle Fred would be pulling his hair out with where to put them. I already knew he had no more room for any. He had tried to turn some away the day before, but the people who’d brought them told him they couldn’t possibly take them back home. The city morgue is full. The hospitals didn’t want them because they are full, too. You’d never think in a city this size there could be a shortage of anything until people start dying every day by the hundreds and suddenly there’s no place to put the bodies. That’s all they are when there are that many. Bodies. Or not even that. The health department sent out a bulletin that they will begin sending around trucks to private homes to pick up the dead off the porches because undertakers like Uncle Fred are refusing to comefor them. Thedead—that was what they called them, as if it is too sad and too hard to think of them as singular beings who had names and addresses. Thedeadsounds like theflu. But they aren’t the same. The flu is one entity who’s seemingly been given a key to every house. The dead are people by the thousands—fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters.
Mama wanted us to be home in Quakertown instead of here, but Grandma and Grandpa were afraid we’d bring the flu there. I guess they didn’t know they could get it from their mailman or the fellow who delivers their vegetables or the woman who stops at the restaurant to ask for directions. Anyone who breathes is a potential carrier. I said as much to Mama after she told us we weren’t going and when she and I were alone with the washing.
“Grandma is afraid for Baby Curtis and Aunt Jane,” Mama replied, as if I had said something completely different. “I shouldn’t have asked and put her in the difficult place of telling me not to come.”
“But she’s not afraid for us?” I said as I hung one of Uncle Fred’s nightshirts to dry.
“Of course she is. I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Uncle Fred needs us here.”
I truly didn’t want to go back to Quakertown, but I could see how much it weighed on Mama that she had no choice but to have us stay. Even though we’ve been out of school for nearly a week and no churches are meeting and no theaters are showing movies, the flu shows no signs it’s letting up. The number of people dying just keeps getting bigger, not smaller. We wake up each morning wondering if maybe today’s the day the flu begins to tire of us.
Willa complained at first about being relegated to the bedrooms after Mama and Maggie left this morning, but she quieted down soon enough. In fact, she is now uncharacteristically quiet. I imagined I would need to have a long list of activities with which to keep her occupied for the several hours Mama and Maggie would be gone. But once we settle into her room to look at books, that’s where we stay. I let her page through my favorite book, the one with the Latin names of all the flowers andbeautiful drawings of what they look like. I tell her she can find her four favorites and then we’ll draw a bouquet of them and fill in the sketch with colored pencils. I am half reading a book of my own,Anne of the Islandby L. M. Montgomery—a novel I’ve read twice already. My mind begins to wander and because Willa is being so quiet, I lose track of time.
I start thinking about how different everything is now with this plague covering all the earth and killing so many people, and all the while Papa and Jamie Sutcliff and so many others are off fighting in a war where more people are dying, but not from influenza—from mortar rounds and mustard gas and bullets. It is like there are two wars. And what does war even accomplish? How does one country win over another by simply killing its people? None of it makes any sense. I am missing school and Gilbert, and even the silly girls in my class who care more that all the handsome young men are coming home from the front with missing limbs than that all those limbs were lost in the first place. I am tired of sitting in the house and pretending I can’t see how busy Uncle Fred is downstairs. I am tired of meatless Mondays and wheatless Wednesdays and I want Papa home with us and not heading off to France. I’m peeved that Maggie got to go with Mama when it should have been me. I’m fifteen. Practically an adult. Maggie is still just a child. When Mama came to tell me she was letting Maggie accompany her, I asked her why.
“She just needs to get out of the house for a bit,” Mama had answered. “She is only coming along to keep me company. That’s all.”
I would have liked to get away from the funeral home for a stretch of hours. I would have liked to keep Mama company on her errand. I would have asked to accompany her if I had known she was of a mind to let one of us go.
I am ruminating on all this when Willa says she doesn’t want to look at books anymore.
I pull myself out of my irritated reverie. “Shall I get us something from the kitchen?” I say to her. I toss my book onto her bed behind me. We’ve been sitting on the rug in her room with books all around.Morning sunshine is slanting in on us and it is almost like we’re sitting outside on a day before the flu. Almost.
Willa peers up at me. Her eyes are glassy. “I don’t feel good,” she says.
A tiny arrow of alarm slices through me as I move to her and put my palm on her forehead. She is hot with fever.
She coughs and makes a face. “I want Mama,” she whimpers. “I don’t feel good.”
“Where do you feel bad, Willa?” I ask.
“All over. I want Mama.”
I stand and fold back the coverlet on her bed, tamping down the temptation to assume the worst. It is just a fever, I tell myself. A bit of a cold. The kind people used to get all the time. Willa can’t have the flu. We’ve taken every precaution with her. “Let’s get you into bed, and I’ll make you toast and cocoa.” I turn back around to help her to her feet.
“I don’t want toast,” she grumbles. I expect her to fight me on getting into her bed, too. But she goes to it willingly and climbs in.
“How about just the cocoa, then?” I say, faking a cheery tone as I pull off her shoes.
She shakes her head. “I’m cold.”
I pull up the coverlet around her, and my thoughts are all aflutter with what I’m supposed to do next. I dare not go ask Uncle Fred for advice. Not only would he not know what to do; he has been with the dead all morning, touching them, lifting them, moving them.
“I want Mama,” Willa murmurs.
“She’ll be home soon,” I say reassuringly. But Mama and Maggie have been gone less than an hour. They were going to walk all the way to South Street and likely have only just arrived. Mama hasn’t yet served up the soup and sympathy, and they aren’t on their way back home. It will be several hours before they return. “I’ll be right back,” I say to Willa.
I go downstairs to get a basin of cool water and a rag for a compress. I open the pantry to get the bottle of aspirin, figuring I can crush one into some warm water if Willa refuses to swallow it, but the Bayer bottle is gone. Mama took it with her.
Maybe a warm drink will soothe Willa. I warm a little apple cider, pour it into a cup, and then take the basin and drink to Willa’s room. She is already asleep and breathing heavily, as though being chased in a dream. I put the cup down and sit down on the side of her bed. I plunge the rag into the basin, wring out the excess, and place it over her forehead. The cloth is warm under my hand in an instant. The speed with which the cool cloth becomes hot scares me. I take it away and soak it again in the water. And then again.
Should I call for someone? I wonder. Should I go tell Uncle Fred? Should I run across the street to Mrs. Sutcliff? Will she have aspirin? But that would mean leaving Willa alone. Should I go? Should I stay? Is it just an ordinary fever Willa has? Or has the invader swept down on us like it has on everyone else? I refuse to admit that of course it has.
