CHAPTER 26
Pauline
No mother should ever have to hold her child in her arms, cold with fear that her baby is dying. I have already hovered in that terrible place. I made my truce there. I owe Death nothing. I should not have to remind that specter of this.
This one is not yours,I’ve been repeating all day, while I sponge away Willa’s fever and soothe her thrashing. I have sensed her wanting to drift further and further away from me, and I have been pulling her back, pulling her back.
This one is not yours.
The hours I’ve spent in this room are already a blur, but I dare not leave Willa’s side. I must win this contest of wills. I must stay vigilant until Death slithers away completely.
This one is not yours.
Sometime in the afternoon Fred had come up the stairs. I heard his heavy footfalls, different from those of Evelyn and Maggie. He’d called out to me from the other side of the door.
“Don’t come in,” I told him. “It’s not safe. Do you know if a doctor is coming?”
“I called Dr. Boyd, a good friend of mine, and he said he’ll try his best to stop by this evening, but you know there’s no medicine for this, Pauline.”
“That doesn’t mean we don’t do all that we can.” I placed a cool hand on Willa’s brow and she whimpered slightly. “It doesn’t mean we do nothing.”
He’d hesitated a moment. “Yes.”
“And the police? Did you telephone them about the baby?” I’d heard the infant earlier that afternoon. His cry for attention had woken an ache in my breasts that nearly felt like milk would start spilling from them. I had laid an arm across my chest to stop it, even though I knew there was nothing in my bosom to nourish a child. My milk had dried up months and months ago.
“No one’s reported a missing child,” Fred replied. “But they said they’d make a note of it.”
“Where is he now?”
“Evelyn and Maggie are with him.”
“And did Maggie tell Mrs. Arnold what happened?”
“She went to the church earlier like you asked and then the two of them drove down to South Street in Mrs. Arnold’s car to see if Maggie would have better luck remembering which house it was. She got back a bit ago. They couldn’t find the house, though.” He sounded like he was baffled by the idea that a stranger’s baby was now staying in the house.
From somewhere above me I heard the infant’s lusty wail for attention. Willa echoed it with a low whimper of her own.
“I don’t know how long the baby will be with us and we need a few things,” I said. “Baby bottles, rice cereal. That kind of thing. Evelyn will know what to get. Can you give her some money?”
“It’s already been taken care of. Don’t fret about that.”
“Make sure the girls stay away from this room, Fred. I will onlycome out when I know no one is on the stairs. Tell Evelyn to fix me a tray later and then leave it outside the door. And I’ll need some broth for Willa.”
I looked down at my youngest child, wanting her to open her eyes and tell me she doesn’t want broth. She wants ham loaf. Why can’t she have ham loaf?
But Willa, with her eyes closed, was silent except for her labored breath.
“All right,” Fred said. And then there had been a pause, before he said, “Shouldn’t I call the Red Cross so that Thomas can be notified?”
A little dagger pierced my soul. “Notified of what?”
“That... that Willa has the Spanish flu. Shouldn’t he be told?”
My youngest child trembled slightly under my hand at that moment. Of my three girls, Willa is the one least likely to throw a punch in her defense. Evelyn can wisely reason her way out of trouble, and Maggie will simply plow past it, but Willa will make friends with an enemy before realizing it desires to harm her. I hadn’t wanted to admit aloud, in full hearing of my companion, that the flu that had already killed so many raged now inside her.
“No, Fred. Willa is strong. She is brave,” I said, wanting my little girl to hear those words and be nourished by them. “Her papa will see her when the war is over and he comes home.”
For several seconds there was no movement outside the door, and then I heard Fred taking the first step back down the stairs.
I must have dozed after he left, because twilight fills the room now and I hear far-off sounds of pots and pans in the kitchen.
Willa is moaning softly in her sleep, a dreadful murmuring that I can almost not bear to hear.
I start to sing “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” to fill the air around us with a sound other than that one. She quiets and my tears tap her coverlet like raindrops.
