Ruth peered out the window toward the cottage. “I hope she’s not ill,” she said.
“I’ll go check on her,” Lucy said, but before she could open the back door, a truck pulled up near the garage and Hattie stepped out of the cab in her gray uniform and white apron.
“That’s Zeke’s truck,” Lucy said, as the truck began backing out of the driveway. “She must not have stayed in the cottage last night.” She pulled open the door as Hattie rushed onto the back steps. Even from where I stood, I could see that her eyes were red.
“Sorry I’m late!” she said, hurrying breathlessly into the kitchen, a handkerchief wadded up in her fist. “I’ll cook y’alls’ breakfast right—”
“What’s wrong, Hattie?” Lucy interrupted her.
Hattie stood in the middle of the kitchen, looking woefully at the three of us before burying her face in her hands, her shoulders heaving. Ruth pulled a chair from beneath the table.
“Sit down, dear,” she said. “Tell us what’s happened.”
Hattie lowered herself onto the chair, her dark cheeks streaked with tears. “Butchie has the polio!” she said.
“Oh no,” I said, and Ruth took a step backward as though Hattie might be a carrier of the dreaded disease.
“How horrible!” Lucy pressed a fist to her mouth.
“Zeke come get me last night and brung me over Adora’s to help out before they knowed what was wrong,” Hattie continued. “Doctor says he’s the first case in Hickory. He’s real sick. Can’t move. Can’t even swallow and ain’t breathin’ right.” She looked up at us, a mystified expression on her face. “Why my baby cousin got to be the first one?” she asked.
“Poor Adora,” Ruth said, genuine concern in her voice. “Did the doctor give him some medicine?”
Hattie shook her head. “They come in a ambulance and took him away to Charlotte,” she said. “Honor’s all tore up. They wouldn’t let her go with him. They let me and Zeke leave the house, but Adora and Honor and Jilly is all under that quarantine now.”
“This is terrible.” Lucy twisted her hands together in front of her. “He’s such a sweet little boy.” Were there tears in her eyes? She ordinarily struck me as so self-absorbed. This was a different side to her.
Ruth looked at Lucy. “We need to take them something,” she said. “What do they need, Hattie?”
“They need their baby boy back,” she said, blotting her eyes with the handkerchief. “That’s about it.”
I remembered little Butchie running out of Adora’s house the day we took them the leftovers from the box supper. His adorable little suit and tie. The joy in his face at seeing Lucy. I hated to think of him so sick.
“I could make them one of those stuffed hams,” I said, wondering if my contribution would be welcome. Hattie had told me how much they’d liked my ham, but my connection to Adora’s family was peripheral at best. I looked at Hattie. “You said they loved it.”
“They did.” Hattie sniffled. “That’d be right nice, Miss Tess.”
I felt Ruth and Lucy studying me in silence. “They did like that,” Ruth acknowledged after a moment. “We can get a ham. What else do you need for it, Tess? Hattie can go to the store.”
I ticked off the ingredients on my fingers and Hattie nodded after each one, committing them to memory.
“If you make it, I’ll take it over,” Lucy said to me. “I’m not afraid of those germs.”
“Can’t go in the house, Miss Lucy,” Hattie said. “Nobody ’lowed in now, not even me. The health people put a big sign on the door.”
“Well, you can just leave it on the porch for them,” Ruth said to Lucy.
Hattie got to her feet, smoothing the skirt of her uniform and sniffling. She reached into the cupboard where she kept the skillets. “Let me git some breakfast for y’all before I go to the—”
“Don’t worry about it, Hattie,” Ruth said. “We’ll take care of ourselves this morning. You just get ready to go to the store.”
* * *
Henry came home at noon for lunch—a rarity for him. His cheeks were pale and his expression grim when he walked in the back door, and he grew even paler when he found me sweating over a pot of boiling water in the kitchen. Lucy’d found some linen for me to wrap the ham in rather than using another pillowcase, and the scent of the meat and herbs and spices filled the kitchen.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m making stuffed ham for Adora’s family,” I said, putting the lid on the pot. “Her grandson—that little boy Butchie?—has polio, and—”
“I know,” Henry interrupted. “Zeke told me. But you don’t have anything to do with that family and I don’t like to see you tiring yourself in the kitchen. Let Hattie take care of it.”
“Nonsense.” I smiled.
“She don’t let me lift a finger, Mr. Hank,” Hattie said. She was slicing tomatoes on the counter near the sink.
I knew my face was glistening, tendrils of my hair glued to my forehead and cheeks. It felt good to be doing something other than stewing about my suddenly consummated marriage. Hattie had complained that I was in her way in the kitchen, but I thought she was only teasing. I had the feeling she was touched that I was making something for her relatives.
“I’m enjoying it,” I said to Henry.
He looked at me blankly, that worrisome pallor in his face, and I knew there was more on his mind than his distress at finding me in the kitchen. I touched his arm.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
He turned away from me, setting his briefcase on the seat of one of the kitchen chairs. “Just some problems with the factory,” he said. “If it’s not the boiler, it’s the spray booth. If it’s not the spray booth, it’s the kiln. We had a near accident with the boring machine today because it malfunctioned.” He sighed. “Always something that needs attention.”
Lucy suddenly burst into the room. “You’re home!” she said to Henry. “Did you hear about Butchie?”
He nodded. “I told Zeke he could take time off to drive Honor to the hospital in Charlotte so she could be with him,” he said, “but she’s under quarantine, and it looks like she wouldn’t have been able to see him anyhow. Zeke drove all the way over there and they told him no one can visit Butchie for the first two weeks.”
“First two weeks!” Lucy exclaimed. “He’ll have to be there that long?”
I knew Butchie could be in the hospital much, much longer than two weeks, but didn’t say anything. Everyone seemed too upset as it was.
“Could be a very long time,” Henry said. “Polio doesn’t generally go away quickly.” He looked around the room at all three of us. “By the way,” he said, “I told Zeke to give the hospital our phone number, since Adora doesn’t have a phone. Just in case they need to get in touch with an update on his condition.”
“Thank you, Mr. Hank,” Hattie said. “I don’t know what Honor’s gonna do without her baby boy home to dote on.”
“She’ll have him back in no time,” Lucy said, patting Hattie’s arm.
“Should someone get in touch with…” I tried to remember the name of Butchie’s father. “Del, is it?” I asked.
For a few seconds, no one said a word. Then finally, Hattie spoke up.
“Is there a way?” She looked hopefully at Henry.
He hesitated. “I doubt it,” he said finally. “But I’ll look into it.” He shot me a look that told me I shouldn’t meddle. I supposed the last thing Del needed was to worry about his son when he was overseas, fighting for his country, in danger every day.
* * *
I made the stuffed ham, wrapped it in waxed paper, and set it in the refrigerator to chill. I knew it would do little to ease that family’s worries, but at least it would keep them fed. I tried to imagine what it was like for little Butchie to be without his mother, unable to move parts of his body, struggling to breathe. If it hurt me to imagine him scared and separated from his family, what must it be like for Honor? Being pregnant
and losing my baby seemed to have made me more sensitive to anything having to do with motherhood.
When Henry came home from the factory in the early evening, he and Lucy took the ham over to Adora’s.
“Shall I come too?” I asked. I felt as though I should go with them, since the ham was my contribution.
“No,” they both answered at the same time.
“No point to it,” Henry added, “since we can’t even go inside. We’ll let them know you made it though.”
I packed the ham in a large paper bag and handed it to Lucy. As the two of them left by the back door, Henry stopped. He turned back to me, touched my shoulder.
“Thank you,” he said. “It was kind of you to do this.”
46
May 27, 1944
Dear Tess,
I felt very excited as I read your letter! I hope Henry agreed to your plan to have your marriage “voided,” though frankly I can’t imagine Mac ever willingly admitting to impotence! You left me with a cliff-hanger, so please fill me in as soon as you can. I want you to come home!
Speaking of home, though, I’m afraid there’s a snag. You asked if you could live with Mom and me for a while, and up to a few days ago, that would have been possible. But I’ve decided to move out. I don’t know if I ever told you about my coworker Sarah, but we are getting an apartment together. It’s the second story of one of those row houses by St. Leo’s. You know where I mean? It’s really cute and already furnished, but it’s very small. Sarah and I will each have a tiny bedroom. Then there’s a little living room and a miniscule kitchen. It’s all we can afford, but it will do until Mac and I get married, assuming this war ever ends. I’m so sorry, but there won’t be room for you to stay with us. I can talk to Sarah to see if she’d agree to let you sleep on our couch for a few days until you find a place of your own. I feel terrible turning you away!
No, there isn’t much polio here, as far as I know. It sounds dreadful. I hope it doesn’t get too serious there.
Love,
Gina
47
Gina’s letter distressed me. I was unfairly envious of her friendship with her coworker. I’d never met Sarah. Never even heard Gina mention her before, and although I had no right at all to my jealous feelings, I couldn’t tamp them down. Her letter drove reality home to me: Gina had a good friend who wasn’t me, and even if I could figure out a way to leave Hickory and my marriage, I didn’t have anyplace to go.
I had no friends in Hickory. That was the sad truth. Lucy’s friends viewed me as an old married woman and, of course, Lucy’s dislike of me poisoned their feelings about me. The women in Ruth’s social circle still seemed to view me as the hussy who had trapped Henry into marriage. So it was not unusual that I was home alone when the Charlotte hospital called a couple of days later. The hospital receptionist or whoever she was put a doctor on the line, and in a cool, clinical voice, he told me that Butchie Johnson was dead. Without even realizing it, I rested my hand on my empty belly. I asked for details and received few, only that the disease had spread too quickly through the boy’s little body to save him.
I sat still for a long time after hanging up the phone, wishing I could miraculously change the last few minutes. Hattie was at the store and I was glad she wasn’t home. I dreaded telling her. I dreaded telling anyone and thought Henry should be the one to deliver the news. When I gathered my thoughts, I picked up the phone again and called him. He answered a bit gruffly, and I knew this was a terrible time to give him bad news with all that was going wrong at the factory. He was so silent after I told him that I thought we’d been cut off.
“Someone has to tell them,” I said, picturing Adora’s little yellow house in Ridgeview. I remembered her cheerful round face as she spoke to Henry and me through the open window of the Cadillac. “Maybe you can tell Zeke and he can go over to tell them?”
“I’ll take care of it,” he said finally.
“It’s so sad,” I said.
“It doesn’t concern you.”
“I can relate though,” I said. “I just lost a child.”
I heard him scoff. “It’s not the same thing in any way, shape, or form,” he said, shutting me out. He hung up abruptly and I sat for a moment, staring at the phone in my hand. I was hurt by his continued unwillingness to acknowledge that our son had existed. But I supposed he was right that this loss didn’t really concern me. I barely knew Honor. Still, for the rest of the day I was consumed by a deep sadness that felt like it might suck me down if I didn’t fight it.
Hattie cried when I told her, and so did I. Only I did my crying in the bedroom where no one could tell me I had no right to the tears.
48
A few days later, I woke to the sound of someone pounding on the front door. I sat up in the narrow bed, groggy and disoriented. The pounding stopped and I supposed that either the person had gone away or Ruth had answered the door. I looked at my alarm clock. It was only a few minutes past six.
Henry rolled in my direction and opened his eyes. “Did I hear someone knocking?” he asked.
“I think so,” I said. “I don’t know if—”
Ruth suddenly flung our door open. “Get up, get up!” she commanded, breathless from the climb up the stairs. “The Allies attacked the French coast!” she shouted. “Teddy Wright just came over to tell us to turn on the radio.” She was smiling broadly and I could see the pretty young girl she had once been in her face. “There are thousands of troops!” she said, clasping her hands together. “Thousands upon thousands! Hurry downstairs.”
I didn’t think I’d ever seen Henry move so quickly. He nearly leaped from his bed, reaching for his robe as he ran to the bedroom door. I was right behind him, grabbing my own robe and stepping into my slippers.
In minutes, all four of us plus Hattie, already dressed in her uniform, sat as close as we could get to the radio in the living room, awestruck by what we were hearing.
“The Allies stormed the northern coast of France,” the excited announcer said. “A fleet of more than five thousand ships carrying one hundred and sixty thousand troops has invaded Hitler’s Europe and are fighting their way up the beaches.”
A hundred and sixty thousand troops! I tried to picture the scene as the commentator described it. Thousands of soldiers fighting their way ashore, a cloud of fighter planes above them in the air. All those young men. All that courage! I wanted to cheer and cry at the same time. I hugged myself, leaning over to get closer to the radio, listening to every word. Please, God, I thought. Let this horrible war come to an end.
“Casualties may reach a dreadful toll,” the commentator said.
I thought of the boys from my Little Italy neighborhood who’d enlisted or been drafted, picturing them among the hundreds of men on that beach in France.
“Thousands are known to be dead or wounded,” the announcer continued, and Lucy covered her mouth with her hand. She knew boys over there too. We all did, and in that moment I thought each one of us was filled with both fear and gratitude for those young men. Henry’s jaw was set. He rubbed the thumb and forefinger of his left hand with his right, the way he did when he was upset or stressed. I imagined every house in Hickory was filled with the same mixture of emotions at that moment. Every house in the country.
“Teddy said the church is open.” Ruth got to her feet. “Everyone’s going. I’m getting dressed and calling a cab to take me there myself. Lucy and Tess, you come with me. And Hattie, you can go to your church too, if you want.” As if on cue, church bells began ringing throughout the town and we all laughed giddily at the timing.
“I need to go to the factory,” Henry said, standing up. “I should let everyone off today to go to church.”
“Mr. Hank, can you stop by Adora’s on your way to the factory and tell them what’s goin’ on?” Hattie asked as she got to her feet. “They ain’t got no radio and you know they ain’t allowed out.” Adora, Honor, and little Jilly were still under quarantine. They hadn’t even be
en allowed to attend Butchie’s funeral, which seemed unbearably cruel to me. Henry had attended with Ruth and Lucy. They’d probably been the only white people in the church.
“Might Honor’s husband be one of the troops?” I asked. I knew Henry hadn’t been able to get word to Del that Butchie had died.
“You mean the father of her children,” Ruth said, with clear disdain. “Certainly possible, I suppose.”
“Oh, Mama.” Lucy scowled. “You’re so hard on Honor.”
“That girl’s a thorn in Adora’s side.” Ruth headed for the foyer. “Now get ready to go or I’ll leave without you,” she said.
I didn’t miss the sorrowful look on Hattie’s face as Ruth criticized her cousin Honor. I didn’t think Henry missed it either. He rested his hand on Hattie’s arm.
“Don’t worry,” he said to her. “I’ll let them know.”
The Baptist church was filled with excited, anxious parishioners by the time Ruth, Lucy, and I arrived. People kept coming, pouring through the doors, hugging one another as they crowded in. They brushed tears from their cheeks, and I knew that for those who had lost loved ones, the morning was bittersweet. I felt the joy and sorrow, fear and hope in every one of our hearts.
I pressed my hands together and bowed my head. Until today, my prayers had felt weak and empty in this sterile church, but today I lifted them up, one with my neighbors, as we all prayed for the same thing: victory.
49
In the days that followed D-day, a confusion of emotions reigned in the town. Excitement and cautious optimism were tempered by grief, since one local boy was among the casualties and the blue star that had hung in the window of his family home changed to gold. But the town was also gripped by fear that had nothing at all to do with the war. There was no way around it: Catawba County was in the middle of a polio epidemic that felt more immediate, more real, than anything that might be happening in Europe. New cases were reported every day and the hospital in Charlotte overflowed with sick children. People were frightened, many of them avoiding movie theaters or restaurants where they might come into contact with carriers of the virus. The county health officer, Dr. Whims, had become a household name. We constantly heard his voice on the radio and saw his picture in the paper as he struggled to be a calming influence.