can. Ivy”—Nela’s blue eyes darted toward me—“you’ll keep driving us, yes?”
I pursed my lips, and a hundred more excuses to flee this current situation squawked inside my head.
“Yes,” I said, despite the trepidations and the aches in my head and my stomach. “I’ll help.”
W E D R O V E T H R O U G H a neighborhood of squished-together houses with peeling paint and no front yards whatsoever—cheap and rapidly assembled structures built for Buchanan’s flood of mill and railcar workers toward the end of the past century. We peered through the dark for large white signs with the word I N F LUENZA written in red letters, nailed to front doors. I smelled chimney smoke and something akin to the scents of rot and decay.
“Most folks hate having those signs on their front doors,” said Addie with a shift of her weight on the seat beside Nela. “They make them feel dirty. And punished. Whites are always saying my people carry more diseases as it is.”
“But”—Nela braced her hands against the dashboard and craned her long neck forward to better see the doorways through the windshield—“those signs are the only way we can tell if people need treatment. They own no telephones. They can’t call anyone for help.”
I gripped the steering wheel and squinted through the nighttime streets for quarantined homes, and all I could think about was the amount of time Dr. Lowsley spent paying me personal house calls during my recent bout with the same strain of the flu. He had fussed with aspirin and cold presses and thermometers and made sure Mama served me tea and warm soup. No one needed to hang up a sign to flag down ambulances in the dark or put me in a hospital swarming with people vomiting black tar. Even Father—a man who had never paid me much mind once I started looking more woman than girl—meandered into my bedroom one night and held my hand beside my bed for at least an hour. I never would have possessed the time to die under such watchful care.
One block down from the tracks that divided South Buchanan from the rest of the town, not far from the spot where I’d just saved the women’s lives, we found a house marked with one of the red-and-white influenza signs. Addie and Nela scrambled to fetch the stretcher, and I followed behind them to a plain wooden door with an iron handle. Nela knocked and called out something in Polish, and when no one answered, she turned the knob and pushed the door open.
“Do you know the people who live in here?” I asked.
“No, but I feel in my heart that they need us.” She stepped inside, and Addie and I sauntered in after her, with Addie holding the back end of the stretcher.
A pair of older women wearing dark scarves over their heads spoke in hushed tones around a table in the front room. They dressed in long black clothing from another world, another century, and when they lifted their faces to us, they wrinkled their brows and frowned.
Nela said something to them in Polish. The women nodded and, with bony white fingers, pointed toward the staircase behind us.
We clopped up the steps while the tan stretcher swayed in the space separating Nela and Addie’s hands. The entire place stank of booze.
“People are drinking hard to fight the germs,” said Nela over her shoulder, as if she worried I might think less of the residents for the odor—not knowing about my own father and brother’s whiskey-fueled atrocities. “That’s why the emergency hospital smells like liquor, too. The doctors administer whiskey.”
“Well, then,” I muttered under my breath, “I certainly don’t need to worry about certain members of my family getting this disease.”
Upstairs, in a narrow hallway unlit by a single lamp, we passed two bedrooms in which families slept like passengers piled into crowded railroad cars, with two to four people per bed.
“Grypa?” called Nela through the dim hallway. “Grypa?”
“Pomocy!” said a female voice from down the
I pursed my lips, and a hundred more excuses to flee this current situation squawked inside my head.
“Yes,” I said, despite the trepidations and the aches in my head and my stomach. “I’ll help.”
W E D R O V E T H R O U G H a neighborhood of squished-together houses with peeling paint and no front yards whatsoever—cheap and rapidly assembled structures built for Buchanan’s flood of mill and railcar workers toward the end of the past century. We peered through the dark for large white signs with the word I N F LUENZA written in red letters, nailed to front doors. I smelled chimney smoke and something akin to the scents of rot and decay.
“Most folks hate having those signs on their front doors,” said Addie with a shift of her weight on the seat beside Nela. “They make them feel dirty. And punished. Whites are always saying my people carry more diseases as it is.”
“But”—Nela braced her hands against the dashboard and craned her long neck forward to better see the doorways through the windshield—“those signs are the only way we can tell if people need treatment. They own no telephones. They can’t call anyone for help.”
I gripped the steering wheel and squinted through the nighttime streets for quarantined homes, and all I could think about was the amount of time Dr. Lowsley spent paying me personal house calls during my recent bout with the same strain of the flu. He had fussed with aspirin and cold presses and thermometers and made sure Mama served me tea and warm soup. No one needed to hang up a sign to flag down ambulances in the dark or put me in a hospital swarming with people vomiting black tar. Even Father—a man who had never paid me much mind once I started looking more woman than girl—meandered into my bedroom one night and held my hand beside my bed for at least an hour. I never would have possessed the time to die under such watchful care.
One block down from the tracks that divided South Buchanan from the rest of the town, not far from the spot where I’d just saved the women’s lives, we found a house marked with one of the red-and-white influenza signs. Addie and Nela scrambled to fetch the stretcher, and I followed behind them to a plain wooden door with an iron handle. Nela knocked and called out something in Polish, and when no one answered, she turned the knob and pushed the door open.
“Do you know the people who live in here?” I asked.
“No, but I feel in my heart that they need us.” She stepped inside, and Addie and I sauntered in after her, with Addie holding the back end of the stretcher.
A pair of older women wearing dark scarves over their heads spoke in hushed tones around a table in the front room. They dressed in long black clothing from another world, another century, and when they lifted their faces to us, they wrinkled their brows and frowned.
Nela said something to them in Polish. The women nodded and, with bony white fingers, pointed toward the staircase behind us.
We clopped up the steps while the tan stretcher swayed in the space separating Nela and Addie’s hands. The entire place stank of booze.
“People are drinking hard to fight the germs,” said Nela over her shoulder, as if she worried I might think less of the residents for the odor—not knowing about my own father and brother’s whiskey-fueled atrocities. “That’s why the emergency hospital smells like liquor, too. The doctors administer whiskey.”
“Well, then,” I muttered under my breath, “I certainly don’t need to worry about certain members of my family getting this disease.”
Upstairs, in a narrow hallway unlit by a single lamp, we passed two bedrooms in which families slept like passengers piled into crowded railroad cars, with two to four people per bed.
“Grypa?” called Nela through the dim hallway. “Grypa?”
“Pomocy!” said a female voice from down the
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