Belles on Their Toes (3 page)

“Hives,” Tom grunted. “He’s sick as a dog, I tell you. Of course, he ain’t as sick as I was oncst when …”

“He ate some of that burned rangoon—” Anne stopped quickly. “Maybe he ate something that didn’t agree with him.”

“Didn’t agree with him?” Tom asked. And then accusingly to Bill: “Have you been sneaking out and eating down street again? You don’t know what goes into the food they give you at them drug stores.”

Bill shook his head.

“Anyway, it ain’t his stomach,” said Tom. “I know what it is, all right, but your father give me my orders, so I dassent tell you.”

“He gave them to you the time we had the measles and you said it was scarlet fever, didn’t he, Tom?” Bill said.

“That was the time,” Tom conceded.

“Heck, anyone can make a mistake like that, eh Tom?” Bill asked. Bill was one of Tom’s defenders, and usually in the Club.

“You scared Mother half to death,” Anne said accusingly.

“I still ain’t sure it
wasn’t
that, neither,” said Tom.

Anne went to telephone Dr. Burton, and Tom paced the floor of the room shared by Frank and Bill.

“Of course,” he muttered for the benefit of those of us who had assembled to see Bill’s spots, “I don’t know nothing about it. I’m stupit, I am. I’m so stupit that even though I seen a hundred cases just like it in the war, I don’t know what it is. I seen them dying like flies from it.”

“Is it really bad?” Bill asked. “Will everybody catch it?”

“You’ll catch it, you bold thing you, if you don’t stop scratching. You’ll be out of the Club for a hundred years.”

“Not that!” Ernestine protested in mock terror. “Anything but that.”

Tom pretended not to hear. But there was no doubt that Ernestine—or the Princess, as Tom sometimes called her with an exaggerated courtesy—was out of the Club for a thousand years and four days.

Tom resumed his pacing and mumbling. “I was an orderly in the horsepittle for ten months during the war for nothing. Had my eyes closed all the time. Sure I did.”

The war to which Tom alluded was the Spanish-American. If, as Tom frequently alleged, he actually had served as a hospital orderly, medicine had progressed considerably since those days. For Tom placed all his reliance on quinine and castor oil. And we weren’t completely sure he knew that the practice of bleeding the patient had been pretty generally discontinued.

What was good medicine for humans, he believed, was equally beneficial for animals. Tom was a collector of pets, both wild and domesticated, much to the disgust of Dad. Dad used to complain that feeding almost a score of human mouths was more than any white man’s burden, and that it was an outrage to be required to give sustenance to the fauna which followed Tom home or begged handouts on the kitchen window sill.

Let one of Tom’s pets show up with a warm nose, sagging beak, coated tongue, fetid breath, or blood-shot eye, and Tom would swiftly mix a dose of castor oil and Quinine Remedy, add a bit of sugar to make the dose more palatable, and force the solution through the mouth or down the bill of the debilitated creature.

None of them ever died or seemed to hold a lasting grudge. But Tom’s cat, Fourteen—Tom numbered his cats progressively—would get down on her belly and start sneaking toward the back door every time she saw him reach up over the kitchen sink, where he kept the Quinine Remedy.

Tom’s diagnoses for persons other than himself were varied, uninhibited, and sometimes exotic. But when he was sick himself, he always diagnosed the ailment as pleurisy, regardless of whether the symptoms were a bleeding nose or a swollen foot. On these occasions, he would send out for the Quinine Remedy’s large economy flagon, and it never failed him.

ERNESTINE AND MARTHA
were in bed too by the time Dr. Burton arrived. Whenever the doctor came to our house, Tom was the medical orderly again. He said “Yes, sir,” and “No, sir,” and he sucked in his stomach. Dr. Burton knew of Tom’s claims of medical experience, and assured himself of Tom’s cooperation by treating him as a learned colleague in the profession.

“What is it?” Anne asked anxiously, as Dr. Burton leaned over Bill’s bed. “Tom keeps hinting that it’s something serious.”

“He says he’s seen them die like flies from it,” Bill said. “But all it does is itch.”

“It’s obvious, eh Tom?” said the physician.

“Yes, sir. Only I wouldn’t tell them nothing because Mr. Gilbreth made me promise.”

“Anyone can see it’s chicken pox. No need to make an examination, would you say so, Tom?”

“Is that all,” Anne sighed.

“That’s what I thought, sir,” said Tom. “Either that or small-pox, I wasn’t sure which.”

“It’s nothing to worry about,” Dr. Burton told Anne.

“I’m not worried,” said Anne, glaring at Tom, “now that I know it isn’t leprosy or cholera.”

“You’ll all be up and around again in a few days,” Dr. Burton assured her.

“What do you mean, all?” Anne asked. “Chicken pox is a children’s disease, isn’t it?”

“Have any of you had chicken pox?”

“I guess not,” Anne admitted.

“Then you’ll all get it. But Tom will take good care of you.”

“Yes,
sir
,” Tom beamed.

“I’ll have some medicine sent around,” the doctor continued. “And Tom, I’ll count on you to see they keep regular.”

“I’ve got just the thing,” said Tom, and it was obvious that Dr. Burton’s medical standing had skyrocketed in his estimation.

“Castor oil,” moaned Bill.

“A little castor oil never hurt anyone,” Dr. Burton agreed.

“Did you hear that, Tom?” Bill said, grasping at a straw. “Dr. Burton says a little.”

“That’s right,” the doctor cautioned. “Not too much.” He turned to Tom. “I suppose you’ve had chicken pox?”

“No, sir,” said Tom. “When I was a kid I had something that looked just like it. Some people even
said
it was chicken pox. But it turned out to be …”

“Pleurisy,” Dr. Burton nodded sagely.

“That’s the only disease that ever give me any trouble.”

THE NEXT DAY
, when it became apparent that all of us had chicken pox, Anne had Tom move all the boys’ beds into Frank’s and Bill’s room, and all the girls’ beds into Mother’s and Dad’s room. The rooms were adjacent, and by leaving the door open Anne could supervise both wards from her bed.

Anne had no intention of letting any mass epidemic interfere with the family routine. She had each of us get up long enough to wash, remake our beds, weigh ourselves, and make the notations on the process charts.

We got the phonograph from the boys’ bathroom—we usually listened to the language records while we were taking baths or otherwise occupied in what Dad called periods of unavoidable delay—and set it up in the doorway between the two wards. We played French and German records for fifteen minutes. Then Anne got up and looked at the charts, to make sure everyone had done what he was supposed to do.

“That’s fine,” she sighed as she crawled back into bed. “Now we can enjoy our poor health. And a pox on the first person who gets me up again.”

None of us felt very sick. We sang for a while, with the boys’ ward carrying the melody and the girls’ ward an alto. Sometimes, to get the song just right, the boys would sing their part alone, and the girls would sing theirs alone, and then we’d try them together. We sang “Yes, We Have No Bananas,” “Oh, Gee, Oh, Gosh, Oh, Golly, I’m in Love,” “Last Night on the Back Porch,” “You’ve Got to See Mama Every Night or You Can’t See Mama at All.”

Then we played some of the new dance records and sang along with them. “What’ll I Do?” “All Alone by the Telephone,” “Charlie My Boy,” “Limehouse Blues,” and “The Prisoner’s Song.”

We didn’t mind being sick, and we hoped Mother wouldn’t find out and worry about us.

After a while we could hear the sound of a spoon clinking against a glass down in the kitchen, and we knew Tom was mixing castor oil with orange juice and sugar. All of the boys, from Frank on down the line, immediately feigned deep sleep.

Tom brought the castor oil upstairs, one glass at a time. The stirring grew progressively louder as he mounted the back stairs and walked through the upstairs hall to the wards.

When he arrived with the first dose, the boys were snoring. “You don’t fool me none,” Tom told them. “I can see them eyes winking. I’ll be up with your medicine in a few minutes.”

He knocked noisily on the open door of the girls’ ward, with his head modestly averted. Tom always made an elaborate ceremony of knocking before entering one of the girls’ rooms. He thought that the knocking was a waste of time, and alleged that he had, at one time or another, changed all of their diapers. But Dad and Mother insisted on it. When Tom did, by mistake, happen on one of the girls who was not fully dressed, he never could understand—or made believe he couldn’t understand—the ensuing commotion. “That’s all right,” he’d say, while the girl dived shrieking into a closet. “It don’t embarrass me none. I don’t mind. I don’t mind.”

Now, after knocking, he asked:

“All right if I come in, Anne?” He stirred the castor oil harder and louder than ever.

“I guess so,” Anne conceded.

“Ain’t nobody here,” said Ernestine, “but us chicken poxers.”

Tom entered and bowed low to Ernestine, the Princess.

“Here you are, Your Highness,” he said. “I’ve brung you a present from the Grand Doochess.”

He held out the glass.

“Anne first,” Ernestine protested. “She’s the oldest. Besides, you’ve probably spiked my drink.”

“Where’d you learn talk like that?” said Tom, genuinely shocked. “I’m going to tell your Mother on you when she gets home.”

“Here, hand me that glass and for goodness’ sake be quiet, both of you,” said Anne.

“Oh, what’s the use,” Ernestine wailed. “All right, give it to me.”

Having reached the decision, she grabbed the glass before her willpower deserted her, and drained it.

“Good girl, Ernie,” Tom beamed. “You’re in the Club. How was it?”

Remembering she was supposed to set a good example, she smiled bravely.

“Delicious,” she gulped. “Positively delicious.”

“See what I tole you?” Tom said. “The orange juice cuts the taste.”

“That’s right,” Ernestine lied. “Positively delicious.”

“Do you want some more?” Tom asked hopefully. “I wouldn’t mind fixing you another glass.”

“No,” Ernestine shouted. “I mean, no thank you. It was mighty good, but that was plenty.”

“Tomorrow, then,” said Tom, as he departed for the kitchen to mix Anne’s dose.

“I never had so much castor oil in my life,” Ernestine whispered to Anne. “The old idiot must think I’m as irregular as a French verb.”

“If you don’t mind,” Anne pleaded, “please keep quiet until I’ve had mine. My heart bleeds for you, but please hold your oily tongue.”

Anne, Martha, and finally Frank all faced up to their responsibilities by taking their medicine and managing to smack their lips and say it was good. But when Tom came to Bill the era of cooperation ended.

In the first place, Bill wouldn’t wake up, and the more Tom shook him, the louder he snored.

“I never seen such a sound sleeper,” said Tom, deciding it was time for psychology. “Well, if I can’t wake him for his castor oil, I’d better do the next best thing.”

Bill’s snores shook the bedroom.

“Does anyone,” said Tom, “know where the hot water bag is?”

Bill thought he knew what that meant. He rolled over and opened an eye.

“Where am I?” he asked sleepily. “What time is it?”

“It’s time,” said Tom, shoving a glass in Bill’s face, “to drink this.”

“What is it?” Bill asked, stalling as long as possible.

“You know what it is,” hollered Tom, whose patience was becoming exhausted. “Now swalley it.”

“I don’t like it.”

“How do you know you don’t like it, when you ain’t tasted it?”

“I’ve tasted it before. It tastes nasty.”

“Look,” Tom said deliberately. “Ast Anne. Ast Ernestine. Ast Martha. Ast Frank. It’s good. It’s delicious.”

“I know them. They’re just setting good examples.”

Tom now played his hole card.

“Look,” he purred, “I’ve got another glass just like this one, out in the hall. If you be a good boy and drink this, I’ll drink that—just to show you how good it is.”

By now all of the younger boys were frankly awake, and watching. Bill considered the offer carefully.

“How do I know,” he asked suspiciously, “that there’s castor oil in the other glass?”

“You can take my word for it, can’t you?” Tom was shouting again.

“I don’t think so.”

“Call me a liar, then,” said Tom. “Call me a liar.”

He went to the hall and came back holding a glass in each hand.

“Take your choice. If that ain’t fair, I don’t know what is.”

“When I take mine, will you drink a glass with me?” Fred asked.

“Sure,” said Tom. “It’s delicious. Ast Anne.”

“How about me?” Dan wanted to know.

“Certainly.”

“And me?” said Jack.

“Me, too,” Lillian shouted from the girls’ ward.

“Everybody,” Tom agreed. “All hands and the cook.”

Bill examined the glasses closely, and the girls came in to watch him make his choice. The glasses contained the same amount of orange juice, but there was one very obvious difference. On the surface of the juice in one glass were only a few bubbles of oil. On the surface of the other floated almost a half-inch of solid oil.

“I’ll take this one,” said Bill, pointing to the glass with a few bubbles.

“You’re sure you want that one?” Tom asked innocently. “I don’t see no difference.”

“Don’t try to wiggle out of it,” said Bill. “That’s the one I want.”

He was about to take the glass, when he looked up and saw Ernestine just barely shake her head.

“Sure you don’t want to change your mind?” said Tom, obviously pleased with the way things were going.

“Okay,” said Bill, “you talked me into it. I’ll change my mind.”

He grabbed the glass with all the oil on top.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Tom protested, and there was genuine terror in his voice. “You don’t want that one. If you look clost, you can see it’s loaded with oil. Here’s the one you want.”