House of Rougeaux(21)
* * *
After supper Edwin Montgomery relaxes into the brown brocade sofa, his well-muscled arm on the rest, sipping a cup of his evening coffee with chicory. His stomach bulges a little now with age, starting to go soft in the middle. The four children sit scattered to his left, glued to the radio set, Nelie with her eyes fixed on the dark sky beyond the street light out the window.
He rests his eyes on her, this daughter he sometimes thinks is both closest to his heart and most out of his reach. Come on back from the moon now, Baby, he says to her as he often does. And she turns to him with that pressed-lip smile, the same as his wife’s, that says, it’s you that’s being foolish.
Violet Montgomery is finishing up her work in the kitchen, putting leftover potatoes and the remains of her famous roast chicken with rosemary away into the icebox. There is a sudden knock and a voice calling her name. She pulls the latch and opens the door to see her brother-in-law, his face a knot of anxiety, in the dim yellow light of the hall. It’s Azzie, she’s taken sick, fainted right at the supper table and he’s got to run around to the drug store to ring Dr. Leventhal, and please come quick.
Violet grabs her coat and calls out to her family, who have already collected behind her. She steadies her voice, giving instructions to the wide-eyed children, there’s school tomorrow. She locks eyes for a moment with her husband, before running out into the cold night; she already knows it’s bad.
* * *
Dr. Leventhal is a white man, but a kind one, not heartless, like some others, as the adults are heard to say. He came to Nelie’s house once when her mother was ill after her youngest sister was born. He’d removed his hat and spoken in low tones, always careful to say mister and missus.
Nelie imagines a heart like a little valentine, pinned to the inside of his lapel, red paper with white lace edges, hidden so that he looks like other white men on the outside. Like the owner of the Five-and-Dime, for instance, whose icy blue eyes make the back of her neck prickle. Mr. Ainsworth is one of those who hasn’t got a heart, but rather something like a lump of coal rattling around inside an old coffee can. Nelie and Azzie refer to him in this way, Old Coffee Can.
It is a penchant of Nelie’s, this seeing into the interiors of people. These perceptions she whispers to Azzie, who, without a second thought, takes them on as her own. It’s not just Old Coffee Can who has a secret nickname, but a whole community of neighbors and schoolmates whom Nelie has at one time or another observed. There is Mrs. Snowflake, called for the thing inside her that is like the snowfall inside a globe, ever since her husband passed on, and her grown children moved far away.
There’s a boy in Azzie’s class whom all the girls adore, with a ringing laugh and a flashing smile. He has a sun inside, young and strong like himself. Also in the neighborhood live a shy mouse and a sticky box of half-melted candy, a book with hard edges, a razor-strop, a barrel of lemons, the curlicue beside a line of notes on sheet music, a sad hat, a bloody nose, a green forest, a chessboard knight, lost money, lost time.
Sometimes the things are fearful and Nelie would prefer not to see. Azzie will grab her by the hand and they’ll get going a game of fast hopscotch, or skip rope and sing all the songs they know, or make some kind of race or contest until they are out of breath and laughing.
One day they spent all afternoon making a picture with their Crayolas and shiny paper saved from last Christmas, of two magical birds perched on the branch of a cherry tree, whose elegant necks bent together and whose black eyes sparkled. They wrote their names at the bottom in their child’s cursive and decided at last to hang it on the wall above Nelie’s bed.
* * *
That night Nelie floats in a yawning darkness greater than the night itself. She is deaf to her father’s assurances that whatever it is their cousin has, Azzie will be just fine. His steady hands on their shoulders as he shepherds them off to bed, his efforts to smile and joke placate the others, but not Nelie. A fear has struck her like nothing she’s ever known.
Azzie is no longer safe at home, in her own bed, as she is, but in another place. By morning, Nelie half asleep under the crocheted coverlet and their two magical birds, sees the strange, high white walls, and something tiny and sinister up inside Azzie’s throat, a scattering of yellow pin-points bubbling up, like the thick, wet yolks of raw eggs.
Her mother is home again. Nelie is the first up and finds her at the kitchen table still in yesterday’s clothes, eyes red, she hasn’t slept. Violet Montgomery enfolds her daughter in her arms and explains that Azzie has been taken to the hospital. She pronounces the name of a disease, and the names of the good doctors and nurses who are caring for her. Aunt Virginia is there, and they can maybe go visit in a few days when Azzie is settled.
Settled.
Nelie feels a battle underway in her cousin. It has to do with those minuscule, evil, yellow yolks. Nausea claims her insides. But she nods to her mother, keeping her mouth shut, and everything to herself.
* * *
An ache sits with Nelie at her school desk, the shadows of the day are the most noticeable things. Beneath a windowsill, behind a door, thin lines where wall and ceiling meet, the black spaces seep together like ink. Miss Carmine knows her as a dreamy child, but today catches something in her eye that has her let Nelie alone. She will know what that something is presently, since by noon all the teachers will have been notified, that one of the Hubbard girls is gravely ill, and all should be aware, it is after all contagious, and they must keep a close eye on their pupils.