The Devil's Dream (34 page)

“I sure will.” Hank sat and twisted his cap in his hands.

“What is it, honey?” I said then, for I could tell something was wrong.

“Nothing,” Hank said.

But still he sat there. Then he said, “Well, Katie, I reckon we are about down to our last nickel for sure,” not looking at me. “When do you reckon you can get up from there and go back to work?”

“Why, Hank, I just don't know!” I said. He surprised me. I had been figuring on spending some time with the baby while she was so little and all. Then after a while, I thought, I'd try to get a job singing someplace around town. I wasn't too big on joining back up with Virgie and the Raindrops again. But I couldn't for the life of me see how we could be down to our last nickel, anyway, it didn't make sense, for I had been saving up all those months while I was sharing a room with Georgia and pulling in that good radio money.

“Here,” I said. I handed him the baby, and he sat there stiff as a post.

“Mamma had to go to the doctor,” Hank said. “She's been getting these headaches every day.” Well, I should have known! Mamma this, Mamma that. Mamma had to have the furnace fixed, Mamma had to buy new eyeglasses. Of course, Mamma was not but forty years old when she was widowed, but she had yet to show one sign of going out and looking for a job—believing, as Hank believed, that she was “not that kind of woman,” and holding fast to those palpitations of the heart.

Hank handed Annie May back to me in a hurry. “I'm late for work,” he said. “I've got to go.” He put on his cap and left in a rush, and the hospital nurse, a big Scottish woman who was right there in the room and had seen all of this, came over and hugged me. “My wee girlie,” she used to call me.

By the time Annie May and I came back to the boardinghouse, things had changed. Hank was different. He had a worried, tight look about the eyes now, and he went out a lot. He wouldn't talk to me. He did not love to lie beside me in the bed as he had once, tracing the patterns of the lace on my body as I sang the old songs for him. Now when he made love to me it was a hard, fast act, almost as if he was giving in to something and wanted to get it over with as soon as possible.

I remember that summer now as a long bright stretch of time with me and Annie May alone in our room, yet I was not unhappy, because a baby is the best company in the world. I would sing to her all day long, the cuckoo song being her favorite, as it had been mine. I lay in the bed for hours just daydreaming, while Annie May pulled on my nipple. During the afternoon we'd sit at the bay window and I'd watch the life of the street, which I never tired of—the vegetable man from out in the country with his wagon full of corn, watermelons, beans, and tomatoes; his mule wore a floppy hat. “Sweet corn! Sweet corn!” he'd holler. He'd play a blues tune on his old flatbox guitar for a nickel. The three old-lady sisters across the street fanned themselves slowly in the heat all day long, all dressed up for nobody. Children, wild at being out of school, ran up and down the sidewalk with sticks and bats and balls, headed for a game someplace. The thin old man who lived on the corner was said to have been in the Civil War. He walked back and forth to the other end of the block every day, wearing a white linen suit. It took him an hour.

I'd play and play with Annie May, or just look at her for hours as she slept—her little fingers and toes, the tiny birthmark on her upper arm, her funny flyaway hair. She was just perfect. I wondered how she'd look as a six-year-old, or when she was ten, or twelve. I wondered what kind of a teenager she'd be—not like me, I hoped! I wondered what kind of a woman she'd be, where she'd live, what she'd do.

I loved that summer I spent in the boardinghouse with Annie May. I love thinking about it now, summers and summers since. Of course now I wonder if I knew somehow, in the back of my mind, what lay ahead, if that's why I treasured it so very much. . . . Anyway, it ended in the fall. Hank kept pushing me to go back to work, as his mother needed this and that, so finally I just joined up with the Raindrops again, since it seemed like the easiest thing to do. Mrs. Marblehead found me a Negro woman named Sophrina Little who took care of Annie May along with her own children. Actually, I still got to spend a lot of time with Annie May since we didn't have to be down at the studio until five p.m. for the Barn Dance, this was every weekday afternoon.

Sometimes Hank would stay with Annie May then, but usually I took her to Sophrina Little's, which I always felt better about, for Sophrina's children loved babies as much as she did, and Annie May got so much attention over there. Hank didn't pay enough attention to her, I felt, just leaving her in her playpen or on a blanket while he read the papers or studied for a class. Hank was taking a self-improvement class that fall, he was real serious about it, and another class in accounting.

He was determined to make something of himself, so I reckon he has. People usually get what they go after. Whether they end up wanting it or not is another matter.

I always took Annie May to Sophrina's on the mornings we did the
Breakfast Club
with Ed Barr, which was real popular.

We
were getting real popular, in fact! Ernestine Dodd—Petunia—stayed on when I came back, so it was Mamma Rainette and three Raindrops now instead of two, and we sounded a lot better. Ernestine Dodd was a natural cut-up on the radio, in a way that Georgia and I were not. Later she went on to be Sally in Sally and Clyde, which was a famous variety act. They were on
Arthur Godfrey
,
Ed Sullivan
, you name it.

This was the fall that Mamma Rainette and the Raindrops made a record featuring “Git Along Home, Cindy,” which was our lead-in song, on one side and R.C.'s song “Living on Love” on the other. We got a lot of play around Virginia and the Carolinas, so much that Virgie started getting invitations for us to come and play different events, shows and fairs and such, on the weekends. Of course this involved traveling, and I hated so to leave Annie May.

But Hank would say, “Go, go,” for we needed the money, he said, and I went, for I was still trying to be a good wife even though I was having my doubts by then.

I will never forget that Friday night when we got back to Floyd Avenue real late, it must have been three a.m., back from doing a show in Roanoke, and I tiptoed over to peep at my baby, switching on the light in the bathroom and cracking the door just a little bit first so I could see where I was going without waking her up. I was surprised to see her turning her head back and forth, and kicking her feet—usually she slept like a little log. Her breath was coming in tiny shallow gasps. I leaned down and felt of her forehead. It was burning hot.

I pulled on the overhead light and grabbed her up out of her crib. Hank sat up in bed. “What the hell are you doing?” He was rubbing his eyes.

“Annie May is sick,” I told him. “She's just as sick as she can be. Get up, Hank, we've got to take her to the hospital. I think she's
real
sick,” I said.

“Now just hold your horses, Katie,” Hank said. “She hasn't got a thing but a little cold.”

“How do you know?” I said.

“I got Miss Lumpkin to come up here and look at her,” Hank said. “It's nothing. Go to bed, let her sleep. She'll probably be just fine in the morning.”

“I'm going to take her to the hospital if I have to walk,” I said.

“You are not! You spoil that baby to death, Katie, that's probably what's the matter with her anyway. It's
nothing
, I'm telling you. Get in the bed. I've got to get up at six o'clock and go to work, in case you've forgotten.”

“I've just
been
working, in case you've forgotten,” I said, knowing it was a mistake, for I made more money than Hank, which he hated. “Go get the car keys from Virgie,” I said. We still didn't have a car.

“Goddamnit, Katie, shut up! I'm telling you for the last time, we're not taking this baby to the doctor for nothing. Nothing, you understand me? We ain't got the money for it. You wait and see how she is in the morning, I'm telling you. There's nothing wrong with that baby. “Hank never called her by her name, Annie May. He always called her “that baby.” He had a fixation that going to the doctor was a big waste of money—for us, that is. His mother went all the time, and furnished us with full reports—what she said, what the doctor said.

“If you don't get up and take me and Annie May to the doctor right now,” I started, but then I didn't know what to say next.

“What?”
he yelled, bounding up out of the bed to stand in front of me.
“What?”
He pushed me into the wall, so that I stumbled back and nearly dropped her. I got real light-headed and scared, it was late and I was so tired.

“Nothing,” I said. I backed off, and he pulled the light chain and lay back down.

“Get in the bed, Katie,” he said, but I wouldn't put her down, and in a minute I could tell by his breathing that he'd gone back to sleep.

I took Annie May in the bathroom and put her blanket down in the tub and let her stay there with me sitting on the bathroom floor beside her, sponging her whole body off with a damp washcloth from time to time to try and bring the fever down. This seemed to work. Finally she started resting easier after a while, and breathing better. Finally it started getting light outside, and then the alarm went off and Hank got up and dressed for work in a hurry. He came in the bathroom and leaned over and kissed me. I could tell he felt real bad about how he had acted, even though he didn't say anything about it, men just can't sometimes.

“I think she's some better,” I said.

“Well, you'd better get Virgie to drive you to the doctor anyway,” Hank said, so then I
knew
he was sorry, and I said I would.

But the first thing I did after he went out to catch the streetcar was go upstairs and get Miss Lumpkin, who came to the door with her gray hair hanging down to her waist, and I realized that she must have been real pretty, years and years ago. This shocked me.

I asked Miss Lumpkin if she would come and take another look at Annie May, and she said, “Why, what's wrong with Annie May?” and then I knew Hank had been lying.

“She's sick,” I said, “she's been real sick.” And not five minutes later, Miss Lumpkin was there, all professional-looking with her gray hair wound up in a bun now under her starched white cap. I was embarrassed to have her see the unmade bed, yet she walked past it without a glance and picked up Annie May, who was sleeping deeply by then, a good sign, I thought.

Miss Lumpkin looked at me with her clear gray eyes and said, “This baby needs to see the doctor. Now I'll just sit right here with her”—she sat in the rocking chair—“while you gather some things together, Katie, and we'll take her right down to the hospital. It's always best to see the doctor.” Her voice was bright, false, professional.

I couldn't hardly think. I packed up a sack with baby clothes and toys, diapers, the blanket Mamma had crocheted and sent in the mail, Annie May's little silver cup from Hank's mamma. Then I picked up my purse and my guitar case.

“You won't need that, honey,” she said. “But get yourself a sweater or a coat,” which I did, and we left.

They took her away from me at the hospital and did some tests, which took about two hours. I sat in the waiting room and bummed cigarettes from the other people waiting there too, and vomited twice in the bathroom. It didn't even occur to me to call anybody, Virgie or Georgia or Hank.

Finally Miss Lumpkin came back out with two doctors.

Annie May had polio.

They said she would need to stay in the hospital for some time, and it might be months before we would know the extent of the damage. They said a lot of other stuff too, but I couldn't take it all in. Then they led me back to where they had put her in a crib in a room with three other babies in it, under a bright white light that stayed on, I would learn, day and night. There was a chair beside her crib. I could stay for a while. There were certain hours every day when I could visit, and sit in the chair, and hold her. I couldn't hold her that first day, though. I sat there and somebody brought me a cup of coffee and a newspaper. I looked at the date on the newspaper. December 18, 1948. Annie May was nearly seven months old.

I sat there until they told me I had to leave, that I could come back in the afternoon, and again at night if I wished to. So I went and called Virgie down at the radio station, where I knew they'd be just finishing up Ed Barr's
Breakfast Club
.

“Where the hell have you been?” Virgie said. Then I told her, and she said she'd be right there.

It was cold, but I sat out on the steps of the hospital and waited for Virgie, watching people go in and out of the door. I felt light-headed and funny, like everybody was staring at me. Once an ambulance pulled up with its bell clanging, and they wheeled a bloody man on a stretcher in through the double doors. Once a big young Negro man nearly knocked me down, pushing a wheelchair into my shoulder. Some boys about my age walked past on the sidewalk and paused to light a cigarette, staring at me. They
were
staring at me! Then, just as Virgie squealed up to the curb in the big white Oldsmobile, I looked down at myself and realized why they were all staring at me—because I still had on my Raindrop outfit, the red-and-white-checkered dress buttoned up wrong, those big black clodhopper boots. I looked like country come to town. Behind me, in the hospital, my little Annie May lay sleeping beneath those bright-bright lights. Virgie slammed out of the car and ran up to hug me tight. She smelled, as usual, like cigarettes and perfume and gin. “Oh Katie, it'll be all right,” she said, but I knew it would not.