Waiting for Sunrise (26 page)

Billy brushed wayward hair away from her face. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You’ve been so busy lately and—between your work at the restaurant, the civic things you’ve managed to get involved in, and the Fourth of July preparations—I wanted to wait for the right time.”

He rolled to his back. “My goodness, girl. You sure know how to top my gift of the VW out there.”

She giggled. “Billy.”

He looked at her.

“Let’s get your mother here as soon as possible. Maybe a future with a little one to hold will bring life to her living again. You know, like Naomi in the Bible.”

Billy could only stare at his wife. This incredible gift of God he’d been blessed with. First as a friend. Then as a girlfriend. A fiancée. Finally a wife. Now, the mother of his child. A son or a daughter . . .

He reached under the sheet and placed his hand along the flat of her belly. “I love you,” he said.

“I love you more.”

29

Fall 1963, Charleston, South Carolina

It wasn’t so bad, really.

Being in the hospital.

The nurses were nice. Most of the time. Except when they weren’t.

Sometimes Gabrielle, one of the younger ones—the one typically assigned to her—made Patsy laugh. And Patsy was learning that she loved laughing. A lot. When it came.

Another thing she had started to appreciate was not feeling guilty for her lack of meal preparation. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. It was all planned out and cooked and served, without her even having to wash a dish afterward. And, she liked having her laundry done for her except when they dried her underwear. That was frustrating. Made her feel out of control. Would it hurt them so much to just let them air-dry in her room?

Still, in the three months since she’d been admitted, Patsy had found peace here. She wasn’t ready to discuss the details of her life, but she no longer flinched at the doctor’s probing. Clearly, it gave the man something to do.

But she wasn’t talking. Not really. Not yet. Oh, they wanted her to, all right. But that also made her frustrated. She’d stormed out of many a session. Took her awhile, but she eventually went back and said she was sorry.

Sometimes she actually was.

When she’d first arrived, they said she had a “flat affect.” She didn’t know what in the world
that
meant, so Gabrielle explained it to her one day while they were taking a walk. “It means, Miz Milstrap, that you don’t show much emotion.”

Patsy hadn’t commented. To say anything might mean showing she
did
have feelings, which were mostly sadness and loneliness. And the sense that something was missing. In spite of all the people around her and the activities they kept her busy with. There was something . . . it was out there.

She had a dream one night that whatever that something was, she had her finger on it. She couldn’t see it; she could only feel it. It was right there, close enough to grab hold of and identify. But, in doing so, she knew if she did, it—whatever it was—would expose
her.
The revelation of looking into a mirror and not liking what you see. And so, in her dream, she ran from it. Fast and furious. When she woke, she was covered in sweat. So much so, she had to change her nightgown and bed linens in the dark of night.

For the most part, her days were spent in games, arts and crafts, seeing her doctor, going to group, and tending her own little garden. In August, she’d had the prettiest gaillardias of anyone at the center. They grew thick in colors of burnt red and gold, and wine red. She had some nice cosmos too. She would have loved to plant some impatiens, but there wasn’t enough shade in her plot of earth.

Saturdays were too long, but she enjoyed Sunday afternoons. After services, family members came to visit. Gil always came. Sometimes he brought the older children, but Patsy liked it better when he didn’t. They just seemed ill at ease or too active, which only made her nervous the rest of the day. Besides, she liked having Gilbert all to herself. To wrap her arms around. To hold on to. If only for a few hours and even if it meant dealing with the unquiet feeling, which told her that when he left at the end of visitation, he would never come back.

Mam and Papa had come with him once or twice. More than that, actually. Those were the difficult visits. Mam was always dabbing at her eyes, trying so hard not to cry. Papa just kept calling her sugar plum, telling her it was all going to be okay.

She knew that. If there was anything at all she knew, it was that. Everything would be okay.

She just didn’t know how.

“God knows,” Gabrielle once told her. “He knows the path, and he’s laid the bricks. You just have to be the one to walk down it, is all.” Then she raised a hand toward the ceiling, right there in the recreation hall where they were sitting, drinking glasses of iced tea together, pretending to watch
The Secret Storm.
“Miz Milstrap, he loves you more than you even love your own children. He loves you more than you love yourself.”

This was a topic Gabby managed to bring up at least once in her typical seven-to-three shift. That warm autumn afternoon was no exception. Gabrielle sat on the upturned end of a metal bucket at one of the far corners of the backyard gardens. Patsy was on her knees, tending. While Gabrielle talked, Patsy shifted her attention from the rich soil and her blooming snapdragons to the woman’s white uniform. It was starched purely stiff and she kept the hem of it tucked under the knees, which were pressed together. Her white stockings looked gray against the honey-and-chocolate color of her skin; her feet stuck out on either side of the bucket, Patsy supposed to keep her from toppling over.

“I know all that, Gabby,” Patsy said. She craned her neck to look around her nurse. “And I also know you are going to have a dirty hind end, what with it sitting on the end of that pail.”

Gabrielle only laughed. “I can live with it if you can.”

Patsy pulled the floral gardening gloves from her hands, tossed them to the green lawn along with her trowel. She fell back on her backside and adjusted her Bermuda shorts. Keeping her feet together, she spread her knees and then wrapped them with her arms, linking her fingers. “Tell me something, Gabby. What made you decide to be a nurse for the nuts?”

Gabrielle shook a finger at her. “First of all, you are not nuts. You’re just tired and sad about something deep, is all. You’ve got a lot going on in that mind of yours, and it all needs to be sorted out. Which is why you’re here and I have a job, praise Jesus.”

Patsy shook her head. “Maybe so.” She looked at the Keds that had become so dirty she was no longer allowed to bring them inside the hospital halls. She squinted at the woman pretty enough to work as a movie double for Ruby Dee. “So then, what made you decide to work
here
?”

Gabrielle shrugged. “I had a hard time finding work in most places. I’m not an aide, and that’s what they wanted to hire me for. I’m a nurse. And . . . you know how it sometimes is here in South Carolina.”

“Mmm. I know.” Patsy moistened her dry lips with her tongue. Darned ole pills they had her on made her mouth so dry and lips downright crackly. “Did I ever tell you about Martha?”

Gabrielle rubbed her dark lips together before saying, “I take it she was a Negro woman like me?”

Patsy dropped her shoulders. “Why ever would you ask that? And, yes, she is. But she’s more than just some Negro woman. She works for my husband as his head cook at the Trinity location. You know my husband is the owner of Gilly’s . . .”

“You’ve mentioned it a few dozen times.”

Patsy unfolded herself and stood. She dusted the dirt from her knees and the back of her shorts before bending to retrieve the gloves and trowel. “Did I ever tell you about how we met?”

Gabrielle stood. She kicked at the pail; it fell onto its side and she reached for the handle. “No, I don’t believe you did.”

“Well, you sure don’t sound too interested.”

“I’m only interested in what you
want
to tell me.”

Patsy paused. Her eyes danced over the colors in the garden. Beth Reeves, her roommate, was hard at work, weeding around her pansies. Beth’s nurse—a white one named Janie—stood behind her, arms folded, head turned upward toward the sky. Clearly bored. No doubt wondering what the rest of the free world was doing while she was keeping watch over a nut patient.

“Well?” Gabby said. “Are we going back in or are you just going to stand here and stare?”

“I’m thinking.”

“About?”

“Whether or not to tell you how I met Gil.”

“Well, Miz Milstrap,” she said with a chuckle. “This isn’t like you’re President Kennedy and you’ve got to decide whether or not to go to war against the Cubans.”

“I just don’t want you to think I’m breaking down and talking. If you think I’m ready to talk, you’ll tell the doctor and then he’ll really start asking questions.”

Gabrielle pretended to pick at a piece of lint on her uniform, not that she fooled Patsy. “What you say to me, stays with me.”

“Mmmhmm . . .”

“You want I should go inside and clock out? ’Bout that time anyway. Nearly two-thirty so I need to get you back inside.”

The two women walked across the enclosed lawn, traversed the lush landscape dotted with other members of the staff and patients, toward the back of the hospital. “I was thirteen years old,” Patsy began, even against her better judgment, “and my mama had put me on a bus.”

“How come?”

Patsy inhaled deeply. “She didn’t want me anymore.”

Gabby patted her between her shoulder blades. “I can’t imagine that . . .”

They reached the door. Gabby pulled a key out of her pocket, unlocked it, and then pulled the door open for the two of them. “Kick your shoes off, Miz Milstrap, and put them in your cubby.”

“Like I have to be told . . . and I dearly wish you would stop calling me Miz Milstrap. Call me Patsy.”

Toe against heel, Patsy removed her shoes. Gabrielle giggled and said, “Can’t. Against the rules.” Then, as if to quickly change the subject, “My gracious, those shoes have had it. You ought to tell your husband to bring you some new ones.”

With her house slippers on, Patsy and her nurse proceeded down the long, unadorned hallway leading to the single elevator that would take them back to the fourth floor. Their feet echoed atop highly polished terrazzo.

“So? Are you going to tell me?” Gabrielle probed.

“Tell you what?”

They reached the elevator. Gabrielle pressed the up button. “Why your mother put you on a bus.”

“I told you. She didn’t want me anymore.”

“And I told you, I don’t believe you.” She dropped her head back; dark eyes watched the lighted numbers overhead as the elevator came toward the first floor.

“Believe what you will. She put me on a bus one day without any warning and sent me to live with Mam and Papa. You’ve met them.”

“Good folk.”

“They are that. If Mama was going to send me away, at least it was to people like them.”

The elevator door opened, stopping her from saying anything else. Gabrielle extended her right arm. “After you.”

Patsy stepped inside, followed by her nurse-friend.

“Push four, please.”

Patsy jutted her finger against the round 4 button. “When your daughter becomes a liability, you have to send her away, you know. And then, just to make sure you don’t have to deal with her, you move and leave no forwarding address. Yep, that’ll fix her.”

Gabrielle crossed her arms. “Miz Milstrap, let me ask you a question. Have you spent any
real
time thinking about what happened with your mama from her perspective?”

Patsy put her hands on her hips. “Maybe. And maybe I don’t want to talk about it.”

The elevator jolted to a stop and the doors slid open, revealing a wide hallway. Orange and green vinyl sofas stretched along both sides, interspersed with walnut tables topped by tall, beige lamps designed with gold sunbursts front and center. Two or three neatly stacked magazines lay before each lamp, recent ones on top.

At the end of the hall stood wooden double doors. Thick and locked.

Without another word, Patsy walked toward them, waited for Gabrielle to push the button that rang the nurses’ desk, and then listened for the buzz indicating the doors would open.

“By the way, Miz Milstrap,” Gabrielle said as the doors closed behind them, “you’ve got kitchen duty this evening.”

Patsy stopped. They were near her room anyway, but this was clearly news. “What does that mean?”

“It means you’ve been here three months today and you get kitchen duty. Pretty simple, you go down to the cafeteria about thirty minutes before supper. Miz Linder, who runs the kitchen, will give you your duties. Probably folding napkins to start.”

Patsy jerked her head toward her room door. “Then I’ll go wash my hands and get ready.”

Gabby nodded. “I’ll go turn in my report to the head nurse.”

Patsy felt her heart hammer, but only for a beat or two. “You won’t talk much about me, will you?”

“Miz Milstrap,” she answered with a shake of her head. “I’ve got you and four other patients. You think all I want to do is talk about you? Besides, I told you, whatever you say to me is between us. I leave the deep stuff to the doctor.”

“Mmmhmm.”

Gabrielle winked. “Go on now. And I’ll see you tomorrow.”

———

The following day was an especially good day because she received a letter from Lloyd, who’d been stationed at Fort Stewart, Georgia, for the past two years. He and Holly were expecting their first child; his letter was filled mostly with how it felt, knowing he’d be a father for the first time.

“Holly is doing just great,” he penned.

I, on the other hand, am a nervous wreck. Isn’t there a rule about not raising your hands over your head? I came home from work the other day, and there she was, standing on a step stool, arms way over her head, getting a dish off the top shelf of a cabinet.

Patsy giggled at the thought.

I wonder sometimes . . . if I cannot get her off the step stool (what kind of husband am I?), how I’m going to be a good father. And, with the unrest going on over there in Vietnam, I wonder if I’ll get called to leave for locations unknown. Leaving Holly here, alone, is not something I’m altogether keen on. But, if my country needs me . . .