She was on her knees by the settee, with one ear pressed into the baby’s back. The windowpanes rattled with the child’s screaming, but my grandmother heard the young woman’s response, lifted her head from the baby’s back, and asked, “Did he say anything to you?”
The young woman nodded. “Yes ma‘am. He said, ‘Damn it all to hell.’”
My grandmother didn’t ask anything else. My mother stopped her questioning as well and went into the kitchen and started in on the considerable stack of dishes. The young woman didn’t stop her.
When my mother and I went out on house calls, we usually walked into a mess, though never one as severe as this, and part of our duty was to clean. My grandmother asked me to boil a croup kettle and to heat the plaster she had brought already mixed, and while I stood stirring at the stove, trying to keep the plaster from sticking to the pan, she walked up and down the room with the baby. The young woman stood with her back against the wall, looking at the three of us as if we were taking over her life. She seemed indifferent to it. When the plaster was warm enough, my grandmother spread the mixture on a width of torn sheet and swaddled and pinned the baby up in the wrapping like a little cocoon. As she did this, she asked where the baby’s father was.
The young woman said, “He’s drunk.”
My grandmother said, “Drunk is not a place. Where is he?”
The young woman said he was at a pool parlor in an even worse part of town than this one. My grandmother told my mother and me to go home and to return with food and more medicine the next day. We went out to the automobile and brought in the satchel of extra clothes she kept in the trunk during whooping cough season, and then we went home, stopping as we had done before to salt the icy places. My grandmother stayed in that house with the blind baby and her washed-out mother and her hard-drinking father for two nights and three days, administering half a grain of antipyrine to the child every few hours. She never left anybody alone who was taking this drug. When she finally returned home, she fixed herself up on a little laudanum and slept like a bear, on top of her covers with all her clothes on.
The next afternoon she emptied out a startling handful of suma, for energy, and sarsaparilla, for courage and vigor, swallowed them without water, and then dictated a letter for my mother to take down, addressed to the real doctor. My mother used her best linen stationery and her best Palmer penmanship. In this letter my grandmother called him a thug, a hoodlum, a coward, and an overall disgrace to their profession. She suggested that the baby be afforded every future comfort that a blind child could have, including but not limited to entry into the Governor Morehead School for the Blind. She suggested that an account be set up in the mother’s name at the general store nearest her home and that all bootleggers in the region be put on notice to deny the father alcohol under penalty of having their livelihoods exposed and their families ruined.
The doctor wrote her back a tortured and near-incoherent letter in which he confessed to having spilled silver nitrate in the baby’s eyes. He said he despised himself and deserved to die, things of that nature. He consented to everything my grandmother suggested, and then swore to do all he could to advance her career. He wasn’t kidding. The next week things started happening for her. She was appointed to the War Orphan Board, the State Committee on Inter-racial Cooperation, and the Rural Midwifery Council. She was given a lifetime subscription to The New England Journal of Medicine as well as permission to have her patients’ prescriptions filled at Hayes Barton Pharmacy. She wanted one more thing, which, however, would always be denied: the power to admit patients into Mary Elizabeth’s Hospital. The doctor did, though, promise to admit her cases on his authority. My mother asked her
The young woman nodded. “Yes ma‘am. He said, ‘Damn it all to hell.’”
My grandmother didn’t ask anything else. My mother stopped her questioning as well and went into the kitchen and started in on the considerable stack of dishes. The young woman didn’t stop her.
When my mother and I went out on house calls, we usually walked into a mess, though never one as severe as this, and part of our duty was to clean. My grandmother asked me to boil a croup kettle and to heat the plaster she had brought already mixed, and while I stood stirring at the stove, trying to keep the plaster from sticking to the pan, she walked up and down the room with the baby. The young woman stood with her back against the wall, looking at the three of us as if we were taking over her life. She seemed indifferent to it. When the plaster was warm enough, my grandmother spread the mixture on a width of torn sheet and swaddled and pinned the baby up in the wrapping like a little cocoon. As she did this, she asked where the baby’s father was.
The young woman said, “He’s drunk.”
My grandmother said, “Drunk is not a place. Where is he?”
The young woman said he was at a pool parlor in an even worse part of town than this one. My grandmother told my mother and me to go home and to return with food and more medicine the next day. We went out to the automobile and brought in the satchel of extra clothes she kept in the trunk during whooping cough season, and then we went home, stopping as we had done before to salt the icy places. My grandmother stayed in that house with the blind baby and her washed-out mother and her hard-drinking father for two nights and three days, administering half a grain of antipyrine to the child every few hours. She never left anybody alone who was taking this drug. When she finally returned home, she fixed herself up on a little laudanum and slept like a bear, on top of her covers with all her clothes on.
The next afternoon she emptied out a startling handful of suma, for energy, and sarsaparilla, for courage and vigor, swallowed them without water, and then dictated a letter for my mother to take down, addressed to the real doctor. My mother used her best linen stationery and her best Palmer penmanship. In this letter my grandmother called him a thug, a hoodlum, a coward, and an overall disgrace to their profession. She suggested that the baby be afforded every future comfort that a blind child could have, including but not limited to entry into the Governor Morehead School for the Blind. She suggested that an account be set up in the mother’s name at the general store nearest her home and that all bootleggers in the region be put on notice to deny the father alcohol under penalty of having their livelihoods exposed and their families ruined.
The doctor wrote her back a tortured and near-incoherent letter in which he confessed to having spilled silver nitrate in the baby’s eyes. He said he despised himself and deserved to die, things of that nature. He consented to everything my grandmother suggested, and then swore to do all he could to advance her career. He wasn’t kidding. The next week things started happening for her. She was appointed to the War Orphan Board, the State Committee on Inter-racial Cooperation, and the Rural Midwifery Council. She was given a lifetime subscription to The New England Journal of Medicine as well as permission to have her patients’ prescriptions filled at Hayes Barton Pharmacy. She wanted one more thing, which, however, would always be denied: the power to admit patients into Mary Elizabeth’s Hospital. The doctor did, though, promise to admit her cases on his authority. My mother asked her
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