Chapter 31 #5
“In our kitchen?” I said. “Here?”
“I’d just need to get some things and set it all up.”
I looked at Charlie—she wanted to test for syphilis and gonorrhea in my kitchen, where I scrambled eggs? Charlie rubbed her hands on the skirt of the apron, not looking too sure about it either, though not entirely against it. “What would you … need?”
“Microscope, slides, antigen, alcohol. Glass vials, sharps, tubes to draw blood …”
“You have all these things?” Charlie asked her.
“Well, no, but I’m pretty sure I could get them.”
“That sounds expensive,” Charlie said.
“Oh it would be.” Virginia pushed her glasses up on her nose. They made her eyes look huge. “Unless it was free.” She blinked wide at Charlie. “Most of that equipment’s just sitting there up at the school—certainly the microscope and slides are.”
Charlie looked at me then Flossy. “What makes you think they’d let you use them?” she asked.
Virginia chewed her lip a second. “They wouldn’t.
So I wouldn’t ask. Look, the first few months of Ole Miss premed are just coursework, labs don’t even start until January, so all that equipment just sits there gathering dust in Dr. Weems’s closet.
” Virginia rolled her big brown eyes. She looked dangerously young when she did this.
“There’s a chauvinist for you. He lectured in his bio class that women are too hysterical to be doctors because of our hormones.
When I told him I was going to medical school, he said if I wanted a doctor in the house, just marry one, honey.
Then the creep tried to cop a feel. Ask me, somebody ought to put a dose of tricresyl phosphate in his coffee. ”
Even if she was young and not yet a doctor, she certainly had a fire lit under her. Maybe that was a good thing.
Flossy sighed. “Why are we still discussin’ this? I told ya, I ain’t risking my life with a highfalutin nurse still carrying a instruction manual.” She nodded to the textbook in Virginia’s arms.
“I’m not going to be a nurse,” Virginia said and her cheeks flushed pink. “I’m going to be a doctor. And when I do, I’m starting a practice for women only, and those frat boys and chauvinistic teachers can kiss my rosy rear end.”
“Well, when your parents pay to get a M and D by your name, you come back and see us, doll.”
“Believe me, no one’s paying my way but me,” she said, and I believed it.
I noticed that her glasses had been repaired with a bit of bandage and she wore saddle oxfords older than mine and covered in shoe polish.
Then, quieter, she said, “My mom cleans houses for a living. I work three jobs, and all the hospital will pay me is a quarter an hour, meanwhile they pay the boys fifty cents.”
I had to nod with her on that. A fifteen-year-old boy made more than me at the Foote, and I’d worked there four years.
I found this woman’s frustration with doctors compelling.
Like most people, I’d been taught that “the doctor knows best,” he was an educated man after all, meanwhile my mother and I traveled several hours to see one and in twenty minutes, he proclaimed me barren, smiled, and went home for his wife’s birthday.
Charlie looked at her wristwatch, ready to cut to the chase. “You really think you could get it set up and do all tests by tomorrow afternoon, or should we be headed to Memphis?”
“I’m pretty sure I can,” she said. Her eyes jumped from my face to Charlie’s to Flossy’s.
She looked excited now. “These tests, like I said, they aren’t even hard—I could probably do a Wassermann in my sleep.
But I’d have to get everything from the school today since classes start Monday, but—I’m pretty sure I could do it. ”
Flossy’s face and neck were turning a splotchy red. “Charlie? Are you pulling my leg here? You really want her playing our pretend doctor?”
“You’re positive these tests will be done right? They’ll be accurate?” Charlie asked.
“As accurate as these tests have ever been, especially since I actually care that they’re done right. I’d have to let Kleinkamp know I’m taking time off … He won’t like it, but—”
“Don’t tell anyone,” Charlie said.
“I could probably keep my shifts at the hospital though. And I’ll charge you the same as they do, two dollars a test. I’d just need a private room for exams, with electricity and water …
” She almost smiled at the thought of doing all these gonorrhea and syphilis tests.
“It would be like my own practice. I could show up at med school next year with more experience than anybody.”
Next to me, I realized Flossy looked ready to pop.
“You think this is some kinda game, missy? A chance to get some extra credit? Lemme ask you something: How many girls in your little sorority club ever picked up a case a the clap, huh? How many cried their eyes out or had to bite down on a stick every time they sat to pee?” Flossy’s face was turning very red now.
“Put it off all day until they finally just wet themselves—or how many picked up syph and didn’t know it till it was too late?
How many friends did you watch go blind, screaming for help in the bed next to yours? ”
“None,” Virginia said. She sounded a little ashamed she hadn’t seen these things. And she looked sorry they’d ever happened.
“Well if you do, it’ll break your heart,” Flossy said.
“Please. Let me try to do this,” Virginia said. “I’ll know in just a few hours if I can. I won’t even charge you for the first round of tests, in case you’re not happy with how I do it. That way you could still go to Memphis in the morning if you need to.”
Flossy looked away and didn’t answer, but Charlie nodded. She didn’t look completely sure about it, though. “I’ll show you around and find a place for you to get set up.”
Stars shining bright above you …
I blinked up at the overhead light in the front sitting room. I was alone, curled up on the three-legged sofa, where I must’ve fallen asleep. My cheeks felt hot, my chest sticky and tender with the sunburn I’d gotten painting a second coat on the dance floor.
Birds singing in the syc-a-more tree …
I stood up, groaning, and walked to the kitchen, where a tall metal pot of water was on the stove at a rolling boil.
It was dark out and, oh my Lord, almost midnight.
Wayne King’s singing was coming from the backyard.
I gazed through the gray screen door. In the center of the yard, the freshly painted dance floor shimmered like a black pool.
Electric gold lanterns crisscrossed above it; silvery moons and star ornaments glistened against the inky black sky.
The way the crape myrtles bowed around the dance floor, it looked fairylike, like a room, just as Mrs. Tartt said it had for her old parties.
When I looked up, I saw Trixie walking across a tree branch in her bare feet like it was a tightrope while Flossy pointed to where she should hang another shiny thing.
From the back, Flossy and Ruby looked almost like young girls wondering up at this sparkly world, intended for US presidents and old money and size 3 gold heels.
It looked like one of Mrs. Tartt’s old photographs.
When I stepped outside, the screen door popped shut behind me, and Ruby turned around and looked at me. Cigarette dangling from her lips, she smiled and gave me a stark middle finger.
… blue as can be, dream a little dream of me.
“Hey, want me to test you for gonorrhea? I’ll do it for free,” Virginia said, sticking her head out the screen door.
“I’m … pretty sure I don’t have it,” I said.
“Alright, well. If you’re sure.” She walked out on the back porch wearing the too-big white coat.
She’d pushed her wild curly hair back with a white headband, making the rest a dark chaotic cloud around her face, giving her sort of a mad scientist look.
She scanned the glittering backyard for somebody else to test, I guess.
Despite the hour, she did not look one bit tired.
“Hey, uh … can you pick up any of those diseases from anything other than … sex?” I asked.
“Not that I know of. But don’t you go using a condom more than once.” She pointed a spoon at me with a nine-inch-long handle. It was the one I liked to use to make iced tea. “By the way, I borrowed this, but I’ll sterilize it and put it back.”
“You just … hold on to that one,” I said.
Earlier this evening, I’d come down to the cellar.
In just four hours, Virginia had managed to set up a testing lab down here.
It was a small square brick room at the bottom of the cellar stairs, mostly underground, with a brick-laid floor.
Houses like ours in Footely didn’t have such extravagances.
It was much cleaner than the rest of the dusty cellar and easily thirty degrees cooler even on a hot day.
Virginia and Charlie’d scrubbed the floor and used the vacuum cleaner to clean the walls and low-hanging rafters of dust. What used to smell like a century’s worth of garlic and wild scapes and onions now smelled like Lysol disinfectant, rubbing alcohol, and a hint of some sort of strawberry shampoo Virginia used.
When I’d gone down there, I’d made the mistake of not knocking first.
“What is this, a public hanging?” Ruby’d said up to the ceiling.
She was lying flat, knees up and wide open, though in spectacular news, there was a sheet draped across her lower half.
On Picador’s canning stool, Virginia was shining a lamp without a shade into Ruby’s privates, holding and prodding with the aforementioned spoon.
“Sorry, I’m getting a potato,” I said. The potato box, though, was blocked by the examination table. Then I saw Flossy cowering in the corner, next to the old gas-run refrigerated icebox. Her arms were crossed tight over her chest and she looked older than I’d seen her look.
“I’m afraid she’s gonna tell me I got something,” she said.