Chapter 38 #3
I took a deep breath.
I hate to think I’ll miss my last chance to live with Sam as a family. But I can only hope I might have that chance again. I want more children, Birdie, and I hope you want them too. Lately, I found myself thinking that you and me might have a family of our own one day.
Standing beside the road, I heard a rusty door creaking closed inside me. I can’t give you that, Jack.
Like he’d heard me, he wrote: P.S. I’ve scared you to death, haven’t I?
When I was sixteen and had the terrible fever, I’d shoot up in bed, drenched in sweat and fear. It felt like something very important had gone missing, a limb, a year—or was it a person? Before I could decide, I’d fall back down the dark well of sleep.
The night after I received Jack’s letter, I’d woken up gasping for breath, like it was my last. Why not just tell him?
I kept asking myself. Tell him that you can’t have children.
Tell him you had a fever when you were a girl.
Let him decide for himself if he still wants you.
But what if he didn’t? As hard as I tried, the words would not put themselves on paper.
Early Tuesday morning, after a bad night’s sleep, I came downstairs to find Virginia working at the kitchen table. She’d slept on the parlor sofa again after a late night.
“What are you doing up so early?” I asked. “And why do you look so rested?”
“I have to finish these school applications. They’re due in a week.”
I lit the stove and made coffee, and when I poured her a cup, she took a deep sip. “That is miles better than yesterday’s cold coffee.”
“Do I need to teach you how to boil coffee, Dr. Cunningham?”
“No. Then the doctors will start asking me to make it for them. I’m useless in the kitchen to protect my education.”
When I got the biscuits in the oven, I started sifting flour for a cake while I listened to Virginia’s stories about the hospital.
“Last year, I was helping deliver this enormous baby at Oxford. He weighed thirteen pounds and six ounces and that idiot Dr. Cole let the ether tank run out. When the baby was crowning, and the poor mother was ripping apart, he had the nerve to tell her to hush, that all her screaming was disturbing his other patients in the hospital.” She moaned.
“They just don’t care about women, Birdie.
I swear, when I open my own practice, that is going to change. ”
“Good, we need you,” I said, thinking about the cold doctor with the cold hands so casually deciding my fate. I mixed the cake batter and looked in the pantry for anything to make it pink. I settled on a beet. “What schools are you applying to?”
“Anywhere north of here where they believe healing’s based on science, not the Bible.
It’s hard enough to find a school that’ll even accept a woman, much less one who graduated from an unaccredited university in Mississippi.
” She leaned up and set her elbows on the table, looking excited about whatever she was about to tell me.
This was Virginia. “Did you know the first woman doctor in the United States got into medical college as a practical joke?” she said.
“Elizabeth Blackwell, 1847. The dean thought it’d be real funny to let the all-male student body vote on if he should let a female in.
The boys voted a unanimous yes, thinking it was a joke, catcalling and whistling at the idea of having a girl around.
They even sent her a letter saying she’d gotten in.
And were those boys shocked when Elizabeth Blackwell actually showed up and outsmarted them all.
Graduated in the top of her class and opened her own medical college for women only. ”
When Virginia told you something she found compelling, she gestured with sprawled hands and that sharp chin, her pock-marked cheeks turning a hot red.
Sometimes she’d follow you out talking if you left the room, but she didn’t come off as a blowhard or condescending (though it could feel like a lecture); she was simply that passionate about medicine.
Story over now, she clicked the pencil down, crossed her arms, and said, “Alright, Birdie. Sit down and tell me what it is.”
“What what is?” I asked.
“What’s wrong. I can tell it’s something, Birdie.”
I washed my hands, stalling. I didn’t really want to talk about it. “It’s nothing,” I said and forced myself to smile.
“You don’t have to tell me,” she said. “I mean, unless it’s gonorrhea and then you have to tell me because I’ve never seen an actual case. But it might help if you talked about it.”
I felt a lonesome ache in my throat. I’d never talked with anybody about this, but I dried my hands and sat down next to her.
I gave her the simple version. That I’d had a bad case of mumps and encephalitis as a girl and I couldn’t have children.
But that Jack wanted a family. I couldn’t say more than that.
Nothing could change those two facts; they were miles apart from each other.
Virginia looked at me, thinking. She didn’t rush to respond with meaningless condolences.
She asked a few questions: Did I still bleed every month?
Yes. Any pain a few weeks before? No. She said that her schooling hadn’t taught her much about the female body, that most of what she’d learned was from working at the hospital.
I thought that’d be it but then she leaned back and said, “Let me guess. Everyone else has decided for you what you’re entitled to in life. Which isn’t much, because children are supposed to be the single most important purpose in a woman’s life. That about right?”
“That’s pretty close.”
“Well, let me tell you something—that’s a load of malarkey.
” She crossed her arms. “They don’t get to decide what you’re entitled to.
You should live the life you want to live—Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell didn’t give birth or get married.
She adopted a girl later on, after she’d had a tremendous career.
She chose for herself. You should have that choice and I should too.
I want to study medicine, not be distracted by a bunch of screaming infants or a husband who thinks I ought to wash his clothes and make his stupid coffee every morning. ”
I mulled over her words. Live the life you want. You should have that choice. It sounded a little sanctimonious, and the idea was so novel, it made me wonder if it was possible. It didn’t solve my problem with Jack.
“You still might want me to teach you how to make coffee. For later in life.”
“Fine, but don’t tell anybody.” On the back porch, I could hear Picador and Polly about to come in. Virginia leaned up to me, a clump of dark fuzzy hair falling forward.
“Do not wait around to see if this man will reject you for what you can’t give him. Please. You’re more than”—she motioned to my body—“that one aspect of your biology. You’re Birdie.”
“It’s time, Charlie!” I called and backed into the dining room carrying the cake. Pink, three layers, a single candle stuck in the center. Charlie followed me in where twelve elbows were planted on the card tables, their owners listening to Virginia’s story.
“I swear it’s true. It’s called vicarious menstruation,” Virginia said, dark eyes glowing.
“Horseshit,” Ruby said, but she looked enthralled. “You’re pulling my leg, Dr. Virginia.”
“I’m telling you, there are documented cases.
Instead of a woman having a period from her uterine lining, she has it from some other organ or membrane.
” She peered down at the textbook in her lap and read, “These organs have included the lips, the eyes crying tears of blood, the breasts, and the rectum, but the most common is the nose.”
“So when you catch a cold, do you sneeze outta your twat?” Flossy asked.
“Alright, enough. Happy birthday, Flossy,” I said and set the cake in front of her.
I wanted Flossy to enjoy this one with people who wouldn’t call her a whore and throw her off the porch like her sister.
I lit the pink candle and said, “Make a wish.” She pushed her top denture up with her thumb and blew the candle out in one swift breath.
“Blown like a professional,” Ruby said. “Happy birthday, twat face.”
“Thanks, Rube. And thanks, Birdie. This really means a lot.”
I passed pieces around to the girls. The plates were weighty, probably because I’d used an entire pound of butter in the batter and then iced it with pink buttercream.
Dixie swiped the candle out of what was left of the cake and licked the pink icing off it. “How old are you today, Flossy?” she asked.
“Old,” Flossy said.
“How old were you when you started doing this?” Trixie asked.
“Young,” Flossy said.
“Well ya ain’t anymore,” Ruby said, lighting a cigarette.
For a Monday, last night had been surprisingly good, and so far each partner’d made four hundred and twenty-three dollars. Once we’d counted it and tucked it away in Rory’s study, Charlie’d said, “A week and a half and we shut down.”
I’d groaned. I knew Charlie wanted to make closer to seven hundred dollars, but every night we were open, I felt like we were pushing our luck.
I’d been telling myself these past few days that I was doing Mrs. Tartt and Frances a favor by not telling them Rory was in Biloxi—the more money we made, the better for everybody.
But I felt sick thinking about my poor sister wandering the streets of Gulfport, asking strangers if they’d seen her husband.
“What about y’all?” Trixie asked, twirling some blond hair around her finger. “When did y’all get in this business?” Her eyes landed on Esmeralda, across the table.
“Me? Oh I started doing this when I was about twenty-five. After my preacher father threw me out.”
There was a story there, but Dixie asked, “How old are you now?” and we all held our breath. Nobody’d had the gall to ask Esmeralda this before, though we were all wondering.