JEWEL (16 page)

These women’s knees were all but naked, every one of them with hose on, shiny shoes.

They looked at me, sized up both me and my husband, him closing the door behind us. I didn’t want to sit here, didn’t want to be the object of their attention, whatever ridicule they might want to hand out.

But in only the passing of a moment each of them’s eyes fell from mine to my baby, then to their own baby. Then my eyes, too, fell to the baby I held in my arms. We were all of us looking at our sick children, all of us, I knew, wondering what would happen next.

One of the children sneezed, this one about a year old and propped on its momma’s lap, its nose crusted and red, eyes watery. This child’s momma wiped its nose with a handleerchief, the movement quick and simple, rote for her. Then another baby, this one only a few months old and wrapped in a thick, pink blanket, gave out a big whoop cough, the mother blinking at the sound, touching the baby’s cheek with the back of her first finger.

“You must be the Hilburns, ” the old nurse said. I looked at her. She was smiling, trying to give me the comfort she must have thought it her job to give. “You go on right ahead and take a seat anywheres in here, and the doctor will see you in just a few minutes.” She nodded once, a quick and sharp move, as if we’d settled something between us. She turned to the room. “Mrs. Darby? ” she said, and a woman with red hair done up the same as the others stood, in her arms a baby that hadn’t made a sound since we’d been in here. The nurse slowly moved toward the hallway, mother and child behind her.

I sat at the chair nearest me, Leston next to me. He was the only man here, and I wondered what that might mean to him, wondered if it meant he’d never come back here.

If we had to come back, I thought.

An hour later, we were the only ones left in the room. Leston hadn’t spoken yet, but’d looked at his pocket watch and’d walked to one of the windows that looked out onto the courtyard and stood with his hands in his back pockets enough times for me to know how he felt, and for me to worry what he might say about waiting this long.

But when the nurse came into the room, held out her hand and said, “The doctor will see you now, ” all I could see from Leston, what anger he had in him, was a huge sigh he let out, then the deep breath back in.

He turned from the window, ran his hand back through his hair, picked his hat up off the chair next to me.

I stood, moved toward her, took her hand. She hadn’t held the hand of any of the others she’d led back here, and I wondered if that weren’t some measure of the situation, of how sick my baby really was.

“The doctor has surgery this afternoon, but he wanted to make certain to see you, ” the nurse said as we passed one door and then another.

She stopped at the third door, took my hand in both hers. Then she let go one hand, reached to touch Brenda Kay’s face, her pale white fingers even whiter against my baby’s pink skin.

“There, there, little baby, ” she said, and smiled. “It’s just fine, it is.”

She turned from us, opened the door. “If there’s anything I can get you or do for you, please let the doctor know, and I’d be tickled to take care of it.”

“Thank you, ” I said, and nodded. The door was open, ready for us to walk through, but I wanted to look at this woman, wanted to take in her face. I wanted to stay here and look at this lady, a nurse ready to care for us no matter what. That’s what I wanted.

Leston nudged me from behind, whispered, “Let’s go, ” and I could only smile at her, move on into the room.

Books lined the walls, at the center of the room a huge desk, the top littered with papers and more books. Behind it sat the doctor, an old man, older than the nurse, white hair thick on his head, wire glasses low on his nose. He had a book open on his lap, and looked at us over the rim of those glasses.

He snapped the book closed, lifted his head so that now he was looking at us through the glasses. He smiled. Slowly he stood, as if the act were some long journey, one hand with the book, the other holding hard to the chair arm, him pushing himself up and up, until he was standing.

He was taller than Leston, and finally let go the chair to put out his hand, first to Leston, who shook it once, then to me. His hand was soft, a doctor’s hand, the flesh of his palm thick and warm.

He motioned for us to sit in the two chairs in front of his desk. I glanced behind me as I took my seat, hoping for one more smile from the old nurse, but the door was already closed.

“Now, ” the doctor said, and sat back down. He leaned forward, put his elbows on the edge of the desk, laced his fingers together. “Dr. Beaudry tells me I need to have a look-see at this baby.” His eyes were on Brenda Kay.

I tried again to smile, said, “Look-see must be one of these new doctor terms. That’s the same thing Dr. Beaudry said he wanted to do.” They were words of no use to any of us, spoken more to hear my own voice in here than for anything else.

He laughed, leaned back in the chair at the same time, his hands still laced together. “Dr. Beaudry’s an old student of mine. I imagine he’s taken some of my own terminology with him.”

“Doctor, ” Leston said, and for a moment I wondered if, again, he would try his best to take over here. He hadn’t even looked at me this time, had even done away with the pretense of clearing his throat. He said, “We came all the way from Purvis this morning. We waited more than an hour in your office.” He paused. “All due respect, sir, we want to talk about Brenda Kay.”

Dr. Basket looked at Leston, his smile there for a moment, but then gone.

Leston said nothing else, but I was thankful for his words this time, for his having spoken. He’d given us entry into the terrible truth we were facing right now. His words had opened the door I wanted kept closed, but knew needed opening all the same.

The doctor moved to the edge of the desk, his elbows there again. He said, “You’ll have to let me examine her, of course. Then we can talk.”

He stood again, held out his arms to me as he came slowly around the edge of the desk, and without a thought I held up my baby to him, Brenda Kay so much smaller in his arms than mine, a baby so small it didn’t seem possible that in her could be anything so awful I we had to come to a city hours from home. But still here she was, and I felt myself standing, felt my legs carrying my body along behind the doctor as we went in to another examination room, the same equipment hanging from the wall and laid out in trays as in Dr. Beaudry’s room, only more of it in here, all of it glistening with what looked like some clean idea of death, my naked baby on the table, white light pouring down on all three of us. Brenda Kay was awake this time, her arms and legs moving like she was under water, slow and deliberate and without effect. She still couldn’t yet roll over.

He gave her the same examination, but spent longer on each push of an arm, each stretching out of fingers, each look in her eyes. His movement was slow, but perfect somehow, his long and thin fingers holding out Brenda Kay’s in a way that seemed softer than was possible, the touch simple and distant and warm all at once. I don’t know how long we were in there, didn’t care. Leston was back in the office, readying himself in his silence, and I was readying myself in here, just standing near, though the doctor didn’t even look at me. He didn’t ask a single question of me, didn’t even ask for my help as he finally pinned up the diaper, ran his fingertips across her forehead one last time, traced her eyes just as Dr. Beaudry had. He even dressed her, slipped back on the green flannel gown I’d dressed her in in the dark of a morning that seemed a thousand miles from here.

He handed her to me. I was looking for him to hide his eyes from me, too, just as Dr. Beaudry’d done, but he looked at me as he gave her over, a small smile on his face, his head dipped down, his eyes taking me in over the top of his glasses. “Let’s go and have a seat, ” he whispered, and pulled open the door into his office. He let me go first, and as I passed from the white light into the dark wood office, I felt his hand on my shoulder, felt it pat me once, twice, then rest there a moment as we came near his desk.

I felt my mouth go dry, felt my heart go to stone. I didn’t even look at Leston, or if I had, didn’t see him. I only sat, Brenda Kay in my arms.

The doctor sat back in the chair, his eyes on the desktop a moment.

But he gave up on that idea, and looked first to Leston, then to me.

He glanced at Brenda Kay, did his best to look at the two of us, tried hard to hold us each for a second or two.

He said, “What I will tell you is not easy to hear. But what I have to tell you, these words, are necessary.” He paused. His hands were flat on the desk, and he lifted them, held them in front of him, looked at them.

“Hands, ” he said, and stopped. He took a breath. “Our hands tell us much, ” he said, “and Brenda Kay’s hands tell us much, too. They tell us that she is a child given to us by powers none of us can understand.

They tell us we can’t always depend on nature. That things go wrong.”

My arms were stiff with straining, locked into place around what I carried, my child.

“Brenda Kay is a Mongolian Idiot, ” he said. He brought his hands down, let them settle into his lap. He was looking at me.

I swallowed, felt my palms sweating, clutched on the blanket my baby was wrapped in. I felt minutes pressing down on me, felt time and air and everything pressing down.

I whispered, “What does that mean? ” the words ground glass in my throat.

“It means, ” he said, “she is mentally and physically retarded. She will never progress much more than this, than what she is right now.”

He paused again. He held up his hand, pointed to his palm, gently ran his finger along the lines there. “The evidence is in her hands, and her feet. Flat, broad hands, abnormally short fingers, little fingers curved in as drastically as they are, and the two smaller toes as well.

And an abnormal line pattern.” He stopped, adjusted his glasses.

“And there is her face as well. Her eyes, their slanting upward, her broad forehead, her features smaller than a normal child’s.” He stopped again, brought his hands together on the desktop. “What I must say is quite difficult, but as I said, I need to let you know.” He folded his fingers together.

He said, “Because of this condition, chances are small that she will live past two years.”

I’d waited since Christmas to find why she slept as much as she did, afraid all the while of an answer. And I’d waited eleven days since the doctor back in Purvis wouldn’t tell us what was wrong. I’d waited for this moment.

Now here it was, and there was nothing in me. I was hollow, dead wood.

The only thing I saw in that moment, the doctor’s own hands on the desktop again, his mouth drawn closed, eyes fixed on me and the baby I held a Mongolian Idiot, two words already weighing down my arms, my chest heavy with them, my breath now short and as hollow as the rest of me the only thing I saw in that moment was that I’d spent my whole life waiting for news like this to come, not just the time since Christmas, not even just since near a year ago when Cathe ral’d stood in light from my kitchen and told me it was coming, all of it was coming, all of it from God up in his heaven.

No. I’d been waiting for this since the moment my Momma’d died in an upstairs room in a mansion, because there’d been too much good come to me since then, Leston, my children, food on the table, a roof above our heads.

All this in a moment, before I even thought to look down at my baby in my arms, her squirming, before I thought to look at Leston, . see where he was, see who he would be now. All this even before I thought to breathe again.

Then I remembered the birth, remembered the doctor pushing, pressing down on me with all the might a small-town doctor like him could give, but strength enough to hurt my baby. It was blame I was after then, blame and responsibility and someone to look at and spit in the face of.

It was the doctor, him and his hospital, when I’d bore every one of my children at home and’d done fine.

“It was the doctor, ” I said. “It was when Brenda Kay was born, and how he pushed me, pushed my baby. He pressed down on me to get her out.

That’s why her face is that way, why her hands are that way. That’s why she’s not right.” The words left me in one string, all of them chained together and falling from me without any thought. But it was true, it was his fault, the blame square on him. I knew that.

“Mrs. Hilburn, ” the doctor said. He closed his eyes, opened them.

He let out a breath. “This condition is present at conception. That much we know about it.”

He bowed his head a moment, and suddenly I thought of him, of what it must take for him to deliver news like this, saw, too, that Dr. Beaudry’d known all along, knew she’d die in two years and’d told us otherwise just so he could pass us on to his old teacher for the filthy work this was. I saw that there was pain in it for him, too, for Dr. Basket. But my heart didn’t go out to him. He hadn’t borne my child, or any of the others he’d ever given this speech to. He could go home from here, have his dinner, tend to surgery later today while we drove on home, poor crackers he felt sorry for, a Mongolian Idiot there in the front seat of an old pickup truck they’d left outside town, afraid of driving in the big city.

He looked up. He said, “The best thing for you, the best measure to be taken, in my considered opinion, is to give her up to an institution.

There she will be cared for, tended to. The burden she could be to you for however long she lives is immeasurable. Institutionalized, she will be away from you and your household, and cared for.”

“Institution, ” Leston whispered, his first word.

I didn’t look at him. I only stared at the doctor, my eyes dry, no tears for him or for Leston or for anyone, not even for me.

I stood. I said, “Good-bye, Doctor, ” and I turned, moved for the door.

I heard from behind me the squeak of Doctor Basket’s chair as he stood, heard steps on the hardwood floor behind me.

The nurse opened the door before I was even there, light from the hallway spilling onto me and my baby, the old woman standing to one side, no smile anywhere, only her eyes on me, her forehead a field of wrinkles, trying again for that comfort she wanted to give.