Necessary Lies (12 page)

Ivy

Mary Ella walked home with me from the tobacco barn on Thursday, and I was glad she wasn’t going off on her own like usual. Eli’d had his eye on her every time he brung the sled to the barn today. When the day laborers looked in her direction—and they always did because there was something about Mary Ella that made them stare—Eli’d walk between them, blocking her from their eyes. Eli himself, though, looked at her like nobody’s business, while Henry Allen didn’t never look at me at all, which is how we planned it. We didn’t want to raise no suspicion. You’d never know how deep the feelings was between us. Even Mary Ella didn’t know. We wasn’t the kind of sisters that told each other every thought in our heads, no, sir.

I put my hand in my shorts pocket and felt Henry Allen’s note there. I picked it up from the fence post after dinner but never got a chance to open it. That note was calling my name and I wanted to pull it out and read whatever he wrote so bad, but not with Mary Ella walking beside me. She hummed a song she always sung to Baby William and she walked fast. I knew she wanted to get to him. Why some days she’d go wandering off and other days hurry home to her child was a mystery.

“Someone’s here,” she said, when we turned the corner of the path toward the woods. Sure enough, a white car was parked at the side of the dirt road. I didn’t see the dents and rust on it till we got closer.

“That’s Nurse Ann’s car,” I said.

“She’s gonna check Baby William!” Mary Ella took off at a run. She loved when Nurse Ann came with her thermometer and scale and that thing she used to listen to our hearts. She loved it because Nurse Ann paid lots of attention to Baby William. I wasn’t in no hurry to see her, though. She’d ask me personal things I didn’t want to talk about. I didn’t mind so much when Mrs. Werkman asked me questions about my monthly. I’d learned to say I got it a week or two ago and that would make her stop asking. Truth was, I didn’t keep no track. No need with Henry Allen pulling out the way he did.

Once Mary Ella disappeared into the woods, I took the folded piece of paper from my pocket and stopped walking to read it. He wrote it in pencil. He had nice handwriting for a boy. I could always read it easy.

It’s hard being around you all day and not talking to you or specially not touching you. I know your there, though. I can feel it when your around. Don’t even need to see you to know your there because I feel happy and just know. I have to check the burners tonight, so meet at the green barn at midnight. Come if you can. PS did you know Monterey has an aquarium?

I started walking again, smiling now. Them was a lot of words for Henry Allen to write. Usually he just said about what time we could meet. I liked when he wrote all that about wanting to touch me. It made my body heat up, thinking about it. I didn’t like meeting in one of the barns, though. It meant walking a far piece out in the open in the middle of the night, and I was afraid somebody would see my lantern.

When I got home, Nurse Ann was sitting at the table, looking inside Baby William’s ears and tapping on his belly. Mary Ella held him on her lap, her chin resting on his curly black hair. Mary Ella hung on Nurse Ann’s words, worshipping her, like. Nurse Ann looked at me when I walked into the room. “I want to talk with you when I’m done with William, Ivy,” she said, smiling, like she couldn’t wait. “So don’t go away.”

“I’m right here,” I said, though I was eyeing the back door, wondering if I could go out there and sweep the yard or do anything to get away before she had a chance to talk to me.

Nurse Ann had really long, dark hair, almost the same color as Baby William’s. Usually she wore it in a long braid down her back but today it was just tied back kind of loose. “He’s putting on too much weight,” she said, wrapping her fingers around Baby William’s arm. “What are you feeding him?”

“He’s just naturally a big boy,” Mary Ella said.

“He’s gonna eat us out of house and home,” Nonnie said. She sat at the other end of the table, peeling tomatoes for canning.

“How do you know he’s hungry?” Nurse Ann asked. “How does he let you know?”

“He cries,” Mary Ella said.

“Little boys can cry for lots of reasons besides hunger,” Nurse Ann said. “This rash.” She looked at the splotches on his chest. “Have you been washing your clothes with something new? Some new detergent?”

“Same old soap,” Nonnie said.

“Maybe prickly heat,” Nurse Ann said. “Is he scratching it a lot?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

“Not too much.” Mary Ella looked at me like I said something mean about her baby.

“I’m gonna sweep the yard,” I said.

“You stay here,” Nurse Ann warned me, and I gave up on escaping and sat down at the table.

“You really need to stop calling him ‘Baby William,’” Nurse Ann said. “He’s two now. Not a baby any longer and you don’t want folks calling him ‘Baby William’ when he’s ten years old, now do you?”

“We’ll worry about that when he’s ten,” Nonnie said.

Nurse Ann reached into her bag and pulled out a brown glass bottle. “Put this on his rash three times a day,” she said to Mary Ella.

“I need more of that salve for my knees,” Nonnie said. “It only works if I put it on thick enough and then I run out right quick.”

“I have more for you,” Nurse Ann said. She reached into her bag again and pulled out a tube of Nonnie’s salve. “You don’t need all that much. Just rub it in good.”

“Only works about ten minutes,” Nonnie said, “but them ten minutes is a blessing.”

“I’m sorry I don’t have anything better to offer. You take the Bufferin every four hours?”

“I take it regular enough.”

“No more than every four hours,” Nurse Ann said. “Now about your sugar. I brought more of those urine testing tablets for you. How is that working out?”

“Just fine. The pee always turns blue, so it’s fine.”

“Sometimes it’s green,” I said.

Nonnie cut me a glare. “She don’t know the difference between green and blue,” she said.

“Nonnie,”
I said. “You’ve got to tell the honest truth.” I looked at Nurse Ann. “She don’t understand how important it is.”

“Well, Ivy’s right, Mrs. Hart. If your urine’s turning green, you need to be more careful with what you eat. And if it turns orange, then you need to be extremely careful and try to get more exercise. And call me then, because we might need to talk about changing medication. How often are you seeing the green rather than the blue?”

“Hardly never,” Nonnie said.

Nurse Ann looked at me and I felt caught in the middle between them. I shrugged. I’d tell Nurse Ann the truth about Nonnie and her testing when she had her talk with me. Better to talk about Nonnie than myself, anyway. I’d tell her how Nonnie made extra biscuits to eat in the morning. I’d been eating them myself to keep her from having too many and making her sugar go up.

Nurse Ann stood up. “Ivy,” she said, “let’s go sit outside a bit.” She picked up her nurse bag and I followed her outside, feeling like a hog going to slaughter. She led me to the old wooden bench by the side of the house, but I pointed to the chairs under the oak tree. You could hear people talking on that bench. I didn’t want Nonnie or Mary Ella listening in on anything I said.

“Nonnie’s not telling you the truth about them tests on her pee,” I said, sitting down in one of the rickety old chairs. I’d take over the conversation right quick, I thought. Keep it off myself.

“I figured that,” she said. “How often are the results green?”

“Pretty much always. Sometimes half blue and half green, but green more likely than not.”

“And orange?”

“I ain’t never seen it turn orange,” I said. “I’m scared about it doing that. And she don’t always boil them test tubes like she should. She just rinses ’em out sometimes.”

Nurse Ann let out a sigh and looked back toward the house. “Do you know I couldn’t find William when I arrived today? Your grandmother didn’t know where he was.”

“But you found him okay.” I didn’t want her making a big to-do about nothing.

“He needs to be watched more closely.”

I shrugged. What was I supposed to say? Nonnie and Baby William couldn’t last all day at the barn, and me and Mary Ella had to work. We couldn’t be two places at once.

Nurse Ann opened her bag in her lap. “I have some things here for you,” she said, handing me a paper bag. “Look inside and I’ll explain how you use them.”

I opened it up and pulled out a box that said
SPERMICIDAL JELLY
on the side.

“This is not the kind of jelly you eat,” she said. “It kills sperm. Sperm comes from the boy and that’s what makes babies.”

“I know that.” I wished I was someplace else.

“Now, here”—she opened the box and pulled out a long tube—“is the applicator you use to insert the jelly in your vagina.” She went into a long description of how to do that and I knew my cheeks was red, listening to her. This talk was turning out worse than I expected.

She reached in the bag one more time and brought out little packages that said
TROJAN
on them. “These are rubbers,” she said. “The boy puts these on. They’re more protective than the jelly. And the best protection is using both of them together.”

“You mean protection from having a baby?” I wished she’d speak plain.

“That’s right.”

I handed the bag back to her. “I don’t need none of this. Mary Ella’s the one you should be talkin’ to. She already got herself a baby and any day she’s gonna end up with another for sure.”

“I’m not worried about Mary Ella right now. I’m worried about you.”

“No need to be. I ain’t doing nothing.”

“Well, just in case, I want you to have these things and I can bring you more if you ever need more.”

I didn’t know why she wasn’t giving these things to Mary Ella. I’d give them to her myself. I’d told Mary Ella about the pulling out being a way to have no more babies, and she just looked off into the blue yonder the way she always did, like she didn’t hear me.

“All right,” I said. Talking about this was making me think about being with Henry Allen tonight and I felt my face go hot again and turned away, not wanting Nurse Ann to see. “Are we done?”

“Yes,” she said, “and I’ll bring more when I come next time. Just in case.”

I felt like she knew what I was thinking about Henry Allen and I stood up. “I got to sweep the yard,” I said.

She looked up at me. “Are you upset about Mrs. Werkman not being your caseworker any longer?”

“Don’t matter,” I said, though I felt an ache inside me. It wasn’t like I loved her or anything, but she knew us so well. I didn’t like nothing about that new lady. Not her swingy gold hair or her nylon stockings or her smile that looked like it was painted on her face. She was a city girl who didn’t know nothing. Lita Jordan met her and said she was nice, but I could tell she was worried, too. Nonnie said, “That girl ain’t nothing but a little mouse all dressed up,” and that was a right perfect description.

“I’m sure her replacement will be just as good,” Nurse Ann said. “I hear she’s young. Maybe she’ll understand a young girl very well.”

“She didn’t say nothing when she was here.”

“She’s learning,” Nurse Ann said. “The first time I visited patients with my supervisor, I was really quiet myself. Now you can’t get me to shut up, right? And sometimes you wish I would.”

I couldn’t help it. I smiled. “Yes, ma’am,” I said, and she laughed.

“You take good care now, Ivy,” she said, and even though she’d embarrassed me clear to kingdom come, I knew she wanted the best for me, and I carried the bag of things I didn’t need into the house to find a place to hide them.

11

Jane

Robert straightened his tie as he came into the kitchen. I was sliding a blueberry pancake off the griddle, and he leaned over to kiss my cheek.

“I bet my beautiful wife is tired this morning,” he said.

“Why do you say that?” I asked, turning off the burners on the stove.

“I think you were up half the night reading.”

“Oh,” I said, “did I wake you when I got up? I couldn’t sleep.” I was working my way through the stack of books I’d borrowed from Charlotte. The books had the same pull on me as a bestselling novel. “Have a seat, darling.” I glanced at the kitchen clock as I carried his plate to the breakfast nook. We had half an hour before either of us had to leave for work and our maid, Angeline, arrived. That was good. We needed some relaxed time together and we hadn’t had much of it in the four days since I started working.

He sat down at the table and I rested one hand on his shoulder as I poured coffee into his cup. I felt like we were in a photograph in a magazine—a picture of domestic bliss.

“There’s a ball at the club in a few weeks.” He pulled out his wallet and laid eight twenties on the table. “Go shopping this weekend while I’m playing golf,” he said. “Buy yourself something fancy. You can knock everybody’s socks off at the party.”

“You’re so sweet,” I said, sitting down across from him.

“I wish you’d shop with some of the wives from the club.” He opened his cloth napkin and put it on his lap. “I know they love doing that. Shopping together.”

“Maybe soon,” I said noncommittally. One of the wives had stopped by the house to nudge me about joining the Junior League. I told her the truth—right now I didn’t have time because I was working. Then I cringed. She would tell her husband. Her husband would tell other people. And soon the word would be out that Robert Forrester’s wife had to work such long, hard hours that she couldn’t even join the Junior League. “I’ll make a special effort to get to know some of the wives at the ball,” I promised, “but I need to ask Mom to go shopping with me this time. She’s so lonely without me living there.”

He swallowed a bite of pancake. “So, what have you been reading about?”

I poured syrup over my own pancakes. “Well, last night I read about how to interview clients,” I said. “You know, how to put them at ease. How to accept them without judging them. That sort of thing.”

“Bedside Manner 101.” Robert blotted his lips with his napkin. “They should teach that in medical school, but they don’t.”