Chapter 10

10

THE WHITE HOUSE ON THE HILL WAS GRAND. ADA, WHO HAD NEVER STEPPED FOOT in a house so splendid, much less lived in one, could not believe her good fortune every morning when she woke up. To have gotten this job in the first place—caring for Mr. Oswald’s wife, who was ill with pneumonia—had itself been a turn of good fortune, and now, she told herself over and over again, it was a job she had to keep. Another one would not come so easily, and it would certainly not pay so well. At the Oswalds’ she was earning so much that in only six weeks, if her arithmetic was right, she would have enough for Millicent’s surgery. Six short weeks, and then she could go home.

Ada’s first impression that Mr. Oswald was someone important was only confirmed by the grandeur of the house. It had thirteen rooms and the largest veranda Ada had ever seen, completely encased by screens. The entry hall was bare but for a grandfather clock embellished with intricate carvings of flowers and leaves. The clock, Mr. Oswald had told her when he first showed her around, had been shipped in a crate from Tennessee and had not run properly since the moment of its unboxing, something about the humidity interfering with its inner gears. The dining room had a gleaming cherrywood table with seating for twelve, and in the center of the table a brass candelabra that held the same number of candlesticks. There was a parlor decorated with beautiful looking glasses in gilded oval frames and a bookcase full of books that, according to Mr. Oswald, had suffered the same fate as the grandfather clock, the humidity attacking them until the pages rippled and the covers mildewed, and even keeping the books behind glass did not help. The kitchen, which Mr. Oswald described as the domain of the cook, had a cast-iron stove and its own icebox. The open shelves of a cupboard were stacked with saucepans and boiling pots and colanders and bowls. On the countertop, there was a measuring scale and a salt box and a machine with a crank handle, the purpose of which Ada could not conceive. A worktable in the center of the room held a knifeboard and a bowl piled with fruit. And off the kitchen, Mr. Oswald had informed her, was the room where she would stay free of charge. To be on the premises was part of the job. Naturally a doctor would come daily to administer medical care, but between his visits Ada was to be available at every hour, was that clear? Ada had said yes, and she had peeked inside. The room was small and windowless, with space for hardly more than the bed, but unlike the boxcar, it had a door that clicked shut, and it was dry, and she was grateful for that.

***

MRS. OSWALD WAS quarantined in a bedroom at the end of the hall. Ada started each day by bringing breakfast up to the room, although Mrs. Oswald—just like Millicent—hardly wanted to eat, and Ada carried the untouched meals back down to the kitchen where the cook, Antoinette, frowned as though to leave the food uneaten was a personal affront. Ada might have assured Antoinette that it was not her fault—her cooking, which Ada enjoyed by virtue of living in the house, was delicious, the meat always tender, the stews wonderfully rich—except that Antoinette had been so standoffish to her since the moment they met that Ada refused to give Antoinette the satisfaction of an assurance like that. If Antoinette wanted to be unfriendly toward her, Ada would not go out of her way to be friendly back. For years Cordelia Bennington, a girl Ada and Millicent had gone to school with, had been spiteful toward them, and though Millicent often tried to be conciliatory, even kind, Ada derived more pleasure from getting under Cordelia’s skin. One day when Ada had worn a new dress to school, a dress that her mother had made in a print of bright orange and red, Cordelia had said right to her face, “You look ugly to me.” Ada had wanted to punch Cordelia straight in the belly or pull the white ribbons out of her hair, but their teacher, Miss Cook, was nearby, so all Ada said was, “Well, look away then.” All morning Ada had stewed, thinking about what other things she might have said instead. That same afternoon during class Miss Cook explained that there were places in the world covered all year round with ice and snow, a concept that prompted Cordelia Bennington to declare that she would never go somewhere like that. “No one would ever choose a land of such cold.” It was a declaration so infuriatingly definitive that Ada raised her own hand and, while staring at Cordelia and her stupid white ribbons, said, “I think it might be beautiful there. Some people don’t know beauty even if it is staring them right in the face.”

For much of the morning until the doctor arrived, Ada went to fetch washcloths or she propped up the pillow so that Mrs. Oswald could sit upright or she pulled the sheet higher if Mrs. Oswald shivered. Ada had never looked after a white woman before, but far from being demanding, as Ada had assumed she might be, Mrs. Oswald seldom asked for anything, and she always thanked Ada for even the smallest deed. She seemed appreciative simply for Ada’s company, and during their first morning together she had not only asked Ada where she was from, but when Ada told her Barbados, with genuine interest she had said, “Tell me about it. I have never been.” Ada described the limestone soil and the smell of hibiscus and the schooners in the harbor that came ashore with cordwood stacked on their decks and the trams that ran through the city and the taste of fish cakes, but she did not reveal anything about her mother or Millicent or their house and the road where they lived, even though the whole time she spoke she was thinking of those things. She had a sense that she ought to keep such personal details to herself. She was there to do a job, after all. Mrs. Oswald smiled weakly and remarked that it all sounded lovely to her.

At the end of each day, after the bedpan had been rinsed and Mrs. Oswald was in her nightdress, and the doctor had twice come and gone, Ada sat in the cane-backed chair long-side the bed, listening to each of Mrs. Oswald’s strenuous breaths as she fell into a fitful sleep. She couldn’t help but think about Millicent, who was so far away. Couldn’t help but recognize how she was trying, by the grace of God, to make both Millicent and Mrs. Oswald well.

She had mailed one letter home so far just to say that she had arrived safely and had taken a job. Every day at noon a mail messenger, a slim Black American boy who wore his uniform trousers rolled above his ankles, trudged up the hill to the Oswalds’ house to collect any outgoing mail and to deliver the incoming. A week was not long enough that her mother could have sent a reply, but each time the mail messenger arrived, Ada ran down the stairs to meet him. The boy, who had introduced himself as Michael after the third time Ada rushed to the door, always smiled and tipped his blue postal cap, but day after day he brought nothing for her.

***

ON THE LAST day of September, at precisely 11:30 a.m., Dr. Pierre Renaud climbed the hill to the Oswald house, as he had been doing twice daily for the past week. Coming to the house was certainly an improvement over the Negro ward. When Pierre had heard that John Oswald needed a physician, he seized the opportunity to fulfill a role more fitting for a man of his pedigree. The house was more stately than any other he had seen in Panama, and when Pierre stood on the veranda that first day, waiting for someone to answer the door, such a sweet and cooling tropical breeze caressed the air that for a moment he was happy to be in Panama just to experience it. Now the feeling from the first time had dissipated, but he was pleased nevertheless to arrive there and have important work to do.

Pierre let himself in and walked upstairs to the bedroom. From the bed, Marian Oswald looked up—she appeared quite wan—and Pierre bid her hello. The nursemaid girl was sitting in the chair, apparently reading from a Bible on her lap. She stopped when she saw him and set the Bible, open, on the bureau. Pierre believed a Bible should be closed when it was at rest, but he did not say a word about it. Nor did he say a word about how light it was in the room that day, though he thought it unusual that the drapes, which ordinarily were closed, had been opened for some reason.

Pierre set his medical bag on the floor and walked to Marian’s side of the bed. The nursemaid girl remained in the room.

“How was the night?” Pierre asked Marian.

“It seems I survived it,” Marian said.

Pierre smiled. Good humor was an encouraging sign. “As I expected you would.”

He checked Marian’s pulse and asked her to open her mouth while he scraped her tongue with a wooden stick. He held the stick up to the light to inspect what he had collected before dropping it into a paper bag. Then Pierre took out his stethoscope, a single elegant tube made of wood and brass, and set one end of it on Marian Oswald’s chest while he listened at the other end. The first time he had come, he had asked her to say “eeeeee” while he listened, and the way the sound had come through had been the confirmation he needed to diagnose pneumonia. Today he listened for any intensified rattling and crackling, rusty lungs throbbing against the cage of the ribs. There was not much, and that, too, was a good sign.

“What do you hear?” the nursemaid girl asked.

Pierre turned, peering over his shoulder. The girl always hovered about during the exam, asking question after question. How high is the fever today? Do you see anything new on that stick? Why could she need to know such things? He needed to know them certainly, but she only needed to know how to fetch ice and change the sheets. And when she was not asking questions, she was saying superfluous things. She hasn’t eaten today, but I did ask Antoinette to prepare some broth. She used the washroom twice during the night. Useless information. Unless she could tell him the thickness of the pleural lining or the chance of cardiac thrombosis or any other actual medical fact, she should keep her thoughts to herself. He did not care for an outspoken woman. A woman might be moved to share her opinions with a diary, but she should not share them with the rest of the world.

“I hear the lungs,” Pierre said.

“But how do they sound this morning?”

Pierre forced a brief smile. “Fine.”

Rumor had it that John had put in a request for a trained hospital nurse when, impressed by some act of compassion he witnessed on the street, he hired this other girl instead. Pierre understood that there had been an urgent need, that desperation could make a man do many a strange thing, but in his opinion John would have been much better served had he waited for his request to be fulfilled.

Pierre turned back to Marian. “The systems are steady. You are battling through.”

Marian coughed a few times, and the girl rose to grab the bedpan, but Pierre held up his hand. “The coughing should not produce anything now.” When the coughing subsided, he saw that he had been right. He stood and leaned down to start packing his bag—he would be back, of course, later that afternoon—when quite unexpectedly John stepped into the room.

It was the first time Pierre had seen John since starting the job a week earlier. He was dressed in a crisp white linen suit, and his stiff brown hair was combed to the side. His round spectacles sat high on his nose. Upon his entrance, Pierre stood.

“John, is that you?” Marian asked from the bed.

“Yes.”

“You’re here.”

She reached her hand out to him, but John remained where he was, just inside the door as though he were scared to venture any farther. Pierre had witnessed such trepidation many times—a fear of being proximate to illness.

“How is she?” John asked.

Pierre said, “There has been no improvement, but neither has there been further deterioration. Nothing significant, I should say. It is the most we can hope for at this point. It will simply take time.”

“And her lungs?”

“The same.”

“Is there anything more you can do?”

“Not now, no. Keep her here. Let her rest.”

In fact, there were other treatments Pierre might have tried, procedures like bloodletting or maggot debridement, but he did not have the stomach for those, and furthermore he doubted their efficacy. He had seen a hundred such cases, and from what he could tell, Marian Oswald’s case was much like the rest. There was fluid in her lungs, but not much, and she was otherwise strong, which boded well. Everyone wanted an intervention, but in his experience the natural systems of the body were often the most curative. He would keep an eye on things, of course. If it got worse, he would not hesitate to act. But for now the prescription was simply to rest. In a few weeks’ time Marian Oswald would be the picture of health, and when that happened, John Oswald would shake his hand and everyone in the Canal Zone would know of the Frenchman who had been—far from a failure—an unqualified success.

Pierre again leaned down to pack up his bag when the Oswalds’ cook, wearing an apron tied around her waist and a piece of fabric tied around her head, arrived at the room with a tray that held a bowl of hot broth. “Good morning,” she said. “I have soup for Missus.”

“Antoinette?” Marian said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She walked into the room and put the tray on the bureau. She turned and looked at everyone gathered—Ada, Mr. Oswald, Mrs. Oswald, and the doctor—and said, “There a party in here? That why the drapes open today?”

She meant to say something cheerful to offset the gravity that always weighed down the air in that room, but the way the tall doctor grimaced told her she had made a mistake.

“Yes, why are the drapes open?” Mr. Oswald asked, suddenly glancing around the room.

“I had that same question myself,” the doctor said.

“You did not open them?” Mr. Oswald asked.

“Certainly not. They were like that when I arrived.”

Standing by the head of the bed, Ada spoke up. “Missus Oswald wanted them open,” she said.

Antoinette and the doctor and Mr. Oswald all turned to look at her.

“What did you say?” Mr. Oswald asked.

“Missus Oswald wanted the drapes open.”

“She did?”

“Yes. And I thought... well, that the light might do her good.”

“You thought—?” Mr. Oswald said, furrowing his brow. He turned to the doctor. “Is that true? Is the light good for her?”

Pierre said nothing for a moment. He felt embarrassed for John. First the cook with her ill-advised joke and now the nurse-girl who could not even bring herself to say “sir” when she was talking to him. And more than embarrassed, Pierre was flabbergasted to see that John, whom he knew as a powerful man, who was a powerful man, did nothing to scold either one. But before Pierre could speak, John continued.

“You said let her rest. I imagine in that case the drapes should remain closed, shouldn’t they?”

Antoinette waited, but no one in the room stirred. For eight months she had been at the Oswalds’, and all that time, it had been just the three of them. Now, though, this mixed-blood will-o’-the-wisp from Barbados had moved in. Yes, the girl was pretty—Antoinette had noted with resentment the way the girl’s dress nipped in at the waist and settled over her hips—but why did she not wear a head tie? Why had she no manners or tact? Going so far as to boast about sleeping in a boxcar the first night she was here—a strange thing to boast about, Antoinette thought. Was that how children in Barbados were raised? Truthfully, she wouldn’t mind if the girl returned to that boxcar. Then things could go back to how they had been. The last thing she needed was to be replaced by yet another young flower who believed it was her turn to stand in the light.

All at once Antoinette strode across the room to the window and yanked the drapes shut. “The dark do help people rest,” she declared.

In bed, Mrs. Oswald suddenly coughed so hard that she sat upright, and Ada rubbed her back while both the doctor and Mr. Oswald looked on with alarm.

Marian lay back after the fit of coughing was done. Her throat was raw. Her chest felt brittle. Her whole body ached. That morning, before the rain had begun, Ada had asked her quite innocently whether she wanted the drapes open or closed. “They’ve been closed since I got here, but I have been meaning to ask.” Ada had been standing by the window, ready to open the drapes at her command. The fabric was a thick, plum-and-gold-colored brocade. Marian remembered John closing them when she first relocated to this room. “John prefers them like this,” Marian had said to Ada. After a pause, Ada had asked, “But is it what you prefer?” The question had nearly made Marian cry. It was so rare that someone asked for her preference, so rare that she had a say in her own life anymore. Years ago, John had walked into her world and cast a shadow over her. To everyone, he was more important than she was, more intelligent, more interesting. That would always be true. And the knowledge of that, her place in his shadow, had darkened something in her. “No it isn’t,” she had said, and Ada had opened the drapes. Just like that, light had streamed in.

Now, with Ada and Antoinette and Pierre and John all crowding around her, Marian took a shallow, scraping breath. “Open them, please. I prefer them open,” she said.