Chapter 16

16

THE DAYS MARCHED AHEAD INTO OCTOBER. ADA HAD BEEN WORKING UNDER THE Oswalds’ roof for nearly two weeks, and in that time she had mailed home a second letter along with most of the money—the equivalent of nearly ￡5—she had been paid so far. A letter could take a week or more to arrive, but Ada was hopeful that her first note at least had reached her mother by now and that her mother had written a reply. Every day when Michael knocked on the front door, Ada flew down the stairs to meet him and took the envelopes he handed her and flipped through them, looking for her name on the front of just one.

Michael, who was fifteen years old, had a soft spot for Ada. Of all the stops on his route, he most looked forward to walking up the hill to the Oswalds’ house, where he knew the girl with the high round cheeks and the lavender eyes would come to the door when he knocked. It used to be the cook who answered, a brusque older woman who had hardly even smiled at him when he arrived. To Michael, it had been a welcome change when the girl started coming to the door instead. She had an easy smile, and she was eager to see what he was delivering that day, and though Michael knew—because he sorted through the envelopes himself before he got to the house—that he was bringing nothing for her, it still pained him to see how the girl’s expression tumbled from the high point of some mountain to the valley down below when she saw that same fact for herself. He wanted to tell her, Maybe tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow whatever she was waiting for would come, but every next tomorrow brought the same nothing as the yesterday before.

Despite visits from the doctor and despite Ada’s constant attention and care, Mrs. Oswald’s condition kept getting steadily worse. The fits of coughing came more frequently now. Her skin had a purplish flush. She slept on and off throughout the day, weakened by the disease.

When Mrs. Oswald was awake, however, she spoke to Ada much the way she had since the start—as though grateful just to have someone to speak to at all. She recounted the months she had spent in Panama thus far, the beautiful views from the veranda, the tedium of the dinners she’d had to attend.

“John wanted to come,” she said one afternoon. “It was important to him. They all believe it is the most important work of their lives.”

Ada watched Mrs. Oswald arduously draw in a breath. She lay on her back in the bed, the sheet folded down at her waist. Her face was damp with sweat. She looked up at Ada and said, “Did you go to school?”

“Yes.”

“What did you study?”

“Reading and writing and some arithmetic.”

Mrs. Oswald smiled feebly. “That’s good. It’s important to learn such things. It’s important for a woman to use her own mind. I studied the science of plants before I met John.”

“There’s schooling for that?”

“Yes, I have a degree in botany.”

Ada said, “My mother knows about plants.”

Mrs. Oswald smiled again. “I imagine your mother knows many things that I have yet to learn.”

Ada nodded. “She’s always trying to teach us—my sister and me.” It was the first time Ada had mentioned either her mother or her sister to Mrs. Oswald.

Mrs. Oswald coughed. “I do hate being confined to this bed,” she said. “If I had the strength for it, perhaps you and I might go for a walk. You could tell me what your mother has taught you. And we could look at the flowers. The flowers here are wonderful. Ixora, Passiflora, heliconia...”

Marian stopped, recalling their first days here. She had been so desperate for fresh air that during a break in the rain, she had begged John to join her on a walk. They had followed a footpath toward the next town, and Marian had spied the most remarkable, creamy white orchid, growing tall amid the brush. She had stepped off the path and started walking toward it when John said, “Don’t, Marian!” She had looked back over her shoulder at him. “I just want to see it,” she’d said, and John had replied, “Yes, but you don’t know what else might be in there, too.” She might have argued—he needn’t be fearful of everything —had she not recognized the stern expression on his face, and with great reluctance she had forced herself to walk back over to where he stood rooted to the path.

Marian looked up at Ada sitting by her bedside. “You should take that walk yourself,” she said. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to join you in this state.” She cleared her throat, felt the ever-present pain in her chest. “But if you go,” Marian said, “promise me that you will take whatever path you please.”

She saw Ada nod, even though Marian imagined she was not making much sense.

The day after she and John had taken that walk, John had come home with a potted pink orchid, which he placed on the floor at her feet as she sat on the veranda again. “Now you may see it,” he said. It was a different variety, not nearly as stunning as the orchid she had spotted in the brush, but it was the only time he had ever given her a flower, and she thanked him for it. It was always curious to her, though, how a flower like that could look better to John in a pot than it did growing free.

***

THAT DAY WHILE Mrs. Oswald slept, Ada went out to the hill. It was the first time she had stepped away from the house, and it felt good to have the sun on her back. The talk of plants had made Ada think about how her mother always made a batch of bush tea when one of them was unwell, and she hurried over the hill, plucking stems from the ground, until she had enough to make a strong brew.

Quickly, she took what she gathered back to the kitchen, filled a pot with fresh water, and set it to boil. The water had just started to rumble when Antoinette came in carrying several paper-wrapped packages. She frowned at Ada. “Why you in here?”

“I am making bush tea.”

Without setting the packages down, Antoinette walked to the stove and peered into the bubbling pot herself. “With what?”

“Some plants I found on the hill.”

“Outside?”

“There’s an inside hill?” Ada said.

Antoinette glared. She set the packages down and shooed Ada away from the stove, flicking her wrists back and forth, saying that she could well finish brewing the tea herself, Ada was not the only one who knew about tea, a bush tea from Antigua was superior to a bush tea from Barbados any day of the week, so go on now, get out of my kitchen and back to where you belong.

***

IN THE DAYS that followed, Ada hardly left Mrs. Oswald’s side. She sat, waiting to be needed, praying that the next hour was when Mrs. Oswald’s condition would improve, that her breathing would sound less like a husk scraping against the ground. She could not help but think that if Mrs. Oswald improved, it would be a sign that across the ocean, Millicent might be improving, too.

When Mrs. Oswald was awake but too weak to talk, Ada occasionally read passages from the Bible out loud. Yesterday, she had read from Matthew in the New Testament, but she had only gotten as far as Jesus healing fevers with a single touch, and today she thought Mrs. Oswald might want to hear what else he would do. She had just started to reach for the Bible on the bureau when Mrs. Oswald, who aside from her raspy breathing had been quiet for the past twenty minutes or so, said suddenly, “We lived in the mountains.”

Ada returned her hand to her lap. Mrs. Oswald’s oak-colored hair was limp with sweat.

“The mountains?” Ada said.

“The Great Smoky Mountains. In Tennessee, where both John and I are from. They were beautiful.” Mrs. Oswald took a few labored breaths. “All morning I’ve been thinking about them.” Quietly, she started to cry.

“Shhhh,” Ada whispered.

“We had a baby,” Mrs. Oswald went on. “Never born, but we had one. We buried her in those mountains.”

Ada grabbed a cloth from the bedside table and pressed it to Mrs. Oswald’s hot cheek to stanch the tears that seeped from the corners of her eyes. She did not know what to say. She only stopped when Mrs. Oswald turned her face away.

It was raining again. Marian struggled, through the tears that filled her eyes, to see out the window on the wall to her left. She was confined to this room but at least she could see out, and what she saw were the tops of smoky blue-gray mountains even though those mountains were hundreds of miles away. Those were the mountains where she had walked over ground matted with golden pine needles and stroked her hand along the bark of the trees, mountains that soothed her, that somehow let her think and breathe better than any other place in the world. And they were the mountains where, next to a yellow birch tree, she and John had buried the baby’s remains, or what there had been of remains—the blood-soaked cloths she had asked the doctor to leave behind, that blood being all that was left of the baby, she thought. The burial had happened only at Marian’s insistence, and by herself she had put the stiffened, claret-colored cloths in a box that she held on her lap during the carriage ride up to the place where the land started to slope. The carriage driver walked behind them with a shovel, and when John told him to, he dug. It took less than a minute to dig a hole that small. John was the one who placed the box inside because Marian could not bear it, and Marian remembered looking up the side of the mountain as far as she could see and back down again at the top of the box nestled in the earth, and she nodded and with the nose of the shovel the carriage driver pushed the dirt he had loosed over the box. It made a quiet thumping sound when it fell. When the box was entirely covered, John and the driver returned to the carriage. Marian had not been able to bring herself to leave. She had stood there trembling, staring at the dirt that covered the box that now held all that was left of the baby she had once held within her. “Come, Marian,” John had called from the carriage. He and the driver were waiting for her. She had crouched and pressed her hand flat on the dirt so that it left an impression. Then she stood and walked away, too. Her life was in those mountains, and just that morning she had realized that she might never go there again.

***

MR. OSWALD WAS at work and Antoinette was out picking limes on the day that Mrs. Oswald had the worst fit of coughing Ada had yet seen. Even when the coughing petered out, Mrs. Oswald shivered with fever and twisted the sheet, and Ada hurried to gather cloth sacks of ice and lay them on Mrs. Oswald’s head and on the crooks of her elbows and against the soles of her feet. The doctor was due any minute, thank goodness, and Ada held the ice sacks in place while she whispered, “It’s all right,” over and over again. But by the time the ice had melted and the water wept through the fabric, the doctor still had not arrived, and Ada ran to the icebox again, tying new sacks, wondering where he could be. He was never late, and she could not imagine that the Lord would let him be so today of all days. The second time she returned to the room, Mrs. Oswald was quiet but for her strenuous breathing. She was still on her side. Ada lay a hand on her forehead. She was burning. Ada placed the sack down and glanced at the door. Where was the doctor? She could not wait any longer. To Mrs. Oswald she said, “I’m stepping out to fetch you fever pills, but I’ll hurry back and the doctor will be here any minute, I hope.” As soon as she saw Mrs. Oswald nod, Ada ran down to the kitchen, sifted through a drawer in the cupboard until she found a commissary booklet, then rushed out of the house without even bothering to straighten her dress.

***

PIERRE HAD BEEN sitting on the train to Empire, thinking about what he would eat for supper that night, when quite suddenly the train had come to a standstill. He and his fellow passengers looked around at one another. Someone shouted out, “Why are we stopped?” There was general confusion and murmuring—some men stood up to peer out the windows and one man actually stepped out of the train car. After a moment, he came back on to say, “There is a cow on the track!” The man started to laugh. Pierre, however, did not think it funny. A delay meant he would be late to the Oswalds’. It was the sort of thing that might well keep John Oswald from recommending Pierre for some future post. And most annoying was that any tardiness in this case would not be his fault.

In his seat, Pierre sighed. More passengers were looking out now, and some had gotten off the train entirely, eager to see what Pierre imagined was a fat stubborn cow standing on the railroad track. Where had a cow even come from? Had it been out for a stroll in the jungle and lost its way? Though it was a humorous thought, Pierre would not permit himself to laugh, as he was still, mostly, annoyed. They had been stopped for what seemed like an extraordinarily long time, given the issue at hand. How long could it take to shove a cow off a track? Pierre’s brief amusement turned back to anxiety. He needed to go, for heaven’s sake. He had somewhere to be.

By the time, fifteen long minutes later, the cow was coaxed off the track and the train started again, most everyone on board was exasperated and impatient to move on. Pierre was so wound up that he thought he might burst. As soon as he got off at Empire, he charged up the hill. He let himself into the house and rushed up to the room. When he walked in, he was relieved to see that Marian Oswald was sleeping in bed. But when he looked around the room, he realized she was alone. Quietly, Pierre placed his bag on the chair. The drapes were open, of course, but he took the opportunity to draw them closed and light the lamp on the table instead. He guessed the girl was probably in another part of the house. He tried to enjoy the relative peace. There were no sounds in the room besides Marian Oswald’s hoarse breaths. No one peering over his shoulder, no one asking questions that were not her concern. In a day when Pierre had already suffered one annoyance, the fact that he could work uninterrupted, on his own terms, was a pleasant surprise.

The last of the adrenaline that had built up from the train and the rushing up the hill flowed out of him as he stood there. Carefully, Pierre pressed his fingers to the inside of Marian Oswald’s wrist. Her pulse was weak. He removed the cloth from her forehead and felt it for fever. It was quite high, upwards of 103 if he guessed just from touch. The girl would need to draw an ice bath. And where was the girl anyway? It seemed odd that she had not returned to the room by now.

Pierre looked down at Marian Oswald and felt distinctly less confident about her prognosis than he had at the start, though that was not something he would admit out loud. He reached into his pocket and rubbed his stone. However, aside from the raspy breathing, she was sleeping tranquilly and maybe that was what she needed more than anything he could offer just then. Not wanting to disturb her rest, Pierre picked up his bag from the chair and walked out of the room.

On his way out, as he passed through the entry, he ran into the cook, who was stepping through the front door with an enormous basket of limes.

“Doctor,” she said when she saw him.

Pierre did not think she had seen him arrive, which meant that she did not know he had been late, which was good.

“Excusez-moi. I just completed my exam,” he said, and the cook nodded. “But the girl was not there. Do you know where she is?”

The cook said no, she did not, and as there was nothing more for him to do at the house until he returned later that afternoon, Pierre opened the door and walked out. He thought, as he started back down the hill, that the girl’s absence was one more thing he would have to report to John.

***

THE COMMISSARY IN Empire, like all the canal commissaries, was divided in two. One half was for employees who were paid in gold and the other half was for employees who were paid in silver.

Ada was well aware that day which door she was supposed to go in—she was what people called colored, but that was not white enough—but because she was shopping for the Oswalds, she decided to walk through the gold entrance instead.

The cashier, a young woman with the longest blond hair Ada had ever seen, glanced up at her when she walked in. “May I help you?” she asked, and her voice when she said it was perfectly kind.

Ada mustered her nerve. “Do you stock fever pills?”

The cashier smiled. “We have small jars against the back wall.”

Quickly, Ada walked to the back and scanned the shelves. There were glass jars and vials, various powders, dried herbs. She looked and she looked but saw no fever pills.

Another woman, a petite white woman carrying a small patent leather purse in her hands, came and stood next to her. Out of the corner of her eye, Ada glanced at her, but the woman said nothing, and Ada returned her gaze to the jars on the shelves. The electric fans that hung from the ceiling turned in lazy circles overhead, pushing around the hot air.

Then, quietly, leaning forward as she spoke, the woman next to her said, “I believe you may be confused.” Her tone was sympathetic, as though she were truly concerned. “This is the gold commissary.”

Ada clenched her jaw while she went on running her eyes over the jars. Fever pills. Fever pills. Where could they be?

“Next door is silver,” the woman continued.

Fever pills. They had to be here somewhere.

“Did you hear me?” the woman whispered. “This shop is only for gold.”

Ada stopped and looked at her. The woman was not much older than twenty if Ada had to guess. She was pretty, with a sweep of freckles across the tops of her cheeks. Sugar dusting, Ada’s mother might have said.

The woman waited. There were other shoppers in the store, but none near them at the moment. The fans kept turning.

Now the woman, this slight, freckled woman, pointed to the floor in front of her and said, “Gold.” Then she pointed to the left, her finger jabbing the air. “Silver.” When she dropped her arm back down to clutch her purse, she said, “Do you understand?”

Ada fought a feeling that was spiraling up inside her, a bilious thing. Of course she understood. There was not a soul on the isthmus who did not understand. And yet here was this woman, telling Ada her place, and saying it in a way like she honestly thought Ada was confused, or else like she was witless, to which Ada took even greater offense. Of all the ways a person had ever described her, witless was not one.

Ada seethed, but she did not move. She kept her hands at her sides as a kind of heat vibrated through the tops of her ears.

The woman sucked a quick breath through her pretty petal-colored lips. “Excuse me,” she called to the blond-haired cashier at the other side of the store.

In the middle of a transaction, the cashier looked up, and the young freckled woman nudged her elbow in Ada’s direction as if to say, This one. This one doesn’t belong here, you see. Maybe she expected camaraderie from the cashier, but the cashier merely glanced at both the woman and Ada and promptly returned her attention to the customer she was ringing up.

The freckled woman sighed, evidently with frustration, and now, loud enough that every shopper in the store could hear, she said, “This commissary is for Gold Roll.”

Everyone in the store—the cashier and the customer at the counter, two more women from the next aisle, as well as one woman in a lace-trimmed bonnet who walked all the way around a corner to see what the commotion was about—stared.

The heat in Ada’s ears let loose all through her, tingling under her cheeks and down into her fingertips, spreading through her chest. But there was some perverse pleasure in it, too, letting the woman get so incensed when the whole time Ada knew what she needed to say to put the thing to rest. She had it locked inside her like a secret, and there was something sweet about that. She might have let the woman carry on, too, might have let her wrap herself ever tighter in her thorny nest of vexation only to make her look like more of a fool when Ada said what she was about to say, except that Mrs. Oswald was at the house, burning with fever, and Ada did not have time for delay.

“I’m the Oswalds’ nurse-girl.”

The woman, who seemed at first stunned that Ada had spoken at all, stopped and stared at Ada with her pretty mouth hanging open, her cheeks turning so pink it looked as though they’d been plucked.

“What’s that?” she managed to ask.

“Mrs. Oswald is sick.”

“Oh. Oh, yes. I... I did hear about—”

“I’m buying her fever pills. They’re only sold here, on the gold side.”

That last part may or may not have been true, but it made the woman squirm with discomfort. Ada kept staring in her eyes, and what she saw there was shame. Shame, and anger at being shamed. Well, good. Even though the heat still pulsed beneath Ada’s skin. Even though the triumph, small as it was, was not enough to make the whole encounter worth it.

When the woman took a step back and then scurried away to another part of the store, though she offered no apology, Ada felt the thrill of that very small triumph. She looked again at the shelves. On the second shelf from the bottom, she found something called Sappington’s Anti-Fever Pills. She took the jar to the counter, tore a ticket from the commissary booklet, and used it to pay. “Send Mrs. Oswald my best,” the blond cashier said, and Ada nodded.

Outside the store, the sun was bright and there was a hum in the air that all of a sudden Ada felt the urge to match. “It must be now the kingdom coming,” she sang as she walked down the commissary steps, carrying the jar of pills in her hand. She felt good, and at that moment she did not care who heard. “And the year oh jubilo.”