CHAPTER 23
For the next week, Mirielle remained in the infirmary, battling aching joints, erupting boils, intermittent fevers, and above all, boredom. It was strange to lie in bed while sisters and orderlies bustled around her. She found herself hesitating before reaching for her call bell, reluctant to ask for more water or fresh sheets. Was it fear of rebuke for yet another call? Embarrassment at not having the strength to perform simple tasks herself? Mirielle couldn’t put her finger on it. But she sat with chapped lips in sweat-drenched sheets until she could no longer stand it. More often than not, the sisters and orderlies were kind and swift in answering, and Mirielle regretted the many times she’d tramped to a patient’s bedside and spoken brusquely.
She understood now too how slowly the minutes passed when four white walls and an under-stuffed mattress comprised your entire world. The occasional birdsong through an open window, the bleat of rain upon the roof, the footsteps and chatter from the walkway—these were both welcome distractions and painful reminders of her confinement. Only Irene’s daily visits saved her from going mad. The woman could prattle on about anything—the weeds in her garden, the latest Montgomery Ward catalog, even last night’s supper—and, for once, Mirielle was happy to listen.
Frank stopped by too, though strictly speaking, men were not allowed in the ladies’ infirmary. He slipped in one afternoon when Sister Verena had been called away and Sister Loretta was dozing in the corner to deliver a letter to another patient. On his way out, he pulled up a stool and tarried at her bedside.
The Hot Rocks had agreed to play at the July Fourth celebration, he told her, and Dr. Ross would permit dancing. Mirielle had never been one to feign modesty, but she pulled the covers to her chin as he spoke, fearing how red and raised and ugly the lesion on her neck must be. Her hair was likely a fright too. She tried to smooth the wayward strands in a subtle, natural way so he wouldn’t think she was primping for him.
“Well?” he said.
“Hmm?”
“Have ya given it any thought?”
Mirielle rattled her head. Even though he talked like a bush hound, his voice had a pleasant, almost lulling sway. “Thought to what?”
“The treasure hunt for the kids.”
“Oh.” Mirielle crossed her arms and looked away. Jean wasn’t the only child at Carville, but Mirielle was in no mood to plan anything the girl might enjoy.
“Think on it,” he said, standing to leave. “And be sure to get well. Ya got a frog race to judge too, remember?”
* * *
When she didn’t have the distraction of visitors, Mirielle steamed and stewed. Never in her life had she known such a rotten girl as Jean.
On her eighth day in the infirmary, Mirielle’s fevers at last relented and Doc Jack permitted her to leave under two conditions. One, she was to rest a week before returning to work. Two, she must return to the infirmary each day for a quick checkup and dose of Fowler’s solution. Doc Jack promised the concoction of arsenic and potassium bicarbonate would help the boils on her legs heal—and it had. Only a few pinpoint scars and bumps remained. But the medicine had to be carefully dosed to avoid arsenic poisoning.
Imagine if Jean had told her to take that instead of iodide, she thought as she walked back to house eighteen. Mirielle would be dead. The morning sunshine stung her eyes. The riot of colors and sounds around her almost too much to take in. Mirielle had been terrifically foolish to have listened to the girl and try to treat herself alone.
She stopped and leaned against the walkway railing. She’d only done it to get back to her daughters, to Charlie, sooner. Now, if her next skin test came back positive, she’d be here all the longer.
Mirielle brooded about it the rest of the walk back to her house. She brooded while she showered off a week’s worth of sweat and sickness, and brooded while she dressed. Irene stopped by while Mirielle was fastening the straps of her shoes and asked if she wanted to play a game of rummy. Mirielle shook her head. She was too angry to speak, too bent on finding Jean.
No more bedtime stories. No more shoulder shrugging at her antics. She’d give the girl an earful and be done with her. Mirielle wasn’t her mother. She had her own daughters to think of, far away as they may be.
As soon as her shoes were fastened and hat pinned, Mirielle started off. She searched the house and surrounding lawns, the rec hall and canteen. Jean had a fascination with the goat and monkeys they kept by the laboratory for experiments, and Mirielle searched there too. When she came to the reading room and found it empty, she sat down on one of the worn armchairs to rest a moment. Her stamina had waned after a week in bed. Church bells tolled the hour, two long peels from Sacred Heart’s belfry. But earlier she’d heard both chapels ringing—one atop the other—to call the residents to Sunday service.
Mirielle stood and marched toward the oak-shaded lawn at the southeast corner of the colony. Church wasn’t the only to-do on Sundays. Though visitors were allowed any day of the week, few ever came. Those who did, usually came on Sundays.
Picnic tables sat beneath the sweeping oak boughs and dangling moss. Those lucky few residents who hadn’t been hauled across the country or forgotten by their families congregated here with their visitors. But Jean was not among them.
Mirielle hovered a moment, leaning against the splintery lip of one of the picnic tables. Before today, she’d avoided this shady lawn on Sundays. No need to be reminded that no one had come to call on her. Now that she was here, it was impossible not to imagine Charlie in a dapper suit and fedora seated at one of the tables. She pictured herself beside him, so close the scent of his spicy aftershave tangled with her perfume. Evie played in the grass nearby. Helen squirmed on Mirielle’s lap. In between her thumb sucking and cheerful babbling came the word mama.
Mirielle drew her arms around herself, a tight squeeze to stanch the longing, then let them drop to her side. Such imaginings were impossible. Children under sixteen were forbidden to visit, and the trip across country was unmanageable, even if Charlie were to undertake it alone.
As she turned to leave, Mirielle spied Jean high up in one of the trees at the edge of the lawn. She sat on one of the thicker limbs, swinging her legs and chewing on a piece of straw. Mirielle’s festering anger boiled up again. She stomped to the base of the tree. “Jean, you climb down this minute.”
Jean glanced down, her expression morphing from wide-eyed surprise to jaw-clenched obstinacy. She shook her head and returned her gaze to the picnic tables.
“You’re already in a heap of trouble, missy. Don’t try my resolve.”
Jean continued swinging her legs. She bit off a piece of straw, chomped it between her teeth, then spat it out. Mirielle watched it fall to the ground, her hands tightening into fists. “Climb down now, or you’ll be sorry.”
She heard Jean snicker and had to dodge another falling piece of saliva-coated straw. “If you’re not down by the time I count to ten . . . well . . . I’m coming up to get you. One, two, three . . .” Mirielle prayed Jean would come to her senses and clamber down before she reached ten, but Jean didn’t move. Obstinate girl! Mirielle grabbed on to the lowest branch, testing the strain of her weight on her newly healed arm before walking her feet up the furrowed trunk.
The soles of her patent leather shoes skidded down the bark. She let go of the tree and tore off her shoes. Then, after a glance toward the picnic tables, she unfastened her stockings from her girdle and yanked them off as well. Her bare feet found better purchase, though anyone who looked would catch a glimpse of her underclothes. She scrambled precariously up the tree one branch at a time. “If I fall and break my arm again, I swear you’ll be in a cast too,” she mumbled as swamp moss tangled with her hair and bark scratched her palms.
When she finally reached the bough where Jean sat, she looked down. With so much anger propelling her upward, Mirielle hadn’t realized how far she’d climbed. The ground lay at least fifteen feet below. She closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around the trunk until a rush of dizziness passed.
Jean sat at least ten feet out from the trunk.
“You have one more chance to climb down,” Mirielle said to her. “Otherwise I’ll tell Sister Verena what you’ve done, and you’ll lose your radio privileges for a year.”
The girl stuck out her tongue at Mirielle and crossed her arms.
Mirielle stomped her foot, then tried not to flinch as the limb shuddered and swayed. “You’re nearly ten years old. Stop acting like a toddler.”
To this, Jean only crossed her arms more tightly and looked away.
Mirielle glanced down again, then quickly up. Her pulse thudded in her ears. Grabbing an overhead branch, she planted her toes outward and stepped away from the trunk. She knew women in the pictures who did their own stunts. If they could do such daring feats, so could she. She took another few steps. A breeze off the river fluttered the hem of her skirt. An ant crawled onto her hand and down her arm, but she dared not let go to swat it away. The farther she walked, the more the limb beneath her wobbled and groaned. Fear of falling ate away at her anger and bravado. She’d made it halfway to Jean when the groaning sound sharped into that of a splintering crack. Mirielle froze. Her heartbeat was deafening now. The breeze a lash upon her nerves. She inched a foot or so back toward the trunk, then let go of the branch above her and slowly sat down, still several feet from Jean.
Minutes passed, and neither of them said a word. Mirielle listened for another cracking sound but heard only the flutter of leaves and her uneven breathing.
“Why did you tell me to take potassium iodide when you knew it would make me sick?” she said at last.
Jean shrugged, continuing to stare at the milling residents and their visitors.
“I could have gone blind. My kidneys could have failed and I would have died.”
Jean gave no reply.
“You want me dead, is that it?”
Jean’s muddy-blue eyes cut to Mirielle, then down. She balled her hands in her lap and shook her head.
“Have you gone mute again?”
Another shake of the head.
“Then why!” It came out more a scream than a question, and Jean startled, grabbing the branch to steady herself.
Mirielle sighed. The overload of adrenaline, first from anger, then from fear, had left her jittery.
“I didn’t want you to go away,” Jean said, so soft it was almost a whisper.
“What are you talking about? I’m stuck here same as you.”
“Someday you will. It’s all you talk about.” She lifted her chin and raised her voice, speaking in a nasal pitch. “ ‘Back in California . . . When I get home to California . . .’ ”
Despite her anger, Mirielle chuckled at Jean’s impersonation. “It’s my home. I have two daughters younger than you and miss them terribly.”
“See. You will leave. They all do.” Jean stared back at the residents on the lawn, her eyes rimmed with tears. Mirielle followed her gaze, remembering what Frank had told her about Jean’s father. How he’d dropped her at Carville’s gate and never looked back. What must it feel like to watch others with their families after being abandoned? No wonder Jean misbehaved.
Mirielle scooted as close to Jean as she dared, leaving several feet yet between them. “Do you climb up here every Sunday?”
“Nah, usually I’m down there with mon père.” She jutted her chin toward the lawn. “He comes to visit just about every Sunday. Our house ain’t but a few hours south across the river. He’s a boat maker.”
She’d heard Jean speak so little, Mirielle had never noticed the faint Cajun sway to her speech. “You’re lucky to get visitors,” she said, even though she knew Jean was lying. “What about your mother?”
“Maman’s dead.”
“I’m sorry. My mother died when I was young too.”
Below them, two of Carville’s other children—black girls a few years younger than Jean—scampered over picnic tables and around tree trunks, giggling and hollering. The man who’d come to visit them ran after them in a game of tag while a woman looked on, smiling and fanning herself with her hat. One of the girls had pale lesions up and down her arms. The other had lost most of the fingers on her right hand, giving it a mitten-like appearance. Otherwise, they were identical.
“When they find a cure, we’ll all leave and go home to our families,” Mirielle said.
Jean snorted.
With the man sweating and clutching his side, the twins stopped their game and skipped over to the woman—presumably their mother—who produced two red lollipops from her handbag. The twins squealed.
“They have lollipops twice that size at the boardwalk in Los Angeles,” Mirielle said, seeing the longing in Jean’s eyes. She inched her butt along the branch, fearful of another cracking sound but determined to get closer. When she made it to within an arm’s distance, she reached for Jean’s hand, but Jean leaned away.
“I hate lollipops.”
“Oh? They have all kinds of flavors. Cherry, orange, lemon-lime, even cola-flavored. I’ve asked my husband to send some for the July Fourth party.”
“Really?” Jean’s face brightened.
“Fireworks too. And there will be music and dancing and even a frog race. But you’ve got to cut out your antics and do your schoolwork, otherwise I’ll tell Sister Verena not to let you attend.”
Jean wadded up the last bit of straw she’d been chewing and tossed it to the ground. “What good is it if I can write my letters pretty and add up a bunch of numbers if I’m just gonna be stuck at Carville all my life?”
“You’re going to get out,” Mirielle said, feeling a renewed sense of determination. Her work wasn’t just about proving Sister Verena and Charlie wrong; it was about stopping the disease. For all of them.
Below them on the shaded lawn, many of the visitors were taking their leave. The twins’ parents hugged them, then shooed them toward the colony’s maze of houses and walkways. An elderly woman kissed her husband goodbye. A mother, her son.
Absentmindedly, Mirielle reached again for Jean’s hand. To her surprise, Jean took it. “Someday the both of us are going to make it home,” Mirielle said. “But first, you’ve got to show me how the devil we’re going to get down.”