22

Salt

I’m lying in bed at the end of a hot day. I’m so sick with the salt, I mean, without the salt. I get so dizzy. A few times today I blacked out while chasing after Davy. Mama called the doctor and he said I needed to eat more salt. Yuck. Pops has been away on a business trip with Boomer and he just got home. I hear him on the stairs, one heavy foot after the other. He sees me lying in bed during the day. Even Mama is lying in bed from the heat.

Pops drops his suitcase. He says, What’s happened here? Mama’s room is dark and so is mine. Odessa comes upstairs and brings me a little blue plate topped with yellow eggs and toast. She says, I put salt on the eggs. I say, I don’t like salt. Odessa says to me, You don’t have a choice, it’s either that or in bed for the rest of the summer sick as you are or sicker. I take the plate and sit up as the room spins. It spins so fast I’m afraid we’ll all throw up.

Pops comes into my room and sits on my bed. He says, Let’s call the doctor. I say, Mama called the doctor. What did he say? Pops asks. He said I need more salt in my food. Pops puts his head in his hands and whispers, It’s all my fault, Scags, it’s all my fault? Why? I ask, why is it your fault? It’s all from sweating so much and not having enough salt in me. She gets dehydrated, Mr. Morgenstern, Odessa says, as she takes the empty plate from me and leaves the room.

I tell Pops, Odessa must know, her daughter is a nurse. Odessa and her husband put their daughter through nursing school and now she works in a hospital. I’ve heard Odessa tell Mama that she is dating one of the doctors, but Mama tells Pops there wouldn’t be any colored doctors in the hospital. I want to tell Odessa that Aunt Money is dating a colored man. Wouldn’t it be wonderful If Aunt Money’s boyfriend met Odessa’s daughter and they fell in love and what if Aunt Money dated the doctor? This sure seems like such a good idea that I tell it to Pops and he pulls his hands away from his head and places both of them on my face. What a stinking little genius you are Scags. But Pops, there’s more to say so take your hands away. He lets go of my face and I feel the cool air wipe my cheeks. You see Pops, I say, if you get sick now like Mama and me and get it over with, then there won’t be anymore sickness for a long time. We will have used up our sick genies and can now have only healthy genies. They will laugh with us because we are so healthy. Don’t you want to get sick? Don’t you want to let Mama and me take care of you?

Is it so much fun being sick? Pops asks me. He pushes my hair off my forehead. I see him staring at his hand when he takes it away. I’m really not so sick now, I say, I’m going to get better right away.

He looks closely at his hand and turns it up and down. I grab it saying, What is it Pops? He turns his face away as if he was crying. I don’t hear any sobs but he is definitely crying and I don’t know what to do.

Odessa comes back into my room carrying a bowl of popcorn she made for me. She says, It’s got plenty of salt and butter on it, just the way you like it. I think, being sick can be fun. Why doesn’t Pops want to get sick like Mama and me? He pulls his handkerchief out of his back pocket and blows his nose. Odessa takes a look at him and leaves the room. Pops turns back to me and sticks his hand, his big hand, into the bowl and grabs a fistful of popcorn, opens his mouth wide and tries to put his whole fist in at once.

I start to laugh at him, I laugh and laugh until his mouth is full. He looks funny. His cheeks are like a chipmunk’s and his mouth is like a fish and his eyes, his eyes must hurt him he is staring so hard at me. But he shakes his head, stands up and is gone, chomping away on the popcorn. Waving his hand at me from behind his back like it is a tail. He goes to Mama and closes their door.