I had just swallowed my last bite of fried chicken when Daddy came back with a look on his face that couldn’t hide how upset he was. Truth be told, Daddy’s never been able to hide it when he’s not happy. And since Mama died, that’s pretty near every day.
“What’s wrong, Daddy?” I asked.
“I guess . . . Charlotte’s not up for visitors just yet.”
I gasped. “So we drove all this way and can’t see her?”
Daddy tried to smile. “No—I mean . . . yes . . . we can see her—just not face-to-face. We’re going to go over by the Family Center area, where there’s floor-to-ceiling windows. We have to stay outside, but we can at least wave at her through the window. Won’t that be nice?” His voice cracked a bit when he said that.
Waving at Charlotte through a window wasn’t at all what I’d been dreaming of, and it sure didn’t sound like much of a reunion. The thought of one more day of not being with my sissy made my eyes sting. But blinking those tears away, I reminded myself I was closer to my sissy than I had been for a long time. I took a little bit of comfort in that.
We walked over to an area full of empty benches and sat down. Then we stared up at the long window like we were in a movie theater, waiting for a picture show to start. ’Course, lately all the movie theaters had closed down, because everybody was worried about getting polio. Some people say you get it from dark places like the theater, but that’s not where Charlotte got her polio. Some people say you can’t know for certain where anybody catches it, but I do.
I know exactly where Charlotte got it. And I know exactly whose fault it is.
Just as I was stewing in my thoughts, a gust of wind blew on my legs, making me wish I had on my overalls instead of my church dress. But before I could rub my goose bumps away, a nurse in a white uniform and a white cap appeared at the window. She waved to us and then gestured at someone else coming into the room.
And then I saw her. I saw Charlotte!
She sat in a wheelchair with her yellow hair pulled back off her face, and was wearing a sweater and a blanket over her lap. She waved at us, and I leaped off the bench and waved back, with both my arms over my head. Then I jumped up and down for her, and even somersaulted in the grass. I heard Granddaddy chuckle and imagined Charlotte chuckling too.
Then I stopped and really looked at her. My sissy. My Charlotte.
She looked at me and raised her hand to the glass and rested it there.
How could she be so close to me but feel so far away?
I reached out my hand like there was even a smidge of a chance I could feel her palm. I don’t know how long I stood there like that, but my arm was getting stiff when I heard Daddy announce, “We probably should be headin’ back.”
After blowing more kisses than I could count and catching a couple kisses that Charlotte managed to blow, we got back in the car.
“Wait—we can’t go!” I yelled.
“Pixie, it’s no use.” Granddaddy sounded sad when he spoke. “We can’t be with her today, no matter how much we want to.”
“Not that.” I shook my head as I held up the brown bag. “We forgot her cookies.”
Daddy nodded. “Can’t forget the best medicine, can we?” He took the bag and headed back into the hospital while me and Granddaddy waited in the car, pretending our sniffling was only due to the cold weather.
CHAPTER 7
When Daddy returned, he started the car for the long trip home. But before putting it in gear, he looked at me in the back seat and handed me an envelope with my name written on it. In Charlotte’s handwriting!
She wrote me a letter!
I didn’t want to open my letter yet. I wanted to be by myself when I did, and Daddy and Granddaddy must’ve understood, since they didn’t question me.
Holding it close, I noticed something odd about it. “Why does it feel a little wet?”
“As a precaution,” Daddy told me, “they steam everything that comes from a patient’s room, gettin’ rid of any possible germs.”
Even though the damp letter felt strange to my touch, I held it gentle on my lap the whole way home, as if I was holding a newborn baby.
As soon as we got home, I jumped out of the car. Tearing through the porch door, I let it slam behind me. All I cared about was getting to my room to read my letter.
I heard Grandma calling—probably to lecture me—but her calling stopped after the sound of Granddaddy’s voice. I sat on my bottom bunk, but something didn’t feel right, so I climbed up to Charlotte’s bunk.
Even without a mattress, it felt right to be on her bed.
Sitting cross-legged, I looked down at our room, imagining what Charlotte used to see each morning. There wasn’t a whole lot to look at, just an old brown dresser in the corner, which now only held my clothes. And next to the dresser was a desk that used to be Mama’s. Actually, everything here used to be Mama’s, which used to make me and Charlotte feel happy, imagining Mama using it all.
I held the letter in my left hand, and with my right hand I traced the outline of my name. I couldn’t help but smile at the honest-to-goodness proof that my sissy was still in my world. I took a deep breath and opened the letter, making sure not to rip the still-damp paper.
Dear Pixie,
Hi! How are you? How’s school? And how are things with Miss Beany? I hope you are giving her a chance and have found out how nice she is. Tell her I said hi.
Guess you know by now I have polio. When they first told me, they called it “infantile paralysis,” and that sure sounded bad! But I was so sick back then that I didn’t even care. Then later I heard one of the nurses talking about my bad case of polio, so I understood.
I really don’t remember much about how or when I got here. They tell me my fever was so high, I was acting crazy . . . They call it “delirious.” I swore I saw Mama then. She looked so pretty. I wanted to run to her, but my legs wouldn’t work. She smiled at me and disappeared.
Maybe it was just the fever—but it gave me such comfort.
For weeks and weeks (it’s hard to remember what day it is), I was in a room all by myself, called “isolation.” I remember my legs hurt so much, especially my left one. I couldn’t even have a sheet on it. If someone even touched it, it felt like they were digging a fork into it. Can you believe that? I tried not to cry. But I did.
Some of the nurses here are afraid of catching polio. There’s one that made the student nurses from Indiana University check on me whenever my fever was high. And there’s one who is my favorite. She’s Nurse Margie, and she stays with me when I’m having a bad night.