"Mickey," he whispered weakly. "I want Mickey to sleep with me."
"But you might roll over on him and then he'd be dead. You wouldn't want him to die, would you?"
"No," he said, looking stricken at the thought, and then that terrible gagging began again, and in my arms he grew so cold. His hair was pasted to his sweaty brow. His blue eyes stared vacantly into my face as over and over again he called for his mother, "Momma, Momma, my bones hurt."
"It's all right," I soothed, picking him up and carrying him back to his bed, where I could change his soiled pajamas. How could he throw up again when there couldn't be anything left? "Chris is going to help you, don't worry." I lay beside him and held his weak and quivering body in my arms.
Chris was at his desk poring over medical reference books, using Cory's symptoms to name the mysterious illness that struck each one of us from time to time. He was almost eighteen now, but far from being a doctor.
"Don't go and leave me and Carrie behind," Cory pleaded. He cried out later, and louder, "Chris, don't go! Stay here!"
What did he mean? Didn't he want us to run away? Or did he mean never sneak into Momma's suite of rooms again to steal? Why was it Chris and I believed the twins seldom paid attention to what we did? Surely he and Carrie knew we'd never go away and leave them behind--we'd die before we did that.
A little shadowy thing wearing all white drifted over to the bed, and stood with big watery blue eyes staring and staring at her twin brother. She was barely three feet high. She was old, and she was young, she was a tender little plant brought up in a dark hothouse, stunted and withered.
"May I"--she began very properly (as we had tried to teach her, and she had consistently refused to use the grammar we tried to teach, but on this night of nights, she did the best she could)--"sleep with Cory? We won't do anything bad, or evil, or unholy. I just want to be close to him"
Let the grandmother come and do her worst! We put Carrie to bed with Cory, and then Chris and I perched on opposite sides of the big bed and watched, full of anxiety, as Cory tossed about restlessly, and gasped for breath, and cried out in his delirium. He wanted the mouse, he wanted his mother, his father, he wanted Chris, and he wanted me. Tears were pooling down on the collar of my nightgown, and I looked to see Chris with tears on his cheeks. "Carrie, Carrie . . . where is Carrie?" he asked repeatedly, long after she'd gone to sleep. Their wan faces were only inches apart, and he was looking directly at her, and still he didn't see her. When I took the time to look from him to Carrie, she seemed but a bit better off.
Punishment, I thought. God was punishing us, Chris and me, for what we'd done. The grandmother had warned us. . . every day she'd warned us up until the day we were whipped.
All through the night Chris read one medical book after another while I got up from the twins' bed and paced the room.
Finally Chris raised his red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes. "Food poisoning--the milk. It must have been sour."
"It didn't taste sour, or smell sour," I answered in a mumble. I was always careful to sniff and taste everything first before I'd give it to the twins or Chris. For some reason, I thought my tastebuds keener than Chris's, who liked everything, and would eat anything, even rancid butter.
"The hamburger, then. I thought it had a funny taste."
"It tasted all right to me." And it must have tasted fine to him, as well, for he'd eaten half of Carrie's hamburger on a bun, and all of Cory's. Cory hadn't wanted anything to eat all day.
"Cathy, I noticed you hardly ate anything yourself all day. You're almost as thin as the twins. She does bring us enough food, such as it is. You don't have to stint on yourself."
Whenever I was nervous, or frustrated, or worried--and I was all three now--I'd begin the ballet exercises, and holding lightly to the dresser that acted as a barre, I began to warm up by doing plies.
"Do you have to do that, Cathy? You're already skin and bones. And why didn't you ea
t today--are you sick, too?"
"But Cory so loves the doughnuts, and that's all I want to eat too. And he needs them more than I do."
The night wore on. Chris returned to reading the medical books. I gave Cory water to drink--and right away he threw it up. I washed his face with cold water a dozen times, and changed his pajamas three times, and Carrie slept on and on and on.
Dawn.
The sun came up and we were still trying to figure out what made Cory ill, when the grandmother came in, bearing the picnic basket of food for today. Without a word she closed the door, locked it, put the key in her dress pocket, and advanced to the gaming table. From the basket she lifted the huge thermos of milk, the smaller thermos of soup, then the packets wrapped in foil, containing sandwiches, fried chicken, of bowls of potato salad or cole slaw--and, last of all, the packet of four powdered- sugar doughnuts. She turned to leave.
"Grandmother," I said tentatively. She had not looked Cory's way. Hadn't seen.
"I have not spoken to you," she said coldly. "Wait until I do."
"I can't wait," said I, growing angry, rising up from my place on the side of Cory's bed, and advancing. "Cory's sick! He's been throwing up all night, and all day yesterday. He needs a doctor, and his mother."
She didn't look at me, or at Cory. Out of the door she stalked, then clicked the lock behind her. No word of comfort. No word to say she'd tell our mother.
"I'll unlock the door and go and find Momma," said Chris, still wearing the clothes he put on yesterday, and hadn't taken off to go to bed.
"Then they'll know we have a key."