“I s’pose not.”
“Even real mothers can’t watch out for kids the rest of their lives, and you’re just his foster mother.”
“So they keep telling me.”
Gilly hadn’t meant to be cruel, but she needed to make Trotter understand. “If he knows how to read and how to stick up for himself, he’ll be OK.”
“You got it all figured out, ain’t you Gilly, honey?” She relaxed into a smile. “Well, I ain’t stopping your boxing lessons. I just don’t care to watch.”
Boxing lessons? The woman was a throwback to another century. Gilly started to pass her at the door, but as she brushed by the big body, Trotter grabbed her and planted a wet kiss on her forehead. One hand went up automatically to wipe the spot, but a look at Trotter’s face, and Gilly stopped her arm midway.
“Don’t know what got into me,” Trotter mumbled, trying to turn it into a joke. “I know you don’t allow no kissing. Sometimes I just haul off and go crazy.”
“At Sunday school Miss Applegate calls it demon possession.”
“Does she now? Demon possession, is it?” She began to laugh so hard, Gilly could feel the boards vibrating under her feet. “Demon possession—Mercy, girl, I’d have to catch me a jet to keep one step ahead of you. Well—you better get going before the devil grabs me one more time.”
She waved her hand to land a mock spank on Gilly’s bottom, but by the time it swept the air, Gilly’s bottom along with the rest of her was well down the hall.
THE VISITOR
The week before Thanksgiving, Mr. Randolph came down with the flu. It wasn’t a bad case as flu goes, but he was an old man, and any kind of sickness, as Trotter said, was harder on the old. So with many rest stops for Trotter to recapture her wind, she and Gilly brought the rollaway cot down from the attic and set it up in the dining room, turning the never-used room into a sickroom for Mr. Randolph.
There had been a great discussion as to whether big lawyer son should be notified. Mr. Randolph was sure that if his son knew he was sick, he would be snatched away to Virginia never to return again. Trotter recognized this appalling possibility, but maintained that there was some moral obligation to inform next of kin when one took to one’s bed.
“Suppose he just shows up one day and finds you sick—then he won’t trust you no more. He’s sure to take you away then.”
But Mr. Randolph thought it worth the risk, and they had compromised by having Mr. Randolph move in, so Trotter could keep a close eye on him.
“Now what happens if you die on me?”
“I promise not to die in your house. You have my solemn oath.”
“Gilly, if he looks peaky, we carry him next door as fast as we can go. I ain’t gonna be sued by no big Virginia lawyer.”
Mr. Randolph raised up off the rollaway. “If I die on you, you can sue me, Mrs. Trotter. You can take me for every cent I have.” He lay back, giggling and gasping.
“Humph, every cent. You won’t even have no social security if you’re dead. Better not die, that’s all I got to say.”
“I promise not to die, but with these two beautiful ladies nursing me, I may decide to remain ill for a long, long time.”
“Well, that’s a chance I got to take, beautiful as I am. But if you ain’t well a week from today, you’re gonna miss out on the turkey and stuffings.”
So Mr. Randolph swore a solemn oath to be well by Thanksgiving. As it turned out, he was a little better, but by then both Trotter and William Ernest were down with the bug.
Trotter fought going to bed, but her fever was high, and she was too dizzy to stand up. Despite her protests, Gilly stayed home from school Tuesday and Wednesday to nurse the three of them, and Thanksgiving Day found her exhausted from going up and down stairs and from bedside to bedside.
It occurred to her that if she could get sick, too, no one would blame her for collapsing but, of course, she didn’t catch anything, except irritability from not sleeping properly and worrying. She called Mr. Randolph’s doctor, Trotter’s doctor, and the pediatrician, but no one gave her any help. The patients were to stay in bed and take aspirin for the fever.
Gilly chopped an aspirin in half with the butcher knife for William Ernest. One piece flew out of sight under the stove and the other piece, which she got down the boy’s throat with no little difficulty, came up again promptly, along with the bowl of soup she’d coaxed down earlier. She was afraid to try any more aspirin.
Trotter told her to wipe his face and arms and legs with a cold cloth, which seemed to help the fever a little, but the child was still miserable, and clean as she might, the smell of old vomit hung in the room.
The whole house was a mess, in fact. Even rooms like the living room and kitchen, which nobody but she went into, be
gan to look as though they had been bombed. She was simply too whipped to pick up after herself.
By Thursday she couldn’t have cared less about Thanksgiving. The turkey Trotter had bought was relentlessly defrosting on the refrigerator shelf, but there was nothing else to remind her as she sat at the kitchen table dressed in jeans and a shrunken T-shirt, chewing her late breakfast of bologna sandwich that the rest of the nation would soon be feasting and celebrating.