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Retirement Talk for Boomers, Seniors, and Retirees

Frog Spit

Jackie Spinks

                                                   Chapter Five

           Things were so good, they preened themselves—they were now on easy street, except for Laura driving them bonkers with her coughing.

           “Laura, quit your hacking.”

           “I’m trying.”

           “Well, try harder.”

           “I can’t help it.”

           “Why are you shaking?” said Selma

           “It’s cold in here.”
           “No, it’s not.  You’re imagining things.”
           Brita began to notice Laura’s every tremor and Laura, in turn, watched Brita.

           “Stop worrying, Mama. Please. I’m fine, really.” She balked at Brita’s hovering.  Brita retreated, but continued to watch with a growing apprehension.

           And the family now alternated between crabbing at Laura to eat more-- and leaving the vicinity when she started her coughing fit.

           “Laura, remember the starving kids of India, and how they’d love your food.”

           “I remember.”
           “So eat.”

           “Will you quit fluttering over me,” Laura slowly took another bite.  “You’re driving me nuts.”

           “Well, you’re putting a damper on things.” Adina said.

           “I’m sorry.”

           “If anyone puts a damper on things, it’s you, Adina.  You go around rattling your beefs like a pair of castanets,” Wil said.

           “When have I put a damper on things,’ Adina looked up from her embroidery, her latest ambition.

           “Just all the time.”
           “Hey, people,” Laura interjected, “It’s not Adina, I’m the one who’s the bellyacher—and the bellyache.”

           “Once out of Laura’s hearing, they’d sigh, “What do you think is the matter?”

           “Don’t know.”  Blue veins crossed Laura face.  She, now, worked so slowly her sisters finished her chores and around her wafted the constant odor of vomit.

           “Do you think she has the coughing sickness?”

           “Nah, she couldn’t even stand if she did.”

“Guess, it’s no use worrying.  What will be will be.  Says so in the Bible.”

           “Oh, piddle on that.”

           “I’m going to tell Ma on you, talking about the Bible like that.”

           “So what!  Like which of us hasn’t had something wrong with them?”

           “I’m telling you, Wil’s right.  We worry over nothing.  Everything’s going so good, we have to dig up something to worry about.”

           “I guess.’
           “No guessing about it.  There’s nothing wrong with Laura.  She’ll grow out of it.  Besides it’s up to God.  He’s a good God.  He won’t let anything happen to Laura.  Right?”

           Not trusting that line of reasoning completely, they listened with earnest concentration to stories of people who had been much more sick than Laura, people who were weak, vomiting, feverish-- and how those people returned to bouncing health.

           They collected a pirate’s chest full of these stories about different people more ailing than Laura, and who, with some special treatment were completely cured.  Everyone who stopped by the farmhouse shared one of these stories with the family.  And the story- teller held the rapt attention of an eager- to-believe audience.

           “Breathes like a baby, now.  Up at dawn.  Puts in a full day’s work.  Wish I had his get-up-and-go.”  (Putting in a full day at hard labor was the criterion for health and success amongst early Mormons.)

           The family would gobble up these stories about the miraculously cured, near death encounters, that reversed themselves in wondrous ways.  Some distant relative (they were now all in America) would stop by for the “Latter-day Saints forbidden coffee and relate a story about how they knew this fellow who ten years before, the docs gave two weeks to live, and now, believe it or not, was back at work, strong as an ox.

           “Or another story about how this aunt of someone was in the last stages, spitting blood…

           “Spitting Blood??!!” It was believed that once you reached this stage, you were a goner.

           “Yup”

           “And she up and around?”  They looked at each other excitedly, faith renewed.  Could it be?

           “And you’re sure she’s not spitting blood, anymore?” Brita had to reconfirm she’d heard the man correctly, that the storyteller had his facts straight.

           “Yup.”

           “How do you account for that?” Lars, who was now a landowner, had developed a more practical turn of mind and needed a description of what could be done to effect this wonder for Laura.

           “Just God’s will,” the narrator answered.  “And she drank a lot of milk.”

           “We’ll have to get Laura to drink more milk,” they looked at each other and nodded.

           “But Laura doesn’t like milk,” Selma said.

           “We’ll make custards and puddings and put a lot of milk in them” And for months they held on to their belief in the totem power of milk.  Brita, also, tried to entice her with her favorite food.

           “Not Lutefiske again,” someone would complain at the dinner table, then get dirty looks and an index finger to the lips.  And the one complaining would glance over at Laura, stooped over her lutefiske, taking slow bites and shut up.

           Laura would like lutefiske, in fact loved lukefiske, and most of the others hated it and had uncharitable thoughts about Laura and why couldn’t she like something like apple cake.  Why did it have to be lutefiske?

           “How about some nice hot milk and honey, everyone,” Brita would try to sell another product nobody wanted.

           “A chorus of “No!”  And then more index fingers to the lips to shut up. Remember the milk.  The first morning Brita arose and found blood on Laura’s pillow, she sank to the floor horrified.  Then pulling on some resource she didn’t know she had, she shook Laura and commanded, “Come on, you lazy lay-bout, it’s time to get up.”
           The family had only been out of Sweden for that many years and they’d come from an area where they’d never seen anything like this.  Maybe God was punishing Laura because of something they’d done.  First Waldemar.  Gone.  Just like that.  Plenty of food.  Now Laura-- who wouldn’t eat.

           Brita and Lars began to tithe, just in case God was angry with them and they’d offended Him by coming to America and not knowing their place, which God had meant for them—to be a servant to Sir Ericson.

           They seized on the idea of returning to Sweden.

           “We go back.” Lars said.

           “To what, Lars?” Brita responded.

           “We go, Laura will be okay there.”   But that idea had to be scuttled when they were unable to sell the farm and get passage to Sweden.

           So in order to let God know, he, Lars Larson, was doing his bit, Lars would recite every Sunday morning to a group of Mormon Swedes, mostly relatives, formidable swatches of morals from the Bible, while the kids cowered in the back of the room peering furtively at Laura, feeling like they were pilgrims a few miles ahead of the plague.  Or else, why was Pa so frightened?

           Lars always managed to stick a prayer in to let God know he’d appreciate it if He’d pay a little attention to this family here in America, who’d never asked for a favor before and never would again, but were collecting more than their share of heartache.

           And they sure would be grateful if He’d extend the same help He gave that fellow who couldn’t stand and now had get-up-and-go, and that woman spitting blood now fit as a fiddle.

           Brita, who had a personal relationship with God, assured them all that after talking it over with Him, she knew He’d reconsider.  All would be righted soon.  She had it on good authority.

           But the family was dubious about Brita’s inside tract with God.  While the whole family had a will to believe in magic and conversations with super-natural beings, they were hindered by too many disappointments from this source and their beliefs had dwindled into distrust about anything anybody said.  Even Angels that Brita said came and visited her and assured her God was paying attention to them—was questioned. 

           Every morning, now, before the cows were milked, the family would apprehensively check on Laura’s breathing, bending quietly over her sleeping form, then consult with each other.

           “What do you think?”

           “I think she looks a little better.  What do you think?”

           “I think so, too.  Did you see she asked for a piece of toast yesterday.”
           “But she only took a couple of bites.”
           “Well, maybe it was cold.  You know she hates cold toast.”

           “Yeah, everybody hates cold toast.”

           “I eat cold toast.”

           “That doesn’t mean you like it.”

           Laura opened her eyes.  “Boo!” She smiled at their eager, frightened faces.

           “Good-morning Laura.”  Then Adina, the oldest, turned to Selma and Signe, the youngest and said, “Go make Laura some hot toast.”

“You aren’t our boss.” Signe said.
”I’ll do it,” and Selma and tore into the pantry, grabbed the bread out of the

cup board, sliced it and slapped it on top of the stove to brown.

“Here Laura, nice hot toast,” they proffered a plate of toast to Laura.  Laura took a few bites.

“Will you quit hovering,” Laura stopped eating.

“Okay!  Okay!  You eat. We’re going.”  They turned to leave and Laura said.

“It’s super yummy, but would it be okay if I saved it for later.”
“How about some jam?”

“No, this will be fine.”  Later they found the toast in her handkerchief under her

pillow. They exhausted every avenue.  The milk had failed its promise.  They tried fruit, castor oil, mustard plasters, tansy tea, poultices, enemas, praying, steaming up the room, even blood-letting, which made her face turn even more blue and took away her voice.  After one of these exercises they’d sit in tense silence at the kitchen table hoping she’d get better on her own, but feared that wouldn’t happen.  Was there something they hadn’t tried?  They scrutinized each other.

“We’ll stumble onto something sooner or later,” they reassured each other.

“She’s getting so thin, it’s scary.”

“I feel like cramming the food down her throat.”

The sisters tried some black magic, communed with the Devil, spoke in tongues, writhed on the ground, and danced in the forest under the full moon, hoping for some assistance from that corner, as the other Side seemed pretty uninvolved.  Walking home they’d assuage each other’s fears, that they might have interfered with Lar’s link-up with the Big Command in the sky, then agonized over their bargain with the Devil. .Pulling themselves together they’d console each other, it didn’t matter, they couldn’t stand watching Laura die, even if they went to Hell for it.  After all, they had a lot of years left to work things out with the big G-man in the sky, but Laura didn’t.

“Come on Laura,” they’d encourage their frail sister, thinking a positive fix might work.  “How are we going to go blackberry picking without you to find the good patches?”

“There’s a good patch by Miller’s pond,” Laura murmured.

“But we need you along to help us.”

“Maybe, tomorrow.”
           “Dr. Smith would drive his buggy out to the farm, listen to her chest, hand Brita a prescription, drink some forbidden coffee, eat some of Brita’s famous pie, compliment Brita on making the best pie in the state, take fifty cents from Lars and leave.

“I don’t know why we get the doctor?  He never does anything.”

“Any other ideas?” Lars answered.

“No.”

“It isn’t like Laura doesn’t have attention.  She gets more attention from us than she’d get in any hospital or sanitarium.”  They looked at each other and nodded.

“But she doesn’t want attention.  She wants to be left alone.” Each morning, before going to school or milking the cows, the sisters, washed Lara’s sheets, that she’d drenched with night sweats, on the scrub board in big galvanized tubs.  They’d wring them out, the water, pink with blood, rinse them and then hang them out on the line.  When she coughed, they’d hold her head over pans of boiling water hoping the steam would clear her lungs.  They took turns (boys and Lars included) sleeping with her.  But the person sleeping with Laura got little sleep, as Laura was so restless, twisting and moaning between coughing fits, so that sleep came in half hour snips.  Also her bed partner would be up most of the night, holding the pan so she could vomit, steaming up the room to clear her lungs and buck her up by telling her once this particular fit was over she’d feel better.

As Lars had helped the extended family come to America now they took turns trying to help with Laura, with the small cousins taking turns trying to amuse Laura.  And she endured their attempts.

Lars, Brita, one of her brothers, or two of her sisters,  would carry, her now less passionate to live sixty pound frame,  outside and she’d show the kids how to make dandelion chains.

           “They’d take pretend tea with her and she’d play-act along with them, until she had a coughing fit. The kids would wait and watch.

           “Guess I’d better not play anymore,” and she’d wipe her mouth. As one year turned into two, Laura wore herself out even more with a fear that she might infect the family as it was now reported that this coughing sickness was contagious.  Up until then, because it ran in families, the doctors and scientists claimed it was inherited—a genetic thing.  But it had now been proven to be a contagious.

           “No, not any closer.  Don’t come any closer,” she said.

           “Why not?” and they’d approach her anyway.

`          “Please, no,” and she’d twist so her back was to them and when she was unable to turn she covered her mouth with her handkerchief and if her handkerchief was unavailable, she lifted the bottom of her dress and covered her face.  As time passed she preferred to spend almost all of her time on the horsehair couch in the kitchen, near the wood stove—alone..

           “Don’t worry, Laura.   We won’t catch it,” they’d placate her. (None of them did.)

           “If you’d only move me out of the house.” Laura said.

           “We like you here.”
           “Please move me out of the house.  Another place.  Please.”

           “So they moved Laura into a tent in the front yard of the farm.  Once installed in the tent, to her consternation, the family huddled even more closely around her in the tent.  The family’s universe was now concentrated in the tent, with her sisters running back and forth from the house to the tent, carrying bed pans, trays, medicine, clean sheets and towels.  Still trying this and trying that.

           Little cousins tried to peak under the tent, but older cousins shooed them away.  Fascinated by this forbidden tent, it lured them like a Coney Island Carousal.  This taboo place where they weren’t allowed, this place that was lit up at night by a kerosene lamp, that had bending and moving shadows, with moans and pleading voices and every once in a while an adult hurrying out carrying a bucket filled with bloodied towels, which made it as spooky and exciting as a Grimm’s fairy tale.  And the fact it was restricted, off bounds made it even more exciting.

           Lars sat on an overturned pail after dark, when he could no longer work in the fields and played on the accordion Laura’s favorite songs—In the Sweet Bye and Bye, Old Rugged Cross, I Love You Truly, and Sweet Sixteen. And the strains of the accordion filled the evening air, drowning out the croaking of the frogs, the trees rustling in the wind or the train whistle off in the distance.

           And when Wilfred wasn’t there with his Moose Malsey stories, they’d tell lame jokes for Laura’s amusement.

           “Do you know I saw a coyote this morning in my pajamas,” Walter would say.

           “How’d he get in your pajamas?” Lars would answer.

           “Did you know Walter keeps a tame raccoon in his room and at first the smell was terrible,” Lars said.      

           “Then the raccoon get used to it,” Adina played straight man this time. And the kids laughed, convinced this was the funniest joke they’d ever heard.

           And if they managed to make Laura smile, everyone lightened up--felt all was okay in their small world-- and exulted with loud and rapid conversations, everyone cackling, competing, twitting each other to tell some particular joke they’d told a dozen times before.  The family never lost hope that Laura would escape her final sleep.

           The whole family was now aware of how contagious tuberculosis was and  were mindful that there were whole families that had been afflicted and all had died.  But their love for Laura and each other superseded fear.  Besides, Laura wasn’t going to die.  Brita had it from the Top Administrator in the sky.

           Forgiving, generous-hearted Laura, suffered long—mostly because the family wanted so much to keep her.

           She expressed her longing now to leave this suffering, but because they all protested so fiercely they wanted her to stay with them, she stayed.  But finally death knocked at the door and when no one answered, walked in anyway.