YELLOWJACK
By F.J. Nita Wilson
New Orleans
1878
Annette awakened in her own filth and tried to look
around the room. Her mouth was dry as cotton as her granny used to say and
strands of hair were stuck to the roof of her mouth; some matted and glued to her forehead. Her nightgown was damp and clinging to her
frail body, but the fever was gone and she could see bright light through the
closed shutters of her bedroom. She vaguely
remembered the men coming down the hall carrying the last member of her family
on a stretcher, but she would carry the image of her father’s once strong arm
swinging lose under the sheet as the tired men carried him out to the wagon
loaded with the bodies of friends and neighbors. She’d had funerals for her mama and the
twins, but by the time her Uncles died, she had to pay a man to leave their
bodies at the gates to the cemetery with a note to put them in the big family
crypt. Annette nursed her grandmother,
but then took sick. The last she
remembered of her sweet grandmother was her father’s begging the men with the
stretcher to be careful with his mother, as she was fragile. Annette must have outlived the yellow jack, but
was it a blessing or a curse? She
outlived it only to be left alone at sixteen in a house once full of joie de vivre, but now full of la mort
et la misere. She couldn’t think
about her losses right now, she needed to bathe. She hated being dirty and she smelled bad. If she didn’t get some life back into this
hot dank room, she would fade away and join her loved ones; she could hear
them, see them, smell them, moving in and out of the shadows of the once sunny room, living in a world she wouldn't see, but
she didn’t want to join them.
She
got up and stripped the bedclothes from the big bed and carried the heavy linens,
down the stairs into the back courtyard almost tripping over the end of a once beautifully
ironed, linen sheet now soiled with her own sweat and illness. She managed to put them in the big tub under the
water pump. A storm was coming up the river from the Gulf of Mexico; maybe it
would relieve the heat and take away the stench of death and sickness. She pumped water over the dirty wet sheets
and began to pour water from the big tin pitcher over herself and her
hair. She picked up the slippery bar of
bathing soap and soaped herself all over.
No reason why she couldn’t wash her nightgown while it was still on her;
people had surely done sillier things after such a plague. She peeked at the dirty
soapy water running out of her now clean hair, leaving her hair and body like
the horrible disease creeping out of the city after taking its greedy helping
of souls. She twisted her long hair
into a rope to get the excess water out and reached for the bathing towel
hanging stiffly from the last use a week or so ago.
She took off her nightgown and wrapped it in the big towel wrung out as
much water as she could and put it back on, clean, cool and damp on her
skin. Now, she could think. Picking up the big laundry paddle she pushed
the sheets down into the tub of soapy water and decided to leave them to
soak. The kitchen door was open and a
bird flew out when she approached, God
only knows what else has made a home in here, she thought and walked
in. It was strangely clean with a pot of
moldy soup on a back burner of the very cold stove. All the dairy products would be rancid and
any bread would be full of mold, but there were no dirty dishes in the big sink
and the table was clear, the big friendly kitchen just needed life; she jumped
at the sound of the front bell and could hear footsteps coming down the brick
walk into the courtyard and up the old wooden staircase.
She wiped her hands on a dish towel and grabbed a big apron left thrown
over a chair by Annie when she went home to nurse her own family. The men were
coming back down with their stretcher as she crossed the courtyard.
It’s
a strange feeling watching yourself in death, being carried with your dirty hair
and nightdress out into the street; how frail I look, how fragile, how
peaceful.
“But
wait,” she called, “I’ve washed my gown and my hair. Take this me, not that me. This me is clean and ready.” But no one noticed, no one heard and no one was
left to care. She turned back to the
kitchen and realized, she had no hunger, no thirst and no reflection in the big
mirror over the wash basin in the corner.
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