A Song for Nettie Johnson by Gloria Sawai

touched her on her hair, but she didn’t move. I touched her on the cheek and she twitched a little. Then she opened her eyes and looked at me.
    “I’m sick,” I said and walked out of the room and back to bed. In a minute she was in my room, leaning over me in the dimness.
    “Norma? Did you say you were sick?”
    “Yes.”
    “Where?”
    “All over.”
    “Here?” She touched my forehead.
    “Yes.”
    “Here?” She touched my neck.
    “Yes.”
    She turned on the lights. She looked at my face and neck. She felt the sheets and pillow. They were damp.
    “You are sick,” she said.
    “I know.”
    She walked down the hall to the bathroom and came back with a glass of water, a washcoth, and a bottle of aspirins. She gave me an aspirin and the water. Then she washed my face with a cold wet cloth, and my neck too. She covered me up and brought in an extra blanket.
    “You’ll be all right,” she said. “Try to get some rest.”
    I didn’t say anything. I just turned over on my side and went back to sleep.
    In the morning I was still sick. My chest was sore and my head ached. My arms and legs felt damp and heavy. My mother came in again and looked at me.
    “I’ll make a mustard plaster,” she said.
    My mother is not an ignorant woman by any means, but she is not a woman of science. She does not read up on the latest developments in medicine as my father does, even though he’s only a telephone man. She prefers remedies handed down by her mother and grandmother and even great-grandmother for all I know. Mustard plaster is a case in point. If you’re unfamiliar with that remedy, this is how it works: You make a paste of water, flour, and powdered mustard. I’m not sure of the proportions, but don’t use too much mustard – it burns. You spread this yellow paste on a piece of cloth cut out to fit the chest it’s going on. Then you lay another cloth over it and pin the edges together. You put this on the chest right next to the skin, and it’s supposed to do some good – I’m not sure what, except warm your chest considerably and make you sweat.
    She came upstairs carrying the mustard plaster, holding it in her two hands like a rolled-out sheet of dough. When I saw it I began feeling embarrassed and wished like everything I hadn’t gotten sick. I was eleven years old at the time, nearly twelve, and I was beginning to develop. I was the only one in my class beginning to show. Ever so slightly I know, but even so I wasn’t fond of the idea that someone would see me, even my mother.
    “I think I’m feeling better, better than last night,” I said. “I don’t believe I’ll be needing the mustard plaster.”
    “You’ll be up and on your feet in no time with a good strong mustard plaster,” she said. She laid the bulging cloth on a chair and lifted the quilt from under my chin, and the sheet too. She unbuttoned my pyjama top slowly and gently, and I felt myself getting more and more embarrassed. She spread out the fronts of my pyjama top; then she lifted the mustard plaster from the chair and laid it on my chest, tucking it under my neck and partway into my armpits and down to my stomach. She pressed her fingers on it ever so gently and I felt the pressing on the soft places on my chest where I’d begun to develop. I stared at the ceiling and didn’t say anything. Neither did she. It seemed as if she didn’t even notice, but she must have. I don’t see how she could have missed. She buttoned my pyjamas again and covered me with the sheet and quilt.
    “Have a nice time in bed today,” she said. “I’ll bring you some magazines to read and some juice.”
    Maybe it doesn’t make much sense to you how I felt about such things at the time. I certainly don’t feel embarrassed now. But now I’m thirteen and in grade seven and I’m fully developed. My mother has explained everything to me, about my body and sexual things. So now I understand all that. I have no problems in that line. However, when I