Apron Strings by Mary Morony Page B

outta the car. We went back to the house when we heard they was gonna have to cut off Cy’s leg to get’m free. About supper time, six men brought Mista Gus through the front do’ and up the stairs to his room on a do’ someone done pulled off a shed and made it up like a stretcher. The tired lookin’ doctor trailed behind. All the men was covered in blood. I run up and down stairs I know a hundred times that night bringin’ bandages, towels, sheets, water, and soap, while Miz Bess directed the goin’s on like a field boss. Miz Pansy stayed with Miz Ginny in that very same room Miz Ginny and I had passed time in earlier. Finally, the sedative the doctor gave Miz Ginny took effect. Then Miz Pansy stepped and fetched as much as me. Mama was nowhere to beseen, and I didn’t have the time to catch my breath, let alone ask where she was.
    Plumb worn out, I fell asleep on the cot in the storeroom back of the kitchen without even botherin’ to take off my filthy clothes. Miz Pansy shook me awake a few hours later. “Git on outta here, girl, I need to git off these feet. You best be gettin’ on home. I ‘spect they gon’ need you. Tell yo’ sister Roberta git on up here, an’ you stay wit’ yo’ mama, hear?” I nodded. “Well then, move.”
    If I live forever, I don’t expect I’ll forget the dreadful sight at home. The room smelled of burned meat and blood. Mama looked a hundred and ten. Cy was lyin’ in the middle of the room on a board held up by two sawhorses, his leg still bleedin’. There was no mistakin’ that he was dyin’, and Mama, by her look, weren’t far behind ‘im. Wilson, my sister Alberta said, had only just passed out from exhaustion. “Thank the Lord, too,” she said. “He ‘bout drove us all mad with his carryin’ on.” Then she added, a little more softly, “Poor soul lost his father and most likely Cy, too.” She shook her head slowly back and forth.
    “Miz Pansy say Ro best be gettin’ up to the big house. They gon’ need her ‘fore long,”
    “Hmmph, we ain’t no slaves! They jest gon’ have to do wit’out,” Roberta sniffed.
    Alberta said, “We don’ need to be runnin’ ‘round all the time fo’ them, no way.”
    Roberta’s face darkened like the sky befo’ a storm. She nodded toward Cy. “You see this? Po’ boy don’ even rate no aspirin, and we s’posed to keep slavin’ for them? Ya’ll heard ‘em, ‘Here boy, bite down on this stick, we gonna take yo’ leg off.’” She shook her head again, and her eyes lingered on Cy.
    “Ro,” I said, “you know good as me he was out cold when they cut off dat leg. Stop all the time lookin’ at what you ain’t got.”
    “I tell you what
you
ain’t got,” Alberta started in. “You ain’t got the sense of a canary, and po’ Mama ain’t got no sleep and she ‘bout worn out. She won’ let nobody do nothin’ for ‘im, like she can keep the po’ soul livin’ on the strength of her will.
That
’s what you got, Ethel, but you ain’t gonna have Mama or that boy, neither one, if we don’ do somethin’ for Mama quick.”
    “Ro, go on up to the big house,” I said. “Find the doctor or Miz Bess and axe ‘em if we can have one a ‘em powders they give Miz Ginny. I’ll see if I ken talk some sense into Mama while you gone.” Roberta took off at a dead run.
    “Mama,” I said. “You got to try to rest.” She wouldn’ even look at me. Roberta was back in no time. “Miz Pansy was in the kitchen lookin’ dead on her feet when I gots there. I told her I needed one a ‘em powders like the doctor give Miz Ginny for Mama. She reached in her apron pocket and pulled out two packets and tol’ me to put it in some warm water. She say, ‘Tell Miz Bertha I say drink this, and if’n she don’t listen, ya’ll tell her I’m comin’ down there my own self and makin’ her.’ Den she say, ‘I best be gettin’ back up ta da house cuz Miz Bess can hardly stand up herself.’”
    It would’ve been