paint.
In this anxious time, war news brought a strange relief. My father sent a map of Europe with battles and casualties noted in his precise hand. The children gathered around, wide-eyed. “All for an archduke?” Horace marveled. “What was so all-fired wonderful about him ?” I explained the web of alliances that pulled countries into war and described battlefields scored with trenches, pocked by mortar shells, and lumped with bodies.
“The good thing,” Emma said, “is that it’s not our problem.”
During recess, Susanna tapped my arm and whispered: “Have you noticed that Alice hasn’t had a fit lately?”
“Perhaps she’s growing out of them. We can hope so, Susanna.”
E DNA F ULLER WAS the first to come directly to me. She’d walked five miles through the woods. She was rarely seen, but everyone knew of her husband’s cruelty and drunkenness, the family’s poverty, and the froth of warts on her face. I’d caught children playing “Ugly Edna.” One of the younger girls reported a nightmare of Edna “sticking her warts on me.” When I saw the real Edna at my door, I nearly stepped back in horror at the monstrous face pasted on a normal woman’s form.
“Jacob don’t give me any money, Miss Renner, but I was hoping you could fix my face for this.” She thrust out a Mason jar of jam and insisted I take it. I’ll have to touch that toad face, I thought, immediately disgusted by my own disgust. Suppose I was Edna, seeing others shrink from me, trapped with a man like Jacob? How could I not try to help?
I took her to the side of the house and touched the paint, pressing my other hand against her fleshy lumps. And the tremor came, weaker than with Alice, but constant. When I pulled away, Edna steadied me. In the dimming light, I noticed first her lithe, proud body, and only after that the few square inches of brow, cheeks, nose, and chin plagued by lumps and bulbs.
“Good luck, Edna. I hope it works.”
“Bless you for trying, Miss Renner. I’ve got to get back now. I left my babies alone.” She hurried into the woods, melting away as Ben did. Was it he who sent her to me?
Three days later at Bennett’s store, I saw a vaguely familiar, faded cotton jacket from the back. When the woman turned, only the posturelinked this woman to the one who’d come to my house. There were no warts or scars, just a handsome face framed by auburn curls. I stepped back, stunned. Edna had the grace to merely wish me good day, put her groceries in a basket, and hurry out of the store. By Sunday, Galway burned with news: Edna and her three children had left town on the night train, headed west. Raving about a stolen wife, Jacob had been arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct.
After church, people churned around me, softly asking when they could “come by.” Parents had a sudden need to discuss their child. Others had a pie, preserves, dressed game meat, needlepoint, or flower bulbs they’d been meaning to drop off as welcome gifts. Some mentioned pains I’d never imagined behind the smiling Sunday faces.
They came all afternoon. Buggies, wagons, and cars filled my yard. The postman’s wife had sick headaches. There were bad hips, racking coughs, bodies cruelly twisted by arthritis and deep pains of rheumatism. Charlie brought me his childish grandmother, tenderly prying open her burned and blistered hands. “She keeps playing with live coals.”
A woman brought a young boy with a deep, suppurating wound on his leg. “Take him to Dr. Bentley,” I pleaded. “Please, before the infection gets worse. Don’t count on me. Your son needs a doctor now.”
“I can’t,” she sobbed. “I don’t have no two dollars.” Coins passed silently up the line for her, and she hurried away.
The line curved around the house, slowly inching forward. The tremor didn’t come regularly, or always with the same intensity. It seemed indifferent to the severity of cases. When it came, strength ran out of me and
In this anxious time, war news brought a strange relief. My father sent a map of Europe with battles and casualties noted in his precise hand. The children gathered around, wide-eyed. “All for an archduke?” Horace marveled. “What was so all-fired wonderful about him ?” I explained the web of alliances that pulled countries into war and described battlefields scored with trenches, pocked by mortar shells, and lumped with bodies.
“The good thing,” Emma said, “is that it’s not our problem.”
During recess, Susanna tapped my arm and whispered: “Have you noticed that Alice hasn’t had a fit lately?”
“Perhaps she’s growing out of them. We can hope so, Susanna.”
E DNA F ULLER WAS the first to come directly to me. She’d walked five miles through the woods. She was rarely seen, but everyone knew of her husband’s cruelty and drunkenness, the family’s poverty, and the froth of warts on her face. I’d caught children playing “Ugly Edna.” One of the younger girls reported a nightmare of Edna “sticking her warts on me.” When I saw the real Edna at my door, I nearly stepped back in horror at the monstrous face pasted on a normal woman’s form.
“Jacob don’t give me any money, Miss Renner, but I was hoping you could fix my face for this.” She thrust out a Mason jar of jam and insisted I take it. I’ll have to touch that toad face, I thought, immediately disgusted by my own disgust. Suppose I was Edna, seeing others shrink from me, trapped with a man like Jacob? How could I not try to help?
I took her to the side of the house and touched the paint, pressing my other hand against her fleshy lumps. And the tremor came, weaker than with Alice, but constant. When I pulled away, Edna steadied me. In the dimming light, I noticed first her lithe, proud body, and only after that the few square inches of brow, cheeks, nose, and chin plagued by lumps and bulbs.
“Good luck, Edna. I hope it works.”
“Bless you for trying, Miss Renner. I’ve got to get back now. I left my babies alone.” She hurried into the woods, melting away as Ben did. Was it he who sent her to me?
Three days later at Bennett’s store, I saw a vaguely familiar, faded cotton jacket from the back. When the woman turned, only the posturelinked this woman to the one who’d come to my house. There were no warts or scars, just a handsome face framed by auburn curls. I stepped back, stunned. Edna had the grace to merely wish me good day, put her groceries in a basket, and hurry out of the store. By Sunday, Galway burned with news: Edna and her three children had left town on the night train, headed west. Raving about a stolen wife, Jacob had been arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct.
After church, people churned around me, softly asking when they could “come by.” Parents had a sudden need to discuss their child. Others had a pie, preserves, dressed game meat, needlepoint, or flower bulbs they’d been meaning to drop off as welcome gifts. Some mentioned pains I’d never imagined behind the smiling Sunday faces.
They came all afternoon. Buggies, wagons, and cars filled my yard. The postman’s wife had sick headaches. There were bad hips, racking coughs, bodies cruelly twisted by arthritis and deep pains of rheumatism. Charlie brought me his childish grandmother, tenderly prying open her burned and blistered hands. “She keeps playing with live coals.”
A woman brought a young boy with a deep, suppurating wound on his leg. “Take him to Dr. Bentley,” I pleaded. “Please, before the infection gets worse. Don’t count on me. Your son needs a doctor now.”
“I can’t,” she sobbed. “I don’t have no two dollars.” Coins passed silently up the line for her, and she hurried away.
The line curved around the house, slowly inching forward. The tremor didn’t come regularly, or always with the same intensity. It seemed indifferent to the severity of cases. When it came, strength ran out of me and
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