Homesick (8 page)

My father was still not home from the hospital.

I had left the seashore and was in the Great West when my father finally came home in the late afternoon. He looked tired.

“She has phlebitis in both legs,” he said. “That means she has a clot in the veins so that her legs swell up. She may have to stay in bed a long time.”

“What about her middle? Lin Nai-Nai says there's something wrong with her middle.”

My father sighed as if he wished Lin Nai-Nai had kept still. “The doctor thinks that is going to be all right.”

“Can I see her?”

“Not for a day or two.” My father lay down on the sofa and fell right to sleep.

The next day I stayed glued to the Bobbsey Twins. I was glad that there were so many books. I was glad that I didn't have to worry about how any of them would turn out. When my father came back from the hospital, I kept my finger in my place.

“How is she?” I asked.

“She's doing all right.” He spoke in a strong voice and smiled as he sat down on the top step of the porch. “And I have a surprise for you.”

I closed the book. “Animal, vegetable, or mineral?”

He laughed. “Animal,” he said. “Jean, you have a baby sister.”

I heard the words all right but they seemed to dangle in the air. I couldn't make them travel all the way into my head.

“Are you joking?” I whispered.

“No, I'm not joking. You have a baby sister.”

The word “baby” registered first. “A boy or a girl?” I asked and then the whole sentence hit me. I threw the Bobbsey Twins into the air so they landed in a jumble, pages topsy-turvy. “I have a baby sister,” I yelled. I jumped up and threw myself at my father. “I have a baby sister.” It was the most wonderful sentence I had ever heard. I ran inside and told Mrs. Jordan. “I have a baby sister.” I ran to Lin Nai-Nai's room. “I have a baby sister.” I went back to the porch where both Mr. and Mrs. Jordan had joined my father.

“What does she look like?”

“Small,” my father said. “Brown hair like you. She was born six weeks early but the doctor says she'll be fine.”

Suddenly I realized that my mother and father had known about this baby for a long time. Probably everyone had known but me.

“Why didn't you tell me before?” I asked.

“Mother was having a hard time,” my father said. “She didn't want you to worry.”

“Did Mrs. Hull know?”

“Yes. Mother told Mrs. Hull.”

So Andrea had known too and had probably been told not to tell. But how could I not have noticed? I asked myself. How could I not have seen what was going on under those loose dresses? There was part of me that might have felt cross but I couldn't feel cross today. There wasn't room in me for anything but a wild, tumbling excitement. Just think, I told myself, I would never be alone again. There'd always be another child in the family. Of course there'd be eleven years between us, but my father had a sister, my Aunt Margaret, who was twenty years younger than he was. Who cared about age? I had a sister, oh, I had a sister!

“When can I see her?”

“Tomorrow, I think,” my father said.

I couldn't stay still. I raced up the hill in the sunshine, my heart singing. When I ran out of breath, I threw myself down on the grass and before I knew it, I had begun a new picture album. Me reading to my sister. Me walking her to kindergarten the first day of school. Me picking her up when she fell down. And the older she grew, the more we would share.

The next afternoon when I walked down the hill to the hospital with my father, I carried two bunches of daisies, one for my mother, one for my sister.

“Now that the baby has been born,” my father said, “we think the worst is over for Mother. But until her legs get well, she'll have to stay in the hospital. Maybe for most of the summer. If she's coming along all right, I'll be going back to Hankow next week for a while.”

“Well, I'll visit her,” I said. “Every day.”

“Yes. You and Mrs. Jordan can go together. Or you and Lin Nai-Nai. But I want you to remember one thing. You mustn't worry Mother. If something goes wrong or if you don't feel well, just don't mention it. We want her to get well fast. All right?”

“All right.”

We went to see the baby first. She was in a basket in the doctor's office where he could keep an eye on her. He got up from his desk, all smiles. “She's doing just fine,” he said.

She was tiny. And kind of puckered-looking, the way your hands get if they've been in the water a long time, but I knew this was just because she was new. Her hands were folded into two little fists and when I slipped a finger into her fist, she held on. “I'm your sister,” I said. Even if she couldn't understand, I wanted to tell her. “I'm your sister, Jean.” I put the daisies in a glass beside the basket.

Then we went to see my mother. She smiled when she saw me and held out her hand. “How do you like your sister?” she asked.

“I think she's the most wonderful baby in the whole world.”

“We'll have to think of a name for her before your father goes back to Hankow.”

Of course I had already decided what her name should be, but I remembered I wasn't supposed to upset my mother. I waited until the Jordans and my father and I were sitting at the supper table.

“I think she should be named Marjorie,” I announced.

My father was cutting up his meat. “I don't believe Mother would like that,” he said. “You have to think how the first name goes with the last name. Marjorie Guttery. That doesn't sound nice.”

“I think it does.”

“We've talked about a few names. Ann. Ruth.”

I shook my head. “Too short. Like mine, they're both too short.”

Every time I saw the baby in the next few days, I thought she looked more and more like a Marjorie, but I knew that was a lost cause. All I hoped was that whatever they called her, she wouldn't sound too good. I didn't want a sister who would be one-hundred-percent perfect.

The night before he left for Hankow, my father told us it was decided. My mother had picked the name.

Miriam.

Straight out of the Bible, I thought. A name for a saint.

“I hate it,” I said.

My father looked at me over the rim of his coffee cup. “Well, don't tell Mother.”

“Do you want me to lie?”

“I think you're smart enough,” he said, “to make her happy without actually telling a lie.”

After my father had gone the next day, I went to the hospital with Mrs. Jordan.

“How do you like the baby's name?” my mother asked.

“I think it's a nice Bible name,” I said primly.

My mother turned to Mrs. Jordan. “Has Jean been good?” she asked. Now that my father had left, I knew that my mother was worried that I'd be a bother to Mrs. Jordan. I knew that every time we visited, my mother would ask the same question. “Has Jean been good? Has Jean been good?” All summer long. I felt like a coolie who has had a load strapped to his back before going up the mountain.

Later while Mrs. Jordan was talking to the doctor in the hall, I slipped into his office for a private visit with my sister. Someday, I thought, she'd have a load on her back too.

“Listen,” I told her, “I don't care what your name is, I just want you to know that I'm not going to worry about your being good. And don't expect too much of me either. We're together, remember. We're sisters.” I could hardly wait for her to understand.

My life took on a pattern now. Since I could never stay long at the hospital, there was a lot of time to fill up. Mrs. Jordan introduced me to some other children, and when I wasn't reading in my window seat with Kurry or writing letters at my blue desk, I was often with Peggy Reynolds who lived two houses down. We played tennis and checkers and I lent her the Bobbsey Twins and she lent me the Rosemary books. Once the Jordans took me to the Cave of the Immortals in the West Valley. At the temple inside the cave, I could go up to the altar and talk to the Rain God if I wanted to, but I didn't have a thing to say to him. My prayers had nothing to do with weather.

What I really liked best that summer was going on little breakfast picnics with Lin Nai-Nai. We had found a fish pool in a park not too far away and while the fog was still lifting from the ground, we would sit there in the midst of bluebells and tiger lilies and eat our hard-boiled eggs and bananas and drink the tea we'd brought in a thermos bottle. Sometimes I gave Lin Nai-Nai English lessons while we ate. She could carry on a conversation now about health and one about weather, but she couldn't manage to say “Miriam.” So we settled on Mei Mei, the Chinese word for Little Sister, which I liked better anyway.

After three weeks, my father came back, but he could only stay for a few days. We went down together to the hospital and found Mother sitting up in a chair, her legs propped on a stool. The baby had been moved into her room. Miriam had lost her pucker now and when she looked at me, I imagined she knew who I was.

“She had her fingernails cut yesterday,” my mother said.

That was wonderful news, I thought. If her fingernails were growing, the rest of her must be hurrying up too. I leaned over the basket to see.

“Would you like to hold her?” my mother said.

I had never supposed that they would trust me to hold her. I sat in a chair and my father placed her gently in my arms. She didn't cry. She just looked up at me and I looked down at her. I'm so lucky, I thought. Who would have dreamed I would be so lucky?

When I went back to the house, I told Lin Nai-Nai about it. The next morning at breakfast I was telling the Jordans when one of the servants came in with a note and gave it to my father. He tore it open and as he read, his shoulders slumped. When he looked up from the note, there was emptiness in his eyes.

“Miriam died last night,” he said. “They don't know exactly why.” He pushed back his chair. “I must go right down to the hospital.”

I didn't recognize my voice when I spoke. “Will you tell Mother?”

“She knows.”

“But I thought—” I didn't go on. I thought something awful would happen to my mother if she were even a little bit upset. I was afraid that now she might break in two. Mr. Jordan went out of the house with my father and Mrs. Jordan put her arms around me. I think she expected me to cry, but I didn't feel like crying. I felt numb. Wooden. Oh, I should have known, I told myself. It was too good to be true. I should have known.

Later that morning my father took me to see Mother. She was lying white-faced in bed and she put up her arms to hug me, but she didn't say a word about Miriam. It seemed to me that I would never dare say Miriam's name to my mother for fear of what it might do to her.

In the afternoon Lin Nai-Nai came to me with a little picnic basket in her hand. “We'll go to the bluebells,” she said. “That will be good for you.”

Still wooden, I followed her. We sat down by the pool and she spread out the picnic. Almond cookies too—my favorite. I tried to eat but I couldn't.

“Cry,” Lin Nai-Nai said. “Put your head down,” she patted her lap, “and cry. It's the only way.”

“I don't feel like crying. I don't feel anything.” But suddenly I did feel. Not grief. Anger. It flooded through me. I was furious. At first I couldn't figure out whom I was furious with, but then I knew. I was mad at Dr. Carhart. I picked a daisy and began ripping off the petals. Who did he think he was? What did he know? Standing up in a pulpit and saying death was a glory! Nothing to be sad about! What kind of glory could it be for a little baby who wouldn't know if she was in a dark tunnel or not? I took a bite of hard-boiled egg and chewed it furiously. I ate my whole lunch that way. In a rage. Then we went back to the house.

That night I tried to write to my grandmother but no words came. It would be weeks and weeks before she'd know that Miriam had died. In fact, she was probably still getting used to her being born. She was still happy. I crumpled the paper.

We had a funeral for Miriam in the living room. My mother couldn't leave the hospital, of course, but my father and the Jordans had invited a few friends. The tiny white coffin was set on a table. There was a wreath of flowers on it but no bluebells. I ran out and picked some bluebells and put them in the center of the wreath before the service started. We sang hymns but I didn't sing. There was no song in me. The minister from the Kuling church read the twenty-fourth psalm and said a prayer, but he didn't mention glory, thank goodness. Then because Miriam was to be buried in Hankow, two coolies carried the little coffin down the long narrow path. Standing alone with my father on the porch, I thought I had never seen anything as sad as that tiny coffin winding down that steep mountain, bumping along under two poles that the coolies carried on their shoulders. Every bump was another never. Never, never, never, never.

When the coffin was out of sight, my father put his arm around me. “You know, Jean,” he said, “you have been very, very good through this.”

Suddenly something inside me exploded. I wheeled around at my father. “Good!” I shouted. “That's all anyone can think about. Good! I haven't even thought about being good. I haven't tried to be good. I don't care about being good. I have just been
me.
Doesn't anyone ever look at
me?”

My father had sat down in a rocking chair and had pulled me onto his lap. I was crying now. All those tears that had been stored up inside were pouring out. My whole body was shaking with them. My father held me close and rocked back and forth.