The Curious World of Calpurnia Tate (13 page)

Sheets of water surged under the front door and we were forced to retreat to the stairs. Then the water drove us up the stairs to the bedrooms. By five o'clock, the whole island was underwater due to a great storm surge. We saw sofas, buggies, and even a piano floating by, to which a man and child clung. We sang hymns and prayed in an attempt to sustain our spirits. The windows shattered in the shrieking wind, forcing us to shelter under mattresses from the hail of broken glass. The water reached the top of the stairs, and we had to make the decision to climb on the roof and strike out for other shelter, or else ride out the storm with the house. An agonizing decision, with all our lives hanging in the balance. At that very moment, the whole house moved beneath our feet like a living thing; the groan of parting timber made our blood run cold, and the porch and the front of the house were torn away. Gus decided that we should abandon the house and try to reach the Ursuline convent, a three-story brick building a few blocks away. He begged the Alexanders to do the same, but Mr. Alexander would not, instead tying his terrified wife and screaming children to Grandmother's four-poster bed. With the next horrible shriek of cracking wood, the house broke apart around us. We, along with Dr. Pritzker, were cast into the water on our makeshift raft, straight into the teeth of the howling storm.

Several shutters lashed together floated by, somebody else's raft, now unoccupied, and we managed to haul ourselves partly upon it. I looked back to see the remains of the disintegrating house subsiding into the waves. We never saw the Alexanders again.

The water was freezing cold, and all around there was only blackness, but we clung to that raft as to life. The wind tore at our clothes, and the rain hit us with the force of bullets. Gus cried out that he could see a light in the distance, and he and Dr. Pritzker tried to steer us toward it. Halfway there, Dr. Pritzker was swept away into a tree where scores of poisonous snakes had sought shelter and sustained the injuries that are still evident.

At intervals the full moon appeared through thin clouds, lighting the scene of devastation around us. Gus pushed us toward the light, which we could now see was a lamp in the upper windows of the convent. A few minutes later, the light receded, and we realized we were caught in a whirlpool of debris that was now taking us away from our destination. When it carried us back nearer the light again, Gus, with a mighty effort, propelled our raft out of the whirlpool, but in doing so lost his grip and floated away from us. Oh, Margaret, I will never forget that moment, not as long as I live. I called his name in anguish, and a few seconds later, I heard his answering cry from out of the darkness. He was alive! But his calls slowly grew fainter and fainter, along with the hope in my heart.

We reached the safety of the convent, where the nuns and other refugees pulled us to safety through the upper-story windows. The good sisters gave us dry clothes, although I confess that at that point I no longer cared if I lived or died. I prayed for Gus's safety through that long black night.

The next morning, Sunday, the water had receded, and the convent stood alone amid the desolation of broken timbers and wreckage. A great and eerie silence descended. There was no keening, no lamenting, no wailing in grief as one would expect after misfortune of this magnitude. The survivors were all too numb to mourn properly. We picked our way through mountains of rubble toward the medical college, and there we were joyfully reunited with Gus, whom providence had sent a floating door to carry him to safety.

And now, Margaret, having laid out this tale of tragedy beyond measure, I resolve to never speak of it again. My dear sister, I remain forever,

Your loving Sophronia Finch

I put the letter back, my stomach heaving. No wonder Aggie could not speak of it. I realized I had been insensitive to her terrible trauma and resolved to treat her gently from then on. And I told myself I would never think of Galveston again. But of course the more you tell yourself you won't think of something, the more you end up thinking about it. Like it or not.

The next day I overheard a couple of worried discussions between my parents. Then Dr. Walker arrived, a tall, somber individual afforded great respect in our house and habitually clothed in funereal black. Typically we children scattered on his arrival like an ant colony when you poked it with a twig, as he invariably stuck some kind of cold metal instrument into your ears or mouth, or applied an icy stethoscope to your chest. (According to family lore, when I was afflicted with croup at age three, I asked to borrow his stethoscope to listen to my teddy bear's heart, which request he frostily declined. Since I have no memory of this, I can't defend myself one way or the other.)

The doctor and Aggie and Mother congregated in my room and shooed me out, shutting the door firmly in my face. I lingered at the keyhole for want of something better to do. From inside, I could hear a series of muffled commands.

“Open wide and say ‘ah.'”

“Ahhhhh.”

“Now take some deep breaths through your mouth.”

Since I was not on the receiving end of the exam, I found it all much more interesting than usual. When I heard his bag snap shut, I knew it was time to skedaddle.

Mother and Dr. Walker walked downstairs to the parlor. Mother was wringing her hands and, in her distraction, did not notice me lurking in the hall.

“Calm yourself, Mrs. Tate,” the doctor said. “I can find nothing physically wrong with her except a mild degree of anemia. This is easily treated by driving iron nails into several apples, letting them sit for a few days, and then making sure she eats one every day at breakfast. Do this for six weeks, and the anemia will be cured. No, the main problem here is a severe case of neurasthenia, also known as nervous prostration. Her nerves have borne a severe shock, and curing this will likely take months, not weeks. Try to provide her with soothing pastimes to calm her mind, such as sewing, and quiet music, and nonstimulating books. But I caution you not to give her novels—no, no, novels tend to excite the imagination and foment the mind, the exact opposite of the effect we are seeking in this case.”

Really? Was this why Mother was always trying to pry Mr. Dickens and Miss Alcott from my hands, to replace them with knitting and sewing?

“No, no,” he went on, “I find a steady, improving, educational biography to be useful in such cases, the longer the better. You will find such reading material to be just what the doctor ordered.” He followed this remark with a strange rusty cough. It took me a moment to identify the parched sound as a laugh, the creaking laugh of a man with a dreadful sense of humor.

He went on. “I will provide her with a stimulating tonic of coca leaf tea for the mornings, along with a soothing draft of laudanum for bedtime. Be mindful that she does not reverse them. And now, I bid you good day.”

Mother followed Dr. Walker out to his buggy, spouting effusive thanks.

I ran upstairs to my—our—room. Aggie was fully dressed and lying on my—her—bed. She stared unmoving at the ceiling.

“Am I dying?” she said listlessly.

“Aggie!” I was shocked to the core. “Of course not.”

“What does the doctor say?”

“He says you have anemia, and we're to give you iron apples. He says you've had a shock, and he's prescribing dull biographies for you to read.”

She propped herself on an elbow and stared at me with a flutter of curiosity. “Really? He sounds like a quack to me.”

“No, no, he's the best doctor in town.”

“That's not saying much. I'll bet he's the only doctor in town.”

“Well, yes. But he's also prescribing you some medicine to make you feel better.”

“Okay,” she said, and flopped back on the bed.

I volunteered for apple duty. Mother was so pleased that I was “showing an interest” that I didn't correct her and tell her I was actually viewing the whole thing as a sort of experiment. Once a week I drove several large two-penny nails into seven apples, and every morning I extracted the nails from one of them, the pale pulp now stained a rusty brown. In the interest of Science, I filched a slice. It was like licking a cast-iron pipe.

Aggie slowly improved, but then we almost had a setback when she said one morning, “I had a terrible dream last night. I dreamed there was a coral snake in the room.”

“It's not a coral snake,” I said before I could stop myself. Oops. I clapped a hand over my mouth.

“What do you mean?” she said, looking at me curiously.

“Nuffin'.”

Dr. Walker's tonics proved to be helpful, but then the most helpful thing of all happened: She received a letter from Galveston that improved her mood overnight. She didn't share the contents with us but we figured it had to be from her parents. Months would pass before we'd find out just how wrong we were.

The day following the letter, I got home from school and found her up and dressed with her hair in a silly elaborate coiffure, taking a general interest in her surroundings.

“Hello, Aggie,” I said, all politeness. “You look like you're feeling better.”

“What,” she said, “is that
thing
?”

“What thing?”

“That thing on the dresser,” she said, pointing at Sir Isaac Newton.

“Oh. That thing, as you call it, is a black-spotted newt. He's an amphibium, as I'm sure you can probably tell, of the family Salamandridae, genus
Diemyctylus
.”

“Why are you speaking that gibberish?”

This shocked and offended me. “Gibberish? It's hardly gibberish. It's Latin. It's what they call the Linnean Binomial Nomenclature. It's the way we Scientists classify the whole natural world.”

She did not look impressed.

“Watch this,” I said. “I'll feed him a fly. I've got some dead ones in a tin, and I tie them on a thread, which isn't easy, believe me, and then I dangle them over him to stimulate his appetite. He doesn't seem all that interested if they're not moving.”

“That's disgusting. Get rid of it.”

My goodness. A rapid recovery and a tart tongue to boot. “He's mine,” I said, “and I'm studying him. You better not touch him.”

“Never.” She shuddered.

Poor Sir Isaac. What did the world have against him? And with such an adverse reaction from Aggie, good thing she thought the snake was only a dream.

That night, after climbing into our bed and pallet, I said, “So what's in that funny-looking case in the wardrobe?”

“You better not touch it.”

“Okay, but what's in it? Is it a concertina? It's some kind of musical instrument, right?”

“That proves how little you know. Be quiet and go to sleep.”

“Not until you tell me what it is.”

She sighed. “It's a type-writing machine, and you better not touch it. I'll tell your mother if you do.”

“Gosh.” As far as I knew, there was precisely one of these newfangled devices in town, owned by the
Fentress Indicator
, our local paper. You rolled a piece of paper into it and then tapped out your message on the keys, almost like playing the piano. The results were marvelous, the print as neat as a page in a book.

“Will you show it to me sometime?”

“No. Go to sleep.”

“Why did you bring it?”

“Shut up and go to sleep.”

Well, honestly, there was no keeping me away from it after that. The next day while she was taking a bath, I pulled open the wardrobe door and studied the position of the case to make sure that I—crafty Calpurnia!—could return it to the exact same spot. I lifted it out, amazed at its weight. Gad, it weighed a ton. Breathless with anticipation, I unlatched the lid. It had apparently survived the Flood in pristine condition, black and gleaming and complicated, with the name
UNDERWOOD
in handsome gold print across the top. Each letter of the alphabet had its own round key, but they were all out of order in a terrible jumble. How could you possibly find the one you wanted? The many complicated levers and dials made me afraid to touch it. Why had she brought it? Surely it worked, and surely she knew how to use it; nobody in their right mind would lug something so cumbersome all the way across the state if they didn't mean to use it. I carefully closed the lid and left it exactly as I'd found it.

The next morning, Aggie joined us at the breakfast table. J.B. stared at her with curiosity and said through a mouthful of flapjack, “Who's that lady?”

“That's your cousin Agatha,” I said. “Please don't talk with your mouth full.”

“What's a cousin?”

“Well, you know Aunt Sophronia and Uncle Gus?”

“No.”

“Yes, you do. There's a picture of them on the piano.”

J.B. stared at me blankly, and I realized that even the simplest explanation of genealogy was beyond his tender years.

“Never mind, J.B. She's going to stay with us for a while. A big wind blew her house down, and she has nowhere else to live.”

He grew animated and said, “You mean like the pigs and the wolf?”

“It wasn't a wolf, J.B. It was a big wind, a storm. You know what a storm is.”

But this news did not interest a six-year-old. He turned his attention back to his breakfast.

To celebrate his homecoming, and to make up for the fact that he had missed our birthdays, Father eventually called us into his room one by one. He made a short speech about his own good fortune, and how lucky he was to have a family, whole and safe and well, then quizzed us about our behavior during his absence.

“Were you a good girl, Calpurnia, while I was gone?”

“Uh, mostly, Father, yes.”

“And did you do as Mother asked you while I was gone?”

“Uh, yes, Father, I mostly did.”

He pondered my responses as if trying to make a decision. “In that case, I have a special present for this special occasion. Hold out your hand.”