AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It’s Sunday. Nobody does therapy on Sunday.”
“You haven’t even been here long and you already know how the place works?”
“It’s my business to know. I don’t even know why I’m here, where nobody wants me.”
Mike pulled the white sheet over her twisted limbs and pulled the cereal closer. “You a smart girl. You can decide for yourself. Work hard to get some function back. To make a life for yourself. Or lay there and die. Up to you.”
“Told you what I wanted to do.”
“Uhh. Huh. Except I don’t think you mean it.”
Big tears to match his own popped up in her eyes. “I want to be Maria Tallchief. A beautiful ballerina. I want to dance and dance. That’s not ever going to happen. So, I don’t see no purpose in it all.”
Had he been stabbed? In his early bad days, he got knifed in his arm before and this is what that felt like. His flesh was knifed away at the thought that this child, his child, would never have, never be what she wanted.
He pushed the cereal closer to her and readied the spoon to feed her as he had to feed all the other bad cases. He always got these tasks with the polio children because no one wanted to touch them when they were at this stage, because of the foolish belief that Negroes didn’t get polio as badly as white people, so he did it. Often, he taught them to feed themselves. Then the nurses could be bothered with them.
“You got a voice. Maybe you can sing pretty like your Mama.”
Andie raised her black eyebrows. “Whoever heard of a crippled nightclub singer?”
“Whoever heard of a dark black ballerina?”
Now, he had knifed her. The pain boomeranged back onto himself. Clearly, this child had to be shaken from her daydreams if she would get a will to fight for some kind of function. “Open your mouth.”
Her lips trembled, just the slightest little bit, but she did as he asked. Spoon by spoon he fed her the lukewarm Ralston, sprinkled with the slightest bit of sugar. Wasn’t easy to get either. He could drink his coffee without the sugar. But he had gotten some just for her.
Watching her eat her cereal in silence, he was struck by the thought that Cat had to do these things for her when she was a baby. Feed her, change her, help her to walk. Andie occupied this space in Cat’s life when she was a baby. Now, here he was, her real father, doing the same thing. Caring for Andie was not a punishment for his self-centered actions in leaving the sobbing Cat at the station. It was simply time to do these things.
When he had scraped the bowl of the last bit of sweetened Ralston, he pushed the tray back.
“Now Andie.” He spoke loud in a voice, but not too loud to disturb the sleeping Cat who slept on a cot in the corner. “I’m going to help your muscles remember what they supposed to be doing for you.”
“How will that happen?”
“Got me a little warmed up peanut oil here. Every day before you get into therapy, I’m going to massage these limbs of yours to get them to wake up.”
“I don’t want to smell like a peanut.”
“No problem in that. Once we done with the massage, I’ll wipe you off. Then you’ll have exercises for today to do. I’ll check in on you as I make my way around the wards.”
He pulled the sheet back and took the oil into his hands.
Andie frowned. “No one ever touched me with no oil before.”
“Got this idea from George Washington Carver. Know him?”
The little girl’s eyes blinked fast. “I do. He was a famous inventor. Died the year I was born.”
Mike rubbed a dot of the precious fluid into his hands. He had not even known that. So smart. “Well, Mr. Carver do a lot of things for himself. He was a dark black person like us. So, we can do a lot of things too.”
Taking her thin arm into his hands, he used a gentle kneading motion on the limb, not wanting to hurt her, but knowing that was going to be impossible.
“You hurting me!” Andie boomed out with that strong voice of hers. Yeah, she got that from her mother.
“You want to wake up the whole place?”
“I don’t care about them. Or you.”
