It was just a game of tag. I was running as fast as my six-year-old legs would carry me, but when I reached the big old thorn tree that grew at the far west side of our orchard, I stumbled and fell.
"Ouch," I yelped. "I sat on a thorn!"
Martha, my older sister who had been chasing me, ran quickly to my side to see if I was faking or if it was for real. When she saw the tears coursing down my cheeks, and the pain registered in my eyes, she didn't ask, but knelt quickly on the ground beside me and put her arms around me. Even at nine years old, it was Martha's nature to comfort those who needed it.
But the pain was too much for me. I needed more comfort than Martha could give. "Take me to Mom," I said in a pitiful voice while the tears continued to flow.
"All right. Just stand up and I'll help you get to the house."
But when I tried to stand, the pain was so terrible that I fell against her. "Oh, Martha, I can't walk. It hurts too bad," and the tears flowed faster and faster.
Without another word, my sister lifted me in her arms and carried me across the orchard our parents had planted when they were first married, across the shady side yard, and around to the back porch. By this time I was screaming, partly from pain and partly from knowing I would soon get help and relief.
As she laid me down on the back porch, my mother came running from the kitchen with Janice close behind her. Janice was my little sister who was just two last week, and she followed our mother everywhere. Rover, our big brindled watch dog, disturbed by the commotion, roused from his nap and moved from one sunny spot to another.
"What in the world is the matter?" my mother asked, for the sight of her had made me cry louder and harder. She knelt on the rough boards of the porch and took me in her arms. She wore a faded housedress and apron, and her feet were bare as they usually were all summer; there was a smudge of flour on her face from her baking, and her dark red hair was pulled back tightly in a bun at the back of her head which made her look much older than her thirty-five years. But to me she looked like a guardian angel, and I clung to her fiercely.
"I . . . I fe. . . ." I tried to talk, but I was crying too hard.
"We were playing tag, and she stumbled and fell," Martha explained. "She said she sat on a thorn and it did happen under the old thorn tree, but when I tried to help her up to walk to the house, she cried harder and said that she couldn't stand or walk, so I carried her."
Mom wiped my tears on her apron and cuddled me close in her arms. Although there were six of us children, her love was always enough for each of us. "Let's take a look," she said practically. And so saying, she stretched me out on the porch, slid off the porch to the ground and pulled up my short cotton dress, and down my panties so she could my see small behind. "Well, there's nothing here but a red spot," she said, but when she touched the red spot, I yelled in pain.
"Maybe the thorn went inside," said practical Martha as she edged closer to take a look while Janice rubbed my head and said in her tiny chirpy voice, "Ginny, Ginny."
"Maybe it did," Mom agreed. "Sit here with her, Martha, while I go get a piece of fat meat and a clean white rag. We'll put a bandage on it holding the fat meat against the spot and maybe it'll work the thorn out. That's what my grandma always did when I stepped on something and it stuck in my foot."
We all knew that Mom had lived with her grandma after her own mother died when she was a little girl, so we were used to being treated by grandma's remedies. Living in Southern Illinois in the thirties as we did, homemade cures were always used.
Mom went back into the kitchen while I lay sprawled on the back porch face down with Martha beside me holding my hand. Janice patted my head and Rover kept trying to lick my face. Martha pulled my dress down to cover me, and kept saying, "It'll be all right. It'll be all right." She was probably feeling guilty because she had been chasing me.
After Mom had put the fat meat on the red spot, covered it with the white rag, and tied it into place with strips of cloth around my leg, she gathered me up into her own capable arms and carried me around the house, up onto the front porch, into the bedroom where she turned had turned back the quilt, and deposited me in bed, dirty feet and all.
"You stay there and rest this afternoon," she said as she washed my face with a wet washrag and smoothed back my heavy dark curls. "The fat meat will draw out the thorn and by morning you'll be as good as new."
I wanted to argue that it was a beautiful sunshiny afternoon in late June, and I'd rather be outside playing, but it did hurt very much if I moved about much, so I decided to just lie still and rest.
"I'll send Elizabeth to read to you when she gets back from Miss Whitfield's. She went to borrow some baking powder so I could fix some cornbread for supper." She left, and I closed my eyes.
I must have gone to sleep for the next thing I heard was Elizabeth's cheerful voice, and opening my eyes I saw her coming over to the bed. Elizabeth was thirteen, a thin girl with short cropped blonde hair and blue eyes. She seemed to live in a dream world, and was always hiding away in the hayloft, or back at the bluff, and was always writing poetry. But she was gentle and kind, and I loved her dearly.
"Ginny, whatever did you do to yourself?" she asked as she leaned over to give me a kiss. "Martha said you sat on a thorn. Is that true?"
I gave her a pitiful nod as the tears welled up in my eyes again. She kissed me again and sat down on the bed beside me. "Mom said for me to read to you, and I have some of my poems hot off the press."
She read me her poems, and as always I told her they were beautiful. I wanted to get up, but when I even sat up, it hurt too badly and I sank back down on the pillows. When Mom called Elizabeth to come help her, I just lay there listening to the sounds from the kitchen and outside.
When Daddy and Joey came in from the fields, they came in to see me. Joey, my older brother, was fifteen, and had coal black hair and dark eyes and freckles across his nose just like I did. He just said that he was sorry I was hurt, looked at me awkwardly awhile, then left to do the chores. But Daddy pulled up a chair to the bedside, took my hand in his, and smiled down at me. I loved Daddy so much, and I knew he had a special love for me. Elizabeth said it was because I was born right after his beloved daughter Alice by his first wife died of pneumonia, and I had helped take her place.
Daddy had been real sick and had been in the hospital for two years, or so Martha said, as it just seemed like such a long time to me. I liked when it was my turn to go with Mom in the car with one of the uncles, or Grandpa, on the long trip to see him, but I did not like him being away. He had only come home this spring. He seemed all right, but I had heard Joey tell Mom one night when I was supposed to be asleep that they would have to go on running the farm as they had done all the time he was gone, and it seemed that they were doing just that. Daddy just seemed quiet and peaceful, and glad to be home.
Now I squeezed his hand as I looked up at him through my tear filled eyes, and said, "I fell and hurt myself real bad, Daddy, but Mom put fat meat on it and she says I'll be good as new by morning."
"I'm sure you will be, Punkin," he said as he held my hand tighter. He usually called me Punkin even though he knew my name was Ginny. He had wanted to name me Rhody for his little sister who had fallen into the fireplace and died from her burns, but Mom had insisted that I be called Ginny after a character in one of her favorite books. I had always been glad that she had won, but I never told him that.
We stayed like that for a long time until Mom stuck her head around the door and said in her kindly though reproving voice, "Joe, don't you think you had better go help Joey and Elizabeth with the chores?" Then he smiled and nodded and got up and left.
I liked being served supper in bed, and the attention they gave me with one and then another coming to sit with me to talk, read to me, or just sit by my bed, but I didn't like being isolated there while all the fun and excitement of our large family took place in the other rooms, or on the long front porch.
When it got dark, Mom came with a lighted kerosene lamp and a washpan of warm water to wash my feet and get me into my nightgown. When she had me sit up on the side of the bed and stick my feet down in the water, I cried out in pain for the place on my backside hurt so much. After I was ready for bed, she sat on the side of the bed beside me and stroked my forehead.
"I'm sure the fat meat will work and you'll feel better in the morning," she said. It was the year 1937, and this was the best way she knew of to draw out splinters and thorns if they were so embedded that she couldn't pick them out with a needle.
"Now, let's say your prayers so you can get to sleep." She had given me an aspirin for the pain, and I was feeling sleepy.
"Do I have to kneel by the bed?" I asked. "It hurts when I move about."
"No, just close your eyes and fold your hands, and I'm sure God will hear your prayers."
So I prayed, "Dear God, bless Mom and Daddy, and Naomi, Joey, Elizabeth, Martha, Janice, Rover, and Bobby Dog, and all our friends. Amen." I opened my eyes an then closed them quickly. "And please, God, help me to get well."
Mom kissed me, took the lamp, and left the room. I must have fallen asleep soon afterwards. It was much later for it was very dark and still when I awoke, feeling like I was burning up. I was thrashing about and crying, and I heard Martha spring up from where she slept beside me, and run to call Mom.
She came with the lamp, but when she had felt my forehead and saw the state I was in she sent Martha to get Daddy. I remember him coming in the room pulling up his overalls as he came. He took me up in his arms and sat down in the rocker. I can still hear him saying, "She's burning up with fever. Go get a pan of cold water and some towels." While Mom ran to do his bidding, he laid me back on the bed and had Martha help pull off my nightgown. Then while I lay there in my panties feeling as though my body were on fire, he began to bathe me with the cold wet towels. Sometime after that I slept. I didn't know until much later that one or the other of my parents stayed by my bedside all night long feeling my head and bathing my body when I felt too hot.
Next morning, I was not as good as new, and the fat meat had not drawn out the thorn or whatever it was. Instead, when they took off the bandage, the small red spot was now a huge red place with streaks of red running out in all directions, which was a sure sign of blood poisoning I heard them whisper. I saw the fear in my mother's eyes as she looked down at it, and saw her lips moving in a silent prayer.
It was Daddy who said, "We've got to get her to the doctor." And turning to Joey, who stood with my sisters around the foot of the bed, he said, "Run up to Uncle Albert's and see if he can take us." As Joey left at a run, I knew that Daddy was once again in control.
Uncle Albert drove Joey back, and before I quite knew what had happened, they had my clothes on me and we were away in the car, leaving Elizabeth and Martha to take care of Janice.
When we got to the doctor's office, Daddy lifted me up in his arms and carried me inside. Uncle Albert had called him before he came for me and they were waiting for us. Daddy carried me right into the examining room and laid me down on the long, cold steel table.
It was just a game of tag. I was running as fast as my six-year-old legs would carry me, but when I reached the big old thorn tree that grew at the far west side of our orchard, I stumbled and fell.