Brad Watson: Miss Jane

HE DROVE BACK to the Chisolm place the next afternoon, in his Model T Ford. Went inside the house and examined the child, asked Mrs. Chisolm a few questions, then went out to his car, gathered up a douche apparatus, and went back inside. Ida Chisolm seemed to recoil from it.

“Do you have one of these?” he said to her. She shook her head, like a horse pestered by a fly. “Well, you can have this one. She must be kept very clean — inside, I mean. You want to try to keep her fecal matter — her poop — from getting into her other parts. It’s all kind of together in there, with this child. Let me show you.” She didn’t move. “Come on over, now. This is important. And when she’s old enough, she must be taught to do it herself, and frequently. Otherwise she will have frequent problems for sure.”

“What kind of problems?”

“What I believe, from what I can tell and what I’ve been told, is that without it she could have frequent infections, and you don’t want me over here every other day having to treat that.”

Warily, the woman approached and watched, listened to what he said. When he looked up at her for a moment, he saw her blinking back tears.

“It will be all right,” he said.

“So you say,” she said.

“All right,” he said after peering at her, trying to figure her state of mind. “Now, listen. I know we normally don’t let infants sleep on their backs, if we can help it. But it would be good if she could sleep with her hips slightly elevated. It might mean checking on her more often, I know. But it will help avoid the possibility of the kind of thing that would lead to infections. And during the day, when she’s in the crib, same thing. And when she’s upright, being held or whatnot, not a problem.”

She said nothing, looking blankly at the child lying there in her crib, at the little diaper the doctor had folded and placed beneath her bottom.

“You understand, Ida?” He said her first name to get her attention.

She only nodded. And he went out.

CHISOLM WAS in the work shed sharpening edges on a disc harrow. He stepped out and the doctor met him there just outside the shed, in the shade of its eave. The doctor removed his hat, ran a hand through his hair, inspected the hat as if for flaws, then put it back on.

“Child seems all right,” he said to Chisolm. “Seems healthy, to me. Doesn’t have everything she ought to have, but there does not appear to be an obstruction and as long as she’s able to eliminate waste and y’all keep her clean, she should be all right.” He looked at the man. “I’ve explained that to your wife.” Chisolm looked back at him curiously. “We’ll see how she comes along in time, but I believe she’ll be all right. She’s nursing well.”

“She, then.”

“Yes.”

Chisolm looked at him a long moment, studying him the way he did, taking the words in.

“Doesn’t need anything special, then?” he said. “No medicine or special food?”

The doctor shook his head.

“I’ll be honest with you, though,” he said.

Chisolm said nothing, waiting.

“The truth of the matter is that if something is going to go wrong, it will likely go wrong in these first weeks or even first few months. If she doesn’t soil her diaper often as any child ought, or especially if she goes even a day without that, as I said, you send for me quick. Keep an eye out for any swelling in her lower tummy. Or something kind of poking the skin out in an odd way. You can expect me to be checking in pretty often for a while. I won’t charge you for it. Let’s just call it a learning experience for everyone, but especially me, as a doctor I mean.”

Chisolm just nodded, his eyes on the doctor’s as if expecting more. Then he looked away.

The doctor yawned and rubbed his face with his hands.

“Blame me if it doesn’t seem I’ve treated half the county in the last few days. I had a passel waiting on me when I got home this morning, then went to town to call a friend who knows more about this kind of business here than I do. Went home hoping for a nap but I’d hardly lain down before a boy rode up hollering his father cut himself bad at the sawmill. Had me a bit of a nap under a sweet gum beside the road between there and here. I thank you for that gift of spiritual aid in that regard.”

Chisolm nodded, managed a grim smile.

“You need another?”

“I’m plenty good for now, thank you. Sir, I believe your product is as good as anything bottled in Kentucky. You are an artist.”

Chisolm almost grinned. “Anytime you’re in the neighborhood, Doc, just help yourself.” Then he said, “I guess I got one question.”

“Shoot.”

“How is it a child comes out like this’n?”

The doctor shrugged his shoulders inside his jacket, like he’d got a chill. He was overtired.

“The way I see it, most everybody’s lucky nothing goes wrong during a pregnancy. I sometimes can’t believe how often nature gets it just right. I’ve seen some things you wouldn’t believe. Most that come out wrong or odd die soon after birth. Sometimes I can be pretty sure, when I come back to check on them, that what happened was not a natural death.”

Chisolm looked at him for a long minute, but the doctor kept looking out over the field.

“Anyhow,” Chisolm said, “you figure this one’s a girl just because, I reckon, it’s clear she ain’t a boy.”

“Best I can tell,” the doctor said, “she’s just a girl who did not fully develop. Something stopped that in the womb, for whatever reason. It happens. No one’s fault. It’s rare, but at this point I do not think it’s life-threatening.” He paused. “There’s many a case of a child being both , to one degree or another, but that’s not the case here. I’m told this is most likely a condition you see only in female children, anyway, and not boys.”

Chisolm looked at him.

“Both, you say.”

The doctor raised his eyebrows and gave a nod, took his hat off to look it over again, brows furrowing down.

“Can’t be a nothing,” he said. “Come out able to be one or the other, and you have to wait and see which one wins out. Sometimes it just stays both.”

Chisolm looked at him, taking that in.

“Well, I reckon if a thing like that can happen to a child, we got damn lucky.”

“All things considered,” the doctor said, “I’d have to agree.”

“And nothing to do about it.”

“I don’t believe so, no. But, in time, who knows? If you can, you might put a little away toward it whenever you can, just in case.”

They stood there another long minute. Then the doctor gave Chisolm a light pat on the shoulder. “She’ll be a little treasure for you and Mrs., I don’t doubt it,” he said.

Chisolm nodded, and went back into his shed and began filing at the disc blade again. The doctor left and made a couple of house calls in the general area. The afternoon grew chilly, late November coming on. When he returned home at last light the house was empty, but a small fire flickered in the hearth, and there was a tin plate on the stove’s warmer, covered by a clean cloth. A note from his wife on the kitchen table. She’d gone into town to visit her mother, might stay overnight, not to worry.

He went into his study, where he’d left the jug from Chisolm, poured himself a measure into an empty coffee cup, lit a small lamp on his desk, and wrote in his journal. A tree frog sang out its loud, long, piercing song just outside the window on the porch, and even its near-deafening note, coming from an inch-long operatic amphibian soprano, somehow brought up a corresponding silent note of melancholy.

AS SOON AS the child got a little strength in her neck, her mother enlisted the older daughter, Grace, who carried the infant around like a broken third arm in a makeshift sling. She brought her to her mother when she was hungry and would step outside and walk fast, then run to someplace on the farm she could hunker down, hide out, curse or weep as the mood might fit her. Occasionally she would take a little homemade corncob vine-stem pipe she’d fashioned with a paring knife and puff on a bit of tobacco she’d snitched from her father. It was a small rebellion but there was a measure of satisfaction in it.