she put her hand on my forehead. The comparison confirmed what she suspected.
“You have a temperature, all right.”
If my father had been there he would have been quick to correct my mother’s choice of words. “A fever, Gail. She has a fever. Everyone has a temperature.”
My mother gave my forehead a tiny little push as she took her hand away, a signal that I was supposed to get back—there was illness here.
I didn’t go far. I stood in the doorway and watched Marie while my mother went through her routine of questions.
“How long have you been feeling sick?”
Marie rolled onto her back and brushed her hair from her face. Her cheeks now glowed so brightly they looked painful, as if they had been rubbed raw. Her eyes seemed darker than ever, all pupil, black water that swallowed light and gave nothing back. Her lips were pale-dry and chapped. Her dress had ridden up over her knees and the sight of her sturdy brown legs and bare feet was strangely shocking, a glimpse of the sensual in the sickroom. (But nothing new. I had once seen Marie naked, or nearly so. In our basement laundry room we had a shower, nothing fancy—a shower head, a tin stall, and an old green rubber curtain with large white sea horses on it. I came galloping downstairs one day—obviously when Marie thought I would be out of the house a while longer—and caught her just as she was stepping out of the shower. She was quick with her towel but not quick enough. I saw just enough to embarrass us both. Dark nipples that shocked me in the way they stood out like fingertips. A black triangle of pubic hair below a thick waist and gently rounded belly. And above it all, shoulders that seemed as broad as my father’s. I stammered an apology and backed out as quickly as possible. Neither of us ever said anything about the incident.)
After another brief coughing fit, this time nothing more than some breathy, urgent chuffs, Marie answered, “I don’t know. A couple days maybe.”
“Have you been eating?”
Marie shook her head.
“Are you sick to your stomach?”
Another head shake.
“Have you been throwing up?”
Marie whispered no.
“Do you know anyone else who is sick? Someone you might have caught this from?”
I felt so bad for Marie having to put up with this interrogation that I finally said something. “Mom. She doesn’t feel good.”
My mother turned and said sharply, “You wait in the other room. I’m trying to find out something here.”
I took a few steps back into the kitchen, but I still saw and heard what went on in Marie’s room.
My mother brought two wool blankets down from the closet shelf and spread them over Marie. “The first thing,” my mother said, “is to bring your temperature down. We should be able to sweat that out of you in no time.”
To this day many Sioux practice a kind of purification ritual in which they enclose themselves in a small tent or lodge and with the help of heated stones and water steam themselves until sweat streams from them. My mother believed in a variation of that. A fever was to be driven away by more heat, blankets piled on until your own sweat cooled you.
Marie must have agreed with the course of treatment because she made no protest.
“David will be here this afternoon if you need anything,” my mother said. “You rest. I’ll come over again around three o’clock, and if you’re not feeling better we’ll give Dr. Hayden a call.”
This remark brought Marie straight up in bed. “No! I don’t need no doctor!” With that outburst she began coughing again, this time harder than ever.
“Listen to you,” my mother said. “Listen to that cough. And you say you don’t need a doctor.”
“I don’t go to him,” said Marie. “I go to Dr. Snow.”
“Dr. Hayden is Mr. Hayden’s brother. You know that, don’t you? He’ll come to the house. And he won’t charge anything, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Marie’s frugality was legendary. She hated waste, and on more than a few occasions she claimed what we were going to throw away—food, clothing, magazines—saying she would find a use for them. Finally we caught on. Before we planned to throw anything away, we checked with Marie first. Our old issues of Collier’s probably found their way out to the reservation.
Marie closed her eyes. “I don’t need no doctor.” Her voice was no louder than a whisper.
My mother left the room, closing the door halfway. “Keep an eye on her, David,” she told me. “If she gets worse, call me.”
“Is she very sick?”
“She has a temperature. And I don’t like the sound of that cough.”
I stayed out, as my mother ordered, but I walked past Marie’s room often. Marie slept, even when she coughed. I heard her voice on one of my passings and stopped, but it soon became obvious that she was not calling me but talking in her fevered sleep. “It’s the big dog,” she said. “Yellow dog. It won’t drink.” And then a word that sounded like ratchety. And repeated, “Ratchety, ratchety.” I didn’t know if it was a word from Sioux or from fever.
Later, as I was sitting at the kitchen table, Marie shouted for me. “Davy!” I ran to her door.
I stopped. Marie was lying on her back, gazing at the doorway. “I don’t need no doctor, Davy. Tell them.”
“My mom doesn’t want you to get worse.”
“No doctor.”
“It’s just my uncle Frank. He’s okay.”
Marie’s forehead and cheeks shone with sweat. “I’m feeling better,” she said. She pulled back the blankets and sat up, but as she did she began to cough again. Soon she was gasping for breath in between coughs. This frightened me. I went to the bed and held Marie’s shoulders until the coughing subsided, something I remembered my mother doing for me. I felt Marie trembling all over, as your muscles do after great exertion.
When she was done I helped her lie down again. “Maybe I should go get my mother.”
“No doctor.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll tell her you don’t want a doctor.”
Marie’s eyes closed and she seemed to be breathing evenly again.
“Marie?”
She nodded weakly. “I’m okay.”
I backed slowly away but hesitated in the doorway. Marie’s eyes remained closed and her breathing was deep and regular. My hands were damp from gripping Marie’s shoulders. Was the sweat mine or hers?
My
