by Virginia Watts

Published by Oyster River Pages

I knew something was different because when we got to the high school gymnasium, my father picked me up and didn’t put me down. He always let me walk in crowded places as long as I held his hand. I didn’t want to be carried in his arms anymore. I was five. I wasn’t a baby. But everything that morning felt different.

We were in a hot, sticky section of summer. The August sun had been killing the grass in our front yard all week. Blades matted down, yellow and flat. All fused together into one solid mass of misery. Jagged little bones that stabbed my skin through the leather straps of my sandals as I followed my father and my two older brothers to the car. I opened my mouth to complain about the heat and the grass and my feet but decided against it. Usually, when my brothers were following behind my father like this, they’d be punching each other in the arm or trying to trip each other. Not today.

It was Mark’s turn to sit up front, so I had my oldest brother Curt in the back seat with me. The car smelled like strawberries because my father had brought some home from a nearby orchard Friday after work. He forgot about them until Saturday afternoon. When he  carried them gooey and drippy to the front porch to show my mother, she immediately declared them unfit to eat. My brothers and I waited for the coast to be clear, sampled, and  decided they were still fairly edible. We ate what didn’t fall apart through our fingers and survived to another morning. This Sunday morning.

 My stomach growled. Curt smiled over at me.

“How long will we have to wait?” I asked as we pulled out of the driveway, cinders crunching, my tire swing hanging there. Lately, morning was the only part of the day I could swing. Soon the sun would light the rubber on fire.

“I don’t know. Not long probably,” my father answered. 

Nothing was open along Main Street, Somerset, Pennsylvania on a Sunday morning. The bank, the post office, the grocery store. Even the laundromat was dark. Sidewalks were deserted except for a tall, thin woman in a long burgundy coat with a shiny black fur collar. She was walking a miniature dog. I recognized her as we passed by. She worked in the women’s clothing section of Shank’s Department Store. She and my mother went on and on about skirts and blouses, hand washing, the popular colors that season, hem lines, why shades of yellow made most women “sallow”–so many things I didn’t understand and hoped I never would. 

When we arrived at the high school, there was already a long line of adults who all had their children with them. Everyone was quiet there too. Some turned around and nodded or mouthed a “hello” to my father. They all knew who he was. He managed the milk plant in town. 

My father was right about the wait. Soon someone opened the gymnasium door and the line began inching forward. That’s when he picked me up. The firmness of his grip and the uncharacteristic serious tone in his voice made me do nothing except nod after he whispered to me:

“When we get inside, you watch your brothers. Watch them swallow their sugar cubes right up. They are going to be so delicious. Do the same and swallow your sugar cube. Because if any of you get really sick, you’ll snap my heart in two.” 

The rest of the time inside that gymnasium is a blank to me, other than the fact that the sugar cube tasted like plain old sugar. I had overheard snippets of conversations between my parents about polio symptoms, names of children and families they knew, but until that morning, I hadn’t thought there was anything that could get to any of us if my father didn’t want it to.  

Copyright © 2021 Virginia Watts. All rights reserved.