Sanatorium Girl

By Drake

In 1920, tuberculosis was the main killer of young people. Occupational therapy had just begun as a profession unto itself. The Mississippi State Tuberculosis Sanatorium had been open only two years. Louisa Anne McFarland, from Jones County, was sent to the Sanatorium to heal her tubercular lungs. On the same path so many TB patients took, she remained to work after being healed. She learned how to do occupational therapy with other patients. Early occupational therapists seldom had formal professional education or any kind of formal credentialing. This novel is an example of how such unrecognized women of the early 20th century saw a need and filled it. With so many young adults thrust together, the outcome of sex and unwanted pregnancy was inevitable.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 10, 2005
• ISBN: 9780595818518

Drake

Author is an occupational therapist who has researched tuberculosis in 20th century Mississippi. She has lived in the South more than 20 years doing and teaching occupational therapy. Her father had tuberculosis in WWI, which gave her the inspiration for this novel. This is her third novel about occupational therapy.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1  

SUMMER 1920

Sixteen year old Louisa Anne McFarland coughed a little as she scuffed barefoot along the dirt road that led home from the church where she had been helping prepare the flowers and food for the funeral this afternoon. The dust must be getting into her throat, she thought. Old Mr. Brangle died yesterday morning. In this hot weather, you had to get the body into the ground as fast as possible. He had been sick for a while so nobody was surprised when he died. His grandson, who was living with him to do the farm work, had found him when he went to help him up and out to the outhouse.

Louisa Anne was thinking about how school would start in two weeks and she would again catch a ride into Ellisville with her neighbor to attend the high school. It was a struggle for her father to send her to school with the other six children his responsibility as well. But Louisa Anne was the smart one in the family. In fact she was the only one who really wanted to keep on with school after finishing pleasant Ridge School. She had pled for the opportunity to keep on with school. When her mother died in childbirth two years ago, she had had to assume the responsibility of her newborn sister. It was a difficult thing to persuade her father that she should keep on with schooling. But she had finally succeeded by promising him to work extra hard after she got home in the evenings and on the weekends. She had kept her word, grabbing her hoe and heading straight for the field to hoe corn or chop cotton as soon a she changed out of her school dress.

When she got home from her funeral preparation for Mr. Brangle, she got busy peeling, slicing and boiling some new carrots from the garden to mix with some chopped left over roast pork and muscadine jelly for a casserole to take to the after the funeral lunch. In the church foyer, she had already seen a number of cakes and pies so she knew that she needn’t worry about bringing dessert. In this rural community, Louisa Anne had been introduced to funeral etiquette at a young age, long before her mother died. The children from the nearby farms had often reenacted funerals for their pets, for dead birds and squirrels. They had heard their parents discuss funerals, seen them dress for funerals, and had observed the kinds of dishes that they took to the after funeral dinners. Sometimes, the children would be able to persuade their mothers to let them have a few leftover biscuits or crackers to have for a lunch after one of their pet funerals. Usually, the oldest child got the honor of being the preacher. They sang which ever songs they could remember from the Sunday school classes. Jesus Loves Me or Gladly the Cross Eyed Bear were favorites. If they were lucky, they would find an empty cheese box for a coffin. Wild flowers were plentiful in spring and early summer. They used the old ash scoop from the fireplace which had been discarded when Mr. McFarland bought the new cast iron cook stove five years before his wife died. It was not as good to dig the graves as a pointed scoop would be, but it worked for the shallow graves that the children dug. By now, there were many marked and unmarked animal graves under the old sweet gum tree behind the clapboard four-room house.

The first human funeral she remembered attending was for one of the Negro field workers occasionally hired by her father and other nearby farmers. He lived in an old tenant house on a nearby farm. Someone found him in the woods. He had been shot in the back and the sheriff had said it was a hunting accident. However, Louisa Anne had heard black people at the church after the funeral talking about how it was no accident. Normally, a young white girl would not have attended a funeral in a Negro church but Louisa Anne had played with the murdered Negro man’s daughter when she was small. Her parents had attended the funeral and decided she was old enough at age nine to go with them. The main thing she remembered from that funeral was that her little playmate, Evelyn Sue had wept loudly as had all of her brothers and sisters and mother and many other relatives. So when she attended the funeral of a white male high school teacher who also attended their Universalist church, she was surprised to have almost no loud weeping as there had been in the Negro church

Her own mother’s funeral two years ago was harder to remember because she had been too upset at losing her mother to pay attention to details. She had wept but quietly. When her younger sisters’ sobs became too loud, she gently gripped their arms or shoulders to help them get control. Her childhood friend Evelyn Sue had kept the new baby so that all the other children could attend their mother’s funeral. It had been in winter and was cold enough so they had not had to bury her so fast. She did remember taking her turn to sit with the body through the night. They had waited two days until her older married sister Ella from the Lauderdale County could come down on the train. Mr. McFarland had decided that he wanted all the children with in him the church, except the newborn babe. His brother had joined him in the front pew of the small white church.

Funerals were such a central event in the community, that even by age sixteen, Louise Anne had already had enough experience, and she felt she could probably do every part of a funeral if she had to. Since Evelyn Sue’s father’s funeral, she had helped make food for Mrs. Williams’ white funeral after she too died in childbed. That had been at the Baptist church nearby. She had enjoyed the music during the service. It was the first time she had heard I’ll Fly Away. This service had been almost as excitement filled as the funeral at the Negro church. People had moaned and wept in ways not done at the Universalist church where people tended to contain their grief.

At old Mr. Brangle’s funeral, the piano was playing when she slipped in to sit by her friend Nola Sue Edwards near the back of the sanctuary. She felt flushed and hot. It was time for the funeral to start but as usual, a good time elapsed before the family assembled to process into the front pews. Part of the pleasure of this event was to look at the dresses of the women in the church. One of the things she had been privileged to learn from her mother before she died and from the home arts teacher in Jones County AHS in Ellisville was to sew. She had learned how to look at a dress and figure out how to cut a pattern from newspaper before laying out the cloth. The hardest part of sewing she found was getting enough money to buy the cloth. Usually, she just tried to get matching flour sacks and to make the collar and cuffs from the bleached white muslin sacks that held sugar. She nudged Nola Sue and pointed to the navy blue dimity middy with three-quarter-length sleeves which Mrs. Sanders wore over a black sateen skirt. It almost hid her pregnancy. Louisa Anne could tell that the light blue straw hat had been redecorated to match the middy. Pieces of the dark blue dimity had been fashioned into roses and attached to the hat band. The two girls used sign language to guess how many months pregnant Mrs. Sanders was. Louisa Anne pointed to her own abdomen and then held up six fingers. Nola Sue answered by folding down the sixth finger. Now Louisa Anne felt cooler, though still hotter than she liked.

Soon thereafter, the family of old Mr. Brangle began the procession down the middle aisle toward the front pews. The pianist, Mrs. Akins, banged out Nearer My God to Thee, as the family took their seats. The pall bearers carried in the light pine casket and placed it on the two backless stools placed near the altar for that purpose. Then two of the men drew screw drivers out of their pockets and unscrewed the top and set it on the floor behind leaning it against the two stools. There lay the shrunken body of old Mr. Brangle dressed in a suit Louisa Anne could never remember ever seeing before. Obviously, they had not found his false teeth as his face was caved in. She wondered why they even opened the casket but a moment of mature realization came to her. Probably some of the children and grandchildren had not seen him for a while and wanted to have one last look, no matter how dead he appeared.

In the small church, soon the heat from the living bodies in the full pews became oppressive, what with the heat of the midday sun outside. Louisa Anne’s flushed hot feeling came back. The preacher led the congregation is the favorite hymn Safe in the Arms of Jesus. Then there was a lengthy prayer about how all of us would one day join Mr. Brangle in heaven. The Bible reading John 3:15-17 was accompanied by muffled sobs from the front pews. The congregation recited in unison the Twenty Third Psalm. Then the preacher gave a combination eulogy and sermon about how old Mr. Brangle had always treated his neighbors as he would want to be treated. He never cheated the Negroes who worked for him. Louisa Anne became aware that the last pew behind her and Nola Sue was occupied by several Negro men. These men loudly murmured their agreement with the preacher. He went on to say that Mr. Brangle would be blessed to be with God, that he had lived a long life, outliving three wives and having so many healthy offspring. As he moved through his sermon, the sobbing from the front pews increased in volume but it was still nothing like what she had heard at Evelyn Sue’s father’s funeral.

Just as Louisa Anne thought she might faint from the heat, despite the occasional breeze that wafted through the open window, the preacher Rev. Windom announced the last hymn Abide with Me. This followed the usual pattern of Universalist funerals it seemed. As soon as the last chord rung, Louisa Anne and Nola Sue were out of the pew and went to help with the tables of food. The pall bearers carried the coffin out across the road into the graveyard. Louisa Anne could see the group out in the grove across from the church as they sang a hymn while Mr. Brangle was lowered into his grave. The crowd drifted back toward the tables laden with food. During the actual burial, several of the women and Louisa Anne and Nola Sue had made everything ready for the dinner. The plates were old crockery which various families had donated to the church when they got newer sets, so none of them matched. Many were chipped and cracked. The three stacks of plates at the end of the table under the trees must have held twenty each. The men returning from the grave stood around outside in the church yard talking about the crops, the weather and the animals. With the goading of Mrs. Win-dom, the preacher’s wife, the men got into two lines and began their trek down both sides of the long table. The pall bearers and the preacher went first. Next came the older men and then the almost men. Lastly went the women and then the girls. By the time Louisa Anne and Nola Sue got to the piles of plates, they had a poor choice of only chipped, cracked plates left. Never mind, these young women were hungry and eagerly scraped the serving dishes to get the last bits of casserole, garden salad or dessert. The plate of pickled pork sandwiches was only half gone. They were the last to serve themselves so that the older women who finished eating first began to clear the dishes off the table as the sky from the west had begun to darken. It was good they got the old man in the ground before a rain could wash the loose soil back into the grave. Besides, it always felt sadder to consign someone to a damp grave than to a dry one.

As soon as the girls were finished with their meal, they too, jumped up to help with the clearing up as the clouds were now quite dark around the edges. Everyone felt the need for a cooling rain in mid-summer. The church was closed up before the storm came but Louisa Anne was drenched by the time she got home from the funeral. The rest of the family had gone on home ahead of her while she stayed to help the women clear up. The rain felt wonderful after the heat of the small church. She was very glad she had not worn her newest dress though. It would have been ruined with spots from food while handling the dirty dishes and now the rain.

CHAPTER 2  

SCHOOL IN THE FALL 1920

Louisa Anne was surprised when her father offered to hitch up the team and take time away from crops and livestock to drive her and Nola Sue to school. The previous year, he was satisfied to simply give Nola Sue’s father a hog at Christmas to thank him for stopping daily at the end of their lane to pick up Louisa Anne for school and to bring her home too. The drive to the high school was only four miles but it was enough that it took too much time away from farm work for Louisa Anne to make the walk twice a day.

Mr. McFarland, Louisa Anne and Nola Sue shared the detachable wooden bench mounted on the front of the wagon. This wagon was used for everything, carrying grain and cotton, or a hog to market. It had side extenders to make the sides and back higher if the load was bigger. On special occasions, the two detachable benches were mounted on the wagon by slipping some rods attached to the seats into holes in the wagon frame. Then most of the family could sit on the bench with the smaller children on a quilt on the wagon bed. It was a task each winter after the crops were stored or sold, for Mr. McFarland to replace the boards on the wagon or on the extenders that were damaged or rotted. Infrequently, he would buy a new set of wheels as the dirt roads were often hard on the iron rims of the wooden spoke wheels. It would take a few years for them to rust through in spots. This plus the wearing away on patches of gravel meant new wagon wheels periodically. Now they were riding on new wheels.

Mr. McFarland was unusually voluble. He seldom had conversations with Louisa Anne at home. When he spoke to her, usually it was to bark instructions. But this school morning, he inquired, How is school? Are you studying enough?

Louisa Anne was confused by the question since she had shown him every report card she had received last year. Her marks were superior. She was also embarrassed to discuss this in front of Nola Sue. None-the-less, she answered his question; Well, school has only been in session for a week. I will not have a report card for five more weeks. But I did have a note on my grammar lesson from Miss Engle, that it was very cleverly written.

Is Miss Engle a good teacher? Mr. McFarland asked and turned away from the road to look at her for an answer.

Miss Engle is good enough to teach English as well as drawing and music. I don’t have any complaints about her teaching, Louisa Anne said while she wondered why he was asking these questions when her opinion had never seemed to matter before. Nola Sue sat silently beside her obviously surprised also as men seldom asked women’s opinions in their world. As he did not ask another question, Louisa Anne told about her other teachers. Miss Pruitt teaches us mathematics and science as well as physical culture. She is a little severe though I’ve never had any problem with her. Last spring she scolded Nola Sue for not jumping vigorously enough in the gymnasium exercises. Louisa Anne coughed into her handkerchief as she gave a sideways glance at her friend to see how she reacted to this betrayal of what was public knowledge among the students but not shared with adults. Still her father glanced at Nola Sue but rode silently allowing Louisa Anne to talk. Louisa Anne wondered if it was because he finally thought of her as an adult.

She was quickly disabused of this notion when he said, Well, you girls need discipline. I am sure Nola Sue deserved her scolding. Nola Sue blushed and lowered her eyes but remained silent.

The first day, when they drove up in front of the school, Mr. McFarland stopped at the end of the gravel sidewalk which led to the front door and let Louisa Anne and Nola Sue get down. All three of them had been crowded on the front seat. Before they had reached the heavy front doors with beveled glass insets, Mr. McFarland had driven the horse to the hitching rail and gotten down to wrap the harness around the wooden rail. The girls stopped inside the door and watched him as he also started toward the front door. When they realized he would open the door and catch them watching him, they quickly turned and scampered up the stairs to the central hall and from there toward their first class of mathematics. He was there that afternoon waiting in the line of wagons and buggies to pick up students.

Suddenly, Mr. McFarland wanted to go to town almost every morning and afternoon.

Louisa Anne only discovered the reason when her classmate Gerald French, asked her if she knew that during the last study hall, while Miss Stevens was in charge that her father came into the classroom where Miss Engle had her desk in a corner which she used as an office for all her classes. He would sit in one of the student seats and talk to Miss Engle. All the boys had seen him sitting there as they ran up the stairs past the classroom door after physical education class.

This was news to Louisa Anne. Suddenly it dawned on her why her father had suddenly taken over driving her and Nola Sue to school. But she withheld from Gerald that she did not know this. She simply tossed her head and said she knew he had something to discuss with Miss Engle. But during the next classes she could not concentrate. She knew what this meant. Her father was courting Miss Engle. If he were successful, she would have a new stepmother. She mentally revisited whatever she knew of Miss Engle, that she was from Magee and had gone to college at Mississippi College in Jackson. Miss Engle was pretty enough. She looked to be about twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old. A quick calculation in her head showed that she would be fifteen years younger than Mr. McFarland. They had recently celebrated Mr. McFarland’s birthday and Louisa Anne had made a buttermilk cake that he especially liked. He was 43 years old. Louisa Anne thought to herself, She won’t be interested in an old man like my father.

Then she thought If he is successful, it will mean that four year old Charles will no longer sleep with her father. They would have to move everybody around so there would be enough places to sleep. After her mother died, the baby had stayed with her Aunt Bernice, her father’s sister. But then when Aunt Bernice had another baby herself, she sent little two years-old Alice Sue back home. All three older girls had been sleeping in one bed but when Alice Sue came home, Mr. McFarland built another bed out of rough pine. He had made the two boys Alex age ten and Peter age twelve, sand the wood sufficiently so it would not have slivers. A new iron bed frame was just too expensive. He made a rope mesh through the frame to hold the mattress. Louisa Anne made a new mattress tick from ticking purchased in Ellisville. She filled it with pine shavings mixed with shredded corn husks. Then Louisa Anne took the Baby Alice Sue with her to sleep in the new bed. Her sisters Ruth Ellen age fourteen and Mary Jean age eight had now more room in the old bed with the iron headboard. With both beds crammed into the small ten by twelve foot upstairs room, it meant there was no place for the chest of drawers so they had moved that into the hallway. It made it so there was only a narrow way to squeeze between the drawers and the wall to get to the stairs. On the other side of the stairs was the bigger boys’ room with one bed and the stairwell. Peter and Alex had the luxury of sleeping only two to a bed. But if Mr. McFarland married Miss Engle, then the boys would have to share the bed with Charles. Her parents had a small bedroom off from the big room downstairs which served as kitchen, dining room and sitting room. After her mother died, Louisa Anne had volunteered to move down into that small room with the new baby Alice Sue, but her father had been emphatic that he must sleep between where his daughters slept and the front door. He was not about to have his daughters sneaking in and out of the house while he was asleep. So he had sent Baby Alice Sue off to live with his sister near Laurel.

Louisa Anne was glad that the baby was back with them now even though the crowded girls’ bedroom caused plenty of bruises on the legs of all the girls as they hurried to dress and undress. During the day while Louisa Anne was at the high school, someone took Alice Sue to Evelyn Sue’s mother to tend. After Louisa Anne got back from school, she would go and get her two year old sister and bring her home.

The outhouse was around the back and down the hill about twenty feet from the back door of the big room. The well with the pump was on the north side of the house about ten feet from the back door. It was sheltered by a small house which also held a room where there was a block of ice brought from town, to cool the milk, cream, butter and fresh meat if there was some. Mr. McFarland had talked about piping the water into the house for several years before her mother died, but had never done it. Suddenly, Louisa Anne realized what it meant that he had stopped to get the pipe and a short pump to put on the cupboard. He was going to finally pipe the well water inside for some other woman after he had promised and promised her mother again that he would do that. Suddenly, she felt all the rage of how her mother had been cheated of this convenience that he was planning for some other woman.

CHAPTER 3  

OCTOBER 1920

Louisa Anne realized that the crops were ready to come in and yet her father was still taking time out of his farm work to drive her and Nola Sue the four miles into Ellisville to school. Also, she realized that Miss Engle was being stricter with her. Every time she and the English teacher had any verbal exchange, she compared it with how Miss Engle treated other students. She even thought that other teachers were watching her and also treating her more tentatively. It was very confusing and made it more difficult to concentrate on her studies. She would be glad when she was finished with English and did not have to have a class with Miss Engle next term.

One afternoon after she had returned from school, changed into her old faded too small dress, and put on her straw hat, and gone out to the crib to shell come corn for the biddies, her father came into the crib and sat down on the other small empty, upturned barrel. An impending sense of doom smote Louisa Anne. She knew that something important was about to be said. Even though her father was a marginal farmer, he had managed to keep ownership of the 60 acres, the house and buildings through unstinting work. She could seldom remember him sitting down except at meals or in church. If he sat down it meant he had something momentous to say. Nevertheless, she did not stop shelling corn into the battered old bucket that was used for feeding chickens as well as gathering eggs. She was standing sideways from where her father sat on the barrel. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed him wringing his hands as he prepared to speak.

I supposed you wondered why I was driving you into school for the last few weeks. He waited. Louisa Anne nodded her head in agreement but remained silent. I’ve been trying to get a new mother for you and the younguns. Miss Engle, the English teacher has consented to marry me. There was another long pause. This time Louisa Anne raised her head and looked sideways at her father waiting for him to go on. It was obviously a difficult thing for him to say and she vowed inside not to make it any easier. Every since she realized what he was doing, her resentment towards him because of her mother had made her feel bitter toward him. Finally, he said We will be getting married Saturday in Magee at her parent’s home with just the preacher and her sister and brother there. We’ll stay on Saturday night at the Magee Hotel and come home Sunday morning. I want you to tell the other children and then clean the house so it will be clean when she gets here. Have Peter and Alex make room for Charles. He waited a moment longer to see if she would give him a response and when she did not, he rose up off the barrel and left the crib. Louisa Anne began to cough and looked after him and wondered if Miss Engle had ever seen him in the dirty bib overalls he wore out in the farm yard. Then she wondered if Miss Engle would stop teaching. None of the teachers in the high school were married. The only one called Mrs. was Mrs. Oakes, a widow whose husband had been killed in a fall while working on bridge repair over at