Macdonald Betty - The Plague and I

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THE EGG AND I

THE PLAGUE AND I. Copyright 1948 by Betty MacDonald. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

EPub Edition October 2016 ISBN 9780062672254

Version: 04172017

For Dr. Robert M. Stith, Dr. Clyde R. Jensen
and Dr. Bernard P. Mullen without whose generous
hearts and helping hands I would probably
be just another name on a tombstone.

The Captain of all these men of death that came against him to take him away, was the Consumption, for it was that that brought him down to the grave.

Bunyan, The Life and Death of Mr. Badman

G ETTING TUBERCULOSIS IN the middle of your life is like starting downtown to do a lot of urgent errands and being hit by a bus. When you regain consciousness you remember nothing about the urgent errands. You cant even remember where you were going. The important things now are the pain in your leg; the soreness in your back; what you will have for dinner; who is in the next bed.

By background and disposition some people are better suited to being hit by a bus than others. For instance Doris, who had worked in a Government office with me. Her mother had a little tumor, her father had a bad leg, Doris had a great deal of female trouble, and they all were hoping that Granny had cancer. Doris, her brothers and sisters, her aunts and uncles, her mother and father, her grandmother and grandfather, all of them, had begun life as barely formed, tiny little premature babies carried around on pillows and fed with eyedroppers. If they did manage to pull through the first year, and they often did, life from then on was one continuous ache, pain, sniffle and cough. When Doris or any member of her large ailing family asked each other how they felt, it wasnt just a pleasantry, they really wanted to know.

They were so anxious to be sick that they prepared for colds days in advance of the actual germs, like training for the big game. Doris would say Monday morning at breakfast that she thought she felt as if she might be getting a cold. Instantly the whole household was en garde, and for the next week Doris was given hot tea, whiskey and lemon; a little sweater to wear under her blouse; many pills to take at the office, including nose drops which she administered by lying across her desk with her head hanging over the edge; a small screen to put around her desk to ward off draughts; sun lamp treatments on her back; mustard foot baths and plenty of encouragement.

By Saturday she usually had the sniffles as they called it, and during the next week she worked it into something big. To Doris and her family tuberculosis would have been anti-climactic but a definite asset. So of course it was not Doris but I who got tuberculosis, and the contrast between our families was noticeable.

In the first place our family motto was People are healthy and anybody who isnt is a big stinker. In the second place there were five children in the family but not one little premature baby. We began life as large, plump, full time babies, filled with vigor and strength and all but one had bright red hair. My father, a mining engineer and a great admirer of health, spent much of his spare time and energy maintaining our good health. As soon as we were able, he made us run around the block every morning before breakfast in winter; hike for miles and miles in the mountains with mother and him in summer; go to bed every night at eight oclock; drink ten glasses of water a day; and play out of doors (much against our wills) during all daylight hours.

For my sister Mary and my brother Cleve (sisters Dede and Alison were yet to come), this routine brought the desired results but as I grew out of infancy I turned thin and olive green and remained so no matter how many times I ran around the block, which was undoubtedly why I was Gammys favorite child.

Gammy was my fathers mother who lived with us and consistently undermined his health program. Gammy was a wonderful grandmother. She was a tireless reader-alouder, doll-clothes sewer, storyteller and walk-taker, but she was a pessimist, the kind of pessimist who gives every cloud a pitch black lining. With Gammy the state of being pessimistic was not a spasmodic thing induced by nerves or ill health, it was a twenty-four-hour proposition and she enjoyed it. She began her black premonitory remarks each morning as Daddy forced Mary and Cleve and me out the front door to run around the block.

We were living in Butte, Montana, the mornings were often bitterly cold, and we children, who were not exactly eager good sports about this morning exercise, would rush in from our rooms and sit down to breakfast, hoping that Daddy had forgotten about the morning run. But he never did. Lets see some color in those cheeks, he would say heartily, unclamping our fingers from spoons and forks, stuffing us into our coats and rubbers and driving us out into the crisp morning air. Gammy would stand by the door waving her apern and wailing, Darsie Bard, how can you drive those poor little cheeldrun out into this bitter cold?

Wed hang around the steps blowing our hot breaths into the freezing air and watching them smoke and hoping that Gammy would soften Daddy, but he only laughed at Gammy and shut the door firmly and finally. Wed start out then moodily shuffling our feet and pushing each other off the sidewalk into the deep snow but about halfway down the block the natural childish spirit of competition would come bubbling up and wed race each other the rest of the way and arrive back at the house with full circulating blood and, in the case of Mary and Cleve, rosy cheeks. The first one in the back door would always hear Gammy say, Here come the poor little things now, Ill fix them some hot Potsum. (She always called Postum Potsum.)

After she had fixed us some hot Potsum and had given us each a much too big helping of her gray, gluey, lumpy oatmeal, Gammy would pick up the morning paper and read aloud bad news. I see that the Huns are cutting off all the Belgian womens breasts, she would remark pleasantly as she took a sip of Potsum. Or, Well, heres a poor careless little child who played on the railroad tracks and the train came along and cut off both his legs at the hip. Poor little legless creature. Or, Heres a little mountain girl who had a baby at thirteen. Well, I suppose we cant start too young to learn what life has in store for us. When she had exhausted all the sad news about people, she would read bad weather reports from all over the world. Blizzards, cyclones, droughts, floods, hurricanes and tidal waves were her pleasure. Mother pleaded with Daddy to stop taking the morning paper, but we children enjoyed it.