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With an effort that hurt Henry to watch, Anna raised herself onto her elbow. A low rasping sound rose from under the blanket; neither of them paid attention to it or to the attendant smell, except for Henry’s mental note to change the pad. Henry drew the low table closer to the lounge and moved the pitcher, glass, bottles, and folded medicine papers aside. Anna took the pen in her palsied hand, dipped it into the ink as Henry steadied it, and signed the deed in a wavering script. “I don’t want Brainard or Charlotte trying to take anything from the children,” she told Henry. It was the clearest speech she had spoken for two days. “Make Mother Better if It Be Thy Will” may 15, 1894 on tuesday, Dr. Dean brought Dr. Kinnie, from Frankfort, to examine Anna. At that time they noted that her pulse was between 140 and 160 beats per minute, so they gave her some digitalis “to strengthen the heart.” The news meant little to Lottie, so she resolved that when her chores were done she would look up “digitalis” in Home Physician, the family medical book. Perhaps it would give her a clue about how sick Mother actually was. At ‹rst, Lottie thought, taking care of Mother wasn’t so bad; it made her feel rather proud, in fact, as though she were returning some of the care that Mother must have given to her when she was very small. Mother’s illness seemed not so different from Auntie’s spells. As the days passed, however, she became frightened. Her mother had never been ill for so long, not even after she had given birth to Josie, which, she’d said several times, had “just about worn her out.” Lottie could pinpoint almost to the hour when Mother had gone from being an invalid to something else, a body that still moved and spoke, yet was breaking down like a dead groundhog in the sun. The sickroom smell of chamber pot and vomit changed to something more sour and somehow metallic. Mother’s skin looked stretched over the bones of her face and hands and body, and it shone an odd bronze color with green underneath. 128 Oh, and the sounds she made, when sleep conquered her usually stoic will! Low, racking groans that changed to whimpers. Then this morning, just before she awoke, Mother lay curled on the lounge, crying “Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!” Lottie shuddered to remember it—she didn’t want to think of it, but those little breathless yelps kept coming back to her like a snatch of song sometimes did, as she mindlessly moved from task to task. Then, a day or two ago, Lottie couldn’t remember when, the blood had come. Bright red blood in the pot, soaking through the bedclothes, and then the pads, more blood than Lottie imagined could ‹t into one thin body. “Please, God, make Mother better,” she prayed repeatedly, and nearly always remembered to add, conscientiously, “If it be Thy will, amen.” She had learned in school about the democratic process, and Papa had described how the candidates rode in carriages in torchlight processions and handed out cigars to prospective voters, and how, after a candidate was elected, the voters could write and demand that he consider their wishes during his governance. Feeling slightly guilty that she might be lobbying God in this same way, she nonetheless enlisted the support of Will and Josie, who now went about the house likewise muttering , “Please, God, make Mother better if it be Thy will, amen.” She didn’t ask Roy or Ralph to join the campaign, fearing they would think she was being foolish. Dr. Dean, she knew, had tried every remedy he could think of. She had learned to recite some of these to herself, and had only found a couple of them in the Home Physician. Bismuth, for indigestion, was there. Cardamom and ginger, she knew. William Davis, Brooks & Co.’s elixir of calisaya iron, that was one to keep in the mind, it would have been poetic were it not so terrifying, and strychnine, that was in the book, another powerful remedy that could act like a poison if not handled carefully. None of these things seemed to make much difference to Mother’s condition, unless they made her sicker. Today, Dr. Dean had brought another doctor with him. Mother had said, “My condition does not seem so very...

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