Machine Dreams
“We had a neighbor called Mrs. Thomas. I remember reaching up a long way to pull the heavy telephone—a box phone with a speaking horn on a cord—onto the floor with me. Telephone numbers were two digits then. I called 7, 0, and said, “Tommie, I’m sick. I want you to come over.” I can still hear that child’s voice, with the feeling it’s coming from inside me, just as clearly, just as surely as you’re standing there. I was three years old. I saw my hands on the phone box, and my shoes, and the scra...tchy brown fabric of the dress I was wearing. I wasn’t very strong and had pneumonia twice by the time I was five. Mother had lost the child before me to diphtheria and whooping cough, and stillborn twins before him. She kept me dressed in layers of woolens all winter, leggings and undershirts. She soaked clean rags in goose grease and made me wear them around my neck. Tommie would help her and they’d melt down the grease in a big black pot, throw in the rags, and stir them with a stick while I sat waiting, bundled in blankets.MoreLess
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