Nine Lives

Cats, it has been said, have nine lives. Before I reached the age of accountability I had used up four of mine by not being poisoned with arsenic, bleeding to death, breaking every bone in my body, nor dying at the hand of a pedophile. The move back to the Deep Run area where all our kin lived did not improve my chances A farm is a terribly dangerous place for children.

My first crisis was stepping on a rusty nail that penetrated all the way through the arched part of my foot and pushed the skin up like a tent. Daddy pulled it back out with pliers and had me soak the foot in hot water with Epsom salts, thinking that if tetanus was present we would see red streaks climb my leg in a day or so. No need for a doctor until then. I had never had the shot, nor any other inoculations.

We never had shoes to wear in summer, and we did not always know why we had a sore foot, a bit of glass, a splinter ? It must have been a thorn, felt like one when I walked on my heel, so I walked on my toes instead when Mama could not find the cause with a sterilized needle. It will pop out when it gets infected, they said, and then it will get well. A week or so later it had not popped out, and it was beginning to throb. One morning I noticed big infection under the tough skin of my whole heel

The most painful trauma I had resulted fom an unseasonable warm spell occurring just before Christmas. Since the house was not heated, except for a wood stove in the front room, we had feather beds under us and many homemade quilts over us, aided by a hot brick at our feet. In my outing flannel gown I awoke covered in sweat and to my mother's horror she saw bright red spots all over my chest and underarms which burned and itched. She remembered my grandpa had lived with us when I was very small, and he had an itch on his legs that looked similar which he was treating with a bottle of lotion. Half a bottle had been left over, which she moved with us. She never threw anything away. Stripping me down, she shook the liquid which had settled to a pink mass in the bottom of the bottle, and plastered me with it. It was so painful and I screamed and jumped up and down. She tried to wash it off with water, but it would not dissolve, and immediately huge blisters covered the area. I cried and she cried. She put one of her loose nightgowns on me and suspended everything with pillows and boxes, because I could not bear anything to touch me. After a couple of hours the burning eased up, and I got a little sleep that night. On Christmas day I was able to go to the table for dinner with pillows under my arms. Daddy felt so bad for me he suggested they bundle me up and take me to Kinston that night to see the Christmas lights at the rich people's homes. By the end of the vacation, I was comfortable enough to go to school. I never missed school, perfect attendance for nine years!
I was covered in scabs, but I put on a high neck dress. When I raised my arms I smelled the faint odor of dead skin. When teacher asked me to write on the board in math class, a girl saw up my sleeve and was horrified. I told her I had a bad fall and scraped the skin. The only scarring was under my arms, and that has definitely been a plus, because I have never needed to shave there.

My legs have not required shaving either, because something similar happened to them in the summer. Daddy told me to put on a pair of denim pants and help my mother scatter fertilizer on the peanut plants. They were covered with dew, making my pants wet and heavy. Soon there was more fertilizer on my pants than the peanuts. My legs began to burn all around. We hurried to finish the job; the faster I walked, the worse the abrasion and burning. Again I had skin burned off, and I carry some of the scars still.