Chapter 15 - The Medicine Bag on the Kitchen Table
I sat at the sewing machine and listened for his car.
That morning after he left with the envelope still sealed in his jacket pocket, the house got too quiet. The needle was parked up. The white fabric lay folded over the arm of the machine, and underneath it, where Mom had told me to show him, the little bundle stayed where we'd put it back. Three finished baby gowns, pressed flat, with their thin straps and tiny hems. My pay work. And tucked between them, Mom's clinic discharge paper with her name on it. Proof we hadn't made anything up.
I kept checking the kitchen window. The refrigerator hummed. Light moved across the wood floor a little at a time. I unwound a thread from my bandage and rewound it tighter with my teeth.
He'd said twenty minutes to the drugstore on Highway 9 and back. He'd written down the name from the empty bottle in his own neat print so he wouldn't get it wrong. He hadn't asked to open anything else. That was the deal we'd made before he walked out.
A car door shut outside. I stood up so fast the chair legs scraped.
He came through the white door sideways, carrying a white pharmacy bag and a small carton of orange juice. His suit jacket was creased now. His hair had come loose a little in front. He looked tired in a normal way, not the hard serious way from before.
"Got it," he said. He set the bag on the kitchen table like it was something breakable.
I stared at it. The bottle inside was new and full, with our name printed on the label. My throat got tight.
"You paid?" I asked.
He nodded once. "Don't worry about that part."
I did worry, but I let him put the juice next to it. He pulled the receipt out and folded it and slid it under the bag, out of the way. His wristwatch caught the light. The little tattoo on his hand moved when he flexed his fingers.
"Let her take the first dose with food," he said. "Pharmacist said with a little juice or crackers."
I carried the bag into the bedroom. Mom was on her side under the light cover, awake. Her eyes went right to the bag.
"He came back," I whispered.
She breathed out slow. "I heard."
I got the crackers from the kitchen drawer and poured juice in the chipped cup. Mom pushed herself up on one elbow. Her hand shook, so I held the cup while she swallowed the pill, then another sip. We waited. I watched her face the way I watched a seam to see if it would hold.
After a minute her shoulders dropped a little. "That's better," she said. It wasn't everything better. It was just easier to breathe.
The man stayed in the kitchen doorway. He didn't come all the way in. He kept his hands at his sides.
Mom looked at him. "You kept your word."
"I did," he said.
I went back to the table and lifted the sealed brown envelope from where he'd left it when he took off his jacket to drive. The kraft paper was still closed. The flap had never been lifted. I held it out to him.
He frowned. "That's yours."
Mom's voice came low from the bed. "We didn't open it. We don't want terms tied to seeing me. Take it back."
He didn't reach right away. "If I take it back, they'll ask questions."
"Then tell them the truth," Mom said. "She sews for pay. We pay for medicine ourselves."
Something shifted in his face. He took the envelope and slid it back inside his jacket, flat against his chest. It disappeared. That felt final and clean.
He looked at the sewing machine, at my right hand with the bandages gone gray at the edges. "You should rewrap those," he said.
"I will," I said.
He stepped toward the front door, then stopped. "That bundle under the fabric. That's staying here?"
"Yes," I said. "It's our work. It's not for trade."
He nodded like he understood more than he'd said all day. "Good."
At the white door he turned. He wasn't shocked anymore. He just looked like a man who'd seen a small house clearly for the first time. "If the machine breaks down, or you need thread — " He stopped himself. "You did fine, Lily."
May you like
After his car pulled away, I locked the door. I put the new bottle on the shelf above the sink where I could reach it. I rewrapped my fingers with fresh gauze from the bathroom box. Mom watched from the bed while I fed the white fabric back through the machine and sewed a straight line, slow and even, just to hear it run right.
Mom was resting easier, her breathing settled. The gowns were still ours. The medicine was paid and in hand. And we were still together in the same rooms, with work left to do.
