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From the The Tenement Series of non-fiction essays by Harry Buschman
© by Harry Buschman
Are You Sure You're Sick?
My mother would
look at me suspiciously and say:
"Are you sure you're sick?"
She had a good reason to ask the question. During the endless gray winter months
that dragged by from Halloween to Easter Sunday none of the family was at their
best. We lived on the fourth floor of a five story cold water tenement, and
during the closed in days of winter we shared the same air. The windows were
shut tight and sealed with newspaper on All-Hallow's Eve, the kerosene stoves
were lit, and the gas oven was turned on. We hibernated until the first sign
of spring.
We were a family of five. My father was never without the stub of a soggy White
Owl cigar .... my uncle was never without a Camel in his mouth and another behind
his ear. My mother couldn't cook anything without burning it, and my aunt stank
of the gaggy perfume she scammed while working for Woolworth's. In such an atmosphere
you would expect all of us to be sick all of the time -- and perhaps we were.
But sick enough for a doctor? That was the $64 question we would ask when the
rash erupted again or the dizzy spells made it difficult to climb four flights
of stairs.
Doctors made house calls then. They charged $2.50 a visit, and you made damn
sure you were sick before you spent that kind of money for a sore throat or
a runny nose. Money like that didn't grow on trees -- it would feed a family
for a week. Whenever I felt sick enough to whine about it, my mother would say,
"Are you sure you're sick?" She would not rely on my decision, she
would send me off to school with faith in my resilience and trust in my recuperative
powers. "Oh, he'll take a turn for the better" -- or, if not, the
school nurse was a better judge of such things than she was. Usually getting
out of the apartment and into the fresh air cured me, but occasionally I picked
up something that was "going around" and the nurse would send me home.
Seeing me at the door again, my mother would heave a sigh of resignation and
rummage through the medicine cabinet. She was not a very good pharmacist and
the things she found there and forced down my throat probably did more harm
than good. After a day or two of home remedies, and seeing no improvement, (and
more than likely a steady decline) she would be forced to admit that I really
was sick and that maybe she should call the doctor and ask him to come over.
We had no telephone of course. The doctor had one, so did police stations, hospitals
and a few very important people. We did not. The only phone we could use was
in "Goofy" Margolis's candy store on the corner. It was in constant
use by the horse players in the neighborhood and there was always a waiting
line. My mother had more important things to do around the house, so she would
wait for my father to get home and tell him to go and phone the doctor. He'd
go off, grumbling how he had no use for doctors, and anyway "we coddle
our kids too much these days -- run off for the doctor the minute they get the
sniffles .... are you sure you're sick, kid?" From my sick bed I would
look up through the clouds of his cigar smoke and assure him I was and that
even the school nurse said I was.
Well, as I said,
doctors made house calls in those days. They had office hours in the morning
and went on tour in the afternoon. Sick people didn't go to the doctor, he came
to them on foot wearing a black suit and carrying a black leather bag of tools.
During the morning he lanced boils and set broken bones in his office but his
afternoons were spent with the bed-ridden. My father would come back from the
candy store to say the doctor would drop by tomorrow afternoon, then he'd light
up a new cigar, give me a wink and say, "We'll have you back up on your
feet in no time, soldier." My uncle, with a Camel in his mouth would look
in and ask, "What's the matter with the kid -- sick again?"
By this time I would have progressed from sick to ill, and whatever ailed me
would have a viselike grip on my young constitution -- I would have grave doubts
of living long enough for the doctor to see me alive. But children are a hardy
lot and usually recover in spite of the care and affection they receive at home,
yet I couldn't help feeling they were trying to do me in. I would lie there
looking at the pattern of lights on the ceiling cast by the kerosene stove and
try to understand the secrets of life, I would count on the fingers of one hand
my pitifully few achievements and
drift off into a feverish sleep wondering who would get my stamp album after
I was gone.
But, as it always does, dawn would break, and sick as I was, I'd be hungry.
My mother would put something like kippers and home fried potatoes on my lap
and I would eat it in bed. I would get a "sponge-down" and clean underwear
in preparation for the doctor's appearance and spend the morning wondering how
much I was missing at school.
The appearance of a doctor in your bedroom was, and always will be awe-inspiring. It is akin to witnessing the performance of a great actor on the stage. You watch his every move, listen carefully to everything he says, and try as best you can to catch the hidden implications he may have inferred but left unsaid. "Well, he's really sick .... there's a touch of pneumonia, and I wouldn't be surprised if he's got the chicken pox, a lot of it going around -- God!" he would add. "the air is foul in here, smells like a poker game. Keep his bowels open and make him drink a quart of water every day." It didn't take long for a doctor to reach a diagnosis in those days, he didn't have to make tests and nobody dared talk back to him. He'd take a quick look at you and more than likely, if you knew what was good for you, you started to feel better right away.
Then he'd take my mother into the kitchen and lay out the routine for my recovery. "Go down to the drug store and get a block of sulfur -- boil it on the back of the stove, that'll keep the rest of you from getting whatever he's got. Get yourself a roll of cheesecloth and hang it in his bedroom door -- keep it wet, that'll keep his germs from getting out of the bedroom." He would leave as quickly as he came with a parting, "Hang in there little fella, you'll be up on your feet in no time," to me, and to my mother a reassuring smile and a parting, "You know, you'd all be a lot better off if you opened a window in here now and then."
It wasn't only a question of diagnosing what you had, it was also looking for signs of what you didn't have. One thing you could be sure of, so long as you were not at death's door there was no danger of being sent off to a hospital. No doctor wanted that. He would have to say goodbye to that $2.50 a visit once the hospital got their claws in you. So if your number wasn't up, little by little nature would take over and you'd get better. My friend Ernie would bring my homework from school every day, and I suspect I learned as much doing my lessons at home as I did under the watchful eye of Mrs. Martel at P.S. 9. Finally, when you did get back to school you carried a magic note from the doctor excusing you from all strenuous physical activity, and if you were really lucky you might even get permission to leave school earlier than anyone else did.
During the convalescence
at home a kid was as close to Heaven as he could get
without actually going there. The bed was covered with the toys I loved best,
there were things like orange juice just for the asking and when my father came
home from work he would read to me. He would put his soggy cigar on the kitchen
stove, clear a place on the bed and lie down next to me and off we'd go to Treasure
Island or the court of King Arthur. I would drift off to sleep wishing I could
be sick forever.
©Harry Buschman 1996
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