Gifts of the Spirit

Postscript

Prologue

When it occurred to me to start writing about my life, at first I was very hesitant.

Who am I to do that? I thought. I had read books all my life, and it had never occurred to me that I could write one.

And then I thought, Why not? It’s not as if women aren’t allowed to write or that their writing isn’t taken seriously as it was for George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) and Jane Austen. I have read a lot of books by women writers: most recently the latest in the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. I could never tell stories as she has, I realized right away. Nor could I do novels like Tess Gerritsen or Patricia Cornwell. I don’t have their background to draw on.

All I have are my own experiences. Are they worthy enough of note to be recorded for everyone to read?

Of course, everyone wouldn’t want to read them. Perhaps Finnish people, I thought, hopefully. Perhaps people who had lived as we did on a farm. Perhaps people who remembered the Lappalas of Unitarian fame. Perhaps other people who know what it means to be in love so totally and wholeheartedly that nothing else matters except the loved one.

Maybe even another woman, one who, like me, has lived a normal life, facing challenges as they surface and finding the courage to do what needs to be done during those times.

I remember a quotation my daughter-in-law once shared with me, she who writes all the time and has encouraged me to join the league of women who write not because they want to but because they have to. They must. Something within them—within me—says that I need to write.

After all, as she said when she gave me a copy of the passage she had memorized:

"All things to nothingness descend,

Grow old and die and meet their end.

Man dies, iron rusts, wood goes decayed,

Towers fall, walls crumble, roses fade.…

Nor long can any name resound

Beyond the grave, unless ’t be found

In some clerk’s book; it is the pen

Gives immortality to men."

I’m not exactly seeking immortality, but I would enjoy putting the truth about my life onto paper. My daughter-in-law will enter it into her laptop computer and perhaps send it off to a publisher with a kind word of encouragement. And in the meantime, I shall enjoy myself, writing.

I think I’ll begin with the flu epidemic of 1918 because that was the first time my courage was tested—really tested—twice—first at home and then at a neighbor’s.

1: The Influenza

The symptoms began slowly with Mother, who, although running a fever, refused to lie down. Aini, my older sister, did lie down with what she said were a sore throat and body aches. She told me, I’m absolutely exhausted, and she looked it. The way she acted worried me, but I kept telling myself all would be well if she’d only lie down for a while.

But next came Ronny, my older brother. He rushed in from the barn after doing the morning milking, dropped the buckets of fresh milk on the table, and hurried outside again where I heard him vomiting. He then ran for the outhouse, where he sat for hours it seemed, alternating vomiting with diarrhea. By the time I was able to coax him into the house, his nose was bleeding, and his eyes were bloodshot, but the worst of the vomiting and diarrhea had abated, and he seemed glad to lie down in the boys’ bed with my littlest brother Eino, who didn’t seem to feel well either. He complained of a sore throat and a headache and told me rather vacuously that his whole body hurt.

Mother, although obviously very ill, insisted on running the milk through the separator, and ordered me to put the cream and the milk down onto the shelf Father had built during his better days atop the well, where they would stay cool. She tried to take some of the cream to make into butter but was so exhausted that she fainted. I had to try to drag and lift her onto the big bed next to Aini. I managed to finish the butter, using the wooden piece that fit into the crock full of cream. It seemed to take forever for me to push the wood up and down, up and down, until pieces of butter formed. Then Mother poured the pieces into a round flattened wooden bowel, used a piece of wood shaped like a ladle but without any holes in it, and pressed the rest of the liquid out of the butter. Finally, she shaped it into molds also made of wood with a decorative cover so that the butter inside looked pretty. But there was no time that day for decoration. I put the butter into a glass dish, covered it, ran it into the well, where I filled a pail with fresh, cold water and hurried back inside to put one wet washcloth on Aini’s head, another on Mother’s, and a third on Eino’s.

I thought of trying to get hold of Dr. Raihala in Virginia, but since we didn’t have one of those new-fangled telephones, I knew I had to rely on my own wits, which at that moment were not working at all. I felt beyond terrified… worried about Mother and Aini and Ronny and even myself. What if I got sick, too? Who would take care of us?

Since there seemed to be no answer to that question except me—Maria Seraphina Jackson—I finally got going, trying to do what seemed necessary as quickly as I could.

Next to Ronny I set a pail on a towel for him to vomit into, which he did. I was afraid of diarrhea but was grateful he’d been able to hold his bowels so far.

Things that day went quickly from bad to worse. Mother and Aini began to cough so violently I feared they would soon bring up blood. They couldn’t lie still in bed but moved constantly, seeking a cooler spot, trying to ease their aching heads. I tried to keep a glass of fresh, cold water on the table on each side of the bed to ease their sore throats, but every time I lifted one of them up to sip on the water, she fell back in agony, holding her head.

By nighttime I was beside myself. The cows needed milking again, and they had to be gathered from the field. I needed to shovel the fresh manure from behind their stanchions and lay down new hay for them to munch on. And there was dinner to make—although that task seemed unimportant at the time with my mother and my brothers, and sister so ill.

Hurriedly, I pulled on a shawl and my outside boots, called Koira the dog, and headed out into the field. Thank God for Koira, who really earned his keep that evening. He gathered the cows together with yips and barks and sent them on their way while I helped, using the bell Mother had taught us was their signal that fresh food was coming.

The milking seemed to take forever although I usually enjoyed resting my head on Bessie’s soft flank while I pulled her teats rhythmically, filling the pail that sat between my legs. Every milking I blessed Mr. Leinonen, who had made the special small stool for me to sit on when I milked.

That night I let the manure lie where the cows dropped it, filled their troughs with fresh hay, and hurried back into the house where I found that Ronny had thrown up again and Mother and Aini had both messed the bed, in agony still from their head and throats.

I had to work hard to keep from gagging. Thank God I had stoked up the kitchen stove before I went outside and put a pan on the top to heat. For a long moment I stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the bedroom, wondering where to start. Ronny seemed to have fallen into a heavy sleep although his bucket needed emptying, so I began with Mother and Aini, pulling off their clothing, trying hard not to get any of their poop onto the bedspread, and, using some rags from the kitchen, wiped down their rears. While I was in the process, another spout of greenish liquid spurted from Aini’s rear. The smell almost drove me away until I remembered Vicks Vapo-rub. I put a fingerful under my nose and then continued my task.

Once I got their clothes off and each one cleaned as best I could, I helped them into clean nightgowns and forced each one to stand for a second as I opened the bed. They fell against the cool pillows as if I had opened the doors of heaven. I put a layer of rags under each of their butts, hopefully to catch any more drainage. Then I helped each to take a sip of water and placed a fresh cool cloth on each one’s head.

By then Ronny had awakened and soiled himself with both vomit and diarrhea. He was so loathe to have me clean him that I had to get very firm: We’ve been going to the sauna together ever since we were tiny, I told him, so you don’t have anything I haven’t seen a million times.

That seemed to comfort him, for he allowed me to help him divest himself of his outer clothes, vomit, diarrhea, and all, and wash himself as best we could. He usually slept without any night-clothes, but that night I dug into Father’s chest and found an old nightshirt, for by then Ronny was shivering from cold. I piled the extra blankets from Mother’s and Aini’s bed onto him along with a knitted woolen comforter Mother had made the previous winter. He still shook with cold, but the vomiting and the diarrhea seemed to have ebbed so I hurriedly grabbed all the soiled clothing from the floor along with his pail of vomit, and ran through the kitchen outdoors where I emptied the soiled clothing as best I could, vowing to set up the wash tubs tomorrow. Tomorrow, I thought, wondering if it would ever come and what it would bring. In the process I checked myself all over to make sure I didn’t have any kind of rash, looking down my throat using the mirror in the sauna. I was able to use the outhouse normally. All of that was a huge relief. At least one of us had stayed well.

Little did I know that tomorrow would be a replica of today… only worse. Aware that none of the others would be able to eat, I cut myself some bread from the loaves Mother had made that morning, thank God, slathered them with butter and raspberry jam from the dwindling stores we had put up the previous summer, warmed the coffee Mother had made for breakfast, and sat down to think the situation through and to plan.

First of all, I realized I had to stay well. Were I to become sick, too, we would be in an awful mess. So I vowed to warm the sauna and keep it hot, to take a hot sauna every morning and every night, to eat meals whenever I could, and to try to sleep whenever there was time.

But there was very little time.

As I came in from the sauna, having set the soiled clothes to soak in cold water, and taken enough steam to keep the bugs—whatever was causing the horrors my family was enduring—away from me, I heard Mother and Jennie moaning and Ronny vomiting again. Little Eino lay as still as a stone, hardly moving at all. That frightened me most of all.

I had to dig down deep that night, but not nearly as deeply as I would the next week or so, for the horror went on and on until it seemed for a while as if there would be no end, as if I would spend the rest of my life in a half-awake, half-asleep stupor, trying with all my might to keep my loved ones alive and as clean and comfortable as I could make them.

All I had in the pharmacopeia of Mother’s aid kit was Vicks Vapo-rub, a cup for drawing blood, and some patent medicines she had bought from travelers—elixirs whose main ingredient, I soon discovered, was alcohol. I had never tried cupping and doubted the validity of the treatment. (What would drawing blood from weak people do but make them weaker?) But I did keep myself well-dosed with Vicks and tried to get Mother and Aini and Ronny to swallow a teaspoon of one of the elixirs. Nothing, however, did any good. I finally decided to fix a beef broth out of one of the cans of venison we had put up during the previous fall. I mixed it well with onions and carrots from our cellar and added potatoes, too. Once it had all cooked down until there was visibly nothing left that was onion, carrot, potato, or venison, I strained it using cheesecloth and set the broth back on the stove to keep warm while I disposed of the solids. Instead of pouring them into the slop pail, which I would then have to empty, I gave it to the cows, who seemed to be perfectly happy with that alternative to hay.

In addition to keeping the sauna and the kitchen stove hot, despite the outside temperature, which was rising steadily, I had to keep up with the milking, eventually clean out the manure, adding it to the pile outside the barn, and pull down fresh hay from the hay loft. Instead of letting the cows out into the pasture to graze, I had Koira help me get them into the horse paddock, which was now empty since Father had taken or sold all the horses and brought hay to them, a back-breaking job. This eliminated the time needed to move them to and from the pasture, and I desperately needed every second.

I finally developed a schedule, which I continued day and night: in the morning, I checked Mother and Aini to make sure there hadn’t been any accidents. If there had, I removed the rags, wiped them carefully to make sure that they didn’t develop any rash, and replaced the rags. Every other day I tried to change the bedding, rolling both of them onto one side while I made up the other side, and rolling them back so I could finish the job. Then I wiped each of them down with cool water and put them into fresh night-gowns. The sheets and any soiled rags were added to the pile I had soaking in the sauna. Then I replaced the cool cloths on their heads and tried to make each one take as many teaspoonfuls of water and warm beef broth as they could manage. When they began to show signs of vomiting, I quit in a hurry.

Then I hurried to Ronny, whose vomiting and diarrhea had been largely replaced by a sore throat, a headache, and—instead of a fever—a shivering cold that I couldn’t manage to warm despite the temperature in the house, which had become almost unbearable from the extra heat generated by the wood stove, which I kept stoked all the time, fearing that if it went out, I would really be lost. Finally I thought of putting bricks from the outside pile—there to someday use to replace our wooden homestead—into the oven until they were warm, wrapping them into towels, and placing them down Ronny’s sides and his legs. I thought of lying down next to him to share my body warmth, but as the days slipped by—one after the next—I realized if I lay down, I would fall asleep and never wake up—or at least not wake up for a long while—so I forebore.

Eino gave me the least trouble. He didn’t vomit or have diarrhea. He didn’t seem to have a sore throat or a headache. He just lay there quietly—the boy who kept everyone in the neighborhood on his or her toes because of his shenanigans—as if the life were being sucked out of him bit by bit, and he had no energy to continue to breathe. I worried about him most of all, especially after a rash appeared on his face and rapidly spread to his arms and body. It didn’t seem to itch. At least he didn’t attempt to scratch it. Perhaps he didn’t have the energy. At any rate, once I had Mother, Aini, and Ronny settled, I always sat down next to him, held his hand, offered him water and broth, which he manfully attempted to drink. Most of it ran down his chin. As I touched his hand, it felt burning hot, and a touch of his head proved that he, too, had the fever. I added him to my list of patients needing cool water, vowed to bathe him all over in cold water as soon as I could, and hurried to my next task.

Once I had gotten the clothing into the sauna, I dumped it into a washtub of cold water, lugged pail by pail from the outside pump, until I thought it had soaked enough to get rid of the worst of the stains. Then in another washtub, I scooped water from the kiuas (the water side of the sauna stove), where it had heated to boiling, then scraped bits of Mother’s lye soap into that washtub, and, using the scrub board, rubbed each article up and down until I considered it clean, wringing it out as tightly as I could, before dropping it into a third washtub we used for cold water rinsing. From there I wrung it out again and hurried outside to hang it onto the clothesline Father had strung from the house to the post he had dug into the ground, placing a t-shaped board atop it so Mother could string lines from side to side. (It remained long after he had left as a reminder of the good he could do when he was of a mind.)

The sheets were the hardest, being long and unwieldy and much mended, but somehow I managed, and there was a huge sense of relief and power that filled me once I saw those clotheslines full. I usually finished the morning off with a sauna myself—although the heat from the kiuas had made me sweat enough already.

Then it was back into the house to replace the cloths on Mother’s, Aini’s, and Eino’s heads and the bricks around Ronny and to try to eat something—even if it were just stale bread—with some broth. Every morning I tried to make coffee just as Mother did, grinding beans by hand, and putting them into the coffee pot with a pinch of salt (no egg, however). She considered putting eggs into coffee wasteful.

Oh, during the space of time it had taken the sun to move from east to west on the second day, I realized I had forgotten the chickens. Once I got into the coop to collect the eggs, a day late and a dollar short, as Father used to say, they reminded me in no uncertain terms that they had been without food for days. The rooster almost attacked me, and the hens all came down from their roosts to share the bounty I spread out for them—two days’ worth of food.

I knew I’d have to be more careful as the days went by, because I wasn’t sure which of the eggs I had collected were good and which maybe not, so I tried making a batch of pulla—Finnish sweet bread—adding the eggs one at a time after having broken each one into a separate cup. The extra eggs made the pulla especially good, I thought, as I mixed in the butter, which I brought from the well, sugar from the barrel that was getting low, and just the right amount of flour—not too much, not too little—as Mother had taught me.

I was careful to braid the dough from the middle to each end, and took a second to look with pride at my concoction even though it had taken me away from the task I most abhorred and really needed to do again right after milking during that second morning—pouring the fresh milk through the separator, through which the cream was skimmed off and the milk left ready to put into the milk pails. I despised cleaning the separator, because it has many round sections through which the milk ran, separating the milk from the cream. Every piece had to be washed thoroughly because even a little bit of stale milk sticking to the pieces made the new milk rancid. How I hated that separator!

Now, Maria, Mother told me, make sure every piece is immaculate before you dry it. I knew if I didn’t handle the milk right away, it would spoil, and we would lose money because we wouldn’t have our quota of cream and milk when the milk-wagon from the Cook Cooperative Creamery came around—if it ever did.

Perhaps—I couldn’t help but think—everyone around me was ill, and I was the only person in this whole world who wasn’t sick. Little did I know then that I was almost correct. I found out that millions died during that influenza pandemic, which swept through the whole world, killing more people than the World War had. But that information reached me much latter. Then my concern was for our own area. No smoke was coming from the Lofgren’s chimney nor from Kivimaki’s, but I couldn’t worry about them. I had enough to worry about taking care of our house. They would have to make do as best they could.

I spent a lot of time as I was cleaning up after Mother and Aini and trying to warm Ronny up and worrying about Eino thinking about Dr. Raihala and the hospital in Virginia. If I could only get my family there, I thought. But as soon as I thought of the hospital, I also remembered the pest house where desperately ill people were brought… usually to die.

Every time that thought of getting everyone to Virginia crossed my mind, however, I realized how unrealistic it was. We didn’t have a carriage—only a wagon—and no horse to pull it, thanks go Father’s shenanigans.

It occurred to me, however, that it might be helpful to let others know about the sickness that had beset us, and so early one morning I made a sign—Sickness here—to put on the fence post at the end of the driveway. Just in case someone would contact Dr. Raihala, he’d know to stop here on his rounds.

How I kept going I’ll never know! I tried to catch a few hours sleep in the darkest part of the night—although that was also often the very worst time for Ronny, whose fever would climb—not from the bricks, I hoped—so that he was kicking covers off rather than cowering underneath them. I added him to my cool-cloth, cool-water-and-beef-broth regimen with great worry. There had been nothing left for him to vomit and no diarrhea for days by then, and I feared desperately he had passed from one stage into a worse one. His color turned, too, with brownish spots appearing. And when he coughed, as he did a lot, it seemed as if he were coughing up his whole insides.

Mother and Aini seemed weaker every day, too, their fevers unchecked no matter how many times I tried to sponge them off with cool water and to hold a teaspoon to their lips so they could swallow some cool water and some broth.

I spent the days and nights so busy that most of the time I wasn’t as terrified as I became in retrospect.

But one day followed the next, until finally one morning, Mother’s fever broke. In her almost normal voice she asked, Is there any coffee?

Aini’s return to normalcy seemed to take a bit longer, but gradually she, too, began to return to the living.

Only Ronny and Eino remained ill and the three of us worried about them. When Ronny coughed, mucus came up from his lungs, which sounded as if they were full of water. But thanks perhaps or hopefully to my continued ministrations, Eino’s fever, too, finally began to go down.

Then, suddenly, when we were in the depths of despair about Ronny, who seemed worse every day, his fever alternately dropping so he was shivering, and rising again until he was burning hot, a light appeared in the wilderness. We heard a horse and buggy stop near the fencepost as if to allow the driver to read the sign, and then it turned and continued until it reached the house.

Soon down jumped Dr. Raihala, spruce as always in his celluloid collar and black hat, carrying his black bag.

I rushed to greet him, hugging him with all my heart, and dragging him toward the house at the same time, trying to explain what had happened and was happening to everyone so quickly I’m afraid the words just made a mumble of sound without any sense. He did take a good look at Mother, Aini, and Eino, and nodded, as if satisfied, although all three were still abed, too weak to get up except to use the chamber pot and to sip some water and some more broth.

I’m not quite sure what he did for Ronny. He sent me out of the room, and I heard him pounding on Ronny’s back, as if he could force the water out of his lungs and the mucus from his—what I learned later—esophagus. He had used a device he called a stethoscope—something new, he told us, that he had great faith in. He said it had allowed him to listen to Ronny’s lungs and to proceed with forceful action to move his insides around. I still think it sounds very strange, but whatever he did, it worked. Ronny’s coughing resulted in huge blobs of mucus that Dr. Raihala let drop into a towel. Ronny’s recovery commenced with whatever Dr. Raihala had done. By the next morning he—like Mother and Aini—was asking for coffee and maybe some pulla to dunk into it and some oatmeal to eat (providing I made it nice and thin).

You’ve done some good work here, young lady, Dr. Raihala told me when Mother and Aini and Ronny all explained to him how I had taken charge. You’ve kept your family alive. No nurse at our hospital in Virginia could have improved on what you did. Keeping them cool, keeping them hydrated—with the water and the broth, and keeping them clean—that was all you could do, and you did it exceptionally well. By the way, how old are you?

I know that my face was red—both from the heat and from his kind words, which I appreciated more than he could possibly know. I had not known what to do, but inadvertently it seemed I had done all of the right things. I grinned at him, smiling from ear to ear, happy and relieved to hear that my best had been good enough.

I’m twelve—going on thirteen, I answered and followed with a quick question: How about Eino? I feared the worst but hoped for the best.

He, too, will recover, given time. Now it’s time for you to rest.

And rest I did. I even skipped that night’s sauna. I fell into bed beside Aini, and slept the clock around, leaving Mother and Ronny and Aini to do the light work that involved taking care of themselves and Eino.

Had I only known that would be my last night of real rest, I would have slept longer! Or perhaps, had I been aware of what was to greet me in the morning, I wouldn’t have managed to sleep at all.

2: More of the Same

When I awoke the following morning, I had no idea of the challenge that would lie before me before the end of that day. Nor had I any conception until later how very fortunate we had been.

For the first time in weeks, Mother was up before me, grinding fresh coffee and starting a batch of fresh bread. She was still in her nightgown and obviously very weak because she had to pause every few minutes to sit down, but at least she seemed much better, and I was enormously relieved.

After finishing the milking, this time cleaning the manure that had accumulated behind the stanchions and herding the cows out toward the pasture with Koira’s help, I volunteered to put the milk through the separator and to clean it. Mother knew how much I hated that job, and she stopped to give me a loving look and to whisper a quick, "Kiitos." (Thank you.) She wasn’t a hugging sort of person, but the love she felt for us she expressed in so many ways that we were all deeply aware of its warmth.

Barely had I sat down after washing the parts of the separator, covering the whole contraption with cotton, and shoving it into the corner where it usually sat, when we heard the sound of hoofbeats and a yell, Whoo-hoo is anyone home? (The words were in Finnish.)

Mother and I hurried outside just as August Leinonen almost fell off the horse he was riding. We helped him into the house, feeling the heat of his fever and aware of his weakness.

Help! he managed. Not for us. I’m the only one up. Everyone else is sicker than I am. But someone’s yelling for help from the top of Hauala’s barn.

Mother and I exchanged glances. I was healthy, tired but well. I could go.

We helped August back onto his horse after giving him fresh cold water and some of the warm broth that still simmered on the back of the stove. He nodded, seemed able to keep that down, and said he was in a hurry to get home. Ma and Pa and all of the kids are sicker than I am, he told us, holding back a cough, and set off over the fields for home.

It took Mother and me just a few minutes to gather the supplies I thought I’d need: fresh rags (I was so grateful I had kept up with the washing), some more Vicks Vapo-Rub, a jar of beef broth, as many eggs as I felt I could safely carry, some bleach for sanitizing, and a bar of Mother’s home-made lye soap. Mother wrapped it all in some clean towels and a sheet, fashioned the whole into a bag she was able to hang on my back, and I set off for Haualas to do what I could to help.

Little did I know what I was in for.

The Haualas were far wealthier than we. Instead of the two-room log homestead cabin where we lived, their house had two stories. Mr. Hauala had ordered the whole building from the Sears & Roebuck catalog two years before, and it had come with everything needed, including two flights of stairs—one from the side porch and one from the living area, both leading to the second floor, where there were three bedrooms—one at the top of the living room stairway and two more on the right just past the upstairs hallway that led from front to back. It was a marvelous house with its walls painted a clean white and wainscoting, varnished to a sheen, lining the walls of the kitchen. Their pump sat in the kitchen, not outside as ours was, and their woodstove had a warming oven atop the stove plates. Its stovepipe led upstairs with a register in the first bedroom so the upstairs would warm up during the winter.

All in all, it had been spectacular to watch it going up, including a cupboard with shelving along the walls of the upstairs hallway where Mrs. Hauala could store towels, sheets, pillow-cases, and extra clothing. There was even a shelf of books on the lower left hand side. Once, when we had gone there for a "coffee kekkuri," (a get-together) I had found those books and devoured them—especially Tarzan, the Ape Man.

At any rate, I crossed the field and was nearing the house when I saw Mr. Hauala, lying flat on the ground just outside of the barn. Running to his side, I feared he had fallen. But once I touched him, I realized he had collapsed from weakness. His forehead was burning hot.

Bring me into the sauna, he directed me. "And fill the kiuas (the sauna stove) and the water tubs with water from the well house." The words didn’t come out exactly in that order nor were they as clear, but I caught the drift of his advice and hurried to do as he had told me. Once I had everything full of water—the water section of the kiuas, every wash tub, every bucket, every dishpan—I helped him get out of his clothing, which was filthy with dirt mixed with vomit and diarrhea and tried to fix him some washing water, but he waved me off. They need you worse than me. he said, motioning toward the house.

The minute I entered, I realized something was hideously wrong. From the minute I stepped into the house, using the front door, which led into a sunroom and thence into the living area, I knew things in this house were bad. The smell alone had me gagging. The kitchen floor, usually covered with sparkling clean linoleum, was spotted with vomit and diarrhea. Thank God Mrs. Hauala had lined the clean linoleum with newspapers as Finnish women were wont to do to keep the floor as clean as possible, so the first thing I did was to gather up the newspapers and throw the whole mess outside for me to worry about later.

The line of vomit and diarrhea led me from the side porch up the side porch steps and toward the upstairs hallway. I scraped every step into a dustpan before I stepped on it, backed out, and threw that out the door. Before I started that, however, I had checked to see whether a fire was burning in the wood stove in the kitchen. Of course, it wasn’t. People like the Haualas had a summer-kitchen—a separate building where they could heat a wood stove and do the cooking in order to keep the house cool.

So my first job was to find some kindling—the woodbox was full, thank God—and get a fire started in the kitchen wood stove. Once I had the kitchen stove going, regardless of the heat it would add to an already hot day, I filled the water holder on the side and every bucket and dish pan with water from the pump and set them all on the stove to heat.

Only then did I start up the back stairs. The water wasn’t hot enough for me to wash each one, so I had to step on the residual vomit and diarrhea as I was going upstairs, gagging all the way and trying not to vomit myself. Thank God for the Vicks, which I had slathered on my nose and even into my nostrils.

By the time I got upstairs, the smells were staggering in their intensity. I headed first for the worst area—the back bedroom on the left. There, covered in their own soil lay the two Hauala boys, obviously dead. Unbelievably, they had turned blue before they died. The odor of death and decomposing bodies—for they must have lain there in the heat for days—was almost overpowering. But I thought, I can’t help them, and hurriedly shut the door on the horror and headed for the two who lay on the double-bed in the first bedroom to the left.

They writhed in pain, holding their heads, and trying to speak with throats that had swollen shut. I had passed them by as I headed for the worst of it, and they were desperate for help. As soothingly as I could, I pulled their clothing off, throwing it out the upstairs window onto the roof of the sunroom, where it lay for days until Mr. Hauala finally got back on his feet and was able to help me. Running back downstairs, I filled a bucket with cold water, rushed back up the stairs, and, using the rags I had brought from home, began to sponge them off, one at a time. Each of the girls—for there were two of them—Elsie and Violet—was able to take a sip of cold water, and they thanked me with their eyes as I turned them over to change the soiled sheets. They were so hot I hesitated to cover them even with a sheet, but I did manage to get a fresh sheet underneath each one after I was through with the sponging.

Ma… one of them stammered, how is she?

Where is she? I asked, really aware of the answer before it came.

The bedroom at the head of the stairs, came the answer I had feared.

I should have run there first because I knew that the heat from the kitchen woodstove was coming