Chapter 4 - Birth and Vanishing
It was the end of the winter in nineteen o-seven and the Irwin’s new house on Santa Fe Avenue was glorious and three stories tall, including the attic. With five gabled windows on the second floor, a porch that wrapped all the way around, a copper roof tinged with the patina of nearly twenty years of air, and eight rooms to live in. All for one thousand and one hundred dollars, with two hundred dollars down payment. Flora had insisted on painting it pine green with rose trim and white columns and white shutters. The front yard had an oak tree that may have been thirty five foot high, it’s buds had just come out one or two days before, with thick branches on three sides on which one of John had installed a rope swing. Flora sat inside in the drawing room, in a wicker rocker, letting out a pair of John’s striped pants an inch or so. In Flora’s womb a baby kicked hard and she froze in place and grabbed her abdomen, looked straight ahead, breathed deeply, waited, then returned to sewing and rocking in her chair again.
According to Salina’s principal stork, doctor Rothschild, Flora was eight months pregnant and having a normal pregnancy. Flora had grown impatient wanting the baby to come as soon as possible. She projected her impatience onto nearly every one she knew. In several weeks time she was frequently snapping at delivery people, the milkman, the paper boy, grocery delivery boy and the postman. One morning, while John slept deeply in the master bedroom at the rear of the house, Flora had awoke at five in the morning and quietly stepped her way out of the house to sit on the front porch, hidden on a stool behind one of the columns, and close to the front steps where she waited with great patience. There in the darkness, she waited and watched, as the morning light began to peek over the horizon. She observed the bluebirds and sparrows leave their heights in the trees and search out morning worms on the lawn. She cared not for the serenity nor the beauty of this sunny and cool morning because she was on a mission that required her intense focus. Flora was motivated by the nearly psychotic hormonal anger of late term pregnancy, manifest as a vengeful determination to correct a great injustice to her household: sloppy newspaper delivery to her front lawn. She spotted the paper boy coming her way from the north on Santa Fe Avenue, and she ducked low to hide her self below the railings of the porch.
Bobby Perkins was eleven years old, he had the job for the Courier for over a year, and he delivered to sixty homes five days a week. He pushes his scooter up each street with his heavy canvas bag hung over the handle bars and he stops in front of each home and tosses a paper towards the front porches. Sometimes, he’ll tie a small length of string around each paper to keep it rolled up, but if he is out of string, he has learned to finesse his toss so that the paper lands still folded on the customer’s property. His eyes still puffy weak from slumber, and working in an almost dream-like state of being as he stared down Santa Fe Avenue, he was tossing papers and generally holding his head downward, watching the dewy morning ground under his foot falls. No one is on the street when he does his route, ever, so there is nothing to watch out for, no one to expect to have to talk to. Bobby approached the Irwin’s house, a corner lot what’s porch is a longer distance from the street than most of the other houses, and so he leaned his scooter against the oak tree and took their paper towards the porch. He stopped ten feet from the porch steps and gently tossed the paper, flat, onto the porch. Before he could turn around to leave Flora sprung up like a scary clown from a Jack-in-the-Box toy, her hair loose and wiry, in her nightgown and looking to a child like the visible angry ghost of a woman. Bobby left the ground by a few inches and his arms and legs jutted outward momentarily as every nerve in his body was shocked into fright, his hair stood on end and he let out a yelping high pitched scream. Then he froze on the Irwin’s walkway, his mouth hanging open, taking in the reality of what he was seeing, and he wet his pants, and Flora wasted no time in letting him have a piece of her mind as if little Bobby was destined for consumer service hell. Flora instantly began hollering at him with a fury, threatening his job, accusing the boy of laziness for delivering a loose newspaper the day before that had to be picked up, put together and refolded. Bobby, in a state of shock, could not really hear her words, just see her anger, and feel his own blood stop cold as the ghostly specter berated him from atop the porch. She concluded:
“The very next time young man, I’ll personally visit your boss, and see to it that you are without a job!”
Flora calmly went back into the house, she climbed back into bed, smiling at John who was barely awake. She told no-one of her exploit into the world of domestic vigilante justice. To some fifty neighbors, Flora’s dawn outburst, nearly at the sound level of a train whistle, became just another early morning voice from the ether, in their dreams and nightmares. So they did not wake up that morning, their sub-conscious minds having made the logical assumption that “no-one would be up hollering about newspapers at five-thirty in the morning, so keep dreaming, go back to sleep.” Ramifications of this morning last to this day, as a legacy of unknown origin that remains in Salina, Kansas, of perfectly hand delivered papers,.
Until after the baby comes Thelma has agreed to ride into town five days a week to care for and to keep company with Flora while John is at work. Upstairs, Thelma a friend and a loyal employee of the Jenkins for many years, was making the bed and gathering laundry. The house was clearly too big for just Flora and John, even too big for themselves and a baby. Flora had been trying to talk Thelma into moving in to stay on permanently with them, leaving her mother’s household. Thelma would like nothing more, but her sense of loyalty is strong to Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins.
John was at work, not at the Kansas Pacific Railway, but at the First Kansas Home Trust Company, a mortgage bank on Iron Street. The portly Mr. Godfrey had approached John on the evening of his wedding with an offer he could not refuse: a two hundred dollars sign on bonus and three hundred dollars per month plus ten percent shares and five percent commission on new loans that he himself acquired. He apologized to Mr. Auburn of the Kansas Pacific and it was agreed that he should leave for the mortgage bank. The change meant everything he could want for Flora, a home of their own, new clothes, a carriage and two horses, a maid and maybe a Model T of their own. John was face down in his ledger books in his office when he heard something that caught his attention from outside his office. He picked up his empty coffee cup for an excuse to go to the main room. It was his old boss, Mr. Auburn of the Kansas Pacific Railway, with his back turned to him, talking rather loudly and raising his arms to Mr. Godfrey. John walked to the back of the main room to the pot belly stove where coffee was kept warm and poured a cup. He tried to hear the conversation, but Auburn and Godfrey quickly moved into Godfrey’s office, the door slammed behind them, and the conversation became accusatory and defensive muffled intonations only. “Very strange.” John thought.
“They had a couple of loans with us, I remember checking the numbers. Hmm . . the loans were made twice, big amounts, for labor to, to . .Chicago Box Cars to put up the cash to build cars he needed. Nothing wrong with that. What could have gone wrong?”
John sipped his coffee, burned his tongue and without thought cursed aloud. Realizing he was being a busy-body he returned to his ledger books, closing his office door behind him. It was time to go home to Flora in less than a half an hour, and work had to be finished rather hurriedly. “Thank goodness for Thelma!” John thought to himself as he sat down, wishing he could see Flora now, knowing that Thelma was back at the house tending to her needs, eased his mind greatly.
John was able to walk to work and back from Santa Fe Avenue and he enjoyed the time, stopping often for pastries for after dinner and, one for himself on the way home which he kept secret. Sewer and drainage work seemed a year after year ongoing process in Salina, with large trenches with hazardous planks covering them, tempting pedestrians to cross them, lining several streets at a time. The state of perpetual construction reminded John of any street in Chicago when he was growing up there. In Salina, people would fall into the trenches on a daily basis, horses and carriages would slip in and become stuck whenever it rained, sidewalks near the trenches would cave-in creating more chaos for the town. But the patient townspeople felt certain it would all be worth it. Soon it would be planting time in the fields, mostly for wheat, in the hundreds of square miles surrounding Salina and the town would fill up with outside labor, contractors and salesmen. Many of the hobos, who’s hundreds of small encampments line the train tracks from Topeka and Wichita and Denver to Salina, would find day work with the farmers and the petty crime would slow, the muggings and the occasional store break-ins would cease for a few months at least.
John arrived home with pastries and a warm smile and a kiss for Flora, but Flora’s affection in return was not genuine, pecking him on the cheek and returning herself to a state of frustration with a frown. Secretly John was loving the new agitated, bloated, cramping, violent throwing of objects woman that Flora had become during this near end of her pregnancy. Knowing it was temporary he could manage her many frustrations . A so much different woman he had never seen in Flora. It was almost refreshing that she now deplored annoyances, she now wanted help from others, now relied on Thelma and him for assistance. There was now a veritable little devil inside his angel that had been waiting for an excuse to reveal itself. Flora had been a perfect, strong and independent woman, who was now made vulnerable by pregnancy. Before the attitude adjustment , that was her pregnancy, she had been an amenable presence of perfume and kisses who had never said no, who was always first to rise and fetch to please, who now cared not for that pretentious servile behavior, not while a child was within her, turning and kicking, sapping her energy and consuming her nutrients, and according to Flora, stabbing her with a stick whenever she went to sleep. John and Flora had decided months ago, the stick stabber would be would be named Sydney if it were a boy and Isabel if it were a girl.
John was in the stable out back feeding the horses and putting away tack at around five-thirty. In the kitchen an herbed chicken was roasting in the oven. Thelma was gathering her things to ride home to the ranch when Flora screamed with intense pain from the second floor bedroom. Thelma dropped her bag and ran up the stairs.
“Miss Flora miss Flora, talk to me honey, what is the matter!” Thelma shouted as she rounded the hallway into the bedroom.
Flora was on the floor flat on her back holding her abdomen, a puddle of fluid was underneath her.
“I think it is nearly here Thelma!” Flora cried out and gasped with deep worry on her face.
Flora then became focused and Thelma started to panic. Flora was relieved that the birthing process may now be starting. So relieved that the pain of her present labor seemed to be overcome in her mind.
“Help me up onto the bed dear.” Flora grabbed the bedpost and leaned upwards from the floor.
John’s rapid and hard foot steps traversed the inside of the house, he swung himself around the banister post at the bottom of the stairs and dashed upwards into the bedroom and was there in less than fifteen seconds. Flora was in the bed and Thelma was propping her back with pillows and covering her.
“You lost your water, it’s coming, it’s starting! Honey are you fair? Does it pain you?” John was now in a panic and breathing hard from his flight to the second floor.
John came to Flora’s side and grasped her shoulders with great care, he looked into her eyes and consoled her.
“Darling, every thing is going to be fine, we’ll get through this just fine, it is all going to work out, we are ready for this.” John said softly.
This was the extent of John’s plan for this birthing. All else was assumed by him to be handled by others, or some mysterious group of child-birthers that came from out of nowhere to brush the man aside and manage the rest of the process. He realized he did not know what he was doing and had in actuality planned poorly. He looked at Thelma with the intensity of a man at war.
“Thelma what do we do next?”
“Mr. Irwin what are you asking me for? I ain’t never done this before!” She said with incredulous tone.
Thelma also had assumptions about the matter, that the Irwins had it all planned. She thought about the doctor.
“Doc Rothschild Mr. Irwin, we have to get Doc Rothschild here!”
Flora began panting, the second floor room was warm and all three were sweating, Flora took control.
“John, get on your horse, ride over to find doctor Rothschild. Thelma, open that damn window then go down to the sink and bring me a pot of cool water from the well tap before I burn up, and bring an armful of extra towels and sheets. I think that I will manage for a little while.”
The patient was in control of the orderlies. John disappeared like a fireman leaving a burning building. Thelma hurried down the stairs to the kitchen, she took the chicken off the spit and tossed some water on the fire. Thelma filled a big pot with water and returned to Flora’s side. John found Doctor Rothschild at Quincy’s after being routed around town by three different people. Throughout town the word was spread that the Irwin baby is on it’s way. At the moment that John burst into to Quincy’s and spotted Doc Rothschild every one inside knew why. Doc Rothschild knows that a labor could last many days, but he also knew that the husband of the expecting mother can not be argued with and not be kept waiting. Doc Rothschild stood up from his barstool and belted out some orders immediately.
“Ron, two whiskeys. John, you down this whiskey with me and we’ll go, a calm father is a father that a mother will appreciate at this time. Then go to the carriage house and tell them to rig my carriage. She’ll be fine John. Over the teeth, past the gums, look out stomach, here it comes!”
“Great!” John thought, “at a time like this Flora will be tended to by two men wreaking of whiskey.”
“Doc you take my horse and I’ll bring your carriage over to the house after it is ready!” John said seeking expediency.
At the house Mrs. Jane Schmidt from next door had arrived, having heard Flora’s initial scream and realizing what was happening, was ready to help. Mrs. Schmidt had started boiling water in case of a quick labor, and had propped Floras feet upward and spread out with pillows. Doc Rothschild arrived and began listening to the baby’s movements and heartbeats and palpating Flora’s abdomen attempting to determine where the baby’s head was. John seeing clearly that he was in the way, rode out to the Jenkins ranch to inform the grandparents of the event. Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins along with Jeremiah, returned by car, ready to stay at the house until the baby was born. It was now a full house of attendants. John was greatly relieved. He and Mr. Jenkins took Jeremiah and went to Quincy’s to drink and wait. Jeremiah would be the messenger between Quincy’s and the house.
Women did not get priority in medical care in Nineteen-O-Eight. It was likely that a woman’s female friends and neighbors knew more about the signs and symptoms of an illness of a woman’s uniqueness than did the local male doctor. It was an embarrassment for a man to allow his wife, or daughter to see a male doctor for fear that the doctor might gaze upon the woman’s private parts where only he or his wife are allowed to gaze; perhaps looking into her vagina, or examining her breasts or her colon. This chauvinist limitation, this virtuous conservatism influenced by cultural religious ethics, was the basis of the ignorance of women’s health, and was the unwritten reason that the category of Women’s Health was not part of medical collegiate study for decades to come. It is the reason that a woman or a girl often died before seeing a physician, or would be close to death by the time she obtained a physical examination, too late for treatment.
Sydney Orenthal Irwin was born at Eleven-O-Three p.m., feet first. Doc Rothschild had walked into Quincy’s with a big grin on his face at approximately Eleven-Thirty that night, and ten minutes later John was holding his sleeping son in his arms. The joy was measurable by the width of the smiles in the Irwin house that night. The Jenkins were bursting with pride at being grandparents. Thelma visibly shared the joy as if the baby were hers too, grinning ear to ear and glowing as she carried sheets and towels up and down the stairs. Flora, still ecstatic with relief of a healthy baby and a delivery over with, began to subside into sleep, but not before John joined her in bed and together they touched baby Sydney all over his face, stroking his head over and over, playing with his little lips, squishing his little nose from side to side and a lot of feeling his little fingers on their own hands. Flora was beyond exhausted and sore and happy and she fell asleep looking at Sydney.
The next day Mr. Jenkins pulled into the drive and shut-off his motor right outside the kitchen where Thelma and John were having breakfast beside a bassinet containing the newborn Sydney. Mr. Jenkins entered the kitchen.
“Good morning daddy! Good morning Thelma dear. I have got something for my grandson, sort of for my grandson!”
Mr. Jenkins was jovial like a stage announcer or a medicine salesman, his face was glowing with glee.
“I want my grandson to have good transportation and so I’m giving you my Model T!”
John’s mouth dropped and he gazed out the window at the car. Excitement filled his body and for the moment he was a boy again as if gifts of wonderment were before him.
One year and two weeks after Sydney was born Flora gave birth to Orenthal. He came out head first and the birth was easier for Flora and the preparation and readiness for the new family member was hyper-organized by John and the Jenkins. He was heavier than Sydney, Doc Rothschild said Flora carried longer and that was why he was a “fat little gentlemen.” John had named him for his father, who’s absence in his life, ever since Sydney was born, had been gently chipping away at John’s conscience for the past year or so.
Flora was different after Orenthal was born. She held him constantly for two days rocking him and even singing to him though still in pain from delivery. She was kind to Thelma, she would affectionately express her love of the new baby and of John. For the first three days of his waking life O.W. would not breast feed at all, he slept too much for comfort of Flora or of Thelma. Flora became obsessed with getting him to feed on her milk. Thelma began helping Flora to draw milk into a cup. O.W. would drink from the cup but it was difficult at first and he would spit it up, too often to gain enough nutrient, for a newborn. Flora’s patience grew short and her mood darkened and became intensely frustrated. It was on the fourth night that O.W. began to feed normally. Relief was felt throughout the household, John was delighted, Thelma and Flora began to sleep along with O.W.’s and Sydney’s inconsistent and staggered hours.
In the days that followed the feeding crisis of the newborn O.W., Flora’s body began to recompose, her soreness from delivery changed slowly from throbbing waves of pain, to stinging and aching, to dull ache. She began to venture from the bedroom, spending some time in the kitchen with Thelma, eating breakfast with John once or twice. O.W. was a voracious breast feeder, impatiently he would bite and pull like a wild animal as if to draw more milk at once. Flora’s nipples became sore and chapped, often bleeding. To Flora’s perspective the salves and creams that now occupied all available space on her bed-side table, became as much a part of the problem, as a solution. Flora had become more quiet, thinking only of the new baby, almost as if unable to talk to anyone. She would stare at O.W. in his crib, on her lap, at her breast, not taking her eyes off of him ,even when others entered the room, as if she were reading a book intensely. Her obsession became worrisome to John and Thelma.
A new mother’s desire, to succeed in rearing her infant, is inborn to her physiology. Encouraged by the releasing of a flood of hormones initiated by the entire process of pregnancy and child birth. But a good physiologically driven behavioral trait can be poisoned by the mind. Flora’s expectations had been elevated in the past year and several months since her pregnancy with Sydney had been trouble free, having unfolded like the pages in a mother’s “How To . .” book. It was the shattering of her expectations and subsequent confidence which may have caused her reaction to the problems with O.W. to be extreme and obsessive.
It was mid-morning and Thelma carried into Flora’s bedroom two clean bottles on a tray for Flora to fill for storage in the ice box. This event had become torturous for Flora and frightening for Thelma, who had to watch the pain and aggravation of her best friend attempting to fill two to three baby-bottles every morning, from chapped and bleeding nipples tender from O.W.’s rough handling. It was no longer helpful to switch from one nipple to another. Thelma and Flora filled the first bottle half way as tears came to Flora’s eyes from the pain. Flora grabbed the bottle from Thelma’s hands and threw it hard at the rear wall of the bedroom. The bottle smashed against the hard plastered wall and the milk splattered on the floor and walls. Thelma stood up shocked but not surprised.
“That’s enough! It’s useless! It’s not working anymore! I’ve had it Thelma!” Flora’s voice was strained and loud.
“Honey you’ve got to try, how about some salve and I’ll come back in a while?”
Frightened by the out-burst, Thelma attempted a compromise with a quiet voice.
“Fuck the fucking salve Thelma!”
Flora picked up one of many brands of skin salve from the bedside table and threw it at the same spot on the wall, smashing it to pieces, leaving the contents globed onto the wall with shards of green glass.
“Get out! You don’t know what I’m going through, you don’t have to!” Flora yelled.
“You want I should clean up that mess?” Thelma said tamely.
“Just get the hell out, now, stay out, now go!” Flora pointed at the doorway.
In twenty years of being with Flora, nearly every day, Thelma had never seen her in a state of rage. Thelma scampered out of the room for fear of Flora throwing something at her, frightened, her face deeply concerned, her lips quivering in readiness to cry, she swiftly closed the bedroom door behind her. Thelma hurried down the stairs with tears flowing down her cheeks. Upstairs in the bedroom, Flora could hear her friend’s moans and her sobs from the kitchen below her, but she did not care. Rage had implanted it’s ugly colors in her mind, putting aside all care for others, the babies included.
After that morning, she ostensibly abandoned the babies, and she became quiet, staring out the window depressed and unconcerned with O.W. and Sydney’s critical needs. She never apologized to Thelma. She would not answer John’s desperate inquiries as to her state of being. In the day her hands would shake and she tried to hide them from Thelma and John as if ashamed, as if this mysterious symptom was one of many signs that she was failing as a mother. Cold shivers came and went up and down her spine in between aggravating heat spells, as she lay in bed creating a damp lining of sweat in the shape of her recovering body. Thelma became a hand and foot assistant while Flora remained camped in her own bed for weeks. Flora refused to talk about whatever was wrong, not with Thelma, not with John, not with her own mother who once again began to visit on a daily basis. Days upon days would pass without Flora picking up Orenthal. Flowers were brought to her room in an attempt to bring cheer, only to be ordered thrown out, or their vases used to hurl at the wall by the agitated Flora. She ordered Thelma to remove the baby’s cradle from her room and take O.W. to the kitchen downstairs. Docile and disconnected from Orenthal, Flora’s condition became a crucial matter fast to John and the Jenkins. Doc Rothschild recommended locating a nurse maid, immediately, to provide breast milk for the newborn Orenthal. John inquired to neighbors about a nurse maiden. There was no woman available in all of Salina willing to assume the commitment. Finally a newspaper advertisement from the St. Louis Dispatch, revealed a service run by a woman who manages a rotating team of Nurse Maidens, John wired her immediately. Worried that a nurse maiden may not be available immediately, John had indicated in his telegram “Colored OK.” Five days later Mary Coons arrived at the Irwin household, a buxom and cheerful black woman in her mid thirties with a trunk and a carpet bag. Twenty-Nine day old and ten pound Orenthal was saved by the milk from Mary’s breasts. He would not have lasted another couple of days, he had been poorly consuming cow’s milk and had become lethargic, quiet and barely awake. Mary Coons saved the family and John let her know it, he took her shopping in downtown Salina, where she was treated to a new dress, a new hat, a necklace and a spelling book at John’s insistence. Because she was black, the female shop keepers were kind enough to size her from out on the sidewalk, then show her apparel from inside the display windows.
In the weeks and days since Flora’s initial out-burst at Thelma, her disposition became more solemn and sheltered. Withdrawn to her bedroom she became a hermit in her own home. Except to use the bathroom, she had only gotten up and out of the bed a couple of times. She began snapping at Thelma for the most trivial of matters. She threw a hair brush at her in frustration at what Flora perceived was a pitiful attempt on Thelma’s part to beautify Flora’s appearance, by bringing her make-up. She barely ate, refusing breakfasts and lunches and only nibbling and picking at her dinner trays.
Doctor Rothschild visited many times in those first weeks after delivery. He was as frustrated as John and Thelma, unable to stop a situation he was familiar with.
On the front porch on the evening of the most recent, of many, object throwing tantrums John consoled with Doctor Rothschild.
“It’s the baby blues John. It’s not entirely uncommon. Some women get it real bad. With some it comes and goes right quick. But John, this one is a real hum dinger. I am at a loss for remedies John.” Doc confessed.
“Doc this can’t go on like this!” John pleaded with Doctor Rothschild.
“I know John. There are things you can do, but unfortunately they all require her cooperation and if she doesn’t want to do something, it’s not going to work.”
Doc Rothschild started Flora on Laudanum dosages. The opiate liquid medicine gave Flora a lift temporarily. For a few weeks, she was out of her bed, holding Orenthal now and again. But the artificial mood alteration tapered off to return to a depressed state. She continued the opium dosages and began requesting two bottles per week from the doctor. In most of her waking hours while in her room, she darkened the windows, claiming the light gave her headaches and she had demanded that three blankets cover each window. John brought her an Edison Cylinder player and twenty new cylinders of mostly classical performances. Rarely would Flora smile, she shunned house guests, her mother would visit and Flora would withdraw into solace and silence. Her father would visit bringing his natural jovial optimism and this would receive a contrasting reaction from Flora, a rejection of the joy invoked as if through a subconscious response. Flora recognized when she was being patronized and lashed at anyone she suspected of doing so. A kind of jealousy seemed to be occupying her. She refused to accept that the people who have loved her were genuinely concerned for her and not trying to “fix the family,” for the sake of the children, the grandparents, the husband, the house maiden, but not for her own sake. She became paranoid that Thelma and Mary were trying to somehow take the babies, by caring for them better than she could. She would hear Thelma and the babies laughing and cooing, playing with them happily downstairs and immediately she would yell out for something, food or a glass of water, causing Thelma to leave their attention momentarily.
In a sign that Flora knew and accepted that she was ill, she began reading her bible as if trying to understand her condition, carrying it with her through the house, falling asleep in her bed with the book flat on her chest. She returned to the Lutheran Church where she had not attended for more than two years. But at services she would talk with no one and sit in the rear pews. Arriving late she would slip through the side entrance and leave before services ended. Her friends from the congregation would attempt to talk with her but she would physically run away when seeing them approach. She began wearing a heavy bonnet around town, hiding her face, she would use a parasol to shield the gaze of townspeople. Thelma and Mary had assumed all care of Orenthal and Sydney. Mrs. Jenkins would fill in for Thelma on many nights and every other weekend. Flora’s eye sockets were dark pits of depression, the bones of her face were more defined than ever as her diet was suffering. Sleeping was an activity of ten to fifteen hours per day. John would bring her the paper and read humor and stories with little response overall. John saw no good reason to wean her from the laudanum, Doc Rothschild agreed. During her periods of laudanum euphoria, usually in the afternoon after her second dosage, were the only times that Flora could be seen smiling, softly, gently, as if thinking a pleasant memory from somewhere else in another time and place.
Orenthal was fourteen months and several days old on that one of many days that a march of rain and lightning storms had crossed the plains, drenching the streets of town that had no brick and still no drainage, making most of the roads in Salina nearly impassable. Thelma, Mary, Orenthal and Sydney, had left the house and had taken one of the new Salina Transport Wagons, to the Fair Market Mercantile for groceries. Flora sat reading her bible by the fireplace in the drawing room. A half empty bottle of laudanum by her side on a small table. Thin and pale, dressed for sleeping, although it was two o’clock in the afternoon, she stopped reading and stared forward at the flames of the warming fire. She slammed her Bible closed and stood, and she tossed the book onto the fire. She turned to her bottle of laudanum, took off the cap and held it upside-down over her lips and allowed an entire half bottle to pour down her throat as she swallowed it all without pause. Then threw the bottle into the fire, impacting against the rear bricks, cracking the bottle open, the wet remaining contents spread over the burning logs and created a bluish green wave of flame that then flickered out as Flora stared at it, mesmerized by the colors. As if pulled by a string fastened to her abdomen from somewhere outside the house, Flora left the house and walked off the front porch and stepped into the front yard. Outside under the rain storm it was as dark as a full moon night. The rain itself was loud and heavy as large droplets pounded the green leaves of every tree nearby and slammed into the Earth and the cobble stones and the copper roofs of every home and tapped hard upon Flora’s head and shoulders. She ignored the chill in the air and the water drenching her hair, an embarrassment and discomfort someone else would feel if standing in the rain, on their front yard, in slippers and a nightgown. She stepped off the curb into the deep mud of the street. She turned left to the north and away from the center of town, and she slowly and steadily began walking, emotionless and not looking downward nor to the left or right. Her slippers suctioned in the deep brown mud and then abandoned her feet in the first few steps leaving her barefoot, but of no concern to her. Her nightgown quickly became heavy with rain water and her hair straight and fallen over her eyes and face. No one in Salina came to their doors or windows while Flora trekked by their homes in a slow rhythm of despair. Not one person witnessed her as she slowly passed by more than fifty homes on five streets that rainy afternoon. Flora’s body was but a burdensome vessel for her mind to carry itself north while bewildered in darkness. It was a solitary and very private experience within the now wet skin that was the woman she was leaving behind her. She had felt the emptiness for too long. The deep chasm of shadows, of solitude, and of an unexplainable wanting for an end to it all, had enveloped her completely. She could not will her own body to turn around and go home. She reached the outskirts of town, and the painted houses of columns and shutters became the staggered shacks of the poor and servant class. Later the shacks gave way to cattle fencing and weeds along the empty road she tracked, still unseen.
Thelma, Mary and the boys arrived home at four thirty, approximately one hour before John was due home. Thelma noticed the front door open and thought little of it. Both Thelma and Mary assumed that Flora had gone to rest in her bedroom and so continued with their chores, starting dinner and putting away groceries, putting Sydney down for a nap, and feeding Orenthal. Neither Mary nor Thelma had looked into to Flora’s bedroom. When John arrived home he followed his after work habit of holding the children, bouncing Sydney on his lap, helping to feed Orenthal, playing with them on the floor of the drawing room. Waiting for Flora to awaken, John warmed his feet by the fire and read the newspaper. Then he became curious and softly climbed the stairs to their bedroom. He entered and became shocked and scared. Running down the stairs he cried out:
“Thelma! Where is Flora, she’s not in her room?”
“Mary, is Flora with you? He yelled out as he ran into the kitchen.
“She was sleeping Mr. Irwin!” Thelma responded.
“No, she’s not up there!”
“When did you see her? Did she say she was going out?” John inquired urgently.
“She said nothing to me.” Mary added.
“She said nothing.” Thelma replied.
John checked the coat rack in the foyer. Flora’s cloak, her hats hand her handbag and parasol hung in place as if she were home. John ran out of the back door and into the barn.
“Flora! Flora!”
He ran out of the barn leaving the doors open behind him. He ran back into the kitchen where Thelma and Mary, holding Orenthal, now stood watching him with shock in their expressions.
“I’m taking a horse to town to look for her! If I’m not back in an hour’s time, go next door and get the Perkins boy to go to Sheriff Malloy and tell him what has happened. Give him a quarter.” John belted out orders as he turned for the barn.
“Yes sir Mr. Irwin.” Thelma and Mary replied in tandem.
John rode on every street between the house and past any store or house that Flora might go to. He went into seven shops, telling the owners to look out for her, he checked inside all three bars and the two saloons and the playhouse, he trotted in the pouring down rain down of every back street of Salina. An hour and a half had passed and he galloped back to the house, puzzled, extremely worried, dumbfounded by Flora’s disappearance. Sheriff Malloy’s four seat Model T was parked out front. John tied his horse to the front porch railing and ran inside.
“Flora! Flora?” Hopeful, he yelled out her.
Sheriff Winston Malloy approached him in the hallway outside the kitchen, wearing a rain cloak and leather rain hat, he held his hand upward as if to stop John from running further into the house. Before John could say anything, Sheriff Malloy informed him of his plans.
“John my man is coming back here right now with chains for the car and me, and him will take it out and start looking. Take a breath and tell me where you have looked so far.” Winston Malloy’s tone was calming.
John looking defeated and tear in his eyes, dropped his shoulders in despair, while Sheriff Malloy embraced the sides of his arms to console him. John breathed deeply to capture wind enough to speak.
“Winston. I have been all over town, into every shop she might go, the bars, the playhouse and even the saloons. She did not even take her cloak, or hat or a handbag! I rode on every street in Salina. She is nowhere!” John’s emotionally crippled voice rose up in frustration.
“We will find her John. I’m going to send a rider out to the Jenkins ranch to see if she is there, if she is not there that rider will be joining our search. Now, John, it’s going to be darkness in just over an hour, so I’ll take the car with chains to the outsides of town and use my search lantern. I think you should keep riding in town, with a lantern, to see if she turns up.” Sheriff Malloy said in a reassuring tone.”
By ten o’clock that night more than twenty people were involved in the search for Flora. Three cars, two motorcycles, five riders including John. Children on foot were scouring the neighborhoods calling her name, looking behind trees inside of barns and in wooded patches. The street lamps were left on all night to illuminate the sidewalks and streets so that she might be seen from front porches. Several men from Quincy’s Bar had taken to the street to patrol for Flora. John would keep returning to the house every forty minutes or so, with all the house lamps on, Thelma and Mary and Mrs. Jenkins waiting inside, hoping the nightmare would be over. It was not. By midnight those who knew and loved Flora were sensing a dire situation. It was no longer a matter that there may be a misunderstanding, that Flora may have traveled and forgot to leave a message. The situation had become terrifying. John persisted all night and into the morning to ride the streets of Salina. Sheriff Malloy had driven over two hundred miles on the roads of all four directions in and out of Salina. Flora was nowhere to be found.
At ten o’clock that following morning the sky had cleared and the air was warming and the moisture was rising as a wispy fog off of the streets and lawns of his neighborhood. John rode in a slow trot toward his home, slumped over his horse’s neck and nearly unconscious. Sheriff Malloy’s car was on the street in front of the house. John sprung upwards with hope upon seeing the car. John dismounted quickly and let his horse stand free near the front porch and he entered the house to hear what news he might. The drawing room was filled with tired people, the Jenkins, the sheriff’s deputies, and a few of the guys from Quincy’s. Silent they sat and kneeled around the room, still wearing their coats, too guilty of failure to remove them in John’s home. The fireplace was warming the searchers and they all turned their tired eyes towards John as he entered the room.
“No?” John asked the crowd.
“No.” The men answered in low voices, several at once, in the same apologetic tone.
John’s knees buckled underneath him and he collapsed with three slow thumps as he landed on the wooden floor and he curled up, grabbing his knees. He could not cry, his tear ducts were dry at this point of the end of a long night of crying. No one in the room came over to him to express a sharing of his sadness, it seemed inappropriate, intensely delicate. Everyone got up after a minute or so and John remained on the floor, staring forward at a wall, silent and exhausted. The volunteers filed out the front door, and Whitey and the Sheriff stopped short of the front door and turned and looked down to John.
“John, we need a couple of hours of sleep and we will be back with the car to start searching again.” Whitey said.
“We’re not giving up yet John.” Sheriff Malloy added.
John nodded in acknowledgment and remained on the floor. Thelma brought him a blanket and a pillow for his head, covered him and closed the front door shut and Mary placed a cup of hot tea in front of him on the floor.
That next days search turned up no sign of Flora. The impending sorrow of the possibility that her absence might be permanent had set in. The possibility she was dead somewhere, although unthinkable, began to morbidly enter the thoughts of the searchers and John. John was heavily fatigued and insane with sorrow. After two days since her disappearance he had begun to cry again. On the third day he and Whitey and Mr. Jenkins were the only men searching but to no outcome, not even a clue. On the end of the fourth day a boy who lived a block away knocked on the front door and presented Thelma with a pair of dirty and trampled women’s slippers he had found in the street in front of the house. Mr. Jenkins suggested that she may have run away, knowing her to have been a wild child in her early teenage years. John could not accept that, but accepted Mr. Jenkins proposal that he travel to Topeka to begin searching for his only daughter there. After finding no sign of her in Topeka, and after showing her photograph to hundreds of people, Mr. Jenkins drove to Wichita, and a repeat of the same sad outcome, then to St. Louis, then back again to Salina. He had one thousand posters made and distributed them everywhere, he had them printed in four newspapers, and hung them in store fronts, and in train depots and post offices. On the fourth week since her disappearance, Mr. Jenkins loaded his car onto the Southern Pacific and left for Denver, returning two weeks later with the same sad news.
John would not accept she was gone, rather he would accept that she was missing and he held-out hope that one day she may return. Now that she was gone he felt his love for her more than ever before, but now it was love as a pain, a knife had been run through his gut, and had stuck there and was rusting and growing his sorrow. With his sense of hope came hallucinatory images and sounds of Flora that were frequent throughout the months to follow, as Flora’s face appeared to him, ghost like, in front of his sight or out of the corner of his eyes, reflected in windows, or in puddles of water, shaped by passing clouds and framed between the branches of trees, outlined in the constellations of the stars. Her voice resembled that of many of the women he would hear in public, “John,” seemed to chime out of crowds in a lilting soft and quiet high tone. He would turn his head and search out crowds for her face. Disappointed again, the knife turned inside him.
Sydney and Orenthal were too young to feel the pain in a manner they may remember. John was relieved to see their adaptation to their mother’s absence. Sydney cried for his mother many times for a week or two, sometimes throwing tantrums and breaking toys or kicking walls. His little brother Orenthal cried more than usual for his mother. He cried for wanting a mother’s affectionate arms around him, a mother’s reassuring tones responding to the slightest discomfort of her baby, a mother’s smell that never washed off and that was uniquely hers, a smell known since the nostrils of the child first breathed inward. Thelma was indispensable at this time, both as a replacement to Flora’s motherly presence and as relief for the chores of family care that would have crushed John under the many responsibilities. Her dedication and love for the family made it possible for John to survive the ordeal without losing patience or going mad.
Mary remained with Orenthal until soon after he began eating solid foods and broths and apple sauce. Mrs. Jenkins hired her on at the ranch, to cook, and Mary could not have been happier with that arrangement, feeling well accepted already by the Jenkins and the Irwin families.
John had to keep going, and keep living and continue the family now broken in more than half, and he had to remind himself of this fact to build his emotional defense against the heartbreak. Broken emotionally in pieces so small that the feelings could not even be picked up and be examined and held in one hand and say, “this is it, this is what went wrong, this handful of shard and pebbles and splinters, this represents the entire situation of Flora being gone.” Flora’s colors, her fabrics and her furniture and her photos, and her smell seemed to be in every corner of the house. John would walk the hallways and climb the stairs while keeping his face down, as if foot steps took concentration, to avoid the pictures that lined the stairwell.
According to Salina’s principal stork, doctor Rothschild, Flora was eight months pregnant and having a normal pregnancy. Flora had grown impatient wanting the baby to come as soon as possible. She projected her impatience onto nearly every one she knew. In several weeks time she was frequently snapping at delivery people, the milkman, the paper boy, grocery delivery boy and the postman. One morning, while John slept deeply in the master bedroom at the rear of the house, Flora had awoke at five in the morning and quietly stepped her way out of the house to sit on the front porch, hidden on a stool behind one of the columns, and close to the front steps where she waited with great patience. There in the darkness, she waited and watched, as the morning light began to peek over the horizon. She observed the bluebirds and sparrows leave their heights in the trees and search out morning worms on the lawn. She cared not for the serenity nor the beauty of this sunny and cool morning because she was on a mission that required her intense focus. Flora was motivated by the nearly psychotic hormonal anger of late term pregnancy, manifest as a vengeful determination to correct a great injustice to her household: sloppy newspaper delivery to her front lawn. She spotted the paper boy coming her way from the north on Santa Fe Avenue, and she ducked low to hide her self below the railings of the porch.
Bobby Perkins was eleven years old, he had the job for the Courier for over a year, and he delivered to sixty homes five days a week. He pushes his scooter up each street with his heavy canvas bag hung over the handle bars and he stops in front of each home and tosses a paper towards the front porches. Sometimes, he’ll tie a small length of string around each paper to keep it rolled up, but if he is out of string, he has learned to finesse his toss so that the paper lands still folded on the customer’s property. His eyes still puffy weak from slumber, and working in an almost dream-like state of being as he stared down Santa Fe Avenue, he was tossing papers and generally holding his head downward, watching the dewy morning ground under his foot falls. No one is on the street when he does his route, ever, so there is nothing to watch out for, no one to expect to have to talk to. Bobby approached the Irwin’s house, a corner lot what’s porch is a longer distance from the street than most of the other houses, and so he leaned his scooter against the oak tree and took their paper towards the porch. He stopped ten feet from the porch steps and gently tossed the paper, flat, onto the porch. Before he could turn around to leave Flora sprung up like a scary clown from a Jack-in-the-Box toy, her hair loose and wiry, in her nightgown and looking to a child like the visible angry ghost of a woman. Bobby left the ground by a few inches and his arms and legs jutted outward momentarily as every nerve in his body was shocked into fright, his hair stood on end and he let out a yelping high pitched scream. Then he froze on the Irwin’s walkway, his mouth hanging open, taking in the reality of what he was seeing, and he wet his pants, and Flora wasted no time in letting him have a piece of her mind as if little Bobby was destined for consumer service hell. Flora instantly began hollering at him with a fury, threatening his job, accusing the boy of laziness for delivering a loose newspaper the day before that had to be picked up, put together and refolded. Bobby, in a state of shock, could not really hear her words, just see her anger, and feel his own blood stop cold as the ghostly specter berated him from atop the porch. She concluded:
“The very next time young man, I’ll personally visit your boss, and see to it that you are without a job!”
Flora calmly went back into the house, she climbed back into bed, smiling at John who was barely awake. She told no-one of her exploit into the world of domestic vigilante justice. To some fifty neighbors, Flora’s dawn outburst, nearly at the sound level of a train whistle, became just another early morning voice from the ether, in their dreams and nightmares. So they did not wake up that morning, their sub-conscious minds having made the logical assumption that “no-one would be up hollering about newspapers at five-thirty in the morning, so keep dreaming, go back to sleep.” Ramifications of this morning last to this day, as a legacy of unknown origin that remains in Salina, Kansas, of perfectly hand delivered papers,.
Until after the baby comes Thelma has agreed to ride into town five days a week to care for and to keep company with Flora while John is at work. Upstairs, Thelma a friend and a loyal employee of the Jenkins for many years, was making the bed and gathering laundry. The house was clearly too big for just Flora and John, even too big for themselves and a baby. Flora had been trying to talk Thelma into moving in to stay on permanently with them, leaving her mother’s household. Thelma would like nothing more, but her sense of loyalty is strong to Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins.
John was at work, not at the Kansas Pacific Railway, but at the First Kansas Home Trust Company, a mortgage bank on Iron Street. The portly Mr. Godfrey had approached John on the evening of his wedding with an offer he could not refuse: a two hundred dollars sign on bonus and three hundred dollars per month plus ten percent shares and five percent commission on new loans that he himself acquired. He apologized to Mr. Auburn of the Kansas Pacific and it was agreed that he should leave for the mortgage bank. The change meant everything he could want for Flora, a home of their own, new clothes, a carriage and two horses, a maid and maybe a Model T of their own. John was face down in his ledger books in his office when he heard something that caught his attention from outside his office. He picked up his empty coffee cup for an excuse to go to the main room. It was his old boss, Mr. Auburn of the Kansas Pacific Railway, with his back turned to him, talking rather loudly and raising his arms to Mr. Godfrey. John walked to the back of the main room to the pot belly stove where coffee was kept warm and poured a cup. He tried to hear the conversation, but Auburn and Godfrey quickly moved into Godfrey’s office, the door slammed behind them, and the conversation became accusatory and defensive muffled intonations only. “Very strange.” John thought.
“They had a couple of loans with us, I remember checking the numbers. Hmm . . the loans were made twice, big amounts, for labor to, to . .Chicago Box Cars to put up the cash to build cars he needed. Nothing wrong with that. What could have gone wrong?”
John sipped his coffee, burned his tongue and without thought cursed aloud. Realizing he was being a busy-body he returned to his ledger books, closing his office door behind him. It was time to go home to Flora in less than a half an hour, and work had to be finished rather hurriedly. “Thank goodness for Thelma!” John thought to himself as he sat down, wishing he could see Flora now, knowing that Thelma was back at the house tending to her needs, eased his mind greatly.
John was able to walk to work and back from Santa Fe Avenue and he enjoyed the time, stopping often for pastries for after dinner and, one for himself on the way home which he kept secret. Sewer and drainage work seemed a year after year ongoing process in Salina, with large trenches with hazardous planks covering them, tempting pedestrians to cross them, lining several streets at a time. The state of perpetual construction reminded John of any street in Chicago when he was growing up there. In Salina, people would fall into the trenches on a daily basis, horses and carriages would slip in and become stuck whenever it rained, sidewalks near the trenches would cave-in creating more chaos for the town. But the patient townspeople felt certain it would all be worth it. Soon it would be planting time in the fields, mostly for wheat, in the hundreds of square miles surrounding Salina and the town would fill up with outside labor, contractors and salesmen. Many of the hobos, who’s hundreds of small encampments line the train tracks from Topeka and Wichita and Denver to Salina, would find day work with the farmers and the petty crime would slow, the muggings and the occasional store break-ins would cease for a few months at least.
John arrived home with pastries and a warm smile and a kiss for Flora, but Flora’s affection in return was not genuine, pecking him on the cheek and returning herself to a state of frustration with a frown. Secretly John was loving the new agitated, bloated, cramping, violent throwing of objects woman that Flora had become during this near end of her pregnancy. Knowing it was temporary he could manage her many frustrations . A so much different woman he had never seen in Flora. It was almost refreshing that she now deplored annoyances, she now wanted help from others, now relied on Thelma and him for assistance. There was now a veritable little devil inside his angel that had been waiting for an excuse to reveal itself. Flora had been a perfect, strong and independent woman, who was now made vulnerable by pregnancy. Before the attitude adjustment , that was her pregnancy, she had been an amenable presence of perfume and kisses who had never said no, who was always first to rise and fetch to please, who now cared not for that pretentious servile behavior, not while a child was within her, turning and kicking, sapping her energy and consuming her nutrients, and according to Flora, stabbing her with a stick whenever she went to sleep. John and Flora had decided months ago, the stick stabber would be would be named Sydney if it were a boy and Isabel if it were a girl.
John was in the stable out back feeding the horses and putting away tack at around five-thirty. In the kitchen an herbed chicken was roasting in the oven. Thelma was gathering her things to ride home to the ranch when Flora screamed with intense pain from the second floor bedroom. Thelma dropped her bag and ran up the stairs.
“Miss Flora miss Flora, talk to me honey, what is the matter!” Thelma shouted as she rounded the hallway into the bedroom.
Flora was on the floor flat on her back holding her abdomen, a puddle of fluid was underneath her.
“I think it is nearly here Thelma!” Flora cried out and gasped with deep worry on her face.
Flora then became focused and Thelma started to panic. Flora was relieved that the birthing process may now be starting. So relieved that the pain of her present labor seemed to be overcome in her mind.
“Help me up onto the bed dear.” Flora grabbed the bedpost and leaned upwards from the floor.
John’s rapid and hard foot steps traversed the inside of the house, he swung himself around the banister post at the bottom of the stairs and dashed upwards into the bedroom and was there in less than fifteen seconds. Flora was in the bed and Thelma was propping her back with pillows and covering her.
“You lost your water, it’s coming, it’s starting! Honey are you fair? Does it pain you?” John was now in a panic and breathing hard from his flight to the second floor.
John came to Flora’s side and grasped her shoulders with great care, he looked into her eyes and consoled her.
“Darling, every thing is going to be fine, we’ll get through this just fine, it is all going to work out, we are ready for this.” John said softly.
This was the extent of John’s plan for this birthing. All else was assumed by him to be handled by others, or some mysterious group of child-birthers that came from out of nowhere to brush the man aside and manage the rest of the process. He realized he did not know what he was doing and had in actuality planned poorly. He looked at Thelma with the intensity of a man at war.
“Thelma what do we do next?”
“Mr. Irwin what are you asking me for? I ain’t never done this before!” She said with incredulous tone.
Thelma also had assumptions about the matter, that the Irwins had it all planned. She thought about the doctor.
“Doc Rothschild Mr. Irwin, we have to get Doc Rothschild here!”
Flora began panting, the second floor room was warm and all three were sweating, Flora took control.
“John, get on your horse, ride over to find doctor Rothschild. Thelma, open that damn window then go down to the sink and bring me a pot of cool water from the well tap before I burn up, and bring an armful of extra towels and sheets. I think that I will manage for a little while.”
The patient was in control of the orderlies. John disappeared like a fireman leaving a burning building. Thelma hurried down the stairs to the kitchen, she took the chicken off the spit and tossed some water on the fire. Thelma filled a big pot with water and returned to Flora’s side. John found Doctor Rothschild at Quincy’s after being routed around town by three different people. Throughout town the word was spread that the Irwin baby is on it’s way. At the moment that John burst into to Quincy’s and spotted Doc Rothschild every one inside knew why. Doc Rothschild knows that a labor could last many days, but he also knew that the husband of the expecting mother can not be argued with and not be kept waiting. Doc Rothschild stood up from his barstool and belted out some orders immediately.
“Ron, two whiskeys. John, you down this whiskey with me and we’ll go, a calm father is a father that a mother will appreciate at this time. Then go to the carriage house and tell them to rig my carriage. She’ll be fine John. Over the teeth, past the gums, look out stomach, here it comes!”
“Great!” John thought, “at a time like this Flora will be tended to by two men wreaking of whiskey.”
“Doc you take my horse and I’ll bring your carriage over to the house after it is ready!” John said seeking expediency.
At the house Mrs. Jane Schmidt from next door had arrived, having heard Flora’s initial scream and realizing what was happening, was ready to help. Mrs. Schmidt had started boiling water in case of a quick labor, and had propped Floras feet upward and spread out with pillows. Doc Rothschild arrived and began listening to the baby’s movements and heartbeats and palpating Flora’s abdomen attempting to determine where the baby’s head was. John seeing clearly that he was in the way, rode out to the Jenkins ranch to inform the grandparents of the event. Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins along with Jeremiah, returned by car, ready to stay at the house until the baby was born. It was now a full house of attendants. John was greatly relieved. He and Mr. Jenkins took Jeremiah and went to Quincy’s to drink and wait. Jeremiah would be the messenger between Quincy’s and the house.
Women did not get priority in medical care in Nineteen-O-Eight. It was likely that a woman’s female friends and neighbors knew more about the signs and symptoms of an illness of a woman’s uniqueness than did the local male doctor. It was an embarrassment for a man to allow his wife, or daughter to see a male doctor for fear that the doctor might gaze upon the woman’s private parts where only he or his wife are allowed to gaze; perhaps looking into her vagina, or examining her breasts or her colon. This chauvinist limitation, this virtuous conservatism influenced by cultural religious ethics, was the basis of the ignorance of women’s health, and was the unwritten reason that the category of Women’s Health was not part of medical collegiate study for decades to come. It is the reason that a woman or a girl often died before seeing a physician, or would be close to death by the time she obtained a physical examination, too late for treatment.
Sydney Orenthal Irwin was born at Eleven-O-Three p.m., feet first. Doc Rothschild had walked into Quincy’s with a big grin on his face at approximately Eleven-Thirty that night, and ten minutes later John was holding his sleeping son in his arms. The joy was measurable by the width of the smiles in the Irwin house that night. The Jenkins were bursting with pride at being grandparents. Thelma visibly shared the joy as if the baby were hers too, grinning ear to ear and glowing as she carried sheets and towels up and down the stairs. Flora, still ecstatic with relief of a healthy baby and a delivery over with, began to subside into sleep, but not before John joined her in bed and together they touched baby Sydney all over his face, stroking his head over and over, playing with his little lips, squishing his little nose from side to side and a lot of feeling his little fingers on their own hands. Flora was beyond exhausted and sore and happy and she fell asleep looking at Sydney.
The next day Mr. Jenkins pulled into the drive and shut-off his motor right outside the kitchen where Thelma and John were having breakfast beside a bassinet containing the newborn Sydney. Mr. Jenkins entered the kitchen.
“Good morning daddy! Good morning Thelma dear. I have got something for my grandson, sort of for my grandson!”
Mr. Jenkins was jovial like a stage announcer or a medicine salesman, his face was glowing with glee.
“I want my grandson to have good transportation and so I’m giving you my Model T!”
John’s mouth dropped and he gazed out the window at the car. Excitement filled his body and for the moment he was a boy again as if gifts of wonderment were before him.
One year and two weeks after Sydney was born Flora gave birth to Orenthal. He came out head first and the birth was easier for Flora and the preparation and readiness for the new family member was hyper-organized by John and the Jenkins. He was heavier than Sydney, Doc Rothschild said Flora carried longer and that was why he was a “fat little gentlemen.” John had named him for his father, who’s absence in his life, ever since Sydney was born, had been gently chipping away at John’s conscience for the past year or so.
Flora was different after Orenthal was born. She held him constantly for two days rocking him and even singing to him though still in pain from delivery. She was kind to Thelma, she would affectionately express her love of the new baby and of John. For the first three days of his waking life O.W. would not breast feed at all, he slept too much for comfort of Flora or of Thelma. Flora became obsessed with getting him to feed on her milk. Thelma began helping Flora to draw milk into a cup. O.W. would drink from the cup but it was difficult at first and he would spit it up, too often to gain enough nutrient, for a newborn. Flora’s patience grew short and her mood darkened and became intensely frustrated. It was on the fourth night that O.W. began to feed normally. Relief was felt throughout the household, John was delighted, Thelma and Flora began to sleep along with O.W.’s and Sydney’s inconsistent and staggered hours.
In the days that followed the feeding crisis of the newborn O.W., Flora’s body began to recompose, her soreness from delivery changed slowly from throbbing waves of pain, to stinging and aching, to dull ache. She began to venture from the bedroom, spending some time in the kitchen with Thelma, eating breakfast with John once or twice. O.W. was a voracious breast feeder, impatiently he would bite and pull like a wild animal as if to draw more milk at once. Flora’s nipples became sore and chapped, often bleeding. To Flora’s perspective the salves and creams that now occupied all available space on her bed-side table, became as much a part of the problem, as a solution. Flora had become more quiet, thinking only of the new baby, almost as if unable to talk to anyone. She would stare at O.W. in his crib, on her lap, at her breast, not taking her eyes off of him ,even when others entered the room, as if she were reading a book intensely. Her obsession became worrisome to John and Thelma.
A new mother’s desire, to succeed in rearing her infant, is inborn to her physiology. Encouraged by the releasing of a flood of hormones initiated by the entire process of pregnancy and child birth. But a good physiologically driven behavioral trait can be poisoned by the mind. Flora’s expectations had been elevated in the past year and several months since her pregnancy with Sydney had been trouble free, having unfolded like the pages in a mother’s “How To . .” book. It was the shattering of her expectations and subsequent confidence which may have caused her reaction to the problems with O.W. to be extreme and obsessive.
It was mid-morning and Thelma carried into Flora’s bedroom two clean bottles on a tray for Flora to fill for storage in the ice box. This event had become torturous for Flora and frightening for Thelma, who had to watch the pain and aggravation of her best friend attempting to fill two to three baby-bottles every morning, from chapped and bleeding nipples tender from O.W.’s rough handling. It was no longer helpful to switch from one nipple to another. Thelma and Flora filled the first bottle half way as tears came to Flora’s eyes from the pain. Flora grabbed the bottle from Thelma’s hands and threw it hard at the rear wall of the bedroom. The bottle smashed against the hard plastered wall and the milk splattered on the floor and walls. Thelma stood up shocked but not surprised.
“That’s enough! It’s useless! It’s not working anymore! I’ve had it Thelma!” Flora’s voice was strained and loud.
“Honey you’ve got to try, how about some salve and I’ll come back in a while?”
Frightened by the out-burst, Thelma attempted a compromise with a quiet voice.
“Fuck the fucking salve Thelma!”
Flora picked up one of many brands of skin salve from the bedside table and threw it at the same spot on the wall, smashing it to pieces, leaving the contents globed onto the wall with shards of green glass.
“Get out! You don’t know what I’m going through, you don’t have to!” Flora yelled.
“You want I should clean up that mess?” Thelma said tamely.
“Just get the hell out, now, stay out, now go!” Flora pointed at the doorway.
In twenty years of being with Flora, nearly every day, Thelma had never seen her in a state of rage. Thelma scampered out of the room for fear of Flora throwing something at her, frightened, her face deeply concerned, her lips quivering in readiness to cry, she swiftly closed the bedroom door behind her. Thelma hurried down the stairs with tears flowing down her cheeks. Upstairs in the bedroom, Flora could hear her friend’s moans and her sobs from the kitchen below her, but she did not care. Rage had implanted it’s ugly colors in her mind, putting aside all care for others, the babies included.
After that morning, she ostensibly abandoned the babies, and she became quiet, staring out the window depressed and unconcerned with O.W. and Sydney’s critical needs. She never apologized to Thelma. She would not answer John’s desperate inquiries as to her state of being. In the day her hands would shake and she tried to hide them from Thelma and John as if ashamed, as if this mysterious symptom was one of many signs that she was failing as a mother. Cold shivers came and went up and down her spine in between aggravating heat spells, as she lay in bed creating a damp lining of sweat in the shape of her recovering body. Thelma became a hand and foot assistant while Flora remained camped in her own bed for weeks. Flora refused to talk about whatever was wrong, not with Thelma, not with John, not with her own mother who once again began to visit on a daily basis. Days upon days would pass without Flora picking up Orenthal. Flowers were brought to her room in an attempt to bring cheer, only to be ordered thrown out, or their vases used to hurl at the wall by the agitated Flora. She ordered Thelma to remove the baby’s cradle from her room and take O.W. to the kitchen downstairs. Docile and disconnected from Orenthal, Flora’s condition became a crucial matter fast to John and the Jenkins. Doc Rothschild recommended locating a nurse maid, immediately, to provide breast milk for the newborn Orenthal. John inquired to neighbors about a nurse maiden. There was no woman available in all of Salina willing to assume the commitment. Finally a newspaper advertisement from the St. Louis Dispatch, revealed a service run by a woman who manages a rotating team of Nurse Maidens, John wired her immediately. Worried that a nurse maiden may not be available immediately, John had indicated in his telegram “Colored OK.” Five days later Mary Coons arrived at the Irwin household, a buxom and cheerful black woman in her mid thirties with a trunk and a carpet bag. Twenty-Nine day old and ten pound Orenthal was saved by the milk from Mary’s breasts. He would not have lasted another couple of days, he had been poorly consuming cow’s milk and had become lethargic, quiet and barely awake. Mary Coons saved the family and John let her know it, he took her shopping in downtown Salina, where she was treated to a new dress, a new hat, a necklace and a spelling book at John’s insistence. Because she was black, the female shop keepers were kind enough to size her from out on the sidewalk, then show her apparel from inside the display windows.
In the weeks and days since Flora’s initial out-burst at Thelma, her disposition became more solemn and sheltered. Withdrawn to her bedroom she became a hermit in her own home. Except to use the bathroom, she had only gotten up and out of the bed a couple of times. She began snapping at Thelma for the most trivial of matters. She threw a hair brush at her in frustration at what Flora perceived was a pitiful attempt on Thelma’s part to beautify Flora’s appearance, by bringing her make-up. She barely ate, refusing breakfasts and lunches and only nibbling and picking at her dinner trays.
Doctor Rothschild visited many times in those first weeks after delivery. He was as frustrated as John and Thelma, unable to stop a situation he was familiar with.
On the front porch on the evening of the most recent, of many, object throwing tantrums John consoled with Doctor Rothschild.
“It’s the baby blues John. It’s not entirely uncommon. Some women get it real bad. With some it comes and goes right quick. But John, this one is a real hum dinger. I am at a loss for remedies John.” Doc confessed.
“Doc this can’t go on like this!” John pleaded with Doctor Rothschild.
“I know John. There are things you can do, but unfortunately they all require her cooperation and if she doesn’t want to do something, it’s not going to work.”
Doc Rothschild started Flora on Laudanum dosages. The opiate liquid medicine gave Flora a lift temporarily. For a few weeks, she was out of her bed, holding Orenthal now and again. But the artificial mood alteration tapered off to return to a depressed state. She continued the opium dosages and began requesting two bottles per week from the doctor. In most of her waking hours while in her room, she darkened the windows, claiming the light gave her headaches and she had demanded that three blankets cover each window. John brought her an Edison Cylinder player and twenty new cylinders of mostly classical performances. Rarely would Flora smile, she shunned house guests, her mother would visit and Flora would withdraw into solace and silence. Her father would visit bringing his natural jovial optimism and this would receive a contrasting reaction from Flora, a rejection of the joy invoked as if through a subconscious response. Flora recognized when she was being patronized and lashed at anyone she suspected of doing so. A kind of jealousy seemed to be occupying her. She refused to accept that the people who have loved her were genuinely concerned for her and not trying to “fix the family,” for the sake of the children, the grandparents, the husband, the house maiden, but not for her own sake. She became paranoid that Thelma and Mary were trying to somehow take the babies, by caring for them better than she could. She would hear Thelma and the babies laughing and cooing, playing with them happily downstairs and immediately she would yell out for something, food or a glass of water, causing Thelma to leave their attention momentarily.
In a sign that Flora knew and accepted that she was ill, she began reading her bible as if trying to understand her condition, carrying it with her through the house, falling asleep in her bed with the book flat on her chest. She returned to the Lutheran Church where she had not attended for more than two years. But at services she would talk with no one and sit in the rear pews. Arriving late she would slip through the side entrance and leave before services ended. Her friends from the congregation would attempt to talk with her but she would physically run away when seeing them approach. She began wearing a heavy bonnet around town, hiding her face, she would use a parasol to shield the gaze of townspeople. Thelma and Mary had assumed all care of Orenthal and Sydney. Mrs. Jenkins would fill in for Thelma on many nights and every other weekend. Flora’s eye sockets were dark pits of depression, the bones of her face were more defined than ever as her diet was suffering. Sleeping was an activity of ten to fifteen hours per day. John would bring her the paper and read humor and stories with little response overall. John saw no good reason to wean her from the laudanum, Doc Rothschild agreed. During her periods of laudanum euphoria, usually in the afternoon after her second dosage, were the only times that Flora could be seen smiling, softly, gently, as if thinking a pleasant memory from somewhere else in another time and place.
Orenthal was fourteen months and several days old on that one of many days that a march of rain and lightning storms had crossed the plains, drenching the streets of town that had no brick and still no drainage, making most of the roads in Salina nearly impassable. Thelma, Mary, Orenthal and Sydney, had left the house and had taken one of the new Salina Transport Wagons, to the Fair Market Mercantile for groceries. Flora sat reading her bible by the fireplace in the drawing room. A half empty bottle of laudanum by her side on a small table. Thin and pale, dressed for sleeping, although it was two o’clock in the afternoon, she stopped reading and stared forward at the flames of the warming fire. She slammed her Bible closed and stood, and she tossed the book onto the fire. She turned to her bottle of laudanum, took off the cap and held it upside-down over her lips and allowed an entire half bottle to pour down her throat as she swallowed it all without pause. Then threw the bottle into the fire, impacting against the rear bricks, cracking the bottle open, the wet remaining contents spread over the burning logs and created a bluish green wave of flame that then flickered out as Flora stared at it, mesmerized by the colors. As if pulled by a string fastened to her abdomen from somewhere outside the house, Flora left the house and walked off the front porch and stepped into the front yard. Outside under the rain storm it was as dark as a full moon night. The rain itself was loud and heavy as large droplets pounded the green leaves of every tree nearby and slammed into the Earth and the cobble stones and the copper roofs of every home and tapped hard upon Flora’s head and shoulders. She ignored the chill in the air and the water drenching her hair, an embarrassment and discomfort someone else would feel if standing in the rain, on their front yard, in slippers and a nightgown. She stepped off the curb into the deep mud of the street. She turned left to the north and away from the center of town, and she slowly and steadily began walking, emotionless and not looking downward nor to the left or right. Her slippers suctioned in the deep brown mud and then abandoned her feet in the first few steps leaving her barefoot, but of no concern to her. Her nightgown quickly became heavy with rain water and her hair straight and fallen over her eyes and face. No one in Salina came to their doors or windows while Flora trekked by their homes in a slow rhythm of despair. Not one person witnessed her as she slowly passed by more than fifty homes on five streets that rainy afternoon. Flora’s body was but a burdensome vessel for her mind to carry itself north while bewildered in darkness. It was a solitary and very private experience within the now wet skin that was the woman she was leaving behind her. She had felt the emptiness for too long. The deep chasm of shadows, of solitude, and of an unexplainable wanting for an end to it all, had enveloped her completely. She could not will her own body to turn around and go home. She reached the outskirts of town, and the painted houses of columns and shutters became the staggered shacks of the poor and servant class. Later the shacks gave way to cattle fencing and weeds along the empty road she tracked, still unseen.
Thelma, Mary and the boys arrived home at four thirty, approximately one hour before John was due home. Thelma noticed the front door open and thought little of it. Both Thelma and Mary assumed that Flora had gone to rest in her bedroom and so continued with their chores, starting dinner and putting away groceries, putting Sydney down for a nap, and feeding Orenthal. Neither Mary nor Thelma had looked into to Flora’s bedroom. When John arrived home he followed his after work habit of holding the children, bouncing Sydney on his lap, helping to feed Orenthal, playing with them on the floor of the drawing room. Waiting for Flora to awaken, John warmed his feet by the fire and read the newspaper. Then he became curious and softly climbed the stairs to their bedroom. He entered and became shocked and scared. Running down the stairs he cried out:
“Thelma! Where is Flora, she’s not in her room?”
“Mary, is Flora with you? He yelled out as he ran into the kitchen.
“She was sleeping Mr. Irwin!” Thelma responded.
“No, she’s not up there!”
“When did you see her? Did she say she was going out?” John inquired urgently.
“She said nothing to me.” Mary added.
“She said nothing.” Thelma replied.
John checked the coat rack in the foyer. Flora’s cloak, her hats hand her handbag and parasol hung in place as if she were home. John ran out of the back door and into the barn.
“Flora! Flora!”
He ran out of the barn leaving the doors open behind him. He ran back into the kitchen where Thelma and Mary, holding Orenthal, now stood watching him with shock in their expressions.
“I’m taking a horse to town to look for her! If I’m not back in an hour’s time, go next door and get the Perkins boy to go to Sheriff Malloy and tell him what has happened. Give him a quarter.” John belted out orders as he turned for the barn.
“Yes sir Mr. Irwin.” Thelma and Mary replied in tandem.
John rode on every street between the house and past any store or house that Flora might go to. He went into seven shops, telling the owners to look out for her, he checked inside all three bars and the two saloons and the playhouse, he trotted in the pouring down rain down of every back street of Salina. An hour and a half had passed and he galloped back to the house, puzzled, extremely worried, dumbfounded by Flora’s disappearance. Sheriff Malloy’s four seat Model T was parked out front. John tied his horse to the front porch railing and ran inside.
“Flora! Flora?” Hopeful, he yelled out her.
Sheriff Winston Malloy approached him in the hallway outside the kitchen, wearing a rain cloak and leather rain hat, he held his hand upward as if to stop John from running further into the house. Before John could say anything, Sheriff Malloy informed him of his plans.
“John my man is coming back here right now with chains for the car and me, and him will take it out and start looking. Take a breath and tell me where you have looked so far.” Winston Malloy’s tone was calming.
John looking defeated and tear in his eyes, dropped his shoulders in despair, while Sheriff Malloy embraced the sides of his arms to console him. John breathed deeply to capture wind enough to speak.
“Winston. I have been all over town, into every shop she might go, the bars, the playhouse and even the saloons. She did not even take her cloak, or hat or a handbag! I rode on every street in Salina. She is nowhere!” John’s emotionally crippled voice rose up in frustration.
“We will find her John. I’m going to send a rider out to the Jenkins ranch to see if she is there, if she is not there that rider will be joining our search. Now, John, it’s going to be darkness in just over an hour, so I’ll take the car with chains to the outsides of town and use my search lantern. I think you should keep riding in town, with a lantern, to see if she turns up.” Sheriff Malloy said in a reassuring tone.”
By ten o’clock that night more than twenty people were involved in the search for Flora. Three cars, two motorcycles, five riders including John. Children on foot were scouring the neighborhoods calling her name, looking behind trees inside of barns and in wooded patches. The street lamps were left on all night to illuminate the sidewalks and streets so that she might be seen from front porches. Several men from Quincy’s Bar had taken to the street to patrol for Flora. John would keep returning to the house every forty minutes or so, with all the house lamps on, Thelma and Mary and Mrs. Jenkins waiting inside, hoping the nightmare would be over. It was not. By midnight those who knew and loved Flora were sensing a dire situation. It was no longer a matter that there may be a misunderstanding, that Flora may have traveled and forgot to leave a message. The situation had become terrifying. John persisted all night and into the morning to ride the streets of Salina. Sheriff Malloy had driven over two hundred miles on the roads of all four directions in and out of Salina. Flora was nowhere to be found.
At ten o’clock that following morning the sky had cleared and the air was warming and the moisture was rising as a wispy fog off of the streets and lawns of his neighborhood. John rode in a slow trot toward his home, slumped over his horse’s neck and nearly unconscious. Sheriff Malloy’s car was on the street in front of the house. John sprung upwards with hope upon seeing the car. John dismounted quickly and let his horse stand free near the front porch and he entered the house to hear what news he might. The drawing room was filled with tired people, the Jenkins, the sheriff’s deputies, and a few of the guys from Quincy’s. Silent they sat and kneeled around the room, still wearing their coats, too guilty of failure to remove them in John’s home. The fireplace was warming the searchers and they all turned their tired eyes towards John as he entered the room.
“No?” John asked the crowd.
“No.” The men answered in low voices, several at once, in the same apologetic tone.
John’s knees buckled underneath him and he collapsed with three slow thumps as he landed on the wooden floor and he curled up, grabbing his knees. He could not cry, his tear ducts were dry at this point of the end of a long night of crying. No one in the room came over to him to express a sharing of his sadness, it seemed inappropriate, intensely delicate. Everyone got up after a minute or so and John remained on the floor, staring forward at a wall, silent and exhausted. The volunteers filed out the front door, and Whitey and the Sheriff stopped short of the front door and turned and looked down to John.
“John, we need a couple of hours of sleep and we will be back with the car to start searching again.” Whitey said.
“We’re not giving up yet John.” Sheriff Malloy added.
John nodded in acknowledgment and remained on the floor. Thelma brought him a blanket and a pillow for his head, covered him and closed the front door shut and Mary placed a cup of hot tea in front of him on the floor.
That next days search turned up no sign of Flora. The impending sorrow of the possibility that her absence might be permanent had set in. The possibility she was dead somewhere, although unthinkable, began to morbidly enter the thoughts of the searchers and John. John was heavily fatigued and insane with sorrow. After two days since her disappearance he had begun to cry again. On the third day he and Whitey and Mr. Jenkins were the only men searching but to no outcome, not even a clue. On the end of the fourth day a boy who lived a block away knocked on the front door and presented Thelma with a pair of dirty and trampled women’s slippers he had found in the street in front of the house. Mr. Jenkins suggested that she may have run away, knowing her to have been a wild child in her early teenage years. John could not accept that, but accepted Mr. Jenkins proposal that he travel to Topeka to begin searching for his only daughter there. After finding no sign of her in Topeka, and after showing her photograph to hundreds of people, Mr. Jenkins drove to Wichita, and a repeat of the same sad outcome, then to St. Louis, then back again to Salina. He had one thousand posters made and distributed them everywhere, he had them printed in four newspapers, and hung them in store fronts, and in train depots and post offices. On the fourth week since her disappearance, Mr. Jenkins loaded his car onto the Southern Pacific and left for Denver, returning two weeks later with the same sad news.
John would not accept she was gone, rather he would accept that she was missing and he held-out hope that one day she may return. Now that she was gone he felt his love for her more than ever before, but now it was love as a pain, a knife had been run through his gut, and had stuck there and was rusting and growing his sorrow. With his sense of hope came hallucinatory images and sounds of Flora that were frequent throughout the months to follow, as Flora’s face appeared to him, ghost like, in front of his sight or out of the corner of his eyes, reflected in windows, or in puddles of water, shaped by passing clouds and framed between the branches of trees, outlined in the constellations of the stars. Her voice resembled that of many of the women he would hear in public, “John,” seemed to chime out of crowds in a lilting soft and quiet high tone. He would turn his head and search out crowds for her face. Disappointed again, the knife turned inside him.
Sydney and Orenthal were too young to feel the pain in a manner they may remember. John was relieved to see their adaptation to their mother’s absence. Sydney cried for his mother many times for a week or two, sometimes throwing tantrums and breaking toys or kicking walls. His little brother Orenthal cried more than usual for his mother. He cried for wanting a mother’s affectionate arms around him, a mother’s reassuring tones responding to the slightest discomfort of her baby, a mother’s smell that never washed off and that was uniquely hers, a smell known since the nostrils of the child first breathed inward. Thelma was indispensable at this time, both as a replacement to Flora’s motherly presence and as relief for the chores of family care that would have crushed John under the many responsibilities. Her dedication and love for the family made it possible for John to survive the ordeal without losing patience or going mad.
Mary remained with Orenthal until soon after he began eating solid foods and broths and apple sauce. Mrs. Jenkins hired her on at the ranch, to cook, and Mary could not have been happier with that arrangement, feeling well accepted already by the Jenkins and the Irwin families.
John had to keep going, and keep living and continue the family now broken in more than half, and he had to remind himself of this fact to build his emotional defense against the heartbreak. Broken emotionally in pieces so small that the feelings could not even be picked up and be examined and held in one hand and say, “this is it, this is what went wrong, this handful of shard and pebbles and splinters, this represents the entire situation of Flora being gone.” Flora’s colors, her fabrics and her furniture and her photos, and her smell seemed to be in every corner of the house. John would walk the hallways and climb the stairs while keeping his face down, as if foot steps took concentration, to avoid the pictures that lined the stairwell.
posted by James G. Mason at 8:21 AM
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