MARY ALICE
Gypsy Nurse
by
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Lillian looked up from her bucket of sudsy water as Alice came in. She got up from her knees, leaving a puddle on the floor. "Alice, your face is so red! Are you alright? What's the matter?" She rushed over to comfort her friend, who had collapsed on her bed, tears streaming down her face. "What is it? Has someone done something awful to you?" Lillian was frantic with worry. Alice turned over, so Lillian could see that she was shaking from laughter, not distress. She sat up, trying to control herself. "Oh, I did it! We're both going to have jobs! We can save our husbands' wages by using ours for living expenses. Mr. Harney thinks I'm a great, fine Lady, and he can't do enough for me!" Using her best acting mannerisms to exaggeration, she recounted her meeting with the Superintendant. The two young women rocked in each other's arms with merriment. They had a difficult time sobering up to receive the messenger with the bedding and disinfectant. When he had left, Lillian conducted Alice on a tour of the shack. She showed her the cracks between the floorboards, where the light shone through from under the house. There was no sub-floor, just plain boards over the joists. Knots in the wood had fallen out, here and there, leaving holes for even more drafts. By holding a candle next to the corners, they could see more bedbugs between the wall planks. "Look," Lillian showed her roommate, "our luxurious household effects!" She pulled back threadbare curtains to expose the rough, unpainted shelves. "Oh, no! Not all this! How privileged we are!" Alice covered her mouth with mock amazement. "Four, whole warped tin plates, three forks, one knife, six spoons and two tin cups!" "With a hole in the bottom of one cup, Milady," giggled Lillian. "We must call the tinker to have it mended. Oh, yes, and our utensils, fit for royalty!" She pulled out a huge, rusty, cast iron frying pan and a cooking pot that would hold barely two cups of fluid. When they had finally managed to stop laughing, they set to work to make the shack livable. Alice drained the kerosene from a lamp. She soaked a cloth in the smelly stuff and poked it along all the cracks that might harbor the bedbugs. Lillian finished scrubbing the floors. "We'd better not wash the windows." she said "The dirt on them will serve to give us some privacy until we can make some curtains." By this time, they were so exhausted that they ate a cold supper and fell into deep sleep as soon as the lamp was out.
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About the Book
Mary Alice was a Renaissance woman. Born in the mid 1800s, she was the offspring of an illiterate Gypsy girl and the “black sheep” of a prosperous family. Through the leading of the Holy Spirit and the kindness of a wealthy relative of her father, she was educated on many subjects. She married a reformed “skirt chaser” and they moved to Oregon, where he worked as a logger and she as a nurse/midwife. Alice, as she would become known, was a strong, intelligent and respected woman – raising a family and rescuing lost souls while serving as the chief medical attendant in several logging camps in the mountains of northern Oregon.
About the Author
This novel is a result of a labor of love from two women mother and daughter: Ilda was the daughter of the real Mary Alice’s youngest daughter and an Austrian immigrant. She had many of her grandmother’s talents and abilities. She was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. When World War II broke out she got a job as an aircraft electrician in a defense plant, then joined the Navy nurse Corps. She married another veteran named Frank in August 1947. They made their home in Southern California and raised three children. The family moved to the Seattle area in 1966. One of her hobbies in her later years was attending a writers workshop and writing poems and short stories. She and Frank were enjoying their Golden years when she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in the 1990s. Her husband died in 1999 and she followed him in 2003. Cora, her youngest daughter, was thirteen when the family moved to the Seattle area. She met her future husband Dan on the school bus less than two years later. They have one daughter and only furry grandchildren. They traveled with the Air Force for twenty years until he retired in 1991. They settled in a small town southeast of Seattle. Cora was a stay-at-home mom and homemaker, only working a few part-time and volunteer jobs. Now she works at home as a writer and travels the Pacific Northwest as a Christian speaker, assisted by her re-retired husband. The co-author, Cora, has a Facebook page and a webpage: maryalicegypsynurse.com. She can also be emailed at: cleeowen@Comcast.net.