Page 82 - Fever 1793

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR October 1st, 1793
We set out to see where we could be useful— the black people were looked to. We then offered our services in the public papers, by advertising that we would remove the dead and procure nurses.
—Richard Allen and Absalom Jones
A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Black People During the Late Awful Calamity in Philadelphia in the Year 1793
The sights and smells of Eliza’s patients were no worse than Bush Hill, but I was not prepared for the heartache. Walking into the homes of strangers, sitting on their furniture, and drying the tears of their children was harder than cleaning up the sick. A dying woman in a cot surrounded by strangers was sorrowful, but a dying woman surrounded by her children, her handiwork, the home where she worked so hard, left me in tears.
We left the house at first light and sometimes did not return until dark. Joseph kept the children busy in his shop and had supper ready for us when we stumbled home. After a few days of coolness, the sun blazed with heat again, and the air was thick with moisture and infection. The calendar said October, but it felt like July.
Rumors washed over the city. The fever had ended. The fever started again. A shipload of sick people was coming upriver. A cure had been found. No cure was available. An earthquake in the countryside left people saying the end of the world was at hand. The wells had been poisoned. The British were coming. I would have despaired of the hopelessness and confusion. Eliza dismissed the wild tales with a shake of her head.
“They may be true,” she said, “but we have work to do. Come now, Mattie.”
One boarding house facing the Delaware River had a sick sailor in nearly every room. We went from patient to patient, checking their condition and feeding weak broth to those who had the strength to swallow. The sailors babbled in their own languages, afraid to die on the wrong side of the ocean in a world far away from people who knew their names. The vinegar-soaked cloth tied around my nose could not shield me from the stench of the dying men who baked in the old house.
On our way out, Eliza accepted a basket of dry bread from the woman who ran the boarding house. “That’s nearly the last of the flour,” the woman said. “It’ll be sawdust after this, just like the War.” “Sawdust?” I asked. “You can make bread?”
“It will have some flour in it,” Eliza said as she thanked the woman, “but the sawdust will stretch the
wheat, make it go farther. When your stomach hurts enough, the tongue won’t mind the taste.”
At Barrett s apothecary, Eliza purchased jalap and Bohea tea. I walked around the shop while Eliza argued with the owner about his prices. Grandfather used to bring me to Barrett s to buy soft-shell almonds and figs from the big barrel. This was the kind of shop I had always dreamed of. Back then the shelves had been crowded with colored glass jars, wooden boxes, casks, and bags, all labeled with the
spidery handwriting of Mr. Barrett. Now they were covered with dust and the shells of dead insects. Eliza finished her purchases, grabbed my hand, and slammed the door behind us.
“He’s a scurrilous dog, that man,” she muttered.