Under the Skin (18 page)

It’s better money than chambermaiding—being a bath attendant and giving them massage treatments. And that was where I started, when I was younger. Before the old hotel burned, they had a whole slew of foreigners working here but it was hard to keep them on—seemed like they didn’t take to the place and after a month, or whatever it took to earn their fare, they’d light out for the city. So Mr. Roberts the manager was always on the lookout for any of us mountain folk who could talk polite and do the jobs the foreigners was quitting
.

At first all I did at the bathhouse was to help the ladies with their clothes—them stays they wear need a strong somebody to pull the laces tight and give them that narrow middle they all want. I done that and I helped the ladies getting in and out of them deep old tubs. But then it come about that Greta, this one woman massager, she sprained her wrist whilst clambering over them Injun rocks on her day off. So she showed me how to give a massage, not wanting to have to cancel any appointments and get in trouble with the boss
.

I already knowed something about it, my papaw having been took bad with the rheumatics as he aged. Some mornings he’d wake all twisted up and just groaning with the pain and I’d rub at his poor old legs till they
loosened up to where he could stand. Ever one in the family knowed that I had a healing touch. Papaw always said it was the warmth of my hands done the trick more so than all the rubbing
.

So at the hotel, it weren’t long afore word got round and more and more of the women asked for me by name. I was making good money and my ladies was always giving me little presents and the manager was like to bust, he was so happy at the way they all went on about “Amarantha’s magic fingers.”

It was fine, bringing relief to some of them sickly females, and the money was fine too. But it got to where sometimes my hands told me more than I could bear—a cancer growing that couldn’t be stopped or a confusion of the brain that I might ease for a time but never cure. Knowing that the woman under my hands would carry these ills with her to the grave was sad. Yes, bitter sad, but I could have borne it, knowing that I’d given the poor thing a moment’s ease
.

Yet there was worse—a blackness at the heart or a twisting of the soul that I could feel—that seemed to cling to my fingers like an ugly smell. Such times fair sickened me till I would go home and drink the black draught to purge myself of the ugliness and scrub my poor hands with lye soap till they was raw
.

It weren’t worth it to me. And so I asked the manager to let me be a chambermaid instead. He looked at me like I was crazy but I made up some story and at last he agreed. Though he made me promise that I would take a turn in the bathhouse whenever they was shorthanded
.

Today was one of them times. When I come to work this morning and went to get my cleaning things, the head housekeeper told me that she was training a new girl and they would do my afternoon rooms
.

“Mr. Roberts said for you to get over to the bathhouse
by two and get changed into a uniform—Selma’s not come in nor has she sent word.”

I dreaded it when I saw that my first lady was one of them DeVine sisters. I didn’t know how she might take it to have her treatment from a chambermaid. But I had on the white dress and apron with my hair up under my cap and when she swept into the changing room all fine in her lilac walking dress (for it was the sister called Theodora), she never seemed to notice that I was the same one as made her bed and tidied her rooms
.

“A quarter of an hour in the tub will be long enough today,” says she, turning to let me undo the buttons at the back of her dress. “And when you begin the treatment, I’d like you to spend some extra time on my neck. I slept awkwardly last night and there’s a certain stiffness. Your treatment last time was relaxing, to be sure, but I’d prefer a more vigorous approach to work out the kink in my neck.”

I mumbled my yes ma’am, like we are told to do, and once her stays was loosened, stepped into the tub room to put the towels ready. When she opened the door, she had the bathrobe wrapped around her decent enough but then, without looking at me once, she marched straight to the edge of the tub and dropped the robe. Most ladies generally keep it on; some wears a bathing costume, but not this one. There she stood naked as a jay but for the big cap that covered her hair. She took no more mind of me than if I wasn’t there, just set down and slipped into the tub, being careful to keep her head well out of the water. I picked up the robe and laid it across the little stool by the tub
.

“Will that be all, madam?” says I, standing waiting by the door of the treatment room
.

She had already settled into the steaming water and she stood there with her arms out to the side, a-waving them slow like up and down under the water. With her
long slim neck and the great puffy white cap sticking up above the water, she put me in mind of one of them fancy water flowers they used to be in the pond by the old hotel
.

“You can go now, Selma,” she said, “but come back for me in a quarter of an hour.”

I like to laugh out loud when I closed the door behind me. Selma is a hand’s breadth shorter than me and a good bit heavier. Me and her don’t favor in the least. But all that Miss DeVine saw was the uniform. Oh, she had taken the trouble to learn the names of us who did for her—but all she saw was the white dress and it was Selma; gray calico with an apron, now that was Amarantha. There hadn’t been no call to worry that she’d know me
.

This was my first appointment of the day and I looked about me to see what needed doing. The treatment room is a little box of a place—there’s a chair and the leather-covered table, a big clock on the wall, and a cabinet where the creams and lotions and folders for the different patients is kept. All the walls and wood is painted white and for a moment I took a notion that was I to stand still, all in white as I was, I might sink into them white walls like a raindrop into a pool
.

Notions. I shook my head to clear it of such foolishness for there was things to do. The windows, which is set high so’s can’t nobody peer in at folks whilst they’re having their treatment, was shut so I used the long pole with the hook to open them and let some air in. And there was the creams and lotions to set out and the clean sheets for the treatment table
.

Next I looked at the paper that said how many was down for treatments—five in all. A right full day. My own back would need a massage when it was over but that wasn’t likely to happen
.

I set myself down in the chair and took up the folder
marked T. DeVine to see if there was anything special Selma had been doing for her. They neither one of them sisters looked sickly and it didn’t surprise me none to find a big
R
stamped in green ink on her file
.

Professor Swann is the director of treatment here at the Mountain Park. He wears a white coat and little gold glasses and it’s him who talks to every new guest and draws up a plan of treatment for them to follow during their stay. When he marks a folder with the green
R
for Regular, it mostly means that these is healthy folks who feel they need a rest. These folks generally like to have a fuss made over them. They drink the waters twice a day and soak in the tubs and get a massage but it ain’t like there is aught to cure. These
R
folks is generally the easiest for me and I was some relieved to see that Miss DeVine was one of them
.

I looked at my list for the day and checked the folders of each one—two
R’s,
one
O,
which just means too fat and calls for sweating and extra-hard massage. These ones is told to keep to a special diet but when I worked in the bathhouse regular, I had many an
O
woman offer to pay me would I bring something for them to eat when they came for their treatments. There was one wanted a whole pie—“Any kind you can get”—and another that was crazy for hard candy
.

Next was a
C,
and I shook my head
. C
is for Cancer. Which usually means they are seeking anything they can find after being give up on by their regular doctor. There have been a few times where I think I may have helped one of these
C’s—
when the growth hadn’t gone too far and when they was of the sort who was amenable to being helped. But for the ones I can’t heal, there is another way I can help them
.

Some of them poor
C
women is plumb starved for touch, their husbands fearing to cause them pain—or
,
worse, fearing that the cancer’s catching. And too, there’s many a man can’t bear the sight of his wife’s body after the surgeon’s knife has been at it. No, I can’t cure these women but at least I can let them see that I don’t shrink from them and I can let them feel the touch of a gentle hand on their bodies. There has been more than one woman weep and tell me how long it had been since anyone had touched her
.

The last folder was a
N.
These is the ones I always dread, for what it means is the doctor don’t have no idea of what’s wrong. The
N
is for Neur-as-thenic—I had the professor to write the word out for me but I disremember how to speak it. These
N
women is always tired and sad and sometimes a little addled. Now and again they will be calmed by the treatment but mostly they is hard to please
.

Looking up at the clock, I saw there weren’t but a minute left before I had to go after Miss DeVine so I put the folders back in the cabinet and pulled my cap down a little lower, hoping to let her go on thinking I was Selma
.

Miss DeVine was standing by the bath with the robe loose around her when I opened the door. She didn’t say nothing, nor did she look at me but walked through and dropped her robe again without even waiting for me to turn away. She stretched out facedown on the table and just lay there, not bothering to pull a sheet over herself like most would. So I draped her the way I was taught and put the special oil on my hands
.

“Shall I begin with the back, madam?” I tried to make my voice soft like Selma’s and speak the words like we was taught
.

“By all means—and remember, extra attention to the neck.”

I laid my hands on her draped shoulders for a moment
,
to accustom her to my touch—same as you’d do with a young unbroke mule. Then I put aside the drapes that covered her back and began the long stroking motions, always toward the heart, light and easy at first and growing a little firmer after a time
.

My hands was tingling some but I figured that was on account of I hadn’t given no treatments in some time. Miss DeVine’s flesh was firm and healthy-feeling and her skin was creamy white, without a spot, except for a little sickle moon of dark brown moles—five in all—on her left hip. I wondered did her twin sister have the same marking
.

Next came the part that is like kneading bread and I could feel the stiffness in her shoulders giving way. I worked them muscles hard, and when she didn’t seem to mind I went on to the next step, digging deep and pressing with my thumbs, all the while moving them in little circles. She made a little squeaking sound and I slacked off, not wanting to hurt her
.

“Don’t stop,” says she, “I believe that’s helping.”

And on I went, stroking, kneading, digging, and on to the tapping and the shaking—all the different ways I’d been taught to work on a body. There is foreign names for each of these—“effloory-something” and “tappy-something else”—those are two which I learned once but they have a foolish sound to them and I can’t hardly make out to say them right nohow
.

She was easy to work on—lay still, didn’t complain nor nothing. But the longer my hands stayed on her, the more it seemed to me that there was something wrong deep inside that fine-looking body of hers. There was the feeling of wrongness, of something black and rotting inside and as I labored over her, I could feel it drawing up through my fingers and into my own body
.

At last the time was up. I still had to help her with her
stays and such but while she was putting on her shift, I excused myself to step outside for a breath of air. I was weak and trembling and my stomach heaved but didn’t nothing come up but a little yellow bile
.

Back in the dressing room she was waiting and she spoke right sharp when I couldn’t pull them stays as tight as she wanted. But as she left, she handed me a quarter—with most ladies it would have been a dime or a nickel
.

“My neck feels much better, Selma,” says she, sweeping out the door. “Put me down for the same time tomorrow.”

I got through the rest of the day somehow but the bad feeling wouldn’t leave me, no matter how much I washed my hands. When finally I got home that evening, I washed them with lye soap in the hottest water I could bear. Then I mixed a black draught and drank it down
.

Later, after I’d purged myself and my hands was raw and red, I set the milk for the fairies and went up to the spring, aiming to look in the little round pool for an answer to what was ailing Miss Theodora DeVine
.