Red Blood, Black Skin and The Blue Sweep

Red blood, Black skin, and “The Blue Sweep”.

My big sister was my hero. Back in those days when I still literally looked up to her, she was my Fearless Leader in our summer exploits. Five years my senior, it took a long time for me to pass her by 3 inches in height, as well as miraculously close the intellectual gap by finally meeting up with her in the faraway land of “grown up”. But back then I idolized her. When she would deign to break away from her fascinating older friends who talked about boys (what on earth did they do with THEM? It all sounded squishy and complicated) to come out into the sunshine to play silly childhood games with me, my heart would soar. I was 8, she was 13. I would happily be her Robin if Batman would only come out of her groovy teenage Batcave. Today, she did, despite the fact that these days our number one focus was on survival. We rarely played anymore. Survivors don’t have time for child’s play.

We had grown up in a suburban paradise. Rich little Black girls, living in a house their affluent doctor mother had provided, complete with main house, guest house, stables, and a grassy lawn with pool and poolslide to boot. This house even had a miniature play house for the little girl who has everything. Built of the same plaster and timber as the real structures, we could take turns pretending to be the “Lady Of The House”, have tea parties, and act as if no adults existed in the world. But now, it had all fallen into disrepair. We stayed on because the structures were still sound, and the world didn’t notice one small Black family hiding from the ravages of “The Blue Sweep” virus in the ruins of our own home.

Since my sister and I decided to fully commit to a major play break (burying bodies and scavenging food gets tiresome), we wanted everything to be as authentic as possible, so we took an old rolled-up portable picket fence, and sectioned off a small piece of the lawn to designate it as the yard belonging exclusively to the play house. The only thing we hadn’t worked out was how to create a gate in the fence. Stumped, we simply allowed one side to sag over, and we would jump in and out of the enclosure where the fence hung low to the ground. Of course, that wasn’t exciting enough after awhile, so my sister added a new facet to our game – we would be pole vaulters who lived there!! She found a discarded post, and used it to vault herself over the upright part of the fence. I was riveted, and of course my competitive nature immediately caught fire. If my big sister did it, I had to try it too!! I grabbed the post where she had dropped it, and took several paces back. Screwing my little face up in concentration and determination, I suddenly sprang forward, sprinting as fast as my little legs could carry me. I planted the pole as I had seen her do, and vaulted myself skyward!! Only . . . I didn’t quite make it all the way over as she had done so effortlessly. A searing pain shot through me as I realized I was straddling the splintery picket fence. I started to cry even though I wanted to look brave in front of my hero, and I quietly said “ I think I hurt myself”. My legs turned to jelly, and I didn’t think I could walk. I also felt oddly wet in my crotch, and to my shame I realized I might have wet myself. I held my arms out to her, and my big sister immediately scooped me into her arms. I whispered into her ear that I think I needed the toilet, and in a flash she gently put me down on the one in her bathroom in the main house. After awhile, when no urine had come out, I woozily got to my feet. My sister gasped in horror, and her eyes filled with tears. I got a cold lump in the pit of my stomach, and when I turned to look I realized that the entire toilet bowl was stained bright red with blood. My blood. So. Much. Red. Blood. I had become accustomed to seeing blood, but not my own . . .

I had never seen so much blood in my life. It was sickly fascinating, the way it coated the toilet seat and bowl in a viscous, crimson cloak. Bright red and glistening in the muted light. I was torn between fascination and horror. My brain couldn’t quite fathom how all of that had come out of little me. The only good news is that the color of my blood was red, not the distinctive blue of The Infected, those doomed to the slow, agonizing living death that we’d come to call “The Blue Sweep”. My sister sprang into action, screaming for our mother. If my big sister was my hero, my mother was my Über hero. A genius Cardiologist (the first African-American woman with a private practice in the US), gorgeous, stylish, and the most loving mother I could possibly have hoped for. Everything in me cried out for my mommy. She arrived immediately, and laid me down to inspect the damage. My assurance at the arrival of my mother crumbled when I saw her composure break as she examined me. She covered it quickly, but I knew if she, a DOCTOR, was that upset I must be hurt REALLY bad. She stifled tears, but her professional manner took over. She bundled my sister and me into the car, and we made our way to the nearest Med Compound. We arrived, and my nose was immediately assaulted by the astringent, alien smell that all triage units exude. A scent that is the opposite of reassuring, it strikes fear into every child’s belly. They ran me into an examining cubicle, and that’s where I first saw them: The long, wood-handled probes, 10-inch long Q-Tips used to examine wounds. These were the instruments of my torture. The attending Triage Nurse had to examine the extent of my injury. He had been off duty from a 20-hour shift, just long enough to get sloppy drunk, and halfway get it up for a plague hooker in exchange for an Anti-Sweep shot. He was hammered, REALLY not happy, but he was here. Luckily, saving me and my reproductive capabilities was a priority with The Guild, because “The Blue Sweep” virus makes you spectacularly infertile – one of the tertiary symptoms in females is when, without warning, your uterus decides surf’s up, and it “Sweeps” itself out of your abdominal cavity in one de-oxygenated bloody flux of deep blue blood. That distinct blue shade that means you’re already dying inside. Not cute. Downing cups of black coffee to sober up, he had to PROBE the area with those damned Q-Tips. Up and down, back and forth, he pushed my mutilated crotch around trying to see through the blood exactly what I’d done to myself. I gripped the edges of the gurney, crimping my toes up in my shoes with every painful prod and poke. “Red blood!” He grunted. “Red is life. Good!” I wanted to scream in agony, but I was trying desperately to be a brave little girl for my mom, since she seemed so frightened, even though she was trying not to show it. I wasn’t entirely successful in being silent, because it hurt SO BAD. My poor sister was sitting in the corner, sobbing, utterly devastated. I realized she felt responsible; that she had failed to protect her baby sister. I was suddenly struck by how loved I was by both of them. Which was momentarily comforting. Finally Dr. Mengele’s cousin finished his examination. The verdict: I had lacerated the pubococcygeus muscle, more commonly known as the “taint”. That area between my vagina and my anus (‘taint pussy, ‘taint ass. Ow is right). There was a jagged tear that required stitches. The “good” news (wow, there was actually good news) was that had the tear been ¼ inch higher it might have affected my ability to have children. So, I was lucky, if that can even be a term applied to this situation. Bonus? Bloodwork re-confirmed I was virus free. After consulting briefly with my mother, I was wheeled into pre-op. A kindly anesthesiologist put a mask over my nose and mouth, just like in the movies!! I was fortunate to have physicians for both parents, so as afraid as I might’ve felt, I knew that doctors were people I could trust. I relaxed. He told me to count backwards from 100, so I did. 100 . . . 99 . . . 98 . . . then I remember seeing dolphins swimming in the ceiling, frolicking in the glittering aquamarine surf, and then . . . the world went black.

I awoke to a dark, strange, forbidding room, filled with the unfamiliar sounds of other fitfully sleeping sick children. For a moment I didn’t know where I was. I felt so small and alone. But soon, a nurse realized I was awake, and she came to my bedside. I suddenly became aware of another thing – I was about to vomit. The nurse, obviously an expert at this, saw a change come over my face and she asked me if I felt like I needed to throw up. I nodded my head, and she deftly positioned a basin under my mouth just in time for the hot, brown contents of my stomach to come shooting out into it. I was terrified of vomiting, so the entire ordeal became that much more horrible when I did. I was so scared, and my mommy wasn’t there. But the nurse was very comforting. She wiped my mouth and made me feel much better. She explained that the medicine they had given me to put me to sleep sometimes made people sick. She spent a little more time with me, putting me at ease. It was the middle of the night, but she acted as if it was the most normal thing in the world to watch a little girl puke and then make light conversation as if nothing had ever happened. It worked. I was able to go back to sleep, both my stomach and mind calmed and still.

The next day, my mother came to take me home. I was very proud to hear every single one of the nurses tell my mother what a good girl I’d been, and how polite I was. She clearly had raised me well. I got into the station wagon, walking very slowly because I had been given three catgut stitches to close up my lacerated crotch. When we got home, my sister was there with hugs and a slight shadow of shame still hanging behind her eyes. My mom had made up a bed on the large couch in the den so I could watch the big TV. “The Mad, Mad, Mad Monsters”, an animated film starring the voice of Phyllis Diller among others, was the scavenged VCR tape that night. I had been looking forward to it for weeks, ever since a stash had been recovered from a family’s home that had succumbed, going mad, ripping each other apart even as their own body parts fell out of them and smacked wetly to the floor. They had all slowly turned that ominous, telltale shade of blue that is a clear sign that they’d fallen prey to “The Blue Sweep”, and the gibbering madness would soon consume them all. But safely tucked into clean, soft sheets, that nightmare seemed a world away. My mom told me she had a surprise for me. She went to the door to the back yard and opened it. Two furballs with wet, slobbery tongues ran in and immediately started licking all over my face!! My mom had gotten two puppies to welcome me home and make me feel better. She really was the best mom in the world. I was safe at home, and I was going to be just fine. The dogs also served as a secondary line of defense – they would bark when they smelled The Infected. I didn’t hurt myself badly again until I scavenged a skateboard years later. But . . . that’s another story.