Machine Dreams Read Online Free PDF

father and I lived with Gladys Curry while our own house was being built. We’d sold Mother’s place to get the money to buy land, and Gladys let us stay in her spare bedroom. What a pistol she was—still working at the dress shop then, hard as nails and took no truck from anyone. We weren’t paying rent and I did a lot of work around the house, or tried to: I could spend all morning scrubbing the kitchen floor; she’d come home, get down on her knees right in front of me, and do it over to suit herself.
    But she was a lot of fun and said outrageous things—especially considering she’d known me since I was a little girl, and her daughter, Jewel—her one child—had married my older brother. They’d lived with Gladys awhile too, before moving to Ohio, and we filled the space they’d left. Gladys was a widow, one of those women three times stronger than the man she married. She’d tell me that every woman should have a husband and a lover; it took at least two men to stay this side of the desert; no one man had sense enough to take care of things and it was useless expecting him to. She’d had her daughter at seventeen, and her husband had died in a mine accident when she was thirty; she never did marry again but had a boyfriend for years. He kept a room downtown but spent most of his time with her—she cooked and cleaned for him and cajoled him and entertained him—she said she was no fool, she owned her house and her car and why on earth should she marry again.
    We’d moved out to the other house by the time you were born, but Gladys was around a lot all those first few years. When you and Billy were toddlers, we’d dress you both up every summer afternoon and take you somewhere. You were like two dolls, done up in matching blue and white piqué sunsuits. We’d show you off to her neighbors in town. Mrs. Talbot, across the street from Gladys, would sit on her leafy porch and shake her head. She thought I took too many pains keeping my children so clean. Especially Billy. “You wash that child too much—you’re going to sap his strength. You’re washing his strength away.”
    Gladys and I would take you both down to the train station. The trains were still running then. Patchen, the engineer, would hold Billy on his lap and drive the engine back and forth acrossthe yard. Then he’d hand him back to me covered with soot and crowing. Those engines were coal burners, dirty and loud. You were three. While Billy rode, you stood without a word and never took your eyes from that square of filthy window in the cab. I remember Patchen’s old striped hat and those yellow gauntlets he wore—elbow-length padded gloves covered with coal dust. He would say to me, “Best let that boy alone. A boy can raise himself.” Gladys said she’d never raised a boy, but she doubted they could fix their own meals or mend their own clothes any more than a man could.
    She was there the night you almost died of pneumonia—you were five months old. Your father was out of town and there was a blizzard; the phone lines were down and the car was drifted in. You couldn’t seem to breathe if we laid you down, so we kept you awake all night, upright, to keep your lungs from filling—took turns walking the hall and holding you. You were so small but you’d open your mouth when you felt the spoon near your face; you wanted that bitter medicine. By dawn we were giving you whiskey with an eyedropper, a drop at a time. Gladys walked a mile through that deep snow to get to a working phone, and the doctor came by seven. Somehow you were better and he said just to keep you at home, it would only be worse to try to get you to town.
    Stayed way below zero that whole December and January, one storm after another. If you hadn’t been breast-fed from the beginning, I don’t think you would have made it. Several people lost young babies that winter—influenza and pneumonia. Adults got sick and didn’t get well till spring.
    I was always