A BOIL IN THE DESERT

The pain under my arm started as we left the motel. Daddy was determined to make it across the desert in one day. He and Mother had packed the old family Studebaker 4-door sedan tight while it was starry sky dark. They woke us kids up way before dawn and bundled us into the Studebaker. Daddy said it was a workhorse and would safely get us across the desert and on to California. I privately wondered about that.

We were well into the desert as the sun was waking up. I had only been able to doze off and on because of the pain under my arm. My little brother and sister slept like puppies in the car bed Mother had built for us in the back seat of the car. They missed the incredible desert dawn, but I drank it all in hoping the beauty would help my pain. I hadn’t moaned or complained about my pain because I was ashamed and afraid because I had disobeyed my mother.

She had told me I was too young to shave under my arms, but I had done it anyway a couple of days before we started on our car trip. I sneaked her razor, did it, cleaned up, and returned the razor without anyone knowing.

I had once ignored one of Mother’s life-rules: “If you do something you’ve been told not to do, there will be consequences.” The first time she told me this was when she washed my mouth out with soap for sassing her. I had been told not to speak that way, but I had done so anyway. As she lathered up my toothbrush with soap and scrubbed away at my then seven-year-old mouth, she kept saying, “If you do something you’ve been told not to do, there will be consequences. This mouth washing with soap is the consequence for sassing me. I took the consequence, apologized, and never sassed her again. But did I really learn my lesson?

Life is filled with temptations. I had been firmly told when I was ten that I was too young to shave my legs and under my arms. Mother had said maybe when I was thirteen or fourteen, I could shave those body parts. I adhered to the admonition not to shave my legs mostly because everybody would’ve immediately noticed. When I turned eleven, just before our car trip, and the hair under my arms kept growing and getting gross looking to me, I just couldn’t see any sense in waiting two more years. So, I did what I did. Now, here I was stuck in the back of the car with my little brother and sister and what I was pretty sure was a boil growing under my right arm. As I thought about it all, I figured that something I had done with the razor in the act of shaving was now causing me to suffer a painful consequence. I wondered what Mother’s interpretation would be and would she think this pain wasn’t enough of a consequence, so I stayed silent.

Mother and Daddy were talking together and paying no attention to the back-seat’s occupants. My siblings who had been arguing over who could have which colors had resolved their differences over the crayons and were now heads down wildly coloring away in the coloring books. No one was paying any attention to me. So, I felt under my arm as the sun climbed ever higher into the sky and, sure enough, felt a bump forming the center of the pain. I wondered how hot it would get and how big the painful bump would get and if it did, how long would it be before I’d have to confess what I did and ask for help from my parents.

From the front seat, I heard Daddy ask Mother to check the map for how far the next big town was where we could get gas. Mother said she would and I could hear her unfolding the road map. As the miles ticked by, the pain under my arm was now a steady, dull throb. I hoped I could make it to wherever the next stop would be. I sneaked a peak under my right arm at what was happening. Yep, there was a throbbing red bump and redness all around that bump. It hurt a lot, but I gritted my teeth and held my silence. I picked up one of the horse books Mother had provided for me and tried to read. I couldn’t focus on the words, so I gave up and just pretended to read by holding the book and occasionally turning pages. I had no idea what was happening in the story, even though horse stories were my favorites. My entire locus of attention was under my right arm.

The heat was intensifying. There was no air conditioning in our Studebaker, not even an air cooler. All we had were wet rags Mother wet from a large water bottle and handed over the seat for us to place on our foreheads and she was frugal with those because as she told us, the water had to last until the next filling station stop. From our back-seat perspective, there was no telling when that would be or what we might have to endure before that happened. I was already enduring more than I had bargained for at the start of this journey.

Despite my best efforts to stifle any moans, as the heat and the pain got worse, a deep moan escaped my lips. Mother whipped around and looked at me, asking “Josie, are you carsick?” That had happened to me before.

“No, Mam," I answered.

Mother felt my face. She felt the faces of my siblings for comparison.

  “Josie, you are burning up with fever.”

“Yes, Mam," I replied and lifted my right arm so she could see my armpit.

Mother gasped at what she saw. She turned to my father and said,” Josie has a large boil under her right arm. It is sending poison into her body.”

Daddy was silent at first, thinking. Then, he said, “We are not going to stop or veer off this road. Do what you can to help her.” He drove on.

The desert heat intensified. Mother gave me a fresh wet rag and told me to put it under my arm. I did so, but it only brought a little relief.

“How do you feel, Josie?” Mother asked.

“Like I’m dying,” I whispered, though I had no idea what dying actually felt like.

I closed my eyes and rocked along with the movement of our Studebaker. I began muttering to myself praying to God to take away this pain and promising to never disobey my parents again, ever.

“What are you muttering about, Josie?” Mother asked.

“I’m praying," I said. I knew I wasn’t known as a praying person, even in church. It just never seemed right to me to ask God for stuff when I already had a good family, home, and my own horse. I couldn’t remember the last time I asked God for anything. But, in this particular situation in the Studebaker in the desert with the boil, I thought it was time to ask for help, and I figured God was the best one to ask. I knew he was more powerful than my parents. Don’t ask how I knew that, I just did. So, I asked and asked for his mercy and his help as sincerely as I knew how.

Mother said, “We should all ask for God’s help.

Daddy said, “Talk to God silently now all of you.”

As silence reigned inside the car, storm clouds were starting to build in the desert sky, and we were headed right into them.

“Storm’s a coming,” Daddy said breaking the silence, “and they can be fierce in this desert, though usually short.”

He pulled off the road on a rise of high ground to wait it out. We all knew that the rubber in car tires were a shield against lightning. At least, we'd been told that. I sure hoped it was true. As he turned off the motor, the sky went black and tremendous lightning greeted our eyes and loud thunder shocked our ears. I concentrated harder on my praying.

Inexplicably, in the midst of all this lightning, thunder, and praying, my boil burst spewing its poison out of me just as the heavens opened up and a deluge of rain poured down upon our car. I could feel the poison from the boil emptying into the rag that Mother had given me to hold under my arm. My hand was stiff from holding it there when suddenly there was no rain pounding on the roof of the car.

“Storm’s over,” Daddy declared.

The whole thing--storm, boil draining, all of it, according to Daddy only lasted about 15 ferocious minutes. It seemed like an hour at least to me.

“My boil burst and spewed,” I announced.

“Thank God,” Mother said.

Daddy nodded.

I nodded.

My siblings nodded.

We all rolled down the windows and let the coolness from the storm’s rain pervade the car. My siblings went back to coloring. Daddy started up the car and pulled back onto the road heading west. Mother handed me a fresh wet rag to clean up my under arm saying, “Josie, do the thinking you need to do. Clean up under your arm. We’ll talk later about all this.”

“Yes, Mam,” I answered.

Whatever happened next, whatever consequence came when my parents knew about my shaving and the coming of the boil, I would take it gladly. In my mind, I was saved from Death! Somehow amidst the thunder and lightning, God had heard me, taken pity on me, and mercifully burst my boil. I kept murmuring to myself, “Thank you, thank you, sweet Lord, thank you, thank you.”

I did my thinking as Mother had directed me to do. I had been taught to recognize and understand a life lesson, especially when it smacked me in the face. Then, analyze my behavior, and figure out what there was for me to learn. Such life lessons were never easy to look at, but I knew this was one such time I definitely needed to do so.  I turned everything over in my mind and came to an important understanding. From that day forward, I acknowledged the power of prayer and the gift of God’s mercy. I never forgot that lesson, and I never shaved under my arms again.