Treating dark secrets

I have to tell you something that I would rather keep a secret. I am a victim of toenail fungus. You must have seen the commercial on television. Little yellow critters get under your toenail, and they do their work, and the nail turns yellow. In my case, the right big toe.

I have to tell you this, because it is the second time in my life that revealing such a dark secret has brought me into contact with Vicks Vapo-Rub.

The first time was when I was a kid. I can’t tell you how old I was, but I can tell you the exact day. It was the day I came down with my first cold, ever, in my life, and my grandmother, Susie, found out about it. After that first time, I desperately tried to keep it a secret from her, when I caught a cold, because I knew what would happen next.

She always found out, of course. Susie belonged to an extinct generation, that was born in the 1800s – 1886, for her – and spent most of their early life living in the country, before they moved to the city. Susie was born in northern Alabama, came to Texas in a wagon, lived on a farm in Haskell County, and finally married, settled in Abilene, where there was work, and had six kids, one of whom was my mother.

Susie’s husband, Roy Grant, died in 1929 and she raised the six kids, alone, through the Depression. She was nicely equipped. In the country, women worked to keep men in the fields. Susie brought that mission with her to the city and, as long as I knew her – she died in 1977 – never let go of it. In the city, they may have been her daughters, coming home from work in offices downtown, but she had the table set and ready for them at 5 p.m., rain or shine, heat or cold. To me – I grew up in my grandmother’s house – it meant she poured the milk and had it on the table by 4:45, in the dead of August. By 5, it was warm in the glass. It turned me away from milk, and I still resist eating dinner before 7 p.m.

Susie could spot an illness coming while it was still a mile away. If I sneezed, she was on me like a hawk on a gopher. I could protest, claim it was dandelion fuzz, but it was no use. She had me by the arm, making a stop in the kitchen, turning on the oven to 500 degrees, then on into the bedroom, where she shucked me out of my clothes and got me in the bed. Miraculously in her hand appeared a jar of Vicks Vapo-Rub. Susie was a believer in salve. She had two kinds: Vicks, and some kind of petroleum-based black salve that she squeezed out of a tube. With these two, she could cure anything, or scare us out of catching anything in the first place.

With two fingers, she scooped out the Vicks and rubbed it on my chest. She disappeared for a moment, then reappeared with a 500-degree cuptowel, straight from the oven. This she slapped over the Vicks layer on my chest, snugged it on, and pulled the covers up under my chin. In her hand appeared a teaspoon, and the Vicks jar. She dug the spoon into the jar, came out with a rounded mound of it, and said, “Open your mouth.” You can see why, after the first time, catching a cold became my desperate secret. In went the Vicks, I closed my mouth, pulled it off the spoon and swallowed it straight down. I spent the day in my Venusian stew, trying desperately to get better, and maybe it worked.

I thought when I grew up that I was forever done with Vicks. Now a friend insists it works on toenail fungus, without the side effects of the product mentioned on TV. The friend says it will take a couple of months. I started the treatment yesterday, using my little finger to get the dab of Vicks out of the jar and onto my toe. I wash my finger immediately, but it is no use. It smells like Vicks. My toe smells like Vicks. For the second time in my life, I reek of Vicks Vapo-Rub.

I was putting it on during the day, but Karen said, “You are supposed to put it on before you go to bed, and leave it on all night.” “But,” I protested, “it will get on the sheets.” “Put a sock over it,” she said, in a tone suggesting there was some country life in her background. I did as I was told. During the night, Susie’s voice floated over to me from her own dreamland. “I told you so,” she said.