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by William Melvin Kelley

  “Are you all right now, Mr. Pierce?” The doctor called from behind the wall of nurses.

  Mitchell nodded.

  “You see, girls? He’s all right now.”

  The nurses, after looking long and hard at the new fathers, began to disband. “We’ll be close just in case.”

  “Two of them together and you have a riot,” commented one of the white nurses.

  Finally the corridor was empty except for the three men.

  The doctor patted Mitchell’s arm. “I’m truly sorry, Mr. Pierce.” Mitchell did not know if the apology was for the nurses or the baby.

  The Cuban’s eyes jumped from one man to the other, back and forth. “He crazy—right, doctor?”

  The doctor frowned. “Certainly not. And what exactly is your business in this hospital?”

  “Me?” The Cuban came to attention. “To see my son. You see him? A bull. This crazy want to steal my son.”

  “I assure you, nothing was further from his mind.”

  “I not so sure.” He turned and began to tap the glass, motioning to one of the nurses to push his son closer to the window. Then he rested his head on the glass, watching.

  “Are you all right now, Mr. Pierce?” The doctor continued to stroke Mitchell’s arm.

  “Isn’t there some mistake? I mean, that is the baby you…”

  “Unfortunately. I was right there. In fact, it came first.”

  “But how?”

  “Not to joke, but the usual way, I’m afraid.” The doctor had been inspecting the polish on his shoes. “Do you recall the conversation we had in the cafeteria?”

  Mitchell tried. All the doctor had really said was that Tam had given birth to twins. Then, Mitchell realized now, he had tried to tell him that one of the babies was…colored. He had now seen that for himself, but he could remember nothing else.

  The doctor knew he did not understand. “The Civil War?” He raised his eyebrows. “Colonel Nicolls…Washington?”

  Tam was from Washington. Tam had given birth to a…colored baby. Tam then, the doctor was thinking, must be…Mitchell began to laugh. “But that’s impossible. I understand you now, but that’s impossible. An ancestor of Tam’s was with Major General Robert Ross when the British invaded Washington in 1814.”

  The doctor was not cheered by this information.

  Mitchell stopped laughing. “But then how…?” He thought. “Of course, neither of our families has ever been really wealthy.” Finally, he shook his head. “No. It’s impossible.”

  “Well,” began the doctor, “there’s only one other possibility.” He hesitated. “Superfecundation. But, oh God, that may be worse.”

  “What? Super…?”

  “Superfecundation, Mr. Pierce. Very rare. Perhaps…you’d better just accept the situation as is.”

  “No.” Mitchell went over it again and shook his head. “I mean, how can I? It can’t really be any worse. Can it?”

  The doctor was thinking. “In fact, superfecundation seems quite likely in this case. The child, after all, is quite dark.”

  “That what he got—huh, doctor? This super…thing?” The Cuban had turned from the glass.

  The doctor looked at him, but did not answer. He took Mitchell’s arm and pulled him away, across the corridor. The Cuban shrugged and returned to his son.

  “As you know, Mr. Pierce, your wife has given birth to fraternal twins.” Eight years before, Mitchell had arranged his mother’s funeral. The doctor talked now as the funeral director had talked then. “This means that not one, but two eggs were present in your wife’s womb.” The doctor knit his fingers. “Superfecundation is the fertilization of those two eggs within a short period of time by sperm cells from two different intercourses. Now obviously, if you had fertilized both eggs, no one would be able to distinguish it from usual two-egg twinning. But if your wife had…relations with another man, who is very different physically from you, and each of you fertilized one egg, each of you would pass his traits on to the particular twin he had fathered. Do you understand, Mr. Pierce?”

  Mitchell thought he did, but was afraid to admit it.

  “Fantástico!” The Cuban turned from the window. “His wife she got two babies, but he is father of only one. Fantástico!”

  Mitchell looked at the doctor, who nodded his head. “Unfortunately, that’s the situation. Unless, of course, the deviate strain is in your wife’s family background.”

  Mitchell shook his head.

  “In that case, Mr. Pierce, your wife is an adulteress.” The doctor seemed almost to want to hurt him. “And, may I say, not a very lucky one.”

  “Fantástico!”

  4

  THE DOCTOR TOLD Mitchell that Tam was tired, groggy, and probably would make no sense until the next day. “Nothing will change before tomorrow, Mr. Pierce. Go home and get some rest. Face the new day with a clear mind, if at all possible.”

  Mitchell knew the doctor was right; he had seen Tam minutes after Jake had been born. She had looked at him, smiled with effort, and asked if he had seen the baby. Before he could answer, she had fallen asleep.

  He took the elevator down to the street, hailed a taxi, and went home. Jake had been in Washington with Tam’s mother for two weeks; the maid had left for the evening—the apartment was empty. Even before he removed his overcoat, he wandered from room to room, finally sitting on Jake’s bed. It smelled of warm milk, and he had to force himself to remain there. Once, he had liked Jake very much. But the boy had become too delicate, a whiner. As he thought about Jake, he realized that the boy had begun to go bad almost eighteen months before, soon after Mitchell had fired Opal Simmons. She had been very good with Jake, good with all of them. But Opal had been a thief. Tam had insisted they never again hire a nigger, had picked a German woman.

  He knew he had one thing to do—call Tam’s mother—and he was not looking forward to it. He liked his mother-in-law, but whenever he talked to her, especially on the phone, his stomach always began to ache. Yet he could never discover what about her upset him. He decided that he would not tell her everything, just that Tam had given birth to twins, both healthy.

  In his overcoat and scarf he sat down at the phone table and placed the call. “Hello…Mother?” He and Tam had been married five years, but he still hesitated over the word. “This is Mitchell.”

  “Hello, Mitchell. Is everything all right?”

  “Fine.” On the phone table was a small white pad. Page after page was filled with Tam’s signature. Sometimes she had written Tam Pierce, sometimes her maiden name, and on one page just Tam J. or Tam Johnson, and a number. Mitchell tried to recall a Johnson that Tam knew, and finally decided it was the name and number of a small grocery store nearby. Strange that she imagined herself married to the short, parrot-nosed grocer.

  “Well?”

  “Tam had twins, Mother.” He tried to sound happy, but knew he had failed.

  “Of course. That’s what she was supposed to have. Is anything wrong with them?”

  “No.” Under layers of cotton and wool, his stomach began to fill with gas.

  “Don’t lie to me, Mitchell. Tell me what’s wrong with them.” Her voice was very young. She sounded a great deal like Tam, except that she used no slang.

  “Really, nothing’s wrong. I’m just tired, I guess.”

  “New fathers are supposed to be tired.”

  He did not answer. He was looking at Tam’s handwriting, the letters as wide as they were tall, the “i” dotted with a tiny circle. Her handwriting slanted slightly backward.

  “Mitchell, what’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing, Mother.”

  There was a long silence from Washington, then: “Jake is still up. He’s eating a banana, but he might put it down long enough to talk to you. Say hello to your father, Jake.”

&
nbsp; Mitchell could hear banana breaking between small white teeth.

  “Hello, Jake. You have a little brother and a little sister now…”

  Jake breathed into his ear through miles of wire and a clogged nose.

  “This is Daddy, Jake.”

  “Say hello, dear.” There was a grunt, an empty silence, then a scream. Jake had begun to cry.

  “What on earth did you say to him?”

  “I didn’t say anything.” Mitchell shrugged, as though she could see him.

  “You know, Mitchell, this child is in very poor condition. I really think he should stay with me at least two more weeks. I’ll talk to Tam about it.”

  “All right, Mother.”

  “Good night, Mitchell.” She hung up.

  “Good night, Mother.” Into the dead phone.

  His stomach flaming, he took off his overcoat, exposing the heat to the air. He did not loosen his tie or remove his suit coat. Somehow he expected someone to visit—perhaps one of Tam’s friends—and he wanted to look neat. Then he went into the kitchen to get something to eat.

  He made himself a sandwich, sat down in the living room, even though Tam did not like him to eat there, and turned on the television set to watch the news. A war was showing. The reporter asked a wounded soldier if he was in pain. The boy had stepped onto a land mine and his right leg had disappeared. He took three drags on a cigaret, and then, surprising the reporter, and Mitchell too, he died. When the commercial began, Mitchell snapped off the set and went to bed.

  5

  TAM WAS SITTING UP, burying black needles in pink wool, when Mitchell entered her room the next afternoon. She looked at him, her fingers still working. “Hello, Mitchell. This is for one of the babies. You see them?”

  All the way to the hospital, he had been hoping that he would find her sheepish, repentant. “Yes. I…”

  “Aren’t they beautiful?” She lifted the row of knots closer to her nose. “God damn, I made a mistake.” She slid the needles out of the loops of yarn.

  “Tam?” Mitchell ventured from just inside the door to the foot of her white, iron bed. “What about that baby?”

  “Which one?” She was threading the needle back into the loops. “I had two, you know, Mitchell. Didn’t you see them both?”

  He looked at the top of her lowered head. She had not been to the hairdresser in some weeks. Her hair was slightly waved, covering all but the lobes of small pink pierced ears, ringless now. He could see the dark empty holes—spots. She was wearing a white hospital nightgown. “What did you do, Tam?”

  “Now don’t you think that’s a silly question, Mitchell?” She smoothed a space for her knitting between her blanket-covered thighs, then began to nod her head too gravely. “Yes, yes, I know. You want to have a very, very serious talk. Go on.”

  He rested his hands on the smooth cold white railing. “Yes. Well, I really can’t have this, Tam.” Her eyes were smiling. “I understand that things haven’t been going well with us. So I do understand…”

  “Yes?” She was bored.

  “Damn it, Tam, you have to give it away!” The words seemed almost to have created the idea.

  “Which one, Mitchell? I had two.” She smiled.

  “Don’t pretend, Tam. You know what I’m talking about.” He gripped the railing, shaking the bed.

  “Take it easy, Mitchell. I’m all stitched up.”

  He apologized.

  But she continued: “It stings when I go to the bathroom. You should see these young little Rican girls. They’re all fifteen years old. In to have a baby one day, the next day their stomachs are just as hard and flat. And they walk like nothing at all’d happened.” She spoke with some small touch of admiration. “So, anyway, go on.”

  He looked at his shoes. “What I meant before about understanding how you felt?” His shoes needed a polish. “I know I haven’t been a model husband either. It takes two to make a marriage.”

  “Sometimes. Look, Mitchell, what are you trying to say?”

  “I want to know about that baby.” He noticed an edge of whine in his voice, promised himself to sound more forceful.

  “My baby. What do you want to know?” She closed her eyes for a moment.

  “I want to know who the father is.” He resisted an urge to stamp his foot.

  She raised her eyebrows. “Why, you, of course.”

  “We both know I’m not the father of that baby. And neither of us have any colored blood in our families. The doctor explained it to me.”

  “You can’t always tell.” She paused. “But you’re right. Cooley, I guess.”

  Mitchell did not understand.

  “You don’t remember Cooley. You should always remember the important people in your life, Mitchell.” Suddenly, she sat up straight. “All right, Mitchell, stop joking. You don’t remember Cooley?”

  He shook his head.

  “Do you remember Opal Simmons?”

  He did. He had been disappointed when he discovered Opal was a thief. She had seemed so nice and quiet. Cooley. The night he fired her, had stopped her escape, knocked her down and searched her purse for his belongings, Opal had been just about to go on a date. A Black man had come to the delivery entrance and asked for her. “You mean Opal’s Cooley? In the chartreuse jacket?”

  “I mean my Cooley in the chartreuse jacket.”

  “Where is he now?”

  She shrugged. “I really couldn’t tell you. I saw him a couple of times after we got back from the Cape, when you were sick, but I haven’t seen him for about six weeks—after the doctor cut us off.”

  “You were seeing him up to six weeks ago?”

  “Was there any reason not to?”

  He shook his head slowly. “What are we going to do, Tam?”

  “You mean, what are you going to do?”

  He looked at his hands resting lightly on the white iron railing, watched them curl into fists and jump to his sides. Tam’s face was very pale, a great distance away from him across the white blanket. He began to beat the bones of his hips and thighs. “How can you be this way to me? How can you? I’ve made some mistakes, but I don’t deserve this!”

  Her face softened, as if under his fists. “Oh, Mitchell. I’m sorry. I didn’t knew you’d take it this hard. Why, a couple of weeks ago you told me you didn’t love me anymore. I thought you didn’t care.” She spread her arms to him. “I guess this is what they call a reconciliation.” The sleeves of the white nightgown hung, like vestments. “Come here.”

  For an instant, he held his ground, but then circled the bed, pulled up a chair and rested his head on her breasts, loose under the white gown. After all, he realized suddenly, he did love her.

  She put her arms around him. “Mitchell, you know I wouldn’t have done all these terrible, terrible things unless you seemed to be falling out of love with me. You made me so desperate.”

  His hand searched until it found her kneecap and began to pat it. “I know, Tam. It’s all right.” Far down the bed, her toes were wiggling under the blanket. Between her thighs the black needles stuck up out of the ball of pink wool.

  She kissed the top of his head. “Of course, it is. Just the way it should be.”

  6

  SHE KISSED the top of his head again, and patted his back several times. Then Tam’s mother cleared her throat. She had opened the door, and was in the room before Mitchell could sit up, take his hand away from Tam’s kneecap, and smooth down his hair. He wondered if Tam had seen her enter.

  “It’s all right, Mitchell. We’re married.” Tam patted his elbow, smiled at her mother. “Hello. I didn’t know you were coming up. I’ve been through the ordeal before.”

  Tam’s mother stared at Mitchell, until finally he stood up and said hello, his stomach beginning to bubble.

  She kissed Tam on the mou
th, and sat down in Mitchell’s chair. “Mitchell called me last night and he sounded so strange that I left Jake with your father and flew up. And it’s a good thing I did.” Her eyes were suddenly red. “Oh, my poor, poor baby. What that man must have put you through to make you do something like this!” She leaned forward, touched Tam’s cheek. “I had no idea Mitchell was making you so unhappy.”

  “Have you seen them?” Tam knit her hands behind her head, her breasts moving upward under the white gown.

  Her mother nodded. “Before I came in. And then I called your doctor to demand an explan—”

  “Aren’t they beautiful?”

  “How can you say such a thing?” Tam’s mother stood up. “And you!” She advanced on Mitchell now, her right hand raised and open. “If you had been good to her, this would never have happened.”

  Mitchell pulled his head into his shoulders.

  “Don’t hit him, Mother. It won’t do him any good. He already knows what he’s done.”

  His mother-in-law lowered her hand. “Oh, Tam, you don’t know what you’ve done.”

  “Of course, I do, and I’m sorry. But sit down now and let’s talk. You can help me decide what—”

  “You mean you haven’t decided yet? Why, you’ll have to give it away.”

  Tam smiled. “Don’t be silly. To whom?”

  “What difference does it make?” She opened her handbag, and took out a cigaret. Mitchell, behind her chair, reached over her shoulder with a light.

  Tam had been shaking her head. “I won’t do it.”

  “Of course, you will, dear.”

  “I think it’s a good idea, Mother. I told her…” He stopped when Tam’s mother turned around.

  “But, why not, Tam? Surely it can’t mean anything to you. Especially compared to what you’ll have to face.”

  Tam shook her head. “I’ve already faced it.” Her fingers began to poke into the ball of wool in her lap. “Mitchell knows why all this happened. He knows that he drove me out of the house. I want to keep the baby to remind him, when we’re happy again, of how unhappy we were. Now, I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”