Stork Bite

by Simonds, L. K.

  “That’s sweet of you, honey, but how am I gonna have a baby and nurse it and go to a job every day?”

  “We’ll get your mama over here from Dallas to help,” Thomas said. “And I’ll help.”

  “You can’t nurse it,” Cargie said. She felt frustrated rather than comforted. “And neither can Mama.”

  Thomas took her hands in his again. His hands were so big, so skilled at seemingly everything. “We’ll find a way,” he said.

  “I don’t see how.”

  “There’s always a way,” Thomas said. “You’ll see.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “I know so.”

  Cargie sighed and squeezed her husband’s hands. She forced a smile. “Thank you, honey. You’re so good to me. I need to wash my face and get going.”

  “Go on then, and I’ll wash the dishes this morning.”

  The little office at Cole’s Dry Cleaning and Laundry was not recognizable from the first day Cargie had walked into it. Neither was the dry cleaning and laundry operation, for that matter. Cargie had shaken the inefficiencies out of it as one shakes dust from a rug.

  The crates of dry cleaning solution had been moved to the cleaning hall where they belonged, and Cargie’s fireproof filing cabinets were installed along one wall. She turned the desk around to face the door and replaced the cumbersome swivel chair with a ladder-back that took up much less space. In the corner was a newly purchased combination safe so Mr. Cole did not have to tote money to the bank every day. The electric fan still perched on the windowsill and circulated the air over Cargie’s head. When the weather turned cool, Mr. Cole removed the fan and brought in an electric space heater.

  Mr. Cole had taken to going out for lunch every day, and Cargie worked the counter while he was away. Thomas packed her a pail of food every morning, and he always put in a little something extra. Sometimes, he scrawled a line or two of poetry on a slip of paper. Sometimes, he clipped a flower for her or put in a piece of chocolate. Chocolate was Cargie’s favorite surprise.

  If Thomas was feeling full of himself, he wrote a riddle, and Cargie spent the afternoon trying to work through it. Riddles were hard for her. Thomas said they were hard for him too, but that he had memorized some from a book. “We both know you’re the bright one,” he said, and Cargie smiled at her husband’s pride over her.

  She ate her lunch at the counter between customers. Some of the customers were discombobulated to come face-to-face with a no-nonsense colored woman instead of the proprietor. “Where’s Mr. Cole?” they demanded.

  “Mr. Cole has gone out, but I’ll help you.”

  One woman squinted with suspicion. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Mr. Cole is always here. Always!“ The woman’s tone was so accusatory that Cargie suspected she thought Bill Cole was hog-tied in the back room.

  “Mr. Cole will be back by one,” Cargie offered.

  “Well, who are you?“

  “I’m Cargie Barre.”

  “Well!” the woman huffed, but she gave Cargie her name and paid Cargie’s outstretched palm for her laundry.

  Cargie thought some of the ladies were either dim-witted or block-headed, but she did not know which. Even after days had gone into weeks, they still cried, “For heaven’s sake! You again?”

  Eventually, most of the lunchtime crowd grew accustomed to Cargie, and some of them even took to calling her Miss Cargie. The ones who could not make peace with her switched their times to pick up their garments when Mr. Cole was in.

  Every afternoon, Cargie and Mr. Cole reconciled the receipts with the money taken in. Mr. Cole dragged a chair into Cargie’s office and set a grease-stained paper sack of Spanish peanuts on the desk between them. They washed the peanuts down with soft drinks—Orange Crush for Cargie and Coca-Cola for Mr. Cole. The drinks were ice cold from the watercooler in the cleaning hall.

  Every Monday through Saturday morning, the iceman plunked a block of ice into a large ceramic water pot that squatted on an iron stand in the cleaning hall to cool the water for the workers. No one complained when the boss dropped a couple of soft drinks in to chill. In fact, it wasn’t long before the swimming bottles multiplied, and Mr. Cole had to take care to fish out his and Cargie’s and leave the Nehi Grapes, Dr. Peppers, and R.C. Colas to their rightful owners.

  Cargie and Mr. Cole munched peanuts, drank their cold drinks, and reconciled the previous day’s money and receipts. Cargie tallied the receipts, and Mr. Cole counted the money. One day, Mr. Cole asked Cargie if she wanted to tally the money rather than the tickets. “Just to switch things up,” he said.

  “No sir. You have your job, and I have mine. Best stick to them.”

  Cargie’s long, slender fingers flew on the Standard adding machine, and the keys clacked like a tiny machine gun. Yards of skinny white paper squirted onto the desk and fell to the floor. Her aim on the keys was unerring, so when the cash and receipts did not reconcile, which was almost every day, the mistake was always Mr. Cole’s. In Cargie’s estimation he was susceptible to distractions.

  If the money came to more than the receipts, Mr. Cole wanted to put the extra cash in his pocket. Likewise, if the money came up short, he was happy to reach into that same pocket and make up the difference. Cargie would have none of it.

  “Can’t we just write up a dummy receipt?” he said one day when there was an overage.

  “Mr. Cole! We can’t run a business that way!”

  Cargie used a red pencil to document the errors in her ledger, each tiny notation an indictment against Mr. Cole’s business acumen. They both knew the mistakes were his and had not occurred during Cargie’s lunchtime watch at the counter. Mr. Cole worked hard to avoid Cargie’s red marks, and over time, the occasions when the receipts and the cash did not match grew fewer and farther between, and the errors became less severe.

  “Why, Mrs. Barre,” Mr. Cole said one day, “I would not be surprised if you insist on using that red pencil just to make me pay more attention.”

  “Go on now,” Cargie said.

  He shook out a handful of red-skinned peanuts. “Yes ma’am. I do believe you are intent on getting my goat.”

  “Well, sir, you know what they say about that.”

  “What’s that?”

  Cargie paused and looked up, her hand hovering over the adding machine’s keys. “If you don’t want somebody to get your goat, don’t let them know where it’s tied.”

  Mr. Cole was the only white man Cargie had ever spent any time with, and she had come to know him quite a bit better than he knew. When she cleaned out the old desk, she found a slim leather-bound book pushed to the back of the top drawer. It wasn’t a New Testament, as she first supposed, but a diary. Every page was filled with Mr. Cole’s tight longhand, the same script he used to write receipts. On the inside cover, he had written, Property of Pvt. William Cole.

  Cargie felt a quick pang reading that. She had not been permitted to keep her name when she married. She had been Cargie Pittman for twenty-two years, until suddenly—in the space of one day—she was supposed to become a person named Cargie Barre, as if who she was before amounted to nothing. To make matters worse, she could not share this sentiment with anyone, not even her own mother, who would have scolded her for being contrary.

  Cargie read the first entry in the diary before she thought about whether or not Mr. Cole wanted to share his private ruminations with his bookkeeper.

  7 February 1918, Hoboken, New Jersey

  Well, I decided to keep a diary. They said we can’t write about our location after we get to France, but I reckon it’s okay to say I’m in Hoboken today. Somebody said Hoboken is an Indian name, but nobody can tell me what it means. The dock where our ship—the Martha Washington—is moored is right across the river from New York City. I can see the skyscrapers over there from where I’m sitting in a café. The coffee here isn’t anything to write home about.

  My company—the 125th Infantry—got to Camp Merritt two weeks ago, after six
days on the train coming up from Camp MacArthur. Boy! Is it cold up here! I haven’t been warm since we left Texas.

  We’re shipping out tonight and some of the boys are feeling low because we got word that a German U-boat sank the SS Tuscania two days ago. The Tuscania was on its way to France—same as we’ll be tonight. Rumor is hundreds are dead. Hope that’s not true. Hearing that news sure made the war real.

  I’m writing this second part in my bunk with a flashlight. It’s late and we’re headed out to open water. There’s nothing to see up on deck, and it’s cold as all get out up there.

  Seemed like everybody in New Jersey was at the dock to see us off, and we waved to them from the ship’s deck like we knew them all. A bunch of crazy Wisconsin boys pulled off their shirts. There they were, bare-chested, whooping and hollering about how balmy it is in Jersey. Not even a chill in the air, they said. They sang fight songs and went on until a sergeant came along and made them put their shirts on.

  Most of them were pretty lit. They came into the café this afternoon with Wally Shegitz—his buddies call him Walleye after a fish they have up North. Wally and I got to be friends back at Camp MacArthur, and he hollered for me to join them at the bar. They said they were having their last drinks on American soil. Wally said I had to have one for tradition, even if it was just a beer. I chose a whiskey because it’s smaller. First whiskey I ever drank. Burned like fire.

  Cargie had to know what happened after Private Cole reached France, so she put the diary back where she found it, rather than giving it to Mr. Cole, as she should have. The more journal entries Cargie read, the less she thought about Mr. Cole being white. At least, she ceased thinking of him the way she thought about other whites, in whose presence she’d been taught to feign humility, indeed humiliation, lest they think she was “uppity” and make trouble.

  Hennie Filbert had been right. Mr. Cole was not that kind of white. In many ways, Bill Cole reminded her of Thomas. He was steady and even-tempered, as was Thomas. He was a cut-up too, same as her husband. They both delighted in teasing Cargie, but she fancied herself much better at hiding her goats than they were. The truth was that Bill Cole could’ve been green, blue, yellow, or even purple, and she would’ve felt the same about him.

  She just plain liked him.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Thomas thought Cargie’s mother, Mrs. Rebecca Pittman, was as tiny as a banty hen and just as busy. She scratched like a chicken to get to the bottom of things. The day they brought her home from the train station to help with the soon-to-be-born baby, Thomas knew he was in for it. Mrs. Pittman’s sharp black eyes looked him over good.

  “So,” she said. “You is the man that married my Cargie.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Uh-huh. Well. I cain’t hardly get a look at you, between all that black beard and that old hat.”

  Thomas took off his hat.

  “I cain’t say that’s much better,” she said.

  The first night Mrs. Pittman spent in their spare bedroom, Thomas and Cargie lay in bed talking about her in low voices. Only a thin wall separated their bedroom from hers. “Mama thinks you’re handsome,” Cargie whispered.

  “She does?” Thomas smiled in the darkness. “I reckon I see now where you got your smarts.”

  Cargie pushed his shoulder. “Go on now, you old vain thing. She asked me if something’s wrong with you.”

  “What?”

  “Shhh! She’ll hear us.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told her nothing’s wrong with you other than you aggravate me nearly to death every day of my life.”

  “Tell me what you really said.”

  Cargie lay flat on her back and ran her hand over the mound of her belly. “Have you ever seen anything more ridiculous?” she said. “Just look at that.” She took Thomas’s hand and placed it on her nightgown. “Feel that? She’s kicking up her heels tonight. Mama says I’m carrying high and it’s a girl, most likely.”

  Thomas felt the little creature bumping around in there. He could hardly believe they’d made a living thing, and he tried to imagine how the child looked, swimming around like a mermaid inside Cargie. He hoped the baby had good color. Cargie’s skin was dark, except where her skin was stretched around her full womb. There, ragged caramel-colored marks emanated from her belly button like rings from a pebble thrown in water. Stretch marks, she called them. It stuck in Thomas’s head that the baby might be similarly marked. He said nothing about this, but he prayed silently that the child would be a deep, rich brown, like a mallard drake’s breast.

  “What did you say to your mother about me?” Thomas insisted.

  “I said there wasn’t anything wrong with you and she only had that idea because you married me.”

  “Cargie!“

  “Well?”

  “She didn’t mean it that way.”

  “Sure she did.”

  They lay side by side in silence for a while. Then Cargie said, “She asked me if you’re a good man.”

  “Lord God. What’d you say to that?”

  “I told her I didn’t know, but you’re good to me.”

  Thomas found Cargie’s hand and laced his fingers with hers.

  “Are you a good man, Thomas?”

  He sighed. “No. Ain’t anybody good except God.”

  Cargie turned to face him, her features hidden in shadow.

  “Don’t say ain’t,” she said.

  “Don’t tell me what to do, woman.”

  Thomas went for Cargie’s ribs to tickle her, but she arched sideways and got hold of a tuft of armpit hair and yanked. He jumped so hard the headboard banged against the wall. “Cargie, that hurts! Let go!“ He swatted at her arm, but she twisted so that he had a hard time getting in a lick.

  “Hush up, now! Settle down!” Cargie hissed. “She’ll think we’re up to something in here!”

  She let go, and Thomas fell back, massaging his injured armpit. “I think you brought the blood.”

  “Oh hush. Don’t be ridiculous. I’m about to be turned inside out, and you’re going on about a little armpit fur.”

  “Go to sleep, then. You got to make us some money before you’re laid up with that baby.”

  She shoved him one more time and rolled over, and Thomas spooned to her back.

  The next morning, Thomas walked Cargie to the corner of Jewella and Hollywood to catch the streetcar for town. A few of their neighbors waited there too. Thomas held back and pulled Cargie’s arm. “Don’t leave me alone with your mother,” he whispered.

  Cargie laughed. “I do kinda hate it, but you’re all over Mooretown every day. Don’t go home. Stay out ‘til I get back.”

  “I can’t just leave her alone at the house.”

  “Sure you can. She’ll keep herself busy.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Thomas.

  The streetcar arrived and they moved toward the corner. “Go on now and have yourself a good day,” Cargie said. She grasped the side rail with one hand and the bottom of her stomach with the other, as if helping to hoist herself up into the car. Thomas handed up her lunch pail, and she gave him a little wave before turning to find a seat at the back.

  He considered taking Cargie’s advice, but he found himself at the house again, climbing the back steps, and opening the screen door. There sat Mrs. Pittman, drinking coffee and looking over the newspaper at the kitchen table.

  “Good morning,” he said cheerfully.

  “How are you today, sir?”

  “Very well. Can I fix you some breakfast?”

  “I fried me a egg. Cain’t remember the last time anybody cooked me breakfast. Reckon I was a little girl.”

  “Then you’re overdue. I’ll fix you a big breakfast in the morning. How’s that sound?” Thomas poured himself a cup of coffee from the percolator on the stove. “More coffee?”

  “Yes sir.”

  He filled her cup.

  “I’ll just sit up here and let you c
ook for me like I’s the Queen of Sheba,” Mrs. Pittman said.

  Thomas sat at the table and watched her doctor her coffee with milk and sugar.

  “Don’t mind me none,” she said. “Just go on about your business.”

  “Reckon I will.” Thomas blew across his hot coffee. “When I’m a mind to.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Thomas was sure he did not want Mrs. Pittman running loose around the neighborhood, stoking God-knows-what gossipy fires that already smoldered about Cargie and him. “Looks like it’s gonna be a mighty pretty day,” he said. “How about I show you around this morning?”

  She eyed him. “That’s right nice of you, Thomas.”

  “You’re gonna find out I’m a pretty nice fella.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Uh-huh!“ he said.

  She pursed her lips. “Well. I best spruce up if’n we’s going out to meet folks.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  Thomas rose and took their cups to the sink. Mrs. Pittman was a handful, but he’d put her on a short leash, if that’s the way it had to be.

  Thomas took Mrs. Pittman to the school first, even though she would not have any business there. The principal was also their pastor, so it was easy to make a case for the visit. Thomas introduced Cargie’s mother to Pastor Euell and the two teachers, Mrs. McComb and Miss Simmons, who could not say enough good things about Thomas’s tutoring. While they talked, a couple of his regular customers ran to him and hung on like baby possums. He slipped each one a candy from his pocket.

  “Mr. Barre is a godsend,” Pastor Euell said. “We’re blessed indeed to have him. And Cargie too, of course.”

  They said their goodbyes and walked to the market on Henry Street. Mr. Crockett, the grocer, came out from behind the meat cooler to shake Mrs. Pittman’s hand. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am, mighty pleased. Mr. and Mrs. Barre are top drawer, just top drawer. Why, just last week Mr. Barre fixed my electric refrigeration unit.” Mr. Crockett led Mrs. Pittman to a metal door at the back of the store. “Look here, Mrs. Pittman.” He opened the door, and cold air rushed out.