The Butcher's Daughter

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “It’s not what he said. It’s the way he said it. I just knew right away . . . he was up to something . . . and now . . . Mother, you have to believe me. Rodney Lee and that woman are in this together.”

  Yet it sounds far-fetched even to her own ears—like the plot of a bad movie.

  “Think about what you’re saying, Melody. Rodney Lee Midget might be jealous of you and Travis and all, but why in the world would he hire a Negro woman to kidnap your baby?”

  Melody’s brain fumbles with layers of drawn blackout curtains.

  A Negro woman . . .

  Clarity. Why would a racist send a Black woman to kidnap her child?

  “He wouldn’t, Mother. You’re right,” she says slowly.

  Rodney Lee is no hero. She doesn’t trust him. She’s convinced he stole the letter she’d written to Travis. She remembers how uncomfortable he’d made her when he was here. And yet . . .

  Could his words possibly have been a warning, because he knew the baby was in danger?

  “You’ve been through so much.” Honeybee glances over her shoulder into the hall, and lowers her voice. “Melody, honey, you were so exhausted, and on so much medication . . . is there any way you might have . . . I don’t know, got up out of bed with Martina, maybe, and then put her down somewhere and forgot about it? Something like that?”

  “Put her down?” Melody is incredulous. “Forgotten her? You think I would just leave my baby lying around like . . . like . . .”

  “Shh! Or something else. You were on so much medication, and maybe you weren’t, you know, in your right mind, and you might have just . . .”

  Melody gapes at her mother, realizing what she’s implying. The shock jars Rodney Lee’s other words, terrible words, from her memory.

  “I thought you were tryin’ to smother her . . .”

  She clenches the bed rails and pulls herself upright. “Mother, are you . . . do you actually believe that I would . . .”

  “No! No, of course I don’t.”

  “Does Duke Mason think . . . Is that why he wants to talk to me? Does he want to arrest me?”

  “Of course not. He’s just trying to find the baby, and they’ve searched every inch of this hospital, and they didn’t find any trace of her.”

  “Because the nurse took her! But I would lay down my life for that little girl, Mother!”

  She can’t hold herself in an upright position. Her arms give out and she sinks back against the pillow, depleted, defeated.

  But she’ll be all right. Hadn’t Cyril told her she’s the strongest woman he knows, next to his mama?

  “She doesn’t wait around for someone else to fix things for her. Not many women are like that. She is. You are.”

  Yes, and one thing is certain: Melody hadn’t carried their daughter off to some forgotten storage closet like a creature from The Plague of the Zombies. The white-uniformed woman who’d come into her room may not have been a nurse, but she’d been real.

  Still . . .

  If she wasn’t a nurse, why had Melody recognized her?

  Had she? Or was it just that she seemed familiar because she sounded so like Yvonne . . .

  So like Cyril.

  “T’engky,” she’d said when Melody had handed her the baby, pronouncing the word with precisely the same inflection he uses—slightly different from the way Yvonne says it.

  And she’d looked like Cyril, too, hadn’t she?

  “A woman only sees what she wants to see . . .”

  Who had said that?

  Harper Lee? Rodney Lee?

  Never in her wildest imagination could she have foreseen confusing the two.

  “Don’t you worry none. I promise I’ll take good care of her.”

  The nurse had said that, she remembers, when she wanted Melody to give her the baby.

  Or had she?

  Does a woman only hear what she wants to hear?

  “Melody?”

  Honeybee’s voice is coming from farther away than it should be, and Melody is floating away on an icy current.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Just . . . so . . . t . . .”

  Tired . . .

  Dizzy . . .

  The words are swept beyond her reach.

  She needs to preserve her energy to recall what had happened in those precious last moments with Martina.

  Had she conjured a nurse who looked like Cyril because she’d longed to see him?

  Or could he have been here, and taken the baby?

  “Melody!” Honeybee’s voice is urgent.

  She’s leaning over Melody, blurry now, as if Melody is looking up at her from underwater.

  “. . . bleeding!. . . . Help!”

  Honeybee is in trouble.

  Something’s wrong with her. She’s bleeding.

  She reaches for her mother but grasps emptiness, Honeybee and the room spinning slowly away as Melody swirls down, around and around, until silent, murky depths swallow her.

  Gypsy had been alone in the apartment when she finally fell asleep sometime after three in the morning, and was alone again when she awakened at ten.

  In between, Oran had come and gone, leaving behind a pile of newspapers fat with extra sections and advertisements. A few are coffee-stained, many are crumpled, and all are damp. He steals them from stoops or scrounges trash cans, subways, and bus stops—not just the three daily papers but borough weeklies and smaller presses like Co-op City Times and Harlem’s Amsterdam News.

  He spends Sundays preaching sidewalk sermons and she’s expected to spend hers combing the news for plagues, locusts, and various other Armageddon harbingers. She has to cut out relevant articles and glue them into a scrapbook for Oran’s perusal. It sits open beside the stack of schoolbooks awaiting her attention. She likes to get her father’s assignment out of the way early and move on to her homework.

  But today, the papers are full of repetitive coverage on Martin Luther King’s legacy and funeral, the hunt for his killer, the riots and violence sweeping the country. And instead of searching for other significant items, she’s been toying with the scissors, staring at acres of newsprint without registering a word, thinking about last night.

  Then she hears footsteps out in the hall. Oran, already?

  She flips a page and peers at the newspaper, relieved when the footsteps move on past the door. Not Oran. But, checking the time, she knows he really will be here any minute, wanting to go over the articles she’s found for him. He’s always fired up on Sundays, doomsday sermons fresh in his mind, feeding off the crowd’s energy.

  She reads about a rash of Upper East Side burglaries, a serial arsonist in Queens, a murdered bartender in Greenwich Village. As she moves past that one, about to turn the page, the victim’s name jumps out at her. Fergus Ferguson—found dead last night in the pub he owned. No witnesses . . . motive was likely robbery . . . police seeking anyone who might have information . . .

  The alliterative name seems vaguely familiar, but Gypsy can’t place it. She goes back to fretting about how she’s going to address Greg’s lie when she sees him at school tomorrow.

  “When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”

  But what if his family plans really had been canceled? It’s not like he could have called Gypsy to tell her the date was back on, because she doesn’t have a telephone and he doesn’t know exactly where she lives.

  Why, though, would he go out with his ex-girlfriend instead?

  “He’s just using you, you know . . .”

  “Shut up, Carol-Ann,” she mutters.

  Maybe they weren’t on a date. Maybe Greg had gone out with his buddies and run into Carol-Ann and the girls.

  Chocolate egg cream, two straws.

  Gypsy snaps the newspaper page, tearing it, as Carol-Ann’s words echo in her brain.

  “He’s seeing how far you’ll let him go. That’s all he wants.”

  She’s just jealous. She has no idea what Gr
eg wants.

  But how does she know about Gypsy’s tattoo?

  Again, she hears footsteps in the hall. This time, they stop at her door.

  She inserts the scissors into the tear as if she’s cutting out an important article.

  Oran bursts into the apartment, hair standing on end, eyes manic. He’s wearing a brown robe sashed with a frayed piece of rope. “Gypsy, baby! Check it out!”

  “Hmm?” She continues cutting out the newspaper as if she’s too busy for distraction.

  “I’ve got a present for you.”

  No. Oh, no. She braces herself for chocolates, another tattoo. But he holds out his hand, and there’s money in it.

  “What’s that for?”

  “Bread. Buy yourself something.”

  She sets aside the scissors and meaningless clipping to accept the small stack of bills. Fanning it, she sees a bunch of ones, a five, more ones . . .

  Nearly twenty dollars. Impressive. Disturbing.

  “Where’d you get this?”

  “Are you ready for this? Very truly I tell you . . . I found a new gig.”

  “For . . . what? Why would anyone pay you for . . . a gig? You’re not a singer or a dancer or—”

  “You don’t know what I am!” he shouts in her face, a bead of spittle landing on her cheek.

  You are of your father the devil . . .

  She winces but holds his gaze, clutching the money.

  “You don’t want my present, man, I’ll take it back.” He reaches for it, and she sees a glint of gold on his wrist.

  “I didn’t say that. Thank you.”

  “All right, then.”

  As soon as he turns his back, she shoves the last clipping into her school binder and picks up the scissors.

  “You got yourself a present, too, huh?” The question is an afterthought. She hadn’t meant to ask it, stopping him in his tracks.

  Slowly, he pivots. She points at his watch.

  “Yeah. You like it? It’s real old. Not broke-down old. Fancy old. What do you call it?”

  “Antique?”

  “That’s right.” He nods at his new watch, then up at her, grinning widely. “It’s antique.”

  “. . . secondary postpartum hemorrhage,” Doc Krebbs is saying, sitting on a stool pulled up to Melody’s bed in the surgical recovery room. He’s wearing scrubs, with a mask dangling around his neck, his eyes somber behind his glasses.

  She knows that he’s talking to her and about her, telling her that she’s had serious complications, and an operation. None of it matters. She needs to go back to drifting on the sunlit sea with Cyril and their daughter.

  “Melody?”

  She opens her eyes. There’s Doc Krebbs, still talking.

  “. . . very lucky young woman . . .”

  Lucky? Every inch of her body aches here, her heart worse than anything else.

  “. . . if your mother hadn’t . . .”

  Her mother.

  She’s supposed to remember something. About her mother . . .

  She wants to ask, but her throat hurts almost as badly as her heart.

  “From the tube . . . anesthesia . . .” Yvonne says in Melody’s head, on a day when she’d awakened to find that she’d delivered a beautiful baby girl.

  “. . . and I’m so sorry to have to tell you this . . .”

  Her eyes jerk open. Doc Krebbs looks so sad. He isn’t talking about Martina, because Martina is with Cyril.

  But Honeybee . . .

  Something about Honeybee . . .

  Melody tries to remember what it is.

  “. . . to stop the bleeding, and we . . .”

  Bleeding?

  Clarity: her mother, shouting that she was bleeding. She’d needed help, and Melody had been trying to get to her right before she found herself drowning . . .

  “. . . I did everything I could, but . . .”

  Oh, no.

  No, no, no . . .

  Rodney Lee came back for Melody, and he . . .

  “Mother!” Melody rasps.

  Doc Krebbs nods. “She and your daddy are in the waiting room. I’ve already told them.”

  “What . . . ?”

  “She’ll come in to see you in a little while, when you’re feeling up to it. She’ll help you get through this.”

  “She’ll help . . . me.”

  He nods.

  Secondary postpartum hemorrhage . . .

  Melody is the one who’d been bleeding. Not her mother. Honeybee had been calling for someone to help Melody.

  She tries to focus on the doctor, forcing words past the fog in her brain and rawness in her throat. “I almost d . . .”

  “Died? Yes. You almost did. Do you have any recollection?”

  She’d been about to say drown. She’d been spiraling toward the ocean floor.

  “I was dizzy. Cold . . . couldn’t breathe.”

  “Your blood pressure dropped and you lost a lot of blood. Your mother saved your life.”

  No. Melody had almost drowned in a swirling storm, but it was Cyril who’d saved her.

  And when the storm was over, he’d stayed with her, just floating, and Martina, too. She couldn’t see them, couldn’t hear their voices, but she could feel them with her, and everything was all right until the tide came in and swept her back to the world without them.

  “I’m going to let you get some rest,” Doc Krebbs says, and touches her arm. “Again, honey, I’m so sorry.”

  But why?

  Her mother had saved her.

  Cyril had saved her, too, and their daughter.

  He’s with Martina right now.

  Ah, but the doctor wouldn’t know that. He’s sorry because he thinks her baby is still missing. Melody wants to tell him, but she can’t. She can never tell anyone, not even her mother, that Rodney Lee hadn’t sent that woman to take the baby away.

  Cyril had.

  “T’engky . . .”

  The nurse with the patois and Cyril’s face had been his mother.

  “Don’t you worry none . . .”

  The baby is safe, with her grandma and her daddy . . .

  In the sea?

  No, that part had been a dream. But the rest is true. Martina is on Barrow with Cyril and his mother, who’d promised she’d take good care of her. She and Cyril will protect that child from Rodney Lee and Travis and anyone else who would dare try to get to her.

  “I’ll leave you be for now, Melody, honey,” Doc Krebbs says, and she opens her eyes to see him pushing back his stool and standing. “I know this is a terrible blow, but you’re one strong little lady and you’ll get through it.”

  He’s gone before she can ask him what he’s talking about. But at least she knows it isn’t her parents or her daughter, and he doesn’t even know about Cyril. Nothing else really matters to her anymore, so whatever has him apologizing can’t be as terrible as he thinks.

  Melody closes her eyes and drifts back to the sea at last.

  Part VII

  2017

  Chapter Seventeen

  Friday, January 13, 2017

  Barrow Island

  “Marceline,” Amelia whispers, recognizing the old woman in the bed.

  “Marceline?” Jessie echoes. “You mean . . . the Gullah priestess?”

  Amelia whirls to Lucky, who nods. “Marceline’s son, Cyril, was your daddy, honey.”

  “Not . . . not Calvin?”

  She’d lost him once when he’d told her he’d found her in that church, and again when he’d passed away. When her DNA linked to Bettina’s in October, she wondered if he was her biological father after all. Now she’s lost him all over again—and Bettina, too.

  The old woman speaks. Her voice, once resonant and forthright, quavers and the tone has thinned, but the distinct dialect is intact. “Calvin was a good man. He raised you, after Cyril . . .”

  Her voice frays. Her eyes flutter closed.

  Lucky touches Marceline’s shoulder. “You can rest, Auntie. You don’t have
to do this now.”

  “She won’t rest till it’s done,” Tandy comments, watching from the doorway. “I keep sayin’ there’s a reason she ain’t goin’ anywhere just yet. One hundred and eight years old, and she’s just hangin’ on and hangin’ on no matter what the doctor says. Her body’s ready, but her heart is strong and her mind is sharp, and so is her memory. She’s a stubborn old gal. Ain’t you, Miz LeBlanc?”

  The eyelids snap open. “Y’all get on out of here and leave me to talk to Amelia. I got something to say, and I ain’t wastin’ a lick of energy on a bunch of folks that got nothing to do with this.”

  “All right, Auntie. Amelia, you have a seat, and speak up nice and strong so she can hear you. We’ll be in the kitchen. Come on, Tandy, you can pour us some sweet tea.”

  “Mimi?” Jessie asks. “Are you okay if I . . .”

  “Yes. Go ahead.”

  The others leave the room, closing the door after them, and Amelia sits in the chair beside the bed. Marceline appears to have fallen asleep. She wants to take the old woman’s hand, but it looks fragile.

  And you never were much for affection, were you? But you showed it other ways.

  Marceline’s eyes open, and they’re sharp, focused on Amelia. “You look like him. Always did. Just like my son, Cyril.”

  “Cyril . . . Hunter?”

  “Hunter! No! Cyril LeBlanc.”

  “Cyril LeBlanc.”

  Yet she was born Martina Eleanor Hunter.

  “Where is he now, Marceline? My . . . your son.”

  “Died the night you were born, child. Buckruh murdered him.”

  Amelia pushes words past the lump in her throat. “But . . . why?”

  “He was a Black man.” Marceline’s eyes close. Is she remembering, or has she drifted off to sleep for real this time?

  She’s well over a hundred years old, Tandy had said, and clinging to life.

  “Marceline, years ago, you told me you were outside the church when Calvin found me.”

  Her eyes open again. “I saw him come out of there that day with a baby.”

  Amelia’s brain sorts the familiar, peculiar dialect, with there and day pronounced exactly the same.

  “Did you see who left me?”

  “I left you.”

  “Why?”