Lily of the Springs
Page 14
My happiness dimmed a bit as I wished fervently that I could invite Betty and Eddie to join us at the movies tonight. But that’s one thing Jake would never change his mind about. He wanted nothing to do with the Kelly’s. So I’d learned to keep my mouth shut about Betty and our friendship.
If that was what it took to keep the peace, then that’s what I’d do.
***
We stepped out of the movie theater into the chill of a rainy March night, along with the rest of the crowd who’d just watched “Titanic” in a packed auditorium. As the cold rain pounded against me, I caught my breath and tried to pull my short wool car coat closer around me, even though I knew it would be a futile attempt. My tummy had grown so big I couldn’t get the darn coat buttoned.
“Stay here,” Jake said, dropping my hand. “I’ll go get the car.”
“No!” I grabbed his coat sleeve. “I’ll get just as wet standing here than if we go together.” I didn’t want to admit it to him, but I couldn’t quite shake the country girl fear of being alone in a big city at night.
Jake shrugged. “Alright, let’s go.”
The car was parked just down the street, not even half a block away. We’d be there in no time. But still, I couldn’t wait until we got in the car to talk about the movie. Why, it had been the best picture show I’d ever seen!
“Oh, Jake, it was just so sad,” I wailed as we scurried down the sidewalk, heads bent against the rain.
If Jake made a response to my comment about the movie, I didn’t hear it because I was distracted by something happening inside my body. It was a queer feeling down there in my nether regions—a warm wetness between my legs, like I’d sprung a leak or something. I kept walking, though, a step or two behind Jake’s long stride. But when he opened the car door for me, (something he’d only started to do lately) the fluid seeping into the crotch of my panties turned into a hot gush.
“Oh, Lord!” I clutched at my belly. “Jake!”
“What?” He stared at me, the rain pelting his face, flattening his Brille-Cremed hair against his skull.
I felt a half-hysterical urge to giggle as the river of liquid ran down my nylon-clad legs. “I think my water broke!”
***
“Oh, dear God! Jake, I can’t take it anymore! I gotta push. I gotta!”
With one hand flattened on the dashboard, I tried to maintain my balance as Jake took a curve on two wheels, or so it seemed. Beneath my saturated skirt, I felt the baby’s head bulging against my vaginal wall as if it was bound and determined to escape its womb.
“No!” Jake yelled. “Hold on another minute! I see the lights of Hot Springs just down the hill.”
“I can’t hold on!” I moaned as another excruciating pain tightened its vice-like grip around my mid-section. “It’s comin, I tell you!”
“We’re here, Lily Rae! Hush, now! There’s the sign for the hospital. Just another minute, okay?” Jake hunched over the steering wheel, trying to see through the rain.
Through half-slitted eyes, I saw the illuminated red letters—Emergency! The words shimmered and danced in front of my eyes as yet another pain sank its vengeful teeth into my womb on the heels of the one that had just eased. I dug my nails into the arm rest and lifted my bottom from the seat, searching for some kind of relief.
And then I was alone in the car. Leaving the motor running, Jake had run into the emergency room entrance—to get a doctor or nurse, I hoped.
I squeezed my eyes shut, moaning. A moment…an hour later—I didn’t know how much time had passed—I heard a kind, feminine voice. “Okay, honey. It’s going to be just fine. I need you to help me get you into this wheelchair.”
Another pain was gearing up, and I knew it was now or never. If I didn’t get in that wheelchair, this baby was going to be born right here in the front seat.
Drawing strength from somewhere, I eased out of the car, and with the help of the kind-faced brunette nurse, I dropped into the seat of the wheelchair, and just like that, I was being whisked into the ER. That’s when I realized Jake wasn’t with me.
Wild-eyed, I looked back. He was getting into the driver’s side of the car.
“I’ll go park the car,” he shouted over the sound of the drilling rain. “And then come looking for you.”
By the time I saw my husband again, Debra Ann Tatlow was almost ten hours old.
***
“Ah, she sure is a pretty one, that babe is. Look at all that golden hair.”
I looked up at the coffee-skinned army nurse and gave her a shy smile. “Thank you kindly. She’s the spittin’ image of my baby brother, Charles Alton. He died when he was only two.”
The smile disappeared from the nurse’s face. She folded her arms across her generous bosom, her chocolate eyes glimmering with sympathy. “Well, now…that’s a real tragedy, honey.”
“I know.” My gaze returned to my baby. Debby Ann’s eyes were closed as she sucked rhythmically on her bottle of formula. Her delicate eyelids looked as fragile as a butterfly’s wings. My heart welled with love. “I always thought I understood how awful it was for my mother—losing Charles Alton like she did,” I murmured. “But now I know I had no idea how much she must’ve been hurting.”
The nurse didn’t speak for a moment, but just gazed down at us, a compassionate look on her pretty brown face. She heaved a sigh and said, “The Lord works in mysterious ways, and sometimes that means folks have to suffer.”
I looked at her. Something in the tone of her voice told me she’d done her share of suffering. I wanted to ask her to tell her story, but I just couldn’t make myself do it. Captain Johnson, RN, was the first Negro woman I’d ever actually met. Oh, I’d seen a few dark-skinned people during the few weeks I’d spent in Louieville; there had even been a Negro girl in my secretarial school. But this was my first opportunity to actually talk with one. And Captain Johnson had been just as sweet as shoofly pie, but still, I felt a little awkward with her.
This morning right before shift change, Captain Waldman, the nurse who’d delivered Debby Ann—because the doctor didn’t get there in time--had brought Captain Johnson into the maternity ward, saying she was going to be taking over for her, and if I needed anything, just give her a holler. I’d still been drowsy from the sleeping pill they’d given me, and all I’d remembered from the encounter was a pretty dark face smiling down at me, and a gentle touch on the top of my head.
An hour later, the captain had come in again, delivering breakfast trays to me and another woman who’d been brought in sometime after I’d fallen asleep in the early hours of the morning. The tousle-haired blond refused her tray, but I discovered I was ravenous. I hadn’t eaten anything since the popcorn at the movie show last night. We’d been planning to stop at White Castle for a couple of hamburgers on our way home, but Debby Ann had vetoed that idea.
With barely contained amusement, Captain Johnson had watched me scarf down two scrambled eggs, two slices of toast, a mound of hash browns and four slices of crisp bacon, and then wash it all down with a tall glass of chilled orange juice. It was almost the best breakfast I’d ever tasted—except for the hundred or so Mother had made every morning from the earliest I could remember.
“Well, that’s a first,” Captain Johnson said as she removed my tray. “I’ve finally met a girl who has an appetite to rival my teenage son’s.”
I let out an unladylike belch, and daintily dabbed at my mouth with a napkin. “I reckon birthing babies works up a mighty hefty appetite.”
The nurse chuckled. “Well, I reckon it does.”
Ten minutes ago, Captain Johnson had brought in Debby Ann for her first feeding, showing me how to hold her and how to give her the bottle. I’d seen my mother breastfeeding Norry and the two younger boys; not one of us had been raised without the breast. For a while, I’d considered breastfeeding. But after talking to Betty, and reading articles in different magazines, I’d decided to be a modern mother and give my baby the best. All those vitamins and minerals
they put in baby formula had to be better than what came out of me, I reckoned. Besides, according to Betty, it was just so much easier to use a bottle—except for the sterilizing, of course.
The baby felt so warm against my hospital gown, and she smelled of Ivory soap and sweet, milky formula. My heart rose, feeling as if it were climbing up through my chest to lodge somewhere between my chin and my throat. I’d never felt emotion like this. Such love, such tenderness. So…this is what if feels like to be a mom. I felt special, as if I’d accomplished a great feat—like climbing Mount Everest--even though I knew I’d only done what billions of women had done since the dawn of time.
I felt the nurse watching me and gave a tremulous smile. “I still can’t believe it,” I whispered.
“It’s a true miracle, isn’t it?” Captain Johnson returned my smile. “I see it happen every day, and I’m still filled with wonder when a new life comes into the world.”
A soft sound came from the baby―a teeny, tiny burp—nothing at all like the shots heard around the world that Davy could expel, and I brushed my lips over her downy, golden head. I repositioned Debby Ann into the crook of my arm and looked up at the nurse.
“Should I try and feed her more?”
Captain Johnson shook her head. “She looks mighty content to me. You still have some time before we take her back to the nursery, though. Why don’t you just love on her a while?” She turned to go. “You call if you need me. I’ll be back in a little while to pick her up.”
“Oh, Captain Johnson!” I called out as the nurse headed for the door. “Still no word from my husband?”
A guarded look crossed the captain’s face. “We’re still trying to locate him, hon.”
My gaze dropped back to the baby. I lovingly ran a hand over her soft down. “That’s okay,” I said. “I know what happened. He’ll be here directly, I reckon.”
***
Jake arrived just as Captain Johnson took the sleeping baby from my arms to transport her back to the nursery.
“Is that my youngun?”
At the sound of his raspy voice, both me and the captain looked over at him.
He was hung-over, I saw immediately. I could tell by the bloodshot eyes and pasty skin. Not that I was surprised. When he hadn’t shown up at the hospital last night, I’d known he was getting himself liquored up—and here in Arkansas, he could do it without breaking the law.
Captain Johnson eyed him up and down, her jaw tight, and then turned to me. “Does this boy have the right room, sweetheart? He your husband?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said tightly.
“Well, then…” Captain Johnson walked over to Jake, cradling Debby Ann in her arms. She stopped a few inches away from him and stared him in the eye. “Private Tatlow, is it?”
He straightened as if someone had stuck a cattle prod up his hind end. I guessed that meant he’d suddenly remembered he was in the military and was being addressed by an officer.
“Yes, Ma’am,” he said smartly.
A slow smile spread across the nurse’s face, but her eyes remained frosty. “Well, now, Private Tatlow, it took you quite a while to park the car, didn’t it, soldier?”
A tide of red crept up Jake’s neck and over his cheekbones. “Yes, Ma’am,” he said again, his eyes fixed straight ahead.
The captain nodded as if she understood. “Let’s see…your baby girl here, was born at 12:55 this morning; that makes her just over ten hours old. Why, you must’ve parked plumb over the Texas state-line and walked back. What else would take a young man so long to get back to the wife he left in hard labor at the ER doors?”
A muscle flexed in Jake’s jaw and his flush deepened. He swallowed hard. “Ma’am, I…”
I could see his brain spinning, trying to think of a plausible explanation. But obviously the liquor had pickled it inactive.
“Quiet, Private!” The smile had disappeared from the captain’s face. Her dark eyes bored into Jake’s.
I could hardly believe this was the same sweet-faced nurse who’d been instructing me on how to feed the baby. It was as if she’d had a complete personality change. On one hand, I felt some satisfaction in the captain’s dressing down of Jake—he deserved it for being such a selfish fool—but I also felt a little scared. Jake didn’t take no guff from anybody, and now, here was this colored woman ripping him a new asshole, as Betty would put it. What if he talked back to her or—Heaven forbid!—hauled off and hit her? I knew that look in his eyes. He was madder than a wet hen. His jaw was rigid, his eyes sparkling with fury. He was seconds away from exploding.
“Captain Johnson!” I called out. “It’s not Jake’s fault. I told him to stay away…” I thought quickly. “He was dog-tired, poor guy, making that drive from Texas. I told him to go get some sleep in the car.” Even as the lie came out my lips, I knew how ridiculous it sounded—and I also knew that the Army nurse wouldn’t buy it. “See, he’d just got off a double shift, and hadn’t had no sleep in twelve hours. And I always heard that first babies took a while to be born, so I thought he’d be back with me in plenty of time…” My voice trailed off.
Captain Johnson stared at me with something like pity in her eyes. Then she shook her head slowly, snuggling Debby Ann closer in her arms. “Honey,” she said softly. “I’ve been where you are, and I know what it’s like to make excuses for a man. I did it for twenty years before I wised up and kicked his sorry ass out. And I’m telling you right now, I wish I could have those twenty years back. I wouldn’t have put up with him for a New York minute.” She turned back to Jake, giving him a look that would’ve frozen hot cocoa. “I can’t stop you from visiting your wife if she wants you here, but if you want to hold your daughter, Private Tatlow, you come back at two o’clock. That’s the next feeding time. But before you do, you find yourself somewhere to take a sponge bath because you reek of beer, and I don’t want this sweet little girl to have that be the smell she associates with her daddy. You understand me, soldier?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Jake barked.
Captain Johnson turned on her heel and strode out of the room. As the swish of her starched uniform faded down the hall, Jake’s posture settled back to normal, but his eyes remained furious. He moved toward my bed, and was still a few steps away when I smelled the stale beer. I wrinkled my nose in distaste.
“Uppity nigger, ain’t she?”
A hot bolt of fury ripped through me. “Jake! That’s just downright mean!”
It wasn’t as if I hadn’t heard the word before. Living in Kentucky all my life, I’d heard it bandied about, usually by old men in overalls sitting out on the porch of Red’s General Store, chewing tobacco. But I’d never heard my Jake say it, and it sounded particularly ugly on his lips.
“She’s been nothing but nice to me, Jake Tatlow, and if you say one more bad word about her, you can leave right now. We just brought a new soul into this world, and I’m going to protect her from the ugliness just as long as I can. And if that means I have to protect her from you, so be it.”
I glared at him and waited for his infuriated response, determined not to back down this time, not just for my sake, but for Debby Ann’s.
To my astonishment, Jake’s blue eyes swam with tears. I gaped at him as shock radiated through me. “Jake!” I finally gasped. “What is it?” My stomach clenched in fear. Was something wrong with Debby Ann, and they’d told him so he could break the news to me?
Jake shook his head and reached blindly for a chair to draw over to the bed. He sat down, reached for my hand and grasped it like it was a rope saving him from a tumbling death. His red-rimmed eyes stared into mine as tears tracked down his handsome face.
“Jesus save me, Lily Rae. They’re sending me to Korea.”
Lily’s Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
1 c brown sugar
1 c sugar
1 c margarine, softened
2 c flour
1 egg
1 cup raisins
1 c cornflakes, crushed
1 t soda
1 t baking powder
1 t vanilla
Cream margarine and sugars. beat in eggs & vanilla. Sift soda and baking powder with flour. Stir in flour mixture. Add raisins, cornflakes & oatmeal. Drop by teaspoon onto ungreased cookie sheets. Bake at 375 degrees for 8-10 minutes.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Jake had been gone exactly a week, and I could barely function. If it weren’t for Debby Ann, I probably wouldn’t have been able to drag myself out of bed.
During the day, I found myself crying at the drop of a hat, and nights were no better. I was either awake and pacing the floor with a cranky baby, both of us bawling, or I was tossing and turning in bed, missing the warmth and musky scent of Jake’s body, and tensing at every little creak in the apartment, sure it was a mad-dog killer breaking in to rape and strangle me. Most of the time, I hadn’t bothered to get dressed in the mornings, wearing my baby-doll pajamas throughout the sweltering Texas days. What was the point? I wasn’t going anywhere.
I barely had the energy to run a brush through my hair, much less put on any make-up. Dirty baby bottles and a few stray dishes were piled up in the sink, waiting to be washed. Since there was no one to cook for, and because I had little or no appetite, I’d been surviving on Trix Cereal, Ritz crackers and Cheez Whiz, and an occasional tuna fish sandwich.
Thank God for Betty! Like clockwork, she’d come over every single afternoon, plopping Davy down on an old quilt on the living room floor. Then she’d spend the next couple of hours trying to keep him on the quilt—he was just starting to crawl—while making a gallant attempt to cheer me up. Both tasks seemed just as impossible, I thought. Davy was a strong-willed boy who’d suddenly realized that knees and hands came in quite handy when you wanted to see a different view of the world.