Mama looked me over, calculating if I was old enough. “For a little bit,” she said, not wanting to promise more. Then we were out the door, rushing up the road toward Auntie’s in the pitch-black night, with only a lantern lighting the way.
The gravelly crunch of our hurrying feet seemed loud in the still night. I had thrown on Daddy’s big nightshirt over my gown. I ran after Mama, who was taking huge strides. All the way there, I thought: No Miss Beach, this day.
As we stepped into the house, we could hear groans coming from the back room. Auntie Lydia was rolling around on her bed in pain. I stopped short and stared.
“Stop, Lydia,” Mama scolded. “You know rolling around makes it worse.”
Auntie just raised her pitiful face to Mama and there were tears in her eyes. “I can’t do this,” she said.
“Don’t be silly. You ain’t got no choice in the matter.” Mama sat down and helped her turn over on her side. “Breathe slow,” she said, rubbing Auntie’s back.
“I can’t.”
“Come on, now. You done it before.”
“I can’t,” she cried, and the cry rose up, ending with a gasp. She shrieked as if the pain surprised her.
“That makes it worse, Lydia,” Mama said. But Auntie just began to writhe again, moaning, her face covered in beads of sweat.
Mama found a rag and threw it to me. “Go outside and wet this at the pump. Then wring it out and bring it back.”
I hurried out onto the dark porch, pausing there a moment, blind in the moonless night. I had to feel for the pump. It took four or five good pumps before cool water began to flow. I held the rag under it for a while, wrung it, and turned to go inside.
At the same time, something rustled nearby. A small crackling sound that cut off sharp, not dying away as if it was all in innocence. I squinted in its direction. All was suddenly too still, a silence filled with guilt. I waited, listening. Nothing. A possum maybe, scrounging for food.
Quickly, I made my way to the bedroom with the wet rag. Mama took it and dabbed at Auntie’s forehead. Auntie clutched at her hand. “How far apart are your pains, Lydia?” Mama asked her.
“Every time I catch my breath, seem like.” The next wave hit her, in answer, and Auntie rolled away from Mama and began to groan miserably.
Mama checked the door, her brow frozen in a worried line. I knew she was hoping to see Granny there. “I sent Prez and Perry to get Granny. She should be here any minute.” Mama loosened Auntie’s grip and helped her lie back to rest in the space between pains.
Granny came through the door then. “Here I am,” she said. Mama sighed. “I sent Prez and Perry on to your place, Lil.” Wearing her faded kerchief, long loose dress, and apron with deep pockets that held all sorts of necessities, Granny hurried into the room, carrying a washbasin and a cloth bag. From it she pulled a sheet, a square of quilted material, and an ax. She handed the ax to me. “Here, missy. Slip this under the bed to cut the afterpains. Lift your hips, Lydia.” Granny helped Auntie while positioning the quilted square under her. Then she clapped her hands once. “Help me tie the ends of this sheet”—she held out the sheet to me—“to the bedposts. This poor chile’s gonna need something to pull on.” After I had tied the ends in place, she asked me, “Are they good and tight?”
I pulled at them. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Good. Go on, now. We ain’t gonna need you around here. Go tend to your little brother and cousin.”
Mama nodded in agreement. Granny was in charge now.
Disappointed, I left Auntie’s and stepped out into the weak, milky light of early morning. More time had passed than I’d thought. A thin fog had settled across the fields and road, blurring every sharp edge. In the new light I scanned the overgrown shrubbery by the side of the house, where I’d heard the strange rustling. Nothing. I searched the road and the fields, looking in the direction of the woods. Nothing. It must have been a possum making that noise, like I thought.
I walked home slowly, wondering about childbirth and why it had to hurt so much. Prez and Perry were already asleep when I got back. I was glad to crawl into bed, but it felt empty without Mama next to me.
I fell into a deep sleep.
Mama stayed down to Auntie’s and let Prez and Perry and me sleep in. It felt good to wake up in my own time—and with a happy thought of a brand-new baby. I hurried into my clothes, threw some water on my face, and rushed down the road to Auntie’s. Mama met me at her door.
“Shhh. Auntie and the baby are asleep.”
“What’d she have, Mama?”
“A girl.” Mama smiled. “She named her Janie.”
“Janie.”
“You go on home and come down later. I want you to write to Uncle June and tell him the news and that everybody’s fine. Then you’ll need to stop by Mrs. Beach’s and tell her why we ain’t comin’ today.” Mama reached into her pocket. “Here.” She put some money in my hand. “Go by Green’s, too, and get me a pound of coffee. You can get yourself and Prez a Scooter Pie. I’ma be down here awhile.”
I looked at the money. It was like a ticket to heaven. I had a free day.
Granny stopped by our house a little later, after Perry went back home, to tell us about the baby. Janie had come fast when she decided to make her appearance, hollering right away.
“I’ma need a cup of tea, Francie,” she said to me. “Some black cohosh if you have any.”
Later, she sat there sipping away while she filled me and Prez in on everything. She leaned back and squinted her eyes. “Let me tell you. That baby’s going to be something, being born between the two lights like she was.” Daybreak and sunrise, she meant.
Granny believed a host of superstitions. Mama hated superstition, so I had a little guilty thrill sitting there listening to her. “Betcha she ain’t gonna have no problem making it to her second birthday You watch.”
I hoped Granny would get started telling me some stories about haints and ghosts. She slept with a fork under her pillow, and when the “witches rode her,” she slept with a sifter under her bed, so they’d have to go through every hole before they could bother her. I wanted to hear the story about her waking up to see a haint sitting right on the foot of her bed watching her sleep. That gave me nightmares the first time she told me.
“That’s pure ignorance,” Mama always said when I asked her about such. “Just some old stuff from slavery times.” I waited, but Granny wasn’t up to her stories this morning. She was so tired she started to doze right there over her tea.
Scooter Pie … at Last!
After Granny left, Prez went down to Perry’s to see if he wanted to go fishing, and I wrote a short letter to Uncle June, put a stamp on it, and left it in our mailbox. Then I walked over to Miss Beach’s, then to Green’s to get Mama’s coffee and me and Prez Scooter Pies. Mama always bought Chase & Sanborn. I put the can of coffee and the Scooter Pies on the counter, but no one was around, not even Vell. Finally, he came shuffling out of the storeroom, carrying a box of canned goods.
“Where’s Mr. Green?” I asked.
“Out back, talkin’ to some men.”
“Well, I want to buy this coffee and these Scooter Pies.” I jingled the money in my pocket and looked at my treat with longing. “Can you go get him?”
“Naw.”
“Why?”
He looked down, embarrassed like he didn’t know what to say. “He’s back there with them other men and they’re talking like they’re mad.”
“About what?”
“I ain’t gonna go interruptin’ them, neither.”
“Well, can you take the money for these?”
I put the money on the counter. He looked at it. “I better not,” he said.
“Come on, Vell. Mr. Green won’t mind.”
“He might get mad.”
“Not if you get the right amount.”
He pinched his lips together, thinking.
“He ain’t gonna get mad, Vell.” I pushed the money toward him. He
stepped back like he was afraid of it. Then he slapped his hand down over it quick. I grabbed my coffee and Scooter Pies just as fast, before he could change his mind.
I dropped the coffee off, set Prez’s Scooter Pie on our table, fetched my Nancy Drew, and made it to my hill with time to spare. The sun was scorching. In the direction the train would approach, all was still, like nothing moving was ever going to come that way. The tracks, shimmering a gleaming silver, wound out of sight where the woods met the gully running next to the tracks’ incline. I pushed my bare feet into the cool grass and slowly tore the cellophane wrapper off my Scooter Pie. Once all of it was off, I held the pie up and turned it slowly, studying it with anticipation. I scraped a bit of the hard chocolate frosting on the edge of my teeth and let it melt on my tongue. I had my book once again and my pie—I was happy.
Just then I heard someone singing behind me, at the bottom of the hill—riverside. I could hear a banjo, too. I crept to the other side of the hill and lay flat on my stomach. There was a hobo camp down by the river—by the viaduct. I knew about hoboes. Sometimes one would come to the door for a handout, and if Mama thought he was harmless, she’d hand him out a sweet potato or some hotwater corn bread.
There were about six or seven of them, both black and white. Someone had built a lean-to out of an old packing crate, and two men were cooking some food over a fire right in front of it. The music was coming from the one sitting by the river’s edge. He was singing along with his banjo and then he closed his mouth and let his fingers fly, making a lively tune, making himself feel good, I guess—for a time. I was blessed to have picked just this time to watch for my train. It was almost as good as a picture show, looking at them. One was mending a shirt, another tying his bedroll, and there was another sitting on a flat rock just staring out at the water. Probably thinking about what a miserable turn his life had taken.
The lonely little figure who’d been gazing out at the river stood up. Something strange about that one, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. He began to climb the hill in my direction. When he drew closer, I saw that he wasn’t a he at all. He was a she—dressed in men’s clothes. She had a sharp birdlike face, with sad, startled eyes. She was colored, caramel skin. Adjusting the man’s cap, she turned and shaded her eyes in my direction. She clutched a lumpy satchel like she wasn’t ever gonna let it go.
I sat up and let myself be seen. She jumped a little and stopped in her tracks.
“Hey, you,” she called out. “What you doin’?” She climbed closer, grabbing at a bush with her free hand to pull herself up.
She came right up to me and squatted down. She set her bag in front of her and looked at it as if measuring whether it was safe so close to a stranger. She was skinnier than I’d thought, her arms wiry and ropy with veins. Her lean face, all sharp chin and cheekbones, showed that she was older, as well. As old as twenty-five, maybe.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Francie.”
“My name’s Alberta—after my daddy.”
“Alberta … There was a character named Alberta in a book I read once.”
She studied my face to see if I was lying, it seemed. Then she shoved some stray hair back under her cap. “You read?” she said.
“Course.”
Her mouth flicked down at the corners like Prez’s when he was trying not to cry. But she recovered quickly and said, “I never got to go to school.”
“Why?”
“Never mind.”
She sat there silent for a while. I kept quiet too. Her eyes dropped to my Scooter Pie with the one bite out of it and I saw her swallow.
“You hungry?”
“Naw.”
“Me neither. Here, take my Scooter Pie.” Mama had told me you shouldn’t ever let someone go hungry if you had something to share. It was sinful.
She shrugged and took it. She ate it quickly, almost choking on it. She licked the inside of the wrapper. “I came up here to look for some place—away from them mens—to go to the bathroom.”
“Do they know you’re a girl?”
“I don’t know. I keep to myself and they don’t bother me none.” She licked her fingers.
“You traveling with them?”
“I’m traveling on my own. I’m going to New Orleans, then hopping a freight out to California.”
“California?”
“It seem like the place to go. Land of opportunity …” Her voice drifted off and she had that getting-ready-to-cry look again.
“Where are your people? Where’s your folks?”
“Here and there.”
I stared at her in wonder. Imagine traveling alone like that. Just picking a place and deciding to go.
She stood up and looked around. “I‘ma go behind them bushes over yonder. You tell me if anybody be comin’.” She slipped and slid down a bit of incline to a row of thick brush. Then she disappeared behind it. I checked the camp at the base of the hill again, deciding her privacy was safe.
Suddenly it was coming. The local heading to Birmingham … The ground trembled beneath me and a faint curl of white smoke plumed above the trees beyond where the tracks curved out of sight. It was coming! I could hear its whistle and that sh-sh-sh sound of steel wheels on steel track.
Finally, a thunderous roar brought that big black round face of the engine into view. I hadn’t stood up good before it was racing by and I was counting cars and squinting at the windows to see the people in them. I waved and waved until it was out of sight.
“What you doin’?” Alberta said from behind me.
“Waving to my train.”
She stood there with me looking down the empty tracks. “I do like trains,” she said. “Cause they’re full of possibility.”
That was just how I felt. They took you to places of possibility.
Alberta started down the hill. Halfway, she turned around and waved. I waved back. Although I wanted to see my new cousin, I wasn’t ready to go home yet. I felt sleepy. I lay down, right there, and using my arms for a pillow, closed my eyes for a nap.
I dreamed someone was watching me—from the woods. Someone was standing there at its edge, just out of reach of the open light, staring at me. I woke with a start, whipped my head around in all directions, then sat there for a while barely breathing, listening as hard as I could. For what, I don’t know.
I sighed, got up, brushed off the backside of my cotton dress, and started down the small hill toward the road, my bare soles relishing the places where the grass was slick and cool. I was going to see a new baby girl.
Clarissa’s Room
“Want to see my room?” Clarissa said on Tuesday.
I couldn’t look at no room. I had work to do. I wiped the sweat off my forehead with my apron. I was down on my knees, rolling up the heavy area rug in the living room. Me and Mama had come to wax the floors. “I can’t,” I said. “I gotta roll up the rugs.”
“I can help you.”
“No you can’t, neither.”
“Why?”
She looked funny with her sunburned face peeling across the nose, her face round and plain as the moon. Her pink shirred sundress showed off red shoulders.
“Cause my mama wouldn’t like it. Your aunt neither.”
“Well, come up then, for just a bit.”
I looked toward the dining room, where Mama was working. Maybe I could sneak up for just a little while.
“I was going to show you my books.”
I looked toward the dining room again. I thought about them books.
“Okay,” I said, standing quickly.
Clarissa led the way and I tiptoed up the stairs behind her, while she chattered on. “Aunt Myra decorated this room for me because she thought I needed cheering.”
“Do you need cheering?” I asked. Such a thought was unknown to me. I couldn’t remember anyone concerned with cheering me up.
“Not much anymore,” Clarissa said, throwing open the door. Stepping aside, she allowed me t
o go in ahead of her. It was like something I’d never seen. One whole wall was nothing but bookshelves like a library. I’d never really been in a library, but when I moved to Chicago, I was going to find me one.
I cocked my head sideways and began to read the titles: some I’d read already, some I ain’t never heard of. I’d read Silas Marner in seventh grade. And David Copperfield last winter.
Clarissa was pulling back her curtains over a window seat covered in the same fabric. “I picked this fabric myself. Aunt Myra and I got it in Mobile.”
It was pretty. I liked cornflowers. What was it like to wake up in a room like this every morning, I wondered. I pictured myself sitting in the gazebo on a summer evening, with a glass of lemonade with shaved ice and a good book.
“Can you keep a secret?” she asked suddenly.
“I guess …” I said slowly.
“First”—she squinted at me—“how old are you?”
“Almost thirteen.” I already knew Clarissa was fourteen.
“Skinny little thing like you? Is your growth stunted?”
“Mama said I take after her people, small and wiry.”
Clarissa seemed to consider this. “What grade you in?”
“I just had my eighth-grade commencement.”
“And you ain’t even thirteen yet?”
“I’ll be thirteen soon—at the end of summer.”
“I guess you’re old enough to keep a secret.”
She went to the bed, bent down, and pulled out a notebook from underneath. She patted the bed beside her. I crossed the room and sat down.
Her eyes were bright as she searched my face. “I’m writing a book.”
“How you doing that?” I asked. I’d never heard of a person writing a book before, though I guessed someone had to.
“I’m writing a little each day. It’s going to take me a long time, because I want it to be longer than War and Peace.” She stopped. “You’ve heard of that book?”
“I know it’s real long. I haven’t read it yet, though.”
“So far, it’s my favorite book. In fact, I’ve decided to name my first girl Natasha because of it.”
Francie Page 6
