Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night

by Barbara J. Taylor

  A life with Daisy. Violet burst into shuddering, gasping sobs.

  Grace tightened her grip around the child. The pain swelled up inside her once more. “In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children,” she whispered, recounting God’s punishment to Eve. She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. “The wages of sin.”

  Violet shot up in horror. “Why should you suffer for my sin?”

  Grace managed one word in the midst of her labor: “Forgiveness.”

  “How?” The crying stopped, but Violet still trembled. “I killed her. You said so yourself.”

  “Forgive me.” Grace’s breathing evened out. She pulled Violet into her. “I’m so ashamed,” she whispered.

  “Ashamed?” Violet shook her head in disbelief.

  “I blamed you. What kind of mother does that?”

  “But I killed her,” Violet repeated.

  “It was an accident.” Grace hugged her child. “I was out of my head with grief.”

  The pain reared up again. Grace clutched her stomach, and in an instant, they found themselves sitting in a puddle of warm liquid.

  Grace spoke slowly, erasing most of the anxiety from her voice. “Take the oil cloth off the table, spread it across my bed, and come back for me.”

  Violet jumped up. She pressed a rag against the front of her damp dress and grabbed the cloth.

  “I love you,” Grace said, clenching her jaw with the pain. “Now hurry. The baby’s coming.”

  * * *

  Grace lay on the covered mattress, while Violet removed her mother’s felt slippers and rubbed the soles of her stockinged feet. “Such a good girl,” Grace said, once the pain subsided. Runnels of sweat ran off her face, soaking the blue and white ticked pillow. “I wish I could spare you this.” Shivers of goose flesh dotted her arms. “I’ll need a clean sheet,” she said, pointing to the closet.

  Violet tugged at the linens folded on the shelf above the clothes bar. They all fell on her head, and landed in a heap on the floor. Panic shot through her as she waited to be scolded for making a mess.

  “Just set them on the rocker,” Grace said breathlessly. She turned her head toward the window and stared out at the storm. “We’ll probably need all of them before this night’s over.”

  Violet returned to the foot of the bed and snapped a sheet open. It billowed softly as it landed across her mother’s legs.

  Grace drew the sheet up to cover her body, rolled down her stockings, and took off her clothes. “No sense getting an eyeful of something you’re not ready for,” she said, pushing the garments to the floor. “Now bring me my nightgown.”

  Violet’s hands trembled when she pulled the gown off the hook and passed it under the sheet to her mother.

  “Maybe you can just feel your way through,” Grace suggested, though she sounded doubtful. The flame from an oil lamp flickered in the otherwise dark room. “And turn down the wick some.”

  Violet stood rigid at the bottom of the bed, transfixed by fear. At that moment, she could no more tend the wick than birth a baby. “I don’t know how . . .”

  “You’re all I have,” Grace replied, before the contractions started again.

  Several minutes passed before Grace could speak. “Lord, help me,” was all she could manage, and then the pain exploded. She clenched two handfuls of sheet and gritted her teeth.

  Violet searched her mind for any bit of knowledge about babies. They had to be “delivered,” but she had no idea what that meant. A woman’s time. A blue baby. Born without breath. Janie Miller once told her, “Doc Rodham brings babies in that black bag of his,” but Violet knew there would be no doctor tonight.

  Grace shrieked, as she slid down the length of the mattress, opened her knees, and pressed each foot against a bedpost. “Get out!” she snarled toward the rocker, her teeth clenched, her eyes on fire. “You’ll not go near my children!”

  Violet turned with a start, but saw no one. “It’s me, Mother. Violet.”

  “He’s gone,” Grace said, “for now.” She drifted into the fog of pain.

  Violet’s hands disappeared under the sheet, but her eyes remained locked on her mother’s. “Tell me what to do,” she begged.

  Her mother rolled fitfully in and out of consciousness.

  Violet stretched her arms in further, until they landed on a slippery mound. Instinctively, she cupped her hands around what she knew to be a head. “Wake up!” she screamed, knowing somehow that her mother had to “deliver” the baby whole.

  Grace’s eyes remained closed, but she pushed her feet against the bedposts and howled.

  Violet felt a shoulder pass through and waited for the other.

  Grace bore down again and moaned, as if competing with the wind outside.

  The baby remained frozen in place.

  Grace pushed down once more, but with less force. She opened her eyes and looked pleadingly at Violet. “Don’t be afraid,” she whispered at the end of the breath.

  Violet slid her fingers inside, felt for the shoulder, and loosened it from its hold. The baby gushed into her hands fully formed, but still attached, somehow, to her mother. She pulled it out from under the sheet and, even with the dim light, saw the blood. So much blood. It seemed to have come from her mother. The bedding was soaked with it. The baby painted in thick, curdled coats of it. And now Violet’s arms were covered in it as she cradled the slippery infant in her arms.

  Grace lay silently in the bed, her eyes open.

  The baby rested in Violet’s hands, silent as well. In a panic, Violet placed the infant on the bed, wiped some of the blood away with a towel, and grabbed the oil lamp. She tipped the light toward the bed. A girl, she noted, before spotting the dark cast to her skin. A blue baby. Born without breath. She set the lamp back on the table, catching the chain of her birthday locket on the metal knob. The necklace tore from her neck and fell to the floor, but Violet didn’t dare look down. She lifted the baby and slapped her back, like Father had done to her one time when she choked on a piece of hard candy. The infant slumped in her hands like a ragdoll. Violet slapped her again, praying she would make some sound.

  In the distance, the manic winds tolled the bells at Providence Christian Church. From Violet’s arms, her sister suddenly added her cry to the cacophony.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  I’VE DONE SOMETHING GOOD, Violet thought, as she looked at the baby in her arms. Maybe the others would see that before remembering the rest. Maybe they wouldn’t be so quick to give her the looks they’d been giving her since that day. She glanced at her mother who had somehow roused herself long enough to instruct Violet on how to cut the cord. She’d fallen asleep soon after, but her color was better and her breathing was even. That was something anyway.

  Violet’s efforts at swaddling hadn’t been so successful, though. The blanket was too loose to contain her squirming sister. Her sister. I have a sister. Again.

  The baby’s eyelids flickered, then opened, revealing two orbs, bluer than the bluest summer sky. Daisy’s eyes. Violet scoured them but could find no trace of judgment. Yet almost everyone blamed her. Not that they ever asked her what happened. At first, they were too busy tending to Daisy. Later, too busy grieving her. They discussed it, of course, but they talked around Violet, not to her. Most folks took Myrtle’s version of the incident as gospel, adding their own suppositions with each telling. And like everyone else, the more Violet heard the different accounts, the more she believed them.

  After all, she was jealous of her sister, and she did throw that sparkler.

  All of it true.

  But not the truth.

  When the pastor had washed away Daisy’s sins, he’d washed away her common sense as well. Violet could find no other explanation for her sister’s transformation that Fourth of July.

  “If a body is old enough to choose Jesus as her Lord and Savior,” Daisy had explained for the third time in the hour since her baptism, “she’s ready to put aside childish things. First Corinthians, Chapt
er 13, verse 11.”

  Violet had dropped the jacks and ball onto their bed, next to the jumping rope and the china doll. Daisy sashayed out the door, still wearing the white cotton dress with the pleated skirt. The matching bow bloomed from her head like a peony. Not fair, Violet thought, catching her own reflection in the window. She pulled at the hem of her yellow hand-me-down and fingered her recently shorn hair. Violet hated her sister for being first, for being nine.

  She had dropped backward, arms outstretched into the swell of a hand-knotted bed quilt. Indignation cozied up alongside her. Eleven months separated the girls, but to Violet’s thinking, it may as well have been eleven years. Daisy got the store-bought dress since she was old enough to be taken to church. Daisy needed quiet because her advanced studies required concentration. Daisy hadn’t been forced to cut her hair short. Not a single louse in all those curls. And such beautiful blue eyes. And that voice, like an angel. Will she be singing in the gymanfa ganu? All the old Welsh hymns will be sung. Even the photographer, hired to commemorate the baptism, declared her features to be “perfectly suited for the camera.” Their father called her little lady. Their mother called her pet.

  Just thinking about it had made Violet’s blood boil, and she gave her sister a good shove in the kitchen when she saw her chance. She hadn’t intended to send Daisy into Mother, especially with a pie in hand.

  Once their father had sent them out to the yard, Daisy drilled her heel hard into the toe of Violet’s boot.

  “Ow!”

  “Jealous.”

  “Ungrateful.” Violet gave her sister a quick push, then ran back to the safety of the porch steps. Neither girl was fool enough to start up so close to their parents. She sat down on the porch, unlaced her boot, and inspected her foot. If a bruise formed up, and she hoped one would, she’d show it to Mother.

  Daisy sat on a rock at the end of their yard, folded her head into her arms, and began to cry. Violet hadn’t expected this particular response, and it made her feel uncomfortable. She removed her other boot and wondered if someone else’s tears could wash away her own anger. Unwilling to apologize—after all, Daisy had pushed her first, a fact their mother could attest to—but anxious to put the matter behind them, Violet considered the situation. She flung her boots onto the porch, and like manna from heaven, the answer appeared. At least two dozen sparklers tumbled out from behind the copper wash tin. Their father must have hidden them there as a Fourth of July surprise for the girls. She grabbed the fireworks and a nearby box of matches, and walked barefooted to the end of the yard. With her hands hidden behind her back, Violet said, “I brought you a surprise.”

  Daisy kept her head on her lap.

  “It’s a dandy. Promise.”

  Daisy lifted her face and glared.

  Violet swallowed. “I’m real sorry—about spoiling your dress, I mean.”

  “What surprise?”

  Violet flung her arms around front and revealed her find.

  Daisy stood up, snatched the matchbox, and said, “You oughtn’t to be playing with fire.”

  Stung by Daisy’s rebuff, Violet’s eyes filled with tears.

  “I’m sorry too—about your foot, I mean.” Daisy carefully pulled a sparkler out of the bunch as if drawing straws. “Hold this. Real tight.”

  Violet dropped the others, and gripped her sparkler with both hands.

  Daisy grabbed a match and dropped the box on the ground. “I’ll light yours, then one for me. We’ll put the rest back so Father won’t find out and switch both our hides.” She looked across the yard. “And keep watch for Myrtle Evans. Nothing she likes more than to catch us up to no good.”

  Daisy struck the match and tipped it toward the firework in Violet’s hand. Nothing. She ran the flame back and forth overtop, and leaned in close to inspect the situation, trying to decide whether or not she had selected what the boys in the neighborhood called a “lemon.”

  Sparks exploded in a flash. Both girls jumped and laughed, frightened and embarrassed at once. The orange flare sizzled down the rod throwing off pinpricks of fire, then sputtered and died before it had a right to.

  “Not fair,” Violet said, scraping at the unused portion with her thumbnail. “I didn’t get a full turn.”

  Daisy bent down, grabbed another sparkler, and handed it to her sister. “This one’s it.”

  Violet pressed both sticks together, glancing quickly toward their house, and then the Evanses’s. Before Daisy could light another match, the first sparkler resurrected itself half an inch from Violet’s fingers. Daisy started to warn her sister, but the words caught in her throat. She tried again but only squeaked a split second before the red-hot ember reached Violet’s left thumb. Myrtle stepped out onto her porch just in time to see both sparklers ignite, raining onto Violet’s startled hands. Her fingers opened and the sparklers scattered like shooed pigeons. Unfettered, the fireworks tumbled to the ground, catching Daisy’s hem on their descent.

  “Violet!” Daisy’s warning landed as accusation.

  Time hesitated as the twin sparklers crackled at Violet’s feet. A glowing strand of light quivered on Daisy’s charred skirt before bursting into a patch of blue flame. Violet’s heart pounded painfully against her chest. Help her! Violet willed her arms forward, but they would not obey. Scream! Run! She stood frozen in place. A soft breeze stirred, nudging time along. The girls locked eyes in horror as the dress erupted into flames.

  Their parents ran out into the yard, Mother first, who smothered the fire. Father gathered Daisy in his arms and carried her toward the house. As they passed by, Violet searched her sister’s eyes for the condemnation, loathing, or, at the very least, the recrimination she deserved. Instead, she found an expression so unexpected, it turned the familiar into something jarring, like that first sip of milk when you think it’s lemonade, or the opening note of any song, other than the one you were waiting for. No matter how good, for that instant, the milk tastes sour and the key sounds flat.

  In that same way, Violet misread her sister’s expression. It didn’t fit her expectation, so Violet decided it was far worse than she’d imagined.

  * * *

  But now, as Violet gazed at the baby who looked at her with Daisy’s eyes, all she saw was love.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  SOME TIME AFTER ONE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING, Owen pulled himself up onto the porch, much the same way he’d crawled out of the snowdrift an hour earlier. He shoved legfuls of snow away from the threshold. Desperation surged through him, giving him the strength to shake the door loose of its icy frame. He spilled into the kitchen and found himself staring at the rear end of a curled-up mule. He shook his head several times, trying to jar the hallucination from his head. Sophie turned her neck to look at him. Owen stepped closer, righted the overturned chair, and stretched his hand toward the animal, hesitantly, certain he’d finally lost his mind. Sophie swatted his cheek with her tail, before settling back to sleep. Dumbfounded, Owen looked around, trying to make sense of his surroundings. The cupboard was his. The sink and the motto above it. And he certainly knew the rag rug at his feet. He glanced at Sophie again. The tea kettle, cup, and open tin of lye lay next to her back legs. He opened his mouth, but not a sound emerged. The frigid air had stolen his voice.

  Owen ran toward the bedroom, certain he’d find Grace lifeless on their bed. He took a breath, turned the knob, and froze at the sight before him. An oil lamp flickered from a table in the corner. Shadows danced across blood-soaked sheets on an empty bed.

  Owen fought to make sense of the scene, to shape it into something he understood. He grabbed the lamp and tipped it closer to the mattress. What in God’s name had happened here tonight? Somewhere, behind the throbbing pain at his temples, a whisper of truth floated by, and landed just short of Owen’s reach. Outside, the wind whipped up and rattled the old house to its bones. Owen spun around and faced the noise. When he turned back, he saw the locket, caught in the light of the lamp. “Violet,” he whispered,
and rushed across the hall to his daughter’s bedroom.

  He pushed through the door and lifted the lamp with a trembling hand. Grace and Violet slept under the hand-knotted bed quilt, their bodies curled toward each other and the baby cooing between them. The flickering light skipped across their sleeping faces like smooth rocks over a still pond. Afraid of waking them, Owen turned down the wick and closed his eyes. For a long time, he stood in the darkened room and listened to the rise and fall of their measured breathing.

  * * *

  Dawn squeezed its light around each side of the gossamer curtain in Violet’s bedroom, alerting Owen to morning. He peered down at the Bible, opened on his lap for the last few hours. Each page announced its intention in gilded letters—Births on the left-hand side, Deaths on the right. He set the book on the night table next to the photograph of Daisy, stepped over to the window, and pulled back the curtain. Drifts of snow, some three-feet high, settled in the yard like tufts of cotton. He closed his eyes and offered up a silent prayer of thanks before turning back.

  Violet lay in her bed, staring up at him. “When did you—”

  He stopped her with a finger to his lips, and leaned down to kiss her forehead. “Good morning, doll baby,” he whispered.

  Grace stirred on Daisy’s side of the bed, and slowly opened her eyes.

  “I didn’t want to wake you,” Owen said, his voice still hoarse. He picked up the Bible and sat back down in the chair.

  Grace looked at him without saying a word.

  “I know I have no right to ask,” he started, staring down at the floor, “but, if you’ll have me . . .”

  Grace watched him in silence, but didn’t move.

  “There’s no excuse,” he started again. “I won’t ask for forgiveness.” He fumbled with the pages on his lap. “Can’t even give that to myself.” He closed his eyes and dropped his head. “I’m broken. Don’t know if I can change that.” He opened his eyes and pulled his chair up to Grace. “But if you give me a chance,” he took her hand in his and stroked it gently, “I’ll have every reason to try.”