“Nothing?” the Blacksmith said and looked worriedly at the Piano Man. “It’s been hours, like you said. Isn’t the baby coming soon?”
Bira stared at the Piano Man. “That’s just it. It could come soon but she won’t let it. I’m afraid, Peter, that if she doesn’t relax soon, it could be bad for her and the baby.”
She stared at him harder, looking for what he couldn’t imagine. The Indian in her was seeing something in his spirit, perhaps. Something wrong? (He made whores of us all) But he said nothing.
“She’s your wife, Peter. This is your child. She needs you. Come talk to her for just a minute. It might help.”
He waited for the Blacksmith to interject his objections, but the giant remained silent next to his wife.
And they both waited.
They expected him to go in there. They expected him to lay his long fingered hands on her and make her lovingly listen to reason about their child.
“She’s. . .” He swallowed. How to get out of this? “She’s already mad at me. Did you hear what she said?”
“I told you that is the pain talking,” the Blacksmith reminded him. “Maybe Bira is right. Go see if you can help her.”
It was another order-go help her. Live where I tell you, do what I tell you, have children when I tell you. Orders, always orders from the Blacksmith.
If he stayed they wouldn’t understand. If he went he was sure that worse would happen.
Or maybe not. Minnelsa might want to spare her parents the embarrassment of what happened until she knew all the facts.
He swallowed the last of his port and rose slowly. Bira smiled, as did the Blacksmith. He walked to the room where all the moaning and screaming had emanated from before. He could hear her heavy breathing as he stood in the hallway.
Perhaps she would just scream “Go away” and that would be that.
Perhaps (He has made all of us whores).
Minnelsa did not see him when he first entered the room. Her eyes were closed and she was pulling against the restraints. Her arms were tied to the bedpost, feet and ankles pulled apart and tied similarly as she twisted and squirmed.
The sisters saw him and smiled. “Soon you’ll be a father,” Fawn said and slowly exited the room. The midwife put a cool compress on Minnelsa’s head.
“Of woman man is born,” she said to him and moved aside to steal out of the room.
He walked towards the bed and she felt his presence. He felt the air in the room change.
“How dare you. . .” she gritted her teeth.
“You must be calm.”
“I want you out of here and out of my body,” her voice rose.
Softly he spoke as he got closer. “They say you’ll hurt the baby and yourself if you keep this up.”
“Damn the baby and damn you,” she shouted then let out a cry of pain that broke the hearts of all who heard. “You made a whore of her and then me.”
He too was dissolved into shame by her weeping and tried to touch her. Her beautiful soft skin was clammy and wet.
“NO!” she screamed. “No! Don’t you ever touch me again! Go touch your whore, go touch my sister since you were so fond of her that you made both a whore of her and of me.”
“Please, Minnelsa,” he begged but he knew they had all heard her. He knew the nosey midwife’s ears had peaked and the Blacksmith had risen to his full height. He knew the sisters were standing there with their mouths open. Bira was seeing the evil in him that she had not seen before.
Tied there, stretched out on the crucifixion of birth, she swore at him: “Get him out of here. Get him away from me.”
“Minnelsa, the baby!” He thought of the innocent child. His other child.
Hatred filled her tired eyes. “I will not give birth to your child if it is within my power.”
He turned and saw Bira standing in the doorway.
“Minnelsa,” he begged again.
She looked at him and shouted: “I will try to kill this baby with every bit of life I have even if it kills me.”
“Mama,” she called in a childlike voice. “Tell him Ophelia is the only child he will ever have by any woman in this family. June gave him a baby when he made her a whore. But I will not. I will die first. I won’t have this baby. I won’t!”
It was the look in Bira’s eyes that cursed him, the words she would not let slip from her lips. The pain came and again Minnelsa screamed and called on God to kill her.
And kill the Piano Man’s baby.
The Piano Man watched her fight the forces of nature as he backed out of the room. He watched Bira’s face turn to cold, hard stone as he walked by her. He saw the recognition in the midwife’s eyes, and the anger in the doctor’s face.
When the doctor went to her and Bira tried to comfort her, she ranted, she shouted, she blasphemed.
In the back of the house June had heard the angry decree and had closed herself off from the family even more by getting up and closing her door.
But that didn’t keep Fawn out. Just as June shut the door Fawn put her body in the way.
“Is it true?’ her sister said standing there, sweat on her face and her body saturated from the heat.
June didn’t look at her. She went to her bed to pull from under her blanket her bottle of comfort. After a few frantic moments of searching, she remembered it was hidden in the tree.
Fawn came into the small room and grabbed her baby sister by her uncombed hair, dirt and leaves weaved into it. “Is what Minnelsa says true? Is Ophelia Peter’s child?”
June looked up at her, her head pulled back by the strength of her angry sister’s hands. Did it matter if she answered? They would all believe what they wanted. Did it matter if she said these were the ranting of a woman in labor, for they would believe what they wanted? They always wanted to believe the worst about her. It was time to let them have the truth.
“Look, I met him first. I loved him first. I wanted him first.” She watched her sister with tear stained eyes.
Fawn was a strong woman, an angry woman. “Oh, my God.” She raised her hand and slapped June so hard that she fell back into the wall, cowering and expecting another blow. “You tramp!” Fawn raised her hand again as June said softly, blood slipping from her lips:
“Our father made us all whores, or weren’t you paying attention to everything Minnelsa said. They made us all whores? Didn’t your husband leave you? Didn’t they all get what they came for, ruin you and leave?
“The Piano Man was mine first. He just never married me. He was greedy. He married my sister. Married her for money.”
Fawn released a scream as intense as Minnelsa’s. She began to beat June with her fists until the younger woman decided not to take it anymore and began to fight back.
She pushed Fawn across the room in her anger. “You think you’re better than me because you walked down the aisle and have a ring on that finger? You’re just as big a whore as I am. You didn’t marry for love. You were sold like a slave to the highest bidder.’
“No!” Fawn screamed as she came at her. “I’m not like you! None of us were ever like you.”
June moved before her sister could hit her, sending Fawn crashing onto the single bed.
Tiny June straddled her crying sister. “You’re a Blacksmith’s daughter,” she whispered into her Fawn’s ear. “You are property bought and sold. What have you got to show for it now, Miss Married? Are you so perfect, so much better than the darkies with no training and no perfect homes? Nothing. You sleep in a single bed like me. You’re a bitch in heat like me. Only unlike me you never tried to go out and get a man that you wanted. I did and I will again.
“But you won’t. You’ll sit in this house day after day and let that old man run your life until you don’t have life anymore. Tell me how does that make you better than me?”
Fawn lay beneath her sister and cried.
Outside the small room Jewel heard it all and, leaning against the doorframe, wept bitterly.
In
the labor room Minnelsa cried curses and gave up trying to scream, her voice gone, her throat weak and dry, her body tired, she did as her mother ordered. “I will not lose you because you are too proud. I will not lose you because your sister and your husband made a mistake. Do as I say, Minnelsa. Give in to having this baby. Have it now, or I will go back to the old ways.” Bira looked at the doctor as she said: “I will cut it out of you myself.”
Bira’s stern face turned back to her daughter. And Minnelsa, understanding her mother’s strength, understanding that there was nothing else she could do, allowed herself to ease into the birth.
She was oblivious of the pain for it was small compared to what the years ahead of her had in store. She thought about the yellow curtains of her kitchen. Curtains she had made herself. She thought about summer days before the heat and before the dog days and the curtains flapping in as she had played with a baby named Ophelia sitting in her lap.
“Wind, Mommy, wind,” the baby had chanted as the curtains moved in and out.
“Yes, wind, sweetheart,” she had answered and kissed the sweet cheeks of her sister’s child that was her child. How they had watched the wind each day until there was no more wind and the curtains stopped and were still and it rained all the time.
“Push, Minnelsa,” the doctor ordered.
She allowed her body to follow the command, but she wasn’t there. She was somewhere watching the yellow curtains between the wind and the rain. Somewhere before there was a Piano Man, somewhere before she had refused to run away with the man she loved because she didn’t want to disobey her father.
“What about me?” John Wood had asked. She had been too confused by duty to understand.
“Push, harder, Minnelsa. I see the head,” the doctor said again and she pushed harder. Harder than she wanted to, harder than was necessary.
Let them get it out of me, she told herself. Let it be born dead. Let him take that with him when he leaves me. We are whores, they always leave the whores.
“One more push and it’s done.”
She pushed again and her mother held her head and shoulders up off the bed with all her weight until the pushing ended and the wail of new life began.
“It’s a boy,” the doctor announced rather subdued.
“Bastard,” was all Minnelsa said before she fell back on the bed and passed out cold.
* * *
It rained the morning the Piano Man’s son was born, rained big buckets of water from the Georgia sky. Jewel made her biscuits and Fawn made another pot of coffee and cooked the eggs and ham, setting the table as usual.
The doctor and the midwife gone, the family returned to what they thought was normal: an early morning breakfast as usual for the Blacksmith and his family.
But this morning things were different. A baby howled near a mother who refused to touch it. “Get him out of here,” was all Minnelsa had said when her mother tried to put him to her breast.
So Bira went about making a sugar tit for the child to suck on.
No one bothered to wash the long night from their faces, to change from the clothes they had worn since the labor had started. They just came and sat down at the table.
The Piano Man had tried to leave but the Blacksmith told him to stay, he must stay for breakfast. “Every journey must begin with a good meal. Besides, where do you think you can go right now with a wife and baby lying in there? You know they can’t travel right now.”
The smile on the old man’s face was frightening.
If the Blacksmith had wanted to, he could have crushed him with a single blow of his fist. Could have hit him and sent him hurling through space. But the Blacksmith told him to come to the table and have breakfast.
It was Bira who found June in Willie’s old room and told her to come to the table.
“Is this some kind of cruel joke to make us all sit together at that table as if nothing happened here last night? As if nothing was said?”
The baby in one hand Bira grabbed June’s arm and pulled her from the room. “You will do as I say. Come with me right now.”
June had never seen her mother so angry. In the kitchen, as Fawn put the last fried egg on the silver platter and Jewel placed the last biscuit in the bread basket, Bira turned to her youngest daughter. She appraised her from head to toe; unkempt, skinny and dirty. “Why didn’t you just tell us at first? Why did you make everyone go through all of this?”
The sisters stopped their tasks and lifted their tired lonely heads to hear her answer. “Because the Piano Man wanted the money. I learned that he wanted what came with Minnelsa more than he wanted me. Because he came here for the land, they all came for the land, and not the daughters. One daughter, any daughter. Because I saw the way Minnelsa looked at him when he left the room. The same way you look when papa leaves a room and I knew I could never love him like that. Because,” then she sighed. “Take your pick.”
She passed them all and went to the table not looking at her father or her ex-lover and genteelly placed the linen napkin in her lap.
As they sat, the new baby in Bira’s arms, the Piano Man realized he had yet to hold his son. The boy was the complete opposite of Ophelia - pale like his mother and big and strong like his grandfather. The doctor said he weighed over ten pounds. Part of why Minnelsa had had such a hard time. Only part. His son would be a big man, he’d be. . .
Like his grandfather, the Blacksmith.
“Mother, who’s to say grace?” the Blacksmith asked as he poured his coffee and added spoon after spoon of sugar.
They all watched Bira’s sullen face as she looked around the room. Each one of them prayed that she wouldn’t call on them. There was no smile of delight, no look of happiness except for the infant in her arms. From a blank slate she spoke. “The person here who has the most to be thankful for should say the grace.”
“And who might that be?” the Blacksmith asked as if this was the way things had always been.
He cut a glance to the Piano Man who was shaking so badly he could hardly catch his breath.
“Me.” She looked down at the baby in her arms and kissed his forehead.
“Dear Lord,” she began and they all bowed their heads. “A new life was given to us today. Thank you for that. Thank you for the return of the health of the prodigal daughter. Help the mother to recover from the labors of birth and the sisters to survive the loss of their husbands. And please Lord, let the fathers survive the end of their dreams. Amen.”
No one echoed her amen. The Blacksmith had not bowed his head. He had watched her the whole time. Now he sipped his coffee. “Strange grace, Bira.”
“A strange day, William.” She looked around the table at the four solemn faces. “Eat children, eat.”
They tried to place the food in their mouths, but they couldn’t. The eggs and ham and biscuits got cold and went to waste. They watched the huge infant feed on the sugar tit and when it was assumed that breakfast was over, the Blacksmith, who had downed every ounce of food he could rose to leave.
“No, William.” Bira said. She herself hadn’t touched a bite as the baby suckled in her arms. “Finish it.”
“What?” He sat back down like an obedient child, a look of confusion on his face.
“Finish it, William.”
“Finish what, Bira?” he asked for he truly didn’t know.
“It has to come to an end. All of this. What was said last night. You have. . .”
He smiled and leaned forward on the table. “We will go on, mother. We will survive. We will act as if nothing has changed.”
He looked at the Piano Man. “We will never mention these atrocities again. When your wife is better you will take her back to your home. I’m sure I can get whatever contract you signed voided. Lawyer Gibbs is very good at such things. At your home you will raise your children as was planned. I am also sure we will be able to find better husbands for our daughters who haven’t been so lucky. . .”
“Lucky!” June said. “Who at th
is table is lucky?”
“Silence,” Bira shouted in her direction. The very room held its breath. “No, William, finish it. Or I will.”
The Blacksmith leaned back in his chair. He really didn’t understand what his wife was talking about. “Bira, I don’t understand.”
She looked at his face long and hard. All she could see was all that he dreamed of and all that might be lost. He had no idea it was over.
“No,” she responded sweetly, “I believe you don’t understand.” She sighed.
“Listen well, all of you. There will be no more dowries, no more land to husbands. You daughters need to go back to the houses you had, the ones that were given to your husbands at marriage and live there. Lawyer Gibbs will help your father and me take care of all that. If your husband left you and you still love him, then find him. If necessary find new men and a new life.”
The daughters stared at her but didn’t speak.
“June, perhaps it would be better for everyone if you went back to your singing. Maybe back North. Once a piece of land was put aside for your marriage. . .”
The Blacksmith looked at June in anger then hissed defiantly: “A piece of land for when she married. She is not. . .”
“That’s over, William. It is finished.” She looked back at June with no emotion in her face. “We will sell the land and give you the money since it is obvious that you will never be happy here.”
The Blacksmith started to speak but Bira raised her hand.
“Peter.” When Bira spoke, all of them, including June, turned to him. He had never known such hate.
“You know what you have to do,” was all she said before she rose to put the sleeping babe in the cradle.
Most people don’t know exactly what happened after Bira gave her orders in the Blacksmith’s house. Word had spread from the gossipy midwife about the night before. So no one was surprised when the Piano Man got into his car and drove to his house to pack a bag and go down to the colored bank on Auburn Avenue and collect every penny he had on deposit.
The Wilful Daughter Page 39
