by Maxine Clair
October glanced out the window. Outside, the gray of old snow didn’t seem to bother neighborhood children, snow-crusted and laughing sliding down their short terraces on sleds.
“Um-umm, I didn’t know that,” October said. A name, nothing special. She would get to it soon enough.
Vergie rocked and cooed, “Him don’t want us callin’ him Baby till him is grown, do you, pumpkins?” She pressed her lips to his forehead. He dozed.
“I know,” October said. “I just can’t worry about that yet.”
“Things happen to people,” Vergie said. “I gather from the birth certificate that you won’t be getting any help from the father.”
October had forgotten the very public fact of that document. She shook her head.
“You know that me and Gene and Aunt Frances and Aunt Maude will see to it that you never go without—you or the baby.”
“I know,” October said.
“Like I said, things happen to people, and you just have to keep on going.”
“I know,” October said.
It was easy for Vergie to say. Vergie hadn’t fallen in love with someone who didn’t want her. Gene had plucked her from the vine when Vergie was lucky nineteen. Married her. Neither Aunt Frances nor Aunt Maude had ever married, and she couldn’t imagine either of them ever falling for a man. What could any of them possibly know about how she felt? Her mother, Carrie, would probably have known something about being down in the dumps, and she probably carried it to her grave. Carrie would know.
After a few weeks of salves and compresses, a manual pump and sugar water, it became clear to October that she could not produce sufficient milk. She was secretly relieved to move on to bottle feeding, where everyone could participate. The Baby did fine on his own, eating, sleeping, pooping.
Next it was Aunt Frances’s turn. October had begun pulling out fabric again and sewing in her room. Often she kept the bassinet nearby, but since Vergie was at home all day, October sometimes let the Baby enjoy sunlight in the living room with Vergie.
Aunt Frances had worked a private-duty swing shift the evening before and wouldn’t be going back to the hospital until the afternoon that day. Bent over the Singer in her room, October sensed Auntie’s approach and hoped that she wasn’t coming in to have a serious sit-down about the Baby. The subject of what she would do with the Baby seemed to preoccupy the whole house.
Aunt Frances tapped lightly on the open door and came into October’s room.
“Girl, you need some light in here—you’ll ruin your eyes,” she said, and she let up all the shades.
“I can see by the light on the machine,” October told her.
“I came in to talk about your child,” Aunt Frances said. She sat down on October’s bed. “If you don’t want to hear what I’ve got to say, just tell me. I know how to keep my mouth shut.”
October folded the panel of fabric she had been working on, then pulled her hair back and twisted it into a bushy ball with the rubber band.
“No, it’s okay, Auntie,” she said. “I know you’re worried about his name.”
“His name isn’t what’s got me worried honey—it’s you. You don’t seem too bothered about him.”
How had she come to such a conclusion? She fed him on time, kept his diaper changed, bathed him every morning.
“I’m with him all day,” October said. “Ask Vergie.”
“I think you’re still stuck on that man,” her auntie said.
“No,” October said. “I’m not.” She wanted to believe her own words. She would just as soon eat crushed glass as run into James Wilson again.
“Then what is it? You act like you don’t know the Baby is here, you never pick him up, never even look at him unless you have to. And you haven’t had on a decent dress, haven’t let Verge do your hair, haven’t been out of this house since you came back from the hospital.”
So Auntie had been watching her every move, passing judgment.
“I told Vergie that I would think about naming him David,” she said.
“That isn’t what a mother does, honey. David is fine if that’s what you want but you don’t let somebody else name your child.”
Tears cramped her throat. She was doing the best she could. What did they want her to do?
“You’ve got to make some changes. He’s two months old. I know you’re down, but start thinking about him for a change.”
After her auntie left, October went out to the living room. Vergie sat near the window, rocking the Baby.
“Tomorrow,” she said to Vergie, “I have to go down and get the Baby’s birth certificate finished. I know Auntie will think I’m wrong, but I like David.”
Vergie’s face showed relief. “That’s so good, October,” she said. “We can’t take him out in this weather, but I’ll bet Aunt Maude will be glad to stay here with him while you and me go.” She looked at the bundle in her arms. “David is a fine name. He’ll love it.”
She named him David, but it was clear to her that her aunt Frances had seen the dead place in her. Over the weeks Vergie could coo and lullaby all day, and October had never figured out how she thought up such things. And so October made a point of trying to sing and entertain whenever she bathed him, only to discover that while Vergie or her aunties had sudden ideas for cute expressions, she didn’t. When his eyes found her, they looked strange and powerful all at the same time. If he was kicking or cooing when she approached, she noticed that he would get still, as if to brace himself, or observe her. And she noticed that he seldom made noises unless someone else was present.
“I don’t think he likes me,” October halfway joked once with Vergie. “Look,” she said. She had laid him on a pad on the sofa and made silly faces at him, wriggling her fingers. He, watched her, but remained very still.
“Girl, hush,” Vergie said. Vergie got up and came over to where October sat making faces.
In baby-talk Vergie said, “Hi, Baby,” and tickled his belly with her fingertips. October saw the joy on his face as he began frantically kicking.
“See?” October said.
“You have to talk to him,” Vergie said. And she went on goo-gooing and ga-gaaing. “Play with him,” she said. “He’s a baby. They don’t come here knowing you, you have to make him know you.”
Just like October had a knack for sewing, Vergie seemed to have a knack for baby-knowing. And just as Vergie could be thoroughly absorbed in David’s care and entertainment for hours, October could get herself lost in pleats and bodices and zippers.
Ever since she was knee-high to a duck, October could cut out a pattern and baste seams. But the very first thing she had ever made she had sewn without a pattern, and had done it for Vergie in a single day. October had been nine at the time, and Vergie had been thirteen or fourteen, with a first crush on a boy who had made her the butt of a mean joke. The end of the world, as Vergie saw it.
It had been October who came up with the idea of a new skirt to cheer her up—turned three yards of orange and purple print into a gathered skirt with two buttons on the waistband and a close-over placket on the side. Right out of her own head.
And she had sewn anything she wanted to sew ever since. As soon as David was out of the womb, her hands had needed to do something that made her feel like herself, and her mind had nudged her toward sewing. What started out as busywork soon became a mission. First just for something to put on, then for something decent to put on, then for something new and different.
In her room with the door closed, she could finish the skirt or blouse and try it on. Even though her breasts and hips were not hers anymore, she sewed as if they were. If she continued to eat small, she would come back to her size, and back to clothes that made her look like her old self, and then, who knew? She traded woolens and knits for cotton and rayon because one day soon s
he would wake up and it would be summer. Her daydreams left off right there: summertime, and she’s wearing a shirtwaist dress with a cinch waist, aqua color, and white sling pumps. Walking along the sidewalk, maybe in front of the building overtown in Missouri where James Wilson used to live. Maybe School Boy seeing her and saying wow.
In march, when David was three months old, October, Vergie, and their aunt Maude took him for his checkup at the clinic in Ross County General. He had outgrown the bassinet graduated to three other cereals and all kinds of little Gerber’s jars. And constantly squealed and grunted. The doctor declared that he was a healthy baby, and happy. Up until that visit October had worried that her shortcomings as his mother would somehow mark him. Now it was clear that he thrived because he was in the house on Monroe Street with four women and a man who saw to his every need.
Around that same time, October had sent a letter to Cora as part of her contact with her old self, her old life. What was Cora doing, how was Ed, when was she moving to St Louis, and, too, if you were me, would you try to get a job again in Wyandotte County? No mention of David. Not yet.
Not that October wanted to return to the scene of her crime. Not that she wanted anything to do with James Wilson—at least that was what she told herself. Just that it was the only job she had known, something begun that she never finished, or never finished sufficiently. The sense of maybe climbing back onto the horse that had thrown her. Undoing the bad impression she had left. These were only fantasies, and a baby son didn’t have to fit in.
When she came home from the clinic that afternoon in March, she helped Vergie get David fed and down for his nap in his new crib, in his new corner of the dining room, where there was steady traffic and he could always be the center of attention. October closed the door of her room and took off her clothes. In the closet she slipped the aqua shirtwaist off its hanger and unbuttoned all the buttons, slipped it over her head and snapped the snaps, buttoned it again. Without looking in the mirror yet she belted it with the self-belt she had made—the cinch fitting would be too much to hope for—and pushed the shoulder pads into place. Then she looked.
Didn’t she look nice! Spring. School Boy would say to James, I saw October, she sure was looking good. She got herself out of the dress and put it back into the closet. Tomorrow she would get Aunt Maude to stop on her way home and buy more material from the Sears catalogue.
There was no scheme, no plan to up and leave Chillicothe. If she didn’t want to work ever again, nobody in the household would force her into it—she knew that. But she had had that taste of life outside the scrutiny of aunts who could read her thoughts. She had made a career. At least that.
What Cora said in her letter made sense. No, don’t even think of going back to Wyandotte. But she could come to Missouri, where Cora now lived. Jackson County covered most of Kansas City, and its school district was known for hiring women who had worked in Wyandotte, where rigor was the byword. Think about Jackson. And besides, now that Cora had moved into Ed’s old place, and with him in St. Louis most of the time, she could use the company. There was only one bedroom, though.
And speaking of company, what about the baby? Did you find a name for him yet? I know why you couldn’t right at first, but I hope you have now. Last I heard you were switching him to the bottle and he was sleeping all night. I’m dying to see him.
There was no scheme, no plan.
Late one afternoon, October finished up a collar and opened the door to her room, something she tried to do before her aunts got off from work and worried that she stayed to herself too much without you-know-who.
Vergie had already put meatloaf in the oven and was holding a serious conversation with baby David about the cost of hamburger. “That you?” she called.
October answered yes, thinking. Let me just get my shoes and stockings on, please, before it starts. What would happen if Aunt Frances came home and found her lollygagging in the bathtub with the radio on and baby David needing to be changed?
In the kitchen, Vergie sat balancing baby David and a basin for snap beans on her lap. He had a pacifier in his mouth; when he saw October, he stopped sucking for a minute, then went on sucking and playing with his hands.
“Wave to him,” Vergie said. “He’s waving at you!”
October waved her fingers but not because she thought the baby and she had something going. Although he did stop sucking again and let the pacifier fall.
“Guess what,” Vergie said. “He had a soft egg yolk today. I was just about to give him a dinner treat. Sit down.”
Vergie got up and put the beans on the table, and motioned for October to sit down. Then plopped David into her lap.
“Tell him what you’ve been doin all day,” she said. She began warming a jar of applesauce in a pan of water.
October cradled David and looked down at him. Maybe when he could talk, she would know what to say to him.
Maybe when he could talk and walk and play, she would start feeling like a mother. Because right now, to her, after all this time, he was still just the Baby that lived with them. She wouldn’t let herself dig down too far, for fear that the dead place in her had turned to stone.
Then instinctively, for the first time, baby David reached his hand out to touch the spot of vitiligo on her face. October wondered if maybe that was what he had always seen, why he always sobered when he looked at her. Maybe she scared him. She brought him close enough to touch it.
His hand, soft on her face, felt sad, made her want to cry, like maybe he had something awful wrong with him and he didn’t know it. She felt so sorry for him so suddenly that she could hardly stand it.
“Here, take him,” she blurted out to Vergie.
But Vergie had her back turned. “Don’t tell me he’s wet again.”
chapter 8
Digging up the past was not something to be tolerated in their Monroe Street house in Chillicothe. Vergie knew that. But mind-reading was another story. She figured that she knew what went on in October’s mind because her talent for reading minds went way back.
For instance, when she was nine she had known that if her mother, Carrie, didn’t stop being how she was being, her father, Franklin, would do something. She could have told her mother, reminded her that when Franklin Brown was mad, he was mad. Hadn’t they seen him drunk and cursing-mad before? But she hadn’t said a word to Carrie.
A thousand regrets ago, Vergie could have told her mother that her father had been watching. She had stood right there with him in the screen door and read his mind just like she had read her mother’s mind every time Mr. Bailey had come across the alley to talk, every time she had seen Carrie leaning up against the fence like she was in love with the wood. But Vergie hadn’t said a word.
A nine-year-old thinks wrong is wrong. And even if it wasn’t, she had supposed that Carrie had decided to go off with Mr. Bailey one day and take her and her sister with her. Vergie would never hear her father whistling again, never sit with him on the piano stool and play two-handed boogie-woogie. Or worse, Carrie might leave her and her sister behind.
And that day in Cleveland, at the table, Vergie had felt the storm gathering, felt lightning in the ping of a fork against a plate, thunder in Carrie’s shoes on the stairs. In the kitchen, when she heard Carrie and Franklin fussing and carrying on upstairs, she knew that if she went upstairs and stood in the doorway as she had so many times before, Carrie or Franklin, one or the other, would have noticed her, would have thrown shoes at her instead of continuing their fight, fussed at her for sticking her nose into grown-folks business. Franklin never would have gotten pushed to a thought about knives. But what had she done?
Who do you choose, Punchinella, Punchinella? She had twirled her little sister faster and sung louder until they had twirled and sung too long.
And October’s troubles? If Vergie hadn’t always read it in her sist
er, she had heard enough from Auntie Frances and Aunt Maude to know that October was more like Carrie than Vergie was. That fact certainly had never hurt Vergie’s feelings.
From the day October got it into her head that she was too big for Chillicothe, and went straight from the college at Emporia, Kansas, to a job in Wyandotte County—where she didn’t know a soul and had no place to live—Vergie had known there would be trouble. No surprise. The minute Cora called and said that October was in trouble, Vergie knew what kind of trouble, and knew that the man was trifling. She knew that October wouldn’t have the gumption to save herself, not to mention a baby.
There was no scheme, no plan for Vergie, either. She couldn’t help herself, couldn’t help loving baby David. Gene didn’t play with him much and she knew why. In his quiet way Gene saw her getting too attached, and then what would happen if October left? The baby would be gone, and she would be hurting. Having a baby around could be worse than hoping for one someday.
But Vergie knew things. Could see things. October wasn’t a bit interested in raising a baby. October hadn’t even gotten to where she could see herself as a grown woman yet. Vergie could see how October wouldn’t, either, for years—years enough for David to grow up under their Monroe Street roof never knowing the difference between auntie and mother.
And so, that day in March, as she watched the bubbles form in the water around the jar of Gerber’s applesauce, she could feel October’s indifference and confusion. When October cried, “Take him,” Vergie knew what October had not figured out: what was true in that moment could be true forever.
On the evening when October called everyone together in the living room, Vergie sensed a strong wind blowing, but not furious enough to blow down the house. October had insisted on carrying David around all evening, and when they gathered, October sat him up in her lap, his head a little wobbly. Watch his head, Vergie thought. In Aunt Maude’s face, Vergie could see the excitement. October was finally shaping up. Behind Aunt Frances’s eyes, Vergie could hear the gears churning. What next?
