Tainted Harvest

by E. Denise Billups

  “Y’all get off,” Joe says to everyone. “Dat tents too far to carry ‘em. I’s take ’em in da buggy.” He hops aboard and steers the wagon toward the medical tent.

  Anabelle’s crouched figure bounces with the child in her arms as the wagon speeds away. Death was in the girl’s runny eyes when Delphine approached her on the trail. Was she reaching out for help when she raised her fevered arm? She’d smiled like an angel ready to leave this world. In a matter of hours, she’s gone. Delphine rushes into Ben’s chest, drops her head, and weeps. “Why da lawd takes dat poe child? It ain’t right.”

  “She’s betta off in his hands, not dis cruel world.”

  She was right to leave the twins. It’s too dangerous for children. Her eyes catch sight of the trench again. A place of death.

  “We’s won’t be here long, Delphie.”

  Ben was wrong. Days turned into weeks, and weeks into months. Three weeks after arriving, Beth and George contracted the smallpox that had riddled the camp. They hadn’t known the tent carried disease. First the women and children they shared the tent with passed, then Beth and George. Like Anabelle and Georgina, they rest in a mass grave beneath a peach grove. Sissy took to bed for days, refusing food and water. Delphine stayed by her side, forcing water into her mouth, assuring her Beth and George were in a better place. She pressed that her only son needed her to live. But she doesn’t know if he’s still alive. Sometimes, she believes Sissy wishes to die in this place with her husband and daughter. Willy keeps her earthbound in this place though he hasn’t returned in weeks.

  Too young to fight, Willy was assigned to be a Union scout, alerting Union soldiers of Confederate movement in the surrounding areas. Once or twice, he’d escaped to visit his mother with a few rations. The last time, he informed Delphine of Ben’s recruitment into Grant’s colored regiment.

  “Ben’s a soldier now.”

  Asleep the morning he left on assignment with Willy, she hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye. “He got his wish,” Delphine replied, saddened and feeling abandoned.

  A month has passed since Willy’s last visit. Now it’s she and Sissy grieving their losses together in a place that brings no solace, just a struggle to stay alive. Assigned jobs as laundresses in Sud’s Row, work became a respite from their worries. The money promised to them as laundresses hasn’t touched their lye-cracked hands; however, the disagreeable laundering continues. Soaking. Scrubbing. Rinsing. Wringing. Boiling lice and infection from clothing and bedding. Bluing yellowed clothes white. Ironing and starching. The ritual keeps her mind off Massa capturing her. But after three months, she’s sure he’s stopped searching. Days when she’s confronted with bloodied and bullet-riddled uniforms, her fear for Ben intensifies and she imagines a gunshot to his head or heart. An instant death. To vanquish the thought, she’d scrub the blood so hard her hands would blister and ache the next morning. But as December grows closer, another concern rises, giving birth to her child in this hell.

  People crowd the encampment in numbers for sanctuary. Security Delphine hasn’t found just misery. At moments, she longs for the twins, the yellow nursery, and Magnolia’s luxuries, but she can never go back. Here, the only consolation she’s gained is inspiration from wandering missionaries. After mindless hours of laundering, she pines for Sunday Bible studies. To her surprise and heartache, one Sunday, she’d wandered into the empty barracks and found an abandoned Bible beside a blank chalkboard. The missionary’s abrupt departure left her with deeper sorrow.

  A new purpose inspired Delphine to take up the Bible and continue the missionaries’ cause. She offered illiterate women and children reading and writing studies from the Testament. With such despair surrounding the camp daily, learning offered hope. Her skills are rudimentary, but it’s enough for those with none. Twice a week they gather in the wooden barracks, learning one Bible verse at a time. Though difficult to decipher, the words provoke discussion and consolation in a place of uncertainty.

  November arrived with scant rations from Union soldiers, who are dying from starvation, smallpox, and dysentery from fetid water along with the others. With meager sustenance, soldiers forage the woodlands and loot many nearby plantations for food. Delphine and Sissy start eating one meal a day to stretch the small rations of flour, beans, potatoes, salt pork, and dried vegetables longer. After weeks of little food and diminished rations, Delphine worries Sissy’s lost too much weight. Her clothes hang loose around her slim frame, and her collar and shoulder bones protrude from her top. Potatoes and hardtack—biscuit made of flour and water—are the only food to stave off hunger. The large jar of molasses Maw packed has dwindled to half a jar, as they used a smidgen to sweeten boiled water for tea and spread on hardtack. Their sole source of protein, salt beef, finished a week ago, leaves them always hungry for fat in their diets, as it does many in the camp.

  Days when she wanders to the creek for water, she imagines the bare peach trees heavy with fruit and most nights dreams of gorging on the juicy flesh till her stomach bursts, waking with cramps from hunger pangs. A few months ago, she gathered a bucket of peach pits left by scavengers and cleaned, boiled, and baked them over fire as Maw showed her years ago. Maw drank peach pit tea to cure an upset stomach. But she and Sissy drink it to stave off hunger pains. At night, the peach and almond scent soothes them before bed.

  Delphine believes they will die of despair before starvation, but evening mourning rituals give them hope in their darkest moments. Neither illness nor malnutrition stops the worshipful gathering of men and women, praying for the dead. A collective spiritual euphoria inspired by handclap-enlivened worship, song, and dance resounds throughout the night. The ritual feeds a need greater than food, freedom. Delphine and Sissy huddle together in prayer for Sissy’s departed family, and Benoit and Willy’s safe return. A few dawns, they woke with many in the barrack. Clustered in sleep. Drunk from rapture or delirium of hunger.

  When the baby stopped kicking weeks ago, Delphine worried poor nourishment weakened the child as it has her. Just days from giving birth, she won’t have the stamina to force a baby from her hips. No matter how often she protests, Sissy, skin-and-bones, continue to share her meals, eating half and leaving the rest for her. “Eat foe the little one. I’s be fine till soldiers bring rations any day, now,” she says with certainty every time.

  Has hunger muddled her brain? Her biggest fear is Sissy will die before the newborn comes. “Siss quit being stubborn. The child and I’s won’t survive alone. Don’t leave me.”

  “I ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

  “Youse my family now, Siss.”

  As she and Sissy grow thinner, listless, time slips past with silent dread, no reassurance from soldiers. With two potatoes, a half sack of flour, and Maw’s molasses dwindling, they won’t make it much longer if food doesn’t arrive. Delphine wonders if the Union cares. Have they abandoned them to die and rot in the camp?

  One of the bleakest Mississippi winters in years leaves everyone in the camp vulnerable, many dying from exposure in makeshift shelters with no access to coats, shoes, or extra blankets to keep warm. Western winds howl off the river and pound flimsy canvases, cutting a wintry blast through slits and cracks. White condensation rises from Delphine’s trembling lips as she shivers in sweat-soaked clothing. Her water broke an hour ago, but feverish and weak, she couldn’t move. But now, with a sharper pain, she throws the cover from her body, plucks the asafetida amulet from her collar, which does nothing for her suffering, and rolls in agony from the mat to the frigid earth floor. The frosty air soothes her hot skin and the rash coating her face and neck. A spasm, more painful than the last, rolls across her pelvis, prompting a guttural groan.

  Her legs buckle as she struggles to stand, forcing her to her knees. She inches to the center of the tent, looking over at Sissy tucked beneath the blanket. “Siss . . . baby comin’. Sissy?” When she doesn’t respond, Delphine crawls toward her, arched with pain, trailing blood behind her ragged dress tail.


  “Sissy, it’s time.” Delphine shakes her waist, pausing in the eerie quiet. She lifts the blanket and rolls Sissy over with a sharp gasp. “Sissy? Siss? Sissssss! Please, wake up!” She drops her forehead to Sissy’s chest. “Youse can’t leave, not now.” Delphine lifts her gaze to Sissy’s serene expression, a peaceful image of sleep, but no breath flows through her body.

  “Please, Lawd, please . . . Wake up, Sissy. You ain’t leavin’ me now, not now!” She rocks Sissy’s waist and pumps her chest, trying to bring life into her stiff body. “Lawd, give her back! Wake up, Sissy! You promised!” She drops her head onto Sissy’s silent chest that beat with life just hours ago. “Lawd, why? She’s all I’s got. I’s can’t do dis alone.”

  Delphine snivels and wipes a fallen tear from Sissy’s wizened, ashen-brown cheek, rubbing her bluish fingertips as though burnishing the skin with warmth. Sissy’s flaky lips had frozen in a smile as though joy swelled her heart at death. A tie ripped open by the wind flaps back and forth, sweeping a frigid draft toward the makeshift bed and across Sissy’s body. Exposure took her in her sleep. She hadn’t died as she’d thought she might from smallpox, which claimed her husband and daughter. After several weeks of sparse food, starvation whittled her to bones, no fat to protect her from exposure. Delphine shivers, reaches over the mat, and catches the flapping canvas with a quick fastening of the burlap ties Sissy constructed a week ago.

  “Ahh!” She slumps over her knees with an acute spasm. Another pain, too strong to tolerate, drops her unconscious to the floor. Five minutes later, she wakes with a feverish delirium obliterating what occurred before she fainted. A sharp twinge warns the baby’s coming. Delphine’s mind sees an illusion of Sissy rising and sitting next to her, though her lifeless body remains on the bed.

  “Delphie, don’t be scared. Youse goin’ have dis child now . . .” Sissy points at the center beam. “Hold dat pole tight and squat. Baby falls quicker and easier.”

  Delphine crawls across the freezing room, stops, and clutches her belly with a guttural groan. She continues toward the center of the tent, back arched to restrain the spasms. Lifting her skirt above her thighs, she grips the pole with simultaneous moans and cries.

  “She’s comin’ fast, Siss.”

  Grunting and squeezing the wooden post, she pushes with a hellish scream, straining till her heart flutters and consciousness verges on faintness.

  Delphine drops her head onto the pole, drawing quick breaths. “Lawd, give me strength.” With a grunt, she arches her spine and thrusts her head back, pushing, shifting on her ankles, knees, and hips, burning from holding the squat. A searing pain tears through her birth canal.

  “Ahhhhh! God help me, Sissy!” She pants, gripping the steady pole with another groan. “Siss, I can’t do dis.”

  “You must and will, Delphie. Push, child.”

  In Delphine’s illusory perception, Sissy rises like a current from the bed, kneeling beside her with a firm hand on her back, rubbing and bolstering her spine, but it’s her own determination holding her upright.

  With several pushes, the baby’s head drops between her thighs. Her eyes fall to the double-wrapped umbilical cord around the infant’s neck, alarmed.

  “Child can’t breathe!” she yells, panting and reaching for the infant’s neck.

  “Calm down and bring yo child into dis world.”

  Pushing harder and holding the child’s slippery head with one hand, the infant’s shoulders appear. Delphine wobbles back on one elbow with the imagined help of Sissy and pushes and pulls the newborn girl from her womb. But the infant’s bluish hue sends fear through Delphine’s mind.

  “KNIFE!” she screams, glancing toward the other end of the tent, wondering why Sissy hasn’t moved. “Please, Sissy, get da knife. Baby can’t breathe.”

  “Bite it, Delphie. It’s da only way. Now, child.”

  With no time to waste, Delphine lifts the child to her mouth, wraps her lips around the cord, and bites into the dense tissue, gnawing through gelatinous matter for several minutes, veins spurting blood over her face, neck, and chest and coursing along her arms. She swiftly untangles the umbilical and ties a knot as though someone’s hands guide her action.

  When the child doesn’t cry, she raises her in the air. “Breathe, please breathe!” Recalling Maw’s hard spank to her firstborn, she whacks the child across the bottom, rousing an infantile wail. She laughs, falling onto her back, the infant’s warm body radiating steam in the chilly air.

  “Siss, I’s did it.”

  Cries, fits of laughter, love, and pain rack Delphine’s body as she admires the child she holds aloft. She pulls the skirt hem up and over the child’s body and scuttles off the icy floor toward the bed, swaddling the infant in the blanket. “Youse warm now, little Sissy.” The spontaneous name appeared unplanned, prompting a glance toward Sissy beaming with joy.

  Delphine shivers not from the frigid night but chills from a high fever. Her top hangs off her exposed, thin shoulders, wet with sweat, birth fluid, and blood. She musters strength, crawls to Beth’s bed, and fetches the extra bedding Sissy refused to remove and forbade her to touch as if her departed daughter would return.

  “Fo’give me . . .” She peers at Siss before taking the blankets from the mat. “Child’s cold.”

  Sissy nods. “Take it foe little Sissy. Youse done good, Delphine.” Her body appears to float to the matt; her eyes flutter closed with a bright smile. Delirium fades in a flash, showing Delphine the truth in Sissy’s cadaver blue lips and pasty brown skin. But feverish and weakened, hallucinations trick her mind. One moment, Sissy lies lifeless on her back, and the next, life revives through her body as she shifts sideways, drawing the covers over her shoulder.

  Afterbirth oozes down her thighs as she makes her way back to the newborn. Fearing the tiny, glistening girl will freeze to death, she removes and wraps her skirt around the squirming infant and peels the bloody, sweat-soaked shift from her body to the floor. Lying beside the child under the blankets, she pulls her into her hot chest, spotted with the reddish rash of smallpox. “Shush now, be warm till I’s make a mornin’ fire, little one,” she whispers, folding her arms around the quivering infant. She remembers a lullaby Maw sang to her as a child, humming most of the song and whispering the last refrain.

  “Jes lay yo head upon my bres;

  An’ res’, an’ res’, an’ res’, an’ res’,

  My little colored chile . . .”

  The temperature sinks lower in the night, too low for Delphine’s thin body and weak heart. Hypothermia sets in as she drifts in dreams to the warm, bright-yellow nursery with little Sissy in her arms. She places her newborn girl in the crib beside the twins and strolls toward the window. Maw and Ben wave to her from the small garden behind the cabin as her heart gives a final flutter.

  Winds subside at sunrise over a familiar wagon rolling to a stop. Colored auxiliary soldiers serving as stewards come for bodies death claimed in the night. One steward enters the tent, pausing at blood trailing from a covered figure to an uncovered woman who’d died with a smile. He crouches beside the mat, peels back the blanket, gasps, and glances away. Anger drives his fist into the muddy ground. The bloody mess around the wooden post reveals the girl gave birth in that spot alone, as the other woman’s clothes are unsullied. He recalls the beautiful girl when she entered the camp glowing with child. A child that might have survived with warmth and medical care.

  He turns his head around and winces at the girl’s nude, gaunt figure. She’d removed the bloody shift and swaddled the baby in her skirt for extra warmth, exposing sharp shoulder blades, ribcage, and hipbones that protrude through her translucent skin. Bloodstains smear her lips, chin, neck, hand, and fingernails. In the center of the tent, he notices the curled umbilical cord on the floor and glances back at her face, realizing what she’d done. Incipient smallpox rashes her skin. In her weakened state, he perceives she’d spent every ounce of strength to deliver the child whose time was short before dying in
the night.

  He’s seen horrific deaths in two months as a steward but never a newborn and mother entwined in a frozen embrace. He draws the blanket over their bodies with a silent prayer. Clearing his throat, he summons his voice. “Moe bodies here,” he hollers to the other steward outside.

  Two men bearing shovels stand over a deep trench heaped with bodies, unaware of the presence beside them. They begin a routine they’ve performed every day since the frigid winter arrived. Shoveling dirt over women, men, and children who, finding only death, faced their demise in a place of refuge.

  When dirt covers the young woman and her infant, the unseen woman backs away, turning around, revealing Delphine in her pregnant form. She walks along the center of the camp, past the medical tent and large barracks where she taught and prayed, and past the many dying in their tents toward the exit.

  “We’s free now, little one.”

  She strolls toward the exit she’d yearned to flee the moment she arrived. Before stepping through the gate, she turns and waves at three figures, Sissy, Beth, and Joe reunited, waving goodbye with bright smiles. Delphine glances up the steep sandstone bluff and drifts beyond the wooden barricade toward a blossoming orchard. She plucks a plump ruby peach, inhales the sugary fragrance, rolls it over her parched lips, and takes a rapturous bite she’d craved for months. The trees rustle, heavy with peaches falling and collecting in her lifted skirt. Mesmeric laughter and a familiar lullaby pervade the orchard as her image and voice dissolve in a rain of pink blossoms.

  Descendants

  Present-day Magnolia Sunrise

  Spellbound, Simone steps from the long-drained bathtub, exits the suite, and climbs three flights to the unlocked nursery. She wanders toward the closet to a loose floorboard, pulls out a wooden box, weeping over timeworn books. Dusk fades, weakening Delphine's grip on Simone, who now sleeps against the closet wall. She drifts toward her favorite chair, humming a lullaby. “Rock a bye, my baby bye . . .” The rocker sways, pitching her voice across the room, waning with sunrise.