by Willow Aster
“Right down there is a tunnel. It leads all the way back to the other side of town and comes out at the railroad. Imagine the worst horrors you’ve seen of people being mistreated, and that’s what my daddy saw when he was a young man. He helped many, many people get to freedom through this tunnel, and as a boy, I helped him. Not so many years ago, I’m sad to say there was still a need for it. I’ll never understand why people see color as a dividin’ line.” His eyes look pained as he says this. “Now, I show this to you because I want you to know the history that’s here. The fact that you’re bringing your baby into this home is not small or irrelevant to me. I like to think it’s a way of the heavens thankin’ my family for what we did and blessin’ us with a new life to carry on here.” He wipes his face with his handkerchief and shakes his head, moved at the thought. “No small matter, a’tall.”
I wipe the tears from my eyes, something I’ve had to do non-stop since being pregnant, it seems, but this is finally something worthy of a river of tears. I stand there taking in all that he’s just told me.
“I’m honored to know you, Papa,” I tell him.
“No, we only did what every decent person should have done. I’m glad we were able to find a way.” He puts his arm around my shoulders and squeezes. “I’m not naive about what might happen though, when people see that baby of yours…which is the other reason I showed you this, Caroline. You need to know how to get out quickly if it were to ever come to that.”
He looks at me gravely and I swallow a hard lump. I know he’s right, but hearing it out loud makes it all the more real. He lowers his head, closes his eyes and we’re silent. I’m imagining all the people who have come through here, scared, possibly leaving everything they’ve ever known to find safety and acceptance.
I rub my stomach, thinking I will always do all I can to protect this child from knowing that pain, but wondering what challenges will face us. It feels like we’ve got an uphill battle before we’ve ever even begun.
THE END OF May will mark another birthday coming and going. Sixteen. Hard to believe. I feel like an old woman already. Lugging this massive stomach around makes me feel about thirty. They throw a shower/birthday party for me at Shelby’s a couple weeks before my birthday. As I blow out the birthday candles, I feel a mixture of melancholy and genuine happiness. I’ve eased into a new life that has been, in some ways, far more wonderful than anything I’ve known. I still cry when I get in bed, remembering my last birthday with Isaiah, but I can’t even be angry with myself for still caring. I’m accepting it’s just the way it is and the way it will probably always be. It’s just proof that my heart is unwavering. I wish he’d deserved it, but I can’t help that.
I wake up about three in the morning after my party cry, feeling very uncomfortable. I sit up and ease my feet over the bed, trying to get up. I stand up and double over. Something has changed with the baby. Everything feels lower, a lot lower. I shuffle to the bathroom, still doubled over, and before I open the door, my abdomen hardens. It hurts. I make it to the restroom and contemplate getting in the tub and washing my hair, just in case this is it. I stand there long enough to feel another pain and decide to just go lie back down.
It eases when I get settled on my side, but I still don’t feel quite right. I watch the sun rise through the lace curtains in the room I’m staying in. I can’t say it’s my room just yet, but I do know it’s the prettiest room in the house. I study every beautiful line on the furniture, the pretty arched door frame, and out the window at the magnolia tree that’s in my line of vision. Anything to distract me from what might be happening in my body.
Around eight o’clock, Papa knocks gently on the door. “Caroline girl, you okay?”
I’m normally up by seven with him.
“Come in, Papa. I’m not feeling too good.”
His forehead is etched with deep grooves of worry when he walks through my bedroom door. He comes over and puts his hand to my head, checking to see if I have a fever.
“You feel a mite warm. What’s been happenin’?”
“It feels like she’s dropped and is just sittin’ right on my bladder. I’ve been having pains, too, but they’re a little better right now. Earlier the pains were coming every three minutes, but in the last thirty minutes, they’ve stopped.”
He nods his head. “I wish you’d called me, dear. I thought I was letting you sleep in.” He gives me a sweet grin. “We’ll just keep an eye on this. It’s possible you’re in the early stages. I can call Shelby for you, tell her you won’t be in…I think you probably need to be done with workin’, Caroline. Shelby will understand. She knows you’re close now.”
I nod. I haven’t wanted to stop until the very last possible minute, but the thought of being on my feet with the baby hanging past my drawers sounds awful.
“Tell her I’ll call her later this afternoon to give her an update, but I think you’re right, I’m gonna have to slow down, if nothing else.”
He scoffs and I can hear him muttering about me ’slowing down’ as his feet patter out the door.
“I’ll make you something to eat!” he hollers when he reaches the end of the hall.
“Thank you!” I holler back.
That whole day I stay in bed. Every time I attempt getting up, it feels like the baby is just gonna slip right out. Shelby ends up calling me in the afternoon, beating me to the punch.
“Now you listen here, Caroline, you stay home from here on. You hear me? We’ve known it could be any time and we’re gonna be all right. You just take care of you and that baby, okay?”
I thank her and take a nap. Now that I’m horizontal, I realize how worn out I’ve been.
The next morning I feel a little better and am able to get up and do a few things around the house. I mostly sit, though, and work on sewing baby pajama sacks. I resist making any in pink, even though I know this baby is a girl like I know my name is Caroline. Sewing makes me miss Nellie and sometime during the course of the day, I decide to write her a letter to let her know how I’m doing.
Dear Nellie and Grandpaw,
I’m okay. I’ve found a nice place to settle down and it’s starting to feel more like home each day. I’ve made new friends, so I’m not as lonesome for Tulma as I thought I might be. I do think about you often and hope that all is well with you. Please don’t tell anyone that I wrote. I’d just as soon everyone there forget about me, so we can all move on, but I did want to let you know that I’m doing just fine. Know that you are always in my heart.
With loving thoughts,
Caroline
I didn’t expect it, but I feel better when I write the note…like I’ve just been released of a lifetime of expectation. I love my grandparents, but there’s never been any doubt that I see the world so differently than they do. They will never accept the baby I’m carrying, no matter the circumstances in which it might have come into this world. In fact, it’s just another strike against it, if it is—well, I can’t even think about that right now. I’d rather remember my grandparents with fondness than hate them for the injustice I know deep down would occur if they were around my baby. I could never do that to any child of mine. It’s best that I got out of there when I did.
THE REST OF the week is a seesaw of stops and starts. I feel awful. I feel okay. I hurt. I’m fine. I think I’m in labor. I’m ready to clean the entire house. We get to the actual week of my birthday and I’m tired of crashing hard on the pendulum. I go for a long walk, determined to go ahead and get this baby out. No more pussyfootin’ around. Maybe we’ll end up sharing a birthday.
I walk and walk and in the last ten minutes of the walk, the pain intensifies about a hundred notches. When it eases up somewhat, I walk faster, realizing this wasn’t the smartest idea I’ve ever had. As Nellie would say, my brain is rattlin’ around like a BB in a boxcar. To make matters worse, I don’t see Papa’s truck out in the yard. I think he had a meeting in town and start a prayerful intercession that he will come home soon.
> As I set foot into the kitchen, I have to lean onto the counter for several minutes. A pain comes sharp and fast. I grip the edges of the sink and slowly breathe in and out. Just then a little trickle runs down my leg and I panic, thinking it’s going to be a gush. As soon as my pregnancy started showing, the horror stories began, particularly at the diner. I’ve heard more than I ever needed to know, and have been terrified since, that my water would break in some sort of horrifying and embarrassing situation. I’m shocked that this tiny trickle is all there is.
The pains feel like they’re coming quickly, but I think they’re still five minutes apart. I’ve always thought I could tolerate pain pretty well, but holy cripe, this hurts. Sweat is pouring out of me. I make it to the bathroom and run the shower, determined that I’ll go in the hospital clean. It takes all the willpower I possess to be in the water for a minute. I’m in just long enough to rinse off the sweat, and when I get out, I bite down on a towel during the contraction. I put on one of the few dresses that still fits, grab my overnight bag, and sit by the door, waiting for Papa to get home. The contractions get closer together. The only sound in the house is my ragged breathing. I swipe the tears off my cheeks and when I think I can’t take anymore, I pick up the phone and dial.
Thankfully, she’s the one who answers. When she hears it’s me, she cries out and says, “Darlin’, as I live and breathe, I was just thinkin’ ’bout you!”
“Can you come? Can you please come?” I gasp out. I tell her where I am and as soon as it seems she has it straight, I hang up.
It might be hours or it might be seconds. It feels like an eternity.
Surely I am dying.
The pain, good God and Lucifer, it hurts so bad.
How could this happen to me?
I hate everyone I have ever known.
I want to be shot.
Now. Just take me now, Lord. What did I ever do to you? I really want to know.
Kill me. Please.
Get this creature that is clawing me inside out—get it out.
I hate Eve. Stupid Eve and that stupid apple. What in the world was she thinking, eating that stupid fruit and causing all this affliction on womankind for the rest of forever.
I get on the floor, desperate to find a comfortable spot, and am there when Papa comes home. He’s frantic. He calls the ambulance and they arrive quickly. They put an oxygen mask on me and several pairs of worried eyes look down at me. We get to the hospital and I’m wheeled directly to the delivery room. The contractions are making my eyes roll back in my head. I feel like I’m losing all sense of reality.
I push when they tell me to push. And vow to myself that I will never ever let another man get near my nether regions to do this awful thing to me ever, ever again. Never in a million years ever.
“Okay, Caroline, this should be the last push! Get a deep breath and when I say go, you push. Ready?”
“I CAN’T WAIT,” I yell.
This baby wants out of me and I want it out so bad. I bite down on a towel my nurse has given me to clutch and push until I can’t push anymore. Every cell shakes as the blaze ignites every crevice of my body. God, it hurts.
And then she’s out. I hear a lusty cry and they flop her tiny body on my chest.
IS THIS WHAT love is? I look at Gracie Mae and feel like my heart is going to burn right out of my chest, it’s so full of love for her. She’s smaller than they expected. Just barely over 4 pounds. I look in her eyes and know the reason. I would have loved her no matter what. There is no doubt in my mind. Before she was even born, her love began healing me. But when I see her face, I shake as the sobs overtake me.
She is, without a doubt, Isaiah Washington’s daughter.
GRACIE IS GOING to be a year old tomorrow. In some ways, it’s gone much smoother than I expected. It’s true that having a child so young has made me ancient before my time, but I’m pretty sure I already was before Gracie ever came along. Maybe she’s the reason I had to grow up so fast.
RUBY ARRIVED THE night before we came home from the hospital with Gracie. As soon as she heard the anguish in my voice over the phone, she left Harriet’s and packed everything she’d need to come stay awhile. Once she was here, we knew we couldn’t ever be apart again. She’s gonna go wherever I go and vice versa.
Ruby was the angel I saw as we pulled into the driveway with Papa, bringing Gracie home for the first time. Standing out front, her white apron blowing in the slight breeze and her hand up to her mouth, she watched for us.
Before I could get out, she was opening the car door for me and holding me tight. I don’t know whose tears fell more, hers or mine. I’d never been so happy to see someone in all my life. She saved me. Ruby and Gracie and Papa. They saved me.
AFTER I PUT Gracie to bed, I help Ruby make the cake for Gracie’s birthday. We’re having a party tomorrow, just something small to break the monotony of all the busyness that’s been going on around the plantation. I say small—the party keeps getting more elaborate every time Papa goes into town.
“I just can’t resist giving her this one more thing!” he says.
I just can’t resist anything he does. He is crazy over my girl and me. The love he and Ruby shower over us has been enough to make up for a lifetime of neglect. Every day I wake up excited to see my Gracie and happy to face a day with this family.
It hasn’t all been easy. I don’t take Gracie into town very often because of all the looks people throw our way. The older she gets, the darker her skin turns and someone inevitably makes a comment. Her hair is getting longer, and it’s the most perfect shade of caramel. I like her curls wild and don’t want to have to tame them for going into town. I do, though, because it seems to invite trouble when I don’t.
Miss Shelby bit her tongue many times from what I knew she was dying to ask, until finally, when Gracie was about four months old, I came out with it. I figured we’d worked together long enough that I should tell the truth and let her decide what to do with the information.
Once I told her the full story, she was quiet for a long time. I apologized profusely for lying to her. I felt horribly guilty for my soldier story. She ended up saying she understood why I’d done it.
“Truth of the matter is, I wish you hadn’t told me,” she said.
She quietly admitted that she might not have given me the job if she’d known I was having a ‘colored baby’. By that time, though, she loved Gracie.
“You can barely even tell she’s black,” she said. Like that was a good thing.
It’s those little backhanded ways the people have here that makes it challenging. Painful. Jarring. On the one hand, they are kind and do care; and on the other, there are still prejudices that run deeper than the Mississippi River. Here we might as well be back in 1950. I know it would be that much worse in Tulma.
I can’t shop at the corner market next to Shelby’s. Or go to the gas station across the street from the doctor’s office. More than once I’ve come home clutching my baby and whispering loving words in her ear to ward off all the evil that’s just been spoken over her. It was one thing when she couldn’t talk, now she’s starting to understand way more than anyone thinks. Just last week, I stood up to a woman in Shelby’s. When Papa came in with Gracie and she ran up to me to pick her up, saying Mama, the woman got a grotesque look on her face.
“That baby yours?” she practically snarled.
“Yes, ma’am, she sure is,” I said, kissing Gracie’s face. I took napkins out of my apron pocket to set on the woman’s table and as I was walking away, the napkins all scattered to the floor.
The woman had shoved them off her table.
“I aint gonna be waited on by no nigger lover,” she said.
I covered Gracie’s ears, picked up the napkins off the floor, and said, “Well, I guess you better keep moving on outta town. Don’t settle here. I’m not gonna let my daughter be surrounded by people like you. And we’re not goin’ anywhere.”
I acted tough, but I shook
for about an hour after the encounter.
It’s one of the reasons I’ve agreed to open a bed and breakfast at the plantation. Papa is the one who mentioned it first, once he tasted the heavenlies, otherwise known as Ruby's cooking. In a month, we’re having our grand opening. I’ve already set it up with Shelby to quit working at the diner a week before we open the Inn, so I can help finish up the last-minute preparations.
We talked it over with Brenda too, not wanting to take any business from her. But all her rooms are now rented out for longer stays, and she likes that better anyway.
I’ll be able to have Gracie with me all day. We won’t have to go into town as much, and we’ll hopefully make a little money to keep everything running. According to Papa, we don’t need to do a single thing, he’d be just fine if we sat in the living room reading all day, every day. But he’s learned that Ruby and I don’t know the meaning of not working, so he’s just trying to be accommodating with us at this point, I think. And I’d venture to say, he admires our drive to do something worthwhile.
He strolls into the kitchen with a glass of scotch. I hold out a spoon of cake batter for him to try and he rolls his eyes back in his head when he takes a bite.
“How did I get so lucky to find you?” he asks.
“You’re easy to please.” I laugh and reach out to lay down some stray brows that are covering his eye.
“That’s not the truth. I didn’t even like cake before y’all got a hold of me.”
“I don’t blame ya! I tasted what they’s eating at Shelby’s and that ain’t good for the soul,” Ruby claims. “Not using enough vanilla over there,” she whispers to me.
“Well, when we open the Magnolia Inn, everyone is gonna be clamoring to taste your cooking, Ruby.” I lean over and kiss her cheek. “They can’t help it that they’re not as good as you.”