“Yes, but—”
“Thank you, Mrs. Johnson. I’m sure you’ll be seeing me later. Take care.”
The forest canopy shielded her from the brunt of the late-morning sunlight. She picked her way carefully around roots, sticks, and the occasional pinecone. Evelyn had trekked ten minutes into the woods when she spotted familiar gingham material. As she sprinted forward, she tripped and sprawled. “Ummpff!”
“Chile, you got to be careful—you got a bellyful, ’member?” In a moment Granny B was there and helped Evelyn right herself.
“I remember,” Evelyn breathed.
“Anyhow, you look fine, ’cept for that bad place on yo’ leg. Guess I’m gon’ have to pack up my blackberries and take care of that.”
“You walked all the way out here to pick berries?”
Granny B leaned down and retrieved her basket. “Well, I woulda picked ’em in my front room, but they don’t happen to grow there. See that you stay on yo’ feet till we get back to the house.”
Much like Velma Johnson, Evelyn matched Granny B’s pace. “Isn’t the sun too strong this time of day for you to be out here?”
“Well, if it’s too strong for me, it’s too strong for you. Whatchyou doin’ out here?” She moved aside a low-hanging branch.
“Getting you!”
“I’m the old, sick one, and you the one cain’t walk straight.”
“I’m glad you find it funny.” This newfound clumsiness bothered Evelyn. Once, she could’ve run through these woods blindfolded.
At the house Granny B handed her a moistened paper towel. “Dab it while I see to these.” She poured the blackberries onto a long platter. Then she washed and dried her hands.
Evelyn propped up her leg. Blood trickled down her shin. “Ooh.”
“Oh, chile, hush. It ain’t nuthin’ but a scratch.” She dabbed the sore area with peroxide and covered it with a large bandage.
Evelyn appreciated her grandma’s attentiveness, even without a smear of Vaseline. “Thanks, Granny B.”
She walked back to her blackberries. “You can thank me by taking yo’ foot off my chair.”
“May I help you?”
“You know somethin’ mo’ ’bout cleanin’ berries than I do?”
“Well—”
“I didn’t thank so.” Granny B retrieved a canister from the cabinet to the left of the stove and set it down. She poured sugar over some of the blackberries she had separated. Then she withdrew several jars from the pantry and deftly unscrewed the lids. After she filled each with scoopfuls of sweetened and unsweetened berries, she resealed them. “Can you get me one mo’ jar from the pantry?”
Evelyn hopped to her feet. “Sure.”
Crash! Granny B fell against the sink, one hand outstretched.
“Granny B!”
She waved her off.
Evelyn’s heart reached out, but she stayed on her side of the kitchen.
Two, then three minutes passed. Evelyn poured a glass of water and grabbed a hand towel from a drawer. “Granny B . . . ?”
She ignored the towel but reached for the water. “Could you get me some mo’?” Granny B looked and sounded as if she’d just run a long race.
“Are you okay?”
Granny B swallowed about half the water and set the glass on the table. “Use that towel to hep me clean up this mess.”
“Of course.” Evelyn restored the kitchen while Granny B got herself in order. When her grandmother returned, Evelyn asked her for the third time, “Are you okay?”
“We’re going for a walk.”
“A walk? It’s a hundred degrees outside!”
“You gon’ let a dyin’ old woman get the best of you? The road got plenty of shade, and it ain’t that hot.”
Evelyn stared after her grandmother, openmouthed, imagining Carrot Lane, treeless. But from somewhere she heard herself agree.
“Then let’s go.”
——————
They walked along Carrot Lane for a quarter mile before turning on a narrow, tree-lined road. Leafy, languidly swaying branches obscured much of the day’s heat. Granny B’s espadrilles kicked up dust and scattered loose pebbles. Evelyn’s thoughts drowned out the overwhelming silence until Granny B came up for air at an abandoned, two-story brick house. Ivy grew rampant on its face. Broken windows gaped. Weeds and wildflowers warred with the grass. Still, Evelyn envisioned its former glory, with its wide front porch and third-floor dormer windows.
“That’s where Miss Jeannie Boyd lived, her and her husband. They didn’t have no kids. They just lived there all by theyselves in that big house his fam’ly left ’em. The chillun used ta walk out they way after school to stop by. She’d pass out candy and cookies and dranks. Sometimes they’d even get a ham sandwich. They thought she was Santy Claus.”
Evelyn smiled a little.
“This where Henton run to, that night when Milton was born. Miss Jeannie had trainin’ birthin’ babies, you see. It was pourin’ rain. Lightnin’ lit up the sky like it was noonday. I thought the thunder would shake our little house right to pieces . . . but she came anyhow. All she brought with her was a cape to cover her head and some boots she thought to strap on. She just busted in the do’ like one of them strong winds blowin’ ever’thang round outside. Made ever’body go in the kitchen—even Henton. Not that he was much help.”
“Didn’t he go get her?” Evelyn asked quietly.
“The pain just kept comin’. We’d see a streak a lightnin’, and the pain and thunder would hit bam! together. I ain’t never felt nuthin’ like it, not even now.” She rubbed her side. “But Miss Jeannie just got on my bed with them muddy boots, and we moaned and screamed together, just pushin’ until finally out came Milton. And then both of us cried. I bet the chillun didn’t know what to thank.”
“Was he a big baby?” She winced.
Granny B looked at the younger woman like she was coming out of a deep sleep. “No, he wan’t big nor little, just yo’ usual baby . . . other than his eyes.”
“What do you mean?”
“They was wide-open, from the minute he got here. I ’member he looked up at me, darin’ me, soon as Miss Jeannie plopped him on my belly. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I knew he was seein’ what I was thankin’ . . .”
A crumpled paper napkin tumbled end over end and got caught in a tall weed creeping along the road’s edge. Evelyn watched it struggle free.
Granny B’s eyes scaled the estate. “I was just gon’ give him to Miss Jeannie. Right there. That night. And she woulda taken him, too, even bein’ he was black. But then, gazin’ into his eyes . . .”
“. . . You could see he was your baby and you loved him?”
But Granny B shook her head briskly. One tear trickled from her left eye. “I could see he’d only come back. You know, like them birds do ever’ year come sprang. Miss Jeannie just lived too close. I knew he’d find his way back.”
Granny B’s words, her voice, her eyes—they held Evelyn captive there in the road. She wanted to scream, “Granny B, how could you not love him instantly?” So what about your own baby, Evelyn? The child growing and moving inside you that you’ve resented from day one? She stumbled. Granny B’s shoes were too big for her.
Granny B kept her from falling. “That makes two times today.”
Evelyn caressed her rounded belly.
“When you pregnant, you don’t give up nuthin’. Yo’ body does the work, not the heart or mind. But bein’ a mama mean choosin’ to do stuff you don’t wont to do or maybe doin’ stuff you shouldn’t even be doin’ at all. You might have to turn yo’ back on whatchyou love and wrap yo’ arms tight round whatchyou don’t. But that’s a choice you make up here.” She tapped her head. “Not always in here.” She jabbed her chest. “God knows my heart didn’t even recognize Milton. Not then.”
Granny B waved a hand at Evelyn’s waistline. “It’s easy now, carryin’ round somethin’ you ain’t got to work yo’ butt off to feed or clothe . .
. and then they look at you with eyes still hungry and cold. They look like the very person you hate even more’n yo’self.”
Evelyn couldn’t dispel the image of baby Milton, gazing with brand-new eyes at his mother and seeing . . . despair. She remembered the grown man, broken, supported by his wife, gazing at his mother and seeing the same thing. “Poor Milton,” she mumbled.
“Poor Milton?”
“Yes, poor Milton. He was born with the weight of the world on his tiny shoulders. He could never carry that! Give him away to some woman down the street? He was innocent, Granny B! You look at raising children as a job, a punishment even. Where is the joy? Sure, you had it hard, but a lot of people have it hard. At least you had your husband—”
“No, I didn’t have no husband. He left me.”
“But that wasn’t until after Milton was born. Why didn’t he just take Milton with him when he left, like he mentioned in his letter? He could’ve taken all of them once he found a place.”
“How could my husband take Milton somewhere? He was long gone ’fo’ Milton was born. ’Bout a year in fact. Not that he woulda taken Milton somewhere since he left his own chillun behind, too.”
Evelyn’s head swam.
Granny B smiled with her mouth, not her eyes. “You thank you know it all, and you just cain’t wait to share it with ever’body. ‘Granny B, go to the doctor. Hug yo’ chillun. Talk to me. Mama, stop tellin’ me what to do.’ You don’t know how to find yo’ be-hind with both hands.”
Evelyn stepped away from her.
Granny B headed in the opposite direction.
Evelyn didn’t know if she wanted to follow her. Then suddenly she did. “Granny B, wait!”
She was talking before Evelyn reached her. “When I was thirteen, Hewitt Agnew stopped at my mam and pap’s house for a drank a-water from the well. My sisters and I were s’posed to be workin’, but when I heard that voice, I dropped them eggs and ran to the side of the house where I could peep at him. He was somethin’ else, with that wavy hair and them green eyes. My sister tried to pull me back to them chickens, but I knew that my days stealin’ babies from them stupid hens was ’bout to end.”
Granny B quieted and they both moved aside for a passing car. When the last bits of gravel stung their legs, they resumed walking. “Hewitt came back to the house three, fo’ mo’ times over the next year and a half, askin’ fo’ work. My pap thought he was a nice young man, so he hired him on. But he didn’t know Hewitt. Pap sho’ found out when Hewitt ran off with his baby girl.
“Hewitt drug me to a justice of the peace—I was raised right, you see. Then he moved us ’bout two miles from Farmin’ton and he set me up in a boardin’house over a shoeshine sto’. We stayed there ’bout two weeks while Hewitt tried to get my pap to take him in as his second son.” Granny B laughed derisively.
“You see, I didn’t know it, but Hewitt had come up with this big plan to marry some rich man’s daughter and then set hisself up. Well, he didn’t know my pap. Turns out I didn’t know him either. Pap bent my spoon and turned over my plate when I left like I did. I was no mo’ his daughter—so Hewitt surefire wan’t his son and wan’t never gon’ be.
“Hewitt saw he was stuck with a young wife who didn’t know nuthin’ ’bout lovin’ no man. And he came to see she didn’t know nuthin’ ’bout stoppin’ babies from comin’. One day he moved us to Sprang Hope. And this where I been ever since.” Granny B clamped her lips together in that way she had of saying, “And that’s the end of that.”
“But what about Henton—?”
“You thank this some fairy tale I’m tellin’?”
“I just don’t understand.”
“Goodness, chile, all that education . . . Henton is Hewitt’s older brother, his only brother. The house on Carrot Lane? That was Henton’s ’fo’ Hewitt brought me there. Henton stayed there all by hisself, tendin’ to them weeds, movin’ from room to room like a shadow. At least until we got there.”
“But what about the kids? Didn’t they wonder . . . ? I mean, they think Henton’s their daddy—I thought he was my granddaddy. Granny B, what are you telling me?” Evelyn stumbled to the grass and sat down.
Granny B took a few more steps before she slowly joined her granddaughter and lowered herself to the ground. “Hewitt . . . he . . . well, he worked fo’ the railroad and he came and went with it, maybe two, three times a year. He’d just show up and then be gone by mornin’ ’fo’ the sun could get a breath, if he even stayed, especially when the chillun was younger. Henton, he worked most nights and caught a nap in the day.
“The chillun . . . well, they was too busy stayin’ outta my way, though Thomas s’pected somethin’. He was hidin’ in my closet one day, Lord knows why. Hewitt caught me by surprise and we . . . Well, when I found him hidin’ there, I thought all the words been scared out of him. He never asked me plain, and I . . . I let it go. I guess you know why the chillun spent summers in Booker’s garden.”
“So you let Hewitt use you?” Evelyn couldn’t imagine her grandmother living at the whim of some man.
Granny B’s eyes flashed fire. “Use me? I was usin’ him. I had a house. Henton was nuthin’ but a ghost round there. Hewitt brought money when he could. But say I left. Where was I to go, a woman with a baby—then another baby and another? My mam and pap wouldn’t have me, so you can be sure nobody else would.” She shook her head as if she’d considered and discarded this option. “No, Hewitt didn’t use me. My chillun had a roof over they head and a man they could point to and call Daddy.”
“But the man who was their father wasn’t, a-a-and the man who wasn’t their father was!” Evelyn ran her fingers through her short, sweaty tendrils. “And you had to sleep with him . . .”
“Had to?” A real laugh rumbled up from her belly. “Mo’ like wonted to. It won’t like I was doin’ nuthin’ wrong—he was my husband. And he could touch me and make me forget ’bout them rusty pipes and cracked walls and wailin’ chillun.”
“If it was working out so well for everybody, why’d he leave?”
Granny B’s smile slinked back to where it had escaped. “My heart just got tired, is all. I told him to leave.”
“His own brother’s house?”
“Awww, Henton was mo’ mine than his. That fool Henton woulda done anything fo’ me I asked him to. Turns out, he did mor’n I asked him to.” She swallowed.
“But, Granny B, Henton left you, too.”
The field before us captivated Granny B. “Yeah, he left. And not ’fo’ leavin’ me somethin’ to remember him by.”
“Milton . . . but how?”
Granny B pushed herself to her feet and brushed off the back of her dress. “The same way with you.” She nodded toward my midsection.
“But—”
“We done talked enough.” She peered up at the bits of sky peeking through the leafy canopy overhead. “I smell rain. We’d better head back.”
Clear blue skies and fluffy white clouds winked at Evelyn as Granny B set off for home. Yet by the time they reached the house, the wind had picked up and the heavens had turned gray. Evelyn waited at the porch until her grandmother inched to the top step.
Granny B slid in the key. Thunder rumbled as she looked back over her shoulder.
“I’ll let you get some rest. It’s been a long day.”
Granny B merely nodded and walked inside as the first heavy drops splashed onto Evelyn’s forehead and coursed down her nose.
——————
“Hi, Evelyn. How’s Mama?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, how is Mama? I assume that’s where you’re coming from.” Lis dropped a pack of frozen ground beef on the island. Ice crystals melted on the countertop.
“I’m sorry. I’m just tired and soaked. She’s fine. Tired, I guess, but fine.” Evelyn popped a grape and looked for something else to occupy her mouth besides words.
“Tired from what? What did you do today?”
“Well
. . .” Evelyn pieced together a reasonable facsimile of the truth. “We gathered berries, or rather she did. I just helped her around the kitchen.” Her eyes zeroed in on the mole on her mama’s chin. Who does she get that from? Granny B certainly doesn’t have any moles.
“What is it?” Lis studied Evelyn’s face.
“Nothing. I just noticed your mole.”
“Mole?”
Evelyn pointed to her chin.
Mama’s fingers brushed her lower jaw. “Oh, my beauty mark? I’ve had it all my life!” She tried to peer at her face in the stainless steel refrigerator.
Evelyn poured a glass of water and took a sip. “I know. It’s just that I’ve been thinking a lot about family characteristics and traits, stuff like that. Where did you get that mole? Does your dad, Grandfath—Henton have a mole like that?”
“Noooo. I don’t think so. What makes you think of something like that?”
Evelyn choked on a grape stem. Quickly she sipped more water. “Well . . . you know . . .”
“What? Is it the baby? Is having Kevin here making you finally think about this baby?” Mama turned her back to the refrigerator.
“I guess I should, huh? Where is Kevin?” She slinked toward the kitchen door.
“He waited around for you after his call, but then Jackson came home and asked him to play basketball.”
“Okay . . .” Evelyn’s voice sounded as distant as her thoughts. She started walking away.
“So have you?”
“Have I what?”
“Been giving some thought to the baby? What you’re going to do.”
“What do you mean? I’m going to have a baby—that’s what I’m going to do.”
Mama looked out at the rain. Then she studied her daughter again. “I imagine you and Kevin had a lot of catching up to do. Did you two have a good talk?”
Evelyn’s fingers played a concert on the countertop. “Fine.”
“I remember how you and Kevin used to talk during your visits. But from what I could tell, you never called him. All these weeks, never once. Now that he’s here and knows about the baby, I would think you’d have plenty to talk about.” She paused. “Was he angry?”
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