by Lori Lansens
Not a moment’s rest did Addy enjoy though, before the front door opened and there stood the silhouette of a tall, thin man. Even though his face was in shadow Addy could see it was her husband, Gradison Mosely. She did not pause to wonder where she was or what Mose was doing here, for she knew full well she was in the entrance hall of the house where she lived and that she’d fallen asleep waiting for Mose. Waiting for Mose. She was always waiting for Mose.
She smiled at him as he burst through the door and put her fingers to her lips to shush him. “Mrs. Yardley’s just got her baby down,” she whispered, and pointed to the closed door of the first-floor apartment.
Mose nodded and closed the big oak door gently behind him, making a comical show of tiptoeing down the hall to where Addy sat. He set his luggage on the sofa beside her and drew from behind him a small box wrapped in red foil. The box was not a surprise, for there was always a present when Mose came home and it was always a pair of salt’n’pepper shakers. The last pair had been ceramic lobsters from Nova Scotia, made to look like a bride and groom. Addy had laughed and laughed when she saw them.
This time though, she’d wait to open her present. She smiled into her husband’s green eyes and rose, reaching her arms around his neck. She kissed him deeply, feeling him swell, then whispered a thing into his ear that she knew would have him bounding up the stairs to their shabby, cold, wonderful little home.
It was two years to the month since the wedding. Addy was twenty-three years old and still there was no child. Addy knew how desperately Mose wanted a family and she feared God was punishing her, making her barren as retribution for her sins. She felt ashamed for herself and hurt on behalf of Mose, who, far as she knew, never did much of anything wrong. Addy hadn’t seen Mose in a number of weeks and in that time she’d gone to Nora Lemoine, with whom she’d grown especially close since the death of Mary Alice, and confessed tearfully. The old woman had stroked her back and said, “Nonsense, Adelaide. God isn’t punishing you.”
She blew her nose noisily. “What am I gonna do, Nora?”
“Well, you don’t see your husband every night like most women do. And you don’t get yourself close to him as often as most either. Mind you, some women wouldn’t mind that arrangement but if you’re looking to have a child you need to get…close…just as often as you can.”
Addy shook her head. “You don’t understand. Every time he comes home. The whole time he’s home. It’s not just once, it’s not just at night. It’s twice in the morning and again at night and sometimes if we brush up against each other in the afternoon…” She started weeping again. “I just don’t understand.”
After she heard that, Nora Lemoine didn’t understand either, for she’d always just assumed Mose was too tired on his days off to be much good, or that Adelaide rejected his amorous advances because she resented his being gone. She raised the issue carefully, knowing that Addy would resist. “Maybe you want to see the doctor, Honey.”
Addy did resist the idea of talking with the doctor but only because she knew Mose would not approve. Early on in their marriage, she’d suggested the doctor and Mose’d gone pale, stomping and declaring, “I forbid it,” which caused another round of stomping but this time from Addy, who would not be forbid anything. Later in bed, Mose had quietly apologized, a thing she could always expect from her good man. He’d said, “I’m sorry, Addy. Don’t know what good you seeing a doctor’s gonna do though.”
“Why?”
He’d been grateful for the darkness. “Can’t help but figure if it’s not working it’s because there’s something wrong with me.”
“Doesn’t have to be you, Mose,” Addy’d assured, kissing his neck.
“But you already…”
“Don’t believe it works like that, Mose. Just because I had the one baby doesn’t mean something hasn’t gone wrong with me.”
He waited a moment, loving her lips on his throat, then asked, “If you did see the doctor, Addy, what would he do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think he’d give you some medicine?”
Addy kissed the hill of her husband’s chest. “Don’t know.”
“Think he have to…” Mose swallowed and pulled her to his mouth. “Think he ask you to take off your clothes? Think he do that? Think he have to touch you here? Addy? Or here? Or here?”
“Mmm-hmm.” Addy moved against his finger.
When Mose bit Addy’s lip she knew it had been deliberate. She opened her bloody mouth and pushed her salty wet tongue against his. Mose drew blood, and Addy knew why. Mose didn’t want her to see the doctor, to be looked over by the doctor, to be touched by the doctor, because it both horrified and aroused him in equal measure.
In the end, after talking with Nora, feeling desperate as she did, Addy decided she would make the appointment and, much as she hated to, she’d have to deceive Mose. When she finally did see the doctor she wished she’d gone two years earlier, for what he told her was surprising, something she’d never have guessed. After her visit, she’d walked all the way home wondering, Only two or three days in a whole long month a woman can get herself with a child. Mose and me never once hit on them days but Zach Heron, one time, one terrible time…
The doctor had told her some other things too, signs to look for on her body and days to count on a calendar so she could know better when she was ready. That’s why today she’d open her present later. Near as she could tell, with the information the doctor’d given her, Addy was ripe and Mose was here. If ever they were gonna make a baby it was gonna be now.
After Addy whispered into Mose’s ear, he flew up the stairs as she’d known he would, and had to come back down to collect his bag. Addy giggled and went up the stairs in front of him, wagging her behind in his face as he clasped his big hands to her breasts. When they reached the third floor Mose opened the door. Though the fire’d gone out and the furniture looked more ragged than he remembered, he wanted to cry at his joy to be home.
There was music playing in the apartment of Martin and Kay Baldwin on the second floor and Addy could not have chosen a finer selection. It was Billie Holiday’s voice rising up through the floorboards and Billie made the blues sound so sweet Addy hoped the singer’d never get over her grief. Addy didn’t mind that the Baldwins liked to play their music loud, for Mose did make some passionate noises and the bedsprings were broken in three places.
The first time, their wedding night, Mose had been tentative and it was over nearly before it began. He told his new bride he knew, or at least he reckoned, because of what happened in Rusholme, that part of their marriage—he’d cleared his throat and said, “the loving part”—would be difficult for her. He told her he thought it best to get it over and done with, and said he’d always understand if she’d just like her back scratched instead. Addy knew that Mose had never been with a woman and that he was unsure and afraid himself. She’d lain awake for some time listening to his kitteny snore, then moved her hand to his hard stomach and caressed him with her fingernails until she felt him wake and swell once more. Then she stroked him with a firmer touch, and when she thought he might burst she stopped and asked, “Feel good, Mose?”
He murmured something that sounded like yes and held his breath when she climbed atop him and brought him inside her. Mose would never have to know the extent of her experience, as witness or participant, but Addy would make sure he understood that her desire, and his own, could tether them to each other. She wanted him to know that the loving part was an important part of their marriage. She knew Mose would learn what to do soon enough.
Mose did learn what to do, and not just what to do but exactly when to do it, and that part of their marriage, Addy thought often, was the only part she had faith in. For Mose was home so seldom that, except for the intimate way in which she recognized his body, he was like a stranger each time he returned. Addy knew none of his fellow porters, had no faces for the names and no imagination for his stories. And though she tried, she coul
d not feel so indignant as he about the working conditions of his fellows, or fully understand his passion for the Brotherhood. But when they moved into each other’s arms, sharing mouth and skin and scent and fluid, he was Mose, her good husband, and she was so glad he was finally home.
The pillows had been the doctor’s suggestion but of course Addy could not tell Mose. Soon as he’d risen from the bed she pulled the pillows from near the headboard and crammed them under her behind. Mose had laughed and waited for an explanation.
“My back aches from hefting that sack of potatoes from the market,” she said, and that was that. Addy lay still with her hindquarters raised up, letting gravity do its chore as the doctor advised, listening to Billie downstairs, weeping with the willow and all the men who’d done her wrong.
It was the next morning, over fresh eggs and biscuits, with the accompaniment of Louis Armstrong on jazz trumpet, that Mose told Addy he’d be leaving a day early this trip. He was heading up to a meeting in Toronto, then off to Vancouver, back to Montreal, out East, then home again in four weeks. Addy was beyond hurt and angry, for this wasn’t the first time he’d left early. “Why can’t you miss a meeting? Why can’t you miss just one precious meeting?”
“Because I can’t. Because I won’t. Because my job is important. Because the Brotherhood is important. Asa Randolph, that American labour activist I told you about, he’s coming to Canada to meet with Arthur Blanchette and a few other men and I’m proud to be a part of that.”
“I hate the Brotherhood.”
“How many times have I told you, with a union representing us we’re all gonna make a lot more money. My job’ll be safe. You’re acting like a baby, Adelaide.”
“I don’t care. I hate it. And I hate that train.”
“Don’t let anyone else hear you talk like that. You have any idea how lucky I am to have work? Do you ever read the newspaper, Woman? Do you understand there’s a depression?”
Addy didn’t tell Mose that her true reason for being troubled was she feared if he left a day early this time, it would be the day she was the ripest, the day they were most likely to make a child. “I know there’s a depression, Mose. I do read the newspaper. I just don’t understand why this one time you can’t stay home with me and miss your meeting and say I’m the important one.”
“And I don’t understand why we can’t move to Montreal like we talked about so I can see you more.”
“On your way from here to there? A few hours? A day?”
“That’s what you’re crossing me over now, isn’t it, Adelaide? A day?”
“I don’t want to live in Montreal all by myself, Mose. Chatham is my home. I got Nora Lemoine here, and Hamond and the boys, and Mrs. Yardley, and the Baldwins. I don’t know what I’d do without all them. That’s my family.”
“I’m your husband.”
“And you expect I’m just gonna sit there in Montreal where I can’t even understand the language, waiting and waiting for my husband?”
“I’m tired of arguing, Addy.”
“And what about driving, Mose? You promised you’d teach me how to drive. How am I ever gonna learn when you’re never home?”
The music had been turned off downstairs and Addy knew it was because Mrs. Baldwin liked to listen in. She lowered her voice. “Just this once, Mose?”
Mose shook his head as he reached for another biscuit. Addy knew, as she’d always known, that she could not fight her husband’s conscience. Addy also knew that at least some of Mose’s passion came from his denial of the obvious. His skin was white, his hair was fair, his eyes were green, and few people might have guessed his mother was Negro. And few people might have guessed he thought of himself as Negro. Addy knew Mose felt betrayed by his pale skin and all the more driven to fight the cause of social injustice. Addy knew all of this because Addy knew Mose. They never talked about such things though, for Addy understood how deeply it would wound her husband if she ever let on she thought he was different.
The red-foil-wrapped present sat untouched on the dresser. Even though Addy was annoyed, she found the will to pull Mose back to her bed not once but twice that day, and three times the next. By the following evening, as Mose was preparing his things for his departure, he’d looked at his wife with deep concern and said, “Your back hurt again?”
“It’ll be fine, Mose,” Addy’d said, her hips hoisted up on the pillows.
“But except for cooking, eating, and loving, you been laying like that since I came home.”
“Be fine, Mose. Just I shouldn’t be so ambitious in carrying home my groceries is all. You sure you have to go?”
After Mose left, Addy remembered the present on the dresser and went to open it. The salt’n’pepper shakers were in the shape of two entwined dolphins. If you were to use the thing for its practical purpose, just the one shake would give you all the seasoning you needed. She set it on a nearby shelf with the others and thought, Mose.
Addy had marked the days on a calendar with a soft pencil. When it was time for her moon to come on she’d woken breathless two mornings in a row, having dreamt she was choking on apple seeds. She prayed not to feel the dull ache in her pelvis that said there’d be blood. Be a baby, she begged. Be a baby. But the ache came, and the blood came, and the tears as they always did now. Dutifully, she counted the days again and watched for the signs again and she waited, waited for Mose.
There was knocking at the door, or rather pounding, and the sound of it chilled Addy, for something was wrong. It was Mrs. Yardley standing there on the landing, her fat baby boy on her hip, her eyes bulging and bloodshot from the effort of dragging her own weight and his up the two flights of stairs.
“There’s a telephone call for you, Addy,” she said, looking worried. “I couldn’t tell who. A man. Line’s not very clear.”
Addy flew down the stairs, rushed through Mrs. Yardley’s open door, and set the telephone to her ear. She was expecting to hear her husband’s voice and was surprised to find an old man at the other end of the line. She held her breath, waiting to hear the worst, for it was only a death, or near death, that would have necessitated a telephone call. She heard her name. “Addy?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Mama.”
For a moment Addy had no picture in her mind and could only wonder, Whose Mama? My Mama?
“Addy?”
“Yes.”
“I have to go.”
“Yes,” Addy said, but she was thinking, Who is this? Go where?
“I’m in Montreal now but I’ll get to Halifax sometime tomorrow and I guess best I can hope for is she can hang on till I…”
“Mose?”
There was no answer. Addy thought the line had gone dead until she heard a short breath and a sniff. “Oh, Mose.”
“I wish you got a chance to meet her. She would have liked you.”
“Oh, Mose, I wish that too. Tell her so, won’t you?”
“I’ll tell her.”
“And say how I love you and how I’ll be looking out for you so.”
“She knows. Addy? Are you still there, Addy?”
“I’m here.”
“I won’t have time to get to Chatham at all.”
Addy had wanted to say “You have to” but said instead, “I know, Mose. I know.”
Though she couldn’t remember bending her knees or shifting her weight or when the tears came to her eyes, Addy realized she was sitting on Mrs. Yardley’s velveteen chaise, crying soundlessly. Mrs. Yardley was sitting beside her, grasping her hand. Addy put the receiver down and fell against her friend, sharing the woman’s ample chest with her big baby boy.
“Poor Mose,” Mrs. Yardley said, sniffing. “And his poor, poor mother.” Addy wasn’t crying for Mose’s mother though, and she wasn’t even crying for Mose. She was crying for her baby yet to be conceived and because it would be another whole month before Mose could even try to sow his seed.
As when the sky turns black and a storm is certain but passe
s with nary a drop, Mose’s mother did not die that day or the next day or even the next week. Her son by her side, she clung to her sickly life and would elude death for years to come. Mose would tell Addy later that the doctor had been shocked by her sudden recovery. An hour after her son’s arrival she had been able to choke down some hot soup, and by the third day of his stay she’d been pleased to save his dear young wife the trouble of darning his socks. She’d even insisted on getting out of her bed before Mose was to leave, to make him his favourite meal. The woman nearly danced the jitterbug when Mose confided that although Addy was a wonderful cook she never could get rice so soft and fluffy as his Mama did.
Someone was at her door and it was the second time in a day there’d been pounding. Addy prepared herself to run down the stairs and hear Mose’s old man’s voice on the telephone again but it wasn’t Mrs. Yardley at the door. It was Simon Ferguson standing there on the third-floor landing, looking like he’d just run to the lake and back. Simon had often turned to her for comfort in the years since Mary Alice died. He was holding in tears, Addy could see, and since it wasn’t the first time he’d shown up at her door this way, she reckoned he’d had another argument with his young sweetheart. She thought the time was right to advise Simon, who was like a son, that he ought to bid that never-satisfied young lady farewell.
“Simon Ferguson, did you and that silly girl have another spat?”
Simon didn’t have the breath to speak.
“What is it? What’s wrong? Come on, tell Addy.”
Simon swallowed and said, “It’s Nana.”
Addy grabbed her coat and together they raced down the stairs, out the door, up William Street, and down Murray, racing toward Nora’s old house. On the lawn, a huge black crow dug for treasure under the soggy autumn leaves. The crow didn’t flap and fly away when Simon and Addy approached, but looked up and gawked at them, like the way people stare when they see another in despair.
Hamond was on the sofa in the sitting room with his head in his hands. Samuel was turned toward the window, sobbing shamelessly. Simon needed courage to speak. He reached for Addy’s hand and squeezed before he asked his father, “What the doctor say?”