Father came out of the kitchen. He gazed hard at her midriff, that portion of her body that was doubly alive.
–Best take Mrs Claudette upstairs.
–Which room?
–The second.
I heard the swish of her fluids as she followed me up the stairs, pulling on the bannister. Loud wet puffing sound. Her laugh, once dancing breath, had grit to it now.
–I certainly have gotten bigger – I didn’t think that could happen. Lying on my back I can barely breathe.
–It’ll all ease quickly, soon as it’s born.
Your little green-eyed boy.
In the bedroom I lifted her feet onto the bed and leaned over her, moving the pillows behind her head.
Into my chest she said
–Your father, is he—
–He doesn’t like unscheduled Cures. Tell me why you’re worried.
–I’d some blood this morning. And my stomach hasn’t been right.
–All right, I’ll look inside.
She nodded and watched me, her face tight.
She reached out a hand and put it on mine. Her skin was as Samson’s would have been, had he not been those years in the field.
–Miss Ada, what happens when you have a baby with someone you’re not supposed to?
–Don’t fret Mrs Claudette. I’ve never seen adultery get into a baby.
The words fell out of me. She was twisting the front of her dress. She looked up me, her lashes velvety and thick.
–Is there anything that can get in?
–…You mean like shock?
–No, I mean like other things you’re not supposed to do.
Her shoulders were prickling in the cool shade of the bedroom, their little hairs awoken.
–From here everything seems fine, but let me look inside.
She lay back and closed her eyes, the thin lids crinkling. I put her to sleep and pulled up her dress. Her belly had grown a thick pink line from button to groin. I pulled down her panties and looked at the stain inside the frilled cotton cloth: quick, bright tendril of pink. She split open like a barrel, the skin hard and unfolding. I saw the outline of the child, saw him kick a little at the gust of air come to meet him.
I looked down and saw a little growth – most likely a remnant of her previous curing – that was causing her to leak, but doing no harm besides. It clung like a berry to the side of her womb. Placing my hand over it I hummed a tune and within a few moments it had gone away with a popping sound.
When I woke her I told her everything was fine, but that she shouldn’t spend so much time on her feet, she nodded and gazed up at me, sinking her pretty white teeth into her pretty pink lip.
She’s not listening to me at all, only watching.
–Is there anything else, Olivia?
The muscles ’round her mouth working into a soft pout.
Must be a trick of hers, to put the men in mind of kissing.
–Well, yes. I’m worried about my brother, Miss Ada.
She squirmed inside of her dress. I felt my voice jump in my throat, but when I spoke made sure I sounded easy and light.
–Why? Is he poorly?
–He’s sick. He’s not right.
She looked down at her hands, and folded them.
–Tell him to come for a curing.
–I don’t think it’s something that can be fixed, Miss Ada.
–Then why are you telling me about it?
She flinched, like I’d pinched her. I’d liked to have slapped her creamy cheek, to stop her from speaking with Father downstairs.
–I just need to know if my baby is a girl.
–…You’re not worried about jinxes?
–I need to know if the baby will be safe around Samson.
Like a warm bath, she slid into her lies.
–I don’t follow.
–When it’s growing up … if it’s a girl, and if we’re living with Samson … I won’t be leaving them alone.
And then she looked at me, through her lashes. Bud of a mouth a little bit open. Her dark hair fell into her eyes and she left it there.
That won’t work, I wanted to tell her. That won’t work on me.
Father made no noise downstairs.
–It’s a boy.
She didn’t gasp or sigh or make any of the relieved noises that Cures make. Her voice was flat and hard.
–You’re sure?
–Certain.
She kept looking at me and I kept looking at her and then, slowly, she pushed her lips together again.
–Well then, that makes things easier.
And she was sitting up without any assistance from me.
I helped her down the stairs and out to the car. I didn’t know where Father had gone, how much he had heard.
–Miss Ada, can I pay you next week?
–Don’t worry about paying me this time. There really was very little to do.
By now she was twisting the keys in their particular way that saw the truck spurred to life once more.
–Oh thank you, Ada. Thank you.
All the concern gone from her now. Looking at me like she might laugh or wink, her shoulders sliding down her back, readying herself to preen in the breeze,
–Us girls must stick together.
I went back inside and called into the kitchen, told Father I was tired and going to bed. He made a ‘Hmph’ sound that I barely heard with thinking all the things I’d liked to have said.
I’d be not right too, with a sister like you.
The next day I’d planned on meeting Samson.
I didn’t know if I’d tell him what Olivia had said, if he’d know why she said it. I’d never known a Cure to speak of a sibling – of any blood relation – in such a way. Of course there was something different about him: he wasn’t afraid of me – of being taken inside me. Didn’t care about the ways I was unlike Cure women. But why would Olivia claim he’d hurt a child?
Like I said, I’d planned on seeing him, but that morning I opened my eyes to a weak, faltering sound – some small thing crying and the mewl of it waking me. Slow and dazed I followed the weepy noise into the kitchen, climbing onto the counters and looking into the bowl we kept atop the cupboard. Wide enamel bowl with its blue rim, and inside of it a baby. Or rather, the outline of a baby. Only a whisper of a thing, neatly swaddled in the blanket we kept there.
I went to the back door and called to Father. I told him within half an hour we’d have a startled and panicking Cure. He was digging and didn’t turn around.
I went upstairs and put on a large black shirt that wouldn’t show up stains. It had a wide pocket on its front, and I went down to the bottom of the garden and filled it with sorrel leaves, stuffing it as though it was my own animal pouch.
Sooner than I’d thought, I heard screen-door-slam.
I walked into the house and already the couple was on the stairs. Father turned to me and said their name – Bennett-Kent. In the second spare room Father eased Mrs Bennett-Kent back onto the pillows while her husband removed her feet from their thin-soled shoes. I was pulling on the leaves in my pocket, making them limp, easier to chew. How different Mrs Bennett-Kent was to Olivia. Both large with child, both with dark hair that snaked over the pillows, but different all the same.
–Ada will see to you.
Mr Bennett-Kent was not a well-proportioned man; his hands were too large for his arms and the calluses across his knuckles made them seem larger still. Mrs Bennett-Kent had large black eyes that followed her husband out of the room.
–Are you in pain?
She nodded, her lips pursing, and said
–I’ve a tightness in my stomach, like a spasm.
–I’m going to take a look inside of you. Close your eyes.
She closed up her face so quietly I thought She must have been told good things.
I peeled back the wet slap of her womb. The baby was still in evidence, like the unevenness to grass where some animal has stopped to graze. Its shado
w-outline turned away from me and I knew its other half did the same in the bowl downstairs. A sound came from her, the deepening lilt at the end of a song, and I picked up the rhythm of a slow healthy pulse.
The spasm that riddled her had started the night before and was working to spoil her lining, had left the baby with nothing to eat, so I took out the mulchen leaves and placed the new bedding inside of her womb.
The leaves settled around the curve of the baby’s back until the lining was plush and wet again. I sang faster, a jumping tune that picked up the pace of the baby’s heart and put suckle back in its cord. After a time the little body got denser. I didn’t know what had caused the spasm. All of her seemed healthy now, and calm.
First thing she did when I woke her was put a hand to her mouth.
–That taste – it’s like I’ve been sucking on a penny.
I told her what I’d seen and asked her if she’d gotten a fright the day before. I put out my hands for her to take hold of, and as she sat upright watched the flesh of her thighs pool out beneath her.
Her skin, deeply brown, was glowing a little now.
–Well yes, last night … but there was no harm in it.
She told me that the night before she’d been up much later than usual. With her husband lost to some unforeseen task in the fields she’d closed the house up extra tight, and close to midnight she checked, for maybe the fourth time, the lock on the screen door. She rattled the door in its peeling wooden frame the way an intruder might.
–To make sure it wouldn’t give, you see.
She’d leaned on the wall letting the weight of her belly settle.
–…Because my back is so sore these days, so tender –
But then she jumped, because she could see the shape of a person outside, someone standing in the yard and gazing toward her.
In the dark she made out the shape of them, thicker than the rest of the night.
–You could just tell it was a person, alive.
Standing as if waiting to cross the street.
And then she turned off the light, and with the kitchen and garden in equal dark she saw that not only, yes, there was a person, but that somehow, in these few moments, this person was now come very close to the house. Was, in fact, standing on the patio step with only the slim parting of the screen door keeping them out of the house.
–I didn’t scream, exactly, but I tell you Miss Ada I jolted like a horse, and then realised it was only Lorraine! My good friend Lorraine Languid. Well, we stood there laughing for I don’t know how long before I thought to turn on the light.
So much talk for so nonsense a story.
I started tugging the duvet back into place, letting her know it was time to leave. I scolded myself, for getting worked up over the baby, and for letting a Cure take up so much time.
–It’s normal to get a shock seeing someone in your garden that late at night.
–Well yes, Miss Ada, and I said to Lorraine I never mind her coming over but it’s a strange way to announce oneself, standing in the garden – and what would she have done if I hadn’t seen her? And gone to bed and locked her out for the night?
I was tugging her skirt down toward her ankles, bothered by the shuffling sound it made around her knees.
I thought of the Lorraine I’d met as a child. Lorraine and her lambs and her smoking mouth.
–She would have gone home, soon enough.
Mrs Bennett-Kent looked at me, her large breasts pulling at the buttons of her shirt.
There’s more to this fright. Of course there’s more, if it was strong enough to spoil her baby’s bedding.
–Oh no, Miss Ada, you’re thinking of the old granite houses on the right side of town. We live on the left side.
–Yes, that’s right—
–Our gardens don’t all back onto the same little lane.
I often forgot, as it was rarely relevant, that there were two types of houses in town, and that most Cures felt it a kind of distinction to live on the left side.
–I see, I—
–On the left side we each have our own private yard, though of course they’re small, but you can leave children out back and let them play, because you see they can’t go anywhere.
–Yes, of course. I see what you mean.
For I did see now, though she was eager to keep speaking and the words came breathless and fast.
–And well, Miss Ada, I haven’t been in the fields of late. With the birth so close, I’ve been staying at home, and for all of yesterday I was busying myself in the garden, and then at about five I came in for my bath and … and well the thing is Miss Ada I’ve always been fond of Lorraine but she’s not above acting strange and I don’t know exactly how long she was wandering around my damn house.
She moved the hair out of her face and made to laugh. As if the laugh would undo the venom.
–Strange behaviour, I said. Strange behaviour, to be sure.
When they had left I went into the kitchen to make sure the bowl was empty, and it was, though the blanket still held a soft smell of orchids, of milk freshly churned.
I rarely wore black on account of the heat and when I saw myself in the mirror I startled. I looked like my own shadow-twin. I went into my room to change and noticed that the ivy was growing thickly through my open window, latching onto the already chipping paint. The whole of the house was warm and creaking. I opened my wardrobe and pulled on the first thing I saw, leaving the shirt in a dark pool on the floor.
–You’re going to meet him?
I turned around with the smock snagging around my neck and shoulders.
–I’m going out for a walk.
–Ada, he’s not safe.
–For who? Cure girls and women?
–His own sister—
–Is a snake if I ever I saw one.
–His own sister doesn’t want him around girls—
–And what’s that got to do with me?
He was quiet then. The old tension between us, that he’d made me in this halted way.
–It doesn’t worry you?
–When did we start worrying over things without being paid to?
–So you don’t care that he’s sick. That it’s his sickness that makes him want you.
–You’re going off rumours.
–You know what you look like to them.
–What does it matter? He won’t hurt me.
–Won’t try to hurt you.
–Right.
–Because he knows he can’t.
A few moments’ quiet. I pulled the smock down over my chest.
–You’re letting that sickness grow inside him.
–Even if that’s true, it’s not the kind of sick we’re concerned with.
–Sick is sick is sick. It’s got to go somewhere.
–This sickness is not my problem.
–No! Only your pleasure. ’Til you’re no longer enough and it’s some Cure girl he climbs on top of.
–That happens it’s his fault, not mine. And what do you want me to do? Kill him? Castrate him?
–I only know I don’t want you lying with him.
–Father—
–I’m telling you not to lie with him.
I bit hard on my lip and walked by him, the soft skin on his arm grazing mine.
–I think some of his sick has gotten inside you.
–You think what you want. No one’s stopping you.
Concord Jackson
Miss Ada was our resident fairy. Magicking everyone’s sickness away.
Are you sick? Is that why you’re looking for her?
When I got to the truck it was still wavy with heat, so he couldn’t have been there long.
–You’re late, I said.
–So are you.
He ran a hand under his cap, into his short soft hair.
–We go to the river?
I nodded and opened the passenger door. The handle was hot in my hand and the worn leather hot on my legs. We drove with the
windows down and I leaned out, letting my hair whip.
When we got to the river he opened the door but before he put his legs out I said
–So I’ve seen your sister twice now.
He didn’t look at me but rested back in the seat again.
–What she want?
–For me to look at the baby. What else would there be?
–The baby all right?
–The baby is fine.
–Is she all right?
There was a sneer in his voice, a venom he didn’t think I’d catch.
–She is, aside from worries about her brother.
His arms were loose in his lap. He looked straight out the window now, into the trees where shade was waiting. I couldn’t let on I didn’t believe her if I wanted him to tell me about the strangeness between them.
–You really think I’m a bad man, Ada?
–I think your own sister’s afraid of you.
–Don’t … don’t let Olivia fool you.
–And why would she be out to fool me, Samson? What is it you don’t want to tell me?
–So Olivia comes around telling stories and I have to make excuses.
–She says you’re sick and that she’s worried you’ll hurt the baby.
–Me!
Laughing and his hard eyes dancing. He got out of the truck, quickly, and I followed him. The grass cracked under my feet. The river was loud and I couldn’t hear what he said as he walked away from me.
–Samson!
He turned and his eyes were pink at their corners.
–Anything happens to that baby it’s Olivia. Soon as it’s out of her she’s liable to eat it with a spoon.
–Why would she say all this? Is she that bad a person?
–Says I’m sick. She’s the sick one.
–Sick like how?
He looked in the river. Spat.
–You’ve seen inside her.
–All I saw was a baby.
Shifting his belt. Wanting to take it off; the hot metal chafing him.
–Sick like how, Samson?
–She’s just not right.
And now he was taking off his clothes and walking into the river he’d spat in.
–You can’t be specific?
–’S hard. She’s been this way a long time.
–Since when?
–Since we were young.
Follow Me to Ground Page 5