“Why?”
“Because it’s”—her voice dropped to a whisper— “illegitimate.”
“I’ll be right there,” I said.
Despite headache and queasy stomach, I stepped into the shower with a whistle on my lips. Sometimes God does have a sense of humor.
Every January, amid much local publicity, the Merchants’ Association welcomes Dobbs’s first baby of the New Year with a Santa Claus bagful of goodies: clothes and diapers from Bigg Shopp or K mart, a case of formula or nursing bottles from our two drugstores, a pewter cup from the Jewel Chest, birth announcements from The Print Place, a nightlight from Webster’s Hardware, several pounds of assorted pork sausages from the Dixie Dew Packing Company.
Integration had officially arrived in North Carolina before I was born, but I was twelve before Colleton County finally agreed that separate wasn’t equal and started closing down all the shabby black schools. I was driving legally before a black infant qualified as Dobbs’s first baby of the year.
I had a hard time believing this was the first illegitimate first baby the stork had ever dropped on Dobbs Memorial Hospital, but this was Aunt Zell’s first year as president of the Women’s Auxiliary and she has a strong sense of fair play.
She’d make Billy do the right thing and then maybe I could pressure him to drop the charges against Marnolla.
“Forget it,” Billy snarled. “She’s not getting so much as a diaper pin from us.”
We three were seated at a conference table in the Women’s Auxiliary meeting room just off the main lobby. A coffee urn and some cups stood on a tray in the middle and Aunt Zell pushed a plate of her sliced fruitcake toward me. I hadn’t stopped for any hair of the dog before coming over and I wondered if my stomach would find fruitcake soaked with applejack an acceptable substitute.
Billy bit into a fresh slice as if it were nothing more than dry bread. “Anyhow, what do we even know about this girl? What if she’s a prostitute or a drug addict? What if the baby was born with AIDS? It could be dead in three months.”
“It won’t,” Aunt Zell said. “I sneaked a look at her charts. Lynette tested out healthy when they worked up her blood here at our prenatal clinic.”
“I don’t care. The Merchants’ Association stands for good Christian values, and mere’s no way we’re going to reward immorality and sinful behavior by giving presents to an illegitimate baby.”
“Why, Billy Tyson,” my aunt scolded. “What if the Magi had taken that attitude about the Christ Child? Strictly speaking, by man’s laws anyhow, He was illegitimate, wasn’t He?”
“With all due respect, Miss Zell, that’s not the same as this and you know it,” said Billy. “Anyhow, Mary was married to Joseph.”
“But Joseph wasn’t the daddy,” she reminded him softly.
“Bet the Ledger l have fun with this.” I poured myself a steaming cup of coffee and drank it thirstily. “Talk about visiting the sins of the father on the child! And then there’s that motor mouth out at the radio station. Just his meat.”
“Damn it, Deb’rah, the girl’s not even from here!” Billy howled. “You can’t tell me Lynette DiLaurenzio’s a good old Colleton County name.”
“Jesus wasn’t from Bethlehem, either,” murmured Aunt Zell.
I can quote the Bible, too, but I decided maybe it was time for a little legal Latin. Like ex post facto.
“What’s that?” asked Billy.
“It means that laws can’t be changed retroactively. In this case, unless you can show me where the Merchants’ Association ever wrote it down that the first baby has to be born in wedlock, then I’d say no matter where Lynette DiLaurenzio is from, her baby’s legally entitled to all the goods and services any first baby usually gets. And if there’s too much name-calling on this, it might even slop over into a defamation of character lawsuit.”
“Oh, Christ!” Billy groaned.
“Exactly,” said my aunt
As long as we had him backed to the wall, I put in another plea for Marnolla. “After all,” I said, “how’s it going to look when you give that girl all those things in the name of the Merchants’ Association and then jail the woman who took her in?”
“Okay, okay!’ said Billy, who knew when he was licked. “But this time, you’re paying the court costs.”
Aunt Zell leaned across the table and patted his hand. “I’d be honored if you’d let me do that, Billy.”
The three of us trooped upstairs to the obstetrics ward to tell Marnolla and the new mother the good news.
Lynette was asleep, so Marnolla walked down the hall with us to the nursery to peer through the glass at the brand-new baby girl. Red-faced and squalling lustily, she kicked at her pink blanket and flailed the air with her tiny hands. Billy’s spontaneous smile was as foolish as Aunt Zell’s, and I knew an equally foolish smile was on my own face. What is it about newborn babies? Looking over Marnolla’s .shoulder, I found myself remembering that long-ago wonder when she first let me hold Avis. For one smug moment I felt almost as holy as one of the Magi, figuring I’d helped smooth this little girl’s welcome into the world.
Nobody had told Marnolla that the baby had won the annual derby, and her initial surprise turned to a deep frown when Billy said he’d call the newspaper and radio station and arrange for coverage of the presentation ceremony sometime that afternoon.
“It’s going to be in the paper and on the radio?” she asked.
“And that’s not all,” I caroled. “Since it’d sound weird if people heard you were going to be punished for trying to provide some of those very same things for the baby, Billy’s very kindly agreed to drop the charges.” I tried not to gloat in front of him.
“No,” said Marnolla.
“No?” asked Billy.
“What do you mean, ‘No’?” I said.
“Just no. N-o, no. We don’t want nothing from the Merchants’ Association.” Marnolla turned to Billy earnestly. “I mean, it’s real nice of ya’ll, but let somebody else’s be first baby. You were right in the first place, Billy. What I done was wrong and I’m ready to go to jail for it”
I found myself wondering if the Magi would have felt this dumbfounded if Joseph had told them thanks and all that, but he’d just as soon they keep their frankincense and myrrh.
“What about Lynette?” asked Aunt Zell. “Shouldn’t she have some say in this? You’re asking that young mother to give up an honor worth at least three hundred dollars.”
“More like five hundred,” Billy said indignantly.
For a moment, Marnolla wavered; then she drew herself up sharply. “She’ll be all right without it. I’ll take care of her and the baby, too. So ya’ll just keep those reporters away from her, you hear?”
I grabbed her by the arm. “Marnolla, I want to speak to you.”
She tried to pull away, but I said, “Privately. As your lawyer.”
Reluctantly, she followed me down to the Women’s Auxiliary room. As soon as we were alone with the door closed, I sat her down and said, “What the devil’s going on here? First you say for me to do whatever I can to keep you out of jail, and now, when the next thing to a miracle occurs, you say you want to go?”
“I didn’t say I want to,” Marnolla corrected me. “I said I was ready to if that’s what it takes to get people to leave Lynette alone.”
“Same thing,” I said, pacing up and down as if I were in a courtroom in front of the jury.
But then what she’d said finally registered and I realized it wasn’t the same thing at all.
“How come you don’t want Lynette’s name in the paper or on the radio?” I asked.
Marnolla cut her eyes at me.
“Who don’t you want to hear? The baby’s daddy? Has she run away from some abusive man?”
There was a split second’s hesitation, then Marnolla nodded vigorously. “You guessed it, honey. If he finds out where she’s run to, he’ll—”
“You lie,” I said. “She’s not from the county,
nobody outside ever reads the Ledger, and WCYC barely reaches Raleigh.”
As I spoke, Aunt Zell came in uninvited. That wasn’t like her, but I was so exasperated with Marnolla, I barely noticed.
“Deb’rah, honey, why don’t you run home and look in my closet and bring me one of those pretty new bed jackets? Get a pink one. Pink would look real nice when they take Lynette’s picture with the baby, don’t you think so, Marnolla?”
Marnolla had always shown respect for Aunt Zell, but nobody was going to roll over her without a fight this morning. Before she could gather a full head of steam, though, Aunt Zell advanced with fruitcake for her and a stem look at me. “Deborah?”
When she sounds out all three syllables like that, I don’t usually stay to argue.
“And take a package of turnip greens out of the freezer while you’re there,” she called after me.
Most of my brothers married nice women and they all seem real fond of Aunt Zell, but they sure were in a rut with giving her presents. I bet there were at least a dozen bed jackets in her closet, half of them pink, and all in their original boxes. I chose a soft warm cashmere with a wide lacy collar, then went downstairs to take the turnip greens out of the freezer.
After my overindulging on rich food all through the holidays, New Year’s traditional supper was always welcome: peas and greens and thin, skillet-fried corn-bread.
As I passed the stove, I snitched a tender sliver from the hog jowl that flavored the black-eyed peas and gave the pot an experimental stir. There was no sound of the dime Aunt Zell always drops in. Even if you don’t get the silver dime that promises true prosperity, the more peas you eat, the more money you’ll get in the new year. I hoped Marnolla’d cooked herself some. Her troubles with Billy were about to be over, yet worry gnawed at the back of my brain like a toothless hound working a bone and I couldn’t think why.
When I returned to the hospital, I could tell by Marnolla’s eyes that she’d been crying. Aunt Zell, too; but whatever’d been said, Marnolla had agreed to let everything go on as we’d originally planned. We fixed Lynette’s hair and got her all prettied up till she really did look like a young madonna holding her baby.
Billy had rounded up the media and Aunt Zell got some of the obstetrical nurses to stand around the bed for extra interest.
My own interest was in how Marnolla and Aunt Zell between them had managed to keep everybody’s attention fixed on the baby’s bright future and away from the shy young mother’s murky past.
As everybody was leaving, I heard Aunt Zell tell Marnolla that by the time the baby had been home a week, people would’ve forgotten all about the hoopla and stopped being curious. “But the baby’ll still have all the presents and she and Lynette will have you.” “I sure hope you’re right, Miz Zell.”
I drove Marnolla home and neither of us had much to say until she was getting out of the car. Then she leaned over and patted my face and said, “Thanks, honey. I do appreciate all you did for me.”
I clasped her call used hands in mine as love and pity welled up inside of me. And yes, maybe those hands had stolen when they were empty, and maybe her altruism was even tinged by a less than lofty pride—which of us can plead differently before that final bar of justice? What I couldn’t forget was that those selfsame hands had once suckered my daddy’s tobacco and ironed my mother’s tablecloths. And I remembered them holding another baby girl thirty years ago; a baby girl whose left little finger crooked like her own.
As did the left little finger of that baby back at Dobbs Memorial.
Aunt Zell must have remembered, too. I wondered what had really happened to Avis. The lost, scared look in Lynette’s eyes did not bespeak a rosy, stable childhood. Drugs? Violence? Was Avis even still alive? I couldn’t ask Marnolla how her pregnant granddaughter had fetched up here in Dobbs, and I knew Aunt Zell wouldn’t betray a confidence.
“I hope you cooked you some black-eyed peas,” I said.
She nodded. “A great big potful while I was timing Lynette’s labor pains.”
“Better eat every single one of era,” I said. “You’re going to need all the money you can lay your hands on these next few years.”
“Ain’t that the truth!” Her tone was rueful but her smile was radiant as she gave my hand a parting squeeze. “Happy New Year, Deb’rah, and God bless you.
“You, too, Marnolla.”
“Oh, He has, honey,” she told me. “He already has.”
Back cover
Table of Contents
Cover
CHARLOTTE MACLEOD - COUNTERFEIT CHRISTMAS
REGINALD HILL - THE RUNNING OF THE DEER
ELIZABETH PETERS - LIZ PETERS, PI
MEDORA SALE - ANGELS
JOHN MALCOLM - THE ONLY TRUE UNRAVELLER
DOROTHY CANNELL - THE JANUARY SALE STOWAWAY
BILL CRIDER - THE SANTA CLAUS CAPER
PATRICIA MOYES - FAMILY CHRISTMAS
EVELYN E. SMITH - MISS MELVILLE REJOICES
ERIC WRIGHT - TWO IN THE BUSH
MICKEY FRIEDMAN - THE FABULOUS NICK
ROBERT BARNARD - A POLITICAL NECESSITY
MARGARET MARON - FRUITCAKE, MERCY, AND BLACK-EYED PEAS
Back cover
Christmas Stalkings Page 22