Mama Rocks the Empty Cradle

by Nora Deloach

  The narrow, winding path seemed longer today. Midnight hesitated as they passed the maple, the oak whose limbs met overhead, making a shadowy tunnel that let only a dappling of sunlight break through.

  An experienced hunter, Nightmare was careful to stay away from roots or rocks that might cause a twisted ankle. Nightmare spoke, and although the dog couldn’t understand the big man’s words, he knew that he was doing what Nightmare wanted him to do. Midnight made a soft sound and wagged his tail.

  A breeze stirred the leaves overhead. A patch of rolling leaves sent an interesting scent the dog’s way; Midnight hesitated. “Go on,” Nightmare’s deep voice encouraged. But this time Midnight didn’t obey. Instead, he sniffed at the pile of leaves, turned in a circle, and squatted. Nightmare seemed satisfied to wait.

  Once he’d finished, Midnight walked along the path, sniffing the air. He smelled fire and the scents of something cooking. He stopped. The dog felt confused, especially when his ears were shocked by an unfamiliar sound.

  He looked up at Nightmare, who now turned and looked back. Midnight wasn’t surprised. He had smelled his master and the two white men who were following them.

  Ahead of them was the old shack. Midnight’s ears pricked; he picked up a sound that interested him.

  Midnight knew that the crying baby inside the shack posed no threat to him, so he decided to dash ahead, push past the house to what was most important. When he stopped again, he wasn’t far from the back door. He put his nose to the ground, and turned in a complete circle. Then, like before, he began digging.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-ONE

  We had a whole lot of reasons to be thankful this Thanksgiving weekend. Mama’s feet were better; she had returned to work. And to her kitchen.

  But there was another very special reason. If you’d looked at Yasmine, you’d see that she waved graceful hands, tinted nails glossed to perfection. On both her and Ernest’s ring fingers were matching wedding bands.

  Yasmine had told Ernest he had the option of marriage and the baby or she’d abort. The next morning Ernest woke her early and carted her off to City Hall to get a license. Three days later, Cliff and I joined them as they were married in a civil ceremony.

  Mama’s table was set. The delightful aroma of the twenty-five-pound roasted turkey stuffed with a corn-bread-and-pecan dressing wafted from the center of the table. There were also cranberry sauce, candied sweet potatoes, macaroni and cheese, collard greens, white rice, field peas and okra, string beans and white potatoes, carrot souffle, and homemade yeast rolls. My mouth watered at the sight of it. Mama had used her best china, her silverware and crystal. Her guests: Cliff and I, Ernest and Yasmine, my brothers Rodney and Will and, of course, my father.

  It was Ernest who turned the conversation to the kidnapping of Cricket’s baby. “Miss Candi,” he said, “I heard you cleaned up another one of Otis’s scandals.”

  Mama looked like she was thinking back as she surveyed our questioning eyes without answering Ernest. Daddy’s fork swung in midair. “If it wasn’t for Candi,” he bragged, “Lord only knows what that crazy woman would have done to that poor baby.”

  “James, I don’t think Birdie would have harmed little Morgan,” Mama murmured.

  Daddy looked at Mama like she was being too modest. “She’s on Bull Street in Columbia. Like I said, ain’t no telling what she’d have done to that poor kid if you hadn’t told Abe where to find them.”

  I leaned over and whispered to Cliff: “Bull Street is the state hospital for crazy people.”

  Cliff nodded.

  “Tell us about how she stole that baby and why she did it,” Ernest urged Mama. “Start from the beginning.”

  Mama leaned back and surveyed her waiting audience. Then she said, “When Birdie was ten years old, her father got her pregnant,” she began. “The poor child delivered a set of twin boys. But those babies died when they were only four months old.”

  “Tell them how Lucy Bell Childs got involved,” I prompted.

  Mama’s eyes flashed at me, but she continued. “During the time, Lucy Bell Childs was the prominent midwife here in the county. It seemed that all of her babies contracted some fever which caused them to linger sickly until they died, about six months after their birth. The talk got around that Lucy Bell carried the fever, so she ended up with the sickly babies, nursing them until they died. She buried them in the little cemetery in the back of Rose’s mobile home.

  “Like I told Simone earlier, the burial laws ain’t as strict in these parts as in a big city, and the laws that we do have ain’t fiercely enforced. Once you’re out in the country, past the town limits, things get so slack people can do most anything they want to as long as nobody complains. So, since nobody complained, Lucy Bell decided to bury those babies in the little cemetery in the back of Rose’s mobile home.”

  “I didn’t even know there was a cemetery behind those trailers,” Daddy volunteered.

  “I didn’t either, James,” Mama said. “But, from the first time I noticed when Simone and I visited Rose to pay our respects over Cricket’s death, I was intrigued. It was like something drew me to the little graveyard, something made me think that it was tied to Morgan’s disappearance.”

  I nodded. “That’s why she had me crawling around on my hands and knees taking pictures of the tombstones.”

  Mama smiled. “Back to Birdie and Lucy Bell Childs,” she said, returning to her story. “Even though Lucy Bell no longer worked at delivering babies, Birdie’s mother, Rebecca Ponds, called on her to help Birdie during her labor.”

  “For heaven’s sake, why?” Yasmine exclaimed.

  “Yasmine, honey, I don’t rightly know,” Mama answered. “I can only guess that it was because Rebecca was too ashamed to call in another midwife or even to take Birdie to a doctor or a hospital.”

  Nobody spoke, thinking of poor Rebecca’s shame and misery, all those many years ago.

  “But it’s important to note that Lucy Bell didn’t take care of these twins like she’d taken care of the other babies she delivered, the ones who’d caught the fever.

  “Lucy Bell Childs must have grown to love the twelve babies she took care of, because she made her grandson, Dan, vow to take care of the cemetery.”

  “Nightmare must have been about fifteen at the time,” I said, chewing a piece of sweet potato.

  “How did you figure that Birdie had stolen the baby, Mama?” my brother Will asked.

  Mama looked across the table at her son. “When Rose brought me the note that she’d found in one of Lucy Bell’s old books, a list of names was with it. Simone and I compared the names on the list to the ones on the tombstones.”

  “I took pictures of each grave,” I said.

  “The names of the Ponds twins were on the list, but those two babies didn’t have headstones in the cemetery,” Mama continued. “I figured maybe they weren’t buried there. Midnight brought home two skulls. I was sure he hadn’t gotten them from that graveyard—there was no sign of digging. When Dan, Rose’s cousin—”

  “Nightmare,” I interrupted.

  Mama raised her eyebrows and said, “When Dan told me that Midnight had been born on the Pondses’ place, coupled with the fact that Midnight first showed up at our house about the time old Buck Ponds died, I surmised that dog might have gone back from time to time. So I asked Dan, who admitted that he frequented the Pondses’ place to hunt. He confirmed my suspicion that Midnight had been digging in the old man’s backyard.

  “The day that we went to Cricket’s funeral, I saw a station wagon with Birdie in it. It was a terrible rainstorm, it didn’t make any sense for Birdie to be just sitting in her car outside of the church. Even more puzzling to me was that I saw Birdie in the station wagon on the road again when we were driving to Rose’s house. I couldn’t help but wonder whether I was wrong in thinking that she was back off her medication and that she wasn’t functioning right.”

  “Why did Birdie kidnap Morgan?” Yasmi
ne asked.

  “Birdie’s childhood was terribly traumatic. Her father, Buck Ponds, was an awful man. The doctor told Abe that when Birdie’s mind first fixed on little Morgan Childs, it was simply because she thought Morgan was pretty. But when she stopped taking her medicine, she decided that Cricket wasn’t a good mother because of her reputation. It wasn’t too far a step for Birdie to begin thinking that Morgan should belong to her. Birdie believed that it was Morgan’s great-grandmother, Miss Lucy Bell, who was responsible for the death of her own twin boys because the old midwife exposed her twins to the fever that killed them.”

  Yasmine still seemed puzzled. “But how did Birdie get Morgan?” she asked.

  “Timber already believed that Cricket wasn’t a good mother to his baby because of her association with Sabrina Miley, who was running a blackmail business on her gentlemen friends. It was easy for Birdie to give Timber money to buy liquor and at the same time encourage him to steal the child for her to care for. Timber told Cricket he was taking the baby to his mother for a few hours. Instead, he took Morgan and gave her to Birdie.”

  “Okay,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “So Timber stole Morgan. But why did he kill Cricket?”

  “Timber told Abe that news got to him that Clarence Young was working out of town for a few days. He decided it would be easy to break into Clarence’s empty apartment, to help himself to a few things. But Cricket found Timber in front of the Cherry Ridge Apartments a few seconds after he’d sprung Clarence’s lock. Cricket started talking loud, demanding to know where Morgan was, who Timber had left Morgan with, yelling at Timber. Timber didn’t want to draw attention to himself, so he took Cricket into Clarence Young’s apartment. When Timber told Cricket that he’d given Morgan to a nice lady to be taken care of, Cricket went ballistic. According to Timber, he had to kill Cricket to keep her from killing him.”

  My brother Rodney waved his fork. “Is there enough evidence to convict Timber of killing Cricket?”

  Mama nodded, her eyes sad. “Cricket’s fingernails were torn and bloody. Scrapings from her nails held evidence of the skin of the person who killed her. The samples match Timber’s DNA. And there were numerous bloodstains in the apartment where Cricket died. Some of those stains matched Timber’s blood type, and samples of his hair were found on Cricket’s body, her clothes. Timber’s fingerprints were on a glass found inside the room. Cricket fought hard to stay alive. Yes, I think there will be plenty of forensic evidence to convict Timber when the case goes to trial.”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “I have one last question,” I said. “Why in the world did Birdie bring Morgan into the crowded Winn Dixie the first time she snatched her?”

  Mama shook her head absently. “Poor Birdie was confused. It was one of those times when she didn’t take her medicine. Like I said, without it, she can’t think straight.”

  “Timber will probably get six or seven years, am I right?” Rodney asked Cliff.

  Cliff nodded. “If an attorney can prove that it wasn’t Timber’s intent to murder Cricket, yes.”

  “Rose Childs’s family was glad to have Morgan back with them. That poor child will have a good home for the first time in her life. I don’t know when Birdie will be released from the hospital, but Isaiah told me that when she comes home, he’ll personally make sure she’ll keep taking her medicine.”

  “That sounds like a promise Isaiah Smiley has made before,” I said.

  Daddy pushed back in his chair. He reached across the table and touched Mama’s hand. “Baby,” he said, smiling, “you’ve outdone yourself with this meal. You’ve really outdone yourself this time.”

  And Mama smiled.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  NORA DELOACH is an Orlando, Florida, native presently living in Decatur, Georgia. She is married and the mother of three. Her most recent Mama mystery is MAMA ROCKS THE EMPTY CRADLE, which is the fourth in the series, and she is currently at work on the fifth Mama mystery, MAMA PURSUES MURDEROUS SHADOWS.