Doc Luca sits on a stool with wheels, rolling around to collect everything he needs, before moving between my ankles. I turn my head to the side and feel every muscle tense, horrified at the sight of this strange man looking inside me.
“Relax, Elimina,” Doc Luca says, pulling on a pair of rubber gloves.
I try to distract myself by studying the letters on Miss Charlotte’s magazine and trying to make out the words. But all I can see is a giant turkey on the cover, roasted and placed on a platter surrounded by fancy decor.
“You’re sixteen?” Doc Luca says as he taps and scrapes and presses.
I nod, trying to ignore the feel of his breath on my legs.
“And this is your first time in Riverside?”
I nod again. But what I really want to say is Stop. Please, stop touching me.
I close my eyes and think about Mother, wondering if this is the curse of poor choices, the shame troubled girls deserve.
“How far along are you again?” Doc Luca says.
“Around twelve weeks,” Miss Charlotte says without looking up from her magazine.
I think of the last time I saw Rowan, the night he cried and I sang to him, about what Josephine told me when I met him on my first day at Livingstone: Don’t talk to him. Keep your distance. And I wonder how different things would be if I had listened.
“Well, good news. Everything looks fine,” Doc Luca says, snapping off his gloves and tossing them in the garbage. “You’ve kept yourself quite nicely. No problems at all, from what I can tell. Should we take a look at that baby, just to be sure?”
“We can see the baby already?” I say.
“I guess hear would be more accurate,” he says with a smile, his teeth so straight and white they almost look plastic. “Should we have a listen?”
I nod, stretching out on the center of the mattress while Doc Luca wheels over a machine with buttons and knobs. He rubs a thick liquid onto my stomach and presses a handle to my skin, moving it through the liquid and adjusting the dial until there’s a clear whirring sound. He pushes deeper and lower, side to side, until I hear a fast drum.
Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump.
“There we go,” Doc Luca says with a satisfied smile.
Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump.
“That’s the baby,” he says, nodding toward the machine.
I look at my belly and then at Doc Luca, amazed at the sound.
“It’s a good little heartbeat,” he says.
I listen closely, and I think about Rosalind carrying me in her belly. Had she heard my heart beating? Did she know what I sounded like before she gave me away?
“I think that’s enough for now,” Miss Charlotte says, turning off the machine so the room is suddenly quiet, the heartbeat gone.
But when I close my eyes, I can still hear it. Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump.
“Well, everything looks really good, Charlotte. I see no problems at all,” Doc Luca says, removing his gloves and washing his hands at the sink. “Nothing to be worried about. She probably just needed some food and a little less of this Riverside sun.”
“That’s good to know, Thomas. I’m pleased to hear that. Elimina, you can get dressed now.”
I head to the curtain slowly as Doc Luca and Miss Charlotte continue talking. I remove the gown and rub my hand over the small curve of my belly. I think about the sound, and I remember Tilly’s advice. Don’t get too attached.
MISS CHARLOTTE INSTRUCTS me to head straight home to help with chores while she visits with friends on the other side of town. But when I see Duncan standing by himself in a small shop with a spool of thread stenciled on the window, I open the door and step inside.
Duncan is leaning over a radio, listening to music, and when he turns around to face me, he smiles like he was expecting me.
“Why do you and your mother have those scars?” I say.
“Well, I usually like to start my day with good morning, Elimina. Especially on a fine one like this.”
“Good morning,” I say, smiling only a little. “Why do your scars look like that?”
He holds out his hands and studies them for a moment. “This is what Redemption Freedom looks like,” he says.
“You’re free? Like free-free. Redemption Free?”
He nods but he doesn’t smile.
“I thought they removed them.”
“Can’t remove these kinds of scars, Elimina. They can only change how they look,” he says.
I look down at my own X, trying to hide the disappointment of knowing it will always be there.
“How long have you been in Riverside?” I say.
“Been here long as I’ve been out. About sixteen years.”
I look out the window, biting on my lip.
“What is it, Elimina? Say what’s on your mind.”
“If you’re free, why would you choose to live here? Why not go somewhere far away?”
He gives a hearty laugh. “You’re not wrong to ask it. That’s for sure. I guess the truth is that we did do a bit of wandering at first. Momma and I. Never made it far. Not with much success, that is. It’s not easy, you know, being free on the Mainland. And Momma likes being close to home.”
“But you can do whatever you want, go anywhere.”
“It doesn’t work so much like that,” Duncan says, scratching at his beard. “Truth is, paying off debt isn’t enough for some. It doesn’t change much. In their eyes, we are rebels and troublemakers. That’s all they see when they look at us. No matter the scars.”
I move toward a mannequin dressed in a Mainland Guard uniform and touch the buttons, the Mainland flag, the stitched-on awards. “So, you’re a tailor.”
He nods, adjusting the mannequin’s collar, pulling at a loose thread. “When we got here, the old tailor had just passed and the guards were in need. Momma knew how to sew, and turns out you can make a decent living fixing guards’ uniforms, which rip about a hundred times a day.”
“And you like it?”
“I’m not sure that much matters,” he says. “But I do alright for myself, and that’s something.”
A new song plays on the radio, and Duncan smiles, showing all of his teeth, including the spaces where some are gone. “This song will just heal your soul if you let it. You ever learned to dance, Elimina?”
I think of the night in the Fieldhouse when Rowan and I played pretend, when we danced even though there was no music. But I don’t think that counts, so I shake my head. Duncan holds his hand out and waves me forward, placing my hand inside his. He puts my other hand on his shoulder and places his on my waist, telling me when to step and where to move until we’re hopping and swinging around the room. We move slowly at first, then quicker as the music speeds up. Even though he’s much older, his body moves smoothly, and I think about the baby feeling all of this as I try to keep up. I imagine the baby twirling and dancing along with us.
When the song is done, Duncan tells me about the instruments and the musicians who are playing, about the way the melodies carry joy even when the songs come from sadness. But when he asks if I’d like to stay longer and join him for a cup of tea, I remember Miss Charlotte’s instructions and the girls back at the house, and I know that I have to get going.
“Can I come back tomorrow?”
“You can come back anytime, Elimina.”
I move toward the door, then turn back before leaving. “Next time, can we go see your mother? I’d like to ask her something.”
He hesitates for a moment and I step closer.
“Please, Duncan?”
He takes a deep breath, like he wants to say no. But when he looks at me, he sighs the same way Mother used to whenever I begged for something I really wanted that she wasn’t sure I should have.
21
THREE DAYS AFTER I ARRIVE IN RIVERSIDE, DUNCAN takes me to see his mother after I finish all of my chores. When we arrive, Lulabelle is knitting in a rocking chair in the corner of a small room with yellow wallpaper t
hat’s covered in tiny pink flowers.
“She loves her knitting,” Duncan says as Lulabelle zips her knitting needles in and out of a red scarf that swirls in a pile on the floor. “Only problem is, she can’t seem to want to end, and we’re all too afraid to take it away and tell her it’s done. Lulabelle?” he says.
She looks up at him and frowns. “Is it dinnertime already? I am not hungry, Jack. Why do they always want me to eat? Eat, eat, eat. All I do here is eat.”
“It’s not time to eat just yet,” Duncan says before turning to me. “Jack is my father. Been dead since I was ten. But some days, she thinks I’m him. Or one of the nurses. She almost never recognizes me as me.”
I watch the two of them chat, and for a moment I wonder if I’ve made a horrible mistake—if Lulabelle is too sick to help after all.
“I brought a friend,” Duncan says, sitting down on the end of the bed and placing one hand on her shoulder.
“My best friend on Sixteenth Street was Martha Lewis. Do you remember Martha? She came to our wedding,” Lulabelle says, smiling up with gaps in her teeth that look just like her son’s.
“This is Elimina,” he says.
“Martha had fat thighs. Really fat thighs. So fat she could never find a pair of pants to fit. Always wore skirts and dresses. Boys used to try and sneak a peek because they knew she got nothing under them. See, she couldn’t find no panties to fit neither,” Lulabelle whispers, laughing to herself. “Poor girl. Poor, poor Martha.”
“Elimina’s going to have a baby soon,” Duncan says.
“You don’t think I know that?” she says. “Come over here, girl. Let old Lulabelle have a look at you.”
She puts her knitting down and reaches out, touching the places where my waist is tight and stretched, before placing her ear against my belly.
“That’s a good and healthy boy you got there,” she says.
“Doc Luca said there’s no way to know if—”
She waves her hand in the air dismissively. “Child, doctors are men who know books. They don’t know bodies that carry babies,” she says in a way that reminds me of Ida. “Those men know things they can study, things they can see and prove with their eyes. But we feel. Even you, young as you are, know more about your baby than that doctor. You know that? You can feel him, can’t you?”
I nod as I think about the baby’s heartbeat, which feels like a voice I can’t seem to turn down. Thump-thump-thump-thump.
“What’s your name again?” Lulabelle says.
“Elimina,” I say, looking up at Duncan, who smiles and gives a small nod.
Lulabelle pauses, and for a moment I wonder if she remembers what she said the other day: You are Lima Jenkins Sinclair.
“I knew an Ellaree. She was a bit loose, but she never went hungry,” Lulabelle says.
“It’s Elimina,” I say again, and this time Lulabelle takes a long, deep breath, her lip quivering as she holds out her wrinkled hands.
“Little Lima,” she whispers, tears pooling under her eyes. “I’m glad you made it back. I’m real glad. But I think we done messed you up good, child. And I’m sorry for what I’ve done. I’m sorry every day.” She looks down at the X on my right hand and shakes her head. “Took my own kind and gave them away. Said at least they saw a face like their own when they came into this world. That’s what I told myself. But that’s not enough. That’s not near enough.”
I’m not sure what to do or what I should say, and I look over at Duncan, who’s staring down at the ground, closing his eyes, like he can’t bear to look up.
“Rosalind. Sweet Rosalind,” Lulabelle says.
“You knew Rosalind? You knew her?” I say, but Lulabelle doesn’t answer. She just lets go of my hands and picks up her needles, knitting and singing again: “Come find me in the waters of paradise.”
“Lulabelle. Please,” I say, and when she doesn’t respond, Duncan takes the needles and the yarn from his mother, setting them down on the bed.
“Let’s go outside, Momma,” he says, helping her stand, then nodding for me to follow. “It’s a beautiful day. Let’s go sit on your chair.”
DUNCAN AND I sit on a wicker couch on the front porch of Cranberry Manor, which is wide and spacious with plants and flowers sprawling from every corner. Lulabelle sits on a rocker next to us, tipping back and forth with her eyes closed. I see right away why Duncan brought her outside. Being here calms her.
I listen to the creak of the chair, the buzzing insects and the birds’ fluttering wings. But when I close my eyes and smell the flowers, sweet and rich, all I hear are Lulabelle’s words.
“Duncan, your mother . . .” I start to say.
He nods his head, like he already knows what’s on my mind. “I worked in the Medical Center back in the Gutter, down in the clinics they opened up in the Lower End. But Momma was a midwife. She was known for delivering babies, and she was good at it, which is why she was asked to deliver ‘special babies’ for a government project,” he says.
I look at Lulabelle and then at Duncan. “The Gutter Enhancement Project?” I say, and Duncan nods slowly.
“She . . . delivered me?”
“I helped her with the project. We both brought you into this world,” he says with a smile that disappears quickly. “We delivered one hundred babies, and the folks in government gave them to Mainlanders . . . That’s how me and Momma ended up on this side of the bridge with these scars.”
He looks down at his hands, then toward the river and the bridge, shoulders drooped like there’s a heavy weight bending them down. “See, I had a wife and two kids back in the Gutter. Two girls,” he says, scratching the back of his head with his knuckles. “A few years before the project, a real bad sickness came through. Took the girls, then my wife. I didn’t handle it well. Momma took care of me, trying to make ends meet and save up as much as she could. But it was hard. When they asked Momma if she would help with the project, and they told her she could get freedom for both of us in return, she said yes right away. But I mostly think she did it to save me. I was taking a lot of things to feel better. But the project gave me hope that I could start over.”
“So you knew my mother, Rosalind Sinclair?”
Lulabelle opens her eyes, like the very mention of Rosalind rouses her. “One hundred,” she says, shaking her head.
“You were the last child to be born in the project,” he says. “The last one we gave away. Number one hundred. We always remember you and Rosalind. She was all alone. No family. Just you.”
“Just me,” I say, quiet and slow, thinking about my own baby, how it’s just the two of us too. “My file said she died on the same day I was born. Were you there? Did you see her?”
Duncan nods as Lulabelle rocks her chair back and forth, gripping the handles tight.
“Momma knew right away that something was wrong. When we got to the block where she lived, she was lying in the alley. She was far along, so we just set up right away and got you out. But once you were born, Rosalind started bleeding everywhere. Momma told the guards to put her in the van and take her to the clinic, but they wouldn’t do it.”
“Why was she in the alley?”
“She was trying to get away from us,” he says, as the skin around his mouth and his eyes sags low. “People didn’t like what we were doing. Those mothers—they agreed to give up their babies for the project, but they didn’t really know what it meant. Once folks saw babies leaving, and once those mothers who gave them up were left with nothing but a small paycheck . . . well, there was a lot of regret. And the ones like Rosalind who were due later started having second thoughts about the whole thing. Rosalind was the last one.”
“She was trying to get away . . . with me,” I say, like it still hasn’t quite settled in.
“When Gutter kids go on academy track, folks have time with them. They’re told Sossi stories. They know the names of their family. While they’re making their way, parents get letters. But project kids were taken right from the star
t. And once they were gone, mothers had no way of knowing where they were or how to find them. Rosalind really didn’t want to go through with it anymore. She didn’t want to give you up, Elimina.”
I close my eyes and place both hands on my belly, breathing in and out slowly. Rosalind wanted to keep me. Rosalind got too attached.
“Dancing walls,” Lulabelle says.
“That’s right, Momma,” Duncan says, sadly. “You were born in an alley in Block 15. Right under this painting that looked like dancing bodies.”
He leans over and rubs the back of his neck like he’s tired.
“I took you to the van and got you cleaned off, and we brought you across the bridge with us. But there was nothing we could do for Rosalind.”
“Lima Jenkins Sinclair,” Lulabelle says, slow and deliberate, smiling.
“That’s what Rosalind named you,” Duncan says. “That’s what she wanted to call you, so that’s what we put on your record of birth.”
“Lima Jenkins Sinclair,” Lulabelle says again.
“But how did your mother know it was me?” I say, thinking back to my first day in Riverside. “Miss Charlotte called me Elimina. How could she know it was me if Mother changed my name? Did you know it was me, Duncan?”
He hesitates for a moment, then nods.
“How?”
“I saw your scar.”
“But it could have been anyone,” I say, and he shakes his head.
“The other project cases—they’re all gone.”
For a moment the street and the birds go quiet, like everything is paused, and I press my hands into my chest because it feels like I can’t find any air.
“They died, Elimina,” he says, and Lulabelle starts to sing.
“Come find me in the waters of paradise.”
“What do you mean, they died? All of them? How can that happen?”
“Most died at their homes on the Mainland, with the people who took them in. Slips and falls. Hunting mishaps, boat trips where they never returned,” he says. “Some just . . . disappeared. Vanished. Like they were never there.”
“Ninety-nine kids died. And no one did anything?” I say.
Gutter Child Page 17