Geoff wore a blue suit and tie, and Belle wore a white linen dress that skimmed over her midsection. A lady in a black dress and an apron answered the door, and Belle, surprised but pleased by the woman’s dark brown skin, stuck out her hand.
“Hello, Mrs. Garfield! It’s wonderful to meet you!”
The lady shook her head, but when she turned, Geoff was still back some paces.
“Baby, no. That’s Delores. She’s our maid.”
In the living room, the pale, gray-eyed Claire Garfield chided her son for waiting to visit right before she was due to travel to the Vineyard. Minutes of that, then she pushed her nose right into their bedroom. Had Belle talked to her obstetrician about birth control, for after the baby? What had he advised? Belle tried to deflect with humor. When that didn’t work, she turned to her husband, but he looked at his shoes.
It was the father who stopped the assault. He was a handsome, urbane man.
“Please excuse my wife,” he said. “She doesn’t realize that you aren’t here for a medical visit.” Zachary Garfield was as pale as his wife, only with brown eyes. His hair was trimmed neatly with silver at the temples. But though the elder Garfields were stylishly attired—Zachary wore a light, summer-weight suit with no tie, and Claire’s pink silk shift came only to the knees, revealing shapely legs—they sat on opposite sides of the room. And unlike Belle’s parents, there was no connecting vibration between her in-laws. They didn’t throw each other secret smiles or exchange any significant glances. There was a chilly unfriendliness between them, which made Belle hopeful. It seemed they weren’t united in their disapproval of her. Claire Garfield was on her own.
While Belle sat on the sofa, feeling like a dead cat on the line, the maid brought in new guests. The older brother, Lawrence, was on summer break from Amherst, taking his Volkswagen bus on the road. He’d popped up with his new wife, a long-haired brunette: a white girl. He and Diane had eloped, he announced. His voice was loud, a combination of voilà and take that, but his parents seemed fine with it, especially his mother, who had hugged Diane at the door, patting her back gently as if the white girl had the hiccups. His parents’ lack of chagrin seemed to bother Lawrence.
It was 1966, and Belle knew about interracial couples. There was one who attended Red Mound, a white man and Negro lady who had lived as husband and wife for over twenty years, though they couldn’t marry under Georgia law. And Belle’s own lineage was mixed, though it wasn’t mentioned outside of the family. But a white female with a Negro male? That just wasn’t done where she came from. Geoff’s brother would have been lynched for something like this, down in Chicasetta—he could be killed for even looking too long at this white girl. And why was she with Lawrence anyway? Was something wrong with her, something not readily noticeable? The mother-in-law was pleased, though. That was clear.
“Excuse me,” Belle said. “Could you direct me to the powder room?” Minutes later, she flushed but lingered on the toilet, sighing many times. As she washed her hands, she looked around for a regular towel, but there was only one as fancy as the soap. This was a caution, washing all this money down the sink. When she came out, the white girl was waiting on her.
“Hi!” Diane said.
“Oh,” Belle said. “Hey yourself.”
“I’ve been so nervous! Lawrence told me Claire would be tough, but she seems really nice.”
Belle noticed that the white girl didn’t even think to put a handle on their mother-in-law’s name. She’d automatically moved to first-name basis with an elder.
“Not to me,” Belle said. “You know that woman asked me ’bout birth control? Here I am expecting, and she want me to stop ’fore I even get started.” After her efforts to speak properly all morning, her speech now thickened into sap.
Diane blinked in confusion. “What woman?”
“Who the hell you think I’m talking ’bout? Besides you, me, and the maid, ain’t no other woman in this house. I’m talking ’bout Miss Claire.” She didn’t care what this white girl did—she hadn’t been raised to call her elders by their first names. Belle might be up north, but she hadn’t left her home training behind.
“Oh my goodness! I’m so sorry!”
Diane’s lower lip trembled. If this white girl started crying, Belle knew she would, too, so she laughed.
“I fixed that heifer, though. I said, ‘Miss Claire, could you tell me what birth control is? ’Cause I ain’t heard of such.’”
“Good for you! Give ’em hell!”
Diane put her arm around Belle, who tolerated the embrace only seconds before pulling away.
* * *
Regularly, Geoff drove her to her obstetrician, Dr. Moorhead. He was one of Zachary Garfield’s fraternity brothers, and he approved of the advice of her mother, that walking would cut her labor time. In that year, the neighborhood was safe. Not fancy like the Gold Coast area, where Belle’s in-laws lived, where well-to-do Negroes were lighter than brown paper bags and welcomed the sight of fine-tooth combs, but not dangerous, either.
Belle wasn’t afraid to walk by herself, but she was lonely. There wasn’t another woman to keep her company, an older female who could advise her about this and that. Not only did she long for her relatives, she craved the food, the offal of home: chitterlings side by side on a plate with collards. Peppers in vinegar, and a cake of hot water corn bread fried in bacon grease. For dessert, a slice of watermelon, a fruit that her mother-in-law forbade in her house.
One day on a longer walk, Belle found a corner store. There were bright turnip greens sitting outside in a bushel basket and an old lady behind the store’s counter. She was walnut brown with pressed and curled white hair. There was a space between her teeth like Belle’s, what everyone down home called “a lie gap,” though Belle didn’t know why. Folks with a gap didn’t seem more dishonest than anybody else.
The old lady came from behind the counter and touched Belle’s pregnant belly without asking.
“It’s a girl! I can tell by the way you carrying.” Her name was Martha Clyburn, and she was from Boone, North Carolina, but her late husband had been from Macon, Georgia. Pretty as all get out, but a no-good skirt-chaser dropping outside kids everywhere, and cheap with his money, too. She was grateful for the four boys that he gave her—all grown, alive, and not one on the chain gang—but she hadn’t been upset when the husband passed away. That insurance money had come right on time. She’d bought the store with it.
Belle told her the husband’s actions didn’t surprise her. “I ain’t trying to speak ill of the dead, but them Macon men got reputations.”
“Child, please! You ain’t said nothing but the word.”
Whenever Miss Martha walked from behind the counter, the baby would kick excitedly inside Belle. Maybe it was the free food she gave them whenever the produce supplier drove in and brought in new stock. In late August, a slab of home-raised streak-o-lean. Early September, a paper sack of scuppernongs, which thrilled Belle to her soul. She didn’t even wait to wash the grapes. She bit into one and sucked the inside from the skin, crunching the seeds.
Miss Martha smiled, showing her gap. “These colored folks up here don’t like no scup’nons, but I knowed you would.”
“I shole do. I thank you so much.”
Whenever Belle tried to offer money for the gifts, the old lady told her, put that away. Don’t be hurting her feelings. She helped Belle load her bags of fresh vegetables in the child’s red wagon Geoff bought her, and Belle dragged the wagon home behind her, thrilled with her treasure. She’d bring what she could up the stairs to the apartment, leaving the rest in the hallway for her husband to deliver when he returned from school.
* * *
When Belle’s time came, Dr. Moorhead brought in a group of male residents, who took turns peering at Belle’s shaved, gaping privates, and, oh, the pain that held her in its humiliating twist, because she was afraid to accept twilight sleep. And, Jesus, if this was labor cut in half, what was the full parcel? Dur
ing those agonizing seventeen hours, fourteen minutes, and thirty-seven seconds, Belle prayed for her own death. Let that damned baby survive on its own, if it wanted to cause this much trouble. But Belle forgot her pain the moment she was handed the white-faced, blue-eyed ugliness. She loved this ugly thing. She loved her so much.
The next day, the nurse came to the maternity ward to demonstrate how to bathe the babies.
“How about we start with yours, Mrs. Garfield?” The nurse scanned the rows of infants. A finger pointed at a dark infant, born at a low weight. Belle shook her head. Another dark baby, a little girl. That went on for several minutes, with the other mothers laughing, already forgetful of their gendered agony, but the game wasn’t funny to Belle.
The younger Garfields named their daughter Lydia Claire, and when mother and baby came home, Belle didn’t want to leave the house. It was so cold outside; sometimes, it even snowed. Other days, the baby had an accident after Belle dressed her in one of the outfits that her grandmother had sewn and mailed to her. The baby would squirt shit through her cloth diaper, gurgling as if having accomplished a goal.
Other than visiting Dr. Clements, the pediatrician who shared Dr. Moorhead’s practice, Belle only left the house on Sundays, to visit her in-laws. She’d hoped the parlor ambushes would end once a grandchild entered the scene, but the baby only became another weapon. Miss Claire constantly joked that if she kidnapped the baby, the police wouldn’t return her. Lydia didn’t look a bit like her mother, she told Belle, and she criticized nursing as old-fashioned.
Every time, Zachary Garfield would cut into his wife’s harshness, talking over her.
“I’m very happy you’re nursing, Belle.” He smiled. “It’s so healthy for the baby, and these modern women care far too much about high bosoms. You’re such a good mother.” He’d hold out his hands for Lydia, and she’d grab his silly tie, printed with a bear digging into a honey jar. The baby nuzzled into his chest as her grandfather rocked her, kissing the top of her head, saying Lydia was his favorite little girl in the world. His pretty, pretty girl, and there would be a serene interval before Belle’s mother-in-law began her jagged criticism again.
After these visits, Belle would lie in her apartment bed, crying, as Geoff stood in the doorway. Whatever he’d done, he was so sorry. Please forgive him, as she covered her head with the spread. Throughout the week, she asked Geoff to go to Miss Martha’s store with her list. Please give her apologies. Tell her friend that it was just too cold to go outside, and please don’t forget his home training. Put a handle on that lady’s name.
One Sunday, she found her nerve to confront him. “Geoff, I’m not going to your mama’s this evening.”
“What’s wrong, baby? Are you not feeling well?”
“No. I’m sorry to say, your mama is mean. I can’t take her anymore.”
“I know that.”
“You do? Then, why don’t you say something?”
“Like what? ‘Mother, you’re a cold bitch, and always have been a cold bitch, but I need you and Dad to pay my rent and tuition’?”
“Lord Jesus!” Belle sat on the couch, hard. Where she came from, folks didn’t talk badly about their mothers or let anybody else do it, either. She couldn’t even imagine her baby calling her a name, once she learned to talk. Even an indirect insult would be insufferable. That’s how her brother Roscoe had got sent to the chain gang: he’d sliced a man’s throat open for calling him a goddamned bastard. The man had been insulting Miss Rose by association. He had been a stranger to the area; otherwise, he would have known to be careful with Roscoe Driskell. Everybody in Putnam County knew that boy had been crazy plus a full tank of gas.
“You don’t need to call your mama out her name,” Belle said. “Just tell her don’t hurt my feelings. I know she’s disappointed.”
“You mean, about the baby?”
“Yes, that. But the other thing.”
“What?”
She couldn’t believe she had married this thick-headed boy. Not only didn’t he have proper respect for his mama but he wasn’t that quick, either.
“Miss Claire’s disappointed because I’m dark-skinned, honey.”
“Oh, that. I don’t care what she thinks. I love your color, Maybelle Lee Driskell.” He kneeled in front of her, and she slapped at his shoulder.
“I told you not to call me that.”
“But I love that name. And I love the girl with it.” He put his hand in a certain place, but gently.
“Don’t you get nothing started.”
He stopped touching, but Belle told him, it was too late. She put her arms around him, squeezing him tightly. He better go ’head and finish. They’d see his mama another time.
When the weather broke, she toted the carriage down to the bottom of the stairs, then went back up for the baby. On the sidewalk, her stride was hurried. She didn’t want anyone to stop her, to look inside the stroller, see the small, white face and the green eyes that had changed from the blue of a newborn. She didn’t want anyone to think she was her own baby’s nanny. At the store, she called a greeting and Miss Martha rushed over, making glad sounds. She pulled the baby out of the stroller. What a big, fine young’un! Look at all them chins, and Belle told her, the baby was so light because of her husband.
“I done seen your man a bunch of times,” Miss Martha said. “I know what he look like.”
“You think she gone get her color soon? It’s been a while now.”
“Child, this is her color! See the tips of her ears? See ’round her nails? See how they ain’t no different from the rest of her? This baby ain’t getting much more darker.”
“Oh. Oh.” Belle wouldn’t cry. Not now.
Miss Martha moved the baby to her shoulder. “I been so worried ’bout you, child. You lucky you came when you did, ’cause I was gone ask your husband where y’all lived and come see ’bout you.”
“I’m sorry. Don’t be mad. I just been . . .” Belle wished she held the baby. She could have dropped her face into the sparse, brown hair and taken in deep breaths. That odor of purity made her feel better, if only for a few minutes.
“I might be old, but I done had four chirren. You ain’t got to lie to me.”
“Miss Martha, it seems like I lost something I can’t get back. And it’s been making me real sad.”
“Oh, child, ain’t nothing wrong with you. All womens be sad after they haves a baby. And you did lose something. You lost your freedom. You can’t never go nowhere without thinking ’bout your chirren. You tied to ’em for life. Even when they grown you gone worry ’bout ’em, ’cause this world is a mean old place.”
Holding the baby, Miss Martha walked to the door, shutting and locking it. She put up the CLOSED sign in the window, and told Belle she had some coffee upstairs, and some pound cake.
A Change Is Gonna Come
Saturdays were for sleeping in—if the baby let her—and for cleaning the small apartment and walking to the store. Not for shopping, but for visiting. Miss Martha brought down a rocking chair, so Belle could properly visit for a long time.
Sunday mornings were for feeling guilty that she wasn’t attending church and praising the Lord. Belle had been startled when her husband told her he didn’t attend church because he didn’t believe in God. She’d never met such a human being before, and it rallied her to try her mother-in-law’s church a few times. But the woman was Catholic and her parish mostly white. For Belle, church was not only for worship, but also for fellowship. She hadn’t felt comfortable sitting among those whom she knew wouldn’t welcome her into their homes. Then, too, later, there would be a bland dinner at her in-laws’, where she’d be dodging Claire Garfield’s viciousness. Church didn’t seem to sweeten that woman’s cup.
Belle’s guilt over missing church was smoothed some when Miss Martha told her she hadn’t yet found a church home, either. So on Wednesday afternoons, when Belle came to shop, the old lady put up the CLOSED sign. While the baby slept, the two women woul
d have Bible study. Miss Martha picked the scripture, and then she and Belle would talk through the words. Such as, what did it mean when Isaiah spoke of “drawing water from the wells of salvation”? That moved them into practical territory: both of them had grown up with pumps in their yards.
And five days a week, Belle rose early and cooked breakfast, sending her husband off to medical school with a full stomach and a sack lunch besides. Every day, Belle nursed her baby and touched her cheek and gave her love. While Lydia munched on the full breast, making cozy sounds, Belle told her that things would be different for girls when she grew up. Lydia would be a smart lady and accomplish greatness. She’d make her mama proud, and after Belle put her daughter down, she’d sit in the kitchen, drink her coffee, and read a library book. She rubbed the table’s edge. Sometimes Belle scolded herself. She had a good life, especially for a Negro woman. She didn’t have the right to want anything else, so she should stop feeling sorry for herself.
She shouldn’t hate the City, though it was full of strangers. It was her home now. She shouldn’t look to her door, waiting for her mother or Dear Pearl to walk through without knocking, assured of a country welcome. She’d despised that violation of privacy as a teenager, but now she longed for it. And she shouldn’t wake in the night and sit up, looking at the ghostly colored shoulder of Geoff, wondering how she’d gotten to this moment. Even Belle’s own baby didn’t look like her—that adored, tiny being that Belle would have died for, just to make sure Lydia was happy and safe and loved.
When the telephone rang one morning, Belle almost didn’t answer: her family contacted her infrequently, and Miss Martha never called, so Belle suspected the call was her mother-in-law. She ignored the sound until it stopped, but then the phone rang again.
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois Page 29