Knee-Deep in Wonder

by April Reynolds

  “Good,” Queen Ester said softly, as she tiptoed closer to the edge of the porch. “Good,” she said again, clearer this time. “Good, good.”

  12

  SHE CRAVED SHOES most of all. On her knees, with her ass high in the air, she had chewed six pairs of shoes into unrecognizable lumps—all on the sly, of course. The leather soles of brogans, with just a trace of dust, she loved best, but they were hard to find. Sunday shoes and bedroom slippers were reduced to piles of leather scraps. She sucked at the tips of shoes like sucking out the marrow from a chicken bone. Dutifully, Liberty would leave her daughter ketchup in a bowl and pickled eggs swimming in red dye, open boxes of Argo cornstarch, and Queen Ester, trying to please, would dip a finger into the bowl and lick it clean. But what she really wanted were shoes—perhaps with the heels worn away and shards of grass tucked into the groove between the sole and leather—or even a work boot, though the rubber aggravated her gums, if anyone were to ask. The first three months she gnawed away at a pair of bedroom slippers and her single pair of loafers; but after the fourth month of pregnancy her house shoes lay at the foot of her bed, unidentifiable. Queen Ester grew swollen and picky, every undone and gone-to-sour thing Liberty could think to give her daughter remained untouched, until finally Liberty handed over an old pair of garden shoes.

  Nobody spoke about him.

  Not quite gone, Chess and his almost-absence had seeped into both women’s dreams. Queen Ester’s belly, of course, didn’t help matters. First stranger, then son (her baby boy, all her own), then—before Halle’s death—finally lover had leapt from the mother’s arms to the daughter’s and, not satisfied with that sin, had topped himself and made a baby. At least that was what Liberty told herself. Maybe not leapt, she thought, but stumbled. But when? Almost nine months ago, unable to put him completely out of mind, Liberty put him out of reach. Beyond her hands but not beyond her sight. Like Chess’s stumble (hmm, yes, she liked that word) into Queen Ester, Liberty too had blundered into Chess. Watching her daughter’s swollen stomach, she didn’t like to recall how eagerly she had shared him, just barely, with his wife Halle and his black night mistress.

  She wondered how he had managed all of them. Wasn’t Halle demanding (especially at the end, when she couldn’t help but be), Morning sullen, and Liberty greedy? She had felt satisfaction that he loved her best. He had said Halle was a sore he couldn’t help picking, and Morning—Morning just kept in his path all the time. And herself? “Oh, I love you, baby. As soon as—” Liberty had put her hand over his mouth then, not allowing him to finish, knowing he wouldn’t be able to stand up to his words later on. But now?

  Now nobody spoke about him.

  For years he had flickered in and out of their lives, him and that wife of his, Liberty thought. Though Halle had stayed just long enough to have six babies. Then she dropped dead, some said from heartache. Hah! She could dish it out better than anybody. Halle fought dirty and more often than not won, leaving Chess to pant in a corner somewhere, licking at a cut she had just inflicted. Heartache? She was the wife and the bitch and that was all. Yes, Liberty knew Chess felt Halle was a sore he couldn’t help but tear at (wasn’t he the same for her?), but Halle, at least in Liberty’s mind, had possessed a streak of meanness that could turn clever and hurt in unexpected places. Though Liberty (and Morning) hated to admit it, Halle proved to have a stronger hold dead than she had ever had while living. Her ghost (prettier and sweeter) slept between the sheets of both of Chess’s women and smiled when they and Chess argued. She wasn’t that nice when alive, but her ghost was a saint. Don’t believe it? Just ask Chess. Liberty did constant battle with a dead wife’s memory.

  Now, though, nobody spoke his name and Halle wasn’t even a thought.

  Nine months had galloped past them all with only Queen Ester’s swelling stomach ticking off the time. When her water broke, a clear mucus running down her legs, Liberty’s first impulse was not to catch her daughter, slumped over the table, but to race out the door through the cotton field and snatch up Chess. “She ready now and I want you to see,” she said, as they stumbled back through the stretch of land that separated their homes. His feet fumbled as she dragged him along.

  “All right, all right, I ain’t fighting you, is I?” Chess gasped, afraid to say another word because this was the first time Liberty had spoken to him since she had opened his face with her hands and then put him out of touch. Queen Ester in labor—this was to be his punishment for impregnating her child, she said. As far as Chess was concerned it wasn’t that much of a punishment; hadn’t he seen his own wife (God bless her) grow with child six times? Granted, he had never been in the room with Halle when she had given birth; she always went away to her mother’s house and would come back to Chess a week or so later with something swaddled in her arms. But he didn’t think Liberty would really put him in the room with Queen Ester. No, he thought, as he watched Liberty’s long legs saw back and forth through the tall grass, his punishment was the absence of Liberty; he missed the way she untucked her laughter. Morning had become complacent these past few months without the threat of Liberty stepping through the door to pluck away “her man.” She had become lazy in bed, telling him no when she felt tired, something she never would have done if she thought Liberty lurked around the corner. “Say, slow down,” Chess said, as he stumbled for the second time.

  Liberty broke the bolt she’d begun at Chess’s house. “Better?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” Chess panted. “I done missed you,” he blurted. Both he and Liberty were surprised by how quickly she turned with her hand raised ready to strike.

  “What you say?”

  “Nothing. I ain’t say nothing.” He took a small hop back from her. Liberty turned away, almost running toward the house.

  Queen Ester had crawled into her bed by the time Chess and Liberty entered the house. They took the stairs three at a time, and both lover and beloved paused when they heard Queen Ester’s heavy moan behind the closed bedroom door. “You stay on here, I got it.” Liberty let go of Chess’s hand. “No, maybe we should—” She stopped. “No. I got it. No. Wait. Go get Other and tell him—”

  “Where he at?” Chess interrupted.

  “Well, shit, I don’t know. He can’t be far.” She licked the inside of her thumb.

  “Sure he could.”

  Both heard Queen Ester’s mewing again. “Just shut it, Chess.” Liberty scowled.

  “Well, goddamn, baby,” Chess said. “You need to hurry up on whatever you gone do.”

  Her nervousness created a wall between them, and Chess hadn’t the faintest idea how to climb over it. Instead, he watched, fascinated, as Liberty paced up and down the hall, her thumb inside her mouth, saying the one thing she knew to calm herself, “All right. All right, all right.” Finally she stopped in front of the door. “I done this before.”

  “When?”

  “Okay, maybe I haven’t, but gone and get me some hot water and some rags from the kitchen. Gone, now.” She walked into the bedroom and closed the door behind her. For the next three hours, Chess stayed alone in the hallway without a chair to sit in.

  “She done yet?”

  Liberty didn’t bother to stand up and walk to the door, she merely yelled out, “You get some respect, Chess. And no, she ain’t done.”

  Chess smiled lightly at what he thought was Liberty’s conversational tone. “You know, Halle would go to her mama, stay a week and come back with a baby. Just one, two, three.”

  Liberty stepped out and slapped Chess lightly, and he saw something playful and joyous in her face. “She at her mama’s. That’s me.”

  * * *

  Then they were four, an awkward number easily broken. And only Queen Ester could stand it. They kept the baby for just seven days. Seven solid days of Queen Ester’s heavy cooing and oh my’s that even she, full of new-mother bliss, knew wouldn’t last. Mama planning, she thought, and I ain’t got the know-how to stand up to her like I should. She was right. Lib
erty spent those seven days thinking there were some things a body couldn’t bear and, Lord be a witness, shouldn’t have to bear, such as your lover making a baby with your daughter, and then to have that baby plus lover plus daughter all under the same roof. No, she thought hotly, nobody should be called upon to bear that. Big as she was, Liberty wasn’t big enough for that sort of nonsense, and she knew someone would have to go.

  Those seven days, when Queen Ester was wrapped in a thin cocoon of rapture, Liberty thought of the man she was going to pass off as the father, husband to Queen Ester except that he died too soon. Duck didn’t have the decency to stay alive for eight months. Nevertheless, she prepared for Annie b and Ed, two people she had laid eyes on only once in her life, with a faith that in spite of everything things would work out. A letter full of looping handwriting had been sent out to Duck’s kin and they were coming, on their way to see what Duck left behind, and thank you for sending the body so promptly. Liberty planned for their arrival, stalking her house, making everyone bend to her will. They were three and baby be damned. On the seventh day, early in the morning, she sent Chess to fetch Mable and Other. Liberty stepped into the bedroom, already mid-speech even though she hadn’t said a word, Queen Ester couldn’t pretend surprise. “It ain’t even got a daddy,” Liberty told her daughter.

  “Yes, it do.”

  “Duck dead, baby.”

  “I ain’t talking about him.”

  “Well, that daddy already got too many babies of his own. And I’m too old to be taking care of no brand-new children.”

  “I ain’t ask you to mind after what’s mine.”

  “I ain’t said you did.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, you telling me that you can mind after what’s yours, but who mind after you?” Liberty walked further inside the room. “That’s right, I do. And you ain’t even got a job.”

  “I can gone and get one.”

  “Then who gone take care your baby while you working?”

  “Mama.”

  “Duck people’s coming down here today. I want you to stay on up here.”

  “Ain’t.” Defiance laced her voice.

  Liberty moved, striding across the small room. She crouched over the bed where Queen Ester lay and yanked her daughter’s shoulder, shaking her furiously. “You hear me? I said don’t you come down when they get here.” She pulled back and raised her other hand. Her palm and fingers waved in the air, poised to strike. Knowing she was beat, Queen Ester laid the baby, too small to be named, in her mother’s arms, sighing gently as Liberty closed the door behind her.

  * * *

  She walked downstairs, baby in her hands. Mable waited for her friend in the café. “Chess come and got me. Other outside on the porch.” Mable saw the baby tucked in the crook of Liberty’s elbow. “What’s going on?”

  “I need you to do something for me.” Liberty’s voice came out, flat and mean.

  “What, Liberty?”

  “Some of Duck’s people gone come by and pick up the baby, and I want you to give it to them.”

  “What?”

  “You heard.”

  “Liberty, what’s going on?” Mable’s concern sat naked on her face, but then both women heard a cranky rumbling enter the yard. Together they stepped to the window. “Who that?”

  “I told you, Duck’s kin coming.”

  “To take the baby?”

  Liberty held the sleeping child out.

  “Do they even know Duck dead?” Mable’s question hung between the two women. Mable already knew that if Duck was the daddy she was Chinese. Nothing escaped her notice.

  “Course they do.”

  “Why don’t you—” But Liberty cut her off.

  “I can’t. Chess can’t gone out there. Look at her.” They peered through the window at the car and saw a man and woman get out. “She ain’t no fool. One look at him and she’ll know.”

  Now it was Mable’s turn to feel nervous. Panic caught at her throat and shook her hard. “I don’t know about this, Liberty. You think these folks outside just gone take a baby when the mama above ground?”

  “Just listen. You tell her Queen Ester ain’t right. And when she say, What you mean? you just nod your head, real slow. You hear me?”

  “Liberty.”

  “When she ask after me, tell her I’m too old to take care of no child, plus—and Mable, say it just like this—I didn’t want to say, but Duck and Liberty never did get along. I don’t know how he would feel … then trail right on off.” Liberty shifted the baby in her arms. “Now take this baby and get out there.”

  “Liberty, I don’t know.”

  Liberty played her last card. “Since I done known you, I ain’t never asked you for a thing. I’m asking you gone and do this one thing for me. How many times you done told me yourself that I need to look out for Queenie fore she turn foolish on me?”

  “All right, all right.” Liberty passed Mable the child and opened the door for her. Other waited on the porch and Mable spoke to him while walking down the stairs. “Come on, Other, I just need you to stand by me.”

  And, well, Liberty was right. Annie b. Taylor was nobody’s fool. She took one look at Mable and Other and knew something was awry. Where’s the mama? she thought, watching the two come closer. Here we are, getting a welcome from some lady who I know for a fact ain’t kin and a nigger big as a bull. Liberty could of come out. Who ever heard of meeting family in the middle of the yard? No one asked them how their trip went or invited them to come on and sit in the cool for a spell. “Something smelling sour,” Annie b whispered to her husband.

  “Hey there,” Mable said, smiling as she approached.

  “Hey yourself.”

  “I’m Mable and this here is Other. And”—Mable moved the child higher in her arms so Annie b and her husband, Ed, could see—“this is your little niece. Can you say howdy to your auntie?” Mable cooed.

  Annie b didn’t look at the child. “Where Queen Ester at?”

  “She laid up right now, sleeping, I think.”

  “I bet.” Annie b snorted and spat carefully behind her feet. “And where Liberty?”

  “Well, somebody got to see after the brand-new mama.” A wobbly smile pulled at Mable’s face.

  Annie b turned to Other. “What? You can’t say nothing?”

  “Other ain’t much for talking. He just came out with me cause I asked him to. You ain’t even take a good look at the baby. That’s what you came way out here for, right?” Annie scared her, and Mable couldn’t put aside the creeping fear. It’s the hair, Mable thought, looking at Annie’s shorn head.

  “You got this dumb nigger with you, like I don’t know no better from a turd. Humph!”

  “Miss b, you know what they say.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Don’t run off and kill the messenger.” Mable coughed a faint laugh and shifted the baby from one arm to the other.

  “Yeah, well, you know what else they say? Mama’s baby, Daddy’s maybe.”

  Ed brought his hands out of his pockets and moved closer to the child, peering into the bundle Mable carried. “I think that’s a right fine-looking baby, b.”

  “I bet you do.”

  “Sure do seem to sleep a lot.”

  “They do when they this little. She ain’t no trouble at all and that’s a fact. Just sleep and eat. Ain’t never seen a better baby. Lord as my witness, I think she look just like you and Duck, Miss Annie,” Mable said, as she put the child in Ed’s arms.

  “My eye she do.” But they took the child anyway, Annie b’s suspicions be damned. She could see Ed had fallen in love with the child in his arms, and she felt it wasn’t her right to deny him what she herself couldn’t give. Together, the new uncle and aunt drove away with the baby.

  * * *

  Thus began years of corrections: I ain’t your mama, I’m your auntie, answered with a shy Yes, ma’am. They took the child. For Helene, only the letters offered solace. At six she would peek
inside the Christmas cards scrawled with, I love you. I love you. Helene’s desire to see her mama wouldn’t quit, despite Annie b’s shooing and hush-all-that. “She ain’t here and she ain’t coming” was a common refrain. At least Queen Ester had had seven days of bliss. The letters, instead of soothing Helene’s want, jump-started her desire, and Annie b, gruff and almost mean, didn’t know what to do with a child that small and needy.

  Who knew what would have happened to the child had she stayed in that house? With both the mama and the granny set against her, the child might not have survived. Annie b knew what was going on, never mind that she hadn’t put a foot inside the door. She knew. She smelled it as soon as she stepped out of the car—soured jealousy and craziness cooking on a stove. Can’t tell me, she had mumbled on the way back home. If Duck was the daddy, I’m a monkey.

  13

  HELENE WOULD HAVE sat there listening forever—wept in all the right places, held her mother’s hand when she looked shaken, gulped it up like a good girl. She had seen enough movies to know when to raise an eyebrow, quiver a chin. She didn’t have to show me that room, Helene thought. But she didn’t; I went up there on my own, ran up the stairs, and kept looking when I should’ve stayed in the kitchen and clipped Mama at the knees, tackled her until she calmed down. Helene stopped, slowing the car down, because she could hear herself talk like a Southerner, her voice rounding out each word as if she were choking on it; she sounded like her mother. “Good goddamn,” she whispered. “I don’t. I can’t sound like her in just one day. I’m wrong and I’m scared. But I’ll take care of it when I get home. Maybe I’ll move to New York after the funeral and get rid of all this forever.” She took me up there, Helene reasoned, just as if she had led me by the hand. She wouldn’t show it to me in the first place, which set my curiosity going, and like a child I bit into the first thing I couldn’t have and ran to the room Mama didn’t have the decency to lock.