Swan Place

by Augusta Trobaugh

  “What do you mean by that?” he said. And I said, “Maybe your daughters aren’t yours. Maybe you’re not the only one who did wrong.” I wish you could have seen his face! I was trying awful hard not to enjoy seeing his pain. But after what all he did to my sweet sister, running off and leaving her to raise the children alone, I’m afraid that I did enjoy seeing it. Just a bit. And he just turned and walked away. He hasn’t been back, and that was over a month ago. I waited until now to tell you, because I wanted to see if he was going to make trouble again. But I haven’t heard another thing. I swear to you, Crystal, when I told him about maybe him not being the daddy he thought he was, I only meant Dove, like that deathbed letter of my sister’s said. But when I saw he took it to mean Molly too, I didn’t correct him. Maybe that big old angel sitting on my tongue stopped me. I don’t know. But I think maybe he won’t bother you all anymore. When we’re sure, maybe you all can come home. I miss you all so much.

  Love, Bett”

  By the time Crystal finished reading Aunt Bett’s letter, she was crying. “Oh, maybe Molly’s safe now!” she whispered. And then she started crying even harder. “But I can’t go back. Not like I am!” Once again, her hand stroked her stomach.

  “Why not?” I argued.

  “I can’t let Bett know,” Crystal pronounced. “This baby will be coming too soon for me and Roy-Ellis to have been married. Aunt Bett will know we didn’t . . . wait . . . till we were married.”

  Now, I didn’t know all the details about what happens between a man and a woman that makes a baby, but I did know how folks felt about mothers who got a baby before they were married good and proper. So maybe it was getting a little clearer to me.

  “And how much too soon?” Buzzard asked. Crystal glanced at me and blushed. “A week,” she finally said, and Buzzard laughed in the softest kind of way.

  “Wouldn’t nobody notice a little thing like that,” Buzzard assured her, and then she laughed again and shook her head.

  “Well, Aunt Bett might notice,” Crystal insisted. “And she would never forgive me.” I was so surprised when I heard myself saying, “She forgave my mama. My mama got me when she wasn’t married to Roy-Ellis.” Then I remembered my mama again and how she worked all the time in that little bitty shop Roy-Ellis had made for her. And how hard Aunt Bett tried to help us out with clothes.

  “Well, you all just don’t be in any hurry to make up your minds,” Buzzard said to Crystal. “Main thing is to wait until we’re sure about Molly’s daddy and sure that this baby that’s coming is all right.”

  “Yes,” Crystal said, and then Buzzard added, “I think maybe it’s time for you all to talk to your Aunt Bett on the phone.”

  “But that’s so expensive,” Crystal protested.

  “I already told you all not to worry about that,” Buzzard said.

  “Well, all right then. But I’m not going to tell her about the baby.”

  “That’s up to you,” Buzzard said.

  So Crystal called Aunt Bett long distance, and they talked for a long time. And like she’d planned, Crystal put Aunt Bett off. “Well, we really still aren’t sure, as you know. And it’s better to wait and see if he comes back. And too, Dove’s real happy in her new school.”

  Aunt Bett said something else, and Crystal answered, “Oh, they’re just fine. They have a big garden to play in, and they like Buzzard real well.” Then silence. Crystal glanced up at me and bit her bottom lip. “Of course we still need you, Bett! Please don’t talk like that. It breaks my heart.” Crystal was close to tears. I held out my hand for the receiver, afraid Crystal would get so upset that she’d blurt out something about the baby.

  “Hi, Aunt Bett!” I said, as cheerfully as possible. “We sure have missed you!”

  “Oh, have you really?” Aunt Bett’s voice softened right away.

  “We sure have. And I’m so glad that maybe nobody’s going to try to take Molly away. But we have to be sure about that. And I think God put a very special angel in charge of your tongue. I sure do thank Him for it!”

  “Thank you, Dove. Thank you. Now what are you all doing for clothes?”

  At that point, I went right into lying like a fool. Lying so much and so convincingly that Crystal and Buzzard both stared at me and with their mouths hanging open. I told Aunt Bett that some of Buzzard’s relatives had only one girl and no other children, and she was older than me, so I could have all her clothes. I told her that even her shoes got passed down to me, and that she was growing so fast, she didn’t have a bit of time to wear shoes out, so they were like new. I told her that other relatives had children just a little older than Molly and Little Ellis for handing down the clothes, and that we all had more than we knew what to do with. And then, I stopped lying when I said, “And I’m still trying to make me a friend.”

  “You are?” Aunt Bett said. “What’s her name?”

  “Sharon,” I said. “She’s timid, but I think you’d like her.”

  “Well, tell me about this Buzzard—good Heavens, what a name!” Aunt Bett went on. “I didn’t even know that Aunt Mee had relatives I’d never heard of.”

  I glanced at Buzzard. “She’s real nice,” I said. “And she makes such good biscuits too. She makes them for us every single morning.”

  “Better than my biscuits?” Aunt Bett asked, and I was thinking, Uh oh! I think I’ve stepped on Aunt Bett’s toes!

  “Just exactly like your biscuits, Aunt Bett,” I said in a hurry. “Why, if I had to tell which were better, yours or Buzzard’s, I wouldn’t be able to say.” I winked at Buzzard, and she nodded and smiled. She understood exactly why I had to say that.

  “Well, thank you, Dove. Now let me talk to Crystal again, please.”

  “Yes’m.” I handed the receiver back to Crystal, who really didn’t want to take it.

  “Yes?” Then a long, long silence while Aunt Bett talked, probably urging and urging us to come back home. Finally, Crystal rolled her eyes. “Aunt Bett, Dove and I will write you a letter tomorrow, I promise. This is awful expensive, talking long distance, and I don’t want to run up Buzzard’s phone bill. Yes. We’ll just wait and be sure! Okay. Bye-bye now.”

  When she hung up, Crystal heaved a sigh. “I don’t know if we can go back—ever. Maybe it’s not safe! Maybe he will wait until we come back and then find out about Molly and take her away. Too, it’s better to wait and see about this baby. Then we’ll know lots more than we know now.”

  Buzzard was studying Crystal with a deep frown. “And suppose you take this baby and Dove and Molly and Little Ellis and go back, then who do you think is gonna take care of that baby while you work?”

  Crystal’s mouth fell open a little, as if she hadn’t thought of such a thing. “Why,” she sputtered, “Dove here can do it, can’t you, Dove?”

  “Yes.” That’s what my mouth said, but my heart was pounding.

  “Well, who’s gonna take care of it while Dove’s in school?”

  “Aunt Bett?” Crystal suggested in a whisper.

  “You gonna load another child onto that good woman, seeing as how she has so many of her own? And was helping out with Molly and Little Ellis?” What a bleak, accusing question it was! We all just sat there in a little circle full of horrible thoughts.

  “Or . . .” Buzzard began again. “Maybe Dove would have to drop out of school to take care of all the little ones while you work.” Crystal and I stared at each other in astonishment. Me? I was thinking. Drop out of school? Not be like the girl in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn? Not have things better than Mama had them?

  “Oh, Dove,” Crystal breathed. “I would never let that happen!”

  Buzzard nodded her head up and down slowly, and the frown was gone. But those awful words were still hanging in the air, and I couldn’t bear them!

  Crystal was still staring at me with a stricken look on her face, and Buzzard said to her in kind of a gruff voice, “And have you taken your vitamins?”

  “I took them,” Crystal said.
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  “Good. We want a healthy baby.”

  The next morning, when Crystal dropped me off at school, Rachel and Mandy were waiting for me once again. And they hovered on either side of me as we went into the building. After lunch, I excused myself from them and walked around outside, looking for Sharon. But when I found her sitting beneath a tree, her glance told me without any doubt that she wanted me to leave her alone. I wanted so bad to tell her that I knew what it felt like to have clothes too little for you and to have the other girls not like you because you’re poor, but I just didn’t know how.

  When lunch was over and I was on my way back to class, I overheard Miss Gray and another teacher talking in low voices in the hallway: “I really hoped she would get off on the right foot with . . . the right group of girls,” Miss Gray was saying. “I just can’t understand why she seems to be trying to take up with Sharon, of all people!”

  And the other teacher said, “Well, you know that Mr. Swan was always a big defender of the weak and downtrodden. He never did join any of the town organizations like the Kiwanis Club, the way most men of station do. Just hung around with all the poor folks he could find. Seems to me Dove is an apple that hasn’t fallen far from Mr. Swan’s tree.”

  And when I heard that, I smiled. Because what I meant to do was be the best of whatever the wonderful Swans had been—but not to give up being myself, not even if I could have been the most popular girl in this whole world!

  Chapter Nineteen

  A little later on, Crystal had to work fewer hours because of her ankles, but she kept her appointments at the clinic near the mall and took her vitamins like she was supposed to. And around the beginning of February, Buzzard said it was time for Crystal to meet Miss Rebecca, the midwife. So Buzzard called her on the phone, and the next Saturday morning, Miss Rebecca came up the driveway riding a bicycle. I was sweeping off the porch when she came up the steps, the skinniest lady I’ve ever seen in my life, but with a face to behold! The kindest, most loving face I think I’ve ever seen.

  “Good morning,” she said to me. “I’m Miss Rebecca, and I’m here to see Buzzard and Crystal.”

  “Yes ma’am. I’m Dove. I’m in Sharon’s class at school.”

  “Oh, that’s nice,” Miss Rebecca said, looking at me in a new way. “Sharon doesn’t make many friends, I’m afraid.”

  “I’d be friends with her, except she gets too embarrassed to let me talk with her.”

  “Well, she kind of likes to keep to herself,” Miss Rebecca said, and she turned as red as Sharon had.

  Miss Rebecca was at our house for a very long time. Buzzard, Crystal, and Miss Rebecca sat in the dining room, talking real low for about an hour. I watched cartoons with Molly and Little Ellis, and this time, I didn’t try to hear what they were saying. I’d heard some things about how babies come into the world, and I didn’t want to know any more. Buzzard came to the door of the little room where we were watching television.

  “Dove, Crystal and Miss Rebecca have to go upstairs for a while. I want you to be sure you keep Molly and Little Ellis downstairs until I say otherwise.”

  “Yes’m.” But I was wondering why they had to go upstairs. What was going to happen? Was Crystal’s baby going to come right away? Buzzard worked around in the kitchen for a while, and I kept Molly and Little Ellis downstairs, just like she told me to do, and after about thirty minutes, Crystal and Miss Rebecca came back downstairs.

  Crystal’s face was red as fire. They went into the kitchen and the three of them talked again. I heard only one thing that was said, and it was when Miss Rebecca said that the baby was going to be a big one. I shuddered. “But that’s okay,” she went on. “Delivered a twelve-pounder one time, I did.”

  “Whoo-eee!” Buzzard responded. “Mama okay?”

  “Mama okay,” Miss Rebecca confirmed.

  By then, the weather had turned too cold for the Sisters of the Circle of Jesus to meet on the back porch, and Buzzard told me that they met in a Sunday School room at the church in the wintertime.

  “Why don’t you just use the living room?” I asked.

  “What?” Buzzard snorted at me. “Use Miz Swan’s very own living room?”

  The tone of her voice told me that it was an impossible idea.

  “I don’t think she would mind.”

  “Listen, Dove,” she started out in a patient voice. “Who all do you think the sisters are?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that other than one of them, they were all maids to white folks. A couple of them still are. Like me,” she added. “And maids don’t sit in white folks’ living rooms.”

  “Oh.” But I was remembering that time when Aunt Mee sat down at the kitchen table with Crystal and me, and how surprised she was to realize what she’d done. Of course, Crystal and I didn’t think a single thing of it, but Aunt Mee was pretty old. And she probably thought all the old rules were still around. And . . . maybe they were, in a way that I didn’t understand.

  On the first day of March, in the middle of a cold and windy night, Crystal woke me up by shaking my shoulder hard.

  “Dove, wake up. Go get Buzzard. I think the baby’s coming.” That was all she had to say. I flew down the stairs and into Buzzard’s room, where she was a big, snoring lump under all her down comforters.

  “Wake up!” I yelled. “Crystal says the baby’s coming!”

  Buzzard groaned and turned over. “We don’t have to rush, Dove. First babies always take their own sweet time. Tell Crystal to time the pains, and I’ll call Miss Rebecca when they’re five minutes apart and steady.” Why, I could hardly believe it! Buzzard was going to go back to sleep! I ran back upstairs. Crystal was sitting on the side of her bed, shaking a little in the chill of the room.

  “Buzzard says to time your pains and when they’re five minutes apart, she’ll call Miss Rebecca,” I said breathlessly.

  “But I’m sitting in something all wet!” she wailed.

  Wet? I ran back downstairs.

  “Buzzard, you gotta get up. Crystal says she’s sitting in something all wet!”

  At that, Buzzard threw back the covers and sat up. “Get me my wool robe out of the closet,” she said. “And help me find my shoes.” When I tried to follow Buzzard into Crystal’s room, she stopped me. “You go downstairs and put the kettle on to boil,” she ordered. “The big kettle.” I did as Buzzard said, and I don’t know why, but turning on the lights in the kitchen and being there while it was still dark as midnight outside and knowing something pretty miraculous was getting ready to happen, right under our very roof, was something very nice. Something I was sure I would want to write into one of my stories.

  As soon as I had the kettle going, I walked over to the window and looked out to where the light coming out of the kitchen lit up some of the big trees in the back garden. And there was something there, as well. Maybe the spirits of Mr. and Mrs. Swan walking around in all that fine, chill March wind.

  When Buzzard came downstairs, she went and got dressed, right down to her heavy boots. Then she called Miss Rebecca on the phone.

  “Yes, the bag of waters have broken,” she said. “No, you’ll not ride that bicycle all the way here in this cold weather. I’ll come get you. About fifteen minutes okay? I’m worried about a dry birth, you know,” she added.

  “That kettle boiling yet?” she asked as she came into the kitchen.

  “Yes. What do you need hot water for?” Buzzard studied me for a moment before she smiled and said, “A cup of instant coffee to tide me over until we can get a real pot going.”

  Buzzard and Miss Rebecca stayed upstairs with Crystal almost the whole day long. I kept Molly and Little Ellis downstairs, and once in a while, I would go to the foot of the stairs and listen. Not a sound. Not a single sound. Once, Buzzard called to me to bring up coffee for her and Miss Rebecca, and I did—but Buzzard met me at the top of the stairs, took the cups, and motioned with her head for me to go down again. But before I could get all t
he way back downstairs, I heard a moan. A long, deep moan!

  As that day went on, I thought back to how that first moan had startled me, because there were lots more, each one louder than the last. On and on and on they went, and finally, in late afternoon, I heard the first scream. Made me want to scream, myself!

  Molly and Little Ellis heard the scream too and looked at me with large, frightened eyes.

  “It’s okay,” I tried to soothe them. “That’s the kind of sounds a woman makes when she’s having a baby.” Why, I spoke with such authority and calmness, but in truth, I’d never been around a woman having a baby before in my life. Because Molly and Little Ellis were both born in the hospital, and I hadn’t even been allowed to go along at all, either time.

  When Buzzard came downstairs again, I didn’t ask if the baby had come. I knew it hadn’t, not with Crystal still screaming and crying. Buzzard had deep furrows in between her eyebrows when she went to the phone and dialed a number. I couldn’t hear what she said, but when she turned to go back upstairs, those furrows on her forehead weren’t quite so deep. Had she called a doctor? Was something terribly wrong?

  But I got my answer to that in about half an hour, when the back door opened, and the Sisters of the Circle of Jesus filed into the kitchen, with two of them carrying Sister Blood-of-the-Lamb, just like always. They nodded their heads at me, took off their coats, seated themselves around the kitchen table, and took out their Bibles. I didn’t even ask them if they wanted some coffee, but I went ahead and started a fresh pot for them while I watched them carefully. But they didn’t do much of anything, that I could see. They didn’t even open their Bibles—just put their hands on them, shut their eyes, and bowed their heads. No one said a single word. Just a big circle of big women, sitting around a table together. Then, after a few minutes, little Sister Blood-of-the-Lamb reached out her hands to the sisters on either side of her, and soon, all of them were holding hands, but they still kept their heads bowed.