by Alix Hawley
—No, Anna. Soon we will have it out and you will see.
Who believes in devils now? Granddaddy’s oldest black woman, Silvy, used to scare us with them long ago—tiny devils floating about like dandelion seeds for bad children to breathe in. When Susy hurries in with a pot of lard, I grease my right hand with it to the wrist. She watches. There will be a time she will need to know how—I will not live forever.
—Is she all right, Ma?
—She will be.
I fold my fingers together and slide my hand into Anna’s body. A trickle of her water soaks my rolled sleeve. She gasps and tenses. She is a thin woman, but her hips are broad enough, like a bell. I catch the baby’s foot. And now where is the other little foot? I inch my fingers higher, with my other hand on the outside of Anna’s belly. When I find the sole bent up against the child’s body, I push the first leg up to join it. Gently.
The small wet feet writhe together. Anna cries:
—Get it out, get it out!
I close my ears and eyes to her, there is nothing but my slippery hand to see with. It finds the baby’s head pushed against Anna’s right hipbone, under the broken bag of waters, which I slide back. Its blood beats under its hair. I feel for its face, tucked down with a small arm folded over it. With my longest finger, I hook the arm and pull it down along the child’s side so it will not break. The neck is not twisted or bent back—I slide upward to reach for the cord, and my finger brushes the child’s lips. It tries to suck.
I breathe in. And cannot help thinking of my last baby, William, the last I will have, dead at nine days.
And James, my first baby, before he was born, and was safe. Of the long birth, when I wanted him out, like Anna, but at the same time did not want him separated from me.
He was a grave little child. Great interested eyes.
—Rebecca, please—
Anna rolls her head. The baby is a big one, but I know just how it is lying in its little dark world. The cord is not knotted, no twists. It is only looped loosely round the baby’s other arm. With my finger I catch it and slip it off. The plump arm twitches. I feel for the chin with my eyes shut again.
I never wish to think of Jamesie, but some nights I dream of him as a small boy, falling from a great tree near the creek where we lived then, crying for me on the ground but quietly, afraid I would be angry with him for climbing. I dream of him smiling in his bed, and dreaming I lift him and find his little arms and body scratched and bloodied, as though he had been crawling through nettles. I dream of him as an old man, walking along bent over—I dream of him born blue, the cord knotted round his neck. I feel him leaving my body in a great rush, again and again. I wake gasping.
Anna now weeps quietly. In her dark inside, the baby sucks again at my fingertip. I tighten my own mouth. Little one, I am not your mother. But I cannot see you lost—
—Susy, you might give us a song.
—What shall I sing?
Susy feels my difficulty and keeps her voice gentle. From through the door comes another voice:
Then the spider, she
Daily waits on me
Oh round about my bed
She weaves her tender web
When I am weary weary oh—
—Polly, that is no help. Enough.
I know the words that come further on. When the child does cry, I must sing goodbye. I could shake this girl my uncle left to me, with her great mouth and her loudness. I ought to have told her to keep home with the other young ones.
I open my fingers slightly, my arm halfway to the elbow inside Anna, my other hand on the hard round of her belly. A smell of damp, cider, fat. Be soft now, soften your bones, I tell the baby and Anna, as well as myself.
The baby twists its head, searching again for my finger. Susy in a crouch holds Anna’s shoulders as she makes a deep distressed sound. Susy whispers Hush, hush. I want to pull my fingers back out—but I do not. With my outside hand I push on the lump of the child’s head and shoulders. Move. You cannot come out this way. Turn your head down. Turn. But it will not turn. Anna is nearly silent now, her mouth gaping, her head hanging. From past her shoulders, Susy looks at me, asking. I nod to her. Watch—
—Come now, little sleepyhead. No more lying on your side.
Its small reaching lips follow my finger. And the baby begins to shift. It is difficult, a big child. I ease it along until it cannot go farther. Do not breathe, baby, not yet. And from the outside I turn the head, I shift the shoulders downward. Slowly, slowly—
—Susy, your hand now.
I put her palm where the child’s rump lies curled. I tell her to push up under it as I push the head down. I feel for the inside curve of Anna’s hipbone, and I move the head along it with care. And the head shifts down until I have it between Anna’s bones. The baby’s limbs roll in this new position. Anna howls goddammit goddammit over and over again. At least she is breathing. And the child is still moving—
When the next pain is done, we have it righted. I slip my fingers partly out, I can feel the wet hair on the head. It is coming down. I slide my hand out and wipe it clean. Anna shudders. God damn him. I nod to Susy. She asks:
—Aunt Anna, who is the father of this child?
Anna groans. The midwife’s stupid question, always the same. A giggle bursts through the door. Polly again. I stroke Anna’s thigh:
—I am sorry, Anna. You know we must ask. Tell us and you can be quiet.
—You know who. My husband, of course it is—damn him, Ben—
Another pain grips her and she cries and rounds her back. I see the top of the baby’s head. Of course it is.
—You are sure, Anna?
She looks back at me over her shoulder. Susy looks at me. Who is the father—they asked me this when my Jemima came, and I said nothing. I said nothing at all that whole labouring.
Another laugh from Polly outside. But now Anna’s baby is rushing down, a great head gasping before the shoulders and body are out. I have it—it sucks in another great breath and bellows. A smell of blood and wax. The thick cord ripples. Anna drops her head and shoulders and cries.
—Look, Anna. A boy.
—A big boy, Aunt Anna.
Susy’s eyes shine with tears as she laughs softly. She is remembering her own little daughter’s birth not long ago, as we all remember at such times—she helps Anna over onto her back, and says:
—Look at him! What will you call him?
I stand. My dress is soaked with Anna’s waters, and there is a great tear where she knelt on it. I begin to tidy the baby. Anna tries to look at him, but is still caught with the last pains and unsure of this big backward child. She throws her head into the pillows and squeezes her eyes shut.
—Little imposter.
I laugh as I tell him so, smoothing and cleaning off his face and drying his hair, which has not grown in on the side that was against Anna’s hip. He roots again for my finger. My wet dress clings to my legs. It tears again when I step on it going to the table for another cloth.
The child has not stopped yowling. Anna stares past Susy, who is taking the afterbirth away. Her face is pink now. Satisfaction at being alive, with a living baby, comes over it. She says:
—Let me see him. Give him to me.
I wrap him up. He fights me with his flailing fists and cries harder, trying all the while for my finger. Once he is well bundled I take him to where Anna sits against the bed. She holds out her arms.
—I will call him Daniel, for you, Rebecca.
And Billy broke locks and Billy broke bolts
And Billy broke all he came near—
MY EARS RING with it as Susy and I walk home, leaving Anna and the baby with the other women, who brought in plates and drink as soon as we had the boy right. They were singing the old Billy Broke Locks to the woman made a mother again. Anna was smiling all the time. I did not care to stay. Her husband paid me on the way out. He was smiling as well, proud as can be.
Of course Daniel is the name
she likes. She has no Daniel yet among her other children. I call my own son Daniel by his middle name, Morgan, now, for my grandfather.
There is no Daniel, he is dead.
I picked Jemima for my second daughter. Nobody’s name.
She is in Kentucky, alive, I hope. She would not come back with us. She would never give up waiting for her daddy, as she calls him.
Susy and I go along in silence. The breeze is fresh and smells of rain. Polly trails behind us, smarting after the scolding I gave her for giggling and making a little spy of herself. She calls loudly:
—How would anyone know if that baby was not Uncle Ben’s?
Susy looks back, about to laugh, then sees my face and stops. We walk on. Polly takes to singing Oh weary weary oh—
We pass along the back of Granddaddy’s property, where my brothers have their houses now that he is gone. I feel more at home once I see the buildings in the broad sloping fields. My brothers and my older boys have cleared so much land here, we can see anyone coming. Once we are away from the creek I listen for the low current of the Yadkin. Autumn is settling. Smoke in the air, leaves damp beneath the trees. The smell makes me think of a spring cellar—there was one in my daddy’s house when I was very little, I believe, before he married again and began having more children like Anna, before Martha and I were sent to live with Granddaddy. We do not have a cellar here.
I do not like to be reminded of things.
—I want to cut out my new skirt tonight.
Susy gives a little twirl on the path. She is always ready to be happy. With her arms up, she is very slender. She checks to see if Polly is in earshot, then says:
—I have started another baby, Ma.
I put my arm about her shoulder:
—Did you think I did not know?
She laughs, and I say:
—You will have an easier time with this one.
Her little Lizzy was born when Susy was fifteen years of age. I did not think she would come through. Her hipbones were close-set like a child’s still. I could touch both with the fingers of one hand. The fort was so poor and unclean, such a place to begin a life. That poor baby opening its eyes for the first time there.
I have wondered at times about the first birth there ever was. Eve’s, it would be, I suppose. When there was no one to help.
Susy hugs me. She does not like to be reminded of unhappy things. She says:
—Will is wishing for a boy.
—They usually are.
* * *
At home a pig is loose, scurrying along the kitchen-garden fence. The children are hooting and running after it, led by Israel, who taps its flanks with a stick to send it in different directions. It butts its head against a rail with a squeal, then swerves off to try to get into the corn, but Israel leaps in front of it. It runs straight into his leg. My daughters Becky and Levina scream with laughter and run after it with my uncle’s younger girls. One of them falls flat and pulls herself up covered in dirt. She stands looking at me, tugging her plait loose. So many children, I could run a school.
—Israel, keep it out of the field.
—I am trying, Ma!
—You could be trying harder.
His cheeks are redder than usual from his running and the cool air. He has always loved animals, hugging or teasing them, making pets. He laughs and crouches with his arms wide to catch the crazed pig. Polly runs up from somewhere behind me, her cap down her back, dashing into him before the animal can, and Israel falls backward with her on top of him.
—You will wear those clothes until wash day, you know.
—We know, Ma. Do we not, Polly?
—We know, Ma.
Polly has called me Ma from the night my uncle turned up with his six after his wife died. They are motherless. Taking his hat off to me, showing his big square forehead. Polly clung to my legs. Not such a little girl, but crying like one. Her daddy had nothing else to say but Well. Life is a rum thing. Setting down his smallest, he said: This one here, we named her for her ma. He coughed and looked around at my house. And for you. Then he headed north again on his own.
Uncle James. He is not so much older than I am. When we were children at Granddaddy’s, he and I used to play that we were riding horses, rearing up and down on branches next to the creek. I call his youngest Reba, not Rebecca. I do not like hearing my name. Or my uncle’s. James. Jamesie. What is the sense of it?
Polly’s dress has slipped up, her legs are in the air behind her. A stocking coming down. Thirteen, fourteen years old.
—Polly, get up. Get off him.
My voice is harder than I mean it to be. But it gets her to her feet, and dusting off her skirts.
—Get that pig back to its pen now, Israel. Girls, get it fed. Is all the butter made?
My thin-limbed Becky says it is mostly made. Her eyes are downcast but I see them slip towards my uncle’s boy Henry, as big as Israel, who is walking off whistling and tapping the pig’s hocks with his stick to drive it along.
These are not children, most of them, not anymore.
Susy and I have been awake all night, as the ache in my head reminds me now. My skirt is still damp from the birth, and my legs are chilled.
—Polly, go and get the eggs in.
—I do not want to, Ma.
Polly stands with her stocking fallen just as it is. The way she says Ma has become snappish recently, like a dog barking. Nobody but me to throw her anger at, for not being her own mother. She would throw an egg at my back if she could. If she would help gather them as she is supposed to, and not forget or hide them somewhere for spite or some feeling of secret riches, perhaps. She thinks I do not know her.
—No cake today then, Polly.
I go indoors. Behind me Polly asks Susy if she brought home any of the cake from Anna’s birthing, and what sort.
* * *
Susy goes home for the time. When I have the house put right and clean, and a stew cooking, and more bread baking in the back ashes after Becky’s efforts from the morning show themselves to be hard as bricks, it is dark. The children cram in at the table or wherever else they can find in the room to eat. Their noise fills the house to the roof. Susy returns with her husband, Will Hays, and her fat little daughter. She fell straight to sleep when she got back, she says, and did not cook a thing.
—No more births tonight, I hope! Not even a cat. Not one kitten.
She yawns and stretches, burning with happiness. I am so glad of her. Will Hays rests his hand on her back. He is a good young man, with a serious set to his posture. He helped us get back here in safety, a careful shot, never one to waste his ammunition or anything else. He helped with the house building. He knows how to prosper, and has bought two black servants, one for outdoors and one to help Susy. I see his eyes brighten when my daughter turns her smile on him. I want her life to be this way. A good life.
We have a good life now. I do not have to tell myself this so as much as I did when we were first back. I poke the ashes and stir what remains in the stewpot, onion and pork. That pig might have tried harder to get away. It will not be long for this world. How much salt will we need this year.
Daniel had gone to make salt, and is now lost—
But we will get anything we need here, ourselves.
Polly sits with her younger sister Reba, whispering into her ear and glancing occasionally at me. She coughs loudly with her mouth open. A morsel of food tumbles out and she lets it sit on her plate. My Morgan laughs, which sets Jesse laughing.
—Would you prefer something else to eat, Polly? You might go and dig up a potato and eat it outside. A cold meal would suit you tonight.
She gets up and stamps out the door, dragging Reba along. Her skirt brushes Israel as she passes. The room is tight with everyone sitting round the table, but she passes too close to him. She is young. Too young. And I have said too much, perhaps. Let her go.
Once everything is cleared and put away again, and Susy and her little family have gone h
ome, and the youngest have been sent to wash themselves before they go to bed, I sit at the hearth to mend my skirt. My ankles are cold still from the long damp walk. I stretch them towards the embers. The great toe on my left foot aches and complains.
The children gather gradually and grow quieter. The fat-lamps throw out a little light, which the youngest like to sit in. The girls have their sewing or knitting, though they do not pay much attention to it. Israel sits on the floor doing something with his gun all in pieces. The boys watch this with interest, especially my littlest boy Jesse, five years old now. His hair hangs in his eyes and he shakes it away like a pony now and then, but his body leans towards me, his ear in my direction.
—Jesse, are you waiting for a story?
—Yes.
He speaks without taking his eyes from Israel’s oiling and measuring. I say:
—One of you girls tell us one then. My head is tired.
They all shout: No Ma no, you tell it.
I smile. They think they want excitement, but nothing must change too much.
—Which shall it be then?
—Gulliver!
One of Jesse’s favourites. His father’s favourite. Jamesie’s as well.
—No, Jesse. Tonight we will have Madoc.
It is the first story that comes to my mind. And so I tell again about Madoc who left Wales, where his brothers never stopped fighting over their father’s crown. He took one hundred people, men and women and children, west across the sea to a new land. Some have said this very land.
—Why would they come here?
Polly says it from the doorway where she is now leaning, with Reba behind her.
—Close the door, girls. The evenings are too cold now.
—I would not come here, if I could go anywhere.
You are welcome to go anywhere else—
But I do not say it. I do not mean it. I tell the girls to come in and get warm. Polly’s restless heels bounce as she comes to stand in front of the fire. They nag at me, round and red. Can you not be still.
Jesse knocks the back of his head on my shin where he has moved to sit at my feet: