“My day, no pregnant girl would be walkin around like that.” The woman stares up at me. “Used to send em to the island where nobody would see, lock em up in the house. What you doin out in public, girl?”
“All right, Ms. Ruth,” the worker says firmly. “That’s enough.” To me, quietly, she says, “Go out in the hall. This one ga keep goin as long as she could see you.”
“I ain deaf, I could hear what y’all sayin. Bringin babies in this place. An someone die here last night too. Take her outta here. Get out.”
Someone died? “Where’s Ms. Ferguson? Where’s my grammy?”
“Go down the hall and to the left.” The worker waves her hand, dismissive. I brush past her, round the corner. And there my grandmother is, in a room at the very end. She sits beside a window, dozing. On the bureau, I see something I didn’t notice before: a copy of the same picture Mamma sent to Aunt Patrice, but whole. Me in the middle, Grammy on one side, Mamma on the other. In the picture, Grammy seems so much younger, standing upright, her arm circling me. Her mouth is barely open, her lips starting to curl up. She was about to laugh.
“Grammy.”
She lifts her head, the sun catching the faint hairs on her face. “Indy?” She blinks, making sense of me. “They been looking for you. Your aunt called here and all. They almost sent out a search party.”
“You tell them anything?”
Grammy shakes her head slowly, disagreeing. “I didn’t know what to tell them. I wanted to say something, but then what if your aunt didn’t believe you were telling the truth? I don’t like that woman, Indy. I didn’t want to cause more problems for you. Where you been? He come after you again? That Gary?”
I don’t want to talk about Gary, or about Aunt Patrice. “How come you in this room?”
Grammy leans back in the chair, letting go of her questions, at least for now. “You know why.”
Looking around, I do. The sun makes the room feel a little like home, giving it a memory of the warmth her old kitchen once had.
“A lady died last night and nobody else want to be in here. Ms. Ruth was in the other bed, she wouldn’t calm down till they relocated her. I tell them put her in my old bed, let me come in here.”
“You ain scared?”
“Scared of what? I burn sage in here when they wasn’t looking, put my olive oil on the doorway and read my Psalms. I clear it out, everything’s fine now. Sit down, girl.”
I settle for leaning against the bureau.
“You holdin ya belly.”
I hadn’t realized I was doing that. I let my arms fall to my sides awkwardly.
“Oh, Indy,” Grammy says, “Oh, my baby,” and when she says baby, I know she means me and the last of my anger drains away. I don’t hate her, I can’t hate her. But I still don’t understand. Grammy lets out a tired sigh. Then, as if she can read my mind, she leans forward and opens a drawer, taking the book out. She lays it on her lap. “I didn’t know.”
“What?”
“I didn’t know any of it. I never knew Gary was going to be in that house. I never knew he would do such a thing. I was sad to let you go, but I thought you would have been safer here. You know your mamma and her friends. She’s in the house now. You wouldn’t believe how it look.”
“I been there.”
“To Mariner’s? Oh, Indy. I never would have wanted you to see.”
“It ain home no more.”
She reaches out a hand. I take it, and her fingers clamp around mine. “Don’t hate your mamma for how she is either. I love my baby, but she weak.”
“She took your house and sent you here,” I say, my voice growing hard.
“She weak. She don’t know.”
“That ain my problem.”
“Watch it, now. If you don’t forgive her, it’ll eat you alive.”
I pull my hand away. Forgive. If she says I have to forgive Gary, I don’t know what I’ll do. I don’t want to forgive. I want the right to be angry. I want someone to pay. Right now, I miss Smiley, her grins and her schemes. She might not get everything, but she would understand my wanting someone to pay. I’ll call Smiley later, I decide. I’ll tell her, finally. I fumble in my bag for the phone and its cord, then plug it into the wall to charge. I sit on the edge of Grammy’s bed, resting the bag on the floor.
“Let me tell you a little something about your mamma,” Grammy says. “See, you only ever knew her when she was messed up. She wasn’t always so. Listen. Let me tell you.”
As she does, I can picture it: Mamma, bored silly in that one-room school. Ditching class, skipping down to the water, sneaking out by the dock, watching the men unload supplies, visitors from Nassau stepping ashore, and Mariner’s Cay people coming back from trips to the city, trips to Miami, trips to places even farther away. Her smile quick, her hips wide, her sway strong. Swaying because it feels good to sway. Sway not for whistles, for the calls, the niceness, niceness, pretty, luscious, sweets, lovely, but to coax a dance out of walking. Easy laugh, not for attention, really, but for the tickle as it bubbles up your throat, for the way it makes other people laugh too. Never wanting to sit still. Always ready to run out of the house and find something to do. Every time she pass by a guy, he smile. And sometimes the girls smile at her too, just to see that joy unwrapped and let loose.
“Your mamma was a pretty girl, but she was lazy. When she reach fourteen, I sent her out to work. She didn’t want to put her mind to her books so I say she might as well learn to earn a living. I send her to the neighbor four houses down, a woman who’d had an accident, couldn’t get out of bed no more. The husband was the headmaster, and a deacon in the church. Everybody knew them to be good people. Your ma always use to go out smilin and swayin; come back and her face sour. I thought it was because maybe they talk to her bad. I figure she need that, need a little rough treatment to smarten her up, and I never could bring myself to be hard on her, my one baby girl. Your uncle, I brought him up but he was never really mine. I had your ma late in my time. I waited for her for so long.
“One day she come an tell me she don’t want go there no more. I figure she was trying to get out of work, want to play round the island, go sneakin with her fast little friends, out looking for parties and boys. Always looking, her. Always looking. You wouldn’t understand—you and me, we happy at home. I tell her she have a job, she better go anyway. Well, she went, but she ain come back home on time that afternoon. Come evening, ain nobody seen her. The neighbor, he told me she showed up, cleaned half the house, then left. She came home late that night, wouldn’t say a word. I made her go back to work the next day, and the next, and she stayed another month or two, but one day she didn’t come home at all, and the man who worked down on the docks came by the house and told me he saw her getting on the boat to Nassau. Anytime I could get my hand on a phone, I called around Nassau and asked, called and asked. No one could tell me where she was.
“For months, all I heard was snippets of things your uncle picked up and passed on to me—word that someone had seen her one place or another in Nassau. Living by this one, sleeping on that one’s floor. Then I heard she was pregnant. I thought she would come back to me when her time came, but she stayed right there. Next time I saw her was after she had you. You were four months old and she tell me she was done nursing you. Fact is, I could see she was done with herself, too.
“Indy, she was different. Like somebody gone in her and scrape everything out. She still walk the same way, mouth still twitch and hips still shake, shake more, matter of fact, but the part that make her do them things, the joyful part that was so alive? It was gone. I let her live in the house as long as I could. You remember. Till you was in double digits, she used to stay with us, on and off. But when you started to develop more, I put her out, and all them men who use to come trailin behind her too. I put her out, and you see how she gone downhill. She used to insist on taking you sometimes, say you was her child, not mine. That’s how she got her own back on me.
“Indi
ra, I could see the way things was going. That day I came by the apartment above the bar and you were there, outside in your pajamas? I’ll never forget that day. I had to tell her send you here, Indy. It was the only way. I know she’ll never forgive me. For any of it. And she shouldn’t. I shoulda known.”
We sit together, in that tired light. The air is dense with Grammy’s sadness. When I look over at her, she’s shrunken, as if everything she’s said is pressing her down. As her story settles over me, I understand. The shame I saw on Grammy’s face before wasn’t because of me. She’s ashamed of herself.
“The neighbor was my daddy?” I ask finally.
“Baby, I ain know. I never confronted him. Soon after your mamma came back, his wife died and he left Mariner’s for good. All I know, he start something up in her. He do something that wasn’t right. That’s why I sent you away. I could see all them men, all them strangers around my good grandchild. And I didn’t want see anything happen. Not again. I thought you woulda been safe here. And instead all I do is make the same mistake.”
“If you didn’t know, how come you gave me that book?”
She shifts forward in her chair, looking right at me. “When you unwrapped it? Let me guess. First day you set foot here.”
“Maybe.”
Grammy traces book’s cover with her fingers. “I remember when I started writing in this. Your uncle had sent a letter to say people had told him your mamma was pregnant. The night I got that letter, I stayed up till dawn. Couldn’t sleep. I took out this book, my one book from my time. I went through, cover to cover, and I wrote everything I could find in my mind to tell her about having a baby. I figure, I couldn’t teach her how to live straight, I might as well tell her how to carry. When I was done, I gave it to someone on the boat and sent it to your uncle, tell him next time he hear where she was, carry it to her. I sent so many things for her on the boat, every time I knew someone coming down to Nassau. But whenever your uncle went looking at a new address, she’d already moved on. Finally, he sent it back to me. By the time her and that book crossed paths, she was back in Mariner’s, staying with me. She never even looked at it.”
Grammy flips it open, reading to herself. “You reach this chapter, ‘Preparing the Home’?”
I shake my head. She beckons me over. I hesitate, but it’s Grammy and her arm’s stretched out toward me. I move closer to her chair and she begins to read aloud.
“ ‘Now, baby, I’m not there, so I made you a list of all the things you should put together before your child comes. First, get yourself some diapers. I used the cloth ones, but you might not have time to wash them. You’ll need something in the hospital, and as soon as you come home. Second, get some clothes. A hat, a good stock of onesies, shirts, and pants. The color doesn’t matter. If you have a girl, just put a bow on her head. My mind tells me it’s a girl. Third, receiving blankets, for when the baby spits up, or when somebody wants to hold her. Fourth, at least a couple of good, big bras. When your milk come, you’ll want to have your bubbies held up. I never had those, but you can keep your chest shape better if you have that support. Fifth, someplace for her to sleep. Doesn’t have to be a fancy crib: for a time, I padded a wood box with soft blankets, and that was good for you. There’s more you can get, but you don’t need all the bottles and the pacifiers and whatnot. That’s fluff. Just a few simple things, and love, is enough. Baby, you make sure you love her. No matter how you might feel now, you love her. That’s the most important thing.’ ”
Grammy keeps reading, to herself now, and I look over her shoulder. At the top of the page on how to settle the baby, she’s written about which teas to make to soothe me, and what comforted Mamma when she was little—being bounced gently when she was sleepy, being rocked when she was sick. Reading her words, I can picture it now. Grammy sitting out on the rocks, a tiny Mamma on her lap, the two of them watching the waves. Grammy dancing around the living room singing “Funky Nassau” with Mamma in her arms.
Grammy raises her eyes to meet mine. Tired eyes. For the first time, even in here, she looks old, really old. She shakes her head as though trying to get something out of it. “I wanted you to see. I only ever wanted the best for you, even before you was born. And for your mamma, too. You only ever know her as a whole knot of mistakes. She wasn’t always that way, Indy. She’s my baby too. I know her from before I could see her, I loved her from before I first felt her kick.”
I reach out and take the book from Grammy’s lap, running my thumb along the softened edges of its pages. “How come you didn’t just give this to me? Why you wanted me to wait and open it?”
“It wasn’t the time. But I didn’t know when I was going to see you next. I wanted to tell you, when the time was right, that I loved you from before you was born because I love the girl you come from. No matter what. Don’t mind how broke up she is now. She is precious to me. Same as you.” Grammy leans forward, resting her hand on my belly. “And you.”
The door pushes open, and the worker sticks her head around it, looking less annoyed this time. “We’re serving dinner, Ms. Eunice,” she says. “Time for your granddaughter to say goodbye.”
Grammy pulls me close for a hug. I sink into her embrace.
“You forgive me, Indy?”
Holding on to her, all I feel is relief, knowing she saw me as something more than Mamma, knowing she believed in a different life for me. Anyone who can look at Mamma and still see a trace of a girl who loved to laugh, loved to dance—a girl who’s innocent and free—must be able to see the real me.
“Yes, Grammy.”
“And Indy?” Grammy whispers, clinging to me. “You can’t stay in that house no more. You have anyplace else to go?”
I hang on to Grammy even tighter. “I found this yoga retreat, and the lady in charge, Joe, is helping me.”
“She’s letting you stay with her?”
“Yes, Grammy.”
I feel her relax a little then. “Good. That’s good.”
It’s hard to let Grammy go, but when I do, picking up the bag—even with its patched-up handle—feels right, like I’m taking a part of her along with me. I tuck my phone and the charger into my bag.
“You take care of that book,” Grammy says. I kiss her cheek.
“Love you, Grammy,” I say, holding the book to my chest. “I’ll come back soon.”
• • •
Partway down the dirt track to the retreat, I stop and listen. There are no footsteps, no suspicious rustling in the overgrowth. Instead, I hear crickets singing, the way they did wherever we were in Mariner’s. Farther back in the bush, splashes of red poinciana blossoms interrupt the green. Closer in, lilac flowers crop up on scrubby plants. I reach down and scoop one up, stroking the petals. Soft and thin, like damp paper. Maybe like baby skin.
I don’t want to be scared to walk down the street by myself anymore, scared to sleep alone. Scared to be a mother, scared of what the baby will come out to be. Half of it will be Gary. But what about me? I’m half Mamma and half who knows what—maybe the neighbor, maybe some other man who thought she was put on this earth to be used. I’m not Mamma, and I’m sure not my father, whoever he was. I’m something altogether different, and this thing, this baby, maybe it’ll be something different too.
I bring my hand to my stomach, right where Grammy touched, where she rested her hand when she said and you. Mamma isn’t worthless. I might not forgive her, but I understand that. She’s worth something to Grammy, same way I am, and the baby in me. Mamma’s more than what people see now, more than the stinking mess rotting away in the old house. I think of whoever made Mamma pregnant with me, and right there, with Grammy’s words in my ear, the memory of her touch on my belly, I see it. No matter how much I might want to put everything that happened behind me, I can’t just start over and keep quiet. Gary can’t get away with this. I pick up my pace, hurrying toward the retreat.
The office is empty. I turn my cell on, put it on silent, and set it down beside the o
ffice phone. More missed calls and messages have come in since it charged. Churchy, Smiley, Aunt Patrice. I don’t care; they can all wait. My phone pings, brightening with an incoming message. I ignore it, going to the voice recorder. On the office phone, I dial the house number from memory. I put the call on speakerphone. The line rings four times before there’s the click of an answer.
“Hello.”
I press Record on my cell phone. The bars measuring the volume of sound flutter, telling me it’s picking this up. I feel panic rising, and breathe, breathe past it. He can’t hurt me through the phone. “It’s me.”
“Doubles.” Gary’s voice is surprised and slow and sleepy, like I’ve woken him up from a nap. “Smiley ain here. Mummy ready to kill you. You lucky she ain home. You know how much trouble you cause?”
The clock in the office says 5:37. Smiley and Aunt Patrice will be on their way home from her volleyball game soon. I have to hurry. “I called for you.”
“What happen, you miss me, ay?”
“I need help from you.”
“Help? With what?”
I swallow. “You know what. With the situation.”
There’s a pause so long I think the call’s been cut off. I check my phone: it’s still recording. “What makes you think I want to help?” he says, finally. “You the one got yourself in problems—”
“If I have it, I’ll do a paternity test, and everybody will know.”
“Know what?” A sneer in his voice.
“That it was you. And I was underage, too.”
“Stop talkin crap.” His voice is alert now. “Everybody could see you old enough—”
“I need to deal with it.”
There’s a pause. “So what you tellin me for?”
“I have to pay for it.”
He coughs. “Use what you got.”
“I spent it.”
“I give you four hundred and you spend it?”
Learning to Breathe Page 21