by Minrose Gwin
When she returned, the girl was dead to the world, her head lolling to the side, her mouth a big O, as if she’d been surprised by sleep, the way a murdered man’s mouth will betray his dying grimace. Lord, she could catch her some flies in that mouth. It, like everything else on the girl, was overlarge. She seemed to take up the whole room. One hand was on the child in her lap. The shadow of the table enfolded him like a caul. Her good hand clutched the top of his diaper. She was careful with the child, Dovey would give her that, careful as any mother.
The girl opened her eyes, felt around on the baby, who was still quiet.
“He’s still there,” said Dovey. “What you planning?”
The girl rubbed her face. “I was hoping maybe you could keep him for me so I can make some plans. That’s why I came here. You sent us help. I know you’re a good person. I’ll pay you when I get settled.”
“Whoa, horse. We got our own baby to find. If this one ain’t yours, then there’s folks out there looking for it. We can’t be stashing somebody’s child.” She wanted to say white child.
The girl snapped her eyes at Dovey. “I told you. He’s ours. He’s mine. Nobody’s coming looking for him.”
“You think your mama don’t know her own child?”
“My mother’s headed straight for Whitfield once that stump of hers heals up. Maybe my daddy too. I don’t have anybody I can count on. I don’t have anybody but my Tommy.”
“Losing a leg. That take some getting used to. Give her time.”
“I don’t have time. I can’t let them take him away.”
At that moment, the white cat flicked the curtain at the door and appeared. She stood in the doorway, then ran and leapt onto the girl’s lap, on top of the baby. There was a scramble. Dovey snatched up the cat, Jo took hold of the baby, who began to scream.
“Snowball!” The girl grinned, flashing pretty teeth, large like the rest of her and white. The cat rubbed the chair leg where the girl sat. “This is my cat!” she shouted, drowning out the baby’s screams. “How’d you find me? And where are your kittens, Snowball? Your poor little kittens.”
Dovey opened her mouth to tell about the kitten.
BUT JUST then the girl reached down and made a gathering motion, and then, in one endless moment, she raised the baby’s head. He stopped crying and began to coo. The candlelight flickered over his face, giving it the appearance of being underwater. “Look ahere, Tommy,” she said, “here’s our Snowball.”
Dovey’s mouth snapped shut. She blinked, then blinked again. She’d expected to see a white child, somebody else’s child, a child she’d never laid eyes on, whose diapers, whose little clothes she’d picked up every Saturday since he’d been born. And washed and hung out to dry and returned neatly folded, the diapers doubled so they could be slid right on, no refolding. Diapers and baby clothes were her specialties; she used glycerin soap, no bleach, and prided herself on their softness.
The moment was a long hall with many doors. She opened the one marked eyes and there, before her, were her own Charlesetta’s (Why had she never seen her own daughter in this child?) and her own dear mother’s, the color of pennies, with flecks of olive, upturned at the outer corners. She opened a second door marked mouth (oh, that precious mouth), the cleft a deep pinch, Virgil’s and Dreama’s dimpled chins.
The baby looked at her and broke into a grin. One early tooth on the bottom. The grin Charlesetta’s too, gummy and wide as the sky.
She could have picked Promise out of a hundred, a thousand, a million babies.
What was this crazy white girl thinking?
SOMETHING DEEP within her, the something that had protected her all her life (she thought of it as a gnome-like figure, an old woman, her head wrapped in a white rag like Dovey’s own, veiny hands, callused, bony fingers), tapped her on the shoulder and said, Take care now.
Dovey remembered then what she’d chosen to forget: the fact of the blood tie.
Was she the crazy one? Seeing black where this girl was seeing white? She wished it was daylight and she could take him out in the sun.
“Isn’t he a beauty?” the girl said, holding his head higher.
Dovey didn’t trust herself to speak. She nodded.
His eyes shone. He reached for her.
What is flesh but a vessel? She could see through to the bone.
Another tap on the shoulder. Harder than the first and more urgent. Take care. White folks.
The girl put the nipple to the baby’s mouth and he began to suck, still gazing at Dovey.
Dovey reached out and touched his head. “Got him a head of hair.”
“More than he did at first,” said the girl. She bent over, smiling at him as he watched Dovey.
Use your brain.
Dovey leaned forward in one long wary motion as if she were about to capture a standoffish dog. “You say you wanting me to watch him for you?”
“I thought you said . . .”
“Maybe I could. For a while. Just till you yourself settled. Tonight, if you want to find some place to stay.” Dovey left it unspoken that the girl couldn’t stay there, sleeping in the same room with them, eating at the same table. “Tonight. Then we could see. You bring enough of that powder and nappies to get us through the night?” She took care with her words, each one a polished river stone, cold and pure. Her voice pitched and quaked.
The girl began to cry then, her tears coming hard, wetting the baby’s face. “Don’t think I’m making you do it.” Her eyes searched Dovey’s. “Don’t think that.”
“You ain’t making me do nothing.” Dovey bit her bottom lip, tasted blood.
The baby spit out the nipple, having had only half the bottle. He blinked, his eyes heavy, his eyelashes long and curly like Virgil’s.
“Here now,” whispered Dovey. “Let me have him. You get on along now before it gets too late.”
When the girl rose to hand him over, he jerked in alarm. He clutched onto the girl, his eyes wide and questioning when Dovey took him.
“All right now,” she said, rocking him back and forth. The warm weight of him in her arms heaven.
The girl hovered over them. “He likes to have his back rubbed. If he fusses, turn him over. He’s teething, so rub his gums if he gets to crying. My mother rubbed them with paregoric but I don’t have any and the doctor said not to anyway. I feed him whenever he acts hungry. There’s towels for diapers in the knapsack. Raise his head if he starts to cough. I’m scared he’s going to strangle.”
Dovey nodded, eager, too eager. “You ought to get on now.”
The girl still hovered, casting a massive shadow in the candlelight. “I hate to leave him.”
Promise gave a lurch. Dovey held on to him. “You got your business to do. I’ll take care of him. Don’t you worry none.”
Would the girl never leave?
She turned to go and was almost out of the door. Then, she looked back, her eyes full, like Lot’s wife looking back to her home, and, in that moment of looking, something happened: a shadow passed over the girl’s face and her eyes narrowed.
She looked from Dovey’s face to Promise’s and back to Dovey’s. She strode back over to the table.
“I’ve changed my mind. Here, I’ll take him back. I’ll take him with me.” The girl’s voice was every bit as careful and measured as Dovey’s had been a moment before; Dovey recognized that voice as her own. The girl took another step toward Dovey, her arms outstretched.
Dovey backed up and held on. “What you going to do toting around a little baby? Better he stays here.”
“No. Give him back.” The girl took another step, showing teeth now, looming large.
Dovey backed up. “You got your business to do. You got to make some plans. I’ll take good care of him. You can come get him once you get settled.”
“No. Let me have him.” The girl moved toward Dovey. Something had hardened in the girl’s face.
The girl was between Dovey and the door.
Again
the tap on the shoulder. Take care now.
She put on her best talking-to-white-folks voice. “Now missy, how come you don’t want old Dovey to take care this here child? I took care of three generations of my own. I know how to take care of a baby.”
The girl reached out now, her eyes narrowed. “I know you do, but I want my brother back now. He’s mine to take care of and I want him back. He needs his sister.”
Take care now.
No care to be took.
Dovey drew a breath. “Truth is, he ain’t yours.”
The baby had begun to kick and fuss. Dovey shifted him to her hip, she’d need one arm to defend herself and him. She would never let go of him. Not in this life.
The girl stopped in her tracks, her face suddenly red and splotched and astonished. “What are you talking about? You know good and well that’s my Tommy. What are you trying to do, nigger, steal my baby brother?”
The word hit Dovey like a billy club. She staggered, then righted herself.
The girl’s mouth fell open, as if it were dismayed by its own utterance. The baby shrieked once, then began to cough. “Now look what you’ve gone and done. You’re hurting him! Let go!”
The girl was upon her, prying the baby with the hand on her good side, pushing at Dovey’s turtle-shell chest with the cast. Dovey held on, but the baby, now screaming at the top of his lungs, was slipping from her arms.
“You hurting the child,” Dovey said. “I’ll give him to you if you sit down.”
The girl walked over to the chair and sat, not taking her eyes off Dovey. She held out her arms.
Dovey eyed the girl, then the door. No outrunning them legs. The girl was a cross between an elephant and a giraffe.
She brought the child to the girl, who snatched him up, grabbed her knapsack, and rose. “I don’t know what you’re up to, old woman, but you better move out of the way and let me go.”
“Where you going?”
“If I knew, I wouldn’t tell you.”
“Hear me out, girl. This here’s my grandbaby. His name is Promise. He’s my Dreama’s boy. He looks like your brother because y’all are related.”
The girl shook her head vigorously.
Use your brain.
Dovey tried to muster a smile. “He’s ours. Part yours, part mine.”
The tap on the shoulder again. Take care.
Dovey ignored it. “This why your mama didn’t claim him.”
“Don’t you think I know my own brother?”
Dovey looked at her, not answering. The girl was a mess. Snotty and wet-faced. Hair stringing down, nose splotched and swollen and red.
Dovey spoke gently. “You saved our Promise.”
The girl glared at her. “I saved my Tommy.”
The baby had quieted down. He coughed quietly, then shut his eyes.
The girl put her knapsack on her shoulder. She towered over Dovey.
“Don’t go.”
The girl was shaking now, shaking and crying again. “I thought you were my friend.”
“Friend?” Dovey raised an eyebrow. “Your nigger friend?”
Tap, tap. Take care now.
“I didn’t mean to say that.” The girl hung her head, her hair falling in clumps over her plate-like cheeks.
“You said it.”
The girl sighed, opened the curtain, and stepped out into the night. Dovey waited a moment and followed.
With the baby on her hip and the knapsack on her back, the girl looked like a hunchback making her way down the row of boxcars. Behind her, Dovey slid into the shadows, but the girl saw her.
“Go away. Leave us alone,” the girl shouted over her shoulder.
People started sticking their heads out of the boxcar doors, looking first at the white girl passing, then back at Dovey following.
“Where you heading, sister?” said a man Dovey didn’t recognize. “You gone plumb crazy chasing white folks?”
Dovey didn’t pause. The girl was almost running now. Her legs, like the rest of her, made two of Dovey’s.
Dovey started to run, her foot firing, but the bird in her chest became a trapped wasp, her chest a closed window it flailed against. “Wait up,” she hollered, panting for breath.
The girl didn’t look back. She turned a corner, heading for Crosstown. For a moment Dovey lost her.
YEARS AFTER, Dovey would try to explain what happened next, but people would laugh and say she dreamed it. She dreamed this crazy dream because of what happened to her in the storm. But what actually happened, and what Dovey would swear to until her dying day, was that, when she lost sight of that girl, her arms started flapping and reaching, and she went up and up, swooshing through the trees, cutting through the sky in great looping circles.
It was not like being blown by the storm. It was not like the sluggish breaststroke of her flying dreams before the storm. It was something altogether different, a lift and a flutter and a glide, a power honed and harnessed and utterly hers. She could feel it in her arms, which were nothing more or less than wings.
She almost forgot about Promise it was so surprising, so thrilling.
Having collected laundry from west to east, north to south, she knew Whitetown like the back of her hand, all the shortcuts and alleyways. She sped up Gloster Street, cut through the Spicers’ yard on Rankin to Mound Street, then doubled back down the alleyway behind the Curb Market. She cut the girl off just as they approached Crosstown, the girl (the crazy girl) galumphing toward the depot, Dovey cutting her off from the east.
The nine o’clock Frisco Accommodation sat on the tracks. People were getting off, some of them with casts and bandages, some hobbling on crutches. People were hugging and kissing loved ones. Others, bandaged and bruised, were boarding. Some were being transported on stretchers, some being helped onto the train.
The girl went over to a porter and lifted the baby up in her arms, talking and gesturing and pointing to the train.
Dovey landed hard next to the tracks, kicking up gravel. She tripped and fell, then picked herself up and made her way toward the girl, her arms now heavy as two pieces of lead pipe. As she approached, the girl turned and faced her.
Dovey tried to stretch out her leaden arms, but they wouldn’t move from her sides. “Don’t take him. He ain’t yours for the taking.”
The girl didn’t answer, her face ugly now, mean as a warthog’s.
Dovey came on, her feet leaden too. How tiring flying was. It took the starch out of a body.
The girl had the baby around the middle. He was wailing a thin frail cry.
There was the toll of a distant bell. All Saints Episcopal on West Jefferson, still standing.
The girl had taken the first step onto the Frisco, the baby, now shrieking, under her good arm. She turned to meet Dovey. When Dovey tried to mount the step too, the girl raised the cast on her monstrous, wounded arm, the smell from her underarm spicy and sour.
Dovey flinched, took a step back into nothing but air, and fell sprawling onto the rocks next to the train tracks.
In the split second of falling (she would remember that moment for the rest of her long, long life), Dovey recalled the birthmark shaped like a cloud under Promise’s left arm: dark and irregular and sweet. Dreama called it his little thunder cloud. When she kissed it, Promise would giggle.
“Birthmark,” Dovey called out to the girl and then opened her mouth to say it again. But now the baby bird that had brought her to this place was pecking right through her turtle-shell chest, cracking her open like an egg.
Then she was blown back by a wind that swept everything clean, that roared through the ruined trees. A second storm.
16
9:03 P.M.
At least she hadn’t actually hit the crazy old colored woman. The fact that the woman lay sprawled on the rocks next to the tracks wasn’t Jo’s fault. She had simply tried to ward her off, make her leave them alone. Yes, she had called her a bad name, and yes, she felt bad about that and about her falling (Who w
ouldn’t feel bad? How long was the poor old thing going to have to lie there before somebody came to see about her?), but at least Jo didn’t have to add hitting an old woman to her list of Sins Committed Since the Storm, of which there were many, including kidnapping, some might say; not to speak of the fact she’d lied to the porter, telling him that Tommy had pneumonia (which might not be a lie after all; he’d just that minute had a coughing fit that shook his little body so hard he almost slid from Jo’s good arm).
How the old washwoman caught up with them Jo will never figure out. She was too old to run. Old as the hills. (How could she, Jo McNabb, raised to be decent and kind to the colored, have called that poor old woman, that poor old crazy-as-a-Betsy-bug woman, what she called her, a word Jo had never once uttered in her entire life, a word she’d never even formed on her tongue. A sin too, the worst of them all, and it stretched out before her like an endless row of corn, tall and sassy.)
Although.
It was a good thing that the old colored woman fell instead of climbing onto the train and causing all sorts of trouble, raising a ruckus about Tommy, claiming him for her own, upsetting him even more.
And upset he was. He was whooping like a banshee, thrashing about furiously. How strong he was getting! She took her seat next to the door and put him on her lap and took the half-full bottle from her knapsack and tried to poke it into the cavern of his wide-open mouth. Which just enraged him more. He gagged, flailed from side to side, screaming louder and louder, attracting the consternation of some of the older passenger/patients, who sat slumped in their seats, one man holding his arm as if he were afraid it would fall off. Another who looked like a sheik with a bandage wrapped around his head like a turban scowled at Jo. “Can’t you shut the kid up, for Christ’s sake?”
Jo put the baby on her shoulder and rubbed his back the way he liked, to no avail. He kicked her in the ribs, whammed the side of her temple with his arm, causing the wound on her forehead to fire. He felt like a sack of unruly potatoes, jumping this way and that.