Promise

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Promise Page 30

by Minrose Gwin


  Below her, beside the tracks, a CCC boy had spotted Dovey lying under Jo’s window. He lifted her and shouted for a stretcher. Her head lolled to the side and her eyes rolled back in her head. Then her whole body seized up, and the CCC boy had to bring her back to the ground a few yards from the train, in front of the little box of a station. Jo pressed her nose to the window. The old woman writhed and thrashed on the ground, the CCC boy holding her head in place. It was as if the old woman and Tommy were connected by some invisible thread, each fighting for something only their own thrashing bodies could recognize. Then, as another CCC boy arrived with the stretcher, the old washwoman seemed to fall into a deep sleep.

  Would this child never stop crying? What the devil was wrong with him?

  Now the CCC boys lifted the old woman onto the stretcher (how deliberate they were, how careful; what good, beautiful boys they were). The first boy went up to the porter, talking and gesturing toward the stretcher. The porter nodded and pointed down the line on the train. The four of them lifted her and (oh!) carried her down the line to the last car.

  Jo stood and stuck her head out the open top window of the train and watched them lift the old woman onto the last car. Jo’s heart stopped. Which was not an overstatement—she swore she felt it pause and drop like a stone from the top of her chest to the pit of her stomach when they put the old woman on the train, on her train.

  Would she never be free of the old colored woman?

  Much as Jo wanted her to be all right, to recover fully from her unfortunate accident (yes, it was an accident, Jo told herself firmly), she didn’t like the idea of the woman riding caboose, ready to lurch into consciousness at any moment and start talking nonsense about whose baby was whose.

  Birthmark. The word an icicle dropped from a tree, hard and fast and unexpected. It drilled into her scalp. The figment of a crazy old colored woman’s imagination.

  Tommy had cried himself out. She sat down and pulled out the half-full bottle again. She didn’t like the idea of carrying around lukewarm formula, but she couldn’t bring herself to throw it away. She had only another day’s supply of the powder. He took a few draws on the nipple and then fell into an exhausted sleep.

  The train lurched and clattered, gathering itself.

  Now something plucked at her sleeve; something said, unaccountably, Get off this train, get off now.

  The door beside her had not yet closed. All she had to do was get down the steps to the door.

  She gathered the baby and the knapsack and rose to her feet.

  She took the three steps down. They were steep; she had to be careful not to let the weight of the child tip her over headfirst.

  The train shuddered.

  She hesitated. Why get off now? What was the sense in that?

  Then, down the aisle, the door to the next car swung open and a nurse came down the aisle, reassuring the wounded, a beatific smile on her face. It was the turnip-faced nurse from the Lyric Theatre, the nurse who had tried to take Tommy.

  The train lurched.

  No no no, she thought, and she clutched Tommy’s head and took the one long step to the gravel below, barely landing upright, fighting for her balance on the uneven ground.

  Now, she thought, we’re free.

  SHE STOOD there as the train began to move, slowly at first then gathering speed. What a clumsy, rattletrap thing a train was when it began to roll. It reminded her of a blue heron she’d seen up at Gum Pond, gathering itself to fly, the way it galumphed along the shore, gawky and awkward.

  Tommy flinched in her arms at the train’s racket and began to shriek again. The cars slid by, faster and faster now. The moon was rising and it flashed on her face at each gap between cars, momentarily blinding her. Now the train was singing Cadillac, Cadillac, Cadillac. She stood mesmerized, watching it pull out of the station, gathering speed.

  When the caboose slid by and she turned to go, she saw a motion in the weeds on the other side of the tracks. A small draped figure limped into the dark, then disappeared into the night.

  LATER THAT night, back at the aunts’, which was the only place Jo knew to go, Tommy’s cough grew worse. There was dust in the house, old dust; she could smell it. Dr. Campbell used to say old dust was the worst dust. It had little bugs in it, spider-like mites that couldn’t be seen with the naked eye. They made their nasty little way up the nose and into the sinuses and bronchial tubes, wreaking havoc. She used some of the water from the jug she’d left there to make more formula and fed the baby on the sagging screen porch, then pulled out a drawer from the aunts’ china cabinet, dusted it out, and put a few towels from her knapsack in it. She laid him in the drawer and placed the drawer on the porch swing and sat down beside him, pushing the swing back and forth. It was warm and there was a single bullfrog revving up.

  When he fell asleep, she went upstairs to the aunts’ bedroom at the back of the house, lit a candle, and began to clean. She threw open the windows and pulled away bedding and curtains and dumped them in the extra bedroom. The aunts’ room she swept and dusted. Under the beds were dozens of dead roaches, and two mouse skeletons. She beat the two mattresses with a broom, and threw the pillows and spread and sheets out the back window.

  She worked through the night and when dawn came up, it surprised her. She collapsed onto one of the bare mattresses and fell into an exhausted sleep. At that exact moment, the baby began to cry downstairs. Her eyes, bloodshot and rheumy from the ancient dust, popped open and she began to cry herself, filthy and tired to the bone.

  Was this a nightmare she would ever wake from?

  She staggered downstairs and picked up the baby. The sun had come up. A beautiful day, actually. The ravaged landscape seemed less strange and stark and inescapable. The ruin had become to seem natural. There was even a breath of possibility in it.

  And now, there was one clean room.

  She laid a towel on the bare bed next to the wall and put the baby on it and fell down beside him. Then, miracles of all miracles, he went back to sleep, without a change of pants, without a bottle. His hands and feet were white with cold and the tape holding the bandage under his arm had come loose. She fastened the tape back and chastised herself for not covering him better against the early morning chill. She warmed his hands and feet by turning him toward her and putting her casted arm over his torso. They slept then, face to face, exchanging breath.

  He woke her up by patting her face and cooing. The sun was straight up in the sky and there was a light breeze coming through the open windows. Jo opened her eyes and looked directly into the baby’s. They were open wide, all pupil and darker than she remembered, dark as golden plums. She tickled his cheek and he gave her a one-sided grin, then kicked her in the stomach.

  “Ouch. Cut it out.” She laughed and rose on one elbow.

  He broke into a full smile, reaching for her. He smelled awful.

  “Let’s get you cleaned up.” She sat up and put her feet on the floor, every muscle in her body crying foul, her stomach grinding acid. She thought of the potted meat the colored woman had given her, a kindness. She hoped the old woman would recover, really she did.

  Why had she gotten off that train? She could be in Memphis by now, safely anonymous, lost in the city bustle. But what then? Would she have stood on a street corner begging like a bum? Or worse. She’d heard of girls who lived in places with gold brocade curtains and Duncan Phyfe sofas and sold themselves to men. She shuddered. Would she have gone into the lobby of the Peabody Hotel, the only landmark she’d heard of, and found an easy chair and slept until someone came along and told her to move on? Was there an orphanage in Memphis where she could have gone? It was too frightening to think about. At least in the aunts’ house she had shelter; at least she knew her own town, its inhabitants. At least she had girlfriends here who might be persuaded to offer food and money, if she could find them without herself being found—a big if.

  She was terribly thirsty. She got a jug from the hallway, the last of the w
ater her father had brought. She turned it up and drank. Then she wet a towel and cleaned Tommy. The bandage under his arm flapped loose and she pulled it away. The gash was healing nicely. She dabbed it with the wet rag, and he giggled at her.

  There was what appeared to be a dark patch of blood right under his arm. She dabbed at it, then began to scrub in earnest. The dark patch did not come off. He’d started to fuss.

  That doctor, he’d said something about a birthmark next to the wound.

  She looked at it again. A cloud passed over the sun. The breeze was gone and the room grew still and dark.

  Her eyes drifted up to the ceiling. It had once been painted white. Jo remembered the summer the aunts had had the house painted. A colored man did the work, arriving each morning at seven in his paint-splattered shirt and pants, eyes downcast. Each morning the aunts had met him at the back door and told him to be careful, not to break anything. Now the ceiling was gray with spider webs. Bare of curtains and bed linen, the place looked like a barracks.

  The ants had migrated back to her left eye. She blinked once, then twice. She looked down at Tommy, who was gathering himself for an eruption.

  Her eye burned and watered, blurring her vision. She rubbed it, then dabbed it with her sleeve.

  She rinsed out the bottle, got another nipple from her knapsack, and held the bottle steady with the hand on her bad arm while she measured out the formula and then poured the water to mix, the baby watching her every move. She was getting good at this.

  She sat down on the bed and gave him the bottle as he lay there, not wanting to dirty him by holding him on her filthy lap. She could smell herself, and the feeling of engorgement (a Word to Keep) she experienced right before her period was upon her: another complication, another need to fill.

  How unimportant words were when the body asserted itself.

  When the baby went back to sleep (he was such a good baby, or maybe he was just tired like she was), she cleaned herself as best she could and put on another of the aunts’ dresses and some underwear so dusty it felt as if she had put talcum powder in the crotch the way her mother used to do on hot summer days.

  Outside, the clouds darkened further and there was a gust of cool air. Then the rain came. It came all at once, in a deluge, sheets of it. She struggled to close the windows, soaking the front of her dress in the process, the shape of her body, her belly, which had once been nicely rounded, now concave, her breasts somehow smaller and more singular.

  The baby made a snuffling sound. He slept turned toward the wall, the bottoms of his feet facing her, whiter than the rest of him. He seemed very small on the bed, very alone. Little tadpole.

  She touched her hair, how filthy it was! It was sticking to her head, oily and crusted over with dirt and mud and old dust. Her scalp itched. What she would give for a nice shampoo and set at Lil’s. Then it occurred to her that the rain—all that blessed water pouring down like Niagara—might supply a decent washing, and she snatched up an ancient bar of soap from the bathroom and took the now almost-empty jug of water and ran down the steps. She grabbed an old raincoat that hung on the back door to keep the cast dry. She slipped out of her father’s wingtips and left them just inside the back door.

  The backyard was a tangle of honeysuckle and hedge. She stood still, the green wildness encircling her, letting the rain flatten her hair. Then she took the soap and began to scrub at her scalp, loosening crusty debris and dandruff and oil. It was heavenly. The downpour continued and she managed to scrub and rinse once, twice, three times. Then, under the raincoat, she unbuttoned the dress and let it drop to the ground and after that the underwear. She opened the raincoat and took the soap to herself, top to bottom, bottom to top.

  She’d never felt so deliciously clean.

  It was a warm rain, and she thought of Tommy. He had a diaper rash and cradle cap. He needed a good wash as much as she did. Still naked under the raincoat, she ran back up the stairs and snatched him up, pulling off the diaper and gown he wore, and brought him down into the yard. She knelt in the overgrown grass and put him between her bare legs and scrubbed his hair, making him cry from the soap that stung his eyes, and then the rest of him. Just as she finished, the rain stopped and the sun came out.

  By the time she got him upstairs he was rigid with cold, his fingers a peculiar shade of yellowish gray. She held him to her chest to warm him and he stopped in mid-cry. Then, fast as lightning, before she could do a thing about it, he turned his head and nuzzled her bare breast and latched on.

  Just like a little goat, she thought.

  He sucked hard. She froze, feeling suddenly quite warm, as if she were melting, as if she were turning into a puddle on the muddy ground. It was a strange sensation, not altogether unpleasant, his nub of a tooth sending a signal to her thighs, no, not her thighs, between her legs.

  What is this?

  Now (all too soon) he spit out the nipple, her very own nipple, and began to cry furiously, pounding at her breast with his fist. Nothing here.

  She dried him off and wrapped him in the towel, which he immediately kicked off. Quickly, she let the raincoat fall to the floor, toweled herself, found another dress in the closet, shook it, and slipped it on. She felt too clean for the dusty underpants, so she went without. She ran back downstairs and found the jug, now filled with water from the rain, and brought it back and filled it for another bottle.

  The tears dried on Tommy’s cheeks while he drank, and after he finished, he lay in her arms looking up at her with that steady gaze. There was an odd veneer to his eyes, a kind of film. His nose seemed to have grown wider, his hair was curlier than ever, fluffed from its washing, resembling a halo. The one tiny tooth a pearl.

  She sat on the side of the bed, holding him.

  He was still naked. She raised his arm again to look at the dark spot. He gazed up at her, a half-smile playing at his lips, as if there were something he was waiting for, something more she could provide.

  She didn’t like birthmarks. Son had had one on his belly. He’d been self-conscious about it and had always worn a shirt, even at the lake.

  She had seen it only once, looking up, his shirt lurching open above her, the day of the trick.

  There was something in her eye again, this time the right one. Another stray ant, burning and biting, making her eye run. She rubbed it, but it didn’t stop. She shook her head and the baby eyed her seriously, as if she had spoken to him.

  She felt woozy. Here it was afternoon and she hadn’t had so much as a saltine cracker. What she would give for a piece of cracker, a crumb, even a tiny one the size of those pieces in the communion plate at church. She would let it melt on her tongue (she was always famished at church and picked the largest one) and then drink the sweet sweet grape juice and she would sing glory hallelujah at the top of her lungs.

  THERE ARE unexpected moments when the eye breaks free, packs its bag, tips its hat to the tedious brain, and goes on the lam.

  What was wrong with her eye? It watered and burned, causing her to blink and squint, and when she squinted, little Tommy looked like . . . well . . . in all honesty, he looked like a little colored boy.

  A ridiculous thought. Put into her head by the old woman.

  But.

  She tried to conjure up an image of Tommy before the storm. He’d looked like an old man, she used to say, with his bald head and unfocused hazel eyes. Hazel? What color was hazel? She remembered asking her mother the question. Light, her mother had said. Anything between blue and green and yellow.

  Then, Tommy’s eyes had been his best feature, a cross between green and blue. The color of her mother’s garden in late afternoon.

  He’d had a tidbit of a nose, almost no nose at all. When she’d play with him, which had been rare, she’d pretend to snatch it up between her knuckles.

  But babies’ eyes did change, also their hair and skin. She knew for a fact that her own had been a watery blue when she was newborn and then changed to the run-of-the-mill brown they
were at present, and she had pictures to prove it, or did before the storm. And of course, noses just got bigger and bigger, like her own, which was entirely too big.

  But what about the birthmark? her on-the-lam eye asked.

  She didn’t remember Tommy having one, but that was nothing to remark at. And heavens, surely it was possible for two babies, especially if they were related, to have birthmarks. Her mother was the one who would know, of course her mother would know.

  But she couldn’t ask her mother because Alice had gone mental and would tell Jo to give Tommy back.

  LET’S JUST let the eye play and say this wasn’t Tommy. Let’s just, for the sake of argument, say this was the colored girl’s boy. Would Jo give him back?

  She looked down at him. His eyes were drooping, his eyelashes black and thick as a brush. Tommy’s eyelashes had been blond and sparse.

  No. Jo most definitely would not give him back. She had saved him and loved him and cared for him, and he was hers. Observe how he adored her, how he trusted her.

  She was, at the very least, his aunt, and was being one’s aunt really that different from being one’s sister?

  Or mother?

  Well, mother.

  But, wasn’t he better off with Jo than with that little colored girl? Was her name Dreama? What names colored people had!

  Jo had promised to keep him safe.

  A promise was a promise. Once, her mother had promised to take her to Memphis to the Peabody Hotel. They would go in style. They would ride the Frisco Accommodation, the very train Jo just hopped off of. They would spend the night in a fancy room. They would watch the ducks waddle down to the pond in the lobby, single file, in the morning, and then waddle back up to their coops on the roof when the sun went down. Her mother had whispered this promise to Jo in her darkened room, shades pulled and secured, when she’d had the red measles and couldn’t read or look into the light for two weeks. She’d been tossing and turning, feverish and deeply alone in her predicament. In her fevered brain, the promise had taken the shape of a beautiful girl, the girl she wanted to be. The beautiful girl had kept her company, through the whole measles ordeal, clucking over her, reminding her of the upcoming trip.

 

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