“After all, Father Frank wasn’t gonna feed my kids or keep the roof over our heads,” Becca continued. “So I went to this woman down in the bayou called Mama DeVon. She gave me some herbs which took care of it.”
“Did Alphonse know?”
“Yeah, he knew. Like all men, he talks a big Catholic game. He don’t wanna know about women’s concerns. He looks the other way. Work, sex and beer is all he cares about.” Becca sighed and shifted the weight of the baby on her hip.
“My, my.”
“Eve, you can’t go telling folks what I just told you. I just wanted you to know that I ain’t judging you. Only God gets to do that. You do what you got to do.” She held Eve’s hand and Eve wiped a tear from her eye.
“Tell me more about this Mama DeVon. I got a little cash from Bowie Wallace, the ‘maybe’ father.”
“Well. It was simple enough. Mama DeVon gives you a concoction and guides you through the whole thing. I stayed the night and it was over.”
“I don’t know,” Eve said. “Last time I went to the clinic. There were doctors, nurses. They knew what they were doing.”
“You got that kinda money, then you go back to the clinic.”
“That’s the problem. I don’t have that kinda money.” Eve frowned. “Okay, give me the directions to the place. Maybe I should call her.”
“As far as I know, she doesn’t have a phone. It’s just the way she operates.”
“Herbal remedy, huh? Kinda sounds like voodoo.”
Becca shrugged. “Why is it when folks talk about herbs and such, folks think voodoo? Look, it worked for me. Course, that was some years back.”
“Okay, give me the directions.”
“I’ll make you a map. Here hold the baby.” Becca shoved Baby Pierre into Eve’s arms and took off for the house.
Eve froze. She’d never been interested in holding or cooing over babies, including her own nieces and nephews, of which there were a bunch. She was a sexy woman without an ounce of maternal instinct. No one ever called her to babysit. And in a house full of women with babies on their hips, Eve’s was the one hip that was always free.
Baby Pierre looked up at Eve with innocent eyes and reached for Eve’s hoop earring and babbled. The baby was the perfect blend of Becca and Alphonse with light eyes, light brown skin and curly locks. A little butterball with a stinky diaper. How could anyone think that cute? The baby fingered the gold hoop with wonderment then grabbed the hoop and yanked it with super baby strength.
“Oooow!!!!” Eve yelled startling the baby. The baby began to bawl. At least Eve had the good sense not to drop the child.
Instead she held the child at arms length and shook it like a rag doll.
“You little bastard,” Eve yelled as blood spurted from her ripped ear lobe.
“Mama, Mama!” Dahlia yelled. She ran toward the house with little Marie at her heels. “Auntie Eve gonna kill Pierre!”
Becca came flying from the house. She snatched her screaming child from Eve and comforted him.
“Eve, are you crazy? What were you doing to my child?” Becca’s eyes were fierce.
“He ripped my ear!” Eve answered. She touched her left ear- lobe and brought her fingers away smeared with blood. Indeed, the earlobe was split. The hoop’s clasp had held strong, slicing right through her lobe. The baby still held the earring securely in his fist.
“You should know, he didn’t mean it,” Becca said returning the earring to her sister. “That’s no way to treat a child. Here!”
She shoved the paper with directions to Mama DeVon into Eve’s hand. “You better have the damn abortion ‘cause for sure you’d be a terrible mother!”
#
Eve followed Becca’s crude map into the bayou. It took her first this way then that way, through country roads headed to the swamp. The huge swamp cypresses covered in Spanish moss filtered the day’s remaining light.
Eve came to the end of the road, a place where she could drive no further just as Becca’s map had indicated. It was comforting to see two other cars parked at the end of the road. Eve parked next to them. She took a deep breath and proceeded on foot following the path to the swamp’s edge all the while wary of swamp creatures, especially gators and snakes, and alert to the sounds coming from the foliage.
After a few minutes, Eve came to a clearing where she could see a house on stilts. At the water’s edge, the path led to a plank bridge that hovered only a foot above the swampy water.
The narrow bridge could only accommodate one person at a time. Two women were coming from the house, one younger and one older, each carrying what looked like longneck beer bottles wrapped in brown paper. Eve waited for her turn to cross the plank bridge. With an acknowledging nod, the women passed her in silence.
“I guess this is the place,” Eve muttered as she crossed the bridge. A thin old woman with a colorful head wrap and a red shawl covering a drab green dress that matched the swamp water waited on the porch of the house. The old woman’s skin was light gray-brown, the kind of complexion that hadn’t seen the sun. In the swamp’s super shade, it probably hadn’t.
The usually confident Eve was nervous. This place was nothing like the safe sterile environment of the women’s clinic. Part of her wanted to run back across the rickety bridge up the path to her car. Then what? What would she do? Spend the next four to five months waiting until the kid came so she could give it away? As Eve rethought her decision to come, the woman stared straight at her.
“I’m looking for Mama DeVon,” Eve finally managed. “You’ve found her. What can I do for you?” The woman’s voice was low and soothing against the background of the swamp crickets and frogs. The voice took the edge off Eve’s shaken nerves until a nearby owl’s hoot startled her. It was too early in the day for an owl. But then under the canopy of cypress, summer dusk had already come.
“Chile, you got a tongue in that mouth?”
Eve smoothed her jersey to show her baby bump.
“Oh, I see,” Mama DeVon said. “Well, come inside.”
Inside, the dimly lit place looked like a pharmacy with one wall filled with wooden shelves lined with jars of all sizes and colors.
A basket filled with fresh herbs sat atop the counter in the small kitchen. Next to the basket was a roll of brown wrapping paper and a box full of smaller vials. It was as Becca had said. The woman dealt in medicinal herbs, some of which must have been brewing in the large pots on the stove.
Smells in the place shifted and blended, wafting one minute a sweet mint aroma, then faint basil and then a stench that reminded Eve of the worst of chit’lins. The strong chit’lin-like smell over- powered all the others. Already prone to queasiness, she gagged.
“Sit,” Mama DeVon told her, pointing to a high back wood- en chair. “Feeling nauseous, huh? Well, I got something to settle that.” She took a small vial from the counter and waved it under Eve’s nose. “Is that better?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“I’ll get you a couple vials of that and a bag of peppermint tea. Those should get you through. Though you’re at the point when the queasiness goes away.”
“No. It’s not the queasiness I’m looking to get rid of. I’ve come to get rid of this.” Eve placed her palm on her belly.
Mama DeVon’s eyes widen then narrowed as she frowned. “Chile, from what I’m seeing, you may be too far along for that.”
“But I got to get rid of this,” Eve said giving her belly a fisted punch.
“Oh! Calm down. Don’t fret. I got to check you.”
Mama DeVon instructed Eve to lie on a high table on the opposite side of the room and examined Eve’s belly through her clothes.
Somehow Eve maintained her composure though all the prodding and poking though she felt sick, and was certainly afraid. She wished she had talked Becca into coming with her to hold her hand.
But now Becca was angry and certainly wouldn’t have left her kids alone. Eve sighed. The strange woman was mumbling and shaking h
er head, as her large bony hands moved from the left side to the right side, plying Eve’s belly like it was dough.
“What’s the matter?” Eve finally asked.
“Your situation is complicated. It’s always more complicated when souls are involved. I made a batch of the potion the other day. I think I have just enough left. It’s going to cost more than my regular remedy fee - $200.”
“Two-hundred! All I got is $125. Can’t you just do it for $125. I got to get rid of this thing,” Eve pleaded.
“Calm down Chile.” The old woman thought for a minute. “Well, since I don’t have to brew another pot of the stuff, I guess I could do it for that. I hope what I have on hand will be enough. But you’ll have to stay the night.”
“Yes, that’s fine. Just get rid of it,” Eve snapped.
Mama DeVon rolled her eyes and mumbled something under her breath. Eve wasn’t paying attention. If she had been, she would have noticed the woman’s reaction after she had snapped at her. But for Eve this was a business transaction. She turned her back to count her cash, then handed the woman the agreed upon price, all the while smiling to herself since she really could have paid more.
Mama DeVon took Eve to a second smaller, darker room. Mama DeVon lit what must have been a dozen candles. The candles gave the room a warm, tranquil feel. Even the foul smell from the stove pots was damped by a pleasant scented incense. There was a cot, a chair, a small table and a bureau. Atop the bureau were various statues and pictures set up like an altar. It reminded Eve of her great grandmother’s home altar,
which included pictures of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Jesus. On this altar, the Virgin Mary was the only figurine she recognized.
Mama DeVon covered the cot with several sheets.
“Put this on,” she said handing Eve a sackcloth gown. “And take off your panties.”
Eve dressed as instructed and sat on the cot. Though Becca had told her some of what to expect, Eve wanted confirmation. “You’re not going to stick anything up there are you?”
“No, Chile. Your body’s gonna do all the work. It’s gonna work like a miscarriage.”
“Oh.”
Mama DeVon gave Eve a half of a glass of potion the color of Coca Cola. “Drink it and don’t waste a bit,” she told Eve. “It’s just enough. I ain’t got no more.”
Eve frowned and sniffed the concoction. It had a putrid smell. First she turned her head away. Then, with new courage, she downed it. The taste was bittersweet just short of disgusting. She managed to finish it with a grimace. “Not good.”
“You’re going to be sleepy. Now rest. I’ll be in to check on you,” Mama DeVon said as she left the room.
Sure enough, Eve felt drowsy right away.
She lay on the cot watching the hypnotic shadows from the flickering flames dance on the ceiling. “In the morning this’ll all be over,” she told herself.
#
Eve couldn’t tell how long she’d been lying there unable to sleep and seemingly too weak to rise from the cot. She twisted and turned waiting for something to happen. A couple of times she called out to Mama DeVon but the woman had not come back in the room as promised. Or had she. She wasn’t sure. Her vision was hazy and she may have dozed.
It must have been past midnight when the first cramp came.
Eve had never experienced a pain as wrenching and violent. The clinic procedures had lasted less than an hour. Their aftermath had consisted of a little cramping with minor bleeding, much less bleeding than during her time of the month. But these cramps were different.
In a series of painful contractions, Eve’s innards felt like they were on fire. She screamed and cried for her long dead mother. It was as though the thing inside her was fighting to get out and trying to kill her in the process. She saw Mama DeVon come into the room.
“Oh God, please help me.” Lying on her side, Eve reached out to Mama DeVon, but the woman passed the cot and went straight to the altar and began mumbling something, maybe a prayer. “Please, help me,” Eve moaned in between her screams. Mama DeVon just ignored her.
Then it happened again. Horrific pain. Eve writhed in agony, and curled into a ball. For the moment of calm between the contractions, she began to see babies on the wall: little Pierre prominent among them. He was laughing, wailing, his eyes bloodshot, his hands claw-like. There were unknown babies, gurgling, cooing, screaming. Babies were on the floor near her cot. Some laying still because they were sleeping. Some still because they were dead, their heads crushed. Other strangled by umbilical cords. The ones that were alive crawled toward the cot. An army of them: preemies, fetuses, toddlers in stinky diapers. The born had joined forces with the unborn to take their revenge on her.
Eve screamed and huddled against the wall.
“God, get me out of here.” She swatted at her attackers with her pillow until an abdominal spasm rendered her immobile.
One attacker made it on to the cot and was reaching for her. Eve’s legs again operational, she managed a kick that sent the creature flying. Then the water came. The sheets on her cot soaked. She lay in the warm mess sobbing, thinking she could take no more.
“Please, please. Make them go away.”
“It will end soon, Chile.” Mama DeVon had finally said something. “A soul’s gonna put up a fight before it leaves this world.”
What’s this crazy old woman talking about? On one level Eve under- stood that she was hallucinating. But the pain and the fear were real.
When Mama DeVon approached the cot, the baby army retreated to the corner. Eve peeked around the old woman to make sure none remained near her.
“I’m going to check you,” Mama DeVon said. With a plastic gloved hand she pulled up Eve’s partially wet gown and looked between her thighs. “It’s time,” she declared.
She placed a white metal pan on the floor atop some rags and guided Eve to stand over it. “Hold on to me, squat, and push down with the next contraction.”
Eve was exhausted, her legs wobbly. In comparison to fending off the baby army, the requirement to squat over a pan seemed almost pleasant. As long as the old woman was near, her attackers would stay away. When the next horrific pain hit, she squatted, steadying herself by pressing against the old woman’s strong arm. Then, with a grunt more serious than good sex sounds, she bore down. With cramps in her back and haunches, and with her innards on fire, it took all the energy she could muster to bear down.
With the last push, something had slipped from between her thighs and hit the pan with a muffled thud. Just what it was Eve wasn’t sure. A chorus of oooooooooooh’s and shrieks came from the corner. Then all went quiet.
Eve was at the point of almost fainting. Mama DeVon helped her lower herself backwards onto the cot. Then, the old woman quickly threw a towel over the pan, and removed it from the room before Eve could see anything.
Blood trickled down Eve’s legs. Mama DeVon brought her a clean rag and a pan of warm water and told her to clean herself. She removed the wet sheets from the cot. “You can stay awhile and rest,” the old woman told her. But Eve was having none of it. She gathered her remaining strength, managed to dress herself and was ready to leave.
“Do you want to know the baby’s sex?” the old woman asked handing her a glass of water.
“Hell no,” Eve fired back. She gulped the water. “I just want to go.”
In the dim morning light, Eve gingerly made her way to the footbridge. In the swamp water she saw a baby’s head emerge covered with swamp slime. Then there was another and another. On both sides of the bridge, dead babies were bobbing like marsh- mallows in a pale green soup. Eve screamed and took off running. Well, it was more like a hobble because she was so weak. Before she could make it across the bridge, she tripped. She landed with her cheek flatten against the wooden plank facing the water. A small face emerged from the water below. She screamed and scrambled to her feet then in a rapid limp she made it the rest of the way up the bayou path.
Eve could he
ar the old woman calling after her in a voice that echoed in the early morn: “Hang on little one! It’s gonna be alright!”
Eve was too traumatized to care what the woman was saying.
She got into her car and put distance between herself and that place. With the thing inside her gone, she had a moment of relief that she was once more free.
Eve thought about going to Becca’s then she remembered Baby Pierre was there, along with Becca’s lecherous husband. Her nerves in a shamble and dog tired, Eve drove back to Auntie’s and slept for two days.
#
Now, Eve never told anyone, not even Becca, the details of her horrific experience at Mama DeVon’s place. She was trying to forget the whole thing. But three weeks later her body hadn’t settled down. Instead of going away, the baby bump seemed to grow.
“You took care of your problem, but it sure don’t look that way,” Auntie Chlotilde said commenting on Eve’s growing paunch.
“Becca said bodies take time to come back to normal,” Eve answered acting unconcerned when in truth she was very concerned.
“Well Becca ought to know after five.”
Truth be told—Becca’s body never returned to its former shapely self. She always looked slightly pregnant. Eve’s other sister Blanche in Houston had that same pudgy tummy after several kids. Eve hoped her short pregnancies hadn’t triggered the gene that caused the Durand women to look like they were always in a family way.
Eve finally decided to see a doctor. Thank God, all the doctors hadn’t moved to Baton Rouge along with the women’s clinic.
“Well Miss Durand, looks to me like you’re expecting,” Dr.
Kimble told her after a cursory examination.
“Well, I’m not ‘cause I had an abortion a few weeks back,” she admitted.
“Don’t know what kind of abortion you had, or think you had, but to me it looks like you’re about five months along.”
Eve explained her ‘procedure’ without mentioning the attack by the baby army and without giving any names. You just don’t give names in Zachery. “It was all herbal. Natural,” she said.
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