by Bev Marshall
Since Sheila’s mother had borne so many children, I naturally thought that Sheila was knowledgeable about babies, but really she knew no more than Annette. “Miss Rowena,” she began, leaning toward me with an eagerness I could nearly feel myself. “When do you think you’ll feel your baby movin’ round inside?”
“Well, I…I…can’t be sure,” I replied. “Don’t you remember when your mother felt life?”
Sheila shook her head. “No, ma’am. Mama weren’t never one to speak on such. She never telled us she was gonna have another one till the day come to birth it.”
“Really?” I didn’t know what else to say. Sheila’s life before she came to us was so different from ours that it was like she had lived in a foreign country with a different language and customs.
“So when will you feel it movin’ round?”
I smoothed my dress over my stomach. “I think around the fourth or fifth month was when I felt Annette. It was so long ago now; I’m not certain.”
Sheila reached across the couch and patted my stomach. “And when do you have to close your legs?”
I pulled back, unsure of what she meant by that. “What?”
She grinned. “Uh, leave off with the lovin’ beneath the sheets.”
I nearly stood up to leave then. I hadn’t discussed such with anyone, not even my own mama. I felt my knees pressing against each other, and I suddenly saw myself as a schoolgirl swapping secrets with a friend during recess. I couldn’t help smiling now. “It depends on how you feel. During the last few months before I delivered Annette, I was just too uncomfortable to want to…uh…and…I was worried it might hurt the baby.”
Sheila looked puzzled. “But before that, when you ain’t feelin’ bad, or uncomfortable, can you do it up till that?”
My school days vanished and I was a mature woman again entitled to refuse to answer a question that was too personal. “I’d rather not talk about this topic anymore, Sheila.”
She wasn’t the least offended though, or even put off by my tone. “Okie dokie, I understand how you feel, but, Miss Rowena, I’m needin to know ’cause I might be, might be…” She crossed her hands over her chest and then her fingers too. “I might be gonna have a baby too.” Before I could congratulate her, she dropped her hands and grabbed both of mine. “Don’t say nothin’ though. To nobody. I ain’t sure yet, and I don’t want to disappoint Stoney if it ain’t so.”
“Oh, of course not, sweetheart,” I said and then hugged her. “I won’t tell a soul. You have my word.”
Sheila was bouncing up and down on the couch so that I was getting thrown backwards and forwards. “Won’t it be something? You and me and our two little ones to play together?”
“Yes, yes,” I said. “That truly would be wonderful.”
CHAPTER 17
Not long after Sheila had told me that she might be expecting, Lloyd and Stoney went off to Louisiana to breed the Ayrshires. I was still at the early stage of my time where I needed a soda cracker before I could get up in the mornings without vomiting. I dreaded their going, but I knew Lloyd had been planning the trip for over a month, and Sheila was thrilled that Stoney was going too. Mama offered to come over and stay with me for the one or two nights they’d be away, but I told her I had Annette if I needed anything. The truth was that Mama was getting on my last nerve, and I really can’t say why. She always gave sound advice, which I generally followed, but she was getting to the stage in life where she couldn’t stop giving it. I found myself being short-tempered with Annette too though, and Lloyd, as well. I was sure it was my being in the family way that caused me to get upset so easily. Dr. Brock told me not to worry, that lots of women got “out of balance” when expecting a child. He said that it’s something doctors call hormones that were changing inside me, and he advised a cup of chamomile tea before bedtime, and of course, the soda crackers for the morning.
So after my nausea passed that morning, I rose and helped Lloyd pack his travel bag and made biscuits for the trip. You would have thought Sheila was the one going as she danced around the truck blowing kisses, hanging onto Stoney’s guitar which she was going to sleep with. She kept waving good-bye long after the truck was out of sight, and I finally said, “You want to come in and have a cup of coffee before you go to the barn?”
Sheila jumped back into reality then, literally lifted off the ground. “Oh no, I got to get to the barn right now. I’m helping with the milking since they short-handed till Stoney gets back. Ain’t that something? Me, doing the milking!” Her smile could have stretched a mile.
I watched her running down the hill and wondered what it would be like to live just one day in her head. My own mind was always filled with so many thoughts of obligations and responsibilities and yes, regrets and some guilt. But my destiny was to be born smart and that blessing can also be a burden. I turned back to the house, actually jealous of Sheila’s simple ways. Why couldn’t I feel excited about milking a cow? Why wasn’t I happy for Lloyd to go on a trip with his beloved Ayrshires? Hormones, I decided. I hoped I wasn’t going to be in a bad mood for the entire confinement.
I didn’t see Sheila for the rest of the day, and I supposed that she was out shoveling manure singing a happy song over every pile she scooped. I wandered around the house feeling sour. I just couldn’t make myself sit and crochet even though I had a cap and bonnet set nearly finished. I sat at the player piano for a while and pumped out a few songs. “Danny Boy” brought tears to my eyes, and I started worrying Lloyd was going to be killed in an automobile accident. I imagined Clyde Vairo coming to the door, hat in hand, twirling it around the brim. “Rowena,” he’d say. “I’m afraid it’s bad news. It’s Lloyd.” I laid my head on the piano keys and cried then. What would I do if Lloyd never returned? I couldn’t run the dairy, could I? Well, I thought, maybe I could. Didn’t I keep the accounts, order supplies, figure weekly wages? All I would need would be workers to do the milking. I’d paint the barn, too, a nice brick red like I’d seen in magazines. I’d increase production of the orange drink, as Lloyd always ran out before his last customer. I’d redesign the bottle caps. I’d be alone though. Lloyd wouldn’t lie next to me each night. There’d be no one to enjoy going over the profit and loss statement I prepared each month. Who would care about new bottle caps? I bowed my head. “Oh, please, dear Lord, bring Lloyd home safe to me. Don’t let anything bad happen to him.”
“Mama?” I turned and saw Annette standing in the door leading into the dining room.
“What?” I had snapped at her again. I softened my voice. “What is it?”
She wrinkled her forehead the way I’ve told her not to. She thinks she’s never going to get old and have wrinkles. “Something’s wrong with Sheila I think.”
I sat up straight and wiped my face with the hem of my apron. I wasn’t alarmed right then. Annette has a liberal imagination. One time she was convinced that she’d seen a rhinoceros in the woods behind Mama’s pecan orchard. Then for weeks she had hoarded a bit of coke bottle glass shaped like Leda’s marquise-cut diamond ring thinking it was a valuable precious stone. And nothing could persuade her that her hair wasn’t going to spontaneously curl when she got her period. “Why do you think something is wrong?” I asked.
Annette stood like a stork with her right foot resting on her left knee. “I went up to her house and knocked after the truck left, and she wouldn’t come to the door.”
“Whose truck?”
“I don’t know. I knocked and knocked and finally Sheila came up to the screen on the window in the front room. I hollered that it was me, and she said, “‘I can’t talk to you now. Please go on home.’”
“Hmmm, well, maybe she just doesn’t feel like having company right now,” I said, knowing this was unlikely. Sheila was always happy to have Annette up there.
Annette dropped her foot and walked to the piano. “But, Mama, something might be wrong. She didn’t sound like herself. Her voice was all, all, all scary sounding.”
If Stoney hadn’t been off with Lloyd, I wonder if I would have gone up there. But he was and I felt responsible for her. It crossed my mind that she could be sick, maybe miscarrying. I had to go help if needed. I told Annette to stay home and practice her piano, that I’d go up to Sheila’s house and set things right.
The sun was an orange slice bobbing low in the late afternoon sky, and I shaded my eyes with my hand as I walked on the path up the slanting ground to Sheila’s house. I stood on the porch a minute, collecting myself, before I knocked and called her name. “Are you okay?”
The dark outline of her appeared in the door, but she didn’t open it to welcome me in. “Miss Rowena, is it milking time? I ain’t late, am I?”
I remembered then she was replacing Stoney today. “I imagine they’re getting started,” I told her. “But that’s not why I came.” I hesitated unsure of how to say what I wanted. “Annette said you might be sick, and I was worried that if you were, you know, p.g., well that maybe something had happened?”
I heard her breath coming out in a big whoosh. “Oh, no. That ain’t it. I’m pretty sure I am now, but…” I could see her hands moving to her stomach. “It’s fine. Ain’t nothing gonna hurt this little one.”
Why wouldn’t she open the door? My irritation with her rose up. If she wasn’t sick, then what was the matter with her? Annette had mentioned a truck; maybe something had happened to someone in her family and they’d come over to tell her about it. “Is everyone all right at your mama’s?”
“I reckon so.”
“Well, is there anything you need? I mean if you have trouble maybe I could help?”
Sheila didn’t say anything for a long time like she was considering telling me, but then she said, “No, I ain’t needin’ no help.”
Frustrated isn’t the word for what I was feeling then. I took a firm tone with her. “Sheila, Annette said you had company and then she came up here and you wouldn’t let her in. She said you didn’t sound like yourself.” There, no more of this avoiding the obvious.
“I’m sorry. Oh, I hate to think I made Annette feel bad.” She lifted her hand to the screen door, and I thought she was going to open it at last, but she rested her hand against the thin wire. “Miss Rowena, don’t be worrying about me none.” Her hand moved to her head and she stepped farther back into the house. “Please don’t tell Stoney nothing. There ain’t nothing to tell.”
She was right about that; I didn’t know any more now than I did when I left my own house. “Okay, Sheila. I’m going now. If you say everything’s all right.”
Finally, she sounded like her old self, her voice was light and happy again. “Yes, yes. It is. I’m gonna get my boots on right now and get to work.”
It wasn’t until after Lloyd got home from his Louisiana trip that I found out that Sheila didn’t go down to the dairy that afternoon. Digger told Lloyd that he had to do the cleaning-up and bottle-washing, but that the next morning she showed up early and milked more cows than Shorty ever did and in less time.
When I told Lloyd about the truck parked up there and Annette’s worrying, and my going to see about her, he said it was most likely that her papa had gone there and hurt her again. Lloyd said, “Sheila’s scared Stoney will kill him if he finds out he’s still beating her. She wouldn’t want you or Annette to know, especially Annette, as her tongue slips pretty often.”
So that all made sense to me. Lloyd was right about Annette spilling the beans. I wasn’t about to tell her about Sheila’s baby until she told Stoney, and for whatever reason, she was still keeping her baby a secret.
That night I turned the puzzle of it over and over in my head until I got myself too upset to sleep. I thought about Doris dying, Lil’ Bit far away in Chicago, Mama getting old, Sheila’s papa beating her, Lloyd getting kicked in the head by one of those mean-tempered Jerseys. I woke up Lloyd and told him I was in a state. He rolled over and patted me like a child, but he never opened an eye. I got out of bed and went to the window. The moon and stars were hidden by dense clouds and before me there was only the endless darkness of the night. I thought of Genesis, the world as the void, a black abyss. Nothingness. I shivered, frightened beyond reason, and my fear turned into panic. I ran across the room, back to the comfort of my bed. Once safely beneath the soft sheets, I told myself that my awful hormones were making me think wrong things, and I must calm down. I began breathing slowly and deeply, and that was when I felt my baby move. It was the tiniest flutter, but I knew my child was okay, and I snuggled against Lloyd’s warm back with a mound of hope for my pillow.
The next morning Sheila came down to the house wanting to borrow the wish book. I sent Annette for the catalog, and when she left the kitchen, Sheila leaned over and whispered, “I’m gonna tell Stoney about the baby tonight. I’m gonna wear that pretty nightdress you gived me.”
“You’re sure then?” I knew she hadn’t been to the doctor.
“Yep, I know I am. I’ll tell Annette tomorrow; she’s gonna be so excited.”
I smiled. “She will. Come up as soon as you’re done at the barn. I’ll make a cake and we’ll celebrate.”
Annette came back then with the Sears & Roebuck catalog and held it out to Sheila. I saw that when she reached for it, Sheila’s hands were shaking, and I had to look away so she wouldn’t see the tears in my eyes. I remember thinking that God had finally blessed her by giving her this baby to love. I thought of Mama’s adage about it being darkest before dawn, and I recalled the previous night’s torment that lay behind the joy I felt at this moment.
After Sheila left, I walked out on the porch and watched her trot up the path to her house. She held the wish book against her chest, the hump on her back, which I hardly noticed anymore, bobbing up and down as she ran. She stopped midway, and I followed her gaze across the yard to Stoney. He stood on their porch waving his arm overhead, urging her to hurry on home.
CHAPTER 18
STONEY
It was like some kind of amazing dream I couldn’t wake up from, like I was caught in a net somebody had throwed over me, like I was watching myself — not Stoney Barnes — not that self, but some other fellow sitting on my porch paring his nails with a pocketknife. I seen their heads first, bobbing up and down as their boots traveled on the uneven ground coming up the rise toward the house. Mr. Cotton was sitting beside me in Sheila’s chair, and when they started across the yard with her, I heard him suck in his breath like he’d been hit with a board in the gut. I kept to my nail cutting, saw the oval white peelings falling on the porch twixt my boots. I didn’t want to look on her face. When I glanced at the mound of her, I pretended she was a cloth dummy or a sack of chicken scratch being loaded into the ambulance. I said something or other to Mr. Cotton ’bout her not coming home no more, and I went in the house and sat on the couch, listening to the engine crank, the tires on the gravel, the sheriff yelling couldn’t nobody leave now. I wanted them all to go on home. I wanted every goddamned one of them out of my yard, but I didn’t have no say even if it were my own property. Rented, but mine by payment just the same.
I headed for the kitchen, half expecting to see Sheila slicing up a tomato for my dinner, wiping her hair off her face with the back of her hand like she was in the habit of. I was expecting to hear her singing some little ditty, stopping when she’d look up and see me. Some days I’d take her right there on the kitchen floor, tomato juice dripping off her fingers onto my chest, her giggling and kissing me all over my face and down the side of my neck, squirming like a wriggle worm till I’d hold her so hard a bruise would come up on her arm. When I seen the empty room, I squeezed my eyeballs shut, and I felt tears pushing against them. I got the heaves choking on my loss. That’s when the sheriff come to the door hollering my name.
He said to come on outside, and I went and sat on the folding chair that didn’t belong in my yard. I looked up when a wild turkey flew overhead, its shadow darkening the sheriff’s face. Then my eyes fell down to the gun snapped in the holster on his s
ide. I had a twelve-gauge in the closet. Hadn’t ever shot anything much with it though. I wasn’t a good shot like my brothers.
Sheriff told me I was in shock, said to answer best as I could in my condition. I said I reckon I would try my best, but he was right about me; I couldn’t stop crying and all them people standing around staring at me. I hadn’t cried none since I was thirteen and Daddy took the strop to me for the last time. That time I had grabbed that long strip of leather he used for whetting his razor and curling it around my fist, I jerked him to me till I could see the dark hairs inside his nose and I banged my head against his face till I seen blood spurting out and that’s when I stopped crying.
I didn’t tell the sheriff much of nothin’ about Sheila and me. It was private; none of his goddamned business. I told him that when I left for the early milking, she were lying on her side on her bed, all curled up, sweet dreaming, and when I said that, I could see her there. Some mornings she would turn over to me, lift her arms and hike her nightgown up. “You got time,” she’d say grinning as big as her little mouth would stretch.
“What time was that, when you left the house?” Sheriff Vairo wanted to know.
“Must’ve been around two-thirty. Milking commences about then,” I said. “We started late though ’cause Mr. Cotton weren’t there until maybe another hour.”
I let out a hoot when the sheriff asked me if’n I locked the door to the house behind me. We hadn’t never used the big skeleton key to the front door; most times Sheila left it wide open. We didn’t have nothing worth the trouble of stealing. He frowned at me, and I said, “I ain’t checked to see if anything is missing. Sheila might’ve had a little money put away. She sometimes held back a little for presents and such.”