The cat jumped on the floor and scurried to the outside past Sarah.
“Bye, Mama,” she said and closed the door and turned towards the road.
“I was wanting you to know I got me a kitty,” her mother called through.
Sarah quivered. The kitty was not in sight. Sarah wanted to lay eyes on her, see what might have drawn her mother to the animal. Maybe it was the kitty’s good mothering. Maybe her mother was trying to learn, too.
Sarah thought about what she wanted her mother to know. The answer came easily. She turned her body sideways to the door. “I’ve missed you, Mama,” she said.
When the response came, it came loud and echoing. “Here, kitty kitty,” her mother called out.
Sarah swallowed and straightened her body, turned it full towards the road and her boy. “Every day of my life, I have.”
The setting sun threw its remaining light on the stained glass at the church. The reds, yellows, greens, and blues appeared more rich, now that the sun was casting its crumbs. The colors themselves had to do the work, had to bring forth. She took her boy’s hand. Together, they walked down the steps.
The sound that steer had made that night came to Sarah. She knew now why his cries had found their way to her bones. Like him, she had been calling for her mother. Been calling her whole life.
But hers wasn’t coming. Ever.
…..
They arrived back at their house as the sun was waking the next day. They’d returned to the station and caught the next train that would take them home. It left at 2:20 that morning. Emerson Bridge’s mother stayed quiet the whole time, except for her coughing and the only words she said, “I told you she lived far, far away.”
He had wanted to ask her about the other baby, but it was not the time. She had called her “she.” He could have had a sister. He would like to have a sister one day.
His mother pulled in beside Mr. Ike’s truck and got out and started for the house but then dropped to the ground. Emerson Bridge ran to her. She was on her knees, her body moving up and down like she was opening and closing. She called out a word that she held onto like she didn’t want to let it go. She called out “Maaaaamaaaaa!”
She did this over and over.
Emerson Bridge knew what he had to do.
Lucky was in the lot. He was eating from a bale of hay. Emerson Bridge went there and waited for the steer to lift his head, and then he placed his hands on the sides of the steer’s face. He could feel the animal’s muscles as he chewed. Lucky was strong.
Emerson Bridge told him, “Me and you’s lucky, boy. We got us mamas that love us. But my mama don’t. Hers is mean.”
He could see her though the fence. She was still on the ground.
“I give you that name, Lucky, on purpose. Because I was lucky to have you and hope to be lucky enough for you to win and get that money for me and Mama. But then I found out what that would mean, and Mama said you didn’t have to do it no more.”
Emerson Bridge swallowed. He knew that what he was about to say would change the course for them all. “But you do have to do it, boy. You got to save her.”
He could see himself in the steer’s eyes, the morning sun catching them just right and showing him how small he was in the animal’s round largeness. The steer lowered his head and went back to eating. Emerson Bridge buried his face in the thick hair of Lucky’s neck and told him, “Thank you.”
He returned to his mother, who lay curled up on the ground now, her knees tight to her chest. He laid behind her and cradled her.
“It’s all going to be all right, Mama,” he told her. “Lucky’s going to do this for us.”
She shook her head hard and said, “No, no, no.”
“Yes, yes, yes.”
“No, hon, no.”
“Yes, Mama, yes.”
“We can’t.”
“We have to.”
She stayed quiet but then rolled up on her knees, folding her upper body down on top. “Oh, God! Oh, God!” she called out and beat her fists against the dirt.
Emerson Bridge stood and looked back towards the lot. He was glad God gave Lucky a good coat for the cold weather. He was counting on God to give him everything else he needed, too.
The mother cow saw the gentle wind and the little one return and saw the gentle wind drop to the earth and heard the gentle wind’s voice, calling.
How am I going tell you what I got to tell you, girl. How? How am I going to get words out of me to come across this cold-as-ice air to you? And you standing there all still and me down on my knees with my hands wrapped around a wire and squeezing. I feel like my head’s between two big rocks with no place to go. Like Mattie must have felt that night. No place to go. Either pick she made, I reckon wasn’t no good in her mind. I’m trying to stay all one piece so that part of me don’t fly off somewhere and go to bed and pull the covers up.
Maybe if I tell you the rest of mine and Mattie’s story, I’ll be able to tell you the rest of ours, mine and yours. Yeah, if I could just tell you about that night.
The telephone call came way in the night. “It’s time, Sister,” Mattie said. And all through my head came a thousand bumble bees swarming. We had us a plan. We wasn’t going to have no doctor. I was going to do it, me.
I put on some water to boil and drove the truck over to get her, brought her back here and told her to lay up on our eating table, where I’d already set every towel I had in the house. I went out to the barn to get Harold. He was drunk and in no good shape to come, but I told him to get on his feet and be a man, be a papa. He tried, but I had to prop him like I had to prop him by the door when we got inside. The whole time I was telling myself, “I can carry it, I can.”
There was a light bulb hanging on a cord from the ceiling over Mattie. It looked like a bald head to me that night, a baby’s, naked and upside down.
When the baby come out, it was all red in color and not that bad blue, and that meant alive, and I hollered, “Your baby’s alive,” and then I seen he was a little boy and I said, “A little boy, Mattie, and he’s alive.” She busted wide open into tears and held out her arms for him. He was slick with blood and connected to her by her life cord. It didn’t have much play in it, but I was able to stretch him up to her, and there came her dimples, which I’d not seen in a long time. They went in deep like he’d poked his two little fingers in her cheeks. She had the top of her nightgown undone, and she put his little mouth on her nipple. “You a mama now, Mattie,” I said. “You happy?”
Harold went to sliding down the door. He’d stayed propped that whole time. Then Mattie went to hollering, “Cut him loose of me!” And I was thinking she meant Harold, but that baby wasn’t at her nipple no more. She was holding him straight out with her stiff arms like she wanted me to take him. “Get you a knife and cut him loose of me now.” She was meaning the baby. “What was in my head?” she said. “I can’t keep him. Billy Udean will kill me and this baby, too.”
I didn’t have a knife. Hadn’t thought to have me one out. Harold grunted. He was laying full on the floor now, and it come to me that I wanted Harold’s. His pocketknife. His. “Give me your knife, Harold,” I hollered. “I mean it. You hear me and give me your knife.” I went to kicking him, but he wasn’t offering up nothing, so I fished it out myself and brought it to that life cord and cut it and took that baby. Mattie was trying to get herself off the table, and that baby was in my arms, and what was I going to do?
There Mattie was on the floor now and crawling over Harold. When she got clear of him, she said to me and it would be her last words, too, she said, “It ain’t the child’s fault he was born.” And that’s right, isn’t it, Mama Red. It wasn’t. He didn’t ask to be brought into … into all this. He was crying, he was hungry, and you know what? I wanted to feed him. I did. I’m going to tell you that right now, Mama Red. I started unbuttoning my dress, there at the top like Mattie’d done, and there was that baby alive and awake in my arms and with his eyes all fighting to g
et open to look at me, I thought, and I said to him, “Hey there, little boy. You hungry? You want to eat?” and I got my brassiere away from me, and I put his little mouth at my nipple that was getting all ready for him, like a funnel so he could wrap his mouth around it like yours does you, but he wasn’t wrapping around, so I took my finger and put it right up to his lips. “Come on, sweet baby,” I said and had my finger moving around. “Come on, I’m going to teach you.” And there his lips went to working. I could feel him sucking. I would have give him my whole hand, if he’d have wanted it. He could have pulled every inch of Clementine Florence Augusta Sarah right inside of him. I brought him back to my nipple, and there he went, his little lips working, working, working. But then he went to crying.
I didn’t have nothing for him. I didn’t have no milk. I ain’t no mama, I was thinking. I ain’t. And what’s the matter with me for thinking I could be? But here comes the part I’ve lived with all these years and what I’m so ashamed for you and him to know. I told that little boy, whose belly was as empty my cupboards have been, “I don’t want you, I don’t. You ain’t my baby. I ain’t your mama.”
I didn’t want him, Mama Red. I thought it. And I said it. And I took him back. And I know he hadn’t been in this world but a few short minutes, but they were long minutes, because he had to hear me, he had to take them words into his clean heart. And what gets me is he came into this world thinking he was not wanted. His mama give him back, and I give him back. We both give him back. He did not think he was loved. And don’t a baby deserve to know that? Don’t we all?
I got to take me some deep breaths now and get up off my knees and look at you in them soft eyes of yours and tell you the rest of what I come out here for.
Remember them tracks I told you I was on? Them bad ones I thought couldn’t be but turned out they was, so we all got away from them. I come out here to tell you we can’t get away from them. No ma’am, we can’t. I can’t. I can’t carry it all no more. By myself, I can’t.
I know I’ve done y’all like a yoyo. Y’all together, then apart, then back together. What I’m saying is I’m going to have to pull y’all apart again. Except this time it won’t no fence separating you. It’s going to be more than that. A whole lot more. My boy’s ribs, they stick out like somebody had their hard fingers curved around him. Always before I thought they were Harold’s. But them are my fingers, Mama Red, mine, my fingers curved and ready to pick him up, lift him high. I’m his mama. And I want to take him high.
But that means you losing yours. I’m going to have to put him in that show we talked about, and I’m going need you to go live with somebody else, a man you know. It’s where you started out. His name is Allgood, Jeremiah, like in the Bible. He’s been wanting you back, been begging me, but I’ve put him off. But I can’t put him off no more. No more.
I’m going to have to live with what I’m doing. For the rest of my born days live with it. I am. With what I’m doing to you and to your boy. And to mine. To my boy.
And I won’t never, Mama Red, I won’t never get it out of my head. Or heart. Ever.
JANUARY 14, 1952
The mother cow, alone now.
She was carried away in a sound, unfamiliar, and delivered to land she had once known, having accepted her first steps following her transport from the west, where continual winds sent her, then a four-day-old calf, and her mother east to green pastures.
These were the green pastures.
The train that brought them there let in long slats of light running the way the cows’ bodies ran, head to tail, the light becoming long slivers each night. She was her mother’s last, the cows having been packed in so tightly on transport, her mother was squeezed to her death, while she managed to tuck in beneath her mother’s belly. With no room to fold down, only stand, the cows around her mother helped hold her high, until the train stopped and the cows were offloaded and her mother fell to the floor.
This night, the mother cow folded down onto the land of her infancy, the light above her appearing as dots, an expanse of dots, glistening, like grass in the setting sun after a rain.
Under those same dots, her calf folded down, too. Alone now, too.
MARCH 10, 1952
On the night before the show and sale, LC went to the barn. It was just after supper and already dark. “LC, dear, you sure you want to go out there?” It was his mother, calling at his back. “And don’t you want a flash light?”
He did not turn around, but the answer was yes, he wanted to go. He had something special he wanted to say to his steer, something he should have said long before now. And, no, he needed no extra light, not with the moon and stars accompanying him in the yard. But when he entered the barn, he entered the way he wanted, alone and in darkness. His father had placed fresh straw on the ground that afternoon for the show the next day. It crackled beneath LC’s feet.
His steer lay bedded down in the back stall. The animal made a sound, which LC took as a greeting. “Hey there yourself, boy.” He sat near the animal’s head and touched the steer’s face. The whiteness of it helped him place his hand there. The thickness of it made him wish his hand could stay and hide. “In church,” LC told him, “I learned about a man who died for all the bad stuff us people do. He had a name. It was Jesus. And I’ve been thinking if you’re going to give your life for my daddy and me, then you at least ought to have a name. I was wrong not to give you one. I want to call you my favorite name. I want to call you Shortcake. Can I do that? Can you be my Shortcake?”
The animal’s breath warmed LC’s arm. The smell of sweetness floated up to his nose. Shortcake liked his name.
LC knew his own had come from his father, who put Jr. at the end of Charles’s name and III at the end of his. He had been jealous when he was little, thinking Jr. placed Charles closer to his father. But he was not jealous any longer. There was a lot he wasn’t any longer.
He leaned in close. “Can I tell you something, Shortcake?” He wished his voice could be strong. “The little boy I used to be and the man I’ve been trying to be for my daddy, I’m neither one of them. I feel like I’m nobody no more. Nobody.” LC kissed his face, letting his lips linger in the thickness. “But I don’t feel that way with you.”
He made his way back to the house. He smelled pines. His father had hired someone to cut them down that day.
He readied himself for bed. When his mother kissed him goodnight and was about to turn off his light, he whispered, “What if I don’t win, Mama?”
She gathered him up in her arms. “All a little boy can do is give it his best, dear.”
She’d called him a little boy. He missed being little.
“Would you do something for me?” he asked. “Could you call me Little LC one more time?”
…..
On the night before the show and sale, Emerson Bridge took the kerosene lamp, lit with the last drops of kerosene, to the barn. Lucky was inside for the night, lying down. He was tired. Emerson Bridge had stayed out of school and worked him hard that day and the many days prior, teaching the steer to follow him and stand four-square and be quiet about it all. They’d both done what they’d been asked. Emerson Bridge had broken him, and Lucky had let him.
Emerson Bridge sat in front of the animal on straw taken from one of the bales that his papa used to sleep on. Mr. Ike had wanted to get some fresh straw from the FCX, since they supplied the Creamers with whatever they needed at no cost, now that Mr. Allgood had Mama Red. But Emerson Bridge had wanted to use what his papa had supplied.
The light from the kerosene threw the animal’s head against the back wall, made it appear large and dark, but robbed it of anything that distinguished it, like that one spot of red brown that sat alone in all that white at the top of his head. Emerson Bridge put his finger there. “You look like your mama, boy. You sure couldn’t miss that.” He brought his hand to his own face, to his dimples, pushing in the one in his right cheek. “Maybe my mama had dimples when she was little, too, and t
hey went away when she got old. Wonder if mine will?” He pictured her face. She had a big forehead. He slid his hand up to his own and laid it flat. His whole hand fit. “Here’s where I look like my mama, Lucky.”
The steer was licking Emerson Bridge’s wrist. “I’m glad I never took your name back. And I’m glad I called you Lucky, because that’s what I was, lucky to know you.”
He knew he’d just crossed a line. He was talking of a time when Lucky would be no more. He nestled his face in the animal’s deep fur. “Now, listen. You’re going to be hearing God say something to you. He’s going to say, ‘Let’s ride, My Friend.’ And when you hear that, you go on with him. All right? He’ll take good care of you.”
Strings of saliva dripped from his steer’s lips. Flecks of corn peppered his skin. Lucky thrust his chin into the air and released a low, short sound, one that Emerson Bridge had come to know was meant for him. He saw that Lucky was missing a tooth, the one in the middle on the bottom, and a new tooth was growing in at an angle. Mr. Merritt had talked of baby teeth before, said that cows have them like humans do. Emerson Bridge wondered if the tooth fairy visited cows. He hoped so.
There was one more thing he needed to say, words that had caused Emerson Bridge the most struggle, his papa’s urging Emerson Bridge to be kind. The Bible says to be kind. ‘Be ye kind, one to another,’ it says. I wasn’t always, but I hope you will be, son. What he was asking of Lucky was not kind to Lucky or to Mama Red. He wished his papa was there to help him with it. But then his papa’s words, telling Emerson Bridge he was the man of the house came to him. He felt like that’s what he’d been when he’d made the decision to go forward with the show. Because don’t men take care of who they love like his papa had done with him and taught him to shave. “For when the time comes,” his papa had said.
The time had come.
Emerson Bridge rose to his feet and took the lamp to the back of the barn, where his papa’s John Deere tractor mirror still hung on a nail. Below it, on the one remaining bale of straw, sat his papa’s shaving kit and beside it, his papa’s mug, filled earlier that day with water from Lucky’s pail. Inside the mug, propped against the side, was his papa’s brush, getting softened, too.
One Good Mama Bone Page 31