by ANDREA SMITH
“Did I hear that you brew grapes?” Freddy asked as he clamored back up the steps, carrying three shot glasses and what looked like a mayonnaise jar filled with clear liquid.
“Blackberries,” Thora replied.
“Thora…” Bonnie gasped.
“Will you relax yo’self, Bonnie,” Thora said.
“I hear you, pretty gal.” Freddy filled the small glasses with clear liquid.
“Look,” Letty said, sensing Bonnie’s uneasiness. “Me and Freddy, Lord knows we ain’t perfect. But we’s good folk. Honest folk. Always wanted us a chile but…I cain’t have n’an.”
“Might be me, baby,” Freddy said, putting his arm around his wife’s shoulder.
“Who-so-ever it is don’t matter,” Letty conceded. “Point is, we jes’ don’t work that way. And when Ruby-Pearl sent us a letter and told us about you…” She threw up her hand and shook her head. “I knew our prayers had been answered.” Her smile narrowed a bit. “But this is us, Bonnie,” she said. “Letty and Freddy. Ain’t ’bout to pretend to be nothin’ we ain’t.”
“Amen,” Thora said, taking a sip of sour mash. She gasped a bit at the strength.
Bonnie turned to Freddy. “Can I ask you one more question, sir?”
“Anything.”
“You…don’t mind raisin’ another man’s chile?”
Thora rolled her eyes.
Freddy swirled the liquor in his shot glass. “A chile is a chile,” he replied. “And when it comes down to it, all these babies—they’s only got one Father.”
Bonnie hadn’t been sure what to search for in the Bontons, or anyone else. What did good parents look like? More importantly, what did bad parents look like? Letty and Freddy certainly weren’t perfect. But Bonnie’s heart told her they were a loving and honest couple.
“Ya’ll wanna pick these gals up tomorrow?” she asked.
“Mean we got ’em?” Letty squealed.
“Far as I’m concerned,” Bonnie said.
“Amen,” Thora called.
“We’ll be there,” Freddy shouted. “Be there tomorrow come hell or high water!”
Bonnie had a good feeling about her decision. And, of course, the Bontons were thrilled. Good parents or bad, Letty and Freddy seemed happy and their house was filled with life, albeit slightly disheveled. Bonnie and Thora made their way to the door, once again stepping past old sewing machines and instrument parts. Bonnie waved at the couple as she and Thora let themselves out. She didn’t want to disturb their celebration, for Letty was playing the piano and singing “Blue Moon”…off-key, while Freddy sat tapping his foot and playing a piccolo.
EIGHT
Naz didn’t seem surprised. Nor did he ask the questions he had asked twice before. His eyes were weary, perhaps from having been awakened so suddenly by another child’s wailing or maybe from the futility of reprimanding his wife with yet a fourth abandoned infant in her arms. Bonnie could feel his frustration but she keenly felt her own frustration as well. She wondered how such an occurrence could thrill and amaze her and at the same time so thoroughly infuriate Naz. Without a word, he pushed open the screen door and went into the house.
The child calmed when Bonnie held her against her chest—perhaps because of the close and steady beating of Bonnie’s heart. The child’s mother had abandoned it with no apparent concern about damp winter weather, the porch beneath her infant’s tender head or the rancid checkered blanket draped around her body. An unclasped diaper pin and the tiny prick marks it had clearly left on one of the baby’s arms disclosed how neglected she was. Bonnie set her in the basket that had once held the twins and also Baby Wynn just three months ago and carried her into the house.
Naz was slumped on the sofa, his gaze focused on the TV screen. He didn’t rise to switch the channel from the piercing sound of a station not yet signed on. He watched the vertical lines rise like the end credits of a movie.
Bonnie settled in the armchair across from him with the basket in her lap. “Folks know we care,” she said, addressing his anger. “I can sho’ly think of a worser lot in life.”
Naz didn’t respond. His eyes stayed fixed on the TV.
“What is so wrong with helping a chile in need?”
“This is too much,” he said. “This…is…too…damn…much!”
“I ain’t got no control over folks droppin’ their babies off.”
“We turn that chile over to the law and I guarantee you this mess’ll stop.”
“Or maybe another baby’ll die,” she argued.
“Aw, hell,” Naz whined. “There’s a big difference ’tween a mother that abandons her chile and one that kills it.”
“Maybe the only difference is me,” she said quietly.
“You and Jesus,” he spat. “Bonnie Wilder and Jesus Christ!”
Bonnie refused to take up the argument. Naz was angry. And when he was angry, the man was impossible to reason with. Bonnie simply carried the child into the kitchen. Naz stayed on her heels.
“We have a good life,” he argued. “But all this…it’s gittin’ in the way.”
“Ain’t in my way.”
He pushed aside a kitchen chair and it skidded across the linoleum. “I ain’t gon’ apologize fo’ my feelin’s,” he said. “You knew who I was when we married and I ain’t changed in all these years.”
“Go’n ’bout yo’ business, Naz Wilder! This is my concern, not yours.”
“I goin’ ’bout my business,” he said, “and then I feel bad ’bout leavin’ you alone with all of this.”
“Jes’ go’n, man!” She stood her guard, even if she knew the rift between them was growing. “I got plenty enough to keep me company.”
“And what ’bout Dewey,” Naz threw in. “My friend Dewey’ll be visitin’ in a few weeks.”
“This chile ain’t got ne’er a thing to do with yo’ hunts or yo’ baseball buddies. You do what you wanna do!” Bonnie reached into the cabinet for one of the six baby bottles she had purchased when the twins came. She filled a pot with water, placed it on the stove and put the bottles inside to sterilize.
“This ain’t no home fo’ kids,” he hollered. “And these babies, they gon’ keep on comin’. I jes’ know it!”
Bonnie held the sleeping child. She knew he was right. But unlike Naz, she prayed that this would never stop.
“I ain’t gon’ do this no mo’,” Naz quarreled. “Either we take that chile to the church,” he insisted, “or we take it to the law. Your choice.”
“I won’t do either one,” she said.
Naz kicked the bottom cabinet with his bare foot. Bonnie jumped. The baby’s eyes snapped open and she began to scream.
“I don’t understand,” he yelled.
“It’s jes’ decent,” she called over the crying. “That’s all it is!” Bonnie set the baby in the basket.
“It might be decent,” he said, slipping into his shoes by the door. “But it’s also against the law.”
“I don’t believe that’s true!”
“I told you once and I’ll say it again,” he attested. “You don’t know what you doin’ here!”
“You jes’ go’n, Naz Wilder!” Bonnie snatched a set of tongs from the drawer. “Ain’t got to be studyin’ me or this chile.”
“Hey, Wilders?” a voice called from the front porch.
Bonnie felt her heart stop at the sound of Deputy Pine’s voice. Her eyes locked onto her husband’s.
“Say there, Bonnie! Naz!” Pine yelled as he knocked on the wooden frame of the screen door. “Where y’all at?”
Bonnie pleaded silently with her husband. She pointed her head toward the door, beseeching him to go out and talk to Pine on the porch.
“Come on in,” Naz called.
Bonnie thought about taking the baby and making a dash for the bedroom, but knew that Pine had already heard the child’s crying.
“Mo’nin’, all,” Pine said as he walked in and removed his cap.
“Hey there, Pine,”
Naz said.
“Jimmy-Earl,” Bonnie said, forcing a smile.
“What brings you our way this early on a Saturday?” Naz asked.
Pine slanted his head as he looked at the baby in the basket. “Ole Bailey Dial called me some time ago,” he started. “Say lately he been seeing folks passing through his backyard…say somebody walked through first thing this mo’nin’.”
“Who?” Bonnie asked.
Pine shrugged. “Say he cain’t tell ’cause it be dark. Who this pretty chile?”
Bonnie never dropped her smile. Naz leaned against the refrigerator and listened to his wife’s quick talking. “You ’member…Rita Sims, live out in Hooley?” Bonnie said.
Pine thought for a moment. “Don’t believe I recall nobody like that.”
“She visited Piney Grove once or twice.” Bonnie plucked a bottle from the boiling water and set it on the clothed table, then retrieved a can of milk from the fridge. “By the way, Naz jes’ made a fresh pot of coffee. Let me fill you a cup.”
“No, thank you,” Pine replied. “Got to git back to town in a minute. This gal Rita Sims,” he said, getting back to the point, “where ’bouts in Hooley she live?”
“Out there…by that big ole tobacco field,” Bonnie said. Naz nodded at her inventive lies. “Nice lady,” Bonnie went on. “Anyway, she asked me to set with her chile for the day.”
“Cute lil’ kitten.” Pine smiled. “What’s the baby’s name?”
Bonnie paused. Naz pursed his lips to stop himself from smiling.
“Lucy,” Naz answered.
“Pretty name fo’ a pretty gal,” Pine said.
“Speakin’ a babies,” Bonnie said. “Any more news about the chile in the creek?”
Pine straightened up. She knew that this would take his focus away from the basket. The fact that the sheriff’s office didn’t know any more today than they knew eight months ago was a sore spot. It made Pine, a man who took pride in his job, look weak and inept.
“We got some leads,” he said defensively. “Jes’ ain’t panned out yet. But we ain’t dropped this. We gon’ find out somethin’, sooner or later,” he said.
Bonnie turned her back on the men as she filled a bottle with milk.
“This chile in the creek,” Naz started, “s’posin’ that instead of drownin’ the po’ lil’ thing, the mama woulda dropped her chile off—say, at the sheriff station or…or the firehouse or…I don’t know,” he said, “maybe even with some ordinary person?”
Bonnie could feel the can of milk trembling in her hand.
“Abandonment,” Pine shot back. “Mama be prosecuted.”
“Least the chile be alive,” Bonnie muttered.
“Wouldn’t be no murder, that’s true enough,” Pine said, sitting in one of the kitchen chairs, “but the mama still wrong…still abandonment.”
“And what ’bout that ordinary person,” Naz asked. “You know, the one who took in the abandon chile? What would happen to her…or him?”
Pine rubbed the stubble on his clean face. “That kinda thing,” he said hazily, “see, that got to be dealt with through the court…through lawyers and all that. A woman take in a chile like that, well, that’s what they calls illegal adoption. And all kinds of things ain’t right ’bout that.”
Bonnie scraped a fingernail over a spot of dried egg yolk on the corner of the stove.
“I once heard of this woman,” Pine continued, “she lived in the highlands, you know up there ’round Basin’s Edge…she got herself into an awful scrape when she left her chile with a neighbor.”
“It was her child,” Bonnie said without turning.
“Jes’ ’cause you gi’ birth,” Pine said, “don’t mean you can do whatever you want. Shoo,” he chuckled, “how many times have we heard a mama or daddy—they mad—say to they chile, ‘Boy, I gi’ you life and I can take it away too.’”
Naz laughed. “Sho’ly heard things like that.”
“A mama cain’t hurt a chile jes’ ’cause it’s hers,” Pine said. “And you cain’t leave a baby neither. Got to go through the courts and make it right. That woman I was jes’ talkin’ ’bout? Well, she come back after a couple of years to say hey and to see how the chile was doin’, and they threw her butt right on in the pokey.”
Bonnie felt her heart pounding.
“Take Ruby-Pearl,” Pine went on.
Bonnie turned at the stove. “What ’bout Ruby-Pearl?”
“I’m sho’ her and her brother did things the right way. I’m sho’ she signed some papers and all.” Pine tossed his head and smiled. “She crazy ’bout that nephew of hers.”
“Sho’ you don’t want no coffee, Jimmy-Earl?” Bonnie asked.
“No, thank you,” he said, rising. “Got to get back. Need to get with Bailey Dial,” he said, walking toward the door. “John Brown it! I got to stop with Job Murray too while I’m over this way. Lord, that ole man! Got his tractor stolen and he ’bout to bust a vein.”
“Good seein’ you again,” Bonnie said.
“You too,” he said, then he turned back. “If y’all see any folk coming through—like what Bailey Dial done seen—let me know.”
“I will,” Bonnie called.
Naz showed Pine out. Moments later, the screen door slammed shut and Bonnie could hear the sound of Pine’s engine and the ricochet of pebbles on the road as it pulled away. Naz wore an “I told you so” expression when he walked back in. But he never actually said the words.
“Thanks…for not tellin’ it,” she said to her husband.
“I think what you doin’ is dangerous and crazy,” he started. “But I would never, ever hurt you, Bonnie. You my wife…my heart…and I love you.”
Bonnie felt the tears gathering.
“Honey,” he said, lifting her chin. “We gon’ keep on tryin’, I promise. Tryin’ to have a chile of our own, I mean.”
Bonnie felt like a failure not being able to conceive. And she sensed deep inside that she was the one who couldn’t make a baby, not Naz.
“Oh, I ain’t give up,” she said.
He kissed her forehead. “But, in the meantime, you got to get some help with this.”
“Naz…”
“You know it’s true. I don’t want you to get yo’self in trouble,” he said. “I’ll stay behind you…I’m always behind you. But, please, just get you some help.” Naz walked to the kitchen door. “I’m fixin’ to mow the grass. Come on out back with me. Set out there and feed the chile.”
After the twins, she had known there would be more. Bonnie’d felt it in her heart. So much so, she wanted to sit on her porch every night, all night, and wait for the babies…just like folks waited for the sweet spring vidalias that came from Georgia. She could almost accept not raising a child of her own if, every once in a while, she received one of these precious gifts. But Naz was her husband and she’d never want to lose him. Maybe she’d have to go to the church for help. Or perhaps…the Harvest ladies. Surely among the five other women they could find more options, someone willing to take in a child. Bonnie would still get to spend time with each baby that came her way. And Naz would feel better about it all if he thought she wasn’t alone in this.
The baby girl’s eyes fluttered open. Bonnie lifted her from the basket, sat in the kitchen chair and placed a warm bottle to her mouth. It all felt so good: feeding, rocking and loving. But there was no choice. She had to turn to the Ladies of the Blessed Harvest. Whether Bonnie liked it or not, she’d have to tell Tilde and those.
No tiny turkey sandwiches or deviled eggs were served at the meeting. Bonnie didn’t make a pitcher of sweet tea or even a pot of coffee. On a Tuesday morning, three days after the fourth baby had arrived, she phoned the Ladies of the Blessed Harvest. Miss Idella, Tilde, Olive, Laretha and Delphine arrived within the hour. Tilde was angry at having been summoned by Bonnie, who wasn’t even an officer of the Ladies of the Blessed Harvest. Naturally they were curious as to why Bonnie had convened an emergency meeting. And they also
seemed surprised at the absence of food on Blackberry Corner. But even more suspicious was the presence of Thora Dean.
“I know it’s our usual custom,” Bonnie started, “to have food and—”
“What?” Laretha interrupted, “God ain’t welcome at yo’ meetin’, Bonnie Wilder?”
Thora rolled her eyes.
“Ladies of the Blessed Harvest,” Bonnie said, embarrassed, “let us start with thanks to our Lord.”
The women rose and held hands. Bonnie said a prayer just long enough, she hoped, to make up for her lapse in judgment. She waited for all to settle down before she commenced again. During the pause, she could see Tilde contemplating the empty coffee table with pursed lips. She adjusted her pudgy hands in her lap, over and over, as if to make it known that no plate or cup rested there.
Bonnie began again, “I know this meeting is sudden—”
“Left my whites floatin’ in blueing!” Olive called out.
“And today is Cal Jr.’s final game,” Tilde put in. “You oughta know that, Bonnie. Yo’ own husband is out there coachin’ the kids!”
Thora reached up and squeezed Bonnie’s hand. “Take yo’ time, honey,” she whispered.
Suddenly the baby began to cry in the back bedroom.
“Who baby you got back there?” Olive asked.
Thora sucked her teeth. “It’s Ruby-Pearl’s.”
“Ruby-Pearl back there?” Laretha asked. “Wynn ain’t that little. That sound to me like a newborn.”
“And Ruby-Pearl ain’t even come out to say hey?” Olive snipped.
“Look,” Thora snapped, “this ain’t easy for Bonnie. So would y’all jes’ hush up so she can say her piece?”
Tilde raised a brow. Her expression clearly revealed that Thora Dean didn’t belong here.
“I’m…not sure how to begin,” Bonnie continued.
“Begin by gittin’ to the point, honey-chile,” Miss Idella threw in.
Bonnie clasped her hands. “Y’all…remember when the baby was found in the creek?”
“’Course we remember,” Laretha said.
“You know something ’bout it?” asked Delphine.
“That’s not what I meant to say.”