It Happened in Silence

by Jay, Karla M

  “Margaret Howard. She has that cute hat shop on Main,” Miss Ardith says.

  Oliver brightens at seeing his father. Quite the opposite around his mother. She need only give him a certain look of displeasure, and he becomes as silent as a gravestone. Almost like someone snatched his little soul out and hung it up until it was safe to come out again.

  I help put the food on the table. They have me seated across from Oliver. Mr. William offers a prayer of grace, blessing the food and asking for the health of his family. I add on to the prayer and include my family with his thoughts.

  The food is especially delicious. Parsnip and celery root soup comes first with warm bread and butter, then roasted chicken. Much higher on the hog than we Stewarts need to eat.

  Anyway, the final serving is butterscotch pudding, a sweet I’ve never had the occasion to enjoy before. I have an English voice inside my head, speaking all hoity-toity. Yes. Butterscotch—a most delightful taste.

  Mr. William asks Miss Ardith about her day. He has gray eyes and thick dark hair. When he talks, he shows more top teeth, reminding me of Jacca when he gets to talking in his horsey chit-chatter. A pang of regret for sending him home alone tightens my chest. Had he made it in fine shape?

  “Teresa and Nancy came by, the dears,” Ardith says. “Brought the flowers and baby clothes.”

  Didn’t mention the other harried woman who also come knocking. I wait for her to say more, but she keeps a smile on her face intended for her husband.

  “That was nice.” Mr. William wipes his mouth on a napkin. “Is he eating any better now?”

  “Still fussy,” Miss Ardith says. “I would like to take him to Doctor Grange tomorrow.”

  “Are you that worried?” Mr. William sets his fork on his plate. “And tomorrow, the boys and I have a big rally in Atlanta with the Odd Fellows.”

  “Oh, that’s right.” She lets out a heavy sigh. “I guess a few more uncomfortable days for the baby won’t matter.”

  As if on cue, the baby starts crying in his bassinet in the corner of the room.

  “Willow,” Miss Ardith says. “Do you mind? His bottle is in the kitchen ready to be warmed.”

  I push back from the table, pick up the red-faced wailing infant, and head to the kitchen.

  At my back, I hear Mr. William ask if she’s decided on a name yet.

  “I like Karl, but with a K. What do you think, William?”

  I don’t hear his reply over the baby’s cries.

  The glass bottle sits in a pan of heated water. It’s half full of Borden’s Evaporated Milk, half diluted with water. I balance the baby on one arm and check the temperature of the milk by letting a little drip on my wrist. Good. Not too hot.

  I settle on the bench seat by the window and feed the baby. Feed Karl. It’s good the little rascal has a name. His eyes open up—there you are—and one tiny hand clutches my little finger. This is what we were all looking forward to with Mama’s new baby coming.

  The innocence. The sweetness. Watching new life grow.

  That’s why it’s so sad. A pure tiny babe never had a chance. I drop my nose to his warm downy head and inhale. This has to be one of the best smells in the world, and believe me, I have a list of a hundred or so best scents. Violets. Warm bread. Moments right after it rains.

  By the time Miss Ardith peeks her head into the kitchen, Karl is asleep. His mouth, every once in a while, puckers to a suck, but he’s done for now.

  “I’ll take him while you clean up.” Miss Ardith lifts him from me, and my arms suddenly feel cold and empty. It’s almost a pain for a flash of a second.

  “If you’ll get Oliver in bed, his daddy will read to him. Again.” Her words were light orange, but they scald like they’re red hot. I overheard her complain during one of her talks with herself that nannies need to read to children, saying, “Just my luck to get a broken nanny.”

  Even though she’s a lucky lady sitting in high cotton, she sure enough seems to spend loads of time looking for the bugs in the dirt.

  Once I’ve cleaned up, Oliver follows me to his room.

  The bedroom is stuffed with every toy ever advertised. He has a functioning metal crane and a whistle that imitates five bird sounds. There’s a painting easel. Building blocks. A train track with a lifelike metal train.

  I wouldn’t trade my childhood with wooden carved animals or dried husk dolls for any of these toys, although that mini town by the train is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. We don’t have shiny store-bought niceties, but we know we’re cherished. Something sorely lacking in Oliver’s mind.

  I fold back the fluffy quilt and top sheet, and he hops into bed and slides under the covers. I run the back of my hand along his cheek and smile. Every child needs a goodnight story. I know I most surely counted on Mama’s voice lulling me to sleep. A quiver of sadness goes through me like irritable weather. Not only is Mama’s voice forever gone, but I’ll never read a bedtime story if I’m ever lucky enough to have children.

  “Miss Jojo gives me a goodnight kiss even though she’s not supposed to because she’s a Negro,” he whispers.

  Good for Miss Jojo. Still surprised she’s even considered a Colored person, her skin is so light.

  I lean in and kiss him on the forehead and tuck him in tighter.

  “You have to turn my table lamp on for when it gets dark.” He points to a china lamp with blue and green birds decorating the base.

  I search the base for a button or knob but don’t find one. Seems like lamps and the lanterns we have back home should be built the same way.

  “Plug it into the wall.”

  I follow the cord down to the prong and push it into the wall socket. The lamp imparts a bluish glow round the bedside table. I sign good night. He giggles and signs the same. Such a smart child.

  The house falls quiet.

  I tiptoe down the stairs and out the door to my room. Two tiny windows allow for a nice cross-breeze, while a large magnolia tree shades this side of the house.

  I change into a long white nightgown folded by the bed. The mattress is so soft I’m afraid it might swallow me up. The room turns from dove gray to charcoal dark as I think about living here for another two months. Miss Ardith is “strange around the eyes,” as we would say back home. There’s someone inside her she hides from the sight of everyone.

  I wish my time working here helped Briar shorten his sentence. The surprise on my relations’ faces if he and I came walking home at the same time would brighten everyone’s day.

  But dreams don’t come true because you dreamed them, and wishes can disappear the same way.

  The door slowly opens. A tiny ghost sweeps across the room. It’s Oliver, my new friend. He climbs up onto the bed, half-asleep, snuggling next to me under the thin cover. Billy Leo and I often shared a bed back home after Briar left him to sleep alone in their room. This bed is much too empty to have all to myself.

  The soft rhythmic rise and fall of his warm body next to mine almost makes me wish morning wouldn’t come so fast. The sharp edges of this loneliness are dulled too. I miss my mama. My family.

  Next day, I’m in an automobile again. Not so long ago, I couldn’t have seen myself shuffling round so much. Oliver is in the front seat, and I’m in the tiny back seat holding the baby.

  Miss Ardith has a meeting with some women at an orphanage and needs me to watch the boys. My heart stuttered at first when I heard the word orphanage. Is this a way for her to trick me into riding along and she’ll leave me there? She was none too happy this morning when she come to wake me up to fix breakfast and discovered Oliver in my bed.

  “We do not allow our children to sleep out here.” Her mouth was tight. “He could be bitten by a mouse full of diseases.”

  I cut my eyes to the corners of the room. Mice? Must not care about me getting a disease.

  She whopp
ed the sleepy boy in the back of the head as he stumbled past her.

  “You know better, Oliver.”

  What a start to my morning. Anyway, Oliver stands on the seat and turns around to face me as we take turns with a yoyo. Miss Ardith said she wanted only quiet toys in the car to avoid being distracted while she drives.

  And I can see why. I’ve only been driven round by policemen, and maybe they have more training, but she’s a wobbly driver, working hard to keep the car on the road. Another automobile honks at her because she’s in the middle of the road. My eyes pop nearly out of my head, but I quickly cradle the children, hoping to protect them from a crash.

  “Crazy driver!” she calls out after his horn stops blasting.

  Thank you, Jesus! Relief sets in when we stop on the side of a large home next to an angel statue, nestled out here all by its lonesome.

  The house sits in front of a small cemetery and has land and forest in all directions.

  The day is muggy with giant buffaloes of clouds chasing each other, and it’s going to be hot waiting in the automobile.

  “I won’t be but a few minutes,” she says as she opens the door and reaches in next to me to grab a baby basket with frilly pink ribbons. “No reason to have you all come in, since the baby is happy for a minute.”

  Baby Karl is in his carrier, waving his tiny hands around, cooing. But why the other basket? She said her women friends belong to a club that donates to a foundling home, although this doesn’t seem like the name she spoke. The tiny sign by the front steps reads Beck Infantorium. Her women’s group supports a place with the word hope in it. And carrying just one basket all the way out here, when she said she was taking Karl to the doctor? To me, this is a waste of time.

  “I have to wee,” Oliver says, squeezing the front of his britches.

  I nod. It’s a right long way back to Marietta, and who knows how far to the doctor’s office.

  The left side of the house has a row of bushes overhung with a huge tree. It’s dark and shady and offers a bit of privacy.

  I scoop up Karl and take Oliver by the hand. We cross the lawn. As we draw closer, babies’ wails come from inside the house. Good Lord. Is no one tending to the poor dears?

  I leave Oliver peeing near a bush but keep walking alongside the house. A window is open to an office. I stay shy of it when I hear Miss Ardith’s voice.

  “Then give me one you have. I need a girl that’s a two months old, with brown hair. Her mother won’t know. Babies change so fast.”

  “It will cost you thirty-five dollars,” a woman says, her voice a rotten apple color.

  Miss Ardith is buying a baby girl? Who buys babies? And she’s giving it to a mama who must’ve lost a different one. This seems so wrong. It is wrong!

  “I have the money here.” She pauses then tssks. “How can you stand all of this crying?”

  “After a while, you only hear the ones that need your attention. I’ll get you the girl.”

  Heavy footsteps leave the room and move farther into the house.

  Curious, I duck under the window and move closer to the back-porch area. I pray Karl doesn’t start a-wailing himself. I reach a wheelbarrow parked next to an icehouse with the door open. I start to peer inside but recoil like I’m snakebit.

  On top of the ice are a half dozen dead babies!

  I swallow hard and look again. Some are naked and some still have a tiny diaper, but they’re all blue, their tiny faces frozen, some with eyes open.

  This is more horrible than anything my imagination could ever create.

  How could all these babies die in one home?

  I fight to keep from upchucking. Oliver is walking my way, and I quickly hold my finger to my lips to signal him not to say anything. I turn him around, and we hurry back to the car and climb in.

  I’m cold and sweaty all at the same time. My heart is galloping faster than Jacca ever dreamed of.

  “You look sick,” Oliver says. “Oh. Your eyes are running side to side.”

  I shake away the dizziness. Have to act like I didn’t see that horrible sight by the time Miss Ardith returns. I pat Oliver’s hand and nod.

  “This is the place where we brought the wrong baby.” He’s jumping on the front seat, something he knows he can’t do once his mother gets back here.

  I sign, “What baby?”

  “The day Miss Jojo’s baby died. The doctor brought her a baby that looked a lot like me. Mommy said it was the wrong baby, so we came to this angel house. I got to hold him on the way here, but I don’t remember going home. She gives me medicine to make me strong, but I get so sleepy.”

  This new story is almost as horrifying as what I just saw behind the house. Because if I’m understanding Oliver, Miss Jojo delivered a white baby boy that looked like him, and Miss Ardith brought it here.

  And by the looks and sounds of things, that poor dear is probably crying his little head off.

  Or dead.

  Briar Stewart

  My mind’s worn to a frazzle trying to figure out how I can get out of here. I’m plumb tuckered out, with about as much life left in me as a mashed squirrel. There’s no way I’ll be alive in a month let alone a year. Perhaps not even a week. Maybe that’s their plan.

  Today, I’m out in the clay pits. These are the messiest and hardest chores. We switch jobs every hour, from digging and dropping the earth into the mixing pans, to molding the clay by hand and forcing it into the rectangular mold. The digging blisters your hands and pains your arms and back. But filling in all the corners of the mold by pressing the clay with my fingers leaves my hands cramped and fingers nearly frozen in pain. After I drag the wooden strike ’cross the mold to remove excess clay, I leave the greeny on the ground to dry.

  Been rotated through other jobs these last few days. Putting the dried greenies into the six-foot-long kilns, removing the baked bricks, or hauling them to the storage yard. None of the work’s easy. Dangit, I sure miss the scent of pines and fresh mountain air. Now my nose is clogged with dust, smoke, and the smell of sweaty men. And I got my own stink.

  The warden set the quota of 140,000 bricks a day to be delivered to the kiln for drying. If’n we don’t make the daily quota, someone’s always crying out from the bite of the whip later that night.

  Yesterday, I was on the kilns near sunset when the boss man yelled, “Lay ’em down.” Two trustees dropped off three dead guys. Dumped like yesterday’s washin’. I asked what was going on, and they told me to shut my yap.

  When I fell in step next to a feller I got to know as Rambling Joe, he said burning the bodies is easier than digging a grave.

  “How they account for no worker, no grave?”

  “This whole system works best with all their bad bookkeeping. Fellers are often dropped off who didn’t pass through no court.”

  Again, how can this be legal?

  “Bet them folks working in the brick buildings in Atlanta don’t realize they’re surrounded by ashes and bits of people who died making blocks to build their walls.” He chuckles. “I hope they hear moans and groans at night.”

  Now that he put it thataway, I hope they do too.

  We’re herded back to camp housing, not so much a march as slow, shuffling feet. I meet the stare of a young feller walking next to me. Been beat up real bad, like he been sorting bobcats all night. His stare is half fear, half bewilderment.

  Must be new to the chain gang business.

  I recollect that feeling. When first arrested, seemed like every hour that passed came with a worse happening, one after the other. Disbelief was my only steady thought.

  I nod. The feller nods back. It’s a connection. A silent vow. The saying “misery loves company” ain’t never been truer.

  Back on my cot that evening, my mind turns to Ilya and Cy. I’m responsible for what’s become of them two. If’n only I had
n’t tried to help and just given ’em vittles or money and shooed ’em away, the young’un wouldn’t be stuck in a cave while the other is slaving in the pine forest.

  Taggert might kill Ilya just for having an accent. He got that much hate in him.

  I roll on my side and whisper to Rambling Joe in the next cot.

  “Ever heard tell of a soul escaping?”

  “Some do.” He squints my way. “But you better have a damn good plan. A man will die from sixty or seventy lashes from that bullwhip. And that’s the price for a failed escape. Get some sleep, kid. Tomorrow’s troubles roll in fast enough.”

  This here mixing of moaning ’n groaning men might well could be the hell I done read about in Revelations. Dying here ain’t an option. Neither is working for a year or buying my way out. Heard the judge can be bought. But five hundred dollars? More money than I’ll ever see.

  That leaves bugging out.

  Yep. A plan’s forming in my mind, but my insides, they’re wound tighter than rope around a well bucket. I’ll never fall to sleep this strung out. I need to relax.

  Pictures in my mind of my younger days always calm me. I page through those years, starting back to when I was ten. That’d make Willow five, and Billy Leo couldn’t have been more than two. He was still stumbling and trying to get his mountain footing. We tried to playact Moses floating in a basket, using baby Billy Leo and close-by Ramson Crick. We got a sound scolding when we got back to the cabin with a broken wash basket and a sopping wet baby.

  Other special memories show up. Playing Hide and Seek or Avoid the Shadow at dusk. Shade stretching from the boulders and trees became spooky shadows reaching toward us as the sun dropped behind the mountain. We chased each other, trying to make the other one be the first to step on a growing shadow. The daytime fun? Fishing a crick, watching snake doctors—townsfolk calls ’em dragonflies—walk on water, and catching pollywogs. Those were amusement enough.

  I’ll be satisfied knowing Willow gets home safe. She told me with her signs that Pa forgave me. I liked hearing that. And I’d sure like to see the homestead again. To hug Mama and the rest of my family. Not sure I’d stay forever, but a reunion would sit right with me after being away from my kin the past fifteen months.