by Randi Pink
“This is Ms. Pearline,” Papa told Missippi. “You’ll be staying with her until what happens happens.”
“How long, Papa?” Missippi pleaded. “I’ll miss you.”
“Soon, Sippi.” Papa held out his hand and turned his face away to hide his eyes. “I’ll come by when I have to drop a load off nearby.”
Papa hugged his daughter tight and walked swiftly to the driver’s side of the idling rig. He honked the giant horn twice before speeding out of the parking lot. When her papa disappeared around the corner, she caught a full view of her temporary home.
Missippi ducked when a train zipped high above a squatty, brown brick building. The train nearly ran smack into the tallest apartment she’d ever seen. Her eyes were saucers. Her mouth gaped.
She spun around like Izella on a hot, happy day. The world was a strange place, she thought. Her life last week was a living room, and now her world was a tall building, and an even taller building, and traffic lights, and so many cars everywhere, and oh, a playground full of kids. She’d never seen so many kids. Swinging high as the train. Licking frozen red Popsicles. Chasing each other around the sliding board.
Her first mind told her to run to them. Ask them to play with her and smile until they loved her as much as she already loved them. But then she remembered her aching feet and belly. And after that, she remembered the blanketed woman, Ms. Pearline.
Missippi looked around for her. The woman had gone as quickly as she’d appeared. She reached for her bags, but they were also gone; the woman had taken them away. Missippi began to panic. Strange place, strange woman. No bags, no Papa. Fear crept in.
Missippi heard the soft yell of her name bouncing between buildings. She couldn’t pin down the origin of the sound—it echoed from left to right and up to down and windowpane to windowpane.
“Missippi.”
She heard her name a bit louder, and she spun around, desperate to find the source. “Again!” she yelled.
“Missippi,” the voice said. “Look directly up.”
Missippi lifted her chin a bit.
“Higher!”
She lifted a tiny bit more, because she couldn’t imagine anyone living any higher than that.
“Higher!”
On a whim, she threw her head all the way back, and, on the top floor of the tallest building she’d ever seen in her life, she saw four female figures waving down at her. When Missippi waved back, acknowledging them, they cheered.
“Come on up,” called one of the girls.
“Twentieth floor!”
“Seventh door on the right!”
“We’ll be waiting for you at the elevator!”
* * *
The elevator doors opened to three giddy girls with their hair all over their heads. They eagerly pulled open the gate to grab Missippi through. An arm slid around her waist and another arm around her neck. The third girl walked backward in front of her, making her way down the long hallway.
“How long?” she asked. “Five, six months?”
“At least six,” said the girl on Missippi’s left as she cupped her palm under the belly button. “Her belly button’s popped.”
“Ouch!” said Missippi as the strange girl tugged at her out belly button.
“Oh,” added the girl to the right. “At least six. That button’s all the way out.”
Their faces were round and only a few years older than hers, thought Missippi. No way they were sisters, though. They looked nothing alike—one stout and deep dark, another tall and light, and the last muscly and in-between. Their wild hair made them look like excited flames. Missippi chuckled at the thought: three walking, flame-headed girls. She liked them immediately.
When they reached the seventh door on the right side, the three girls went in one by one, and Missippi saw them. Full bodied and swollen, every single one of them.
“I’m Lillian,” said the tall one. “Three months.”
“Mary,” said the stout one. “Two.”
“And Ruby,” said the last. “Just about any day now is what Ms. Pearline tells me.”
Missippi didn’t cross the threshold. She stood watching as they scurried through the apartment door to Ms. Pearline’s side.
Not a single glimpse of Ms. Pearline’s skin showed, aside from her twitchy face and hands. Her fingernails were bitten so low that the beds puffed up raw like stuffed chicken breast. She looked like she smelled awful, and Missippi wanted to sniff her, just to see if she was right. Covered in tiny wool balls, drab, and nervous, she was definitely the strangest woman Missippi had ever seen.
The small apartment was equally strange, especially compared to the sad gray hallway with slightly worn carpet. It was as if she’d stepped into a whole different world dipped in color. The walls were covered in ripped strips of painted canvas. Small, splashy drawings on tiny sheets of loose leaf and crayon-colored pictures of girls’ smiling faces—some intricately sketched by true artists and others thrown together haphazardly. But all filling their own empty space on the wall, together, transforming the space into a wonderland.
One extra-large bed covered with a beautiful, hand-knitted quilt dominated the living area. The bed was made meticulously, fitted sheet tucked tightly and pillows fluffed. The open kitchen was also in order: five sets of dishes, grouped by color—blue, green, yellow, orange, and bright pink. The only area Missippi could see that was out of order was the large wooden easel in the corner littered with paint and supplies. The stand held a painting in progress—a swollen-bellied girl wearing grease-stained overalls, standing confidently in front of the open hood of a Chevy truck. In the background, empty country and lush green woods with milking cows underneath the setting sun. Only the girl’s head was unfinished.
Missippi took small steps toward the headless girl on the pulled piece of canvas. “This me?” she asked.
Ms. Pearline nodded timidly, as if terrified Missippi would take offense or hate it. Missippi looked at the other three girls. And they looked back at her like her reaction to the painting was the most important thing in the world. It felt like a big moment to her. Did she or didn’t she like the picture the blanketed woman had drawn of her before even laying eyes on her?
She thought of the wind hitting her face when Papa opened up his rig. That wind was the changing of the tides, from low south to high north. Lonely life to not being able to walk a step without bumping bellies with another girl. The winds of a city so windy Papa said they named it the Windy City. She took a peek out the high-rise’s window. Kids running circles around the playground like ants marching and chasing each other through blades of grass. Farther off in the distance, she saw blue water and even higher buildings. The sound of the rushing train taking the place of crickets in the background of life. She really was Dorothy. This really was Oz—Chicago.
She stared back at the painting of herself. Standing up straight, fixing cars, and waiting for a head. She then looked at her new friends, Lillian, Mary, Ruby, and Ms. Pearline.
“I love that picture more than any picture I’ve ever seen in my whole life, Ms. Pearline,” said Missippi in a noticeable drawl. “But who’s gonna draw me on a head?”
They all laughed, even Ms. Pearline, who, seconds earlier, looked like she wanted to pass out from anticipation.
Ruby, the muscly one, broke through the laughter. “Dang, girl! You are country!”
They all fell out laughing even louder. They were going to get along just fine for however long they had each other.
* * *
Missippi was exhausted. The bed was even more comfortable than her own back home, and the room had just enough light to sleep but not so little to be scared of the dark. The knitted cover smelled fresh, like it had been dried on a line, and all four girls slept head to foot underneath it. Missippi, however, couldn’t stay asleep, since Ruby’s defined calf muscle kept banging her in the forehead. She smiled at the close company. This was what she’d always wanted, people surrounding her at all times. Snoring, kic
king, smelly people doing all of the things people did. But this was so much better than anything she ever could have imagined. These girls were just like her—young and puffed up in the middle.
Missippi rolled onto her back to stare at the gray ceiling. It was the only thing left in the room still drab. Every other inch was filled with vibrant color and warmth. Missippi tried to imagine what the other apartments looked like, all plain Jane and bare. She thanked her stars she wasn’t in one of those apartments.
Grinning, she listened to her new world. The dominant sound was Lillian’s breathing in and out like a lion on a hill. But just underneath it was the city. Zooming cars, honking horns, and a million people walking on sidewalks, going on about the business of their night. She thought about how happy she’d been whenever she caught a glimpse of Izella and Ola back home. All of the stories she’d made up for where they were headed and coming from. That was small peanuts compared to Chicago.
Rubbing at her eyes, Missippi eased out of bed and tipped toward the cracked window to look out. Even in the pitch of night, a few boys sat around the swings talking and cracking jokes and laughing. Where on earth were their mamas? Maybe they didn’t have mamas. Maybe they were just like her, mamaless with papas gone on long hauls. She wanted to go down and see why one, two, three, four, five boys around her age were on the playground so late. No way they had mamas.
“Can’t sleep?” Ms. Pearline startled Missippi, who was lost in her watching. “Sorry.”
“No, ma’am,” said Missippi too loudly and with too much excitement. “No reason to be sorry. Ruby kicks in her sleep a little.”
Ms. Pearline covered a laugh. “Yes, I know that. They know that, too, which is why they put you next to her.”
“I don’t mind one bit, Ms. Pearline.” Missippi smiled as she watched Ms. Pearline curiously. She still wore layers upon layers of clothes—a sleep dress with long johns underneath, a robe over them, and her head wrapped tightly to top it off. “Why you wear so many clothes?” Missippi asked innocently and without judgment.
“You, child”—Ms. Pearline gave a respectful bow—“have just asked the question so many people have wanted to ask me but never had the courage to.”
“I’m sorry.” Missippi checked her manners. “Was that wrong to ask that?”
“No, no, no.” Ms. Pearline took a seat at the easel. “Just brave of you to say what’s on your mind, is all.”
Still, she chose not to answer. They sat in silence for a few moments while Ms. Pearline squeezed and mixed paints onto an already stained palette. A dark brown mixed with stark white, creating a soft tan color in the middle surrounded by a dash of black and green and yellow and red. As she mixed, Ms. Pearline sucked on a long, wooden paintbrush like it was a cigarette. She looked like the type of woman who needed a cigarette, Missippi thought. Nervous and squirrelly and all.
“Don’t you smoke?” Missippi asked with a sincere smile.
Ms. Pearline removed the paintbrush from her lips and laughed again. “I quit when I started with the girls. Bad for babies, you see? They come out smelling like smoke instead of babies. And babies smell better than smoke or anything else in the world.”
There was another moment of quiet as Ms. Pearline chose which of her brushes she wanted to use. Missippi watched Ms. Pearline’s fleshy fingertips hover above brush tips, twiddling and twirling and then changing her mind over and over. She finally chose the skinniest and most worn of the brushes. A small, black, slick slit of wood with a pinprick of hairs sticking out of it. Ms. Pearline smiled at it like she was smiling at her oldest friend, and then she placed it in her mouth like she would a cigarette.
Missippi chuckled. “So now you smoke paintbrushes.”
“That I do.”
As she painted, Missippi looked out the window at the boys. “Where are their mamas?”
Ms. Pearline put down her paintbrush and took a seat on the sill next to Missippi. “Every mother isn’t a good mother, Missippi.”
“Ain’t that the truth!” Missippi said too loudly. “This Evangelist down the street from me is a mama, and she cut me down like a blade of grass one day. I sure hope all mamas aren’t like that mama.”
“My mother was wonderful,” Ms. Pearline said, staring at the boys on the swings. “A librarian. Smarter than any man. Anybody else in the world, really.”
“Where is she now?”
“My mother passed away right before I moved to Chicago.” Ms. Pearline pulled in her robes as if there had been a breeze.
Instinct told Missippi to drop it. Ms. Pearline seemed fragile about that, and Missippi certainly didn’t want to make her feel bad.
“So,” she said, changing the subject. “When you start taking in girls? It’s real nice what you’re doing here. Papa never could’ve known half what you know about swollen girls.”
“I started doing this when I found out what really happens to girls like you when no one helps.”
Again, instinct told Missippi to drop it. Not because Ms. Pearline seemed fragile this time, but because Missippi herself did. “Girls like you” brought up anger that Missippi didn’t know was there, and “what really happens” made her scared. What did happen to girls like her if there was no Ms. Pearline? Poor Papa was always gone, and Evangelist was mean, mean, mean as a pit viper. She didn’t want to know, Missippi thought. Maybe later, but not tonight. She turned her attention back to the boys.
“Not having a mama in Chicago looks like fun,” she said. “It’s not fun in Georgia, not having a mama.”
“Glitter and gold are not the same thing, Missippi,” Ms. Pearline told her as she started back painting. “Not ever.”
Sleep caught up with Missippi, and she eventually made her way to bed so exhausted that even Ruby’s kicking didn’t wake her. She dreamed of a baby boy tucked tightly in a blue blanket. His laugh like wind chimes on a porch in the spring. It was a good dream, until it turned bad. It was that same nightmare she couldn’t quite remember. A foul-smelling man. Her tiny twin bed. And so much pain.
Then the dream changed again into screaming, wailing, yelling. Piercing hollers like nothing she’d ever heard in her fourteen years walking on earth. She felt wetness with her hands. Cold and callous wet. She pulled the knitted blanket for warmth, but it didn’t help. Missippi’s teeth chattered her awake. She shot from the dream, thankful that it was over. And then she found out that it wasn’t a dream at all.
The screams she’d heard were real.
They were Ruby’s screams. Her “any day now” had come.
* * *
Ms. Pearline crouched between Ruby’s sweaty knees as Lillian and Mary held a thick stick in her teeth.
“Missippi,” Ms. Pearline said in a gracefully calm voice. “On the counter, by the pepper grinder, you’ll find a timer shaped like a chicken. Go get it and come back to Ruby’s left side.”
Missippi jumped up, nearly tripping on her way to the kitchen. Frantic, she kept overlooking the timer. The light brown pepper grinder, the handmade soap by the sink, the wildflowers stuck in an old tin can, stick-figure drawings and sketches. Everything in the world except the chicken timer.
“Missippi,” Ms. Pearline said over Ruby’s yelling. “Breathe.”
As soon as Ms. Pearline spoke the words aloud, Missippi realized she hadn’t taken a breath in some time. She’d nearly passed out from it, panting and coughing just like Ruby. Then she saw the timer. “Aha! I found it!”
She had no clue how she’d missed it. It sat right where Ms. Pearline had said it would be sitting—next to the pepper grinder on the counter. She grabbed it and hurried back to the living room.
“I want you to set that timer for ten minutes,” Ms. Pearline said, staring into Ruby’s crotch. “I’m speaking to you, Missippi.”
“Oh! Me.” Missippi went to twist the timer, but she was shaking so violently that it took more time than it should have. “Ten minutes, got it.”
“Breathe,” said Ms. Pearline. “Again, I’m speaking t
o you, Missippi—and pay attention to what’s happening. This is where life begins. Painful. Beautiful life. Do not be afraid of it.”
Missippi watched Ms. Pearline, crouched down, smeared with pee and bloody goo, but more calm than she’d ever seen her. All nervousness gone. She’d also shed her layers of clothing. Now that Ms. Pearline was without coats or robes or head wraps, Missippi could see the woman unblanketed. She wore only her white slip.
Ms. Pearline was the most stunning human being Missippi had ever seen up close. Arms so thin she could fit her fist around them, Missippi thought. Legs shapely and lean like a runner’s. Hair the color of a brick, and wild like a flourishing fern. Even her toes were beautiful and long, like claws grabbing hold of a branch. The most amazing thing about Ms. Pearline, though, above all: her skin. It looked like she’d soaked in stars for years and years and come out glistening. Her skin picked up any light. Even in the near dark, a thin reflection of a streetlight found its way to the crease of her forearm, the half-full moon rested on her forehead, and the dim lamplight spotlighted only her, as if the rest of them weren’t worthy of it.
Ms. Pearline reminded Missippi of an alien. Maybe she was one, sent to earth to take care of “girls like her” who would otherwise be lost to God knows where. Maybe, on her planet, “girls like her” didn’t have to worry about Uncs and Evangelists and stubborn old rings around bathtubs. Missippi wanted to go back with her. She opened her mouth to ask Ms. Pearline if she could go, but caught herself. She was a crazy girl with crazy thoughts that didn’t make any sense in the real world.
“Missippi,” said Ms. Pearline. “How much time has passed?”
“Four minutes have passed.” Missippi felt proud to answer the question correctly.
Ruby yelled out, and Lillian and Mary secured the thick stick between her teeth.