Moonrise over new jessup, p.28
Moonrise Over New Jessup, page 28
Without warning, Dot pushed up and walked inside. Her words floated through the screen door with the occasional clink of plates. I pulled the thick quilt closer around me to keep all the warmth of our bodies inside. She returned with two plates of scrambled eggs, toast, and the same ham that I had pushed around my plate the night before, holding it in my face until I reluctantly unwrapped myself and took the food.
“Good.” She nodded her head and sat down. Everything I normally loved rested in my lap cooling. When she was halfway through her breakfast, she looked at me.
“A table holds the food. A woman eats it. You a table or a woman?” she asked.
“You asking if I’m a woman and you the one sitting here with feet dangling from this porch swing?”
She sucked teeth, but then her eyes, her sigh, pleaded for answers.
“Are you sick, or do you have no appetite?”
“What’s the difference?”
“Put something in your mouth. If it comes up, there’s your answer.”
“I have no appetite, then.”
“Then try and make one, honey. Just a couple bites and I’ll leave you alone.”
She slid a fork into her food and motioned for me to do the same. Mine slid through the eggs and grabbed ahold of a good chunk of ham. I picked it up, considered it, and whether my stomach really wanted it. My mouth watered, assuring me that I was starving, and after I made quick work of my plate, she brought some banana pudding in two bowls. Once finished, we pulled the quilt back up to our necks, and I rocked us back and forth with my toe. It was warm under there, and we sat quiet for a while, our shoulders touching again.
“Thank goodness whatever Doc Patterson gave you must be working. What is it again?”
“Iron pills. Some vitamins.”
“Well, they must be doing something. Your head seems better and you were just being stubborn about your appetite.”
“Maybe, although you put your foot in those eggs, and your banana pudding is too good.”
“Well, tonight, I’m going to make you my Auntie Carolyn’s yams.” She jabbed me with her elbow. “So we can see if those vitamins are really doing the trick.”
“Yams? That’s just an old wives’ tale, Dorothy.” She giggled.
“Maybe. But told by some old wives with lots and lots of children.”
Half-truths, some-truths, and nontruths was tricky business those days. As my body adjusted to the clonidine, sleep slipped beyond my grasp night after night. When I did sleep, I had such violent nightmares that nights laying awake staring at the wall or listening to Raymond’s heartbeat were a blessing. I was so tired the tenth day of the rains that when Raymond filled the family room archway—his face etched into a frown and his jaw tight—it took me a moment to realize that his coveralls were still clean. He had been gone at least an hour, driving my car over for its tune-up, and he was supposed to bring it back at lunchtime. But here he was, beckoning me with a crooked finger on one hand, and my pocketbook clenched inside the other.
We left Dot to finish some ironing while we went to the bedroom, and he closed the door behind us. Although his palm was open, inviting me to sit on the chaise at the foot of the bed, his stone silence felt like no kind of welcome. Over the years, Raymond’s thrifty use of words had rarely been an issue between us—in fact, only that time after Patience and the river. Until the day when he silently demanded that I sit without opening his mouth. Instead of words, my pills swished as he gently shook my pocketbook.
After a chest-filling breath, he asked what he was about to pull from inside. It was supposed to have been my car keys—keys always in the place I could lay hands on them. The place where small things not to be lost or forgotten were automatically put. For Raymond, Pop, and Percy, the edge of their dressers; for Dot, a little bowl by her front door; and for me, the little zipper pocket inside my purse where I also hid my clonidine.
My body shuddered—a quick head-to-foot chill—as he sank down next to me. He rested elbows on his knees and leaned forward, staring at my purse clasped between his two tense hands. I knew I had to find him where he was, draw him out—especially since I was the one who caused him to go inside. After he asked three times what was in my pocketbook, I knew only the truth would do.
Except it was also true that I was tangled in a world of stories. For him. This was only one of the sticky threads that I had willingly cocooned myself inside since the day I agreed to keep the NNAS a secret. I was duty-bound to tell some-truths, half-truths, and nontruths to everyone I knew and loved. Including Raymond. Especially Raymond! To protect him at all costs from disappointment and worry that could easily become distraction. And here he was . . . distracted. Because instead of going to the shop, to work, taking my car and bringing it back, he had settled into the office and called Matthew straight away, not only confirming why a doctor would prescribe this medication, but also learning that someone with pressure high enough to need it had no business trying for a baby.
But when he called me a liar to my face—not a storyteller or a tale-teller or even “a lie” in play—I was actually stunned that he could speak such ugliness to me. That word constricted everything I’d done for him until my love, my wanting to protect him, was engorged, misshapen. I didn’t lie; I didn’t tell. Lie was a brutal word to put on my intentions.
“I take these too,” I finally said. “In addition to the iron and some vitamins.”
He released another chest-filling inhale from his mouth in a hollow wind.
“Alice, I’m trying my best to keep my cool here because Mama took pressure medication, heart medication, remember. Doc Underwood’s name is on this pill bottle. You’ve been seeing him? He prescribed them?”
“I have, and yes, he did.”
“He tell you that he treated Mama for years? That he was the one that prescribed this same medication for her?” Doc Underwood had mentioned Miss Catherine when I first met him, if not her medications. Still, when I nodded, Raymond’s jaw clenched and bubbled.
“So I only called Matthew for him to tell me what I already suspected, and he says more than I ever bargained for. Did Doc Underwood tell you that carrying a baby with pressure this high could kill you and the child?”
“Yeah, but—”
“You and Dot, teasing me about yams and fish dreams? You, talking about another baby, you and me . . . And you’re taking pressure medication?” His voice was strangled with anger. “At twenty-six years old?”
“She didn’t know neither. And it’s no reason for us not to be intimate together.”
“It’s every reason for us not to be trying for a baby, and it gives me no comfort to know that you lied to her, too.”
“I didn’t lie, I told you. I take clonidine too.”
“You ain’t helping yourself right now.”
“Why? Because I don’t tell you everything that goes on in my day?”
His face twisted up in astonishment. “What else are you keeping from me?”
“Nothing you want to hear about!”
“How do you know?”
“You wanna know how many times I changed Bea’s diaper today? Or that I need black thread? Who I ran into at the market?” He looked at me and drew breath to speak. But during a pause, his eyes flashed like he was changing his mind about what he wanted to say to me.
“Let me ask you something.”
“Shoot.”
“How is this any different than me keeping secrets from you in those early days?”
“You ain’t really asking me that question, are you?” He said nothing, rubbing his long fingers back and forth over his lips waiting on my answer. I had been so hurt, so angry at Raymond for keeping the NNAS from me that I had set him out in the cold for weeks. I could have said he made a fool of me, talking about me behind my back to his friends, I suppose, but gossiping behind my back was no reason to quit him. No. His secret had lain, a quiet ember lingering among dry brush those first few months of our going together. A single spark waiting on the gentle swish of a leaf, a slight breeze, to feed its need to become a flame. To erupt. The blaze caused by my secret fed itself on the silence growing between us in the bedroom until he bowed his head and squeezed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. Unable to tell any meaningful difference between his lie and mine, I said nothing. Breathing deep, he breathed the first words to break the silence.
“Alice, Mama was in her forties when she started with these medications, and fifty-six when we lost her. You’re twenty-six years old.”
“I knew you would worry like this over something I’m handling. That’s all I’m saying. My pressure is improving, and both doctors agree that we can have another baby. Lots of them.”
“What about you, though? I don’t wanna raise lots of babies by myself. Or with somebody who lies to me.” His or struck a nerve, turned his worry into chords of ingratitude. It was an assumption that I was incapable of making a singular decision about the well-being of my family when taking care of home was my whole life. And having this problem, being sick and tired, especially with Dot walking around expecting, was already hard enough on me. I was handling my feelings, and his feelings, as best I could, and his tone burned me up.
“I didn’t lie to you,” I snapped. His eyebrows flicked at the volume in my voice. “But there ain’t been a day gone by since you hauled me into this NNAS business that I ain’t told a story for you, neither. Not one! You checked me out, trusted my judgment, remember? What use is it telling you all this? To worry you, get in your head? You couldn’t do nothing but watch and wait while I had pressure problems with Bea, and they went away. I’ve been seeing, and will continue seeing, the doctors. I have it under control! Now that you know, ain’t nothing for you to do but wring your hands. That doesn’t help me or you. I’ve told half-truths and kept things to myself around here for years. Years, Raymond! For you. So call me a liar all you want, I guess, but you’d better thank me while you calling it.”
Silence shattered the room, though I hardly felt better seeing purple creeping into his face, or his eyes shimmering. We panted storm-cleaned air on the same rhythm—me, from the shouting, and him, from the hearing. Water pooled at the bottom of his grays as they reflected my words back to me. I thumbed his cheek, intent on catching any tear that I caused to fall. After some moments, he spoke slowly.
“I asked for your hand because I believed I could give you the life, love you like you deserve. Not because I wanted to be the one worrying you, hurting you.”
“I know that, baby. In all my life, my wildest dreams couldn’t have dreamed you up.” A small, appreciative huff escaped him. “All I’m saying is that you came to the park asking me to trust you, and I did. Sometimes, the way I do that, the way I protect you, take care of home, maybe I keep to myself. I do that because I love you, not because I don’t.”
twenty-eight
The phone rang on a Saturday when small became big. Wind had howled through the midnight hours, ushering in cold rain that pelted down with such demoralizing force that the first cake I baked fell in protest. The phone started jangling with regrets and polite questions intended to elicit news of a postponement, so by one o’clock, it was the Campbell family and a couple of Bea’s “uncles” from the shop waiting on me to light Bea’s first birthday candle. Hurrying to find the matches, I let the phone ring on the wall until it stopped. But as I was walking back out the kitchen, it rang again right away.
Sparks rained down my spine as “my old buddy” Chase Fitzhugh announced himself on the line asking “who’s on deck” for a tow. It was only days until all Fitzhugh Auto decisions would be his; when he would be free at last to prove forever and again that he was nobody’s Negro. His small banter assured me he’d tried them at the shop, “but maybe no one works Saturdays like Fitzhughs,” he said. The expectation in his tone boiled my blood and made my heart race. The plastic handset crackled in my grip.
“We’re celebrating my daughter’s first birthday today,” I said.
“That’s wonderful! Just wonderful! Beatrice, right?”
“That’s right,” I managed, wanting to snatch my daughter’s name out his mouth. Maybe he was waiting for me to brag on her a little more, or offer some friendly, motherly details of the day. But I was not inclined to reveal anything further to this man. If Campbells brought the pieces, like he claimed, I meant to offer him only a piece of conversation.
“Okay, well, ain’t that just a blessing. And look, this won’t take long. It’s closer to y’all’s side of the woods than some of the other jobs. They’ll be back in a jiffy. So be a good girl and get one of the men on the phone, hmm? Whoever’s on deck.”
“We’re celebrating—” Raymond appeared in the doorway, the excited, expectant look on his face melting to wonder as he outstretched his hand for the phone.
“ . . . Can we talk about this another time? . . . Chase, we’re celebrating my daughter’s birthday today. . . . Yeah, but that was always meant to be only sometimes, you know, like a favor . . . ”
As told by the surprised way Raymond pulled the phone from his ear and regarded it, Chase hung up. He cradled the receiver, but stood with his hand on the phone, thinking for a beat until Bea’s squeal of delight pierced the air. Dot shouted for us to “come on, Pop already let her have some frosting!” Whatever had just happened on the phone, one look was all we needed between the two of us to package it away.
Pop had already cut the cake and was feeding it to Bea by the time we got back. Those two—peas and carrots. Every day, Bea became something new. Discovered something, cut a tooth, took a step, said a word, gained an ounce, grew an inch. Every day. And by her first birthday, Pop had hardly missed a single heartbeat of her life. When she stubbed a toe, his ached. If she cried, his eyes watered. Her heart pushed the blood through his veins. He fed Bea her first sweets, and I was overjoyed to leave them to it—to give everybody the gift of keeping that phone call quiet enough to disappear.
Supper was cold fried chicken and leftover potato salad that we could barely manage after two cake-covered babies whipped five adults into near exhaustion. In the middle of eating, the phone rang again. Raymond reached around his back and slid the receiver from the wall. His tone flowed flat and even when he offered to swing by later in the week to look over the Fitzhugh Auto wreckers for them.
“Maybe some of your guys wouldn’t mind the overtime,” he said. “I’d be happy to take a look and get y’all’s trucks back on the road.”
Perhaps the offer was the insult—the courtesy of showing a white man how to handle his own business, particularly when that business was misdirection. An opportunity to profit in money, and also, in the currency of reputation. Campbells towed your car in. I’m sure sorry about your bill, but you know how they do. An accusation turned to pocket lining for Fitzhugh Auto, and placing us squarely between a white man and some coin. Maybe that was the reason he reacted the way he did, or maybe it was some other thing. “Why?” is hardly a question worth asking because it can never be answered to the satisfaction of those of us just wanting the thumb off the scale and the boot off our back.
The light mist outside had been enough to allow the sun to go down in secret—day slipped into night sometime between Bea having her first sweets and when the phone rang again. This time, with New Jessup’s eyes and ears whispering from the other side of the woods. The babies were finally asleep, and we were all settled in front of the television in the family room. Meantime, the cook from Julie’s called his friend who called his friend who called her friend who called the Morris boys, who called us up and told Raymond and Pop and Percy that Chase Fitzhugh was riling up some men at the bar to come over with gas cans and matches to show us how to handle wreckers. Floorboards rumbled underneath men’s heavy feet traveling from the gun case to the front door—three separate freight trains strapping rifles on backs, knives on ankles, tucking shotguns under arms, pouring extra ammunition into pockets, giving directions to each other, and ordering me and Dot to stay home. Then, the Studebaker came to life and disappeared through the pines.
After that? Nothing. Driving off, they took all the sound away. Nothing filled my ears, filled the room, filled my house, big and wide and without north, south, east, or west. Only now, a direction beckoned me. I walked past the babies, asleep in their playpen; past Pop’s armchair with his blanket lain askew; past the sewing machine and the basket full of mending, and straight to the still-open gun case. My hand skipped over the little CZ I used for rabbit, and wrapped around the smooth, mahogany wood grip of my Winchester. Used only to hunt deer until then, it would put a hole right in Chase Fitzhugh’s eye.
Eight months along, Dot placed herself between me and the front door, refusing to budge when I told her to stay and watch the babies.
“Alice, listen to me. There’s a whole mess of New Jessup men on the way who can handle this. You and me need to stay put and take care of home. Don’t leave me here by myself.” Her plea was dusky, demanding, and a little bit scared, and it split me in half as I was filling my mind for how to get Chase in my crosshairs. It was already dark, but even in the daylight, a straight-shot bullet from our front porch would have to travel through pine forest, across a field of hydrangeas, past a mess of azaleas, on off through the cornfield, over top of an acre of thick and thin grass, through Pop’s yard, and down the driveway to find its targets at the wreckers. At that distance, I needed a missile, not a bullet. Miss Catherine’s garden was full of shadows and my best way to get close. The light from the home house and shop would blind them to my presence in the corn. I had the cover of night and, above the mist, my folks in the stars.
But Dot’s dusky plea was right—we needed to stay together.
“Listen to me,” I told her. She was shaking her head already. “Listen. We gonna put some brandy on the babies’ gums to keep them asleep, strap them to us, and go into the garden.” Her mouth and eyes turned to disbelieving Os.
