Leaving Lucy Pear(3)
Bea was looking back so intently she didn’t see the root that threw her forward. She caught herself with one hand but the infant’s head fell back roughly, as the nurse had instructed her it was never supposed to do. The baby howled. Bea filled its mouth again with her finger, bounced it, shushed in its ear.
In her fall she reached the pear tree she had chosen yesterday. She came down to the orchard in daylight, wanting to be sure that if for some reason the people picked from only one tree this year, they would find the baby waiting under it. She chose this one, and felt certain in her choice. But now she couldn’t see well and the infant struggled in her arms and the scent of pears was so strong she thought she would gag. Maybe the next tree produced the finest pears. Maybe this tree was understood to be the runt and the people wouldn’t even bother with it. Why had Bea thought herself capable of judging anything, let alone the worth of a tree?
Voices now, shout-whispers through the trees. Get up, said her mother. Give the thing back to the nurse. Go to sleep. Wait for the lady from the orphanage. You’re a good girl. You used to be. Don’t let a small mistake ruin your life. Aunt Vera said, Keep the baby, if it upsets you so much. We’ll raise it together. But that was a lie because Aunt Vera was dying. Do what you want, Uncle Ira said. You think your parents ever do a thing they don’t want? But Bea didn’t know what she wanted. She wanted to go back, she supposed, to before the lieutenant, before he smiled at her, before he pushed her against the wall, before he forced himself on her. Handsome, her mother had murmured in her ear that night. Handsome, she murmured now. Bea wanted to go back to when her greatest struggle was picking her way through Liszt. But she couldn’t go back and Aunt Vera would die soon and she didn’t trust Uncle Ira to defend her, when the time came; for all his talk, he snapped like a stick in front of her father. So if Bea kept the baby it would be taken anyway, only it would be the hideous orphanage woman who got it.
The small woods trembled with the people’s coming and Bea allowed herself a look down. Across the baby’s cheeks, she could trace the rash that had bloomed its second day of life, ferociously red and raw. Bea had convinced herself that the rash was a direct result of her unsuitability as a mother, and that it wouldn’t go away until she gave the thing up. She touched its cheek now, letting her fingers skid over the tiny bumps. They had receded, just as the nurse had said they would. The nurse couldn’t have known how her words, meant to comfort, would rattle Bea. The rash was perfectly common, she had said, nothing to trouble over. It would clear up soon and the girl would have Bea’s skin, “coffee ’n’ cream,” the nurse’s R rolling like water. “Baby girl,” she had cooed while Bea pretended not to listen. Baby girl. Darlin’. Luv. Girl.
Cradling it now as the people came closer, Bea experienced time slowing into a long, stuttering wave, her life at once paused and hurtling forward, her vision stretching to see the infant growing at an alarming rate, lengthening and fattening in her arms until it outgrew her grasp and unfurled to stand before her. It was so undeniably a girl, just like Bea—a girl in an orchard in the middle of the night—that Bea felt her own heart grow. She felt as if her ribs would crack.
Rubbish, said her mother. Sentiment. In three weeks Bea would recommence her musical instruction at the conservatory and enter the freshman class at Radcliffe, where she would continue her studies in the liberal arts and wear a brace to hold in her stomach and go to dances with the Harvard boys and act like all the other girls, as if she’d never lost a thing.
A crunching from the road—feet on gravel, close now. Bea’s breast went taut with goose bumps, reminding her of her exposure, and in the rapid, mindless act of buttoning her dress she was freed of decision. The baby’s eyes were closed. Bea’s arms shook as she set the bundle down in a clump of grass. The approaching footsteps were gentle, she told herself. The people were gentle thieves and they were Irish, like the nurse—they would know, she decided, how to care for babies. She had the whistle in case they didn’t. She stood, her shaking violent now and in every bone of her body so that it seemed to her that she must be audible. She clamped her jaw tight against its rattling. Then she ran, a pounding, rattling heart-bone, and threw herself down behind the stone wall.
? ? ?
They emerged from the gap in a silent swarm, tall and short, in dark, shapeless clothing, their faces and hands pale. Bea could not determine, at first, a leader. They carried ladders, three figures to each, held tight at their sides as they headed for the trees. They were like fairies, Bea thought, until she heard a man’s voice, quiet but clear: “Get off your blasted arses and up those trees.” Bea positioned Aunt Vera’s whistle in her hand. The ladders rose, their tops narrower than their bottoms, and Bea nearly shrieked, thinking of the tiny body, thinking she should have wrapped it in something brighter than Aunt Vera’s shawl, should have set it farther out from the trunk of the tree so it would catch the moonlight, or farther in so it wouldn’t get trampled. She couldn’t remember now at what distance she had set it. She rose on her knees, peering above the wall. She counted eight of them, maybe more. The ladders were planted but she hadn’t heard the baby howl in pain and a new fear struck her—that they wouldn’t find it at all. They would collect their pears and depart in their boats and the baby would still be lying there, sound asleep. Bea would have to collect it, and decide all over again what to do, and feel not only humiliation—that she was used to now—but failure.