Midnight Without a Moon(63)

“Queen?” Papa said again, as if he somehow expected to get a different answer. “You, Queen?” he said softly.

“Yes, Queen!” Ma Pearl said. She coiled the strap around her thick hand as she stormed toward the doorway. “Ast her who the daddy is.”

Papa looked at Queen, then back at Ma Pearl.

“Go on,” Ma Pearl said, “ast her.”

Papa turned to Queen. “Queen?” he said again. This time his tone was one of inquiry rather than shock.

Queen answered him with heavier sobs.

Ma Pearl folded her arms across her chest. “She was sick too long. I watched her every day. And nothing,” she said, scowling. “So I knowed she was leaving at night.”

Queen’s sobs grew louder.

“Caught her tonight,” Ma Pearl said. “Gittin’ thowed outta that ol’ peckerwood’s truck. Jest thowed her out like she was a piece a trash.”

“Queen,” Papa said, sighing.

Ma Pearl snorted. “Dirn fool like her mama. White man ain’t go’n never own up to no colored baby.” She stormed out of the room, the sheet serving as a curtain between the two rooms swaying behind her.

“Go on back to sleep,” she said when Fred Lee’s bed creaked. “Ain’t nothing wrong, ’cept Queen done got herself in trouble.”

At that, Queen whimpered. And it took only a second for the whimpering to turn into broken sobs.

Queen uncurled her body and reached up. She begged for Papa’s embrace. “I’m sorry, Papa,” she uttered.

Papa dropped his head. With his shoulders slumped, he turned and left the room.

As Queen curled herself into a ball and wept even louder, I got up and lit the kerosene lamp that sat on the wooden crate that served as a night table between our beds.

At first I didn’t speak. Instead, I, the newly saved sinner, knelt beside my bed and offered up a prayer for her, begging God not to allow Ma Pearl to beat her so viciously again. Then I went over to her bed and rubbed her back.

Queen winced.

I could feel the bruises beneath the soft fabric. Dark red seeped through yellow.

“We need to get these clothes off you.”

“Okay . . .” Queen whimpered.

But when I began to help her out of her clothes, she wailed. “I just wanna die! Jesus, just let me die!” She curled back into her ball, cringing at every touch.

Tears sprang to my eyes. “It’s gonna be all right, Queen,” I whispered, my voice choking. I stared at what was once beautiful, almost sand-colored skin. It was now bruised, bloody, and purple.

Staring at Queen’s body brought back a memory I didn’t know I had. It was a memory of a time before Fred Lee was born—?a memory of a night Ma Pearl stormed into that very room Queen and I shared.

Mama and I cuddled in one bed, and Aunt Clara Jean and two-year-old Queen cuddled in the other. The memory was a fog, but I remembered Mama crying and Aunt Clara Jean soothing her with, “Sister, it’s go’n be all right.”

Tears sprang to my eyes when I thought of Mama possibly getting that kind of beating twice. The memory and the sight of Queen’s back made me vow I’d never allow myself to get into that kind of trouble with Ma Pearl.

After helping Queen get out of her blood-soaked clothes, I went to the back room and got the basin of water for morning washing, along with a towel. When I returned, Queen was sitting up, the sheets loosely wrapped around her.

“It hurt so bad,” she said when I sat beside her.

“I know,” I whispered.

“If you hadna woke up,” she said, choking back a sob, “she mighta killed me.”

“She wouldn’t have killed you,” I said softly. “She didn’t kill Mama. And she didn’t kill Aunt Clara Jean.”

“I wish she had. I wish she had killed us both before I was even brought to this miserable world.”

“Don’t talk like that, Queen. You won’t have to stay here forever,” I said. “One day you can leave like everyone else. Like me,” I added, feeling renewed joy at the thought of going to Saint Louis in November.

“How can I leave?” Queen asked. “Who go’n take me to live with them? I’ll have a child attached to my hip.” She said that in a tone indicating that the problem was someone else’s fault and not her own.

“Mama and Aunt Clara Jean both had babies before they were married,” I said. “But they still got husbands. They still left.”

“But they didn’t get to choose,” Queen said bitterly. “What woman would want to spend her life looking at something as big and ugly as Mr. Pete?”

I carefully wiped blood from her shoulder, but said nothing as I considered how small Uncle Ollie seemed compared with the mammoth-size Aunt Clara Jean.

Queen’s countenance fell. “He lied to me,” she said.

“Who?” I asked.

“Jim,” Queen answered.

“Jim who?”

“Robinson.”

My eyebrows came together. “Jimmy Robinson?”

Queen nodded.

“What did Jimmy Robinson lie to you about?”

“He said he loved me.”

I stopped wiping blood from her delicate skin. I was so confused it seemed cobwebs had cluttered my head. “Why would Jimmy Robinson say he loved you?”