Before We Were Yours(6)
Babies, I remind myself. It sinks in that there’s more than one, like puppies, and this ain’t normal. Three lives lay half-hidden by the bed curtain Queenie sewed from pretty Golden Heart flour sacks. Three bodies try to pull themselves apart from each other, but they can’t.
I open the door, and the midwife is on top of me before I can decide whether to go in or not. Her hand locks onto my arm. It feels like her fingers go around twice. I look down and see the circle of dark skin against pale. She could snap me in two if she’d a mind to. Why can’t she save my baby brother or sister? Why can’t she pull it from my mama’s body and into this world?
Queenie’s hand grips the curtain, and she screams and tugs, arching up off the bed. A half-dozen wire hooks rip loose. I see my mama’s face, her long, corn-silk blond hair matted to her skin, her blue eyes, those beautiful, soft blue eyes that have marked all of us but Camellia, bugging out. The skin on her cheek stretches so tight, it’s crossed with lacy veins like a dragonfly’s wings.
“Daddy?” My whisper comes on the end of Queenie’s scream, but still it seems to upset the air in the room. I don’t ever call Briny Daddy or Queenie Mama unless something’s real wrong. They were so young when they had me, I don’t think they even thought to teach me the words Mama and Daddy. It’s always been like we were friends the same age. But every once in a while, I need them to be a daddy or a mama. The last time was weeks ago when we saw the man hung in the tree, dead, his body bloated up.
Will Queenie look like that if she dies? Will she go first and then the babies? Or will it be the other way around?
My stomach squeezes so tight I don’t even feel that big hand around my arm anymore. Maybe I’m even glad it’s there, holding me on my feet, keeping me anchored to the spot. I’m afraid to go any closer to Queenie.
“You tell him!” The midwife shakes me like a ragdoll, and it hurts. Her teeth glare white in the lantern light.
Thunder rumbles not far off, and a gust of wind hits the starboard wall, and the midwife stumbles forward, taking me with her. Queenie’s eyes meet mine. She looks at me the way a little child would, like she thinks I can help her and she’s begging me to do it.
I swallow hard and try to find my voice. “D-Daddy?” I stutter out again and he still stares straight ahead. He’s froze up like a rabbit when it senses danger nearby.
Through the window, I see Camellia with her face mashed to the glass. The little kids have climbed up on the bench to look in. Lark’s got big tears rolling down her fat cheeks. She hates to see any living creature hurting. She throws all the baitfish back in the river if she can get away with it. Whenever Briny shoots possums, or ducks, or squirrels, or deer, she carries on like her best pal’s been killed dead right there in front of her.
She’s looking at me to save Queenie. They all are.
There’s a spit of lightning someplace off in the distance. It pushes back the yellow coal-oil glow, then goes dark. I try to count the seconds before I hear the thunder, so I’ll know how far off the storm is, but I’m too rattled.
If Briny doesn’t get Queenie to the doctor soon, it’ll be too late. Like always, we’re camped on the wild shore. Memphis is all the way on the other side of the wide, dark Mississippi River.
I cough a lump out of my throat and stiffen up my neck so the lump won’t come back. “Briny, you gotta take her across-water.”
Slowly, he swivels my way. His face is still glassy, but he looks like he’s been waiting for this—for somebody besides the midwife to tell him what to do.
“Briny, you gotta carry her off in the skiff now, before that storm comes in.” It’d take too long to move the shantyboat, I know. Briny would realize that too if he could think straight.
“You tell him!” the midwife eggs me on. She starts toward Briny, shoving me ahead of her. “You don’ get that woman offa this boat, this child’s mama be dead befo’ mornin’.”
CHAPTER 3
Avery Stafford
AIKEN, SOUTH CAROLINA, PRESENT DAY
“Avery! We need you down here!”
Nothing takes you from thirty years old to thirteen faster than your mother’s voice rebounding up the stairs like a tennis ball after a forehand slice. “Coming! I’ll be right there.”
Elliot chuckles on the other end of the phone. The sound is both familiar and comforting. It calls up a memory trail that stretches all the way back to childhood. Between Elliot’s mother and mine giving us the hawkeye, we never had a prayer of stepping out of line, much less getting away with the sorts of miscreant deeds other teenagers were guilty of. We were more or less doomed to be good. Together. “Sounds like you’re on, sweetheart.”
“The family Christmas picture.” Leaning toward the mirror, I brush blond corkscrews away from my face only to have them fall again. My quick walk down to the stable after returning from the nursing home event has brought out the Grandma Judy curls. I knew it would, but a broodmare foaled last night, and a new baby is more than I can resist. Now I’m paying the price. No hair straightener known to man is a match for the water-laden breeze off the Edisto River.
“Christmas pictures in July?” Elliot coughs, and I’m reminded of how much I miss him. This business of living so far apart is hard, and we’re just two months into it.