JEWEL (10 page)

“You can’t go, ” I said. “You’ve got to stay here with me. With our baby.”

He stopped, stood straight. He tried to smile, opened his mouth to speak. He didn’t want in here, I knew, not with a new mother ready to start nursing. This moment had always been between Cathe ral and me, Leston’s only role in all this him standing outside the door and grinning at the birth of a new child.

But we were in a hospital now, my child just handed over to me by two strangers as if she were a gift from them, their property, real estate deeded to me. She’d been out of my hands the whole first day of her life, and now Leston wanted out.

I said, “You stay put now. We don’t know anybody here from Adam, and I’m not about to nurse my baby in a cold room with nobody here.”

Leston smiled. He glanced at me, then the baby. He shrugged, said, “Be glad to stay, ” and sat down. He tapped the crease in the crown of his hat once, then said, “This is my first time in a hospital, too, don’t forget.” He paused. “Feel like I’m being bullied, all these educated doctors.” He smiled again. “That dolled-up nurse.”

I nodded, smiled. Here was my husband, the king of all he surveyed, made to bow down to a pink-faced doctor in a bow tie.

“But, ” he said, and looked at me. “It’s my baby daughter here what matters. And you.”

I wanted to reach a hand out to him, wanted to touch his clean shaven face again, but just then the baby in my arms let out the smallest of cries, and I looked to her, shifted so she sat lower on me. I peeled back the hospital gown I had on, showed my shoulder, then my nipple, my breasts filled, already a day late at this.

Her eyes were still closed, her lips still quivering, and I snuggled her close, my nipple hard and ready, a drop of clear wet poised at n the tip, and then my baby took me in, started life, taking from me what I was glad I could give.

I smiled, though there was pain in my milk coming down. But it was a pain I took with my whole heart, a pain I wanted with me for as long as my baby wanted my milk. I could fix things, could bear up in whatever came my way. If I could live through this birth by the grace of God, and come through it with the sweetness of my milk just as ready as it was with every other child I’d bore, then I could do anything.

And I saw that I’d done the right thing in taking hold of my own life and setting it straight, my momma and her stories of who I was and where I came fromqike stones in your pocket, she’d said better provision for me than the warning of burning clothes in a nighttime orchard, or the threat in the cold, brown eyes of Missy Cook. I’d gone on from that life into this one, to a husband providing for me better than most women I knew of, children healthy and fit. The stories of my father’s father and of Missy Cook’s father had been stones in my pocket, all right, but not the kind to weigh you down, not the sort you pile in before jumping off a bridge. They’d been the polished and smooth ones, stones cool to the touch, tough and foreign and necessary all the same.

“You are a beautiful woman, Jewel, ” Leston said, and I turned from the baby to him. He was leaned forward in his seat, watching the two of us.

“What makes you say that? ” I said.

“Your being beautiful, ” he said. “And that baby you got there.

Plenty reason enough.”

My newest baby still pulled down my milk, and Leston eased back in the seat, reached a hand to the inside pocket of his jacket.

“Got something for you, ” he said, and brought his hand out, held in it a piece of polished wood.

It was a piece off a dogwood branch, I could see right away, a slender piece, crooked in its own graceful way, and fit my husband’s hand perfectly, from the tip of his thumb to the tip of his pinkie finger.

It was a beautiful piece of wood, not so much for the gnarled knots along the big end of it, nor for the thin point it came to at the other, not even for the gray-brown color of the wood.

What made it beautiful was how it shone in the light from the one window, and the care I knew he’d taken with it to make that shine come up, make the grain glisten, those knots whorls of smooth color.

It was beautiful because of what he’d done to it with his hands.

“Found it last week, ” he said. “Just saw it on the ground. Picked it up.” With his other hand he turned it over, revealed to me new twists in the grain, more new ways the light could shine off it. “Knew I could do something with it.”

I looked at him, smiled. I said, “It’s beautiful. Like all the rest of the gifts you’ve made me.”

The baby safe in the crook of my arms, still sucking away, I reached to the wood, touched it. This was his gift to me, his own small tradition, one he’d started on his own at the birth of James, back when we lived in the cabin on Rosehill Road, and I remembered then the shutters he made for me at the birth of his firstborn.

They were shutters not for closing up when a storm came or cold weather, but shutters purely for the beauty of them, and how fine they made the house look. They were white, solid, and in the center of each was a raised cutout silhouette of a pinetree painted a dark forest green, and I remembered right then Lying in bed one morning only days after James was born, him there next to me and nursing away just like the baby in my arms right now. I’d heard some small scratch of sound come through the walls of the cabin, a sound more like a squirrel working away than Leston with a screwdriver outside my window. Then’d come Cathe ral’s voice out there, her talking and laughing, Leston giving out a word or three now and again. Once the scratching’d stopped, Cathe ral came into the house, James asleep, and helped me struggle up out of bed. She’d smiled, her eyes on mine all the while as she led me through the doorway and out front of the house.

There had stood Leston, hands on his hips, grinning away. He looked at me, then to the house. Slowly I walked to him, then turned, faced the house to see his perfect gift, a gift of his hands and hard work, shutters a crisp white, pine silhouettes a cool green, our cabin now filled with the promise of new life a son and I’d turned to Leston, smiled, kissed him full on the lips. I whispered, “Thank you.”

I picked up the piece of wood from the palm of his hand, felt how warm it was, how soft and clean. He’d sanded it just enough to give it this feel, this touch.

“Wish I could’ve done more, ” he said. “But the work. Too much of it.”

He shrugged, wouldn’t let his eyes meet mine, him embarrassed at how small this gift was.

Since the shutters, the other gifts had grown smaller in size as our lives took off, time swallowed up even more with each new child. After Billie Jean was born, he built me a small cedar chest, after Burton, three window boxes for geraniums. After Wilman, it was a jewelry box, though I had only a couple necklaces, one set of earrings. Before the piece of wood in my hand right now, after Annie’d been born, I’d found on the kitchen table two cherrywood candlesticks. “I’ll make something better, once things ease up, ” he said.

“No, ” I said right away, the wood in my hand still warm from where he’d carried it in his jacket, still warm from the palm of his hand.

“This will do fine, ” I said. “It’s beautiful.”

He shrugged once more, grinned. Then he did something strange and wonderful, he stood, leaned over to me, and kissed me on the lips, and I thought again of him calling me Sug, and how long ago it’d seemed we’d abandoned those love names.

“Leston, ” I whispered. “Sug. I love you.”

He was already sitting in his chair again, his face gone red, him smiling away at his hat.

“I love you, too, ” he said.

I looked to the baby again, touched a finger to her fine, pink cheek.

I said, “This child needs a name. She’s got her whole life ahead of her, one day of it already gone.”

She let go my nipple, her eyes never opening, and I lifted her, amazed like always how little a baby weighed, and brought her to my other breast, let her start in there.

“I got the name this time, ” Leston said. He was smiling. “The way I figure it is, ” he said, and looked at the baby, fixed his eyes on her, “this is the last baby. Last but not least. So I get to name her.”

“Depends, ” I said, “on what you name her.” My milk was coming down on this side, the same deep and dull pain in me. I felt my jaw tighten a little, blinked it away.

He took a breath, sat up straighter in the chair. He put his hat on one knee, fingers touching the crown. He let out a little breath, closed his eyes. He said, “Brenda Kay.”

Slowly I looked from him to the child in my arms, this newborn with the beautiful hair, suckling in her sleep. I said, “After your sister, ” and thought of Brenda Kay, a girl born ten years before Leston, and of the stories he’d given of her, her auburn hair and green eyes, her beaus. I thought too of her dying giving birth to her first child, Toxie, and how Leston had grown up with that boy, himself a kind of older brother to him. I placed no faith in namesakes and how some people thought it bad luck, doom wished upon a new soul on earth if the name of someone who’d died in a bad way were given. Brenda Kay was my husband’s sister, a woman he had loved, family. His own blood, and for a moment I envied him those memories he had of her, evidence she’d lived and had loved him.

I touched my daughter’s hair, her ear, her fingers pink and small, smaller than they would ever be from this day forward, my child already growing right before my eyes, right in this room. “It’s a beautiful name, ” I said. “The perfect name.”

I looked up at Leston, and held out the same hand I’d touched our daughter with, held it out for him.

He lifted his hand up, and our fingers touched. “That’s her name, ” I said, and we held hands that way for the longest time.

CHAPTER 7.

BRENDA KAY SLEPT. SHE SLEPT THOSE FOUR DAYS I SPENT IN THE HOSPITAL in Purvis, no one to visit but Leston, slept the ride home on the same road we’d driven in darkness, the trees lining the road now alive with a fall breeze that moved the high limbs, slept through meeting her brothers and sisters the first day home.

Billie Jean seemed to forget she was a teenager with friends who’d be appalled at this new proof her parents still actually touched each other. She’d leaned in close to the cradle next to my bed and touched Brenda Kay’s cheek with one finger, gave a small kiss to her forehead.

Billie Jean turned to me, on her face a smile I’d never seen before, proof to me she was becoming a woman, her face suddenly thinner, lips fuller, eyes deeper. Without a word she leaned over and kissed me on the forehead, too, and hugged me. I thought I could smell on her the faint trace of rosewater, and hugged her the closer for it.

Next came Burton, who stood at the foot of the bed and said, “Momma, I helped with this, you know.” I nodded, said, “Without you your daddy’d probably still be out in the woods taking out stumps, ” and Burton gave a short, stiff nod, acknowledgment of the truth I’d uttered. He looked into the cradle, the same one he and each of the others had rocked in, at his new sister, gave the same nod at her, and turned, left the room.

Wilman’d been leaning against the wall near the door, hands still in his pockets, head down. Once Burton was gone, he looked up, pushed himself from the wall, and made his way toward the cradle. He looked in, blinked, turned his head first one way, then another. He looked at me.

He said, “It hurt, didn’t it? ” I smiled, shrugged. I laced my fingers together on top of the quilt.

“Yes, ” I said. “But the hurt doesn’t matter, not when you see all the love your children bring you.”

He looked at Brenda Kay, brought his hands from his pockets and reached down, fingered the blanket that lay over her. He stooped, hesitated, and brought his face to hers, kissed her. He pulled away a moment, then kissed her again, whispered, “Brenda Kay.”

That was when I lifted my arms, held them out to him. He smiled, finally, and came to me, his shoulders in my arms a soft dream, one coming to an end every day he grew up, every day each of them grew up.

He patted me on the back, his small hands giving the finest comfort any human being could give.

He pulled away, looked at me. He said, “Don’t cry, Momma, ” and reached a hand to my eye, touched at tears I hadn’t known were coming.

“Don’t cry, ” he said.

I nodded, took in a small breath, said, “Now send in Annie.”

He smiled. “I been taking good care of her, me and Cathe ral both, ” he said, and turned, ran from the room.

“Don’t run, ” I called after him, afraid for a moment of the sound his steps made on the floor, my baby still asleep. But she hadn’t woken yet except for her small cries at feeding. Maybe waking her would be the thing to do.

I leaned over, pulled back the blanket so I could see her, hands in fists near her face, fingers curled into her palms so tight they nearly disappeared.

Then Annie stood next to the cradle. I hadn’t heard her come in, saw only her tiny feet next to the cradle, the ragged bottom edge of her nye-nye on the floor.

I looked up. Her eyes were on me, third and fourth fingers in her mouth, nye-nye held to her shoulder.

“Annie, ” I whispered, “this is your new sister, Brenda Kay.”

She didn’t move, only swallowed, reached up with her free hand and rubbed an eye.

“Aren’t you going to say hello? ” I said, and eased back into the bed.

She shook her head once, fingers still in her mouth.

“Come here, ” I whispered, and held out my hands to her.

She rubbed her eye again, then looked at the floor. Slowly she edged round the cradle and to the bed. She still hadn’t looked at me by the time I could reach her, and I took hold of her hands, squeezed them.

I said, “You climb up here in bed and take a nap with Momma.”

She wasn’t smiling, her mouth open, the whites of her eyes the clean and unbroken white of childhood, the brown irises filled with some wonder at what all this was about, and who that baby in the cradle was, and why everyone was so quiet in a house usually filled with noise.

All of that was in her eyes, and as she climbed up the quilt and then under it, nye-nye still clutched in one hand, her body nestling in to mine, I gave her no answers, simply decided that this time of quiet and sleep was the best I could hope for.