Second Glance (34 page)

“He’s not my lover!” I cry, but my voice splits apart on the words. Spencer turns just in time to see me double over, to watch my water break like a lake on the floor.

The immediate need is to lessen the distress of body or mind in those about us. Common humanity calls for that. . . . [n]o hamlet is so small as to be exempt and every state and town has problems of its own concerning its unfortunate, its underprivileged, its handicapped. . . . How can a community, after caring to the best of its abilities for those who suffer from devastating ills, proceed to govern itself in such a way as to better its chances for the future?

—H. F. Perkins, “Eugenic Aspects,” Vermont Commission on Country Life,
Rural Vermont: A Program for the Future
, 1931

So this is how my mother died: cracked wide as a hinged jaw, pressing a century between her legs, unable to breathe for fear of what might come next. Fire races from my back to my belly, and my insides wring tighter with every contraction. Ruby, just as scared as I am, whimpers at the foot of the bed, hoping to catch a miracle in her outstretched hand.

It is too early—for this baby to come, and for me to leave.

I have been in labor for eleven hours. All this time, Ruby has been by my side. And Spencer has been in his study, drinking. I do not know if he called Dr. DuBois. I am afraid to hear the answer, either way.

“Ruby,” I call out, and she comes to my side. “You listen to me. You promised me that you’d take care of this baby.”

“You’ll be able to—”

“I won’t.” I know it, too—my sight waffles gray at the edges; my arms are so weak I cannot move them. “Tell him about me. Tell him I loved—oh, God!” I break off as another contraction tightens its hold on my belly. Everything inside me spirals low, and I hike myself up to let it happen. “Ruby,” I whisper. “Now.”

My vision goes crimson and the ocean beats in my ears. My body is a tide, and I am swept away in pain, in rapture. I open my eyes and expect to see my mother, waiting for me now that I am on the other side, but instead I find myself looking into the face of my baby.

My baby
daughter
.

I have spent so long certain that giving birth will be the death of me; I have been sure that this child I carried was a boy. Yet neither of these things has come to pass. In one breathless second, my entire world has been turned inside out.

She cries, the sweetest sound I have ever heard. As Ruby delivers the placenta and cuts the cord, diapers and swaddles the baby, Spencer bursts into the room. His eyes are an unholy red; he reeks of whiskey. “You’re all right,” he says hoarsely. “Cissy, God, you’re all right.” Then he notices the tightly wrapped infant in Ruby’s arms.

“Mr. Pike,” she says. “Come see your little girl.”

“Girl?” He shakes his head; this cannot be.

I hold out my arms and Ruby gives her over. I think of my mother, who did not feel the bliss of this. Now that I have felt this baby, heard her, it seems impossible to think I would have willingly ended my life without watching her live her own. There will be the moment she smiles for me, the moment she strikes out on unsteady legs, the first haircut, the first school day, the first kiss. How could I miss any of that?

I tuck her into the crook of my arm. After eighteen years of struggling to find my place in this world, I realize that I’ve always belonged right here, holding fast to my daughter.

“Her name is Lily,” I announce.

Spencer comes closer and glances down at our baby. At her face—dark as a nut, round as the moon, with the flat features of her grandfather’s people.

When Spencer looks at me, I realize that he has been hoping this baby would be a fresh start, instead of fuel for the fire. “Lily,” he repeats, and swallows.

“Spencer, it’s not what you think. Gray Wolf—that man—he’s my
father
. You know how heredity works . . . you understand why she looks the way she does. But she’s yours, Spencer, you have to believe me.”

Spencer shakes his head. “Dr. DuBois said you might be irrational after giving birth . . . We should call him, to come look after you.” He lifts the baby out of my arms and turns to Ruby, his eyes flat, his voice even. “Why don’t you take the car and find him, Ruby?”

“Take the . . . ?” She has never driven the Packard, but she knows better than to talk back to Spencer right now. “Yes, sir,” Ruby murmurs, and she sidles past him.

Spencer starts to follow her, still carrying the baby.

“No,” I call out. “Spencer, I want to hold her.”

He stares at me for so long that I imagine he is seeing our history like a movie, looped to lead up to this point. His eyes shine with tears. But then he pulls up a chair beside the bed and sits in it, holding Lily so that I can see her face. He smiles a little, and for just a moment I let myself believe that Spencer might come to understand it is not blood that connects a family, but the love between its members. “You rest, Cissy,” he tells me. “I’ll take care of her.”

We pay full price for the virtues our culture develops at any particular period. . . . The very ethnic and religious prejudices which still live in the community may be forged into the tools by which a demagogue can further divide the population and stultify human development.

—Elin Anderson,
We Americans: A Study of Cleavage in
an American City
, 1937

In my mind’s eye, I am running. The rain sluices over my face and muddies my feet and yet I know I have to get away from whoever is chasing me. When I look over my shoulder I see him—the same man who has been in my other dreams, with the long brown hair and quiet eyes. He calls out my name, and I turn again, and a moment later he trips and sprawls across the ground. I stop to make sure he has not hurt himself and then I see it—the tombstone with my name on it, the tombstone that I have run right through.

Jerking awake, I feel something heavy on my thigh. Spencer is draped across my lap. At first I think he is asleep and then I realize he is sobbing. His eyes are so bloodshot it frightens me, and his skin gives off the steam of alcohol.

“Cissy,” he says, rising. “You’re awake.”

My body feels as if it has been beaten for days. My legs are too tender to shift on the mattress. Someone—Spencer?—has pressed cold compresses between my thighs to stanch the bleeding. “Lily,” I ask. “Where is she?”

Spencer takes my hand and raises it to his lips. “Cissy.”

“Where is my baby?” I push myself up in the bed.

“Cissy, the baby—she was too young. Her lungs . . .”

I go perfectly still.

“The baby died, Cissy.”

“Lily!” I scream. I try to get off the bed, but Spencer holds me down.

“You couldn’t have done anything. No one could have.”

“Dr. DuBois—”

“He’s doing a surgery in Vergennes. Ruby left word for him to come as soon as he gets home. But by the time she came back the baby was . . .”

“Don’t say it,” I threaten. “Don’t you
dare
say it.”

He is crying too. “She died in my arms. She died while I was holding her.”

All I want is my baby. “I have to see her.”

“You can’t.”

“
I have to see her!
”

“Cissy, she’s been buried. I did it.”

I throw myself out from beneath the covers and hit Spencer in the chest, the arms, the head. “You wouldn’t. You
wouldn’t
!”

He grabs my wrists hard, pulls me back, shakes me. “We couldn’t have baptized her. We couldn’t have buried her in consecrated ground.” A sob rounds from his throat. “I thought, if you saw her, you would try to follow her. I can’t lose you, too. Jesus, Cissy, what did you want me to do?”

It takes a moment for his words to sink it. We couldn’t have baptized her, we couldn’t have buried her in the church graveyard, because to Spencer she was illegitimate. Spencer gathers me into his arms while I am still stiff with shock. “Sweetheart,” he whispers, “no one has to know.”

My eyes burn, my throat aches. “How about the next time I have a baby, Spencer, and it looks the same way? How many Gypsies will you accuse me of sleeping with before you realize I’m telling you the truth? Before you send me off to an institution to be sterilized?” I shake my head. “My mother fell in love with an Indian. Blame her for that, not me. All I ever did wrong was fall in love with you.”

How does it feel
, I want to ask,
to find yourself at the bottom
of one of your own genealogy charts?
But instead I pick up the swaddling blanket at the foot of the bed. “Take me to the grave.”

“You’re too upset. You need to—”

“I
need
to see my daughter’s grave. Now.”

Spencer stands up. He picks up from a tray beside the bed the scissors Ruby used to cut the umbilical cord, a knife she had sterilized just in case. He tucks these into his breast pocket, for safekeeping. “Tomorrow,” he promises, and then he kisses my forehead. “Cissy. Let’s start over.”

I stare at him so long that everything inside me goes to stone. “All right, Spencer,” I answer, in a voice that sounds much like the woman I used to be. My hands are shaking in my lap, but I can play his game. I am already thinking of my next move.

In the voelkisch State the voelkisch view of life has finally to succeed in bringing about that nobler era when men see their care no longer in the better breeding of dogs, horses and cats, but rather in the uplifting of mankind itself, an era in which the one knowingly and silently renounces, and the other gladly gives and sacrifices.

—Adolph Hitler,
Mein Kampf
, from Volume II, written in prison in 1924 prior to the 1933 “Law for Protection Against Genetically Defective Offspring” passed as part of the Nazi Racial Hygiene Program

Lily isn’t dead. Now that I have thought about it, this is the only way it can be—why else would Spencer refuse to show me the body, the coffin, the grave? A hundred scenarios have run through my mind: he has hidden her until he has a chance to leave her on the steps of a church; he gave her to Ruby to bring to the orphanage; he is waiting for Dr. DuBois to come and spirit her away. Another reason I did not die in childbirth: it is my responsibility to find my baby.

I wait until I am certain Spencer has closeted himself in his study again and then I get dressed. It is slow going—my head is heavy with fever and my legs shaky. I slip Gray Wolf’s pipe into the pocket of my dress and double-knot my boots— above all, I have to be ready to run away. I turn the knob of the door with the care of a military spy and creep into the hall.

My first stop is the bathroom. Quietly I rummage through the clothing hamper; I check inside the tub. I even force myself to look in the tank of the toilet. When I cannot find her I go to Ruby’s room on the third floor, and empty the insides of the closet and drawers, mess the bed, toss the shelves. By the time I finish I need to sit down.

Think
, I command.
Think like Spencer
.

On the ground level of the house I sneak from small cubby to cornerhole, peeking in places too small to fit anything but a sleeping newborn. I take care to tiptoe around Spencer’s study, where the clink of glasses places him at the sideboard. By the time I reach the kitchen I am on the verge of tears. She must be hungry by now; she must be cold.
Cry, and I will find you
.