The Darkest Child (6 page)

Martha Jean did not draw back, but I flinched enough for the both of us. Martha Jean drew a short line across her chest with a finger. “Name?” she signed, oblivious to the weakening moans coming from the bedroom.

The midwife seemed not to hear them, either. She dropped her hand from Martha Jean’s face, surprise registering behind her thick lenses. “So, this is the deef one,” she said. “I heard Rozelle had a deef and dumb. Looks just like her mama, too, don’t she?”

Sam stepped in front of Martha Jean, pushing her back slightly. “Miss Zadie, I don’t know you,” he said, “but I always heard you was a pretty decent midwife. Everybody say so. They say you delivered half the babies in Pakersfield. How is it you can’t help Mama?”

She did not look at Sam. She took two awkward steps toward the stove as her tongue sank beneath her lower lip, and then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, she spat a mixture of saliva and snuff right onto the belly of the stove. “Yo’ mama can’t be helped,” she said. “Ain’t nobody in the world can help yo’mama.”

With that, she turned her back to us and left our house. The gob of snuff sizzled in her wake and became a permanent stain on the stove. For some reason, I felt it was a stain on me as well.

That stain, scorching into the iron, held me captivated as Harvey and Sam carried our mother, moaning weakly, out to Mr. Frank’s car, which had finally arrived. And for the first time, I wondered if my mother could be helped, or if she were truly going to die.

“One or the other, Lord,” I prayed aloud. “Help her or take her.”

seven

I
n the absence of our mother, gluttony threatened to be our downfall. Martha Jean, encouraged by Sam, cooked a huge pot of grits and fried over a dozen thick slices of bologna. We gathered in the kitchen and ate until every grain and morsel was devoured. We were undaunted by the prospect of repercussions, even as we consumed the last of a loaf of bread. We sampled, savored, and digested the sweets of freedom.

We were quiet—too busy eating to worry about talking— which is probably why I did not miss Wallace until Tarabelle asked where he was.

“Gone,” Edna answered, pointing toward the back door.

“Probably went up to Mr. Frank’s,” Harvey said. “When did he leave?”

Nobody answered; no one seemed to care. We had not dressed, washed our faces, brushed our teeth, or done any of the other things our mother required of us in the morning. I wasn’t sure Wallace had even dumped the night bucket.

It was Sunday and we should have been in church, but we had gone to bed late and awakened late, and I guess that was our excuse.

I went into the front room, draped my coat over my damp nightgown, stepped into a pair of shoes, and went out into the backyard. I followed the foot-worn trail past the outhouse and deep into the naked woods. Frosted brown leaves and twigs crunched beneath my feet as I walked. Above me, through the bare branches of birch trees, a gray sky mirrored my mood.

The woods stretched southward for about a quarter mile and ended at a barbed-wire fence that protected Mr. Nathan Barnwell’s property from niggers. There was a sign to that effect nailed to a fence pole. Over the years we had used the sign for target practice, had thrown rocks at it, but we had never considered removing it. Harvey and Sam had ignored the sign several times, breaking through the bottom wires and coming home with their arms loaded with corn, beans, or tomatoes, and once with two chickens. Mama had said it was all right since they weren’t niggers anyway.

As I returned to the house, I saw Wallace pass the washtub and dart beneath the clothesline. We reached the back steps at about the same time, and entered the house together.

“Miss Pearl say Mama had a girl, ”Wallace announced excitedly, and if he had expected a celebration, he was sorely disappointed. Not even Laura or Edna, who were sprawled on the kitchen floor coloring the printed pages of a newspaper, responded to the news.

“You think you grown, boy?” Harvey asked. “You just gon’ leave outta here and don’t say nothing to nobody?”

“I wanted to see how Mama was doing, ”Wallace said.

“How is she doing?” I asked, before Harvey could lash out again.

“Miss Pearl say she had a hard time of it, and she’ll probably be in the hospital for a while.”

“What’s a while?” Sam wanted to know.

Wallace shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know—just a while. That’s all Miss Pearl said. Ain’t y’all glad about the baby?”

“Yeah, Wallace, we’re glad,” I answered.

“Speak for yo’self, ”Tarabelle snapped. “Tangy, you always glad about something.Where we gon’ sleep a baby? What we gon’ feed it? Martha Jean gon’ spend her whole life looking after Mama’s babies. Shit! I ain’t glad.”

“Me neither,” Sam said. “It ain’t that I got nothing against no baby, but something just ain’t right.Why this time Mama try to hide it, acting like she gon’ die and carrying on? Why she make it such a big secret?”

“Mama’s no stranger to secrets,” I said.“We should all know by now that she has a private life, and she does not feel obligated to share it with her children. And that is what we are—her children. She has a right to . . .”

“Shit!” Sam hissed.

I stopped. Mr. Pace undoubtedly would have been proud of my rhetoric, but my siblings were staring at me as though I had grown an extra head.

Tarabelle flicked a hand in my direction. “Y’all see,” she said. “That’s why I can’t stand her.”

“Tangy Mae, you oughta quit,” Sam said. “What you trying to say anyway?”

“Don’t matter how she say it, man, she right,” Harvey said.“Long as I can remember, Mama been hiding things from us. Far as I know, she didn’t tell nobody ’bout me, or you, or any of the rest of us. She got fat, and we just sort of knew it, but I don’t remember her coming right out saying nothing.”

“Yeah, but did you ever hear her talking ’bout dying like she was doing?” Sam asked.

“Don’t matter,” Harvey said.“Tan is right. Mama ain’t never told us much of nothing.”

Harvey had given me the encouragement I needed to speak again, and this time I intended to be heard.“Ain’t nobody got no daddy,” I said, “except Archie Preston claiming to be Harvey’s. How come?”

There was silence. I had broached a subject that was taboo, and they all stared at me again.“Tarabelle says it takes a man and . . .”

“Don’t worry ’bout what I said, ”Tarabelle snapped.

“You did say it, ”Wallace interjected.

“That’s why people don’t tell children nothing. Children got big mouths, ”Tarabelle said.

“You didn’t say it was a secret, ”Wallace responded in a wounded tone. He was big on keeping secrets.

“What did Tarabelle say?” Harvey asked.

Wallace glanced at Tarabelle, twiddled his thumbs for a second, then allowed his arms to swing at his sides as he began to repeat, verbatim, what Tarabelle had told us the night before.

Harvey and Sam roared with laughter when Wallace was done telling. I stared at Tarabelle, expecting to see her seething with anger or squirming with discomfort, but her expression was as stoic as ever.

Sam, carried away, jumped up and down on the floorboards which caused Laura and Edna to cease coloring, and Martha Jean to stare at him quizzically.“Pee?” he said between bouts of laughter. “She said it was pee?”

Had they been just a bit more subdued, they might have heard what I heard as Tarabelle turned to leave the kitchen.

“It feels like pee,” she mumbled.

Sam pulled himself together first.“C’mon, boy,” he said to Wallace. “Let’s walk over to Logan’s store.We gon’ get us some Nehi and celebrate our new sister.”

And I was relieved because I knew Sam was going to tell Wallace what went on between men and women, Wallace would tell me, and eventually I might share it with Tarabelle.

eight

“Martha Jean gon’ be awright,” Harvey assured him. “Ain’t nobody coming out here.You going to school, Wallace, so you might as well shut up and get dressed.”

Sam leaned against the back wall behind the stove, grinning at the exchange and smoking a cigarette. He wore the same overalls he had worn the week before, and they were still relatively clean.

“I’m trying to think, Wallace,” he teased, “who gon’ come out here and bother Martha Jean? Who you think?”

Wallace did not have to think about it. He was ready for the question. “A stranger,” he said, “or the insurance man, or the ice man, or Mr. Poppy, or dirty ol’ Mr. Harper who brings the coal.”

“Why they coming?” Sam asked.“You done went and ordered ice and coal, and didn’t tell nobody?”

“Get yo’ clothes on, Wallace,” Harvey said. “You talking ’bout people don’t wanna come when they got to.”

“Bang, bang,” Sam teased, pointing a trigger finger at Wallace. “You gon’ shoot all them people wit’ yo’ cap pistol, Wallace? Make me wanna stay home and watch. I can just see it now. Mr. Poppy come to the door and ask for his rent, and you shoot him through the heart wit’ yo’ cap pistol.They put you on the chain gang for shooting people, boy, and that’s worse than any school I know of.”

Wallace stood up under Sam’s taunting, but finally went back to the kitchen and made a show of getting dressed.

After Harvey and Sam left, I poured warm water into the washbasin and began my morning bath. Tarabelle came from Mama’s room where she had slept for the past two nights. She didn’t say anything, but as she swept by me on her way to the kitchen, she purposely shoved my arm, and water sloshed from the basin.

I turned to stare at her and saw that she was wearing her white, cotton dress—the one with the tiny rose pattern and short sleeves. It was more suited for spring, but no one was going to tell her that.

“Grits,” she grumbled, coming back into the front room. “I’m sick and tired of grits. Oughta be something else in the world to eat besides grits all the time.”

“I want grits,” Laura said.

“You would, ”Tarabelle snapped. “You always want something. I’m glad I’m getting out of here today.Never nobody to talk to but a dummy and two whining brats.”

“There won’t be anybody to talk to at the Munfords’, either,” I informed her.

“Huh,” she snorted. “That’s what you think. Might not be nobody after today, but today
you
gon’ be talking to me. Don’t tell me you thought you was running off to school.”

“I am going to school. Harvey said we have to go to school.”

“Wallace might be going, but you ain’t. Who you think gon’ show me where these people live? I ain’t never been to no East Grove.You just expect me to walk up to some house and start cleaning? Tangy, you gon’ show me the house, where they keep things, how they like things, and how to do things. I ain’t working today, sister. I’m gon’ be watching you.”

“Come on, Tara,” I pleaded, “I missed school on Friday.Mr. Pace is gonna be upset with me.”

“So?” she asked, moving in to stand nose to nose with me.“Who you think you are? You think ’cause you can read a little bit better than the rest of us that it makes you special or something? You ain’t special, Tangy. Ever’ time you gotta do something, you whine.You just like Laura and Edna, whining all the time ’bout everything.”

She grabbed the undershirt that I was about to slip over my head and tried to yank it from my hands.“You think you special, Tangy?” she repeated, tugging and stretching the shirt.

“Yes!” I shouted, and pulled the shirt with all my strength.

My beautiful sister chose that particular moment to loosen her grip. I stumbled backwards and fell to the floor, bringing the basin of water with me, soaking the undershirt.

Edna began to cry, and Laura shrieked for Wallace who came rushing in from the kitchen.

“I don’t need Wallace,” I croaked from beneath a black oxford that was firmly planted atop my naked chest.Tears sprang to my eyes.“Mama said we don’t fight each other,” I whimpered, and the heavy shoe was immediately replaced by a gob of saliva. I could feel it oozing across my ribcage, and I used the wet shirt to wipe it off.

“Silly, ”Tarabelle said, as she turned on her heels and marched across the hall.

“I’m gon’ tell Mama on Tara,” Laura said with such sympathy for me that I felt ashamed for myself and for Tarabelle.

“Ain’t nothing to tell,” Wallace said, helping me to my feet, although I did not want his help. He refilled the basin with warm water, then turned his attention to Laura and Edna.“C’mon,” he told them, “Martha Jean’s got breakfast ready.” On his way out, he stopped long enough to whisper, “Tara’s just a bully.You’ll get her one day.”

Alone in the room, I thought about bravery and common sense, exploring the thin line that separated the two. I was not a brave individual, and common sense told me that my strength would be no match against Tarabelle’s, but I was not afraid of her, either. Not really afraid.

Fear was a thing I understood all too well. It was a malignancy that had spread throughout my body until my mother, in her godly wisdom, had diagnosed and cauterized it.

I stared at my reflection in the basin of water, remembering that day vividly, and shuddering from the memory.

I am ten, sprinting the miles between Plymouth and Stump Town with
sticks and stones pelting my thin winter coat, being chased by four girls who
are no bigger or older than I.

“Pee baby, cry baby, pee baby, cry baby,” they yell from behind me, and
I run even faster.

“You’d better run.”

“Ugly, stinky, tar baby.You’d better run.”

Their words hurt worse than the rock that draws blood from my scalp,
and the stick that bounces off my leg and does not draw blood. I run with
fear pumping through my veins. My notebook and pencils are scattered
somewhere miles behind me, and I am trying desperately to reach the safety
of my mother’s arms, screaming her name in my flight.

I round the bend, running from Fife Street to Penyon Road, and I see
my mother. She is standing on the front porch, staring down past the field
and directly at me. She turns her back and opens the front door. I think she
is going inside, deserting me in the presence of my enemies, and I scream
for her again.

“Mama! Mama!”

Martha Jean and Tarabelle emerge from the house. My mother rushes
them toward the road, and they obey. My warriors charge the battlefield
without armor, attacking my predators, pulling clothes, and hair, and skin,
drawing blood and screams of terror, as I fall to the dirt, panting and crying.

Above the noise of my pounding heart and panting breath comes the
distinct sound of bone cracking. I turn my head slowly and see three of the
girls running back toward Fife, and the unlucky fourth sitting on the road,
holding her right arm with her left hand.

Tarabelle circles the girl once, then turns her cold eyes on me, and before
I can blink, she rams a knee into the girl’s face. Martha Jean, a long red
welt running from ear to chin, helps me to my feet and delivers me into the
waiting arms of my mother.

Mama makes herself comfortable in an armchair and pulls me onto her
lap. She strokes my hair, then wraps an arm around my back, drawing me
closer to her heart.With her other hand, she motions to Tarabelle, and my
sister steps away from us. Mama brings her arm around and under my
thigh, pinning my body to hers.“You a Quinn, baby,” she says softly.“We
don’t run from nobody. Nobody! Do you understand that?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I mumble against her breast.

“You gotta fight. Don’t take nothing but swinging yo’ fist.You understand
that?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’m gon’ make sho’ you understand it,” she says, loosening her grip on
my thighs.“Hand me that poker and hold her feet, Tarabelle.”

Tarabelle clamps down on my feet, immobilizing me.There is no time
to cry out as my mother brings the searing fire iron down onto my leg. I
swoon from the pain, and my mother’s voice trails me as I enter into a darkness
that is death and float deeper still into Hell. “I done branded you a
Quinn, girl. Don’t you ever run from nobody else long as you live.”

Much later, the next day or the day after that, my mother’s face comes
into focus before my eyes. She opens her mouth, and the strong smell of
onions assaults my nostrils.“It wouldna burned you so bad if you’da been
still,” she says.

I remembered wanting to fade back into the darkness, but being unable to. I will forever wear a brand on my lower left leg that I am able to hide beneath a sock. Sometimes when I am most afraid, I touch my scar to remind myself that I am not a coward. I am a Quinn.