The Twelve Tribes of Hattie (17 page)

When Pearl told Benny that Hattie had finally come around, he’d been almost indifferent. Oh, he hauled the baby furniture down from the attic and paid the man who came to repaper the nursery, and he smiled and nodded when the people at church congratulated him, but he never mentioned the baby when he and Pearl were alone. Just before they left for Philadelphia, Pearl came into the house with an armload of new baby clothes. Benny frowned.

“After all this time and trial, I thought you’d be pleased to have a daughter,” she said.

“A niece,” Benny replied and turned back to his paper.

That man spent so much time with dead people that he hardly knew how to be with the living.

Pearl came upon a tree still laden with nuts. The branches were teeming with squirrels and Pearl wondered if Ella would be the sort of child that was afraid of animals. Pearl tried to imagine what she looked like: ivory like Hattie or cinnamon like August, sandy-brown hair or wavy black? She’d be a pretty baby. All of Hattie’s children, the ones Pearl had seen, were pretty. Chestnuts had fallen from the tree and lay in heaps on the ground. Pearl took off her slip and piled nuts into it. Well, all that gathering made her feel carefree as a girl. She got twigs stuck to her sweater and crumbly bits of dirt on her skirt, but she kept collecting chestnuts until they bulged through the silk of her slip.

Benny called as Pearl walked through the wood toward the highway. She stepped through the trees and onto the graveled shoulder of the road, ruddy cheeked and giddy with her slip made into a satchel.

“Will you just look at all these chestnuts!” she said.

“Is that your slip?” Benny asked.

“I’m going to give them to Hattie so we can roast them together. Won’t that be fine?”

He sighed. “I think it’s going to take more than chestnuts.”

“It might ease things a bit, roasting chestnuts like we did when we were girls.”

“Get in,” he said. “We have at least five hours left.”

They only stopped once more—ham sandwiches at a roadside stand eaten so quickly the engine didn’t have time to cool before they started off again. Just past noon they crossed the Schuylkill River and drove into Philadelphia.

I OUGHT
to pack up Ella’s things, Hattie thought. She rubbed her cheek against the smooth spot on top of the baby’s head where the hair hadn’t grown in yet. She stood in the doorway and scanned the street for Pearl and Benny’s Buick. Ella had gotten old enough to hold on to things with her fist—Hattie’s nose or chin or a lock of her hair. And she had learned to give kisses, though she kept her mouth open in a round O, suction kisses, August called them.

He was delighted with her, as he was with all of the children. He treated them like bear cubs at the circus, and they loved him for it. He let the little ones come into the bathroom while he shaved, and they watched him as raptly as they would a picture show. He taught them to whistle songs he’d heard on the radio. August was a buffoon, and they adored him; Hattie kept them alive, and they barely smiled when she entered the room. Hattie didn’t know how to be a different kind of mother. She squeezed Ella. Maybe with you I could do better, she whispered in her daughter’s ear. Maybe this time … But it was too late, everything was decided.

Ella closed her fist around Hattie’s earlobe and giggled. I ought to put her in her blue dress and pack her things, Hattie thought again. But the blue dress was for company or for outings, and they still had another hour together. Hattie decided to put the milk bottles out on the stoop. Maybe she’d sweep too, before Pearl arrived. Fallen leaves were thick on the steps, and Hattie’s was the only porch not swept clean.

Ella cooed at the butterflies flitting around the bushes near the porch steps. It was her first autumn. Hattie wondered what she must think of it or if she’d even noticed that the lush, gaudy colors of summer had faded into the burnt yellows and oranges of fall. Ella wouldn’t have to endure the northern winter. Hattie had never gotten used to it. She didn’t suffer from nostalgia—the South was gone from her—but the northern winter left her raw and heartsick. It had taken two of her children. Ella squirmed against her.

“Oh, it’s the butterflies you want,” she said. Hattie got a mason jar and captured two of them inside. She refused to look at the clock again but she was as aware of the time passing as she was of her own heartbeat. The butterflies, white as two slips of paper, flitted in the jar. Ella was transfixed. In the summer Hattie’s girls trapped fireflies in the palms of their hands. They ripped the glowing bits from the insects’ abdomens and put them on their fingers like rings. “Look at my jewels,” they said and ran down the block with the green glow paling on their fingers. Ella banged the butterfly jar with her hands.

“Ain’t that a purty sight? You poke some holes in that lid and put some grass in the bottom and they’ll live till sundown,” Willie said. She stood in the middle of the sidewalk leaning on a cane.

“It’s a shame to kill them. I thought I’d set them free when she gets tired of them,” Hattie replied.

“Everything got to meet its end somewhere, over by that bush or in that there jar. I reckon it’s the same to them.”

Willie gestured to Ella, “Look like she got a good disposition. Cranky baby’s a hard thing to take. But not as hard to take as a cranky man, I reckon.” She chuckled. “And she full of rolls. That’s good coming into winter. Fat baby’ll do all right even if there ain’t much besides butter beans and her mama’s milk. Fat baby do just fine in a lean winter.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Hattie said. “I guess that’s true. I suppose I’ve managed before.”

“We all have. Well, I better get on. You ought to step in sometime soon. I’ll give you something help you sleep better. You don’t look like yourself.” Willie moved off down the street.

It was true that many a baby, Hattie’s own children, had done all right on butterbeans and cabbage. The next spring Ella would be a little older and stronger, and Hattie could work somewhere. Maybe Mrs. Mark would come back from Florida, or Hattie could find a job cooking at one of the restaurants. August and Marion and Pearl wanted to rip her child from her arms, and Pearl throwing around twenty-dollar bills like they were pennies. She’s always wanted something from me, Hattie thought. I never knew what it was, but she’s been trying to worm her way inside of me since we were little girls—the way spiders get into butterfly cocoons and eat them from the inside out until they’re nothing but husks.

I can’t do this, Hattie thought. If I give my child away, I’ll crumble. I wouldn’t survive it. Maybe it’s selfish to keep her from piano lessons and pinafores, but I’m not that strong. I’d disintegrate into nothing and blow away.

To Ella she said, “We’ll take our chances.”

THE HOUSE SMELLED
faintly of mildew, like laundry left too long on the line on a rainy day. It made Hattie think of things she couldn’t stand: hair in the drain, the bathroom grouting gone black with mold. She tidied the living room and put the butterfly jar on the low table near the sofa. Across the street her neighbor’s late-blooming roses drooped on their stems. It occurred to Hattie that it was roses she needed to brighten the living room. She didn’t care for them but Pearl liked sweet, cloying things.

Hattie decided to cross the street and cut a few. She’d just gotten her kitchen shears and was standing on the porch when Benny’s Buick rolled to a stop in front of the house. “You all are early,” she whispered. The sun glinted off of the Buick’s chrome fenders, shined on the hood as though it had been blessed by God, and there she was standing in front of her rented house about to steal some roses from her neighbor. She didn’t feel up to the battle she’d have to wage in order to keep Ella.

“You’re early,” she said, more loudly this time.

Marion was with them. Pearl powdered her nose in the passenger seat. Her hands shook. She looked out at Hattie standing on the steps with the baby in her arms. Her baby, her Ella. Hattie was older, that was sure, more lined and serious. She looked tired too, and her hair was coming loose from the bun at the nape of her neck, but she stood straight and tall and she still had that something in her bearing that made Pearl feel a little shabby, a little scuffed. She put the compact back into her purse.

Hattie looked down from the porch steps. Benny opened Pearl’s door. He had always had good manners. There she was powdering her nose like a princess. She looked well, well fed, manicured. When she got out of the car, she smoothed her skirt with both hands and walked toward the house. Yes, she looked well, though not quite sure of herself. Her eyes were fixed on Ella. She and Hattie looked at each other, then at the baby. Marion broke the silence.

“Hattie, my gracious, you are in a state. What are you doing out here with those scissors? You like you’ve been at the cordial.” She glanced anxiously from one sister to the other. “It’s gotten so breezy! Isn’t it breezy?”

Hattie took a deep breath and descended the stairs. “You all must be tired after all that driving, though it does seem you made good time. Did you make good time, Benny?”

“Alright time, I guess, Hattie.” He took off his hat when she addressed him.

There was silence again. Marion said, “Don’t you think we should go inside?” She edged past Pearl and Hattie and opened the front door. “Come on then,” she said.

“You look well, Hattie.” Pearl said. “And the baby … You painted the house since the last time I was here. But that was … well, that was so long ago. My goodness. Glory be. Well, this was always a nice respectable street.”

Pearl could not recall ever wanting anything as badly as she wanted to take Ella into her arms. “A very quiet street.” Her voice shook.

Hattie felt a rush of sympathy for her, all trussed up and gloved and too much powder on her face. If the circumstances had been different, she would have reached out and squeezed Pearl’s shoulder. Ella nuzzled Hattie’s neck like she did whenever strangers came around.

“I almost forgot about my chestnuts! Benny, go get the chestnuts.”

He went back to the car. The women entered the house.

The living room was all shadows. Pearl stood in the foyer with her arms hanging limp at her sides; she looked around as though she’d unexpectedly found herself in a barn. Hattie offered to make them some coffee and started toward the kitchen.

Pearl blurted, “Can I hold the baby while you make the coffee?”

“I suppose everyone takes milk?” Hattie asked. As she turned to walk down the hallway, she kissed Ella’s forehead and pulled at her earlobe because that always made her daughter laugh.

She put the water on to boil. There was a little coffee in a tin at the back of the cupboard, just enough for two or three cups. I’ll tell them I don’t take coffee in the afternoon, she thought. She balanced Ella on her hip with one arm and with the other hand took an old serving tray from the hutch and the good cups and the creamer and sugar bowl. Ella kept reaching for the dishes, and Hattie nearly dropped the saucers. She whined as though she might cry, so Hattie wet the tip of her pinky, stuck it in the sugar bowl, and put it in Ella’s mouth. She leaned against the counter and whispered in Ella’s ear while the baby sucked the sugar away. Hattie felt as though she were sliding off of the side of the earth.

Marion came in. “You need some help? At least let me take the baby while you do that.”

“No!” Hattie said sharply. “No, I’m alright.”

“You all are going to have to get on with things, you know.”

“Coffee’s ready. You can carry the tray,” Hattie said.

Benny had put the things from the car in the middle of the living room floor: a basket of apples and one of string beans, a couple of covered boxes, and a big bag brimming over with what looked like clothes. Next to these, Pearl’s slipful of chestnuts. It looked as though he’d unloaded a ship. Hattie shifted Ella from one hip to the other.

“I am grateful for all of these things, and I do certainly appreciate the trouble you went to, but”—Hattie took a deep breath—“you should keep your things. Ella is staying with me. You can’t have her for a bucket of string beans.”

“Hattie! I brought these things because we’re family, like I do whenever I come visiting. I brought some things for Marion too. Didn’t I?”

Pearl looked at Marion.

“I don’t know how you could say such a thing,” Pearl said.

“I’ll help you take them back out to the car,” Hattie said to Benny.

He shook his head and looked up at her from beneath his eyelashes.

“I think you ought to keep them, if you would. I’d like you to have them even if … ,” he said.

“What is the matter with you, Benny!” Pearl cried. “Hattie, I thought you might need these things!”

“You don’t know what I need, and I’ll thank you not to speculate on it,” Hattie said.

“I have never known anyone so full of foolish pride. Anybody can see you need our help. Just look at the state of this house!”

“Pearl!” Marion said.

“I’m sorry, Hattie. I truly am. Excuse me. I’m a little agitated,” Pearl said. “I think we’re all just a little excited. Let’s drink our coffee. Why don’t you sit down so we can have our coffee?”

“I’ll stand, thank you,” Hattie said, rubbing the small of Ella’s back.

“I didn’t mean what I said. We ought to talk this out. We had an agreement, Hattie. It’s all decided. You said yourself that I should come.”