Loving Women (43 page)

I was thirty-seven hours in labor with Jesse, in more physical pain than ever before in my life, my insides tearin apart, my every pore teemin with blood it seemed, feelin split, turned inside out. James Robinson come to the bedside later, looking down at me, his eyes all funny. I told him he had another little girl and we’d call her Jesse after my grandmother, if that was okay with him. He just nodded and looked out the window. And I could feel his goin away. Right there in the room
.

He stayed with me when I came home cause I was sick still and exhausted and sore all over. I slept for almost three days. There was blood still leakin from me too and it was on the sheets and he took the sheets off the bed in a disgusted way and burned them and went to New Orleans for more and came back late at night, lookin at me in a scared way. I thought it was the blood, that maybe it reminded him of the war, and what had happened to his leg. But when I said that, he slapped me hard across the face and knocked me down and I knew then that it was beginnin again. I wouldn’t cry. I knew that if I cried that would set him on me, and I was still hurtin from Jesse. He kept hittin me and I started thinkin about escape
.

He knew. He told me in the morning, You better not run, woman. I told him I was free, I could go where I wanted to go, and then he took a board and hit me with it. Right here, see? Under the chin. The scar. The blood was drippin off me and I was knocked to my knees. And that got him hot and he made me do something to him, with the new blood flowin off me and the blood from Jesse still leaking out of me, and I knew that was the end. When he had his way, he went out, leavin me there, and drove off somewhere in the car. I was all alone with the new baby—Nola was at my mother’s—tryin to fix myself; no phone, no car, my jaw hangin loose, broken so I couldn’t even brush my teeth, couldn’t rinse him away with water and salt, and the blood not stoppin and the baby at my breast, the blood mixin with milk and then I heard another car and it pulled in front of the house and it was the police
.

The two of them came to the door and I yelled through that I was locked inside, and they smashed down the door and saw me there, ragged and beaten and bloodied, and the older cop said, Oh my god, and they took me out to the police car with Jesse in my arms and rushed me to the hospital and on the way they told me they were tryin to find James Robinson
.

The doctors wired my jaw and called my mother and father and everybody came to the hospital and Nola saw me and cried because I looked like an eggplant, all bent and distorted and purple and yellow. And then I found out from Daddy that there had been no war, not for Mister James Robinson. I found out he’d been part of a robbin crowd that shot up a place while he was in the army, and he’d been shot up too, by the cops, all of this out in Texas, and they’d put him in the penitentiary, slammin him away for twenty-five years, because two cops were shot and another man killed. That’s what happened to his leg. And he’d spent the war there in prison, not in the Pacific Ocean fightin for his country. And then had escaped, comin back to New Orleans, looking for me, for refuge, for hiding. Until they picked up a trail, a stickup here, another one there; they smelled him like a hunter in Africa smells a lion
.

And I cried and cried, not for him, but for the children, for Nola and Jesse, because they carried his blood, they carried the wildness, the anger, the lies, the need to inflict pain, and I knew that for the rest of their lives there would be a contest in their blood between me and James Robinson. The truth be told, I felt like such a damned fool too. For listenin to him. For believin him. For lying with him after what I knew. For renewin the goddamned holy vow
.

The police pursued him, catchin him at last in Memphis a year later. By then I was back home at the house beside the Atchafalaya. This time sealed for good. I went to church every day, prayin for strength, wanting to resist everything now, hopin I would last long enough to cage the blood of my children, and then, when they were grown and decent and had found their way, I could be released. To Paradise. Yeah. That’s what I thought. My father died. My mother grew old. The girls grew up and played piano and spoke French and Spanish along with English, taught to them in the Catholic school. Last year, Momma died too. I thought: When will it be my turn?

I was alone in the old house beside the Atchafalaya one morning last November. I went down to the water, to look at the boats goin by, sittin on the little dock we had down there, feeling empty and content. And when I came back to the house James Robinson was sittin at a table in the kitchen. On the table he had a big .45 pistol. He was peelin an apple with a parin knife. He didn’t say anything to me. Didn’t even look up
.

I backed up to go to the door and run. To just get away from there. From him. He picked up the gun and said if I ran he would shoot me down and then when the children came back he would shoot them too, because he didn’t care anymore, he wasn’t afraid of death, he’d just as soon go out that way as any. And I stopped then and he told me to lock the door and I did and he took me there on the floor, tearin at me, slappin at me because I was dry, because I wouldn’t move, because I wouldn’t cry or even speak. He did what he wanted for an hour. In every place and every way he could think. And then said he was going to be around again, that he was free of prison, that he would always be around for me, that he would come and have me whenever he wanted. And left
.

I said nothing to the children. He stayed away for a week and then came again to me in the middle of the night with the girls sleepin and put that big gun on the table beside the bed. This time I was wet without wantin to be and hated myself for it and tried to laugh at him to stop him and he beat me again with the strap, exulted at my wetness, made me beg for more when I didn’t want more, and then pushed me face down on the floor and hurt me bad, and then started to dress. Don’t you come back, I whispered to him, or I’ll call the police. He smiled at me and shoved the big gun into his belt and said, Yes, my dear. And left
.

That night I packed up the children and their clothes and took my father’s old car and drove to my sister’s house and hid there. For two weeks, I never saw the day. All the while, the children were wanting to know what was happening and why they couldn’t go home and my sister’s husband went out with a gun on his hip to the house on the Atchafalaya to pack up more things, all the old and good and personal things, and stored them in his place of business, while I trembled when I saw a shadow at the window or heard a board creak or a tree branch brush against the eaves at night. And then I discovered I was pregnant
.

This time I knew what I had to do, knew I couldn’t pass on more of James Robinson’s evil blood. My sister found me a doctor in Atlanta. And before Christmas, I went up there and had an abortion and made the doctor tie my tubes. It was terrible. But when it was over, the truth be told, I was happy. I knew that I’d never have to worry, ever again, about life risin in my womb. That’s when I saw you, child. Comin back from Atlanta, on New Year’s Eve. Or more accurate, comin
away
from Atlanta. Because I wasn’t going home. Not with James Robinson roaming around free. My sister found a place in a Catholic boarding school for my daughters. She sees them every Saturday and I tried to explain to them that this was only for a while, that James Robinson was still out there, with his big gun and evil ways. The police were lookin for him. My sister’s husband had some people lookin for him too. And I came here, to Pensacola, to hide, to start to live
.

I wasn’t even sure what that
meant,
child. To live. But I knew that I was tired of not feelin anything but fear. I was tired of not bein a woman. Of bein sealed up. Of bein alone. I have missed so many things in my life. And then I met you and you were sweet and you were like the boy I should have had, the boy that might have come down that block the next afternoon, instead of that man in the white suit that I thought looked like a god. You are so good to me. I want to be good to you. I want you to know what I know and for you to know it for the rest of your life
.

So when I had to leave so sudden, I hoped you would understand. It wasn’t planned. I had called my sister to ask after the children and she said she’d been tryin to find me for two days because Nola hurt herself at the school, fell off a horse, fractured her skull. My heart just fell into my stomach. I went there as quick as I could, thinking: She could’ve been dead and buried and I never would’ve known. So I had to go. There just wunt any choice. The blood called me. Nola was so happy to see me and the doctors said she had a close call but would be all right and I explained and explained to the girl about where I was and what I was doin and how it would only be for a while (which is the truth) and explained again (tryin to find the words and not scare her too much about the blood of James Robinson that was coursin through her own sweet veins) and she understood, she’s smart, she said she would pray for me and have the nuns pray for me too. I stayed until she was up from the bed and all right, and spent the rest of the time with little Jesse. She doesn’t understand in the same way. She was hurt the most. But I think in the end that she understood too. I hope so. I hope you do too. Somewhere out there, James Robinson is movin in the dark. But I’m with you, child. So please be good to me
.

PART

FOUR

Chapter

49

From
The Blue Notebook

S
he’s back. I’m happy again
.

Actors I like: Brando, Bogart, Cagney, Astaire. But I don’t get it about James Dean. Maybe the girls just like his red jacket. I see him in a movie and I ask myself: What kind of actor would this guy be if Marlon Brando never existed? He steals all of Marlon’s moves, and mumbles like Marlon sometimes does, but because he looks different they think he’s something new. I bet if he went up against Brando in a movie, Marlon would destroy him. (On the other hand, what would happen if Brando went up against Bogart or Cagney, or any of those guys that came out of the Depression? Maybe they would eat
Marlon
alive). Edward G. Robinson is the best of all. He looked scary as shit in
Key Largo,
sitting in the bathtub in the heat, waiting for the hurricane
.