The Darkest Child (5 page)

Miss Pearl pushed the sheet aside and stood in the doorway. “That’s them Munfords out there,” she said. “They wanna see Tangy Mae. Say they can’t have no girl working for ’em they ain’t never seen.”

I took my coat from a nail in the front room and went out to face the Munfords.

They were standing on the road beside a shiny red automobile. Mrs. Munford stepped forward as I approached. “You’re Tangy?” she inquired.

“Yes, ma’am.” I nodded.

She studied me closely, starting at my black oxfords with no shoestrings, my ashy knees, my worn-thin cotton dress, my corduroy coat, and my uncombed hair. I was sure she could smell Laura’s urine which had probably soaked into my pores.

“How old are you?” she asked.

“Thirteen,” I answered, and did not bother to tell her that I was within spitting distance of fourteen.

She stepped back, consulted her husband, then faced me again. “You tell Rosie that I’m sorry, but you’re too young. We can’t use you.” She was preparing to climb back inside the car, and I should have been relieved, but I knew I could not let them drive away, for surely then my mother would yank me into her deathbed and drag me to the depths of Hell with her.

“Wait!” I pleaded. “Please, wait just one minute.”

I rushed up the steps and burst into my mother’s room, pausing only a second to catch my breath. “Mama, they don’t want me,” I cried out, shifting from foot to foot in my anxiety. “They said I’m too young. What you want me to do, Mama? They gon’ leave.”

“Damn!” she exclaimed. “Did they ask about me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I lied. “They wanted to know if you were feeling any better, and I told them no.”

“Good. You tell Tarabelle to go out there and talk to ’em. We can’t afford to lose that money.”

I watched from the safety of the doorway as Tarabelle made her way slowly down the incline and onto the road. The Munfords looked her over and questioned her the same as they had done me, and I could tell from her slumping posture that they were accepting her, and, unknowingly, giving me a reprieve. Though no one knew as well as I that Tarabelle would make me pay for my freedom.

six

“G
et it out, Pearl!” Mama screamed. “Get it out!” “Rosie, I’m doing the best I can. You gotta help me.”

Something horrible was taking place behind the sheet-curtain we had mounted over our mother’s doorway. For hours, Mama had been making hooting owl sounds, and Miss Pearl’s voice had fluctuated between low coaxing and high swearing. They would not allow anybody in that room, except Tarabelle.

“Kill me, Pearl! Just take something and knock my brains out. Oh, Lord! Sweet Jesus. Kill me, Pearl!”

“I declare, Rosie, you ain’t never carried on so. You just having a baby, and it sho’ ain’t the first one. You know we can’t rush this.”

In the front room, Harvey paced the short distance before the coal stove, back and forth, stopping every now and then to warm his hands, or just to stare at the forbidding curtain. Sam knelt beside the stove, smoking a cigarette and flicking ash into the opening of the grate. He was still wearing his work overalls even though it was close to midnight. The overalls were clean, which meant he had spent another idle day.

“You think Miss Pearl know what she doing?” Harvey asked.

“She know,” Sam answered, blowing a string of smoke toward the stove.

Harvey continued to pace, changing directions several times, coming within touching distance of the better of the two armchairs that Martha Jean and I shared. We had left the other one for him, but he seemed unable to sit. In contrast to Sam’s overalls, Harvey’s would need two days of soaking before going into the wash. They were frayed at the hems, patched at the knees, and dotted with greasy stains that were visible even in the dim light of the kerosene lamp.

“I wish Mushy was here,” he said, nervously running a hand through his short, auburn hair. The hair curled around his fingers, and for a moment he stood massaging his scalp.

“What?” Sam asked. “Mushy done went to Ohio and learned how to deliver babies?” “Nah, man. I just wish she was here.”

“If I was Mushy, I wouldn’t never come back here,” Sam said. “When I leave, don’t none of y’all look on me coming back.”

“Why don’t you leave, Sam?” Harvey’s deep, baritone voice was laced with frustration. “What’s stopping you? You ain’t doing nothing to help out, and I’m getting tired of working to feed you. You don’t give a damn ’bout nobody but yo’self. Why don’t you leave?” He glared down at Sam, who refused to be intimidated, although Harvey, at the age of twenty, was two years older and at least twenty pounds heavier.

Sam inhaled the last of his cigarette, flicked the butt into the stove, then stood to face Harvey. “I don’t leave for the same reason you don’t. I can’t.” His voice, though not as deep or angry as Harvey’s, seemed to convey just as much strength. “Yo’ mother,” he said, bowing slightly at the waist and sweeping a hand toward the curtain. “Yo’ mother won’t let me go.”

“What you mean she won’t let you go?” Harvey asked. “She ain’t stopping you. She didn’t stop Mushy.”

“She couldn’t stop Mushy,” Sam countered.

“Man, if you wanna go, just go.”

Sam stuck his hands into the pockets of his overalls and brought them out empty. “Wit’ what?” he asked.

Harvey’s jaw stiffened, but before he could respond, Miss Pearl stepped from behind the curtain. “I can’t do this by myself,” she said breathlessly. “You boys gon’ have to run and get the midwife.”

We stared at her in disbelief. We were forbidden to even approach Selman Street where the midwife lived, and Miss Pearl knew it.

“Nooooo!” Mama yelled, as something in her room crashed to the floor.

Wallace, who had been quietly studying us from the doorway of the kitchen, turned and pulled the flashlight from the kitchen shelf and placed it in Harvey’s hand. Harvey and Sam, without a word to each other, left the house together, united in their decision to get Mama the help she did not want.

“You know better, Pearl!” Mama exploded when Miss Pearl went back into the bedroom. “She ain’t coming in my house. That shriveled up, rheumy-eyed, snuff-dipping ol’ bitch. I’d rather die a hundred deaths than let her touch me.”

I glanced at Wallace, who grinned and shook his head. “They sleeping through all this,” he said, indicating Laura and Edna who were lying on the kitchen floor. “I don’t know how they can sleep through this.”

“It’s nice somebody can,” I said. “I think I’ll curl up in this chair and try to get a little sleep myself. It could be a long night.”

I nudged Martha Jean and pointed to the other chair. She stood and stretched, and while she was doing so, Tarabelle strode across the hall, brushed past her, and slumped down in the unoccupied chair.

“Po’ Mama,” Tarabelle said in a voice void of sympathy. “She done had her whites, her Indians, and her coloreds.This one must be Chinese or something ’cause it sho’ don’t wanna be born in this house.”

“What they doing in there?” Wallace asked.

“Nothing, ”Tarabelle answered.“Ain’t nothing they can do.”

Martha Jean knelt on the floor beside the stove, and I said, “Martha Jean is scared. She doesn’t understand what’s going on.”

“You the one scared, ”Tarabelle snapped. “Martha Jean know all about it, a lot more than you. I tol’ her about having babies—how it tears yo’ insides out. How you bleed like a hog, and pieces of yo’ body come rolling out on the bed, all slimy and smelly.”

I could feel her watching me, but I kept my eyes averted and said nothing.

“Tan, I bet you don’t even know how a baby is made, do you?” she whispered, and did not wait for a reply. “Takes a man and a woman to do it. You take off yo’ clothes and let him pee inside you. That’s all there is to it.”

It was too disgusting to be believable, but Wallace, intrigued by Tarabelle’s nonsense, stepped closer toward her. “Is that true, Tara?” he asked.

She nodded.

“It is not, Wallace,” I said. “She’s making that up.”

“Takes days to get all that pee out yo’ body, ”Tarabelle continued, enjoying herself. “That is, unless you know how to wash it out. One day, Tan, I’m gon’ tell you how to wash it out. Sometimes you can’t get it all, and some of it gets in yo’ belly and mixes wit’ food and makes a baby.”

I began to laugh. It was a high-pitched, humorless laugh, bordering on hysteria. My mother was a clean woman. Never would she allow a man to do the number one in her. Tarabelle should have known better than to say such a thing, and anyway, babies did not grow in bellies; they grew in wombs.

My laughter brought Miss Pearl back into the front room. She stood over me and shook my shoulders. “Child, ain’t nothing funny here,” she scolded.

I struggled to regain my composure, to become once more the calm, sensible Tangy that she knew so well, but each time I opened my mouth to explain, shrill laughter erupted. My jaws ached, and my stomach cramped. I was so consumed by laughter and tears that Miss Pearl stepped back and just allowed me to ride it out.

At first, I could not identify the sharp pain in my left arm. I thought it was just another symptom of my hysteria, like the aching jaws and the cramping stomach. But as the pain intensified, I tried to move my arm and found that I could not. Tarabelle had a grip on me. She was pinching the skin above my elbow so hard that she had bitten down on her bottom lip.

“Stop it, Tara! ”Wallace shouted. “You hurting her.”

It was an understatement. Tarabelle probably would have ripped the skin away from the bone of my arm if Miss Pearl had not intervened.

“That’s enough of that,” she said, gripping Tarabelle’s wrist. “Let her go!”

Tarabelle gave one last, long twist before releasing my arm. “It’s all yo’ fault I gotta go clean somebody’s house. Ain’t no telling what you went out there and said to them Munfords wit’ yo’ uppity ass,” Tarabelle lashed out at me. “I do mo’ ’round here than anybody, now I gotta do even mo’. It ain’t fair.”

In my opinion, Tarabelle did less than anybody in the house. She did not go to work or to school. She did not watch over Laura and Edna. She did not scrub the outhouse, dump the night bucket, lug the water bucket, chop wood, haul in coal or kindling, sweep or mop the floors, wash dishes, cook meals, clean the ice box, nor run errands. She helped wash clothes on Saturdays, and as far as I was concerned, that was all she did.

I expected Miss Pearl to remind her of that, but Miss Pearl sat on the arm of Tarabelle’s chair, gave my sister a hug, and said, “It’s awright, chil’. Thangs got a way of working out. C’mon now, let’s go check on yo’ mama.”

Okay. So maybe now Tarabelle could add delivering babies to her list of chores which consisted of washing clothes, hanging clothes, and letting the air take care of drying.

Thus far, Miss Pearl had done all of the delivering in our house. From Mushy to Edna, she had delivered all of Mama’s babies, and had a long tale to tell about each birth. I had grown bored over the years of hearing how my mother did not trust the midwife or the hospital, and of how young and scared Miss Pearl had been when she had delivered Mushy.

The springs in the seat of my chair cut into my bottom, but I did not want to move. I was angry, hurt, and scared. I lowered my head to the armrest and stared at Wallace, who stared back at me. Martha Jean stood and began shifting coals in the stove with the poker.

That was the way Harvey and Sam found us when they returned with the midwife, Miss Zadie. She was indeed shriveled. She was a high-yellow colored woman who wore thick-lensed, brown-frame glasses. Her back was stooped to an angle so that she appeared to be searching for something on the floor, and when she held her head up, she resembled a turkey in the act of gobbling. Her bottom lip was unmistakably packed with snuff.

Miss Pearl stepped out into the hallway, greeted the old woman, then rushed her into Mama’s room. I turned my attention back to the curtain. For the longest time there were only whispers and flickering light, but then Miss Pearl’s huge frame formed a silhouette against the sheet. She pushed the sheet aside.

“Go get Frank!” she ordered. “Right now! Tell him to get the car out here as fast as he can.”

“Mr. Grodin’s out front in his car,” Harvey said. “He brought us back wit’ Miss Zadie.”

Miss Pearl nodded her head impatiently. “I know,” she said, “but he won’t take yo’ mama nowhere in his car. Go on and get Frank like I tol’ you.”

“Look here, Miss Pearl,” Sam said. “I wanna know what’s going on in there.”

“She bleeding awful bad, and we ain’t got no choice but to take her to the hospital. I think she done lost that chil’, and if you boys don’t get a move on, we might lose yo’ mama, too.”

“Mr. Grodin can take her,” Sam insisted.

“Yeah,” Harvey agreed. “Tan, you go on out there and tell Mr. Grodin we coming out wit’ Mama.”

As Harvey and Sam stormed past Miss Pearl and into Mama’s room, I stayed in my sanctuary. I felt warm and secure in the chair, and I had no idea what the darkness outside held. What type of man would refuse to take a dying woman to the hospital? I did not know, but I was not going out alone to face him. Nothing made any sense. Mr. Grodin had brought his wife to our house to attend to Mama. Surely, that showed he was a kind and neighborly man. “You going, Tan? ”Wallace asked. “If you ain’t, I’m going.”

“No, Wallace, don’t!” I said quickly. “If you warn him, he might drive off.”

“He ain’t gon’ leave his wife.”

“He might,” I said. “You don’t know.”

Wallace thought about that for a second, then he snatched up the flashlight from the round table where Harvey had placed it, and started for the door. “I’m gon’ tell him,” he said. “If he drives off, I’ll just keep going till I get Mr. Frank or somebody else.”

“I’ll go with you,” I said.

We were stopped by the old midwife before we even reached the door. “Ain’t no need to go out there,” she said. “John ain’t gon’ take her nowhere, and that’s all there is to it. No need troublin’ a ol’ man that’s set in his ways.”

“Okay then,” Harvey conceded, stepping around Miss Zadie and taking the flashlight from Wallace’s hand. “I’m gon’ run on and get Mr. Frank.”

“I’m gon’ wait right here,” Sam said. “If Mama gets any worse, I’ll
make
Mr. Grodin take her. If she dies, I’ll kill him.” To seal his threat, he walked into the front room, snatched the poker from Martha Jean, and glared at Miss Zadie.

Harvey was well on his way before Miss Zadie chuckled and responded in an old woman’s patient voice. “He still wouldn’t take her,” she said.

A knowing glance passed between the two midwives, something I did not understand, but that aroused my curiosity. They did not return to Mama’s room, but instead sat, like a fat woman and a dwarf, in the twin armchairs.

Sam, Martha Jean, and I stood beside the stove with Wallace squatting at our feet, as our guest silently observed us. Miss Zadie, with her stubby little elbows braced on the armrests, fanned her hands and waggled her fingers. “So this is it?” she asked in a dry tone. “It ain’t fit for chickens.”

“Now, Miss Zadie, don’t you go starting on nothing,” Miss Pearl warned. “These chilluns don’t know nothing ’bout you. This ain’t the time.”

The old woman’s head inched upright on her neck with such an effort that I found myself straining my own neck in order to assist her. When she had it as far up as it would go, it bobbed unsteadily a few times, then settled. “When is the time?” she asked.

Miss Pearl said nothing, and the old woman seemed not to expect an answer. She screwed her head around and stared at Wallace. “Come here, boy,” she said, as snuff oozed across her lip and rolled down her chin.

“Nooooo!” Mama screamed, and I could hear Tarabelle in the next room trying to soothe her.

Miss Pearl rose from her seat and padded back across the hall, and Wallace rose from his squat and stood watching Miss Zadie.

“I said, come here, boy,” the midwife repeated, and when Wallace did not budge, she asked, “You scared of me or something?”

“Ma’am,” Sam said, taking a step toward her, “we brought you out here to help our mother. If you can’t do that, I don’t see no sense in you wasting yo’ time or yo’ husband’s.”

Miss Zadie grunted and wiggled into a standing position. With her back stooped and her head lowered, she made her way across the floor toward the four of us. She stopped in front of Martha Jean, went through the painstaking effort of lifting her head, then raised a vein-rippled hand and stroked my sister’s face.