The Day of Small Things (2 page)

Least

O
n the evening of the third day of labor, the woman’s screams filled the little cabin, escaping through the open door to tangle themselves in the dark hemlocks that mourned and drooped above the house. The weary midwife, returning from a visit to the privy, winced as a series of desperate shrieks tore through the still air of the lonely mountain clearing.

Pausing to readjust her loose dress and collect her strength for the battle ahead, she glanced up at the brooding trees and shook her head. “Seems like all them cries and moans is going straight up into them old low-hanging boughs—just roosting there like so many crows. And the pain and grief, it’ll linger on and on till every wind that stirs’ll be like to bring it back—miseries circling round the house again, beating at the air with their ugly black wings.”

The country woman frowned at such an unaccustomed flight of fancy. “Law, whatever put such foolishness into my head? I’m flat wore out, and that’s the truth—else how
would I come to think such quare things? But hit’s a lonesome, sorrowful place fer all that and a sorrowful time fer poor Fronie. Here’s her man not yet cold in his grave and her boy tarrying at death’s door—ay, law, hit’s a cruel hard time to birth a child—iffen hit don’t kill her first.”

Hurrying back into the small log house, the midwife pulled on the clean muslin apron that was the badge of her calling. The screams broke off and the expectant mother lay panting on the stained and stinking corn-shuck tick, her breath coughed out in hoarse rasps. Long dark hair, carefully combed free of tangles in vain hope of easing the birth, fanned in damp strands around her death-pale face. The anguish, the fear, the anger that had passed like a succession of hideous masks over the laboring woman’s gaunt countenance were replaced by an otherworldly absence of all emotion.

Then a great ripple surged across the huge belly swelling beneath her thin shift, and the woman’s face contorted once more. Her mouth gaped but nothing more than a strangled croak emerged. Gasping with pain and frustration, she twisted her misshapen torso and clawed at her heaving belly.

The midwife caught at the woman’s hands and held them till the contraction passed. “It’ll be born afore sundown or they’ll be the two of ’em to bury,” she whispered to the frightened girl standing at the bedside.

“I ain’t never seen no one die.” The girl’s wide eyes brimmed with tears. “My daddy, he was already gone when they fetched him home from the logging camp. Miz Romarie, I’m bad scared.…”

The midwife patted the girl’s bony shoulder and then reached for the bottle of sweet oil that stood on a nearby stool. “We ain’t got time fer that now, Fairlight. You catch
hold of yore mama’s hands whilst I see kin I turn the babe and bring it on. Hold ’em tight now, honey.”

Black night had come and owls called from the sighing hemlocks as the exhausted woman bent an expressionless face to her red, squalling infant. At last she spoke. “It’ll allus be the least un, fer there won’t be no more. Reckon that’ll do fer a name—call it Least.”

(Fronie)

W
hat the Lord in His wisdom has done to me don’t seem neither right nor just. To bear nine children and then to lose them as I have. And my husband Hobart gone too. They ain’t none left on the place save Little Brother and the least un—and she not yet five years of age and naught but a hindrance and a worry. Brother’s a good worker, I give him that, but me and him can’t seem to agree—he says I’m too hard and lights out of here for ball games and singings and whatnot every chance he gets. Though he’s not but sixteen, I do believe that if he would marry and bring home a stout girl, a hard worker to help here on the place, hit would settle him some.

I am plumb wore with all the work there is to do. Brother and me topped the corn by moonlight last night—laid by all them tops for cow feed come winter—and today I can’t hardly go. My hands is red and cracked and the joints is swole till they look like they belong to an old, old woman.

I feel like an old, old woman too. Forty-six years of living and no more to show for it than a farm that’s getting away from me, a child what ain’t right, and a boy what’s never happy lessen he’s going down the road. Ay, law. I have heard the preacher say this life is a misery and we best think on the world to come. Ha. Reckon first we got to get through this world the best we can.

The peddler come by this evening just after dinnertime. I needed some domestic in the worst way—Least is near bout growed out of her dresses. She would just as soon run naked but it ain’t fitten. I’ve cut up and made do with what few rags Fairlight left behind, but even those is going fast.

“What fer ye, Missus?” the peddler says, when I come out to his wagon in the road. My house is the onliest one up this way; naught but the graveyard lays beyond. Mr. Aaron, the peddler, is nigh as dark and lean as his mule. First time I seen him, I thought he might be one of them niggers I have heard tell of, but he said no, his folks was from Roosia, not Afriker. I don’t know nothing of such places, having no schooling to speak of, but I figger they must be over the water somewheres.

I go catch me five young cockerels I’ve been fattening and trade with the peddler for a length of domestic and a paper of needles and some thread. Mr. Aaron feels of the birds and pokes out his lips.

“Not bad,” says he, and pushes them into the coop he has in the back of his wagon. “What more fer ye?”

I think about it. Hit’s a two-mile walk down to Tate Worley’s store, and last time I traded there, Tate was plumb hateful. The peddler might be a little dearer but he wouldn’t be as like to talk about my business.

“I’ll take a half a pound of coffee beans and some baking powder, iffen ye got hit,” I say. Then when he begins to rummage in the back of his wagon for the goods, I say, careless-like, as if I’d just remembered, “I believe I’ll try a bottle or two of that Cordelia Ledbetter’s Mixture. I been told hit’s a right fine tonic and I am most wore to death with this hot weather.”

He reaches into a crate and pulls out three bottles. “All the ladies speak highly of this nostrum,” he says, solemn as can be. “It’s a very popular item.”

I take the bottles with their pretty lavender labels and lay them in my apron with the other things. I can hear a rustling in the big boxwoods planted along the branch. I declare I hate them things so bad, with their smell of graveyards and cat piss. I’d take an axe to them if it weren’t for the trimmings man who comes ever December and buys great bundles of greenery for rich folks to stick up in their mansion-houses.

Mr. Aaron is skirmishing round in the wagon bed, setting his goods to rights, and he don’t seem to notice when I flap my hand towards the house and whisper, “Least, you get yourself back inside!” I am purely shamed for anyone to see the child, dirty and quare as she is.

She wiggles out from under the boxwoods, and just as I’d feared, she has stripped down to her drawers. They are black with dirt and so is she. I flap my hand again and she takes off fer the house but just then Mr. Aaron lifts up his head.

“Little boy or little girl?” he asks. His black eyes is shining.

“Hit’s a girl,” I say, wishing she’d moved a mite quicker. “She took my scissors to her hair back of this …” but I can tell he ain’t paying no mind for he’s turned away
and is rooting around in a big old poke. At last he brings out a piece of red and white stick candy—like what we used to give the children at Christmas.

“For your young un,” he says, pointing it at me. “A present.” He nods his head up and down when I don’t offer to take the candy and pushes it at me. “No charge, Missus.”

I wait a bit, making sure he means it, then I hold out my hand and he lays the striped candy stick across it. “Thank you kindly. That’s right Christian of you,” I says, wondering why he would be giving away his merchandise, but he just laughs and climbs back up to his wagon seat.

“Good day to you, Missus,” Mr. Aaron says and slaps the reins on his mule’s back. “Just you lay out of work a while—set on the porch and take a little of that tonic and see if it don’t help your feelings.”

I wait till his wagon has gone around the bend and I can’t hear the
clop
of the mule’s hooves on the road no more. Then I do like he said and set down on the top step. I call for Least to come get her candy but she don’t show herself, so I lay it and the other things I’ve traded for beside me on the porch floor. I line the three bottles up and study them, then pick one and open it.

The first sip is like fire—and hit puts me in mind of the white liquor Hobart used to get from ol man Clark. Hobart never was bad to drink, but when we was first wed, now and then him and me’d both take a little sup. Hobart would fun me, saying the liquor made me frisky-like. And it did, too. But then at a brush arbor revival down by the river—hit was 1900, three years after we married—we both took the pledge and vowed never to touch ary drop again. And I never will.

I take another sup of tonic. This one goes down easier
and I begin to feel some better. I wonder if this Cordelia Ledbetter tonic can really do what all it claims. The change is awful hard on a woman what with the night sweats and the all-overs. Oh, hit seems fine not having to fool with them bloody rags every month, but on the other side, hit just means a woman don’t get no rest. When a woman’s period is on her, she can’t make kraut or hit’ll go bad, can’t walk in the cucumbers or they’ll mildew—oh, they’s a world of things she can’t do at that time. And iffen a woman feels real puny for a few days every month, why, she can slack off on her work and no one thinks the worse of her.

Least has come creeping out the door and gone back to the edge of the boxwoods. I don’t say nothing but I watch as she sets herself down in the dirt and starts in a-playing with the old corncobs she calls her babies. She’s made a bed for them with some of the big green leaves from the cucumber tree near the chicken house, and she’s laying them ol cobs down side by each on one leaf and covering them with another. She begins to sing one of them quare little tunes of hern and the sound goes right through my head.

It is as bothersome as a circling wasper, so I call to her and hold out the candy stick. The child stares at it for the longest time before she creeps nigh. Then, without looking me in the face, she grabs hold and scuttles like a rat back into her hidey-hole.

Such a quare child. Not like the others—I think back on how it once was. Happy times long ago, like the old song says.

Me and Hobart wed in ’97 and the babes begun to come, one every year at first. Little Hobe in ’98, then Lemuel, then Willoree—like popping peas out of a pod.

“Two boys to help with the clearing and plowing and a girl to help you in the house,” Hobart said, swelling up proud as he looked at our three strong young uns. “Hit’s a good start. We’ll pay off what we owe on this place and be free and clear in no time.”

Ay, law, when you’re young and strong, hit seems you can beat the world. Those first years we worked like dogs, not making much but always putting some by to pay off what we owed on the place. I’d spread out a quilt at the edge of the field and lay the babies on it where I could keep watch over them as I hoed. Back then I could work as hard as ary man, even when I was in the family way.

The next three to come was girls but Hobart never faulted me. “If they can work like their mama,” says he, “I’ll have nothing to complain of.”

I take one more sup of Cordelia Ledbetter and stretch out my fingers. Seems to me the tonic has warmed them and made them feel more limber-like.

Least has come back out and is setting with her play babies and rocking to and fro, singing again, but it don’t worry me so much now. I call it singing but they ain’t no words what mean anything. That child still don’t talk like she ought—oh, she’ll say a word here or there iffen she wants a thing—and she can say No, that’s for sure, but she don’t string her words together. “Oh-eee-oh-iii,” is what she’s singing, over and over to her corncob babies.

Was a time I could line up
my
babies like that, I think, and the recollection brings hot tears to my eyes as I name them over—Little Hobe, Lemuel, and Willoree … Zelma, Porsha, and Fairlight. And next to last the twins, though Dexter died of the summer complaint before he
was three months old, leaving Little Brother. Seven fine young uns.

And Little Hobe went off to the Great War and come back in a box; Lemuel died just a month after his daddy, the both of them killed by the fall of the same big tree—though Hobart was killed outright and Lemuel lingered, howling from the pain and mad with the fever. Then, afore I could turn about, each by each the girls married and moved off.

One thing is for sure, though, I don’t aim to let it happen with Least.