The Personal History of Rachel DuPree (30 page)

Mary had just left the room when the next pain came. When it passed, my head felt clearer. Gripping the rocker’s armrests, I got to my feet somehow and made my way over to the dresser. I leaned against it. I worked the birthing gown up and tucked it under one of my arms. I straddled my legs as far apart as I could and with my free hand, I went looking for the baby.

I couldn’t feel the head or a foot but instead felt a wet stickiness on my fingers. I let the gown drop. My hand was bright red with blood.

My heart twisted up with fear and sorrow. It was Baby Henry all over again—a long labor, bleeding, and a baby gasping for air. The room swayed. I wanted to give up right then, I wanted to cry, I wanted someone to put an end to this.

I got a rag and stuffed it between my legs to soak up the blood. I shuffled back to the rocker, wanting Isaac, wanting my mother, wanting to die.

A pain took me.

“Course I do,” I said to Isaac. “Course I do.”

From somewhere far off, there were kitchen sounds and children’s voices.

I woke up with a jerk. I was still alive, still slumped in the rocker. I held my breath, waiting for the next tearing pain. It came; black spots floated before my eyes. “Isaac,” I called out. He didn’t answer.

The pain passed. I let my head rest on the back of the rocker. The house was quiet. Wind whistled around the corners and the stovepipes’ metal lids rattled as they flapped up and down, but inside, the house was quiet.

“Mary?” I called.

She didn’t answer.

More pain gripped my belly.

“Isaac,” I heard myself say. Then all at once I knew. Everybody was at the water well. Isaac was putting Liz in it; I had to stop him. I scooted forward on the rocker. Gripping the arms, I stood up. My birthing gown, wet, stuck to me. I staggered forward, reaching a bedpost. A hot liquid ran down my legs. A pain grabbed my belly and as I held onto the post, I knew the baby was coming.

My breathing ragged, I inched my hands down the bedpost. I was tangled in my gown—it tore as I lowered myself down. When at last I was squatting, I gripped the post even tighter.

I pushed, bearing down hard, harder, wanting Isaac, wanting my mother.

“Mama!” somebody called.

“Help me get her in the bed,” another voice said.

Through a haze of tears, I saw my mother. My mother with her bent back and loose strands of gray hair around her face. I could hardly believe it. “Mama,” I said, but my mouth was full of dust. “Mama,” I tried again.

She put both hands under my arms and pulled up. “Let go,” my mother said, and I wanted to but couldn’t. My fingers were locked up around the bedpost.

“I’ve got you,” she said. Fingers pried at mine. A cramp bucked me, and I fell back. Strong arms caught me.

Then I was on the bed sinking into its softness. “Mama!” somebody said. Through a mist of stinging sweat in my eyes, I saw Mary and I saw my mother and she didn’t look right to me, but before I could worry about that, I heard splashing sounds.

“Isaac,” I called, trying to sit up. “Don’t you go putting her in the well.”

Hands pushed me back down. My mother said, “I’m getting your legs up. Have to see what this baby is doing.”

Hands lifted my legs and bent them at the knees. My feet were placed flat on the bed. My legs were pulled apart.

“What’s wrong?” Mary said.

“It can’t push through,” my mother said. “Get a knife, a small sharp one. And a needle and thread. Thick thread. And a bedsheet.”

“A knife?” Mary said.

“Get it.” There was a rustling sound. “And whiskey. Is there any?”

“Whiskey? I’m not allowed—”

“Get it.”

“Mrs. DuPree,” my mother said. Why didn’t she call me Rachel? “I’m going to cut you some. Then you have to push.”

I felt my hips being held up as something soft was put under me. Sweat burned my eyes. Hands lifted my head.

“Open your mouth,” my mother said. “Drink this.” Liquid burned my throat; I gagged some. A rag was put between my teeth.

“Hold her knees apart,” my mother said. “Hold her good.” From far away, someone cried.

Then the knife, held by a firm hand, cut me.

W
hen I woke up for good, I knew the baby was dead. Nobody had to tell me. I had known it since I had fallen during the rainstorm and the baby stopped kicking.

“Can you get up?” Mrs. Fills the Pipe said.

She was the one what gave me the whiskey and cut me wider so the baby could be born. I had wanted Isaac, and when I couldn’t have him, I called for my mother. Mrs. Fills the Pipe was all I had.

“Yes,” I said to her.

She propped me up. Pain shot through me. She got my legs over the edge of the bed; I hunched over. The wood cradle in the corner of the room was covered with a square of cheesecloth. I turned my head away, my arms wrapped over my belly. “My husband?” I said.

“He isn’t here.”

“John?” I said. “My son?”

Mrs. Fills the Pipe shook her head.

“My girls?”

“With Mary.”

Tears filled my eyes. I didn’t know if I was crying for the baby or if I was crying because I wanted Isaac and he hadn’t come home and I didn’t know where he was.

“I need to bathe you,” Mrs. Fills the Pipe said. I nodded and she began unbuttoning the top buttons of my birthing gown. It meant nothing to me. All I could think of was Isaac. And John. Something bad had happened to them. Isaac said he’d be home by breakfast; he knew I was close to my time. I couldn’t stop the tears. Him and John must be dead.

Mrs. Fills the Pipe lifted my arms and then pulled the gown over my head. It was bloody, and I never wanted to see it again. She let it fall in a heap to the floor.

She bathed me with a clean rag and got me into my nightdress. I was numb to it all. She put her arms around me and stood me up. I cried out as a hot pain bolted up and down my legs and deep into my belly. Mrs. Fills the Pipe looked into my watering eyes. I took a shallow breath, and she walked me to the rocker.

She gave me another drink of the whiskey, and that stopped my crying. Through half-closed eyes, I watched Mrs. Fills the Pipe change the bedclothes. It was a peculiar feeling seeing another woman do my work and touch what belonged to me. I was too hollow, though, to care all that much. When she finished, she put her arms around me again and put me back to bed, this time propped up on the two pillows.

Mrs. Fills the Pipe stood at the side of the bed and gave me a long look. She said, “You need to see him.”

Him. A boy. I glanced over at the covered cradle. “I can’t,” I said, but then I nodded yes. She went to the cradle and got the baby.

The sun had moved to the other side of the house, and the light that came through the small window over the bed was dim.

It had to be late afternoon; there was one lit lantern on the dresser. The baby was as light as a shadow in my arms. He was wrapped in a blanket, and I couldn’t bear to look at him. Instead, I held him close, wanting to cry, but couldn’t. I was all dried up.

“Look at him,” Mrs. Fills the Pipe said.

The steel in her voice made me do it. My baby boy was a light, dusty color and there were purple bruises under his eyes. I put my curved palm over his head, feeling a dent. His skin was cold, and that chilled me, but his brown hair was soft to my touch. I put my finger to his puckered lips—they were dry—and then to his eyelashes. They were my brother Johnny’s lashes, they were Mary’s. Maybe the baby would’ve had an ear for music. Maybe he would’ve had an easy way with cattle, horses, and dogs.

I unwound the blanket. He wore the long white dress and the knit booties that all of my newborns, except Baby Henry, had worn.

Mrs. Fills the Pipe said, “Mary found the clothes.”

The dress was too long and the booties came up to his knees. Liz and Emma had been small babies but nothing like this.

“He’s ready for his journeys,” Mrs. Fills the Pipe said. She was sitting in my rocker.

He had ten wrinkled fingers. I put my fingertip to each one of his. His nails were long. I would’ve had to wrap his hands to keep him from scratching his face.

Mrs. Fills the Pipe said, “For one year the spirit stays here, this place of his birth and his passing. Then the spirit is ready for the journey along the Wanagi Canku—the Milky Way.”

I heard her voice, but I wasn’t listening.

She said, “The spirit travels the Wanagi Canku to the other world. An ancestor will come and show the way to the other ancestors. And to those who are yet to come.”

I took off the booties and counted his toes. Ten. He had long legs. Like Isaac. I felt myself crumpling. Isaac was dead too. Sorrow crushed my chest.

“A year from now,” Mrs. Fills the Pipe said as if I had asked her a question.

After a while I said, “Did he cry?”

“No.”

“Was he breathing?”

She paused, then, “No.”

“Did he even try?”

She shook her head.

I unbuttoned my nightdress, parted the baby’s lips, and gave him my breast. I had nothing to give and he had no reason to take, but I did it anyway. I had to. I was his mother.

Mrs. Fills the Pipe got up and gathered up my birthing gown, the rags, and the bedsheets. Without looking at me, she left the room.

After a while, I buttoned my nightdress. I put the baby on my shoulder, and my hand began patting his back. I felt myself drift. I was so tired, I just wanted to sleep. When I opened my eyes, Mrs. Fills the Pipe was in the room. Rousing myself, I said, “How did you know?”

She gave me a questioning look.

“That I needed you?”

“Mary.” She sat down in my rocker. “My sister-in-law’s in a bad way. I was traveling to her; her sons are with me. Mary saw us on the road.”

A handful of days ago, I gave Mrs. Fills the Pipe tea on my porch. When I realized that she was an agency squaw, I wanted her gone. And she wanted to be gone when she found out that I was an army man’s wife. She could have kept going when Mary ran down to the road and begged for help. She could have, but she didn’t. I wondered if I would have done the same for her.

“These boys with you,” I said. “Same ones as before?”

“Yes.”

A few days ago, Mary walked with Franklin and it had made her eyes dance. I hoped that she was walking with him now. I hoped that it lightened her heart. I hoped it did the same for him.

I said, “She’s dying? Their mother?”

Mrs. Fills the Pipe stopped rocking. “I believe so.”

“Leaving her boys,” I said.

Mrs. Fills the Pipe nodded and then set the rocker going again. It wobbled some. The chair had been moved from the slight grooves in the floor that I’d worn from rocking Alise and Emma. Setting the chair right didn’t matter anymore. My baby didn’t need rocking.

Mrs. Fills the Pipe inclined her head toward the baby in my arms. “Some spirits, especially the little ones, play tricks. During the year before the Wanagi Canku.”

I shook my head. I was tired; nothing mattered.

“You’ll see,” Mrs. Fills the Pipe said. “You put the salt jar on the shelf and it falls. The fire, even when there is no wind, flickers and goes out. Something tickles the back of your neck. That is the spirit playing.” Smiling slightly, Mrs. Fills the Pipe pointed her chin at the baby. “You’ll see.”

A month after Isaac Two had slipped and fallen on the rocks, it came to me that his one toy, his red rubber ball with a white stripe, was missing. I couldn’t recall when I’d last seen it. I looked everywhere for it; it was important to find it. The ball had been Isaac Two’s and nobody else’s. I had searched the barn, the root cellar, the outhouse. I even went to where he had died and looked in the places between the rocks.

I never found his ball. Isaac talked me into believing that Tracker, our dog then, had dug a hole and buried it.

And Baby Henry. A few nights after he was born and died, I woke hearing him crying, wanting me. Beside myself, I ran up to the cemetery thinking we’d buried him alive. There, I got down on my hands and knees and put my ear to the fresh-turned grave. Nothing.
You were dreaming,
I told myself. You saw him die; you saw the light go out of his eyes. He laid cold in the cradle a day and night before we buried him. But the crying happened more than once; it happened night after night for the longest time. It stopped about the time that I knew there was another baby on the way.

“Ghosts,” I said to Mrs. Fills the Pipe.

“Spirits,” she said.

A spirit wasn’t something to be scared of, not like a ghost was. I said, “A year?”

“Yes,” she said. “For a year you must care for the spirit. You must put out food and milk, whatever you think pleases. When the year comes full circle, you give away the spirit’s possessions. Then the journey along the Wanagi Canku begins.”

“And he won’t get lost?”

“The ancestors will be there.”

My father. Johnny. Isaac Two and Baby Henry. Oscar DuPree, Isaac’s father. I couldn’t bring myself to think Isaac and John.

I wrapped my baby boy up in his blanket, and as I did, a gleam of light from my gold wedding band caught my eye. On my wedding day, after Preacher Teller pronounced us man and wife, after I said good-bye to Dad and Johnny, me and Isaac got in the waiting horse cab. I had expected we’d go directly to the railroad station, but instead Isaac gave the driver an address that I didn’t know. I didn’t ask him about it; I was dazed from the suddenness of finding myself married to a man I didn’t much know. We sat quiet in our own corners of the cab, a big place between us. We were turned away from the other, me staring out my side window, Isaac, I imagined, doing the same.