The Weight of Blood (20 page)

Lila

It was like a punch in the stomach when Crete showed up at the baby shower. For a while I'd managed to pretend I wouldn't have to face him again, but I knew better. He wasn't through with me.
Bastard
, his scrap of paper had read. Not
boy
, like most of them, or
girl
, like Birdie and Gabby had written. From that moment, uneasiness festered, the sickness of waiting to see what he wanted and what he would do.

I was angry that the joy of Lucy's birth was marred by thoughts of Crete. As soon as she left my body, I felt a fierce animal urge to protect her. Whether or not she was Carl's—and I told myself she was—she was
mine
. All the doubts and the dark thoughts I'd had during my pregnancy dissolved when I held her. I'd been so worried that I wouldn't love my baby. Birdie had told me not to fret if the love didn't come right away, that it often took time but almost always showed up when the baby did. She winked at me as she wiped blood and goop from Lucy's tiny body. She could see my love had arrived.

Birdie showed me how to nurse Lucy, how to bathe her, how to care for the stump of umbilical cord that stuck out from my daughter's belly button, a potent reminder of her connection to me. I cried when the stump fell off.

Carl stayed home with me and Lucy for the first week, and then he had to go back to work. We needed the money. I was wiped out from lack of sleep and constant nursing, still wearing my nightgown when Crete showed up one afternoon. Carl wasn't home, and I wouldn't open the door.

“It ain't locked,” he said. “That lock don't even work.” I stood there, terrified, ready to run for a butcher knife if he came in. “I'm not here to do anything to you. I'm just here to talk. We both know that baby … that baby right there”—he pointed to Lucy, who, as always, was wrapped securely against my chest—“she could be mine. And you can't keep her away from me. One way or another, we're family. I'm gonna be in her life, whether or not you like it. That's how it is. You can tell Carl anything you want, he knows what family's all about. He's tied to me. I drown, he drowns. You drown. All of us.” We stared at each other through the screen. “Or just you. We could get rid of you, and everything'd be fine between me and him. Up to you, really, how you want it to play out.”

I felt sick, being so close to him. Could it be true that he wanted to spend time with the baby? Be in her life? How could I allow that after what he'd done to me? How could I trust him around Lucy? I loved her more than I ever could have imagined. Maybe it was true, what Carl said, that being an uncle would soften Crete. Maybe it would change him. I doubted it. To me, he'd always be a monster.

I rode into town with Gabby one afternoon so I could drop off a thank-you note for Ray. The rocker sat by the window in the baby's room, and I loved to look out over the hills as I cuddled Lucy in the chair, singing lullabies. Ray's gift had been incredibly thoughtful, and I'd been too emotional at the shower to thank him properly.

“What a grand surprise,” Ray said as he ushered me into his office. He took Lucy's carrier from me and eased it to the floor. “What brings you by?”

“I just wanted to tell you how much Lucy and I love the rocker. She quiets down every time we sit in it.”

“Warms my heart to hear it,” he said, gazing admiringly at Lucy. “That child is a living doll.”

I adjusted the baby quilt Ransome had made, tucking it under Lucy's feet.

“How are you feeling these days?” Ray asked gently. “Are you getting enough sleep?” You're … You look awfully thin, my dear.”

“I'm fine,” I said. “The baby keeps me busy. I barely have time to sit down and eat.”

“Have you been to a doctor since the baby came?”

“Birdie's been checking on me,” I said.

“I know she delivered Lucy, but the woman's not a real doctor. Heck, she was never even a real veterinarian. She gets prescriptions illegally from the vet she used to work for, some relative of hers. Now, I have a friend in Springfield, Dr. Coates, I can get you an appointment for tomorrow—”

“I don't need to go see a doctor,” I said, my voice rising. Lucy squeaked in her carrier, and I burst into tears.

“Oh, sweetheart.” Ray slid out of his chair and knelt beside me, taking my hand. I leaned over and sobbed on his freshly ironed shirt. He smelled comfortingly of dryer sheets and old- fashioned aftershave. “It's all right. Everything's all right. It's completely normal to feel overwhelmed with a new baby. But you should really see someone, just in case.”

“It's not that,” I said, my voice muffled by his sleeve.

“Then what is it? You can tell me. Maybe there's something I can do to help.” There was genuine kindness and concern in his voice, and that made me cry harder.

“I can't tell you. I haven't told anybody. If I tell, it'll just make everything worse.”

Ray pulled a crisp handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to me. His initials were embroidered on it with gold thread. “It's Crete, isn't it,” he said softly. “Did he threaten you somehow?”

I didn't answer. I'd been warned not to tell, and I knew Crete wouldn't hesitate to follow through on his threats.

“I was worried there might be some retaliation for breaking the contract.” Ray sighed.

I was confused. My work contract? I hadn't thought about that in a while. Carl had told me not to worry about it, and I assumed Crete had let it drop. Though I should have known better than to assume Crete would let anything go.

“Most likely, he's just bullying you for fun,” Ray said. “He has no reason to be peeved—Carl did everything he asked. Signed over the deed to the house and his share of the land to Crete, to buy you out. I tried to talk Carl out of it, told him the contract couldn't possibly be enforced, but he insisted. He wanted to do it Crete's way, make sure his brother was happy.”

I felt like I might throw up. Carl hadn't told me that he'd sold everything to set me free. Or that Crete now had control over us, could kick us out of the house, off the land, on a whim.

“We could try to get a restraining order,” Ray continued. “You'd need to talk this all over with Carl. I understand you might not want to tell me what's going on, but you've got to discuss it with your husband.”

“Not yet,” I said, still reeling at the news of Carl's sacrifice. “I don't know what to say.”

Ray sighed. “Well, honestly—unfortunately—restraining orders don't work best on those who need them most; they rely on rational thinking and fear of the law. But you do need to protect yourself. You have to be prepared in case something happens and Carl isn't there to stand between the two of you. I hate to say it …” He paused and looked down at Lucy, who drifted between sleep and wakefulness. “You need a gun. Do you know how to use one?”

I shook my head. I'd never even held one.

“You're no match against him physically, and he knows that. If you had a gun, the game could almost be fair.”

Though I couldn't see myself toting both a baby and a gun, what choice did I have? If a lawyer was sitting here telling me I couldn't rely on the law?

“Ask Carl to teach you with one of his little handguns. If he won't do it, I'll teach you myself, but I bet you can talk him into it. Tell him you're worried about snakes while you're out with the baby; you want to learn how to shoot to protect yourself and Lucy. It's not completely untrue.”

It was a lawyerish thing to say, a slippery way of viewing truth and lies. But I was already lying to Carl in my own way, by hiding the truth. This was no different. I wiped my eyes and nose on Ray's handkerchief, careful to avoid the embroidery.

“One more thing,” Ray said. “Promise, if it's anything more than big talk, you'll let me know. If Crete ever lays a hand on you, you'll tell me right away.”

“Promise,” I lied.

Gabby

From the start, Lila seemed to know what to do with that baby of hers. Any time Lucy cried, Lila would swaddle her up so tight, Gabby worried she couldn't breathe. Then she'd pop a nipple in the baby's mouth, and after a minute of nursing, the kid would be asleep. Gabby asked what the deal was. Did Lila put a spell on Lucy? Did she have magic milk? Lila said all mothers' milk was magic.

A few months after Lucy was born, Lila had lost all her baby weight, though her boobs were bigger than ever, thanks to the milking operation she had going. Meanwhile, Gabby's pants grew tighter. Under her apron at work, she wore her cutoffs unbuttoned, then unzipped. Nobody special had come around to replace Duane, and she was moping, going to bed alone every night with a box of Velveeta and a fork.

She felt better when she was around Lila. Somehow her friend's newness hadn't worn off, and now she had that new little baby, too. Gabby soaked up as much of them as she could. Over the summer, Lila decided to take up shooting, and Gabby went along with her. Carl and Ray gave them lessons until they trusted the girls not to shoot themselves or each other. A couple times a week, Gabby and Lila would drop Lucy at Birdie's house and head out for some target practice. Both of them could knock cans off a log, though Lila could do it from a much greater distance. Gabby got bored with the shooting after a while, so she'd set up the cans and watch Lila shoot. Lila never got tired of practicing. She wanted to try skeet so she could work on moving targets.

One day Gabby was standing off to the side, watching the cans jump off the log, when she felt a gassy flutter in her stomach. She didn't think much of it as she set out the next round of targets, but when Lila pulled the trigger, the sensation in her gut grew stronger, a tapping, then a knocking. She pressed her hands against her bloated stomach where it ballooned under her dress, and she knew. She'd been dumber than Lila, not paying attention to what was happening in her own body. She should have been over the moon at the thought of someone new coming into her life—she did love new things, after all. And Lila was managing just fine with a baby. But unlike Lila, Gabby didn't have a house or a husband, and she didn't want anything to do with Duane, who was likely the father. She lived alone in a camper and had no instinct for kids. And a baby was only new for a little while. It was bound to you forever.

Gabby went home that day and drank. She drank every last drop she had in the camper—beer and tequila and Mad Dog and peppermint schnapps—so much that she was sure the baby would be washed out, poisoned, or, by some weird trick of anatomy, thrown up. The next day, still dry-heaving, she forced herself out into the woods and started running. Nature was a poor housekeeper, just like her, and the ground was littered with dead leaves, mushrooms, fallen branches, bugs. Layers of life and death piling on top of each other, growing and rotting, tangling under her feet. She let it all trip her up, fell down hard, and gagged. She pushed through the undergrowth, dehydrated, woozy, up into the hills and back down till she was covered with scratches and ticks and burrs. She lay in her narrow bed in the camper and waited for blood, but none came.

Sarah Cole confirmed what Gabby feared: The baby was glued tight as a nit. It refused to be flushed from its hidey-hole, not before it was ready.
You're worried you'll be a bad mother
, Sarah said.
But that's a good thing. The bad ones don't give it a thought.

Lila was happy for Gabby. There were no gifts at the shower she threw; instead, she and Carl collected and scraped together enough money for a down payment on a trailer. It was close enough, Lila said, that they could walk to each other's houses through the woods. By that time, the soft tapping in Gabby's gut had become a whale rolling over in the confines of her innards, carelessly shoving organs out of its way.

Bess was born in the thick heat of Labor Day, screaming on the way out and every day after. She screamed whenever Gabby tried to nurse her, so Gabby gave up and switched to the bottle. Lila tried to swaddle her, but she screamed through that, too. Whenever Bess screamed, Lucy would get worked up and start bawling. Finally, Gabby and Lila discovered that if the babies were swaddled together, they'd both fall asleep, peaceful so long as they were touching.

They didn't see each other as much over the winter, so Gabby couldn't say for sure if Lila was depressed. It seemed more like she was preoccupied. Gabby was preoccupied, too. That first year with Bess was a long, bitter haul, and it took all she had to keep going. Mothering didn't come naturally to her, like it did for Lila; plus, Gabby was doing it on her own. She was lucky if she had time to shave her legs. She had tunnel vision. She didn't see what was coming. And she'd never, ever forgive herself for that.

Birdie

Birdie had four grandsons, two by each of her boys, but she didn't get to see them like she wanted. Her oldest son followed the Lord, preaching at a church way over in the Bootheel, and the other followed the weather, chasing hail across the country for a paycheck fixing dents. She always figured her kids would stay in Henbane, like so many did, but there weren't enough churches or hailstorms to keep them.

Lucy was the only little girl Birdie ever took care of. She wasn't sure at first what to do with her but realized right quick that Lucy was no different from her baby boys. She liked to be rocked and sung to, liked to gnaw Birdie's overall buttons. Lila never left her for too long of a stretch, because she hated to be away from her. That, and Lucy didn't cotton to the bottle. She liked Birdie just fine till she got hungry, and then she'd cry for her mama.

A couple of things changed after Lucy was born. One, Carl went back to working construction. He'd kept close while Lila was pregnant, doing odd jobs around town. Now he was spending more time away, trying to make more money. They wanted to save for Lucy's college, Lila said. The other thing that changed was Crete started coming around more often. Birdie hadn't seen his truck rumble past her house much since he'd moved out of the house on Toad Holler Road a few years ago. Now it was back, here and there, no predictable time or day. Not many vehicles traveled their fork, so she noticed when they did. She wondered about Crete coming by when Carl was gone, but Lila never mentioned it. Birdie went so far as to ask one time, knowing it wasn't her business, and Lila said that now and then he brought them groceries from Dane's. Without really knowing why she was doing it, Birdie started keeping track of his visits, making tally marks on the back of the bookmark she kept in her Bible. Months went by, and she thought about mentioning it to Carl or bringing it up to Lila again, but she didn't. Still, the neat rows of lines on the bookmark made her uneasy.

One fall afternoon she took Lucy so Lila could get caught up on housework. Most days were still warm enough to run around in shirtsleeves, but nights came early and brought a whiff of wood smoke. Persimmons had started dropping, the air woozy with ripeness and rot, and Birdie aimed to gather up a bucket or two for her cousin's horses, who ate them like candy. She set Lucy's busy chair in the sun and buckled her in so she could bounce around and make noise while Birdie worked.
Buh!
Lucy said, smiling and drooling all over the place.
Buh
. That was her word for Birdie.

Birdie filled a bucket, working till sweat dripped down all her crannies, and then sat next to Lucy to rest. The baby's little hands grabbed at Birdie's shirt, and Birdie held up a plump persimmon, showing Lucy the waxy skin, all rose and orange. Lucy reached for the fruit, and Birdie let her hold it. She took another from the bucket, split the sticky flesh with her fingernail, and dug for seeds. She cleaned one seed on her apron and sliced it along the seam with her pocketknife, splitting it in two, hoping the brown spot at the center would be in the shape of a fork, predicting a mild winter. She would have settled for a spoon, which meant snow. But this seed and all the others she cut revealed a knife, straight and sharp.
You best bundle up, child
, she said to Lucy. The winter would be long and bitter.

She was sorry to be right. Lila disappeared in February, not quite twenty years old. Birdie could barely remember such an impossibly young age, a time before all her various parts began to rust and fail. As the years piled up, the betrayals of her body grew more humbling. First, a dulling of the senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste. Then the innards started to go. Her bowels wouldn't cooperate. Her joints wanted to pull apart or grind together, depending on their mood. She couldn't sleep at night but nodded off all day when she was trying to get things done. One afternoon she took the clippers and hunched over to make sense of her toenails, which had brittled and yellowed like old piano keys. Afterward, her back refused to uncurl. She sat there for a bit, helpless in the cage of her own bones, feeling like the Tin Man in
The
Wizard of Oz
before Dorothy showed up with the oil.

It occurred to her then that there was a reason age drained the pleasure out of life, slowly stripping away all the things you enjoyed or took for granted. It was so you wouldn't need convincing when the time came. You'd be ready, because everything good in life was gone.

By the same turn, Lila's end would never sit right with Birdie. She had been nowhere near that downhill slide. She was a child, practically. No matter how hard Birdie prayed, it just didn't sum, how you could snuff out a light like Lila's and leave Birdie's, a guttering flame.