The Wilful Daughter (36 page)

“
At least nobody will ever call my baby a white lady. She’s as pretty as a chocolate drop.”

The women all admired the baby, for she was beautiful. The doctor cleaned up and went on his way. Before June knew it she and her new baby, tired from just being born, were fast asleep.

* * *

Crying woke her. But it really wasn’t crying, it was tiny whimpering of a small animal. June turned and saw the cradle next to her. The room was empty save her and the pretty brown baby girl stirring in her sleep.

June sat up. The soreness of what she had just been through hit her. Her usual reaction for the past months had been to grab her stomach. But she reached down and nothing was there. It was almost as flat as it had been the day she had met. . .

The baby stirred again, the tiny animal that had just come out of her was whimpering in the cradle. She forced her feet onto the floor and walked over to the baby.

“
Hello little one,” she said staring at the tiny face. The brown eyes opened and looked at her. “Well, you’re here and you’re awake. What do I do with you now?”

“
You feed her, silly,” a voice called from the foot of the bed. June had not noticed that the bed had been changed with clean fresh sheets and that the quilts were back. She had been so tired she had felt nothing. At the foot of the bed was an added bundle. Millie had been sleeping at her feet, watching for when she awoke. “You got to feed her. Don’t you know nothing?”

June bent to pick up the baby but stopped. The infant seemed to call for her but she couldn’t move.

The new mother had never picked up a baby in her life. She had never fed a baby or changed a baby. She had no idea what to do.

“
Go get Ella,” she ordered Millie.

“
All you got to do is pick up the baby and feed her.” Millie was on her knees on the bed, hands on her hips like her mother the night before.

“
Go get Ella, I said.” Millie shrugged her shoulders and quickly left the room. June gave her a half hearted thank you as she stared at her child. “I don’t know what to do with you.”

Ella came in shortly forcing an irate Millie to go outside and close the door. She stared at June who stared back and began to cry.

Ella went to her and held her. “You standing up over your baby. You made it through almost twelve hours of labor, you tired and maybe hungry. Now what you crying about?”

Through the tears she whispered: “I don’t know what to do. I never even held a baby before. I don’t know what to do.” She continued to cry.

By now her sobs had been echoed in the bundle and sent the baby in the cradle kicking and screaming. Ella hugged her again and set her in the rocker she had brought up while they slept. Without warning she pressed June’s breast and June jumped. “Hurt a little?”

June nodded not quite understanding.

As she picked up the baby June watched how she held the tiny head and body. “When you feel full that means your milk is ready and its time to feed your baby.” She instructed June to open her gown. June looked down at her pale brown nipple. Her breasts had swollen a little over the months but now with her stomach gone they appeared huge. Ella instructed her to let the hungry baby know it was there and the rest would take care of itself.

June watched in amazement as the baby sucked at her breast. The tiny gums were a bit painful but nothing like the pain of the night before.

“
There,” said Ella sitting in a chair across from her. “Now this explains a lot of things. Why you never went to pick up Toby’s new baby. I just remembered you’re a baby yourself. The baby of your family. You really ain’t never held a baby before?”

June shook her head but didn’t look up from the infant.

“
She’s a beauty like her mother.” Ella watched as June took in everything the baby did. She was so nervous. “Relax, June. She knows you’re her mother.”

“
I just don’t want to hurt her. She’s so tiny.”

“
They all are.” June felt the baby’s little hands and feet. When she went to touch the head, Ella told her about the soft spot. There was so much to learn. “I have no business having a baby.”

Ella laughed. “Child, everyone had to learn what to do. Even me.”

“
What happens now, Aunt Ella?”

Ella leaned back in the chair. “Well, that depends on you and your sister and if you want to keep your baby.” June let the tiny hand hold her finger. “Your mother will be here soon. Your sister and her husband in the next few days.”

“
No!” she shouted, her quick stirring removing the nipple from the baby’s mouth. The infant whimpered and June sat still as the child found its way back.

“
Relax, June, you have to relax when you feed her.”

“
Why are they coming?”

“
Aren’t they supposed to come and get the baby?”

June started to cry.

“
I think it best that you not get too attached to this little girl if you really want to give her up.”

“
I don’t know if I want to do that.” She kissed the baby’s forehead.

Ella shook her head. “June, you not thinking clearly and you know it. You been a mother only a few hours. It’s a lot of work, lifetime of work and I know it. Right now the baby is soft and pretty and easy. But she’s got to eat, and often, and she’s got to be changed a lot too. And I bet you don’t even know up from down in a diaper.

“
I’m not saying you wouldn’t be a good mother. I’m just saying that at 19 years old you need to understand that this in your arms is the rest of your life.”

June said nothing and Ella could see she was wasting her breath telling the sweet child that babies weren’t meant for her. “June, remember this: every woman has the right to have children, but not everyone wants to have them or can take care of them. Not every woman was meant to be a mother.”

June didn’t even look up at her.

“
June, you are something pleasing to the eye. Two months with this baby you won’t be pretty any more. You’d be a tired hag at 19 trying to figure out why you don’t get sleep, why you so fat, why you so alone.”

“
Ouch,” June said and looked out of her reverie at Ella. “She bit me.” June grinned and Ella smiled back.

“
Happens,” was all the old woman would say.

June smiled at her baby and then looked back at Ella. “You don’t think I can do this, do you? You don’t think that I have the sense to take care of a baby.”

“
I didn’t say that, June.” Ella didn’t change her expression.

“
It’s my baby. I made it with my own body. I did this. And you can’t take her away.”

“
I don’t want to, June, but. . .”

“
But what?” June spoke softly trying not to stir her daughter. “My father paying you like he’s paying everybody else to take her away from me? To see I don’t get too attached? I can’t handle this, he said? I can’t do this and be his daughter, is that what he told you?”

“
June,” she calmly watched as the girl drove herself to tears and the baby suckled in her sleep.

“
What?” June whispered angrily.

“
Who’s the father? Don’t you think he has a right to know?” Ella watched as June sat up almost too straight.

“
He knew, he always knew. And there’s nothing we can do about it. We can’t be together. This is my baby. MINE! I can take care of her.”

Ella ignored her. “Men don’t like to marry women with a family already. They don’t like women who come with a lot of baggage. Even pretty young women like you. Your family is giving you a chance to start over without anybody knowing about your mistake.”

“
My baby is not mistake!”

Ella brightened: “You did this on purpose?”

“
You mean get pregnant?” June asked and Ella nodded. “No, I didn’t do that. I just loved a man and. . . Ella, when I say my baby is no mistake I mean that I always thought mistakes were something you didn’t want, something you did and you’re mad about. But I want her and I’m not mad at her. I’m glad I had her. Ophelia isn’t a mistake.”

“
Ophelia?”

“
Yes, Ella.” June hugged the baby. “That’s what I’m going to call her. Ophelia. It’s a name Willie liked a lot. From Shakespeare. You know how Willie was reading all the time.” She kissed the baby again. “My baby, you are no mistake. My baby, my Ophelia.”

Ella left them alone realizing that the bond had been made and there would have to be another way for Minnelsa and Peter to take the child. The Blacksmith would never stand for his daughter living with him and raising her bastard child. He would hardly tolerate her living like that on Ella and Fannie’s place. She hoped June would find a way to detach herself from the child. Ella just hoped it was soon.

* * *

The excitement he felt he kept hidden during the day. The wire had come from Fannie and Ella. Minnelsa seemed fairly happy, her only comment being: “Well it has begun.”

He wanted to ask her what that meant, but he was too excited to care. He had turned away from his wife when they slept. Turned his face to the window and looked into the stars. They would get the baby soon enough but, as far as the Piano Man was concerned it was all over, not just beginning. It was as simple as that-they would get the baby and stay in Tuskegee for a year and then go back to Atlanta. By then June would have herself a new beau and be back at Miss Emma’s dancing and prancing like a young woman should.

He vowed he would never touch her again, and it would all be over.

Except there was something new for him. He was a father. He had his own child. Someone in this world that was part of him. Until now there had been him and his music and his desire to belong, to have money, to have the things being black, even being black in Paris and Vienna could not bring him.

He could not buy family.

When he was playing his music in the salons of the wealthy Europeans, he was the handsome Mr. Jenkins. The women looked at him with smiles indicating they desired his company. Once or twice he had allowed them to lure him to their chambers, only to be dismissed after their pleasure had been fulfilled. The way they dismissed him could only be described one way: they were always so subtle. There was no chance of creating a family with them because of the wealth of their families and the color of his skin and he knew it. Yet all his mother had ever wanted for him was family. She had never found another man to take the place of his father and for that he was sad. She had been lonely to the end of her days. But she would be glad to know that he had created for himself what she could not. Peter Jenkins had a wife, a child and land. He never thought it would feel like this.

Peter Jenkins had longed for a family of his own.

Now he would have one.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Michael didn’t think much of the baby. Wasn’t much to think about. It was small and dark and round. It cried a lot, but that’s what babies did. Whenever June took the baby to her breast, Michael left the room. It was a pretty baby, but not near as pretty as its mother.

Millie was all excited about it, all excited about being a part of June and her baby’s life. Once June’s mother had stayed the week that the Blacksmith had allotted for a visit and returned to Atlanta, leaving June crying and miserable, Millie had stayed in the room with her and watched her learn how to feed the baby, clothe the baby, change diapers, and become a new mother.

“
She ain’t letting it go,” Millie told Michael one evening as they sat at the pond, their bare toes refreshed as well as cleaned by the water.

“
Ain’t letting what go?” Michael asked stretching his tight tired back and then lying on the grass and looking up at the cloudless sunset sky.

“
The baby, stupid. June gonna keep her baby. Gonna keep it right here and raise it and teach school, numbers and stuff, likes she teaches me.”

Millie kept on talking, all about the baby and June and what June was gonna do, and how June was gonna live with Ella and Fannie, but Michael didn’t hear any of it. He was concentrating on one part-the part where she stayed. June was going to stay and that would give him a chance to sell himself to her before some older man decided that he had rights on the young widow.

Of course she wasn’t really a widow. That much he knew from his angry mother, who did not believe that he had, as he put it, only kissed June.

“
And what else were you doing?” Cora had asked puffing and outraged.

“
Nothing, Ma. She’s having a baby,” he had told her just as angry as she was for getting in his business.

“
Pregnancy ain’t got nothing to do with it. Pregnant women get their way with men all the time and I mean all the ways they want. It don’t stop ‘cause she pregnant.”

But for him it had never started. It was not something that he would have thought of. He had no desire to touch June in that way, with her stomach full of another man’s baby.

“
She’s nothing but a tramp. Trying to lure you into marrying her so that she can have a name for her bastard.” And just like Millie was doing now, his mother had gone on and on. But he hadn’t listened after she had called his dainty little June a tramp. He just wanted to be with her again. To touch her hair again, to smell her again.