“He’s with Laura and David,” Wanda said. “And oh, Ninah, they love him so much already. When your grandpa handed him to them, they cried and kissed him and prayed over him for an hour.”
“I want to see him,” I said. “Will you tell Laura to bring him by?”
“That wouldn’t be good, honey,” Mamma said. “You can see him in a few days when you’re feeling better.”
I could feel a wetness all over me, coming mostly from my breasts that hurt so much that even breathing was unbearable.
“Can I feed him?” I cried.
“They’ve got formula for him,” Mamma explained. “It’ll be best if you just let your breasts dry up.”
By that time, the tears were coming hard. “Did they name him already?” I asked them through sniffles.
“Canaan,” Wanda said. “Isn’t that beautiful? He’s the promised land, Ninah. Right here at Fire and Brimstone.”
I
got better fast. Nobody believed I was better, but I was, even
though every step made my mouth water with the throbbing. That next morning, early, I hauled my sore self out of bed and wrapped up in a blanket even though I wasn’t very fat at all and probably could have fit into a coat if I’d had one, and I wandered out to David and Laura’s house.
When I beat on their door, David came to it. As he led me inside, he had tears in his eyes, and he said, “Ninah, I don’t think nobody will ever be able to give a gift as nice as the one you gave us,” and he hugged me too hard. The watery milk poured out of me, and I could feel it dripping on my belly.
Then Laura came into the room, and she couldn’t say anything except, “Oh, Ninah. Oh, Ninah.”
And a part of me was glad to have made them so happy, to give them something they couldn’t get on their own. But another part of me wanted to run into the back and steal Canaan away, to run for the road with him in my arms. I knew I couldn’t run, but I kept imagining it just the same.
“Can I see him?”
“Of course,” David said, and smiled to Laura. He put his arm around me and led me down the hall into their bedroom, where the crib Daddy had made was pushed up next to a wall.
He was so tiny. I’d expected him to be bigger, pulling up on the side of the crib or something, because he felt big enough to be walking when he came out. But he was laying there asleep, with the covers pulled up over him, and he had dark hair, already, and thin eyelids so that I could see little red squiggles beneath the skin. I imagined that James must have looked just like that when he was new to this world.
I was surprised to find Grandpa Herman in that room, sitting in a chair next to the crib, just watching him breathe.
Grandpa Herman stood up and gave me his chair and helped me to sit. He put his heavy hand on my shoulder, and we all stood around the short crib, watching Canaan sleep.
“I didn’t mean to doubt you, Ninah,” Grandpa whispered. “I didn’t mean to falsely accuse you of fornication.”
“Sir?” I asked, thinking that surely the fornication stuff had to be done with. It was a baby, after all. A beautiful human child.
“Did you see his little hands, Ninah?” Laura asked me.
“No,” I said. “Is something wrong with them?”
“No, Peanut,” David said. “They’re perfect. Look.”
And he pulled back the blanket so I could see. His tiny hands were held together, just like he was praying, peacefully, in his sleep.
I stood up, leaned over the crib, and touched his perfect skin. I touched his fingers, so long already, and examined his fingernails.
But when I tugged at one miniature hand, the other one moved with it. I ran my finger between his fingers, down to his palms, and found that they were seamed together, perfectly, at the heart line.
“How did this happen?” I whispered.
“It’s a sign from God.” Grandpa Herman beamed. “The world will surely end in this perfect child’s lifetime. He’s the New Messiah, come to lead his people.”
“He was born this way?”
“Of course,” Laura answered. “You ain’t surprised, are you? You said all along it was Jesus’ baby.”
“No,” I said. “I’m not surprised.”
I
t didn’t take long for everything to make sense to me. I could
understand why Nanna hadn’t wanted to talk about what would happen after the baby was born. She knew already that David and Laura would take him.
And Daddy knew too.
I began to understand why Mamma wouldn’t even come visit. She didn’t want to tell me.
Nobody wanted to give the secret away.
I decided the grudges you hold for betrayal might be the very meanest kind. It wasn’t that they gave my son to my brother that hurt so much. It was knowing that they’d been talking about it, plotting it, worrying over how I’d react and praying about it behind my back.
And I felt stupid and tricked again. I’d made them Christmas presents.
But all that madness got mixed up once I saw Canaan’s hands. It made me wonder if they were planning on killing him all along and decided not to after they saw that he was holy. It made me wonder if he was holy, if maybe I really was knowing Jesus and not James. Because why else would his hands be that way?
And if Canaan was a sign from God, a New Messiah sent here to lead us, then what did that make me?
It was hard for me not to let the good treatment go to my head. When I left David and Laura’s that first day, Barley was working on some kind of little motor just outside. He stopped when he saw me, and I reckon that dragging that blanket behind me, I did look kind of like royalty.
“Wow, Ninah,” he said. “All that time I thought you was just an average—well, you know—slut. And come to find out you’re chosen by God.”
I didn’t say anything to him. I didn’t know what to say.
“Cause I didn’t mean to think bad of you or nothing,” Barley added, and wiped his hands on the front of his pants. “Can I help you back in the house?”
“Thank you,” I said, and took his arm. He directed me to Mamma’s house instead of Nanna’s though.
“Look here,” Bethany said, opening the door for me. “How are you, Ninah?”
“Fine, mostly,” I said.
She helped me over to the couch, and I was glad to have her there because I felt a little bit like I was walking with a boat between my legs.
“I believed you all the time,” Bethany whispered. “I knew you and James wouldn’t do nothing like that.”
“Can I get you something to drink?” Mamma asked, and I said “yes,” and then “juice.”
“Put your feet up,” Bethany said. “You hurting?”
“Some. Mostly sore.”
“Pammy, get a rubber glove and fill it with ice for Ninah,” Bethany instructed, and Pammy, who’d been standing against the wall and looking at me like if she got too close I might shock her with my holy electricity, obliged.
“Maybe by next week I can help you with the chickens again,” I told her as she handed it to me.
“You don’t have to do that no more,” she insisted.
“Well, why not?” I said playfully. “Didn’t you miss me?”
“Yeah,” she said. “But you’re different now.”
“She’s our same old Ninah,” Mamma told Pammy. “Are you ready for school? The bus will be here shortly.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Pammy said, and left.
“And who’d have thought that we’d have the mother of the New Messiah right here among us and not even know it?” Bethany wondered. “My own little sister.” She was talking like I’d parted the sea when all I’d done was sinned with her stepson—or maybe not.
“I want you to see your room,” Mamma said. “Do you feel like walking up the stairs yet? Cause I painted it fresh.”
“Maybe I’ll wait til tomorrow before I try that. I think I want to go back to Nanna’s and rest awhile.”
“That’ll be fine,” Mamma said. “Here, I’ll help you. And when you feel like it, we’ll get Mustard and Barley to move your things back home.”
It wasn’t until I was in bed again that I started wondering where Daddy was. I hadn’t seen him since the baby was born, and he was one of the only people who’d been around when I was pregnant. It didn’t make good sense.
But when I got Nanna alone, instead of asking her about Daddy, I asked her about Canaan.
“Did you know they were gonna take him from me?”
“I’d caught wind of it,” she said tersely.
“Well, why didn’t you tell me?” I cried. Seemed like every time I cried, my breasts hurt more and leaked out hard to keep my eyes company.
“I didn’t know how,” Nanna said, holding my head. “I didn’t know what to think about the whole thing. Didn’t know what you’d want or not want. I didn’t like the idea, personally, but you got to think about the greater good, I reckon. When the idea struck them to give the child to David and Laura, I knew you’d get to be with it and help tend it—and you’d still be free to finish school. But I thought if I told you, you’d try to leave Fire and Brimstone, and I reckon it was selfish of me, but I just couldn’t imagine being here without you.”
“Oh,” I said.
We didn’t talk for a while. She had her hands at the back of my head where I’d cut the hair away, and I could feel her measuring it and learning of what I’d done, but she didn’t mention it at all.
“Nanna, do you think my baby is the New Messiah?”
“I think your baby was born with a simple problem that would have been fixed already if we’d taken you to the hospital where you belonged.”
“So you
don’t
think I’m—special?”
“You always been special, child,” she said. “But one little hinge of skin don’t make no baby a messiah.”
“What will we do about it?” I asked her.
“Right now, the best thing to do is leave things alone til they settle over. We’ll get a doctor to cut his hands apart sooner or later, but I’ll have to work on Herman for a while first. I done studied them little hands good, and it wouldn’t take but two or three stitches in each one.”
That night was my last night at Nanna’s. There wasn’t much for me to collect. David and Laura had taken all the baby things I’d made, so all that was left was a few garments and my rugs and looms.
I pulled James’ rug out of the closet to look at it again, and I thought that the only thing missing, the only thing that would make us a family, me and James and Canaan, even if it was an imaginary family, was the blood from childbirth.
So I placed the rug over my sheet that night and eased myself down onto the edge of it, slipping off my underpants and letting the leftover bleeding stain Canaan onto my hair and James’ rope.
I
guess everybody was still trying to protect me because nobody
wanted me to know that after Canaan was born, Daddy left Fire and Brimstone and didn’t come back for three days.
I kept asking about him, but people’d say, “I believe he’s off looking at a man’s tobacco beds in Watchesaw,” which was a hundred miles away, or, “I think he’s gone to help with a revival in Cedar Bluff,” which was a hundred miles in the other direction. People told me that they thought Daddy might be scouting for migrant workers or running a load of lumber up to North Carolina. But nobody got their story straight, and everybody seemed so frazzled when I asked that they just said the dumbest things. Mustard won the prize. He said, “I believe Grandpa Liston’s in the bathroom, Ninah. That’s where he was last time I saw him.”
“He must have the drizzling shits then,” I told him. “Cause he’s been in there for ages.”
Mustard put his hand over his mouth, but giggled out anyway. He was helping me pack up my rugs into brown paper sacks, folding them just the way I told him. From the side, I could see the hairs on his face beginning to get fuzzy, though they were still blond.
“What? You never heard nobody say shit before?” I played. “Shit, shit, shit. I’m the new mother of God, and I hereby declare that shit is a word worth using here at Fire and Brimstone.”
“Ninah!” he laughed.
“What?”
“You can’t make up rules like that. You’ll get nettles—or even
dunked
again.”
“They’d better not dunk the
mother of God,
” I joked.
“You ain’t the mother of God,” Mustard swore. “You and James did it, and I know cause I watched.”
“No you didn’t,” I moaned, but blushed.
“Did too,” Mustard said. “But don’t worry. I ain’t gonna tell. Cause you deserve to be treated good for a change. How many of these rugs did you make?”
“I don’t know. Thirty or so. And I wouldn’t say shit to nobody but you,” I whispered. “Mustard, where’s Daddy?”
“I ain’t got no idea,” he promised. “Last time I saw him was at the ceremony.”
“What ceremony?”
“Where Laura and David stood at the front of the church and Great-Grandpa Herman blessed Canaan and put him in their arms. Grandpa Liston cried so hard he snuffled like a pig. I don’t know why exactly—cause Canaan’s still his grandson no matter whether he grows up with you or with David and Laura.”
“Did you see him leave?”
“No. But Barley said he got in the truck and drove off right afterwards without telling nobody where he was going.”
Mustard picked up two bags of rugs and began the haul to Mamma and Daddy’s house. I walked with him, but I didn’t carry anything.
“Do you think he’ll come back?”
“Grandma Maree says he will,” Mustard answered. “She said he was just upset and needed a little vacation.”
“But he don’t have money,” I worried.
“He’s got a little bit,” Mustard confided. “He didn’t give everything he made this winter to Fire and Brimstone. He saved up just in case.”
“In case what?”
“Well, just in case Great-Grandpa Herman didn’t want you to stay here after the baby came.”
“How do you know?”
“He’s played hooky from church about ever Sunday with me and Daddy,” Mustard allowed. “But nobody else don’t know that, about the money, so don’t go around mentioning it.”