JEWEL (15 page)

But as soon as the doctor was back in the room, Leston’s hand was gone, back to helping hold his hat. It was gone, and the doctor spoke.

“I’ve just spoken to a doctor in New Orleans, ” he said, and looked at me, at Leston. Then he looked down at Brenda Kay, reached a hand toward her and touched her cheek. Her mouth quivered. She was getting ready for feeding.

He sat on the stool, said, “I’m sending you to the South’s best baby specialist. Dr. Floyd Basket.” His eyes finally met ours full on, and for a moment I wasn’t ready for them, blinked and swallowed. This was the news, what mattered enough to sit down, look us in the eye.

“He’s down in New Orleans, and he’s a very busy man.” He laced his fingers together in front of him again. “My telephone call to him was to set up a day for you. I took the liberty of going ahead and confirming a date.”

He paused, looked at Leston now. “He’s the very best there is.”

I swallowed again, whispered, “Best at what? ” He glanced at me, and looked back to his hands. Whatever power, whatever strength he’d started with a moment ago was gone now. He took a breath.

“I don’t want you to think I’m ducking your question. I’m not. But I don’t want to say. I don’t want to guess at it, so ” “Then guess at it, ” Leston said. “Sir.”

I looked at him. His jaw was still tight, eyes square on the doctor, but behind those eyes was that same look I’d seen before, that look I didn’t know.

“I will not, ” Dr. Beaudry said a moment later, and sat up straight, tall, his hands on his thighs now. “My job here is to give you the best advice possible. This is a small town, and I am a small-town doctor. I will not guess at something I am not genuinely prepared to understand.”

He stared at Leston, who stared back at him, as if this were some sort of contest. “This is why I have set up an appointment with Dr. Basket, in New Orleans. Because he is prepared to say what is wrong here, and I am not.”

He stopped, the two of them in whatever man’s game staring at each other entailed, and I whispered the only words in my head, the only thing that mattered in this world, “Will she die? ” Jt. WL uj His shoulders held up for a moment, but then fell, his head down again. He was silent, we were all of us silent, the only sound I could hear the steady breaths in and out of Brenda Kay sleeping. I looked at her, saw no movement in her, bundled so tight.

“I’m not sending you out of here, ” he said, and stopped. “I’m not sending you out of here, ” he started again, “thinking your little girl is going to die. I won’t. She’s not. But she’s got to see someone Dr. Basket soon as she can, see someone best qualified to tell exactly what is the problem with your daughter.”

Her mouth quivered again, and she turned her head an inch or so, readying.

“When? ” I whispered.

I could see from the corner of my eye him look at the paper again. “A week and a half. Ten-thirty Thursday after next.”

He folded the paper in half, held it out to Leston, who took it only after letting him hold it there in the silence of the room for what seemed a full minute. Then Leston lifted his own hand, that hand shaking, I could see, and took the piece of paper.

“On that, ” Dr. Beaudry went on as though Leston hadn’t made him wait an instant, as though Leston’s hand had been sturdy and still, “is Dr. Basket’s address, the date, the time. All the necessary information.”

Leston stood, and I looked up at him. He put the paper into his coat pocket without looking at it, said, “How much do we owe you? ” His eyes were on the wall behind the doctor.

“Nothing, ” Dr. Beaudry said, and waved away the question with one hand.

He stood. “You don’t owe me a penny.”

Leston, eyes still on the wall, nodded. He said nothing, then turned, went for the door, stood with it open before I was even up from the chair.

Then I was at the door, the cold air outside already surrounding me and Brenda Kay, and I turned back to the doctor, tried to smile, to say Thank you out of whatever respect I had for him and the way he’d touched my baby’s forehead, traced the outline of her eyes. I tried to say those two small words, but nothing came.

The sky opened up, let fall cold rain before we could make it to the truck, so that once inside it the smell was awful, wet wool and old cigarette smoke.

Leston started up the truck, switched the heater on high, turned on the wipers. Then he pulled out papers from inside his coat, the bag of tobacco from his shirt pocket, started rolling. But when he got it to his lips I said, “Don’t.”

He stopped, a match already out of the box, ready to strike. His hands were shaking even more now. He looked at me, hands still in midair, for the first time since I’d come out of the examination room.

I said, “The baby, ” and turned from him to Brenda Kay. Her eyes had come open, her mouth moving quick now, ready.

Slowly I pulled open my coat, unbuttoned my blouse, brought my breast to my baby’s mouth.

Leston brought his hands down to his lap, and watched, on his face that same look I didn’t recognize, but then it came to me, it was fear in him, dark and simple. Fear, what I’d not thought possible in this man, the same man who built homes for us with his own two hands, the one who’d built shutters, and’d polished a bit of dogwood until it shone with the love and power of those two hands. Now his hands shook, and shook with fear.

We’d hit something, I knew, something neither of us knew what to do with, whatever hope I’d had now a distant, dead friend, my prayers only words on a cold wind.

The cab was warming up, though the rain fell harder, the wipers barely able to make clear the world outside the window. .

CHAPTER 10.

SOLDIERS AND SAILORS. THAT WAS WHAT I SAW IN NEW ORLEANS, FROM the moment we made it on into the city, buildings, people, cars and colors all over. But it was the soldiers and sailors everywhere that struck me, men in uniforms, everything khaki or white, everywhere twos and threes and fours, laughing and slapping each other on their backs, or stumbling blind drunk along sidewalks, an occasional woman in tow, skirt hiked up above her knees and makeup smeared.

“Now where again did y’all want to be let out? ” the taxi driver called over his shoulder to us in the back seat, a thin store-bought cigarette wedged tight into the corner of his mouth, only one hand on the wheel.

The other hung out the window, and he waved now and again at other taxis, other cars, even some of those soldiers, as if he knew the whole world here.

“The office of Dr. Floyd Basket, ” Leston said. “Twelve Beaufain Court.”

He’d memorized the address, most likely burned into his mind the first moment he’d looked at the slip of paper Dr. Beaudry’d given us back in Purvis.

Neither of us had ever even been to New Orleans before, though we’d talked of it often enough once we were alone in bed, the children down and the house silent, that the only time we ever had alone, when we would whisper to each other of what’d happened that day. When we got around to talking about New Orleans, it was with some sort of glee, our honeymoon had been only two nights up to Hattiesburg in a hotel looking out on the town square and the statue to the Confederate dead, I’d had to be back to teaching Monday morning, and ever since then we’d talked of dinner at some fancy restaurant in the French Quarter, of walks through Jackson Square, of sitting on the bank of the Mississippi with oyster po’boys. Of just being alone and able not to worry.

But we didn’t speak of it after coming home from Dr. Beaudry’s, hadn’t mentioned word one of the three-hour drive we knew was coming up, didn’t even wake the children at dawn this morning, Cathe ral showing up at the doorstep with Nelson and the rest of the niggers and Toxie and JE, Toxie now in charge for the day, I knew, Cathe ral just walking in, starting up the bacon in the pan. I hadn’t even told her to come, hadn’t bothered, because I knew she’d be here.

Then we drove, down through Tolowa and Lumber ton, then through the two stoplights in Poplarville, then through Derby and Carriere and Ozona, all of them the small towns I’d ridden through in the back of a wagon of a March day colder and darker than this, the next town Picayune, Mississippi, home of the Mississippi Industrial School for Girls and Pearl River Junior College, and the life I’d led before I met Leston.

But as we moved through Picayune, along the same green square all these towns had, past cars and trucks parked on the main street, people all walking on the sidewalks, people with lives to lead on a Thursday morning in a town where I’d spent six years of my life and where no one here would even recognize my name, I couldn’t help but feel that this life I knew, the comfortable one with five healthy children, food on the table, clothing to wear, was coming to its own end, shuttering quick to a stop, its dead end another hour or so away in New Orleans.

Then we were out of Picayune, back on the blacktop and headed next for Nicholson, Slidell, then across Pontchartrain, the north shore as far south as I’d ever been. Picayune was gone, around us only more of the same old trees, some of it giving way every so often to marsh and scrub pine, more and more water.

I looked down at Brenda Kay, who hadn’t come awake since her feeding outside Lumber ton. She was the reason we were here, the reason we were going to head across that lake, do what we’d only imagined doing before.

She was the reason this life I knew was about to end.

Brenda Kay only slept, and slept, and then my eyes became heavy, too, and I lay my head against the window, held on tight to my baby, and fell asleep.

I opened my eyes, and we were stopped. I blinked, swallowed, squinted out the glass beside me to see a street, sidewalk. Not much different than Picayune. Not what I figured New Orleans to look like.

I turned to Leston. He had both hands on the wheel, his eyes straight ahead. Slowly he turned to me.

“Where are we? ” I said, and let my eyes close a moment, opened them.

“Outside town, ” he said. “I don’t know. Here, at this grocer’s.

Ernest Tulley over to the plant said to park here.” He was looking at Brenda Kay, still asleep. “I am not driving in to that place. Ernest Tulley said a taxi can take us in easier than driving myself.”

He let go the steering wheel with one hand, pointed at a wrought iron gate a few yards ahead. “Highway’s behind us. This is where Ernest said to park. Said we can get a taxi from here.”

“Fine, ” I said, and opened my door, climbed out.

I heard Leston’s door slam behind me, and then he was beside me. We were both of us silent, our heads too full with what was coming, whatever surprise God was ready to serve up to us under a blue morning sky already going hot. The breeze in off an ocean still miles away made the air along this street of storefronts even wetter than home, and I wondered what it had looked like, Lake Pontchartrain, as we crossed it.

The driver stopped the taxi in what looked like an alley, said over his shoulder, “This be the place, ” and laughed, his shoulders shaking with whatever joke he’d figured was in his words.

Leston already had two dollar bills out, held them over the top of the front seat. Without looking back, the driver reached up, took the money, shook his head at something else I couldn’t figure. He reached in his pocket, handed Leston back the change.

Leston looked at the money a quarter and a dime and picked out the dime, held it out to the driver.

He took the dime, looked at it just as he had the bills, shook his head again. He said, “Gee, thanks, Pops, ” but by then we were already moving out of the taxi, and I couldn’t see Leston’s face, whatever red anger or humiliation might be there at our being a small joke to that driver.

The taxi pulled away, and we were left standing before a brick and mortar wall a little taller than me, in the center of it a wrought-iron gate. A brass plate black with tarnish was mounted next to the gate, on it the words Dr. Floyd E. Basket, M. D. I turned to Leston, looked up at him, but his eyes were on the building behind the walls, sizing up, I knew, what we were heading in to meet.

He looked down at me, gave a smile that meant nothing, only a movement of muscles in his face. He touched the gate, pushed it open for Brenda Kay and me.

Here was a little courtyard, the ground old bricks covered in green mold like a thin layer of velvet, in one corner a small fountain with just a dribble of clouded water falling into a brick trough. Along the opposite wall were the skeletons of geraniums in a brick planter box.

I stopped a moment, looked at the courtyard, at the cracked white paint of the door before us. I turned, tried to smile up at Leston.

“New Orleans, ” I said.

He looked at me, the same smile there on his face. He said, “New Orleans, ” and leaned past me to the door, knocked hard three times.

We waited, and waited, certain, I figured, we couldn’t just walk into the man’s house, if that’s what it was. Leston knocked again, harder, but as soon as his hand was down the door opened, and an old woman not much taller than Burton stood there, a white paper hat on her head, white dress down to her ankles. She smiled, held out a hand as if we were neighbors she’d known for years.

“Come on in, ” she said. “There’s no need to knock. Just come in and have a seat.”

Her hand was wrapped around mine, her fingers longer, stronger than I could have imagined. She didn’t let go, but gently pulled me into the front room, a parlor of sorts with old oak chairs lined up against each wall. Oak paneling went waist-high on the walls, above it white and green striped wallpaper. A hallway right across from the door led back into the house, back into examination rooms, I .. smagmec .

Five or six mothers each with a child were seated round the room, and right then I knew who Leston and I were, knew we were foreigners in the midst of people who probably figured us ignorant or halfaddled crackers, the taxi driver’s joke clear now, all the mothers had on makeup, hair down and bobbed at the shoulder, atop their foreheads hair curled up in furious heaps, and I couldn’t help but think every one of them subscribed to Billie Jean’s Photoplay, had spent too many nights in moviehouses.

My hair was just back in a bun, the same way I wore it every day, and I wore no makeup, my dress down to just below my shins, almost ankle-cut.