JEWEL (19 page)

I let go the pillowcase, let it settle next to my feet, and I bent at the waist. I hugged the flagpole, felt the cold steel of it press into my face, burn into my cheek.

Tory came from inside the main building and down the steps, in his hand the belt, and when he came close enough I let my eyes look up at him.

He didn’t look at me, but handed the belt to Mrs. Archibald. I couldn’t see her take it, only saw Tory step behind me with the belt, step back without it. He put his hands together in front of him, looked at the ground, him the last one here to see me before I’d tried to escape my life.

Mrs. Archibald lifted my jumper over my hips, and I pictured each girl at the school pressing her face to the glass windows of the dining hall, imagined I could hear the talk they gave, though the only sound was the fall wind in the tops of trees, the whirr and hiss of it.

My eyes went to the blue sky above me, a blue deep and still and cutting. I kept my eyes open as long as I could, focused on that frightening cold blue, until they blinked shut of their own when the belt finally came down on me.

The snap of it was louder than I could have imagined, the pain of it shuddering up through the backs of my legs and into my stomach and my lungs and on into my face and out to my fingertips. But I kept my eyes on that blue the whole time, through each shock of the belt, through each wave of pain.

It was that memory in my head to come back and haunt me each day I spent waiting, a haunting that kept me from the escape handing Brenda Kay over to an institution would be, and I found myself whispering out into the cold dark of the room, into the closed eyes of my baby daughter, whispering to myself and to all the ghosts that seemed to stay with me wherever this life led me words I’d heard most all my life, yet’d never truly known until then precisely what they meant, Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit? I whispered, Or whither shall I flee from Thy presence?

If I ascend up into Heaven, Thou art there, if I make my bed in Hell, behold Thou art there.

There was more to that psalm, the words of David going on to praise his God for that power, that presence. But this was where my words stopped, Behold, Thou art there and I saw only then that perhaps those two great and ugly birds circling over us, those notions of escape and no escape, might actually be one and the same, one great and all-powerful being, my own God in Heaven, waiting up there on high.

But then one morning three weeks after we came home from New Orleans, there came a knock on the door. I did nothing, only opened my eyes.

I’d fallen near asleep in the rocker, and the sound of the first knock, then the next, gave me a second’s dream of my Uncle Benjamin, come to knock on my door to take my baby away, so when there came still one more knock I’d shot open my eyes, hollered, “No! ” Dr. Beaudry pushed open the door, poked his head in. He squinted into the darkened room, smiled. He said, “Mrs. Hilburn, you all right in there? ” I said nothing, didn’t even rock the chair.

“Mrs. Hilburn? ” he said again, and came in. The door stood open behind him, light falling in.

“Close the door, ” I said. “Just close it.”

“Not too good for you, neither you nor your baby. This dark.” He turned, slowly pushed it closed.

“If you’re here to try and take away my baby, ” I said, “then you just might as well head out right now.” I paused, gave myself a push in the rocker, started us in motion again. Brenda Kay stirred, reached up, touched nothing.

He stood with his black bag in one hand, his jacket in the other. He had on a black vest and pants, the jacket the same color, and a white shirt gone gray in the dark. He looked at me a few moments, then turned, looked for a place to sit.

Against the far wall we had an old divan, a quilt thrown over it, but he didn’t seem satisfied with that, only set his bag and jacket on it, then looked past me toward the kitchen. He walked in there, pulled out one of the chairs from the table, set it in front of me, not three feet away.

He sat, looked right at me.

He said, “We don’t want you to give up your baby, not if you don’t want to.”

“What do you mean we’? ” I whispered. Brenda Kay’s hand dropped, lay flat on the blanket.

He looked down to the small patch of floor between us. He had _L. his elbows on his knees, his fingers together in a fist in front of him.

He said, “I think you know.”

“I do, ” I gave right back to him. “And you didn’t have the guts to tell us, neither.” I paused, let him have hold of that for a moment.

Then I said, “So why ought I believe you right now, that you don’t want me to commit my child? ” He looked a few moments longer at the floor, then up to me. In the darkness I could see him blink once, twice.

“You don’t have any good reason to believe me, I guess. And I’m sorry about how you found out.

But I thought it best for Dr. Basket to make the diagnosis, the evaluation.” He stopped, let out a sigh. He sat up, his back to the chair now, his hands loose in front of him. His head was to one side, his eyes on Brenda Kay. “But the truth is ” “That’s all I’m after, ” I cut in on him. “The truth.”

He paused a moment, took in my words, measured them in some way that made his shoulders seem to fall, as though he’d surrendered finally to whatever it was in me that wanted him to squirm.

He said, “Dr. Basket and I both want you to know that if you want to keep her, we will help in what ways we can.”

I was quiet a while, the only sound my chair rocking on the hardwood floor. I said, “And what ways might those be? ” “For one, ” he said without a moment’s pause, “I’d like to see her at least once a month.

And every three months Dr. Basket wants to take a good look at her.

That’s for starters.” He leaned forward again, the fist in front of him. He brought his hands up, let his chin rest on them. “And there is a form of medication. Calcium glucanate, a bone strengthener. One of the problems with Mongolian Idiots ” “Don’t you ever say those words in front of me again, ” I said. I’d stopped the rocker without knowing I had, felt myself holding Brenda Kay even tighter to me. I whispered, “Don’t you dare.”

He stared at me, his chin still on his hands. He nodded, let his eyes fall from mine. He whispered, “I understand, ” then took a breath.

“The injections, ” he went on, his eyes still away from us, “help strengthen bones. Soft bones are one of the problems with…” He paused, touched one ear with a hand, brought it back to his chin.

“With children of this special nature, ” he said.

“Thank you, ” I said, and I closed my eyes.

After a long moment, he said, “Soft bones can be helped along, we believe, with calcium glucanate injections every six weeks. That way we can help her grow as well as she can. It’s quite a modern process.

We’re fortunate to have access to such a medication.”

“Injections, ” I whispered.

“Yes, ” he said quietly. “I wish they could be administered in some other way, but that’s all we can do. Dr. Basket’s already instructed me on proper dosage, and precisely where the injections are to be made.

And he’s ready to send up the first prescription.”

“Where? ” I said, my eyes still closed. I wanted as much dark as I could get hold of.

“Why, to my office, ” he said.

“No, ” I said, “where on my baby’s body will she receive the shots? ” I paused. “You said there’s a precise place.”

“Oh, ” he said, his voice, like his shoulders, fallen somehow. “She would receive two shots, one in each hip. That’s where the bones need the most strength.” I said nothing, only pictured in my head that great bird circling higher and higher, up and away from us, disappearing high into a cold blue sky.

“We need to talk about how much this entire procedure will cost, ” he said, his voice almost a whisper.

I opened my eyes. “No we do not, ” I said. . l .

CHAPTER 12.

LESTON SPENT HIS DAYS COMBING THE WOODS FOR LIGHTERED KNOTS from all the splintered wood they’d blown up years ago, occasionally blowing up a stump on his own with old sticks of dynamite he’d find somewhere in the shed. But even then it’d be only for the splinters that he’d light fuses, that business of hauling stumps for turpentine down to Pascagoula long dried up, the end of the war the end of our money.

Once the boys were home from school, the three of them Leston, Burton and Wilman drove along dirt roads out to nigger shanties to sell them bundles of the kindling, just trying to make enough money for us to get by. There was no way on this earth he’d be caught selling to the whites in town. Just no way.

Billie Jean, a year out of Purvis High, worked as a teller at First Mississippi downtown, she hated the work, and there’d been days beyond number over the last year when I’d had to roll her out of bed, feed her biscuits and gravy in her sleep, plug her under the shower before she’d awake. Then she’d dog it while getting dressed and into the pickup, where Leston waited, silent, eyes straight ahead, coffee and cigarette in hand. But she was faithful to give up her paycheck to us, save for a dollar or two allowance we gave right back to her.

My job was in the cafeteria at Bailey Grammar School, where I served up sweet potatoes and fried okra and on good days a thin sliver of ham to all the children. At the end of the day I was allowed to bring home a few servings of what little food was left. I was the only white woman at work there in the cafeteria, but that didn’t bother me.

It was the money we were after.

Billie Jean hadn’t subscribed to her magazines in two years, the last piece of new clothing I’d bought for myself was a scarf three years ago for when we went into New Orleans, the wind down there whipping sometimes too hard for me to stand. Toxie and JE and Garland and all the niggers were on their own now, playing pickup at whatever work they could find. Leston’d sold off the equipment four years ago.

But this morning, this May Saturday, we were headed for a picnic in celebration.

Thursday night Brenda Kay took her first step.

She was five years, six months and four days old Thursday, and’d finally taken her first step, my baby with the copper hair leaving Billie Jean’s arms and slowly doddering over the braided rug toward me across the front room from her, her feet heavy in shiny white orthopedic shoes laced up to her ankles. The dress she had on, a faded blue thing with embroidered yellow ducks around the hem and sleeves, was one Anne’d worn when she was three, and as Brenda Kay came toward me, my arms stretched out to reach her as soon as she came close, I thought I could see in her face a trace of Annie, somewhere in her eyes a hint of her sister, though the baby’s eyes did slant up in a way at times made her look like some of the children in the World Book Encyclopedia. It’d taken me three years to work up the nerve to search out exactly what Mongolians looked like, and I remember swallowing hard, taking in a deep breath at seeing the photographs there in the library, women and children and men from the country called Mongolia, with their fine straight hair and thick, heavy eyes and broad, flat foreheads.

But then the trace of Annie was gone, and she was Brenda Kay again, my baby, those green eyes wide open in surprise at being on her own as she moved, her short arms out to either side, dimpled knees, pink skin, and there was her smile, the one she held right then and that showed all her teeth, small and thin and distanced one from another, her heavy cheeks puffed out even more for that smile.

The night outside the open windows was filled with the whirr of cicadas, treefrogs, all else that lived in the darkness and away from what was happening inside. The only other sound was the radio turned low and playing some big band from the top of a hotel in New Orleans, rich people dancing to music in clothes I could only imagine, colors I’d never see in this life. The boys were up in their room and, I hoped, embarked on the nightly torture they believed homework only good for.

Leston was at the kitchen table, quiet as always, hunched over a cup of coffee I knew had long gone cold. Anne lay before the empty fireplace on her tummy like every night, she’d finished her homework hours before dark, fed up with following her brothers around, the two of them still fighting as much and as hard as always her legs crossed at the ankles, feet up in the air and swinging away to the dance music. In her hand was a thick red pencil, on the floor in front of her a tablet of paper so like the one I had when I was a child I’d thought for a moment that indeed it was mine, misplaced ages ago and now miraculously appeared.

But the miracle here was Brenda Kay, and how she came toward me and away from Billie Jean while all else in the world shuffled along, dead to the six feet my daughter moved across.

Brenda Kay fell into my arms, and I held her to me, heard her say, “Momma, Momma, ” her only word so far, heard her say it again and again.

Then other sounds came to me, Billie Jean, still seated on the floor on the other side of the rug, was clapping, next came the rush and pounding that could only be my boys on the stairs down. “Momma, Momma, ” they shouted, and once they reached the bottom, Wilman said, “What’s going on? ” Anne was up and coming toward Brenda Kay and me, her arms out, the red pencil still in one hand. She hugged the two of us as best she could, Annie growing up and eight now, older suddenly than I wanted her to be.

“I saw it, ” she said, “I saw it, ” and I felt her hold us tighter, Brenda Kay tucked between us.

“Momma? ” Burton said, still one step up, his hand on the railing, Wilman in front of him.

Billie Jean turned to them. “She walked, ” she said, “she walked.”

That was when I heard Leston’s chair push back, heard his steps across the floor and toward us all, the boys now down with the rest of us, though they were too manly, I could see, to feel the need to hug as Billie Jean and Anne did. But they were with us, and I felt them pat my shoulders, saw them touch Brenda Kay’s head and arms and back.

“Good job, ” Wilman said to Brenda Kay, whose eyes were on him now, her mouth open in that smile, and Burton said, “Good job, Brenda Kay.”

I looked behind me, saw Leston in the doorway, hands wrapped around the coffee cup.