JEWEL (9 page)

“Leston, ” I whispered, and he held up a finger to his mouth to quiet me. He tried to smile, then reached that finger to me, touched it to my lips.

“We got Sepulcher and Temple right here, two good, strong bucks, they’re going to carry you on downstairs and out to the truck. We’re going to take care of you, Jewel. You just hold on.” He paused, blinked. “I already got a call over to the hospital, and they should be ready for us when we get on up there. So don’t you worry none.

That’s all I want you to do for me, just don’t you worry none.”

“The hospital, ” I said again, and Cathe ral edged in front of Leston, touched a cold cloth to my face. “Now hush, ” she whispered, “now hush.”

She looked from me to the door. Leston backed away, looked there, too.

Cathe ral nodded, and in came two of her sons, boys with mouths closed too tight, eyes turned from me, foreheads glistening though the room was cold now, ice cold, and I knew that, yes, I was going to die.

I prayed, the words rising up in me suddenly, a small and perfect and horrible prayer, If it’s a death You want, I gave up to God, the words in my head shiny and polished and black, let it be the child’s.

Sepulcher came round to my right, Temple to my left, so that they faced each other across the bed, Cathe ral tucking the quilts around my legs, my arms. Then the boys looked to Cathe ral. She nodded, and they bent to me, moved their hands beneath me until they met, and lifted, carried me over the foot board and toward the hall, where Leston was already moving backward, glancing over his shoulder to the stairs, to me, the boys, over his shoulder.

I held on tight to Cathe ral’s boys, my arms round their shoulders, my eyes wide open as we moved down the stairs. They took each step slow and deliberate, eyes on each other as though that might give them some greater balance.

But it wasn’t fear of falling that kept my eyes open. It was my prayer, and how it’d come to me so easily, so clearly, the words swelling in my head, my heart thick with them, Let it be the child’s, let it be the child’s. They made perfect sense, and though I tried to stop them, another part of me held tighter to them, and to the purpose I finally saw for them, I wanted none of my children to know the sorrow of a lost parent, a sorrow I’d known too close my whole life.

We were at the bottom of the stairs now, Leston with his hat on, holding open the door. “Annie, ” I said, and closed my eyes a moment, conjured a picture of her on the bed next to me.

“She be sleeping, ” Cathe ral whispered, and I felt the cloth at my forehead.

“Burton, ” I said. “Wilman. Billie Jean.” I saw my oldest in uniform, somewhere in the South Pacific right now, blue water, beaches the color of bone. “James, ” I said.

“Now you be hushing up, Miss Jewel, ” Cathe ral whispered, “because you know all yo’ children be asleep. They all asleep. Even James, he be asleep right now wherever he be.”

I opened my eyes to the truck parked before the house, the yard a white fire in the light cast by the headlights, and now other words came to me, the words I’d formed to ask Cathe ral, the ones I’d put together and readied to give her before I’d passed out in my room.

“Cathe ral, ” I said as the boys eased me into the cab, Temple moving aside, Sepulcher settling me in the seat.

She was there with the cloth again. “You save yo’ words, Miss Jewel.

You save yo’ strength.”

“Cathe ral, ” I whispered, the words old, ancient, though I’d not yet spoken them. I whispered, “Is this the hardship? Is this how He smiles?

” Her eyes met mine for an instant, hung there only as long as she used to let them, before she came to know her God. Then they were away from me, settled on the cloth she still held to my cheek. “You just pray, ” she whispered, “you just pray.”

She closed the door, looked through the glass to Leston, nodded. He gave it the gas, and we were gone, and I was certain she hadn’t heard me answer her, hadn’t heard me say “I am” even before she’d So pulled the cloth from my cheek, my black prayer already resumed, Let it be the child.

“Push! ” the doctor yelled, and it was as if the word were a birth itself, welcome and painful at once, me holding back as long as I had.

There was no telling how long I’d been in the hospital, my mind gone now, all I knew the white of a room, the first hospital I’d ever been in, my legs apart and high in the air, strapped to metal bars poking out the end of the bed, sheets hiding everything everywhere. That was all I knew, and the faces of the last people I’d know on this earth, the doctor, all I could see of him above the sheets below me a flat forehead and thick spectacles low on his nose, eyes all careful concentration and focused between my legs, next to him a nurse, a woman older than me and smiling, a tooth or two missing in front, loose folds of skin beneath her chin, and one other nurse, a girl who seemed no older than my Billie Jean, hands the color of porcelain as she held on to one of my own.

“Now push, darling, ” the younger one whispered, all of them here and ministering to me, I saw, as if I had no idea what to do.

“Push, ” the older woman said. She nodded in what I figured was a motherly way, though I’d no idea how my mother might have urged me had she been here, me fast approaching her and the hereafter, if the Lord chose not to honor my steadfast prayer.

I surrendered to the notion I was going to die here and now, the feeling in me some white wave, a peace that took on whatever might happen, me heading to meet my God. I finally pushed, pushed with everything I had in me, and then with even more. I pushed, not because they’d told me to, but because it was what my body’d led me to believe was right, what it knew to do.

“Dammit, push! ” the doctor yelled, and the young nurse squeezed my hand harder. “Push, ” she whispered again.

I pushed, my eyes squeezed tight to where I could see only swirling red circles and squares whirl and pop before me, a red quick going to white, and I thought I was at the gates of Heaven, readying for entrance, round my neck the millstone of my prayer for the death of this child.

I pushed, and pushed, felt something, a power greater than me, pushing, too, the help of some force not of me at all, and I drove open my eyes, my teeth clenched, my jaw tight as it would ever be.

It was the doctor, there beside me. He was pushing on me, mashing down on me, the fingers of his hands locked together, the palms at the top of my belly. He was mashing down on me, his moves quick and tough, as if he were kneading dough, and with each push down I felt air leaving me, felt the tear below me. “Now is the time, ” I heard him whisper, then yell again, “Push.”

The older nurse was below the sheets now, her eyes the same iron as the doctor’s had been when he was down there. She licked her lips, ran the back of a hand across her forehead. She blinked twice, said, “Here it is.”

I pushed, felt his pressing on me, forcing my baby out, all these at once, the moment in front of me the one between life and death, but both of them just past my touch. I was only watching, distant observer at the birth of my sixth child.

Then the pushing stopped, the white wave cresting in me, falling, the mashing on me gone, and I opened my eyes, looked below me to the foot of the bed, where the doctor held blue-pink feet chest high. He raised a hand, held the baby a little higher, and slapped its bottom once, twice, three times before it gave a startled cough, and cried.

No one except me not the doctor, not the mother nurse, not even the girl who’d called me Darling took notice of the small cleft between my baby’s legs, that certain proof to the world that she was a girl, so that, finally, it was me who called out in a voice as clear as if I’d just been out for a walk in the woods, “She’s a girl.”

The doctor took her into his arms, said, “Why, you’re right. So she is, ” and I saw him smile despite the sweat on his face, despite the thick glasses, despite the blood up to his wrists, his white gown all the more white for it.

“Count them up, ” I whispered, and already I was feeling the loss of blood and strength, the loss of the will that brought her here. I was cold, my arms and legs jittery with that loss. “Count them up, ” I whispered again. “Count up her fingers and her toes.”

“There’s ten of each, ” the girl said, her voice a warm whisper in my ear, words mixed with the small cry of my baby. “Stubby little fingers and toes, ma’am. But there’s ten of each.”

I was shivering, my body lost to me, and I cried, cried out of joy for the two of us alive and here, God in Heaven choosing to honor not the prayer for the death of my child, but the one I’d uttered the first day knew I was pregnant, the one that she’d be alive, toes and fingers all present and accounted for.

“Then go tell Leston, ” I said, and I felt a warm blanket laid upon me, listened to my baby’s cry a moment longer before I gave in to sleep.

CHAPTER 6.

JEWEL, LESTON WHISPERED. JEWEL, IT’S ME.

I opened my eyes. I was in a room with gray walls and one window.

Light tumbled from the window, the shade up, and I blinked, turned from it to see Leston next to me in a chair. His face was near mine, him leaning forward, clean-shaven, hair combed back. He had on one of his Sunday shirts, the yellow one, buttoned up to his neck, over that his good Sunday jacket. He was smiling.

I whispered, “Sug, ” and put a hand up to his cheek.

His smile turned into a grin at that word, and he brought his eyes down a moment, lifted them again.

He leaned even closer, kissed my own cheek, and pulled back, his green eyes working on me, digging deep into mine in a way they hadn’t in longer than I could remember.

He said, “She looks like all the rest of them. Just as perfect as all the rest of them.”

I swallowed, let my eyes close a moment.

He said, “You been out a whole day. You been asleep for a whole day, you and the baby both. Pretty tough work for the two of you, I imagine.” He touched my cheek again, and I could feel myself smile.

I heard footsteps into the room, hard and quick. Leston’s hand moved from me, and I opened my eyes. A nurse, this one round and pink-faced with a paper hat folded in some odd shape atop her coalblack hair, stood at the foot of the bed, a clipboard cradled in one arm. She had bright red lipstick on, cheeks rouged up. She was looking at the clipboard, flipped back a page, then brought that page to the front again.

I said, “When do I see my baby? ” I glanced at Leston sitting up straight in his chair. On the low dresser behind him was his hat, next to it a bunch of flowers in a glass, a few ragged daisies, a stalk of geraniums, some greenery.

Leston looked at the dresser, back to me. “The children, ” he said, and smiled. “They send their love.” He paused, glanced at the nurse, still looking at the clipboard. “Anne wanted to send her blanket, ” he nearly whispered. He leaned an inch or so toward me and no more, afraid, I knew, the nurse might catch him showing too much affection.

“Cathe ral said no, you had plenty of them here.” He gave a quick smile, glanced at the nurse again, sat up straight.

He cleared his throat, looked at the nurse full on. He said, “My wife would like to know when she might be seeing her child.”

She still didn’t look away from the clipboard. She said, “That, sir, will be the doctor’s decision. He will inform y’all when the moment has come. Not before that.”

She turned, never having met our eyes, and left the room, her same hard steps ricocheting round the bare walls.

“A hospital, ” I said. “So this is what I’ve been missing my whole life.” I moved to sit up, tried to reach behind me to push down a pillow, and the same old pains ground through me, what’d been white fire now a bank of sharp embers settled low in my belly, between my legs.

I grimaced, my eyes twisted closed, and heard the scrape of Leston’s chair on the floor as he quick stood up, jammed the pillows down himself.

“Easy now, ” he said. “Easy. Took you twenty-two hours to have that baby. Don’t expect to get up and at em too quick.”

Twenty-two hours, I thought, twenty-two, and when I opened my eyes again, there was the doctor at the foot of the bed, the same doctor with the wide forehead and spectacles. But now he had on a red bow tie and blue button-down shirt, his hair combed wet across his head from the top of one ear to the top of the other. He had the same clipboard in his hand, eyes hard on whatever piece of my life was on that paper.

He looked up from the clipboard, still without a word of warning or congratulations, and faced the doorway, where in came the nurse with the rouged face, lips drop-dead red.

In her arms was the bundle I’d waited nine months to hold, had battled against my body more hours than I could have imagined I would. The nurse was smiling now, and as she neared me, her arms reaching my child out to me, she became my friend, the best one I would ever know next to Cathe ral, and I smiled back at her, our eyes meeting in the same way they always did with Cathe ral each time she handed me my new life.

I peeled back the corner of the blanket that lay across her face, and saw my daughter for the first time. Leston was right, she was as perfect as all the rest of them, a thin copper halo of hair, eyelids a frail blue as she slept, one hand in a fist nestled next to her cheek.

She was beautiful, even more beautiful than any of the others, I couldn’t help but feel, Leston and I never able to do better than the newest baby in my arms.

“She’s still sleeping it off herself, ” the doctor said. “Seems she’s even more wrung out by the whole thing than you. But that’s fine.

It’s what her body’s telling her she needs.”

Just then her pale pink lips quivered, set to sucking at nothing, and I whispered, “There’s something else this little body needs, ” and I looked up at the doctor, the nurse, back to my baby. I said, “And if you will excuse us, we’ll be getting to it.”

“Why certainly, ” the doctor said, and I glanced up to see him and the nurse already turned, moving toward the door.

I turned back to the baby, but heard next to me the scrape of the chair again. Leston stood next to the bed, and I looked at him. He’d already grabbed his hat from the dresser, was leaning over to kiss me good-bye.