The Quickening (2 page)

That’s the way she went, you see, talking as if she was thirsty, but not for anything I felt good enough to offer. She talked as if she had never talked to another person in her life. “Those potatoes won’t be good for much,” she went on. “Not this late, I mean. Not unless you boil them. Of course, if you don’t plant the right kind, boiling will turn them to mush. Maybe it’s best you throw them away.”

I studied her then. She was speaking rubbish, throwing good food away. On closer look, with that shawl over her like a garland and so early in the daytime, I guessed she might do such a thing. “I don’t suppose that’d be right,” I said. My hands were raw from pulling weeds. Three hours at the work and the soil covered me head to toe. “Enidina,” I offered at last, sitting up on my knees. “Though my husband calls me Eddie. Only him.” I wiped my hand from the sweat and dirt and held it out.

“Mary Morrow,” she said with a grimace. My hand nearly swallowed her own. “We’re neighbors,” she said. “Over there, less than half a mile. Ours is an even longer trip to town.” With a lift of her chin, she showed me her house in the distance, a hard brick face against the fields. What with that look of hers, I knew we were farther from each other than that run of dirt road between us.

You may think me unfriendly, but I have trouble remembering Mary without uneasiness. Even then, I was wary of strangers, and I believed women were especially
difficult. I had no sisters to speak of. Had only my mother now and three brothers, gone off to have families of their own. Though I’d tried for friendship, their wives never much cared for the youngest sister who worked with the men in the barn. But women had never liked the look of me. Saw something fierce in my size and roughness. Mary seemed no different. That grimace of hers, it was just the start.

“The big place,” she said. She turned to look at our own and tugged that shawl close to her chest. Next to hers, our house seemed a low stack of wood, but an honest one. The kind people could grow into. The afternoon had hushed and the soil was sticky in my palms. As I stood, I wondered just what she wanted with us. “Now, look at you,” she said. “Just look.” Her eyes narrowed and a smile came to her lips. “We have two boys ourselves and I knew with both of them. In only weeks, I knew it.” She reached out to touch my dress. “You’re carrying.”

I stepped away from her and looked down at my stomach and feet. I was black with dirt and had wiped my hands on my middle so many times that I’d stained my dress with fingerprints. “Isn’t that a wonder,” I said. I didn’t know until then, you see. I’d felt something coming. Like a rainstorm I’d felt it, but burrowing inside me. I’d been sick for so many months, sick too after my father’s death. I hadn’t bothered to pay attention to the weight I’d taken on in our bed or any child it might promise. Mary said her piece and I believed it then, reddening at the thought that this woman had known before me. In her fancy shawl and curious ways, she’d taken the surprise that was mine alone.

I bent to my work to answer her, hoping to end the visit as fast as it’d begun. “It’s not so terrible to know before your time,” she said. But I would have none of it. Her voice was sharp and all too sure of itself. She looked mighty pleased. I kept my back to her, and her feet scratched at the ground like one of our chickens. Finally she walked away.

A sour taste rose at the back of my throat as I watched her go, but the sourness was different now. It had its reasons. “Carrying,” she’d said. With my brothers’ wives, I’d stayed outside in the parlor with the men. In the barn, birthing was a dark, bloody business. The last I’d seen left the cow panting on her knees. We buried her afterward in the snow. Mary stumbled as she went, that gold glinting in her shawl, and I felt the emptiness of this place. The dirt in the fields stirred with insects and wind. The sun was an awful brightness. This woman had carried two children herself. Despite her looks, she’d done that. Against all I’d heard of the ways of strangers, I called after her to welcome her again, and she offered a wave back. She has never left us quite alone since.

We had the rest of the fall to ourselves before Mary came with her family, the first real visitors to our place. Walking into the corner of my kitchen, she studied the weight of my chest and stomach. Her eyes passed over our countertops like a finger feeling for dust. We had but four plates and these my mother had spared us. Surprised by their arrival at dinnertime, Frank and I had to share a plate between us, as did Mary and her youngest. I opened a jar of meat and boiled
some noodles, warmed a sugar dressing for our lettuce. The bread I’d baked during the week I hoped might fill the meal, a cup of broth to soften the crust. I laid out the meat and noodles in my roasting pan, as I had no other dishes, and I kept our only apples for dessert. When Frank set the last plate in front of Mary’s husband, Jack looked at Frank’s hand and wondered at it. Jack’s own was scarred and wide and never much for serving, or so I guessed. Taking hold of the plate himself, Jack righted it at a proper distance for his fork and knife, but Frank didn’t seem to mind. Quiet as he was before a meal, Frank took his seat, his eyes closed and hands on the table. Mary did the same. In the silence, Mary’s youngest knocked over his water glass.

“Are you done?” Mary asked, studying the boy.

Her youngest turned quiet. Mary stood and gave him a cool pinch on the cheek. When she went to clear the mess, the napkin in her hand came away darkly stained. “Well,” she said, “this table needs a wash.”

My fork struck our plate.

“Don’t you worry,” Frank let out. His eyes were open now and bright. With a glance, I knew he was talking to me and the boy both. “I must do that every day myself,” Frank said. “In fact, I did it just this morning, with a bowl of oatmeal. What do you think of that?” Frank took the boy’s chin between finger and thumb. The boy buckled and grinned. He wasn’t much more than two, and shied from his mother’s arm as she scrubbed.

“Interrupting your mother’s prayers …,” Mary said. “And this man, he was praying too.” The cuffs of Mary’s blouse looked neat against her wrists, her nails trimmed.
The way she’d sat so stiffly at our table, I knew she kept herself separate from our place. Her boys were pale too, raised soft by their mother and flushed in the heat of the kitchen. But in a few years they were to be farmer’s sons.

“That’s all right, Mary,” Frank said. “It’s plenty clean now.”

“But a man when he’s praying,” Mary went on, “he needs quiet. A woman needs it too. When they’re expecting a child, they need all the help they can. Isn’t that right, Jack?”

“Mary,” Jack said, but Mary took hold of his arm and he left off. His fingers had tightened around his knife, but her hand seemed to settle him. A large man, Jack looked uneasy in our kitchen, his arms straining his sleeves. His face was rough and tan and darkened easily, his eyes sharp and strangely colored in the deep folds of a squint. He chewed at his meat. A fire in his silence, he stared out the window as if to count the worthy rows of our field.

“A baptism,” Mary started again. “That’s what your child needs. Mother and child both.” She went on as if offering a sermon, talking with her hands over our cooling plates. I’d heard about these baptisms. The music and prayers, a day’s walk out to a large enough lake to have it done. They dressed to be drowned, these followers. A worn, white shirt, a dress that could be ruined, a robe. Cheap fabrics believed good enough to keep a person afloat. No one wore shoes except the minister. No one could spare the expense. The water was cold stepping in, a cause for sickness. The women’s skirts floated to the surface. The men left their hats ashore. There were prayers, a lowering of faces, and
too much sun. As Mary talked, I wondered just what she thought such a soaking would do for us. “Before you’re too far along,” she said.

“I’m not so sure about that,” I let out.

Frank turned to me then. For a man with such an easy tongue, he had a slow way of asking for things. Quiet in his meanings. I was used to this with my brothers, that silence in a man when his sense of right and wrong slips. He has no speech to tackle it. Frank’s face took on a look of desperateness. As if he knew what I was thinking, he took hold of my hand.

“That’s right, Frank,” Mary said. “It’ll be your child too.” But she said it looking at me.

When finally I agreed to it, I agreed because Frank had asked it of me. If we were having a child, it would be mine and Frank’s both. But I didn’t really think there was a place with so much water. And I didn’t think there would be so many interested in seeing it done.

We walked out miles past our house, more than a dozen of us in a ragged line. It was dark starting and we carried lanterns. No one spoke, though the rocks under our feet made sound enough. By the time we reached the end of the road, the morning sun gave some light, all of us filthy with dust. Most of the others were women. And most of these had such a glazed look in their eyes, I feared I would soon look the same. The road narrowed into a stand of trees. As the trees cleared, the sun broke onto a wide stretch of water. I stopped and pulled at Frank’s hand. Children
crowded the shore in dozens, their mothers gripping their shoulders. These were the curious. Not members of the church. They’d ridden from town in carriages and the men stayed back to tend to the horses. Mary stood alone out front, her hands clasped beneath her chin. Her dress was pale and long, like a robe itself, and a line of church members waited at her back. “All right,” Frank said and swallowed. “Just a few folks.” He smiled at me and tugged my hand. When at last I waded into the lake, Frank stepped in himself up to his knees. Soon there I was, waist deep in the water and shivering at the head of the line, for I was the first to be baptized.

The minister wore a suit and button-front shirt all in white, as I’d never seen on a man before. Borden was his name. That summer, he and his father had only just raised their church when the older man suffered a stroke, or so I’d been told. His son was left for the ministering, new though he was in the area and alone. With his black hair and eyes, his blue-white skin, Borden was tall and easy to look at if you cared to for long. He hung his coat on the branch of a tree and stepped into the lake, a hitch in his stride as he went. “Are we ready?” he said. I looked for Frank by the shore. He waved. I nodded to Borden then and he touched my forehead, lowering me back. Borden’s hands were clean and white. Not a hardworking man. Religious. He would never understand what it meant to pray to a field. To feed and watch over the animals that ruled the fat of our stomachs. We looked in hope to the ground and the roots growing there more often than we looked for grace from the sky. He dipped us under and stumbled when we sank too fast.
Red-faced as he tried to lift us up again, he was afraid. You could see it. The one coming out of the water, like a newborn, might forget how to breathe.

I was a heavy woman then as I am still and heavier while I was carrying. Borden lost hold of me and I felt a rush of water. Beneath the surface, I imagined that boy from the laundry line again, swimming up to me from the bottom. His arms and chest were white and thin, his cheeks swollen from holding his breath. He swept a tangle of weeds from his eyes and took hold of my arms. With his face close to mine, I believed I’d known him my whole life. I’d already given birth to him. Already raised him in my house. When finally I felt the air again, I took it in. There came a flash of color, a confusion of hands. I stood in the sun and blinked. The boy was gone. “You are blessed,” Borden called. The church members echoed, “You are blessed.”

I caught hold of myself, my dress clinging to me. The people on the shore watched and waited, their horses pawing the dirt. Mary’s blessing rose above the rest like a hiss. She gazed at Borden where he clung to my hand and seemed about to rush into the lake between us. I shivered where I stood, my dress soaked clear through. My belly was swollen and plain to see. I must have looked close to naked underneath. Frank rushed into the water and wrapped his jacket around my waist, but it was too late. Everyone had seen, and they would expect a child from me.

Some mornings after, I awoke in a sweat and felt for Frank where he slept. His face burned against his pillow,
his forehead hot, cheeks flushed. I would not wake him to his fever but sat back in our bed, hoping the fever would lift. Rain drove through the fields. The morning was dark and the darkness had let me sleep late. Next to me, Frank’s chest rose and fell, and I rested my hand on my stomach. If I waited long enough, I believed I might feel the child inside me stirring.

My boy, you may not understand how awful this waiting was. In those years, you never could be sure of a child, no matter how soon in coming. And you never took for granted what a birth might cost the mother herself. The skin of my belly jumped. I pressed my hand against it again and whispered Frank’s name. Outside, the storm rattled the eaves, but Frank slept on. I felt his forehead. When at last he woke, the strain of his voice came from a dimmer place, and his eyes watered against the light of the lamps.

Mary had become a regular visitor on Saturdays, but that morning she arrived late. “It’s bad today, Eddie,” she said. “Your yard’s breaking up.” I could barely hear her, so loud was the rain outside. Cold and dripping on our front porch, Mary and her good looks seemed to slide away, strange to me. I leaned against the wall.

“What’s wrong?” she said.

“Frank needs a doctor.”

“But we can’t go anywhere in this weather,” she said. “It wasn’t bad when I set out, but now …” Mary left off, helping herself from her wet coat. Her legs and shoes were thick with earth, as if she’d crawled her way along the road. Outside, the rain had grown heavy, carrying the mud away with
it. I knew at once no buggy could cross that ground. No horse could even draw it, not with the weight of a man. The baby crouched against my stomach, and I placed my hands beneath it, feeling it could fall.

“Has he been fed?” Mary asked.

“Some broth to work against his fever. I think it’s all he should have.”

“A man must eat, Eddie.”

“You’re not supposed to make it difficult for his system.”