The Darkest Child Read online

  “How long have you been up?” I asked, sensing that something was troubling my younger brother. Wallace, at the age of eleven, was not one to linger, not in bed or anywhere else. His store of energy did not allow for much in the way of idleness.

  He shrugged his shoulders. “What time is it?” he asked. “I been woke since Harvey and Sam left. Told Mr. Frank I’d come around today, help him fix his fence. He’s gonna give me a dollar.”

  “Don’t tell Mama about the dollar,” I warned. “Don’t tell anybody.”

  “I ain’t stupid,” he said indignantly.

  “You told me.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t never tell nothing.”

  I lit the kerosene lamp, placed it on the kitchen table, and knelt down on the edge of Wallace’s pallet. “Why are you sitting here like this?” I asked.

  “Like what?”

  “You know. Like something is wrong.”

  He was silent for a moment, his gaze avoiding mine. He glanced around the kitchen, toward the back door, up at the ceiling, and finally at me.

  Wallace was frail, and small for his age. His eyes were large and round with thick, long lashes. He had the same silky, black hair as Tarabelle, and his thin face seemed to shrink beneath the mane of hair and those wide eyes that took up so much space.

  “Tan, I think I been sitting here sinning,” he whispered. “Tarabelle says Mama is gonna have another baby. She said it hurts awful bad and sometimes people die.”

  “That has nothing to do with you, Wallace. It wasn’t you who sinned.”

  “I ain’t told you yet what I been doing,” he said.

  “What? What were you doing?”

  “I was thinking how Mama might die, but that ain’t the worst of it. I was thinking how that might not be so bad. I heard Mama tell Miss Pearl that every time a man look at her she gets knocked up. If that’s true, there could be a hundred of us in a few years.”

  “Wallace, nobody gets knocked up just because somebody looks at them,” I said.

  “I don’t know, Tan,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Just think about it,” I said. “Mr. Frank has been looking at Miss Pearl for years, and she doesn’t have a baby. It doesn’t happen just because you look at somebody. And anyway, Mama is always saying something that’s not true.”

  Blasphemy!

  Simultaneously, we gasped and stared at each other, waiting for the roof to cave in, or the ground to rumble and open and suck us in. I had overstepped my boundaries, and poor Wallace was guilty by association.

  Wallace slowly shifted his gaze from my face to the doorway from which I had entered. My pulse quickened, and I hunched my shoulders, waiting for a blow to the head. Mama was standing there, had heard every word I had said. I just knew it by the terror in Wallace’s face. Mama was taking her time, preparing for the slaughter, making me squirm and suffer.

  When I could take it no longer, when I knew that the pounding of my heart had awakened everybody in the house, I turned to face her.

  No one was there.

  I finally exhaled. “I shouldn’t have said that,” I whispered, “but it’s true. Remember when she used to tell us we were rich, and how we’d never be hungry as long as we lived in Georgia? ‘Too many trees bearing nuts and fruits. Corn and bean stalks running out to the road for the taking. Bushes of berries and vines of grapes. No way to be hungry.’” I said, quoting my mother.

  Wallace smiled. “Yeah, I remember,” he said. “I believed that all the way to the second grade.”

  “Me, too. I’d be sitting in school with my stomach making all sorts of noise, and everybody looking. I’d keep telling myself how it couldn’t be hunger because people in Georgia don’t get hungry. At lunchtime, I’d go off by myself so I wouldn’t have to smell the food.”

  “Tan, do you ever wish you’d been born in another family? I mean . . . like Shaky Brown’s, or somebody like that.You know, where you don’t have to worry ’bout things so much.”

  “Wallace, it’s time for you to get up,” I said. If I could help it, he would never know how often I wished for that very thing.

  He rose from the floor, pulled on a sweater and a pair of blue jeans over dingy underclothes, then made his way to the front hall to get the night bucket. It was his responsibility to empty it each morning and wash it out, then bring it back in at night. While he was getting the bucket, I rolled his blankets and placed them next to the other bundles.

  Martha Jean was with Wallace when he came back to the kitchen, both of their noses twisted from the stench. Martha Jean handed him the water bucket and watched as he stepped outside, then she took down two pots from the open shelf, one to heat water for Mama’s coffee, and the other to cook grits.

  I returned to the front room to find Laura and Edna sorting clothes that Tarabelle and I would have to wash. Tarabelle was holding a handful of newspaper and a few sticks of kindling.

  “I’ll start the fire in Mama’s room,” she said.

  “Try not to wake her.”

  Tarabelle took a deep, weary breath. “She already woke. Don’t you hear her in there howling like some ol’ kicked dog? I hope we ain’t gotta listen to that all day.”

  I listened and heard the moaning come to an abrupt halt. It was followed by a loud, strong voice that I knew so well.

  “Where’s my damn coffee?’

  “What you reckon we’ll burn in Hell?” Tarabelle asked as she hung a sheet on the clothesline and clamped it in place with wooden pins. We worked in silence as a Krandike dairy truck rounded the bend below us and moved westward toward the farmland.

  I turned Tarabelle’s question over in my mind, then asked, “What do you reckon?”

  “I reckon we will.” She leaned over the washtub, tossed a couple of shirts into the sudsy water, and began rubbing one up and down against the rub board. “Just think, Tan, all we do is fool around fire. First thing in the morning . . . fire. Last thing at night . . . fire. I think the devil getting us ready. We gon’ be the ones keep the fires burning in Hell.”

  It was a cold morning and the clothes froze almost as fast as we hung them up. They stood on the line, stiff and glazed in a thin layer of ice. We hung as many as the line would hold, then we went back inside to warm our hands and wait.

  Around noon, curiosity and goodwill brought Reverend Nelson and half of the women’s choir down from the Solid Rock Baptist Church. They were about a dozen or so, bearing gifts of prepared meals, bumping into each other as they scrambled for a position near Mama’s bed, slipping white handkerchiefs from patent leather handbags with gloved hands, dabbing at dry eyes, but mostly protecting their nostrils as they discreetly surveyed our cramped, odorous accommodations.

  “Count you blessings, sisters!” Reverend Nelson bellowed. It was the first time he had been a guest in our home, and apparently he had just noticed that our ceiling offered an excellent view of Heaven.

  The women burst into song, their voices combining and reverberating in the small confines of the house. I could not see my mother from where I stood, but every now and then I would hear her moan or scream. Reverend Nelson had brought God into our house, and Mama was deathly afraid of God. She was so afraid, in fact, that she would not go near a church. She sent us, instead, to collect her blessings and bring them home. I think she had convinced herself that God could not see her evil deeds if she did not go near His house.

  I felt overwhelmed by miracles. Our little house was still standing under the weight of Reverend Nelson and the women’s choir. They had braved our rickety, old steps to pray over Mama, and just when it seemed they would be the death of her, God opened the door for Miss Pearl.

  She poked her head in first, her short, kinky hair sparkling with Royal Crown hair pomade. Her large, brown eyes took in the scene, then she pushed the door wide and brought too much of everything into the house—too much laughter for a death room, too much swearing for the reverend and the women’s choir, and too much weight for a woman of forty. Miss Pearl was
like a huge, chocolate Tootsie Roll Pop on a broken stick. Her feet, the smallest part of her entire body, padded across the floor as her pudgy arms swung back and forth, clearing a path from the front room to Mama’s room.

  “What’s going on here?” she demanded.

  “Pearl,” Mama cried out. “I’m dying, Pearl.”

  “The hell you say.” Miss Pearl roared with laughter. “Rosie, you ain’t bit mo’ dying than the man in the moon. You done had these people come out here thinking you dying. That’s a damn shame.” “Well, I feel like I’m dying,” came Mama’s sulking voice.

  Miss Pearl turned to Reverend Nelson, a short, stocky-built, handsome man in a dark blue suit.“Y’all can leave now, Reverend,” she said. “I’ll call y’all back if I have to kill ’er for being a jackass.”

  Reverend Nelson seemed flustered for a moment. “What’s going on here?” he asked. “Sister Janie informed me that . . .”

  Miss Pearl put up a hand to silence him, and then apologized for the misunderstanding. She told him that Mama was in labor, but she probably wasn’t going to die. The reverend nodded, and his nod ended in a bowed head. He clutched his Bible to his chest with one hand, raised the other, and prayed for my mother. When he was done, he said, “Sister Rozelle, you send these little ones to church every Sunday. God loves them, and He loves you, too. Why don’t you join us one Sunday? We’d like to see you there.”

  “Amen!” the women chorused in unison before they began backing along the short hallway toward the front door, spilling out onto the porch, and descending the steps.

  Reverend Nelson glanced at me and smiled sadly as he left. I felt a lump in my throat, and I felt sorry for him. He had put on a suit on a Saturday, and had come all the way down from Plymouth to the outskirts of town to pray for a woman who was not dying after all. God was surely frowning down on the whole lot of us, and Tarabelle was right. The Quinns were going to keep the fires burning in Hell, and Miss Pearl was going to be right there beside us.

  “Okay, we got work to do,” Miss Pearl said, rolling around to face us. “We gotta get something up to this door. Where them boys?”

  Tarabelle answered, “Harvey and Sam out working, and Wallace . . .”

  “I know where Wallace is,” Miss Pearl said. “He up to my place helping Frank tear the house apart. Look like we gon’ have to do this ourself. Let’s get a sheet up.”

  Tarabelle pulled a sheet from the cedar chest beneath the window. She stretched it out, gave one end to me, and we hung it over rusted nails that were already sticking out around the doorframe. Miss Pearl stepped up and tugged at the sheet to make sure it would hold, and just as she did, a soft, angelic voice whispered from beyond. “Tan. Tan, come here, baby.”

  My pulse quickened, and I looked at Tarabelle, whose placid face could have belonged to a statue. She shrugged her shoulders, and I pushed the sheet aside and entered my mother’s room.

  Mama raised her head from the pillow and reached a hand out to me. Her eyes were glassy, and beads of perspiration covered her face. “You see, Tan,” she said between deep breaths.“You gotta tell the right person.”

  “What, Mama?” I asked. “Tell them what?”

  “You have to tell Janie,” she said, winking one glassy eye at me.

  “What they bring?”

  “They brought potato pie.”

  “What else?”

  “Black-eyed peas and collard greens.”

  “They bring any money?”

  “No, ma’am.” I shook my head, and Mama let go of my hand.

  “Guess it’s too late to fix that,” she said. “Pearl done run ’em outta here.” She sighed. “Leastways we’ll eat good for a day or two.”

  A car horn blared in front of the house, and I was relieved by the distraction. I silently prayed it was not the reverend returning with money for my mother. As much as we needed it, I would not have been able to attend the Solid Rock Baptist Church again. Already I did not know how I was going to face the congregation after word got around that Mama had been pretending to die.

  Miss Pearl pushed the sheet aside and stood in the doorway. “That’s them Munfords out there,” she said. “They wanna see Tangy Mae. Say they can’t have no girl working for ’em they ain’t never seen.”

  I took my coat from a nail in the front room and went out to face the Munfords.

  They were standing on the road beside a shiny red automobile. Mrs. Munford stepped forward as I approached. “You’re Tangy?” she inquired.

  “Yes, ma’am.” I nodded.

  She studied me closely, starting at my black oxfords with no shoestrings, my ashy knees, my worn-thin cotton dress, my corduroy coat, and my uncombed hair. I was sure she could smell Laura’s urine which had probably soaked into my pores.

  “How old are you?” she asked.

  “Thirteen,” I answered, and did not bother to tell her that I was within spitting distance of fourteen.

  She stepped back, consulted her husband, then faced me again. “You tell Rosie that I’m sorry, but you’re too young. We can’t use you.” She was preparing to climb back inside the car, and I should have been relieved, but I knew I could not let them drive away, for surely then my mother would yank me into her deathbed and drag me to the depths of Hell with her.

  “Wait!” I pleaded. “Please, wait just one minute.”

  I rushed up the steps and burst into my mother’s room, pausing only a second to catch my breath. “Mama, they don’t want me,” I cried out, shifting from foot to foot in my anxiety. “They said I’m too young. What you want me to do, Mama? They gon’ leave.”

  “Damn!” she exclaimed. “Did they ask about me?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I lied. “They wanted to know if you were feeling any better, and I told them no.”

  “Good. You tell Tarabelle to go out there and talk to ’em. We can’t afford to lose that money.”

  I watched from the safety of the doorway as Tarabelle made her way slowly down the incline and onto the road. The Munfords looked her over and questioned her the same as they had done me, and I could tell from her slumping posture that they were accepting her, and, unknowingly, giving me a reprieve. Though no one knew as well as I that Tarabelle would make me pay for my freedom.

  six

  “Get it out, Pearl!” Mama screamed. “Get it out!” “Rosie, I’m doing the best I can. You gotta help me.”

  Something horrible was taking place behind the sheet-curtain we had mounted over our mother’s doorway. For hours, Mama had been making hooting owl sounds, and Miss Pearl’s voice had fluctuated between low coaxing and high swearing. They would not allow anybody in that room, except Tarabelle.

  “Kill me, Pearl! Just take something and knock my brains out. Oh, Lord! Sweet Jesus. Kill me, Pearl!”

  “I declare, Rosie, you ain’t never carried on so. You just having a baby, and it sho’ ain’t the first one. You know we can’t rush this.”

  In the front room, Harvey paced the short distance before the coal stove, back and forth, stopping every now and then to warm his hands, or just to stare at the forbidding curtain. Sam knelt beside the stove, smoking a cigarette and flicking ash into the opening of the grate. He was still wearing his work overalls even though it was close to midnight. The overalls were clean, which meant he had spent another idle day.

  “You think Miss Pearl know what she doing?” Harvey asked.

  “She know,” Sam answered, blowing a string of smoke toward the stove.

  Harvey continued to pace, changing directions several times, coming within touching distance of the better of the two armchairs that Martha Jean and I shared. We had left the other one for him, but he seemed unable to sit. In contrast to Sam’s overalls, Harvey’s would need two days of soaking before going into the wash. They were frayed at the hems, patched at the knees, and dotted with greasy stains that were visible even in the dim light of the kerosene lamp.

  “I wish Mushy was here,” he said, nervously running a hand through his s
hort, auburn hair. The hair curled around his fingers, and for a moment he stood massaging his scalp.

  “What?” Sam asked. “Mushy done went to Ohio and learned how to deliver babies?” “Nah, man. I just wish she was here.”

  “If I was Mushy, I wouldn’t never come back here,” Sam said. “When I leave, don’t none of y’all look on me coming back.”

  “Why don’t you leave, Sam?” Harvey’s deep, baritone voice was laced with frustration. “What’s stopping you? You ain’t doing nothing to help out, and I’m getting tired of working to feed you. You don’t give a damn ’bout nobody but yo’self. Why don’t you leave?” He glared down at Sam, who refused to be intimidated, although Harvey, at the age of twenty, was two years older and at least twenty pounds heavier.

  Sam inhaled the last of his cigarette, flicked the butt into the stove, then stood to face Harvey. “I don’t leave for the same reason you don’t. I can’t.” His voice, though not as deep or angry as Harvey’s, seemed to convey just as much strength. “Yo’ mother,” he said, bowing slightly at the waist and sweeping a hand toward the curtain. “Yo’ mother won’t let me go.”

  “What you mean she won’t let you go?” Harvey asked. “She ain’t stopping you. She didn’t stop Mushy.”

  “She couldn’t stop Mushy,” Sam countered.

  “Man, if you wanna go, just go.”

  Sam stuck his hands into the pockets of his overalls and brought them out empty. “Wit’ what?” he asked.

  Harvey’s jaw stiffened, but before he could respond, Miss Pearl stepped from behind the curtain. “I can’t do this by myself,” she said breathlessly. “You boys gon’ have to run and get the midwife.”

  We stared at her in disbelief. We were forbidden to even approach Selman Street where the midwife lived, and Miss Pearl knew it.

  “Nooooo!” Mama yelled, as something in her room crashed to the floor.

  Wallace, who had been quietly studying us from the doorway of the kitchen, turned and pulled the flashlight from the kitchen shelf and placed it in Harvey’s hand. Harvey and Sam, without a word to each other, left the house together, united in their decision to get Mama the help she did not want.