Her Own Place (4 page)

Jeff Barnes was overwhelmed. He kept shaking his head, “I can't believe it! Now I know why I love you so much. I knew that you were special when I told you that the name Barnes suited you better than Hudson.”

Nine months and four days after Mae Lee's husband returned from the war their first daughter, Dallace, was born.

As much as it had pleased Jeff Barnes to have his own land to farm, it was not enough to hold him there in Rising Ridge. Once the season's harvest was over, he left home to look for work in a nearby city. Mae Lee blamed the war. It was the war, she decided, that dried up all his interest in farming. But at least he had tried, she thought to herself. His first year back on the farm was a failure. It had rained so much during the growing season, the crops were sometimes underwater for days. And, of course, she blamed herself. She felt she had been of little help. Instead of going away, the first month's morning sickness hung on, stretched into day sickness, and kept up throughout her pregnancy.

Mercifully, her daddy was able to get his longtime friend Hooker Jones and his wife Maycie to farm the land for her on shares. Hooker Jones had moved from a big landowner's farm after a heated dispute over a few bales of cotton. They were getting older, so the smaller farm suited them well.

Jeff Barnes planted a tree the day their son, Taylor, was born. It was one of the rare occasions of his presence whose
date she could later pinpoint exactly. It was not as easy to pinpoint the planting of the seeds for her three other children, Annie Ruth, Nellie Grace, and Amberlee. Four years went by during which time Mae Lee gave birth to four children. Three girls and one boy. Jeff would come home for a few weeks, she would conceive a child, and then he would be off again. He never announced when he was coming, he just showed up. If he was earning a decent salary where he worked, it almost never took the form of bringing money home. Mae Lee knew that her parents were disgusted with her husband's failure to provide or to help on the farm, but they said nothing to her, and she made a point of never expressing even the slightest impatience or dissatisfaction with him in their presence. Eventually, she told herself, Jeff would settle down with his family for good. After his years in the army he was restless, that was all. For now, she only knew his pattern. He would come home, and then after a few weeks announce that he'd heard of a better job someplace else, and would look all lovesick at her with his strange-colored eyes and say, “Baby, we are going to have to move on. I won't go without you. I absolutely refuse.” And each time he'd stand there waiting for her answer, knowing full well she wouldn't go. As in times past, she would only look at him and hold her body stiff, aware that while he might be leaving, a very real part of him remained with her, his newly conceived child.

After their youngest child, Amberlee, was born and she'd survived a few visits from him without getting pregnant again, the next time he offered to take her with him she took him up on it. She meant it, and was so excited by her decision that she
misread the pained disappointment in her husband's eyes, the crack in his voice, as signs of his surprise and pleasure.

She ran to her parents' house to tell them about leaving with her husband. Jeff had only one room in the town where he lived, so they thought it would be best to take only the baby until they found a house. She turned to her daddy, her face took on a soft glow, her eyes danced with delight. “I know you won't like the idea of our renting, when the same money could be buying, Daddy, but it's what my husband wants to do. You have my word, though, well hold on to our land.”

Her daddy frowned. “Talk is easy, baby girl, very easy.” Mae Lee hadn't heard. She turned to her mama. “Mama, I hope it's not asking too much of you to take care of the older ones until we can come back for them. It won't be for long. Just make them behave, Mama. They won't be too much trouble. You know they'll mind you.”

Vergie Hudson looked out her window at her grandchildren playing in the yard and smiled. “I have them at my house all day even when you are home, Mae Lee. But maybe you do need to write out some instructions for me on how to care for my grands.” She grew serious when her daughter broke into laughter. “Just don't move too fast with that husband of yours. Take a little time to sort things out”

“I've got to move fast,” Mae Lee put in. “We'll be leaving in a few days. Just think, Mama, I'll be living in town. Living like a lady. Jeff said he was going to send me to the beauty shop. ‘All the women in town go,' he said.”

The next few days Mae Lee was up early, washing and ironing and baking sweet goodies for her children. They were as
excited over moving to their grandparents' as she was over her move to town.

Dallace, her oldest, watched as Mae Lee ran a hot iron over a small bunch of cedar tree branches piled on the makeshift ironing board. Mae Lee explained that the cedar branches not only cleared away sticky starch from the iron, it also made the clothes smell good.

On the day they were to leave, her husband worked outside on his old car, fixing something under the hood, while she dressed. Mae Lee packed what she felt was her best, and searched through her old dresser drawers for a piece of taffeta ribbon to try and anchor a bow in her baby's few strands of hair. “We want Daddy to let people see his baby is a little girl.”

Mae Lee heard Jeff's car crank up. “Come, baby,” she said, wedging a soft little foot into a freshly polished white shoe, “Daddy's waiting for us.”

She paused to look in a smoke-stained mirror with splotches of peeling in the back. She turned her head until she could see her face, adjusted her navy straw hat with the red plastic cherries to just the right angle. And with baby in one arm, a suitcase closed and tied with a leather belt in the other, she turned for a final look in the mirror.

She no longer heard the car running and she guessed Jeff had only started it to make sure it would crank, and was coming inside for her.

She heard footsteps on the porch. “Jeff,” she called out, “come and get the suitcase. We have to stop by Mama's. I forgot and left the new baby blankets down there.”

Her mama's image, not Jeff's, appeared in the mirror. “What
ails you, child?” Her mama frowned. “Talking to yourself like some addle-minded woman.” She didn't wait for her daughter to answer. “Guess I'd be a little ‘off' too if I had to put up with the likes of Jeff Barnes.”

Mae Lee held her baby close. “Mama, he's taking us with him this time. We'll be back for the children as soon as we can get settled. I promise. They won't be too much trouble. You know they are good children.”

Vergie Hudson sat on the foot of the iron-poster bed. She hugged her arms tightly across her chest and pulled her mouth in at the corners. She always did that when she was making serious talk.

“Go see for yourself,” she said quietly, then moved quickly to take her grandbaby from her daughter's arms. Mae Lee did not move.

Her mama relaxed the tightness of her lips. She cradled the baby's pretty, perfectly shaped head in both hands. “We've shaped it just right,” she said, as if she'd ever allowed her daughter to dare touch the baby's head. All Mae Lee had been told to do was to turn the baby every so often when it lay in its little homemade crib, and never to drop it.

“Well, anyway,” she went on, “your daddy just happened to glance out the window and saw Jeff turning his car around in the front yard. He didn't think a thing till he turned it off and started pushing it, then jumped in and let it coast down the hill. Then, hold the lamb, the fool cranked the car up and took off like the devil chasing lightning. Your poor daddy shook his head. ‘That snake in the grass is slipping off from my baby girl,' he said. ‘He is leaving her. And I'll bet my baby don't even suspect, don't even suspect.'” Mae Lee's mama licked her
lips and rubbed her pointing finger across them. “Now, what do you have to say to that?”

“Jeff's probably gone to buy some gas, Mama.”

Mae Lee's mama shook her head, “Honey, honey. At the end of the dirt road is the highway. If you turn right you're headed north, if you turn left you're headed south to town. The gas station's in town. Jeff Barnes was heading north.”

Mae Lee didn't turn to face her mama; she just closed her eyes and gave herself a good personal silent cussing out. To think, she told herself, that I actually prayed, prayed day and night, for him to return alive from the war.

She stood there, her eyes fixed on her own image in the mirror, a grown woman with tears making paths down through a layer of Sweet Georgia Brown face powder, crying when no one was dead. A grown woman crying over a man who no longer wanted her. She made no effort to straighten her navy straw hat, terribly crooked on her head because of her baby's attempts to reach the red cherries.

She wanted to run beyond the small branch of water just below her house to the banks of the big river and throw herself into the flowing waters. She wanted to scream out to her mama to leave. But she stood and listened, ashamed to turn and face her mama, forgetting that the mirror fully revealed her intense pain and shame.

Her mama laid her grandbaby on the bed and stood beside Mae Lee. She looked at her daughter's tear-streaked face in the mirror. She wanted to take her child in her arms and comfort her, but Mae Lee's eyes told her no. It was the time for both of them to be strong.

Her mama started pulling her mouth in at the corners again.
“I tried to warn you about that Barnes boy,” she fussed. She hadn't, but Mae Lee was not about to say so. You don't tell your mama to her face what she did or didn't say, not even when you are old enough to be a mama yourself. Not even when you know for a fact she didn't say it.

“You were not the only one. There was your friend, Doris Ann. Her mama tried to tell her about them Barnes boys, too. But no, you both wouldn't listen. Good-looking boys with eyes that light color, a high-brown complexion and good hair on their head don't spell nothing but trouble. Everybody knows it. Everybody but young girls who won't listen to their mamas and go fool crazy over them. You know what happened to Doris Ann—well, it's happened to you.”

Mae Lee wanted to remind her mama that she didn't exactly have dark eyes, either. White folks called Mae Lee's eyes hazel. At least that's what the woman put on her job application. But still she said nothing. You didn't talk back to your mama. A daughter wasn't supposed to.

Mae Lee watched her mama in the mirror. The cracked mirror gave extra anger lines to her mama's face, already blown up with contempt. She wondered what her mama would have done if her daughter'd been like a certain war bride down the road. With a husband away at war, there she was, stealing every forbidden moment she could to be with one of the handsome young German POW's brought in by the hundreds to harvest seasonal crops. Now, you talk about strange-colored eyes. It was a good thing the girl's mama hurried up and got her out of Rising Ridge. No telling what color of eyes the baby that girl was expecting would end up with. If that had been
her—her mama would have had something to see. She would have died.

Vergie observed her daughter lost in thought and eyed her suspiciously.

“Is there another young'un on the way?”

“No, ma'am. I don't think so.”

“Well, there is one on the way. You'll find out soon enough.”

“Oh, Mama, do you really think I'm pregnant again?”

Her mama raised her eyes upward. “Why certainly. You married a Barnes, didn't you?” She turned to look at her sleeping grandbaby. She shook her head. “But, oh Lord, them Barnes boys do make pretty babies.”

Mae Lee started undressing her baby girl. Her tears still flowed. She cried not for him but for herself. Nobody used Mae Lee. “The war changed him,” she said slowly. “It was the war, Mama. After the war, Mama, there was this new way about him. I could never get used to it. He was always on the move. Always in a rush to go someplace. He was shell-shocked. And you know what that will do to any able-bodied man.”

It had not all been bad. There had been times when things were good between them, warm and easy, like well-worn soft leather gloves. And there were her babies. Five healthy, beautiful children.

Vergie Hudson looked about her daughter's small room. She fingered the fringed dresser scarf and looked at the fancy pincushions, the round, cardboard Coty dusting powder box, the comb, brush, and mirror dresser set, and the blue bottle of Evening in Paris perfume. “Your husband may not have written
you letters but he sure was thinking about you. He bought you some right nice presents,” she said.

Mae Lee's voice quivered, she was crying again. “He said he did write letters to me, Mama, but his spelling was so bad he was ashamed to mail them, so he tore the letters up.”

“Huh,” her mama grunted, “like you couldn't have made out what he was trying to say. I wish he'd have mailed them. Oh, how my heart ached for you.”

“Jeff has been shell-shocked, Mama,” she repeated. That was safe. Mae Lee didn't tell her mother that during all the years Jeff Barnes was in the army he had never left the supply department where he sewed on buttons and rank stripes. And that she, not her husband, had bought those things.

Mae Lee's mama started to moan softly. She moved to her daughter's side and put her arms around her daughter, patting and rubbing her back as if she were a baby needing to be burped. “He'll come back, baby,” her mother soothed. “He will come back to his little sweet family.”

Mae Lee pulled away. She no longer cried. “Maybe he will come back, Mama, but he will never come back to me,” she said firmly. She took her hat off and pulled her long hair into a braid. “The first thing I'll do tomorrow is ask Daddy to put new locks on the doors. I don't ever want to see Jeff Barnes again in this life.”