JEWEL (13 page)

But I could still hear the crack of the belt, the howls, heard them go on and on, finally losing track of who was who crying out in the dark.

*

The next morning, there on her bed lay Cleopatra, her face toward me, eyes shut deep in sleep, her mouth open. She had on her nightshirt, her sheets bunched up around her feet, her hands tight together at her chest.

I looked to Bessy’s bed, saw her there, her face away from me, blanket and sheet pulled up tight to her neck. The blanket moved up and down with her slow breaths in and out.

Although I’d listened what seemed all night long for them to come in, I’d heard nothing, and for a moment I wondered if everything I’d seen last night had really happened.

Then the two of them rolled over in their sleep, and I saw the truth, Bessy rolled over toward me, and here came her face, the welts from last night given over to blue bruises, eyes swelled slits, her lips puffed up and near-black, cheeks not cheeks at all anymore, only fat skin bruised and bruised.

I looked at Cleopatra, already struggling in her sleep to roll over away from me, her eyes still closed, her mouth still open. She lifted her head an inch or so from the pillow, turned, and I saw the back of her head, a huge gauze bandage taped on to bare skin there. They’d shaved off her ponytails.

When they awoke, the world was different, Bessy and Cleopatra were suddenly best friends, the two of them never apart, though it took three or four weeks for Bessy’s face to come back to normal, and though there was a place on her left eyebrow where it’d split in two and that kept her forever touching a wetted finger there to try and get the hairs to fall together, Cleopatra’s hair was months in growing back, the square of shaved head hid as best she could by piling and pinning the top and sides back.

But I’d been given the role of follower, me the one behind on the morning walks round campus, Cleopatra and Bessy ahead of me and laughing and giggling along.

Cleopatra Sinclair was the only person could even come close to my calling a sister, and she’d been stolen away from me with the slap of fists, the mixing of their blood as they fought. There’d come out of their being whipped a new bond, something I knew I’d never formed yet with anyone, never would unless I surrendered to whatever passion it was the two of them set free in that fight. My days from then on were spent even more alone, me buried deep in the same kind of solitude I’d carried since my brother’d died, an unrecognizable solitude, as much a part of me as the color of my hair, the shape of my lips, my brother always and only the memory of a baby on a daddy’s knee, and of him sleeping away in a cradle, breathing in and breathing out. l Jr Wrl That was my only history of the love of a brother that vague picture in my head or the love of a sister the picture of Cleopatra there with Bessy Swansea. The two of them always walked ahead of me, me there with my arms crossed against my chest, my eyes to the ground, while the two of them set about making themselves their own sisters.

It was blood to forge that bond, I finally knew, my baby Annie here asleep next to me now, blood coursing through her as she breathe in and out herself, the light outside the window gone, night on us. It was blood that brought us all alive, as alive as the soft memory of my baby brother, his blood and mine what kept him alive in my head. Blood, too, as red as the blood on the hands of the doctor who’d held up my newest baby, asleep in the cradle next to me, and slapped her into this world.

Blood part me, part Leston flowing through the bodies of all our children. It was that blood that made us all whole, made us this family, the Hilburns, these six children, and my husband, and me.

Cathe ral came into the bedroom then, touched my shoulder in the dark, whispered, “Miss Jewel, wake up. Time for supper.”

“I’m awake, ” I whispered, and suddenly the world came crystal clear to me, everything around me and everything that’d ever happened to me solid and worth keeping.

“Cathe ral, ” I whispered, and she gave my shoulder a gentle squeeze.

“Twenty-two hours, ” I whispered. “And now God’s smiling.”

I thought I could see her smile in the dark. She whispered, “You put in the work, and now God given you a beautiful child.”

I nodded, whispered, “Six of them, ” touched Annie’s warm body next to me, but still on my heart the stone of James being gone.

She held her hand on my shoulder a moment longer before she stood, slowly moved to the door. “Yo’ supper be up in a minute. Meantime you be keeping it quiet like you been.”

“Six of them, ” I whispered loud enough for her to hear, and she stopped in the doorway. She looked back, one hand on the doorjamb.

I heard from downstairs Burton say, “First dibs on the legs, ” then Wilman whine, “Me first, ” and Leston, “Boys.”

“Smiling, ” she whispered.

Annie moved in her sleep, an arm onto my lap, and I touched her hair, smiled myself. l CHAPTER 8.

STILL BRENDA KAY SLEPT, ON THROUGH THE REST OF OCTOBER, AND then into November, me by that time thanking even more my God for the blessing of a child who took so little tending. And she was a blessing, certainly, four children all growing bigger, calling for more of me with each next morning, Cathe ral slowly disappearing from us, her help around the place falling away as it did after the birth of each new child. By early December, I was only seeing her every now and again, word of her and her boys and how they were all doing coming to me through Leston through Nelson, and there were days when I wondered if I might even see her again, this new sleepy child my last baby.

So that the blessing of Brenda Kay sleeping was only magnified, I had time for mending, time for tutoring the boys and Billie Jean with their homework, time for Annie, who’d taken to napping with me each afternoon, the three of us Brenda Kay, Annie, me a sort of girls’ club for sleep.

None of my other children’d slept through until at least five months, Wilman not until he was eleven months, and there were cold mornings now when I would wake and realize I’d forgotten about the baby in the cradle next to me. But then my breasts would start to filling, and I would roust Brenda Kay out, her eyes opening for a few minutes, eyes the closest to Leston’s green of any of the children, and she would start to feed. She was healthy, ate just as much as any of them had.

She was a little small, and those fingers curled into her hands seldom unfolded, but I counted all this a blessing. She was a different child was all, maybe my change of life baby, and I wondered how delicate her skin might be when she grew up, if she would be as beautiful as her namesake, have as many boys following her home as Leston told me his sister had.

By late December she was awake an hour or two a day, and on Christmas morning I dressed Brenda Kay up in the silliest thing I’d ever paid for, a red flannel outfit, more a sack with arms, around the collar and at the wrists puffs of white cotton, along with it came a little red flannel nightcap, a cotton puff at the end. Before I let anyone downstairs to see what Santa’d brought, I laid Brenda Kay on the bed, Leston already down in the front room and stoking the fire, the children stamping like horses, ready to run. But I took my time with Brenda Kay, this her first Christmas ever, and once I’d gotten her dolled up I couldn’t help but laugh at this little elf on my bed.

I picked her up, held her with her head at my shoulder, and opened the door.

“Go ahead, ” I said, and all four of them tore off down the stairs.

Leston was the only one dressed, him in his overalls and a red corduroy shirt. The tree was set up in the far corner, before the front window, on it the strings of popcorn we’d made the day after school got out, here and there ornaments we’d gotten over the years. Nothing like what I saw in the magazines, not in Saturday Evening Post or the ads in the Reader’s Digest or the occasional Life I’d pick up when we took the children into Purvis Saturday afternoons for the matinee. In all those magazines the trees were lost in too much glitter and light and tinsel.

But our tree, I knew, looked as trees ought, something clean and different in the house, a guest here, rooms filled more than ever with the smell of pine.

The children went at their presents, each lost for a while in them, Wilman and Burton both got shiny new pocket knives, Billie Jean a hairbrush and mirror, Annie a store-bought doll with two outfits. Next they took in to the stockings above the fireplace, Burton first to upend his on the floor, treasure spread before him, a pack of Beeman’s, chocolate candy coins, three new red pencils, a gum eraser, a tangerine.

Then Wilman dumped his, got instead of the Beemans a pack of Juicy Fruit, instead of the gum eraser a ruler, and though I knew the differences in their gifts would start a fight, I didn’t care. Juicy Fruit was for my baby boy, Beeman’s for my little man.

And I thought of James, wondered if this morning somewhere south of the equator where, he’d written last week, it was dead summer, he were opening the package we’d sent him, a new razor and strop, a Whitman’s Sampler, and pictures of home drawn by the boys, Annie choosing instead to draw a picture of the three of us asleep of an afternoon, no difference in our sizes, just two stick bodies Lying on a stick bedframe, another stick body in a stick cradle next to it, all of it drawn with a green crayon. Billie Jean had written him a long letter, and I was proud of her for that, for taking four nights to write it.

I’d wanted to look over it before I sent it, but she’d already sealed it in an envelope, across the front the word PERSONAL written in her teenage curlicues. She’d smiled when she gave it to me, and though I knew Leston wouldn’t have approved what, he’d wonder, did a sister have to say to her brother the rest of the family couldn’t hear? I’d only nodded, tucked it in with the rest of the package.

I imagined him there in a barrack or whatever it was they lived in, and opening the box, getting all those presents, sharing the chocolates.

Maybe he thumbtacked the pictures against a wall near where he slept, or maybe folded them up, placed them in his shirt pocket, him touching those pictures two or three times a day, making certain we were there with him.

I was sitting in my rocker now, Brenda Kay still against my shoulder.

Billie Jean took her stocking from its nail, knelt-with it. “Momma, ” she said, “I’m too old for this here, ” but she wasn’t even looking at me, only dumped the stocking out near as fast as the boys had. In hers was a roll of cherry Lifesavers, a little note from me saying I’d resubscribed to Photoplay for the next year, and a small compact of corn-silk powder, a tangerine.

She looked up at me when she saw the compact, then held it in her hand, opened it. She took out the little powder puff inside, lifted it to her face, held the mirror up, eyed herself. The movements were too quick, I saw, almost routine for her, and I hoped Leston hadn’t picked up on what I figured must be the fact she’d done this a hundred times already.

She stopped, looked to me again, then to Leston.

He was sitting in the chair next to the fireplace close enough to where he could lay in wood as he saw fit. But now he was looking at Billie Jean, his elbows on his knees and leaning forward a bit.

He looked at me. I’d bought it for her, hadn’t told him about it. I smiled, gently shrugged, Brenda Kay stirring a moment. I said, “Who can blame Santa Claus? ” He stared a minute more, then let his head fall, slowly shook it. When he looked up again, he was smiling, though I could see, too, he was trying to hold it back with a halfhearted grimace. He said, “You women.”

“Yes, ” I said, “we are.”

Billie Jean still held the puff near her face. Her eyes were huge, her mouth open.

“You’ll catch more flies than boys with your mouth hung open like that, ” Leston said.

Billie Jean’s cheeks went red. She stood, my oldest daughter, and I could see beneath the flannel the swell of her new breasts, the curve there. She’d begun her monthlies two years ago, but nothing had gone on up top for so long I hadn’t paid any attention. Now here she was on a Christmas morning, full on her way to the beautiful woman I knew she would turn out to be.

She came to me, gave a small kiss to my cheek, and smiled at me, at her daddy, then moved quick to the top of the stairs and for the privacy of her bedroom to try out her new toy. I’d have to show her sometime this afternoon the trick of how wet cherry Lifesavers worked near as well as lipstick if you did it right.

“Don’t you worry, ” I said to Leston. “She’ll grow up whether you forbid her to or not, so you might as well not worry yourself over it.

It’ll happen” He looked up at me, smiling, and nodded. He said, “Now what about presents for Momma? ” Wilman and Burton had their knives open, Burton with his cradled in both hands, Wilman with his in one hand, turning it this way and that.

Annie’d undressed the doll, held her naked in her arms, gently rocked her.

Leston looked up. “Well? ” Both boys snapped shut their knives.

They’d heard him, of course, but only played out the moment, what all children did, act as though you hadn’t heard, then go for as long as you could ignoring whatever command you’d been given, what was in your hand the center of the world at any given moment.

They crawled across the floor to the tree, and both pulled out presents for me, two small boxes wrapped in plain blue paper. The presents looked exactly alike. They always bought the same things for me, one year two sets of stationery with the exact same yellow lily design at the top, another year two tortoiseshell headbands, and I wondered what it might be this year, what Billie Jean had helped them pick out at the five and dime.

They crawled over to me, each with his closed knife tight in a fist.

Burton held his present out to me first, but Wilman pushed his arm aside, held out his.

“Wilman, ” I said, and he let out a heavy breath, pouted, sat back on his legs.

Burton held his present out to me, grinned.

“Thank you, ” I said, “but will you open it for me? ” I motioned with one hand at Brenda Kay. “My arms are a bit busy now.” I smiled.