Lily of the Springs (18 page)

I threw the dishtowel at him. “Oh,
go to hell
!” Never in my life had I ever said such a thing to another living soul, but this time, Jake had gone too far. I headed for the door.

He moved like a flash of lightning, his hand curling around my upper arm, nails digging into my tender flesh. He wrenched me toward him so that his face was inches from mine. I flinched at the sour smell of wine on his breath. The grin had disappeared from his face. His eyes blazed. “It’s a damn good thing you’re pregnant,” he said. “Or I’d have to teach you a lesson about sassing me.”

I stared back at him defiantly, but my heart was hammering. “Let go of me, Jake.”

For a moment, our gazes remained locked. Jake’s grip on my arm didn’t loosen. My free hand cradled my bulging belly protectively. I didn’t really think he’d hurt me or the baby, but his drinking changed his personality. Anything could happen when he was drunk.

But then I saw the flexed muscle in his jaw relax. He released me. “I’ll let it go this time, Lily Rae. I reckon all them raging hormones you got these days make you say stupid things. Just watch your mouth next time, okay?”

I couldn’t trust myself to speak. Instead, I gave him a withering look and turned toward the kitchen door. But before I could step out into the hall, Jake spoke again, “Hey, if you want to play the part of a little handmaiden, you just keep on being friendly with Miss Shit Don’t Stink Betty Kelly. But don’t be invitin’ them over here anymore, you hear? I have to kiss them officer’s asses at work. I sure as shit don’t intend to do it at home.”

I
had no intention of breaking off my friendship with Betty. The girl had been nothing but kind to me, and it didn’t matter a bit to me if she was an officer’s wife. Who cared about stupid Army rules, anyway? After all,
I
wasn’t in the Army; Jake was. So I’d be darned if I let the Army tell me who I could or couldn’t be friends with.

The Monday after the Friday night the Kelly’s had come over, Betty knocked on the door a few minutes after Jake left for the post. With the baby in her arms and a bottle of formula stuck in his mouth, she settled herself down at the kitchen table just as she usually did, talking a mile a minute while waiting for me to pour her a cup of coffee. With Jake’s sharp words ringing in my mind, I couldn’t help but feel awkward with my friend. And Betty picked up on it right away.

There was a soft pop from Davy’s mouth as she withdrew the bottle, and with a practiced movement, she positioned the baby on her left shoulder and began to pat his back, eyeing me from across the table. “What’s up with you, kid? You’ve been acting like the cat’s got your tongue since I walked in. What’s wrong?”

And I blurted it all out—everything Jake had said about Army rules and how we weren’t supposed to socialize with officers and their wives.

“Well,” Betty said when I finished. “That’s about the biggest load of crap I’ve ever heard in my life.”

And as if to second that motion, Davy let out an explosive burp and looked around the room with his bird-bright eyes as if to ask, “Who did that?” Betty and I stared at each other, and then burst out laughing. That’s when I knew she’d be my friend for life, despite Jake’s feelings.

Almost a month had passed since that morning, and Betty had become a mentor of sorts, teaching me to become more grown up and independent and to learn to think of myself as Jake’s partner in life, not his doormat. There was one more thing Betty had taught me, and that was how to drive a car.

She’d taken me down to the DMV where I’d applied for a learner’s permit, and that very afternoon, I’d found myself behind the wheel of the Kelly’s ’51 Packard convertible in a deserted church parking lot with Betty sitting next to me and teaching me the basics.

And today…

I stepped into the DMV waiting room and triumphantly waved a sheet of paper at Betty who was pacing the floor with an irritable Davy.

“I passed,” I called out.

A delighted grin crossed her face and she gave me a thumbs up. “Good for you, hon,” She raised her voice over the baby’s whimpering. “I knew you would.”

“I just have to go get my picture taken. Shouldn’t be much longer.”

When the man behind the counter gave me the license, I saw that my picture wasn’t half-bad. In fact, I looked healthier and prettier than a ripe peach in a Georgia orchard.

Pregnancy agreed with me, I realized. Once the morning sickness had gone away, I’d started to enjoy being pregnant. And Jake was beginning to enjoy it, too. Well, maybe not
enjoy
it, but he’d certainly been lavishing attention on me lately. Since the baby had become so active, he’d started taking an uncharacteristic interest in my growing belly. The first time he felt the baby kick, a grin had spread across his face as wide as the Red River that flowed north of Texarkana. And one evening last week, he’d sat in the bathroom with me as I reclined in the tub and watched my belly go up and down like the baby was riding a bicycle in there, and the whole time, he seemed as fascinated as a boy with his first train set. He hadn’t been drinking as much lately either. I didn’t know why, and honestly, I didn’t
care
why. I was just glad because he was a lot easier to get along with when he wasn’t drinking. Maybe he was finally realizing it was time to settle down and take some responsibilities as a grown-up.

Heading back to the waiting room, I thought about the evening ahead. It was pay-day, and Jake had promised to take me into Texarkana to see “Titanic” which had just opened at The Paramount on Main Street. I’d been dying to see it since I’d first heard it was coming out.

Across the waiting room, Betty smiled when I walked in, waving my license. She rushed over and gave me a hug, squashing a disgruntled Davy between us. “I’m so proud of you, hon.”

My happiness dimmed a bit as I wished fervently that I could invite Betty and Eddie to join us at the movies tonight. But that’s one thing Jake would never change his mind about. He wanted nothing to do with the Kelly’s. So I’d learned to keep my mouth shut about Betty and our friendship.

If that was what it took to keep the peace, then that’s what I’d do.

***

We stepped out of the movie theater into the chill of a rainy March night, along with the rest of the crowd who’d just watched “Titanic” in a packed auditorium. As the cold rain pounded against me, I caught my breath and tried to pull my short wool car coat closer around me, even though I knew it would be a futile attempt. My tummy had grown so big I couldn’t get the darn coat buttoned.

“Stay here,” Jake said, dropping my hand. “I’ll go get the car.”

“
No
!” I grabbed his coat sleeve. “I’ll get just as wet standing here than if we go together.” I didn’t want to admit it to him, but I couldn’t quite shake the country girl fear of being alone in a big city at night.

Jake shrugged. “Alright, let’s go.”

The car was parked just down the street, not even half a block away. We’d be there in no time. But still, I couldn’t wait until we got in the car to talk about the movie. Why, it had been the best picture show I’d ever seen!

“Oh, Jake, it was just so sad,” I wailed as we scurried down the sidewalk, heads bent against the rain.

If Jake made a response to my comment about the movie, I didn’t hear it because I was distracted by something happening inside my body. It was a queer feeling down there in my nether regions—a warm wetness between my legs, like I’d sprung a leak or something. I kept walking, though, a step or two behind Jake’s long stride. But when he opened the car door for me, (something he’d only started to do lately) the fluid seeping into the crotch of my panties turned into a hot gush.

“Oh,
Lord!
” I clutched at my belly. “
Jake
!”

“What?” He stared at me, the rain pelting his face, flattening his Brille-Cremed hair against his skull.

I felt a half-hysterical urge to giggle as the river of liquid ran down my nylon-clad legs. “
I think my water broke
!”

***

“Oh,
dear God! Jake, I can’t take it anymore! I gotta push. I
gotta
!”

With one hand flattened on the dashboard, I tried to maintain my balance as Jake took a curve on two wheels, or so it seemed. Beneath my saturated skirt, I felt the baby’s head bulging against my vaginal wall as if it was bound and determined to escape its womb.

“
No
!” Jake yelled. “Hold on another minute! I see the lights of Hot Springs just down the hill.”

“I
can’t
hold on!” I moaned as another excruciating pain tightened its vice-like grip around my mid-section. “It’s
comin
, I tell you!”

“We’re here, Lily Rae! Hush, now! There’s the sign for the hospital. Just another minute, okay?” Jake hunched over the steering wheel, trying to see through the rain.

Through half-slitted eyes, I saw the illuminated red letters—
Emergency
! The words shimmered and danced in front of my eyes as yet another pain sank its vengeful teeth into my womb on the heels of the one that had just eased. I dug my nails into the arm rest and lifted my bottom from the seat, searching for some kind of relief.

And then I was alone in the car. Leaving the motor running, Jake had run into the emergency room entrance—to get a doctor or nurse, I hoped.

I squeezed my eyes shut, moaning. A moment…an hour later—I didn’t know how much time had passed—I heard a kind, feminine voice. “Okay, honey. It’s going to be just fine. I need you to help me get you into this wheelchair.”

Another pain was gearing up, and I knew it was now or never. If I didn’t get in that wheelchair, this baby was going to be born right here in the front seat.

Drawing strength from somewhere, I eased out of the car, and with the help of the kind-faced brunette nurse, I dropped into the seat of the wheelchair, and just like that, I was being whisked into the ER. That’s when I realized Jake wasn’t with me.

Wild-eyed, I looked back. He was getting into the driver’s side of the car.

“I’ll go park the car,” he shouted over the sound of the drilling rain. “And then come looking for you.”

By the time I saw my husband again, Debra Ann Tatlow was almost ten hours old.

***

“Ah, she sure is a pretty one, that babe is. Look at all that golden hair.”

I looked up at the coffee-skinned army nurse and gave her a shy smile. “Thank you kindly. She’s the spittin’ image of my baby brother, Charles Alton. He died when he was only two.”

The smile disappeared from the nurse’s face. She folded her arms across her generous bosom, her chocolate eyes glimmering with sympathy. “Well, now…that’s a real tragedy, honey.”

“I know.” My gaze returned to my baby. Debby Ann’s eyes were closed as she sucked rhythmically on her bottle of formula. Her delicate eyelids looked as fragile as a butterfly’s wings. My heart welled with love. “I always thought I understood how awful it was for my mother—losing Charles Alton like she did,” I murmured. “But now I know I had no idea how much she must’ve been hurting.”

The nurse didn’t speak for a moment, but just gazed down at us, a compassionate look on her pretty brown face. She heaved a sigh and said, “The Lord works in mysterious ways, and sometimes that means folks have to suffer.”

I looked at her. Something in the tone of her voice told me she’d done her share of suffering. I wanted to ask her to tell her story, but I just couldn’t make myself do it. Captain Johnson, RN, was the first Negro woman I’d ever actually met. Oh, I’d seen a few dark-skinned people during the few weeks I’d spent in Louieville; there had even been a Negro girl in my secretarial school. But this was my first opportunity to actually talk with one. And Captain Johnson had been just as sweet as shoofly pie, but still, I felt a little awkward with her.

This morning right before shift change, Captain Waldman, the nurse who’d delivered Debby Ann—because the doctor didn’t get there in time--had brought Captain Johnson into the maternity ward, saying she was going to be taking over for her, and if I needed anything, just give her a holler. I’d still been drowsy from the sleeping pill they’d given me, and all I’d remembered from the encounter was a pretty dark face smiling down at me, and a gentle touch on the top of my head.

An hour later, the captain had come in again, delivering breakfast trays to me and another woman who’d been brought in sometime after I’d fallen asleep in the early hours of the morning. The tousle-haired blond refused her tray, but I discovered I was ravenous. I hadn’t eaten anything since the popcorn at the movie show last night. We’d been planning to stop at White Castle for a couple of hamburgers on our way home, but Debby Ann had vetoed that idea.

With barely contained amusement, Captain Johnson had watched me scarf down two scrambled eggs, two slices of toast, a mound of hash browns and four slices of crisp bacon, and then wash it all down with a tall glass of chilled orange juice. It was almost the best breakfast I’d ever tasted—except for the hundred or so Mother had made every morning from the earliest I could remember.

“Well, that’s a first,” Captain Johnson said as she removed my tray. “I’ve finally met a girl who has an appetite to rival my teenage son’s.”

I let out an unladylike belch, and daintily dabbed at my mouth with a napkin. “I reckon birthing babies works up a mighty hefty appetite.”

The nurse chuckled. “Well, I reckon it does.”

Ten minutes ago, Captain Johnson had brought in Debby Ann for her first feeding, showing me how to hold her and how to give her the bottle. I’d seen my mother breastfeeding Norry and the two younger boys; not one of us had been raised without the breast. For a while, I’d considered breastfeeding. But after talking to Betty, and reading articles in different magazines, I’d decided to be a modern mother and give my baby the best. All those vitamins and minerals they put in baby formula had to be better than what came out of me, I reckoned. Besides, according to Betty, it was just so much easier to use a bottle—except for the sterilizing, of course.