Miss Julia Rocks the Cradle (14 page)

“How long do you think we’ll be without power?” I asked as Coleman gave his full attention to his driving. Lloyd hung over the front seat, breathing excitedly through his mouth.

“Couple of days,” Coleman said. “Maybe more. Almost the whole county is out, except for spots here and there. Binkie says ours is still on, but who knows for how long. Duke Power has crews working, and they’re calling others in, but it’ll be a while before everybody’s back on line.”

“Well,” I said, glancing at the tired lines around his eyes, “I know you’ve been out all night rescuing people, and thank goodness you were or we’d’ve been up a creek. And I know you need to go to bed, but do you think Sam’s house might have power?”

He didn’t answer for a few seconds as he maneuvered a tricky curve into the hospital parking lot. “Depends on what grid his house is on. The linemen are already getting Main Street up and running, so his may come in on that. Yours too, for that matter. Still, it’s worth looking into. Want me to go by and see?”

“Oh, Coleman, would you?” I rummaged in my pocketbook and brought out a set of Sam’s keys. “I just happen to have these with me. If his heat is on, would you let Lillian know so she and Latisha can go over there?”

“If it’s on, I’ll get them there.”

I could only murmur, “Thank you.” I hated asking another thing of him—he needed to be in bed.

As Coleman aimed for the emergency entrance, which had been thoroughly scraped and salted, Lloyd, who’d been unnaturally quiet, said, “I can hardly believe I’ve got two sisters, can you, Miss Julia?”

Before I could answer, Coleman said, “You’re in for a treat, Lloyd. There’s nothing like a little baby girl, and you have two of them. I call Gracie my Everything Girl, and you’ll feel that way about your sisters. You might’ve wanted a little brother or two, but believe me, girls will steal your heart.”

“Well, I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I was kinda counting on at least one little brother, but I’m trying to be content in whatsoever state I find myself.”

I glanced sharply at him. “Who’s been teaching your Sunday school class?”

“Mrs. Ledbetter.”

Uh-huh,
I thought. “Well,” I said aloud, “far be it from me to contradict her, but consider this: if everybody remained content in whatsoever state they found themselves, nothing would ever get discovered, invented, completed, improved, or done. There’s more to knowing Bible verses, Lloyd, than simply being able to repeat them.” I gathered my pocketbook as Coleman, a smile lurking at the corners of his mouth, pulled to a stop beside the emergency entrance. “You have to rightly discern the word of truth. Thank you so much, Coleman. Would you like to come in and see the babies?”

“No’m, I better get on. I’ll get the suitcases inside for you if you and Lloyd can manage after that. Then I’ll check on Sam’s house and Lillian.”

I opened the door and considered the long slide to the ground. “You’ve been a wonderful help, Coleman. We’d still be stranded at home if not for you.”

“I’m just glad you didn’t try to get out on your own. There were more than a hundred wrecks in the county last night, and by this time I’m feeling like a regular Saint Bernard.” He grinned, then hurried to my side of the truck just in time to save me from an embarrassing fall as my feet slid out from under me.

Having received directions to Hazel Marie’s room, Lloyd and I rode the elevator to the maternity floor, our hands and arms laden with suitcase, makeup case, and a grocery sack of Etta Mae’s clothes. Lloyd was having a hard time half carrying and half sliding his mother’s suitcase along. It had been packed and ready for weeks, and from the weight of the thing, she’d prepared for a lengthy hospital stay.

I tapped on her door, then pushed it open. She was asleep and so was Etta Mae, who was curled up in a large upholstered chair over in the corner.

Before I could stop him, Lloyd ran to the bed. “Mama?” he whispered.

She came awake immediately and clasped him in a loving hug. He had about outgrown such affectionate maternal displays and usually slithered away from them. But not this morning. He not only endured, he hugged her back.

“Have you seen your sisters?” Hazel Marie asked.

“No, we came straight here. But, Mama, I didn’t know a thing until Latisha woke me up this morning. I sure wish I’d been there when they came.”

“Well, you were,” Hazel Marie said. “You were upstairs, right over our heads. And, Lloyd, they came so fast that nobody had time to do anything else. But I was thinking about you the whole time.”

Etta Mae stirred in the chair and came awake with a wide, uncovered yawn. “Hey, Miss Julia. Man, I’m glad to see you and my clothes.” She laughed. “I’m not used to running around in my pajamas half the day. Hey, Lloyd. Let me get dressed, and I’ll take you to the nursery to see the babies.”

I gave her the grocery sack and she went into the bathroom to get dressed. “Hazel Marie,” I said, walking to the foot of the bed, “I brought your makeup case.”

“Oh good. I don’t feel right without my face on. Did you talk to J.D.? What did he say?”

“He said he’d be here sometime this morning, but I tell you, Hazel Marie, the roads are bad and it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s later than that. I’d worry about his driving if Sam wasn’t with him. He won’t let Mr. Pickens take any chances. But tell me,” I went on, “how’re you feeling this morning?”

“Sorta like my granddaddy used to say: like I’ve been rode hard and put up wet.” She smiled, lighting up her pale face. “But oh so happy that they’re here and everything’s all right. I just wish J.D. had been home.”

“Well, Mama,” Lloyd said, “Miss Julia said that having babies is woman’s work, so you pro’bly would’ve let him sleep through it too.”

Hazel Marie reached up and stroked the side of his face. “I probably would’ve.”

But I knew better. If Mr. Pickens had been there, he’d have been in the thick of it, getting in the way, insisting on driving her to the hospital—tree blocking the drive or not—giving orders without knowing a thing about what was taking place, and generally making a nuisance of himself.

On second thought, however, it struck me that contrary to his usual take-charge manner, he might’ve been reduced to a quivering mass of nerves, completely unable to face up to the consequences of his actions. It would’ve been interesting to have seen his reaction to a home delivery, but I hoped to high heaven that Hazel Marie had had her last one because, interesting or not, I could do without seeing what he would do.

Etta Mae dashed out of the bathroom, fully clothed, including her pointy-toed boots. “Thanks so much, Miss Julia, for bringing my toothbrush and comb. I’m feeling halfway human again.” She turned to Lloyd. “Ready to see those babies?”

“Yes, ma’am!
Come on, Miss Julia, let’s go see ’em.”

Etta Mae led us to the end of the hall, where she stopped at a wide window that was covered with blinds. She tapped on a door and asked if we could see the Pickens twins. Then the three of us stood before the covered window waiting for the curtain to go up. When it did, we saw a row of bassinets, each with a swaddled baby in it. The nurse pointed to the two right in front of us, but I declare, I had to take her word for it. I wouldn’t have been able to pick them out from any of the others.

Lloyd gasped at the sight and pressed his face against the window. In an awed voice, he said, “They’re so little.”

After he’d steamed up the window, he turned to Etta Mae. “Why’ve they got those little caps on?”

“That’s to keep them warm,” she said.

“Oh.” He gazed at the babies again until one of them yawned and the other screwed up its face. “Oh look! One’s sleepy and one’s about to cry. Is it all right?”

“They’re both fine,” Etta Mae assured him. “And if you watch long enough, you might see them smile in their sleep.” She paused. “That means they have gas.”

“My goodness,” I murmured. But I was as awed as Lloyd was. I could hardly take in the presence of these two little ones in our lives. And all because Wesley Lloyd Springer, my first unlamented husband, hadn’t been able to walk the walk as well as he’d talked the talk. Because he’d taken Hazel Marie to his adulterous bed, then left her and his son penniless, which brought them as a last resort to my door, I now had a life richer than any wealth he could have left. And he’d been no slouch when it came to amassing worldly goods.

It did my heart good to know that he’d be gnashing his teeth if he knew where and to whom his money had gone.

Actually, whenever I was able to take a cosmic view of things, I had to laugh at what Wesley Lloyd had unwittingly wrought in my life, even though I well knew that my welfare had been the last thing on his mind during his dalliance with Hazel Marie.

It just goes to show, as Emma Sue Ledbetter was known to say, that all things work together for good. I’d once made it my business to look up that verse and found that she often left off the last part of it. But that didn’t matter, the last part of the verse assured me that I still qualified for having things work out for good, anyway.

By the time we got back to Hazel Marie’s room, she had finished her beauty regimen and had her bed cranked up behind her back. She looked considerably better than she had the night before, but the circles were still under her eyes and tired lines marked her face. And no wonder. If I’d gone through what she had—and without a whiff of anesthesia, mind you—I’d have looked worse than the wreck of the
Hesperus.

She stopped brushing her hair and held out a hand to Lloyd. “Did you see them, honey?”

“Yes’m, and I still can’t believe it. One of ’em was fixing to cry and the other one was yawning.”

Etta Mae stood behind Lloyd with her hands resting on his shoulders. “They were waking up and about to let us know they’re hungry. The nurses will be bringing them in to your mother pretty soon.”

“Well, but,” Lloyd said, “how’re we going to tell which one is which? They both looked alike to me.”

My eyes got wide and something dropped in the pit of my stomach. Had we mixed them up to begin with? How in the world would we be able to tell one from the other?

Etta Mae laughed. “Lillian and I made sure we knew which was which, don’t worry about that. By now, though, the nurses will have little pink bracelets on their arms. One will say Baby Girl Pickens One and the other will say Baby Girl Pickens Two.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Lloyd said, but it wasn’t to me because I hadn’t seen Lillian or Etta Mae do a thing to distinguish those babies. All I knew was that I had held the firstborn, then we’d given both to Hazel Marie while we waited for Coleman. And for the life of me, I couldn’t remember which baby was which after that.

“I tell you what,” Lloyd said to his mother. “When you pick out their names, we can put them on their bracelets. So I think you better do that as soon as you can.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking about names,” Hazel Marie said. “But I can’t decide. For one thing, I really didn’t expect to have to name two little girls. If one had been a boy, I was going to name it for J.D., and if it’d been two boys, the other would be for Mr. Sam.”

My goodness, that pleased me enormously, as I knew it would Sam as well. Too bad that it was water over the dam now.

“And,” Hazel Marie went on, “I’d about decided on Britney if only one had been a girl.” She stopped and thought about it. “I guess I was counting on one of each, now that I think about it. They’d have been Jamie and Britney.”

Well, I declare,
I thought, so Mr. Pickens’s first name was James. That was a good, strong name. I couldn’t, however, say the same for Britney. I so wanted to caution Hazel Marie about choosing a name that would date the child. A name made popular by some flash in the pan quickly goes out of fashion, while the child remains burdened with it. What, I wanted to know, was wrong with good old-fashioned names like Mary or Alice or Elizabeth?