Second House from the Corner (10 page)

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I didn't even bother meeting Shayla at the McDonald's. Couldn't muster up the energy to tell her what happened. When I got home, I ran the bathwater with the intention of drowning myself. I figured it was the best way to go. I wasn't one for a lot of blood, so I couldn't slice my wrist and bleed out. We don't have a gun in the house, and although Shayla's brother could probably supply me with one, I didn't want everyone in my suicide business. I thought about tying a noose around my neck and hanging from the ceiling, but that felt a little too Ku Klux Klan for me. Holding my head under the bathwater and letting my life go was the most logical thing to do. Nothing mattered now that Martin was gone.

With most of my body under the water, I said the Lord's Prayer, the Hail Mary, and then blessed myself with the sign of the cross. I took a few deep sighs, and just as I was about to plunge my head under the water, I spied a cockroach crawling from a crack in the wall right beside the tub. I hated cockroaches and I considered whether I should just go for it or kill him first because I didn't want him making his way into my water, messing up my death scene. That's when I heard a rattle in the door. It sounded like a key. Unaware that the bathroom door even had a key, I was stunned silent when Gran burst into the room. The heavy belt that she whipped Crystal with was hanging around her neck. Her feet reached me before I could scramble for my towel and she saw. I know she saw because she started calling on her Lord and Savior to give her strength as she yanked my arm, forcing me to bang my knee trying to get out of the tub. Gran had never beaten me before, but on that day she brought the belt down on my body like she was the overseer and I the runaway.

That thick strap rained down on me so many times I lost count. Welts popped, skin tore, blood poured, everything ached, and I moaned and tried to protect my face. Maybe Gran would beat me to death and that would be the end of it. That would stop the pain that had no words. Gran's motions slowed to a stop. She was out of breath and dropped down on the top of the commode seat, sweat pouring down her face, tears from her eyes as she coughed out one sentence.

“How could you?”

 

ELEVEN

The Backwoods Baby

In June, Gran said it was time for me to go. It was my first time leaving the City of Brotherly Love. I'd been to Englishtown in New Jersey on a bus excursion with the church, but that didn't count as real traveling.

I was supposed to leave in May, but Gran was waiting on some money that never came. So I stayed holed up in the hot house the first week of June. The neighbors couldn't see me, but I saw the kids when they got home from school: playing in the water plug, jumping double Dutch, blasting Public Enemy and KRS-1 on the boom box, eating cherry water ices and salted pretzels, drinking grape soda. Anything to enjoy the time off and beat the heat.

Gran didn't have an air conditioner because she didn't want to run up her light bill. She put the fan in the window, but turned it backward so the hot air blew out of the room. Didn't work, so I was as miserable as a nun in a whorehouse where only sin was for sale.

Gran's friend Mr. Scooter came to pick me up on a Tuesday night when the sun went down and the block was quiet. When I waddled from the house, I placed my postage stamp suitcase in front of my belly, as Gran instructed. I wore her fancy church trench coat, the one she wore when her choir group, The Blessed Hearts, sang at their anniversary. It was blood red with a gold and magenta broach at the breast. Gran flattened her matching pillbox hat onto my head at the last minute. I knew she was trying to make me look respectable, so I didn't say nothing. While I push myself across the backseat of Mr. Scooter's car holding onto his headrest, Gran reaches in between her large breasts for her wallet and gives Mr. Scooter five dollars for gas. I hear her tell him what time my bus is leaving. She had already shoved the money for my ticket and three extra dollars into my pocket before I left the house. On our ride down, Mr. Scooter makes small talk while I work my finger into a tear in the vinyl seat, fumbling my fingers around the cottony filing.

We take Broad Street. Pass Temple University. Pass Hahnemann Hospital, where my grandfather died, and around City Hall, to Market Street. Then we cut over to where the bus station is, at Tenth and Filbert. Mr. Scooter pulls to the curb.

“You need help, Faye?”

“No, I'm fine, Mr. Scooter. Thanks for the ride.”

The bus station is vibrant for that time of night. Four of the ticket counter lanes are open and I get in what I hope is the shortest. A homeless man draped in a pound of blankets walks past me, rattling a dirty coffee cup with coins in it. I quickly turn my head before the smell of him makes me puke. I hear Keith Sweat crooning “Make It Last Forever” on someone's radio. The song made me feel hot and cold at the same time. It was the fourth song on the slow jam tape that Martin played that one time I told Gran I was meeting Crystal at the Gallery mall to look for church shoes. Martin got me from the corner of Eighth and Market Street. We drove in the Hog down to the Lakes, and did it under the highway overpass. It was the first time I got completely naked in the car.

“Next.”

I step up to the counter and purchased my ticket to Virginia.

“Boarding in five minutes,” the clerk tells me with vacant eyes. The job has desensitized her.

The ladies' room is in the back left corner, and I head over to pee before boarding. It smells more horrific than the station and I hold my nose, breathing only out of my mouth until I finish my business. I feel like vomiting, so I hurry out of the bathroom before it catches me. I couldn't imagine heaving on my knees in this filthy place. I find a peppermint in the coat pocket and shove it into my mouth. The sleeping pill I stole from Gran is in there too, and I make sure it's secure.

“Greyhound bus to Lynchburg, Virginia, making stops in Wilmington, Baltimore, Washington, DC, Richmond. Transferring in Richmond, then stopping in Charlottesville. Lynchburg will be the last stop. All aboard. All aboard.”

*   *   *

I crack the orange pill in half and it affords me a long rest on the first leg to the transfer. In Richmond, we have about ten minutes to stretch our legs. I take off Gran's ridiculous hat and trench coat. It's nice to be somewhere where I didn't have to hide. Gran's three dollars went to a Snickers bar, a bag of Doritos, and a Coke. When I get on the second bus I eat the fried chicken and white bread Gran had packed in my bag, then all of my junk food. I can't fall back asleep, so I pull out the romance novel I packed and try to lose myself in the story.

Aunt Kat had on a yellow scarf just like Gran said she would. But even if she didn't I would have recognized her. She has the same head shape and cheekbones as Gran and my father. She's just a little older and her skin was sunburned in a way Gran's would never be. I wondered if it was because she lived in the country.

“Look at you, gal.” She pulls me into her arms. “I ain't seen you since you was knee high to a grasshopper.”

Aunt Kat directs me to a navy-blue pickup truck and brings my bag into the cab with us. She keeps up a constant chatter on Route 29, pointing out the shopping center with the Food Lion, the post office, and her beauty parlor. It's dark and I can't see much. I nod and look at the Blue Ridge Mountains, highlighted by the moon. Majestic. Like paintings in the sky. After about ten minutes driving, we turned on a back road that leads past an endless row of cornstalk fields. I even spot a few cows, horses, and pigs.

Aunt Kat lived on fifteen acres of land that's been in the family for three generations. Since the end of slavery, she told me. Gran said that part of the house is hers and that she could come down here and claim it anytime she wants, but I haven't known her to make a single trip down here in the years I lived with her.

Aunt Kat shows me to a bedroom in the back. The few pieces of furniture in the room were old, but dusted clean. I put my bag down on the little wooden chair facing the window, and just like that I feel a tightening in my belly that spins through me so fast I'm forced to sit.

“Baby knew to wait till you got here.” Aunt Kat put her hand on my belly and looked at her watch. “Let's see what happens over the next hour. Might be time to fetch the midwife.”

*   *   *

Thirteen hours later I'm on a bed propped up with pillows, my feet in brown stirrups that look like they belong to the horse out back.

“Puuuush,” grunts the snaggletoothed midwife squatting between my legs. Pats of sweat glisten from the balding spots separating her gray sprouts of hair. I've asked at least three times why I wasn't going to the hospital, and all Aunt Kat said was that this woman would give me better care.

Every time a contraction rips through my body, I feel like cussing. The old lady had already shoved her bare hand and whole arm inside of me, breaking my water and deeming the baby ready. Warm liquid had dripped down my thighs, and was soaked up by the pile of towels propped under my behind.

The overhead light is harshly fluorescent, and there is a desk lamp sitting on the floor at the foot of the bed, which Snaggletoothed is using to see. The wallpaper is a faded mauve color with marching lines of potted plants. A cousin I didn't know rubs a cool towel across my forehead, and I like her because she kept smiling with the same doe eyes as me.

She whispers, “Don't worry none. She delivers all the babies within fifty miles. She betta than the hospital. You go there, they'll cut you for sure.” She smiles and then runs her hand across my forehead. I feel okay for all of thirty-five seconds, and then the next contraction ripples through me like a tidal wave.

Aunt Kat is at the foot of the bed reading Bible verses. She's Jehovah's Witness, and prays in a much more subdued way than Gran and her Daddy Gracious friends. I could imagine Gran stomping her feet and catching the Holy Ghost while I was trying to dispel this thing, getting on my last nerve. I'm hot all over and I want this to be over. I pray my own silent prayer. Lord, I've learned my lesson. Please let this be over soon.

“I sees the head.” Snaggletoothed leans in closer.

“Grab it,” I sass as a cold pain pierces through my belly with a fierceness that has my teeth rattling, so much that I was sure I would swallow my tongue. Oh, I can't die like this. Please, please, please I pleaded with my eyes closed.

“Next contraction, give it all ya got, chile, and this baby be here. Push like you's mad, push.”

Fire. That's the only way I can describe the heated pain that comes from below as she pulls the thing's head out, and then lets it dangle between my legs while she sucks the mucus from the nose and mouth.

“Slow and steady,” she says, and then yanks the rest of the body out of me.

I don't know what happened after that 'cause the room went dark. Maybe I fainted, but the next thing I knew, the cousin was trying to put a swaddled something in my arms. I pushed her away.

“No, thank you.” My voice was weak but stern.

Cousin looked at me with those doe eyes and said, “You sure you don't want to hold her? She's beautiful.”

I turned my back. If I didn't touch it then she wasn't real. If she wasn't real, then I could go back to my life in Philadelphia like none of this mess ever happened. Then maybe I'd have a real chance of getting out. If I got out, moved on, I'd be better. Happier. I'd be like the girls on
The Facts of Life
who had their whole lives ahead of them. That's what I wanted. Not to hold a beautiful thing that wasn't mine.

 

TWELVE

The Restraints

My cell phone vibrates for the umpteenth time against my purse as I stub out my third cigarette.

“Can I get you anything else, doll?”

“No. Thanks.” I push a few bills across the bar. My head is light when I stand, but after I roll my shoulders back and fix my ponytail I feel together. The same men who catcalled on my entrance repeat their same tired lines on my way out. I don't even turn my head to acknowledge them as I step out onto the street. The smell of McDonald's fills the air and I wonder if they have a vent or something that pushes the scent in all directions, calling customers to come.

My life is so different than the one I left behind in Philadelphia. How dare Martin call me and dredge all of this up? My cell phone vibrates again when I get inside my SUV.

“Hello.”

“Fox, what the fuck? Why aren't you answering your telephone?”

I don't have my answer ready for Preston so I simply say, “I'll be home in ten minutes.”

I need to get myself together so I drive across the street to the CVS. After standing in line while the lady in front of me goes through every coupon in her purse only for them all to be expired, I buy Listerine, Febreze, baby wipes, and Advil. Out in the parking lot, I spray myself down and wipe my face and hands before heading back home.

The door is barely open before Rory and Two are rushing me. “Mommmeeeee.” They say it like I've been to war in Iraq and had to hitchhike back home. It's one of the things I love about having kids. They love you in every moment. Even the kids of crackheads love their mamas.

“What are you guys still doing up? It's way past your bedtime.”

“Daddy said we could wait for you.” Two crinkles that cute nose.

Of course he did. Putting the kids to bed is your job.

“Let's head upstairs.” The baby is in her bouncer. When I pick her up, her diaper sags to her knees.

“You didn't know the baby needed to be changed?”

“Where were you?”

“Answer me.”

“Answer me.” His eyes bore into me and I stare right back.

“Come on, babies, let's go brush your teeth.”

On the way up the stairs Rory waves his hand in front of his nose. “You smell funny.”