Swan Place (35 page)

Buzzard was studying Crystal with a deep frown. “And suppose you take this baby and Dove and Molly and Little Ellis and go back, then who do you think is gonna take care of that baby while you work?”

Crystal’s mouth fell open a little, as if she hadn’t thought of such a thing. “Why,” she sputtered, “Dove here can do it, can’t you, Dove?”

“Yes.” That’s what my mouth said, but my heart was pounding.

“Well, who’s gonna take care of it while Dove’s in school?”

“Aunt Bett?” Crystal suggested in a whisper.

“You gonna load another child onto that good woman, seeing as how she has so many of her own? And was helping out with Molly and Little Ellis?” What a bleak, accusing question it was! We all just sat there in a little circle full of horrible thoughts.

“Or
 . . .
” Buzzard began again. “Maybe Dove would have to drop out of school to take care of
all
the little ones while you work.” Crystal and I stared at each other in astonishment.
Me?
I was thinking.
Drop out of school? Not be like the girl in
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn?
Not have things better than Mama had them?

“Oh, Dove,” Crystal breathed. “I would never let that happen!”

Buzzard nodded her head up and down slowly, and the frown was gone. But those awful words were still hanging in the air, and I couldn’t bear them!

Crystal was still staring at me with a stricken look on her face, and Buzzard said to her in kind of a gruff voice, “And have you taken your vitamins?”

“I took them,” Crystal said.

“Good. We want a healthy baby.”

The next morning,
when Crystal dropped me off at school, Rachel and Mandy were waiting for me once again. And they hovered on either side of me as we went into the building. After lunch, I excused myself from them and walked around outside, looking for Sharon. But when I found her sitting beneath a tree, her glance told me without any doubt that she wanted me to leave her alone. I wanted so bad to tell her that I knew what it felt like to have clothes too little for you and to have the other girls not like you because you’re poor, but I just didn’t know how.

When lunch was over and I was on my way back to class, I overheard Miss Gray and another teacher talking in low voices in the hallway: “I really hoped she would get off on the right foot with
 . . .
the right group of girls,” Miss Gray was saying. “I just can’t understand why she seems to be trying to take up with Sharon, of all people!”

And the other teacher said, “Well, you know that Mr. Swan was always a big defender of the weak and downtrodden. He never did join any of the town organizations like the Kiwanis Club, the way most men of
station
do. Just hung around with all the poor folks he could find. Seems to me Dove is an apple that hasn’t fallen far from Mr. Swan’s tree.”

And when I heard that, I smiled. Because what I meant to do was be the best of whatever the wonderful Swans had been—but not to give up being myself, not even if I could have been the most popular girl in this whole world!

Crystal’s face was red as fire. They went into the kitchen and the three of them talked again. I heard only one thing that was said, and it was when Miss Rebecca said that the baby was going to be a big one. I shuddered. “But that’s okay,” she went on. “Delivered a twelve-pounder one time, I did.”

“Whoo-eee!” Buzzard responded. “Mama okay?”

“Mama okay,” Miss Rebecca confirmed.

By then, the weather
had turned too cold for the Sisters of the Circle of Jesus to meet on the back porch, and Buzzard told me that they met in a Sunday School room at the church in the wintertime.

“Why don’t you just use the living room?” I asked.

“What?” Buzzard snorted at me. “Use Miz Swan’s very own living room?”

The tone of her voice told me that it was an impossible idea.

“I don’t think she would mind.”

“Listen, Dove,” she started out in a patient voice. “Who all do you think the sisters are?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that other than one of them, they were all maids to white folks. A couple of them still
are
. Like me,” she added. “And maids don’t sit in white folks’ living rooms.”

“Oh.” But I was remembering that time when Aunt Mee sat down at the kitchen table with Crystal and me, and how surprised she was to realize what she’d done. Of course, Crystal and I didn’t think a single thing of it, but Aunt Mee was pretty old. And she probably thought all the old rules were still around. And
 . . .
maybe they were, in a way that I didn’t understand.

On the first day of March,
in the middle of a cold and windy night, Crystal woke me up by shaking my shoulder hard.

“Dove, wake up. Go get Buzzard. I think the baby’s coming.” That was all she had to say. I flew down the stairs and into Buzzard’s room, where she was a big, snoring lump under all her down comforters.

“Wake up!” I yelled. “Crystal says the baby’s coming!”

Buzzard groaned and turned over. “We don’t have to rush, Dove. First babies always take their own sweet time. Tell Crystal to time the pains, and I’ll call Miss Rebecca when they’re five minutes apart and steady.” Why, I could hardly believe it! Buzzard was going to go back to sleep! I ran back upstairs. Crystal was sitting on the side of her bed, shaking a little in the chill of the room.

“Buzzard says to time your pains and when they’re five minutes apart, she’ll call Miss Rebecca,” I said breathlessly.

“But I’m sitting in something all
wet
!” she wailed.

Wet?
I ran back downstairs.

“Buzzard, you gotta get up. Crystal says she’s sitting in something all wet!”

At that, Buzzard threw back the covers and sat up. “Get me my wool robe out of the closet,” she said. “And help me find my shoes.” When I tried to follow Buzzard into Crystal’s room, she stopped me. “You go downstairs and put the kettle on to boil,” she ordered. “The big kettle.” I did as Buzzard said, and I don’t know why, but turning on the lights in the kitchen and being there while it was still dark as midnight outside and knowing something pretty miraculous was getting ready to happen, right under our very roof, was something very nice. Something I was sure I would want to write into one of my stories.

As soon as I had the kettle going, I walked over to the window and looked out to where the light coming out of the kitchen lit up some of the big trees in the back garden. And there was something there, as well. Maybe the spirits of Mr. and Mrs. Swan walking around in all that fine, chill March wind.

When Buzzard came downstairs, she went and got dressed, right down to her heavy boots. Then she called Miss Rebecca on the phone.

“Yes, the bag of waters have broken,” she said. “No, you’ll not ride that bicycle all the way here in this cold weather. I’ll come get you. About fifteen minutes okay? I’m worried about a dry birth, you know,” she added.

“That kettle boiling yet?” she asked as she came into the kitchen.

“Yes. What do you need hot water for?” Buzzard studied me for a moment before she smiled and said, “A cup of instant coffee to tide me over until we can get a real pot going.”

Buzzard and Miss Rebecca
stayed upstairs with Crystal almost the whole day long. I kept Molly and Little Ellis downstairs, and once in a while, I would go to the foot of the stairs and listen. Not a sound. Not a single sound. Once, Buzzard called to me to bring up coffee for her and Miss Rebecca, and I did—but Buzzard met me at the top of the stairs, took the cups, and motioned with her head for me to go down again. But before I could get all the way back downstairs, I heard a moan. A long, deep moan!

As that day went on, I thought back to how that first moan had startled me, because there were lots more, each one louder than the last. On and on and on they went, and finally, in late afternoon, I heard the first scream. Made me want to scream, myself!

Molly and Little Ellis heard the scream too and looked at me with large, frightened eyes.

“It’s okay,” I tried to soothe them. “That’s the kind of sounds a woman makes when she’s having a baby.” Why, I spoke with such authority and calmness, but in truth, I’d never been around a woman having a baby before in my life. Because Molly and Little Ellis were both born in the hospital, and I hadn’t even been allowed to go along at all, either time.

When Buzzard came downstairs again, I didn’t ask if the baby had come. I knew it hadn’t, not with Crystal still screaming and crying. Buzzard had deep furrows in between her eyebrows when she went to the phone and dialed a number. I couldn’t hear what she said, but when she turned to go back upstairs, those furrows on her forehead weren’t quite so deep. Had she called a doctor? Was something terribly wrong?

But I got my answer to that in about half an hour, when the back door opened, and the Sisters of the Circle of Jesus filed into the kitchen, with two of them carrying Sister Blood-of-the-Lamb, just like always. They nodded their heads at me, took off their coats, seated themselves around the kitchen table, and took out their Bibles. I didn’t even ask them if they wanted some coffee, but I went ahead and started a fresh pot for them while I watched them carefully. But they didn’t do much of anything, that I could see. They didn’t even open their Bibles—just put their hands on them, shut their eyes, and bowed their heads. No one said a single word. Just a big circle of big women, sitting around a table together. Then, after a few minutes, little Sister Blood-of-the-Lamb reached out her hands to the sisters on either side of her, and soon, all of them were holding hands, but they still kept their heads bowed.

I tiptoed around, getting the cups ready—then another scream from upstairs, the first since the sisters had arrived, pierced the air throughout the house. The sisters all flinched at that terrible sound, glanced up at each other for a moment, and then bowed their heads again. Sister Blood-of-the-Lamb started praying out loud, her words all strewn about with deep, soft moans and whispered “Help her, Jesus!” and “Please bring forth this, Your little child.” Their sounds—their prayers—were almost like music.