The Adventures of Flash Jackson (35 page)

“I can't sit up,” she said. She was lying flat on her back on the bed. “Can you help me?”

I put one hand under her and lifted her up with no more effort than if I was batting a balloon. “You all right, Miz Powell?” I asked.

“I'm so damned weak,” she said. “I can't understand it. I've never been this weak before.”

“I can help you, if you want,” I said. “I can give you something to make you stronger.”

She jerked her hand away from me. “Stop it,” she said. “I'm not a child.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“I'm old, Haley,” she said. “And that's all. So don't go getting any ideas.”

“Ideas about what?”

“About taking care of me,” she said irritably. “I don't want it and I don't need it.”

But soon it became obvious that it was easier for Miz Powell to stay at Mother's than on her own, and she began to go home only occasionally, to get fresh clothes and make sure the house wasn't falling apart in her absence. She and Mother seemed to tolerate each other surprisingly well. They were the last two I would have figured to get along so nicely, but then I realized they were coming together over something common: me and the baby.

“Your mother seems to be waking up from a long slumber,” Miz Powell confided in me one day. “We've had some interesting conversations about her childhood.”

“I bet,” I said.

“It hasn't been easy for her, you know,” she told me. “But then, you know all about that.”

“It's only been as difficult as she's made it,” I said. “It was her idea to close down for so long. I was afraid she'd forgotten everything she learned from Grandma by now.”

“I don't think she's forgotten anything,” Miz Powell said. “I think it's just been a question of her willingness to use it.”

“And?”

“Well, with this baby coming, she seems to have a new fire burning inside her,” said Miz Powell. “We're so excited, Haley. Are you sure it's going to be a girl?”

“Of course it'll be a girl,” I said. “We only have girls in this family. That's the way it's always been.”

“Yes,” said Miz Powell, “but then there's never been anyone quite like you in the family before, either.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I think.”

“It
is
a compliment, Haley dear,” she told me. “You've been awaited for a long time. You're going to fulfill a much-needed role.”

This was not the first time she'd said that to me, but I never knew how to take it. Was I, in fact, the one to replace Grandma? Was that why she had disappeared? Words are nothing—they cease to have meaning when repeated too often. Some things it was better not to talk about. It was better just to let them happen, neither provoking nor being provoked. I was already doing things that I'd sworn earlier I would never do, womanly things—having a baby being the prime example. When I was little, I'd believed I had the choice of being a man or a woman when I grew up, and part of me still felt that way. Yet I was astonished to see myself choosing the role of a woman. Two years ago, I never would have done such a thing.

Mother hired a midwife to come and check up on me as I came closer to full term. She was a lithe, dark woman named Lydia, who wore a plain cloth wrapped around her head as she examined my cervix and pronounced it slightly dilated. It would only be a matter of days now, perhaps only hours. I insisted on being left on my own in my house until the time came, mostly because I couldn't stand them fussing over me. Yet it was nearly impossible for me to move, and so when there came a knock at the door one day in early spring, it was a struggle for me to get to the door.

When I opened it, there was Adam.

“Oh, for Christ's sake,” I said. “Your timing is impeccable.”

His eyes bugged out at the size of me. Gone was the willowy girl with the shaven head. I was back to my old girth, a house again—ankles and legs swollen, belly massive, my face puffed up with the water retained in my tissues.

“Hi, Haley,” he said. “Can I come in?”

I stepped well aside to make room for him, but he brushed against my belly anyway as he came through the door. I felt nothing at his touch, not a twinge. There was no electricity. I didn't even offer him a seat.

“Hi,” he said.

“You said that,” I said.

“I, uh…came to tell you thanks for saving my fadder's life,” he said. “He finally went to the doctor, and you were right. It was his colon. There was something growing in there. But they took it out, and they say he's going to be all right. You caught it in time. Zo, thanks.”

“You're welcome,” I said.

“Zo,” he said.

I waited.

“Dere's something else,” he said. “I, ah…”

I kept waiting.

“I'm not very proud of the way I've been,” he said. “When that happened in the woods wid us, I didn't know what to tink about it. It chust happened, like. Den, you came and told me you were pregnant. And…I got scared. I admit it.”

“Okay,” I said.

“It wasn't the right thing to do,” he said.

He looked around at the bare room. I could tell he was appalled at the lack of comfort there. To someone like him, who had never lived in the woods, he wouldn't have known that I didn't need a lot of extras. All I needed was me.

“Not the right thing to do,” he repeated.

“Adam,” I said, “what do you want?”

“I want to help,” he said.

“Help how?”

“Well…” He gestured around us. “Look at this. I feel bad you don't have nottink. You shouldn't live like this.”

“I'm fine,” I said.

“Yeah, but…de baby should have things too. Nice things. It should be warm, for one ting. You don't run the furnace?”

“I get along well enough with the stove,” I said, though in truth I'd been going over to Mother's all winter just to get warm.

“Look,” he said. “I don't ask any special favors. I don't know what you think of me, but I know what I think of you. You deserve to have the things you need. I want to take responsibility.”

If he'd said that with a touch of pride, with even a slight puffing of the chest—as if to say,
Look how wonderful I am for being accountable for my actions
—I would have thrown him out on his ass, then and there. But that wasn't Adam's way. He meant what he was saying.

“I guess you don't want to get married, after the way I been,” he said.

“You didn't ask me to get married.”

“Do you want to?”

“No.”

“Okay,” he said. “Me neither, not really.”

“Glad that's out in the open,” I said.

“But I do want to be a fadder.”

“I see,” I said.

“I mean, dis baby…every baby needs a fadder. I didn't have very good parents. That's why Mutti and Fatti took me in. So I tink every baby should have good parents. And not just one. Two is better.”

“You saying you want to live together?”

“I'm saying,” he said, “you can ask me to do anything you want, and I'll do it.”

“Anything.”

“Yah. Anything.”

“All right,” I said. “Put your hands on my belly.”

Adam's eyes widened in surprise. I lifted up the three sweaters I was wearing and showed him my stomach, stretch marks and all.

“Touch it,” I said.

Adam extended one finger and poked it gently.

“Come on,” I said. “Like you mean it.”

He rested his palm on my stomach and left it there, rough and warm. I put my hand on top of his and pressed it in deeper. The baby had been active for a while now, and at our combined touch it began to do
cartwheels inside. Adam was startled. He almost jerked his hand away, but I held him there until he relaxed.

“Wow,” he said. “Dat's amazink.”

“That's what we made,” I said. “That's you and me in there, for whatever it's worth.”

A smile crept across his face.

“Don't you get smug,” I said. “Don't you dare get smug, or I swear to God I'll kick your ass.”

“I want to be dere,” he said. “Can I?”

“When I give birth?”

He nodded.

“You haven't earned it,” I said. “You know that. You have to earn something like that. I'll call you afterwards and tell you how it went.”

His face fell, but he seemed to accept it. He knew I was right. But, seeing how disappointed he was, I softened. He had finally come forward, after all. He had finally accepted his role in all this.

“Tell you what,” I said. “You can wait outside, and you can come in as soon as it's over. All right?”

His spirits rose again. “Yah,” he said. “Dat would be great.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Zo,” he said. “When's it going to be?”

At that moment I felt a sudden stirring inside, and something deep within me popped. A great gush of water hit the floor between my feet and spread out like a small lake.

“Looks like right now,” I said calmly. “You want to walk me over to my mother's, please?”

 

I have done some hard things in my life. I've survived on my own in the wilderness, I've ridden bareback all day, I've communicated with the dead. But nothing could have prepared me for how difficult it was to have a baby.

It was a long labor, this being my first child—eighteen hours from start to finish. I had decided early on that I was going to have the baby
at home, with Mother, Miz Powell, and Lydia to assist me. Adam was relegated to the hallway outside the bedroom, where he paced incessantly until I yelled at him to quit it because I could feel the creak of every floorboard. I didn't want drugs and I didn't want a doctor—doctors were for people like Mr. Schumacher, who was sick, but not for people like me, who was healthy. Pregnancy is not an illness. It is, in the truest sense of the word, a labor, and the final hours of those nine months are the hardest labor of all.

I pushed until every muscle burned and my throat was parched. Lydia gave me ice chips to suck on. She refused to give me water, which was right, and when I called her a fucking bitch she knew it was the pain talking, not me. I called Miz Powell a bitch too. I called Adam a faggot Nazi lover, or something equally nonsensical. I insulted the entire world's mother. I pushed until my hips felt like they were dislocated. I pushed until endorphins mercifully flooded my body, so that I didn't feel it when my perineum tore and the baby came out; I didn't feel a thing, not even when Lydia was stitching me up afterwards and Mother was toweling the baby off. I faded in and out of consciousness then, and saw faces floating before me that I knew weren't really there: Grandmother, my father, Frankie.

Grandma said nothing. She only looked on in approval.

My father was beaming. He said, or I thought I heard him say, that he was sorry he'd had to leave me so young.
It had been an accident
, he said.
It wasn't supposed to be that way
. But he was all right now, and so was I. I would not be joining him today.

And Frankie smiled too, excited because everyone else was excited.

“Franks,” I muttered. “You're the only one I didn't insult. I left you out.”

“What is she saying?” Mother asked Miz Powell.

“Something about trout,” Miz Powell said.

“Show her the baby,” said Lydia. “She's ready now.”

“Here you go, darling daughter,” said Mother. “I am so proud of you.”

“What is it?” yelled Adam, from the hallway.

“It's a girl,” I mumbled.

Mother and Miz Powell exchanged glances, amused.

“Sure about that?” said Lydia. “Look again.”

I was too weak to pull back the blankets myself, so Miz Powell did it for me.

“There he is,” she said. “Perfect in every way.”

“What is it?” I asked, because my brain wasn't believing what my eyes were telling me

“A boy!” Mother and Miz Powell said, in unison.

I had to smile, in spite of my exhaustion. I'll say one thing about my life—it's always been full of surprises. I was so tired I was cross-eyed. Lydia helped me pull my gown aside and guided the baby to my breast. Pinched monkey face, two bootblack eyes—that was all I could make out. If the rumors were true, I had a son.

“Wow, buddy,” I whispered to him. “Are you ever going to make things interesting around here.”

F
or matters pertaining to herbal remedies and their uses, I relied largely on Hanna Kroeger's book,
Heal Your Life with Home Remedies and Herbs,
published by Hay House, Inc., in 1998.

I would like to express my gratitude to my wife, Alexandra, who has made my life so much fuller simply by being in it, and whose critical assistance helped shape this book.

Also, thanks to my agent, Anne Hawkins, and my editor, Marjorie Braman, whose support is, as always, deeply appreciated and impossible to repay.