The First Lie (3 page)

“Ivy!” she sounded awake all of a sudden. “Is it Mary Ella?”

“Yes, ma’am. I think she’s having the baby soon. She’s hollerin’ something awful. Should I call Nurse Ann to come over? I don’t have a number for—”

“No, you don’t need to call her,” she said. “She won’t be delivering the baby. Mary Ella needs to go to the hospital, instead—”

“Why?”
What was going on? All along, the plan was for Nurse Ann to come when it was time. She was supposed to deliver the baby right in our house.

“Mary Ella needs to have her appendix out after the baby’s born,” Mrs. Werkman said, “so she has to be in the hospital for them to be able to—”

“What?”
I shouted. “Nobody said nothing about her ’pendix!”

“Well, the last time I spoke with Mary Ella, I could tell she needed to have an appendectomy—have her appendix removed.”

I was too shocked to speak. When I was eight years old, a girl in my school died of a busted appendix. I’d never forget the terribleness of it. What if the same thing happened to Mary Ella?

Mrs. Werkman kept talking. “I’ve been in touch with Nurse Ann so she knows, and Mary Ella’ll be well taken care of at the hospital,” she said. “I’ll call over there right now so they’ll be waiting for her. I’m sure Mr. Gardiner can take her. All right?”

“All right.” I hung up the phone and looked at Mrs. Gardiner. “She said Mr. Gardiner should take her to the hospital.”

Mrs. Gardiner turned to Henry Allen. “Run and fetch Eli,” she said.

“No!” I stood up so fast, some of the milk sloshed onto the table. “Can’t Mr. Gardiner take us?”

“He’s got a chest cold,” Mrs. Gardiner said. “Took him half the night to get to sleep. Eli can drive the truck just fine.”

“But it’s almost morning!” I said. “Mr. Gardiner’ll be getting up soon, won’t he? Please?” I didn’t usually push like that. Not with the Gardiners, who held our past, present, and future in their hands. I didn’t have no right to push, but I didn’t want Eli Jordan anywhere near Mary Ella right then.

Henry Allen stood at the kitchen door, one hand on the knob, waiting to hear what to do. “Go, son,” Mrs. Gardiner said to him, and he didn’t look at me as he grabbed his jacket from the hook next to the door and headed outside. “And you, Ivy,” she said. “Go home and get Mary Ella ready. Hurry now!” She gave me a little shove toward the door.

“Nonnie won’t like it,” I said, more to myself than to Mrs. Gardiner as I ran out of the room, but I knew we had no choice. We hardly ever did.

*   *   *

I raced out of the Gardiners’ house and headed back down Deaf Mule Road on my bike. On the other side of the field, I saw a small white light bouncing through the darkness and knew Henry Allen took his bicycle to get to the Jordans’ house quicker. I pictured him pounding on their door, waking up Lita Jordan and her boys.

I rushed into our house. Nothing was any different from when I left. Mary Ella was still shouting and hollering, sometimes calling out for Mama, and Nonnie was still trying to calm her down and mopping her forehead with the rag.

“You talked to Mrs. Werkman?” Nonnie asked when I ran into the bedroom.

“I did.” I had to bend over to catch my breath. “She said for somebody to drive Mary Ella to the hospital. That she needs her ’pendix out! How can she know—?”

“Who?” Nonnie interrupted me. “Who can drive her? Is Mr. Gardiner coming?”

“He’s sick,” I said. “Henry Allen’s gone to get Eli.”

Nonnie’s eyes got real big. “Oh, Lord,” she said. “Now, ain’t that just perfect.”

Mary Ella moaned and I didn’t know if she was in pain or upset about Eli. Nonnie looked over at me where I stood in the doorway. “Get some things ready for her to take to the hospital,” she said.

“What kind of things?”

“Nightie. Clean underwear. Toothbrush. You know. Use your head!”

I gathered up everything I could think she might need, but I’d never spent the night at a hospital so I didn’t really know what to pack. I put her things in our clothespin bag; we didn’t have no suitcase. Back in the bedroom, Nonnie tried to get Mary Ella to sit up, but she kept saying “It hurts! It hurts!”

“She’ll never be able to walk through the woods to the truck,” Nonnie said.

“Maybe Henry Allen could get the wheelbarrow and we could move her that way?” I looked through the bedroom window. The sun was starting to light up the sky a little, and I saw Henry Allen and Eli coming out of the woods. I ran through the living room and out to the porch.

“She can’t walk to the truck!” I shouted to them. “Henry Allen, what about the wheelbarrow?”

Henry Allen stopped walking, but Eli kept right on coming. “I can carry her,” he said. I thought he could do it. He was so big. Nothing like the boy that played with us when we was kids. He climbed onto the porch in one big step. He was at least five inches taller than me and brawny and dark, except for his eyes, which was the color of honey. “Where’s she at?” he asked, but he didn’t need me to answer, because her hollering told him the way to the bedroom.

I ran into the house after him.

“You can’t come in here!” Nonnie shouted when he reached the bedroom.

“Excuse me, ma’am, but does she need to get to the truck or not?” Eli asked.

Nonnie stood up and tried to neaten the mussed-up housedress Mary Ella was wearing, tugging it as low on her legs as she could get it. Eli waited till she stepped aside; then he moved next to the bed and reached down for my sister. Mary Ella didn’t look at him the way I did—like he’d turned into a stranger since we was kids. She raised her arms to him so he could lift her up, her eyes never leaving his.

“It hurts, Eli,” she said. They was the first calm and quiet words I’d heard out of her mouth all night.

“She got a coat?” he asked as he lifted her from the bed.

“I’ll bring it!” I said, relieved to have something to do. Me and Nonnie gathered up her coat and the clothespin bag and Nonnie’s purse and hustled out of the house after him.

Henry Allen tried to help Eli as they walked toward the woods, but anyone could tell Eli didn’t need no help. He carried Mary Ella like she weighed no more than a feather pillow, her yellow hair spilling over his arm, me and Nonnie scrambling to keep up.

Eli had to put her in the truck bed so me and Nonnie could sit with her. Eli took off his jacket to put under her head and Nonnie and me spread her coat out on top of her. Henry Allen waved to us and we was off. Me and Nonnie held Mary Ella’s hands while she cried and shouted words that made no sense except for every once in a while, that “mama” that made my heart ache. I thought about how much she must be hurting, with the baby getting ready to come out, plus her appendix being sickly.

Eli drove quick except where there was bumps in the road. He seemed to know where they was and slowed down to go over them as careful as he could.

“There, there, child,” Nonnie kept saying over and over to Mary Ella, her voice shivery in a way I never heard before. I didn’t know what to say myself.

“You’ll be okay,” I tried. “Everything’ll be okay.” But I was getting more and more scared.

We was halfway to the hospital when Mary Ella started going real quiet, which was worse in a way than all the hollering. Daylight was on us now, and she stared straight up at the sky.

“She don’t look right,” Nonnie said, leaning over Mary Ella to peer into her face.

She didn’t. She kept staring at the sky. I could see the feathery white clouds in the blue of her eyes and it was like looking into the sky myself. It was like looking at heaven. Mary Ella stopped blinking. She was real still, just staring that faraway stare, going quiet, and I thought,
She’s dying
. All of a sudden, I felt Ruby in the truck with us. I remembered what she said. Mary Ella would have 0 children.
Zero
. Ruby floated around me the way she did in the church. I felt her around my neck and in my hair, and I waved my arms to get her away from me.

“Get out of this truck!” I shouted at her. I pressed my body over my sister’s to keep the evil away. If Mary Ella died, it was my fault for taking my fingers off that plancher thing. For messing with a Ouija board to begin with. For sneaking out with Henry Allen. My fault, all of it. She was all I had left of my family, besides Nonnie. We was night and day different, but right then I would of killed to protect her. Right then, I felt all that love for her that went missing sometimes.

“What are you doing?” Nonnie tugged at my shoulder. “Who are you talking to?”

I shook my sister’s arm. “Mary Ella!” I shouted, but she still stared at the sky like she was already in heaven herself. I couldn’t lose her. I was sure the baby was already lost.
Zero,
Ruby’d said.
Zero
.

Mary Ella suddenly squeezed her eyes shut and let out a scream like somebody stuck her with a knife.

“Oh, Lord!” Nonnie said, smoothing Mary Ella’s hair back from her forehead. “You poor, poor baby!”

As terrible as the scream was, I was so glad to hear it. She was alive! I wanted to hug her and kiss her cheeks, but she would of thought I’d lost my mind.

We pulled into the hospital parking lot and stopped right under the emergency sign. Eli got out of the cab and jumped into the truck bed to lift Mary Ella into his arms again. He climbed out of the truck, fast but careful. Me and him and Nonnie was walking to the entrance when a nurse came out of the building pushing a wheelchair. She stopped when she saw Eli.

“You can’t come in here, boy,” she said.

He nodded like that was no surprise and set Mary Ella, moaning and scared looking, down in the wheelchair.

Nonnie turned to Eli. “You better pray to God she’s okay,” she snapped.

Eli shrugged and stuck his hands in his pockets. “Don’t seem like God’s done much for her so far,” he said, and I thought Nonnie would of hit him if he hadn’t turned so fast to go back to the truck.

*   *   *

They put me and Nonnie in a waiting room. We felt right out of place sitting there with three men who was waiting for their babies to be born. One of them read a book, one flipped the pages of a
Life
magazine, and the third just sat and stared into space. Me and Nonnie didn’t say a word to each other. She pretended like she was looking at a
Good Housekeeping,
but I knew she wasn’t seeing nothing on the pages. I didn’t even bother pretending. I was too nervous about what was happening on the other side of the waiting room door.

I felt like I already knew what Nonnie didn’t know: Mary Ella’s baby wasn’t going to make it. My eyes kept filling up with tears while we sat there and I brushed them away as quiet as I could because I didn’t want her to see.

After a long while, a doctor came through the door wearing a white coat and a big smile. He walked straight over to the man who was reading the book and held out his hand.

“You have a fine son!” He pumped the man’s hand up and down.

“A son!” The man jumped to his feet. “Finally!”

“Everyone’s doing well,” the doctor said. “You can see your baby in the nursery in a few minutes.”

The man grinned as he watched the doctor leave the room. Then he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a handful of cigars. It was just like you always hear about. He handed the cigars to the other two men in the room and they told him, “Congratulations!” Then he turned toward me and Nonnie. He looked straight through us like we wasn’t there. His smile disappeared for a minute, but he was whistling as he walked out of the room.

“Guess we don’t get no cigar,” Nonnie muttered so only I could hear.

I didn’t say nothing. Inside my head, though, I was plenty busy. I was praying to God to let my sister live.

After a while, a nurse came into the room and walked over to us. I could tell she wasn’t going to make no big loud announcement like the doctor done with the cigar man, and I tensed up. She sat in the chair next to Nonnie and leaned close.

“She had a boy,” she said. “She had a difficult time and lost a lot of blood, but she’s going to be okay.”

Nonnie closed her eyes. “Thank you, Jesus,” she said.

I clutched the arms of my chair. “The baby—?” I asked.

“He’s doing just fine.” She smiled.

I could hardly believe it! Nonnie grabbed my hand and squeezed it. It felt like the happiest moment we had in a long time.

“Did they take out her appendix?” I asked.

The nurse raised her eyebrows at Nonnie, who nodded like she was giving permission to talk to me.

“Not yet, honey,” the nurse said. “They’ll do that later today or maybe tomorrow.”

“But it could bust!” I said.

She chuckled, winking at Nonnie. “I promise you we’ll keep an eye on it,” she said, like it was no big deal. Then she turned all serious. “Is your granddaughter keeping the baby?” she asked Nonnie.

Nonnie looked shocked by the question. “Of course!” she said.

“You want to see him, then?” the nurse asked. “The girl’s still asleep, but the baby’s in the nursery.”

Nonnie hesitated so long, I had to answer for us. “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “We want to see him.”

We followed her down a long hallway to where some windows was cut into the wall. The man with the cigars stood there, puffing away, grinning. “That’s my son there.” He pointed through the glass. There was a bunch of little metal cribs in the room and I followed his finger to a baby I could hardly see, he was in a crib so far from the window. “He’s cute,” I said, trying to be polite, but I hardly noticed his baby. I was too busy looking for ours.

The nurse went into the nursery and put a white mask over her face. She reached into one of the cribs, lifted a tiny bundle into her arms, and brung him over to the window. I couldn’t get a real good look at him, he was so bundled up, but I could see his face was pink and his head was covered with lots of dark curls. I forgot all about worrying what color he was. He was the cutest baby ever. That was all I saw. The cutest baby ever.

I looked at Nonnie and she was smiling wider than I ever seen before. She pressed her hand to the window, her lower lip shivering and her eyes filling up. She could surprise me sometimes. She acted mean, but maybe she was just scared. Scared this new baby would be half colored and no one would want it around. Scared we’d get kicked out of our house and have nowhere to live. Scared, like I was, that Mary Ella would die.