And it made me sorry. Sorry for Josey. Sorry for him. Sorry when I knew he couldn’t care for her. Sorry for his broke heart when he knew it, too. He was ashamed of hisself for wanting to give up. Then devastated by his own fleeting thought: that if Josey were dead, it would be a relief.
I wish Charles were here.
She’ll always have me, but right now she need a Charles.
Charles had spent almost five months living between Sissy’s house and his old slaves’ quarters. In secret, he’d walk the shortcut that Jackson had partly finished so he could see Josey most days, waiting to overhear her tell Jackson she missed her daddy but that never came.
But mostly, Charles wanted to be sure that Josey was safe and properly cared for. That Jackson could be the man to do it. That he could be trusted. Charles needed to know how Jackson would be when he thought no one was watching. Needed to see the character of the man he called friend. And Charles missed Josey.
For weeks he cried every night. Had decided that lonely was the disease that Josey left him with. Incurable. A leprosy of the soul. And that first day, Josey’s wedding day, he was falling apart inside. When Josey and Jackson would come to visit him on Sundays, it was the only day he’d dressed hisself all week. And when they’d come, the house was full again with her laughter and the deep ocean of joy in her smile, only ebbing when she saw in him something like sadness and asked, “Daddy? Are you all right?”
He didn’t want to be the reason for her to stop smiling.
“I’m going west,” he finally told her. “Join the preacher and his family. If they won’t have me, I could join the fighting against the Lakota Indians. The west is wild. I won’t die a useless old man.”
But Josey couldn’t let him go.
She told him so.
The first time he left, he walked fifteen miles back home because of his second thoughts and her voice is his head. But when he got back and saw again how well Jackson cared for Josey, it hurt him some. He thought maybe Jackson could do it better than he could. And he didn’t want to be a burden. So he left. He held the healing vision of Josey in his mind ahead of him so he wouldn’t turn back.
BY THE SIXTH month, Jackson stopped believing Josey could be better. Her sickness wore on him like thighs on inseams. But maybe it wasn’t just her. Maybe it’s the nature of things. How men cain’t stay at home and do the work of women. How he was stuck at home, instead of the war. Some women are bred to be trapped in a house. Caged animals in their housework who feel free.
Not Jackson.
Not for long.
Not since he heard from Charles about the new war against the Indians out west. So when them “negro representatives” came down our path recruiting new federal troops to help re-occupy Texas, Jackson said, “I will. . but I gotta talk to my wife.”
JOSEY SITS ON the ledge of the bucket with her leg bent up on the seat. Her pink-white toes are stretching long and bulby, double creased at the knuckle as the pain of her labor rises.
It hits her hard and she grips the bucket’s seat with all her toes and fingers, bearing down, chin in chest, grunting and groaning. But not like she’s about to have a baby, though.
Quieter. Lot quieter.
Like she’s straining out some solid block of the bowel in private. Guarded.
All of this quiet is to keep Sissy unaware and asleep in the other room. Josey don’t want this moment spoiled by her.
“You a whore,” Sissy told Josey the day after the wedding. “Brides s’posed to bleed on their wedding night,” she said. “These sheets stayed clean. And if you try’na pass off your cycle blood as something different. . know that new blood don’t smell the same.”
WHEN THE PAIN lets go of Josey again, she leans back and lets her legs gap open, waiting for the next wave to come. She’s calling for Jackson. Not for me. It wouldn’t be me. Why would it ever be? Even now?
“Nobody’s going nowhere,” Sissy told Jackson the day he announced his leaving. “There’s a lot here that needs doing, a baby coming. . you ain’t leaving me. You promised the last war was the last time. What about these windows, Jackson? What about the sowing that needs doing? What about what I need?”
JOSEY SCOOTS BACK on the bucket and undoes the top buttons of her dress, tugging the material away from her neck like it’s too hot even though there’s snow outside.
Her panting hot breaths push smoke through her thin lips, drying the soft skin there to clear flakes.
I hover next to her, pacing back and forth, wish I could go get somebody, wake Sissy. “Jackson,” she whispers.
“WE ALL DESERVE freedom,” Josey told him when he said he wanted to go back to war. “We’ll be all right. It’s your turn.”
“Don’t listen to this fool,” Sissy said. “She’s trying to get rid of you. Probably got somebody waiting down that nice path you cleared for her.”
JOSEY BRINGS HER foot back to the toilet ledge, biting into her lip, shutting her eyes and rolling her head to one side. For the first time, she screams. And again. Pushing.
Screams!
The cupboard door bursts open, “What the hell you screaming for!” Sissy say coming in. “All this damn screaming!” Sissy drops a bucket of warm water on the cupboard floor. “Two hours you been in here grunting. This ain’t no proper place to have a baby. Get up!”
Josey staggers to her feet and lets herself get pulled along. Every step she takes looks painful.
Sissy sets her down in the corner of the room on a birthing mat that she’s readied for this. She take the cup and pours water in Josey’s dry mouth but Josey coughs it up.
“You need to drink something or get this over wit.”
Josey closes her eyes. “I just need to sleep,” she say. “I’m so tired now.”
“No woman’s posed to sleep for birthing.” But Josey don’t open her eyes again. Only her parched sticky lips peel open and her head rolls. Sissy shakes her awake.
“My heart feels like it’s running away from me,” Josey say. “Scattering in my chest.” Josey slides back down on the mat. Sissy nudges her again.
“You quitting on my grandbaby? Come on and get up. Drink your water.” Sissy holds the cup out but Josey don’t move.
She wakens sudden, grinding her teeth and balling the sheets in her fists from the coming pain. When it releases her again she slides back down, grimacing with closed eyes.
“What’s the matter wit’cha?” Sissy say. “You ain’t the first one ever birthed a baby. And you ain’t gon’ be. .”
“Shut up!” Josey say. “Just shut up! I’m sick and tired of hearing you flap your lips! Get away from me, woman!”
Josey hollers from new pain and pushes at the same time. Her body twists in a strange position, her hips one way, her torso the other, wrung out from the pain. When it ends, her eyes are red like each socket is its own tiny pool of blood, the colored part a blue marble dropped in.
Josey forces her way to a stand. Walks wide-legged across the room, holding her belly. Sissy’s voice trembles behind her. “I. . I just wanted you to drink your water.”
Josey stops at the farthest wall next to the cupboard, too tired to open the door. She leans back against it instead, takes a deep breath before sliding down the door into a squat. She undoes the middle buttons of her dress, tugs at the material, finally rips it off and over her head, leaving her buck naked and pearly white.
“Good Lawd!” Sissy say, blocking her eyes. “You fixin to go to hell.”
Josey’s breaths quicken and her teeth grind again. She rolls onto her hands and knees, meeting the coming pain on all fours this time. Her face reddens and the muscles on the sides of her belly lurch forward and center. Tears run down her cheeks. Breathless now, she tell Sissy, “Throw me my sheets.”