Sissy gathers ’em quickly from the mat and tries to stand with ’em. “No!” Josey say. “Just throw ’em over. You don’t need to come.”
Josey catches ’em one-handed and tangles the sheet into a ball and places it on the floor beneath her. A new nest. She squats down over it, her back flat against the wall and grunts and waits for the next push to come. Her eyes draw closed.
A drip of blood dots the sheet. Then another. A steady stream of red patters from between her legs, wetting the path where the baby’ll come. But blood like this ain’t supposed to happen.
Josey’s head flops forward, her neck sinks into her shoulders, her upper body droops between her legs but she don’t fall.
All the muscles in her belly jerk to center like before but Josey don’t make a sound. I try to touch her face. Of course, I cain’t. I call to Sissy for help but she don’t hear me.
“Josey?” Sissy finally say. She shuffles slow across the room, puts her hand on Josey’s shoulder and shakes her. Leans toward her.
Josey slumps forward into Sissy’s arms. Josey’s head tilts back and Sissy slaps her face. “Wake up, Josey!” She sees the blood soaked through the sheet and sees Josey’s belly lurch to center again. “It’s comin!” Sissy say. “You gotta wake up, Josey. Push!”
Sissy searches the room for something to use.
Nothing.
She lowers Josey in her arms, cradling her like a baby, then reaches for the mat one-handed, catches the edge of it with her fingertips, then drags it over, puts it under Josey’s hips, perches Josey’s legs up and open. “I can see the head, Josey! It’s right there. Push! Josey, push!”
A black mass rises between her legs like a bubble of dark — baby hairs coated in gleaming white and red. “Push, Josey!” Sissy say, trying to help it out. No use. “You got to push, Josey! Or else this baby gon’ choke to death.”
Josey’s belly tightens and the head comes. Sissy gives it a gentle twist to one side and the curve of its shoulders seep out. With speed, the whole body, too. “We got a boy!” Sissy yells over his stuttering cries.
She cuts the chord, joyful, and crawls to Josey with him tucked under her chest. “You gotta wake up, Josey. We got a boy to take care of.”
Josey grunts but her eyes don’t open. The sides of her belly lurch instead, and a new bulge rises from between her collapsed knees — not the gray mass of afterbirth, but something bluish and striped with strawberry colored hair.
“Sweet Jesus!” Sissy cry and lays the boy down. No sooner than she do, the next baby’s delivering itself right into Sissy’s waiting arms. Silent.
“Come on, baby,” she say, flipping it over on her forearm and patting the back. “Come on!”
Nothing.
Finally, a sputter. A cry. Might as well have been the voice of God.
“It’s a girl!” Sissy cried.
And this girl, this boy, Josey would name in freedom. So the last name she chose for them was not Graham who’d owned her. Owned Sissy. It was Freeman.
36 / FLASH, Conyers, Georgia, 1847
I WAS TIRED WHEN I left Soledad’s near midnight last night. Spent two hours resting three times, was sick once, and had to talk myself out of saying fuck it to everything, and letting myself die in the cold. And now, the smoldering embers of Albert’s blown-out fire are glowing in his furnace, waiting to be resurrected, warming me still. It’ll be sunrise soon.
I lay across this bench alone, in the dark, and in the soot of his workshop. A pop from the furnace starts the fire to life again, tinting the air orange and yellow, and casting the black shadows of Albert’s tools against the wall. They throb and change shape in flickers.
I snuggle down into Albert’s burnt-smelling clothes and shift his big leather gloves that I made a pillow under my head. I roll onto my back and stare at the beams on the ceiling, all four of ’em are mostly black from layers of up-floating smoke that stuck.
My hands slide to my nothing belly. I do it because I should have started my monthly cycle ten days ago. And almost thirty days before then. But it ain’t come. I tell myself that it don’t mean pregnant because strain and pressure in life can stop any peace. Any normal. And I’ve had some. And anyway, I don’t feel no different ’cept this sour stomach. Sick every morning, though. And we was careful. Jeremy pulled hisself out of me before he finished every time. And if something was growing inside my body, I think I’d know. I’ll bleed. Cycles come late all the time. I could just be sick and dizzy and weak for no reason. My breasts could be tender for no. .
“If you gon’ stay in here,” Albert say from the doorway, “I’m gon’ have to let Cynthia know.”
I sit up. Nod. Saltiness fills my mouth, directly. I spit.
“I think I’m pregnant,” I say. I’ll be sure soon. And I’ll have to provide for it. Make sure we got a place to sleep.
“Even more reason to tell her,” he say.
“Jeremy’s the father,” I say, wanting to get everything out in the open.
“I brought some eggs,” he say.
“I’m not hungry.”
Albert sits on the stool nearer the furnace, breaks the eggs into his pan, and they sizzle over the fire. The slimy clear whites look like snot — nasty! — from a big sneeze — sick! — and he’s about to eat it. I throw up red broth menudo.
“I’m sorry,” I say. Albert gets his shovel, throws dirt over it, then scoops it all together and tosses it out the doorway. “Thank you.”
He sits back down and flips the eggs over without a word, can hardly hear him breathe. I lay back down and look his way but not at him. I don’t want to talk about last night.
I shift his gloves under my cheek, then roll on my back. He dumps the cooked eggs on his plate. The yellow pieces are charred brown. He say, “Now that you’re empty, maybe you’ve changed your mind about being hungry,” and holds his plate out to me.
He’s right. I take it.
“Fork?” he say.
“A big spoon be better,” I say.
I finish before he starts his and I rest back on the bench, rub my belly. “Jeremy’ll be a good father,” I say. “We almost made it out of here. He just needed another good hand, is all. Could’ve had our new life right now.”
I think about the way me and Jeremy gon’ love each other when this baby come. When he see what we got. “If I could’ve helped him more, he’d have got that hand.”
“Is that what you believe?” Albert say.
“You just don’t know about the world and how it goes ’round. Every family needs money.”
“The greatest wealth is time and health. Love.”
“And family,” I say.
“You can always have family,” he say. “You live in health long enough. .”
“And I got one. When Jeremy gets back, we’re gonna be family. You’ll see.”
He takes my plate. “You’re welcome to stay here for as long as you need,” he say. “’Til the baby comes and only if Cynthia will allow it.”
“I have other places I can go.”
He slides my plate in a bucket of sudsy water under his seat and say, “I’ll make sure you have food, water, that you’ll stay warm.”
“And what do you expect me to do for it?”
He runs a wet rag over the plate, takes it out and rinses it in a second bucket.
“Don’t take me for a fool,” I say. “No man gives something without expecting something else in return.”
“Then you’ve got me mistaken for somebody else — maybe your baby’s father.”
I don’t want to stay here.
Albert sets the wet plate near his furnace to dry, takes his plate of food and moves hisself to the small stool against the wall — just big enough for one butt cheek. I don’t care. I don’t need him to do nothing for me. I just need to stay somewhere ’til Jeremy see what he done wrong and come back for me.