The shadow on the west wall shifts. Two heavy boots rearrange themselves.
“Push, Juna,” I say. “You have to push.”
The women told me all that could go wrong. If it’s coming feet first, you’ll be without hope. If the girl won’t push, can’t push, you’ll be without hope. It’s a wicked time of year, they had said, to be giving birth. She was meant to come in the spring. It should take nine months, maybe ten, the ladies had said.
Folks say Abraham has been planning for a spring wedding, just before the tobacco goes in the ground. He has forgotten what I cannot. He has forgotten the other men Juna laid with and that the baby is no more Abraham’s than a half a dozen other men’s. Abraham has seen Juna over the past months, a few times in town, and so he’s seen how Juna has grown soft and round. Each time we’ve seen him, he has walked with a straighter back, his head held high again, always leading with his chin.
And while Juna is loved more and more every day, I have been forgotten. John Holleran no longer comes to the house. He doesn’t want me anymore, and Ellis Baine never did. Daddy always said I would be pleasing to a man, my softness something a man would want at the end of the day. He always said a man would want to rest his head on my chest, not Juna’s, and that he’d want me to stroke his forehead, tell him what a good man he was. Daddy always said I was pleasing, but now no man will have me.
Juna cries out. First one shoulder appears and then another. It’s quick now. They said it would be, God willing, if all went as it should. And here she is. A little girl. Not so small as we feared she would be. She’s long and lean, her skin so thin I think I can see her insides.
“I was right,” I say, standing from the stool and cradling the small body in my two hands. “A girl. Tiny as can be. A girl.”
Juna lies back and closes her eyes as I wrap the baby. I wrap her one way and then the other and draw the end up around her feet. Keep her warm, the women told me. Clean her face and nose. She cries out like they said she would, like they said she should. I hold her to my chest, but she’s still tethered to Juna. We wait for the cord to stop pulsing, and then Daddy steps up and with his pocketknife saws at it until it falls away.
“Give her to Daddy,” Juna says, her eyes still closed.
I look from Juna to Daddy and back again. He stretches out his hands, but instead of passing her off, I cradle her in one arm and, with my free hand, rub Juna’s soft stomach and tell her to give another push. She does nothing, but still it comes.
“That’s it. There we go.”
The room is quiet; even the wind has calmed. Juna lets her legs fall flat, rests her arms at her sides.
“Give her to Daddy.”
IT HAPPENS SOMETIMES, this time of year, that the weather takes a favorable turn. The sun shines strong enough to warm the ground, and slender blades of grass rise up. And then another turn. Rain and a cold snap, and in the morning, the young blades glisten with a layer of ice. Like slivers of crystal sprouting from the earth, if only for a few hours or maybe a few minutes. The fields shimmer until the icy coatings begin to thaw and melt away, and the slender young blades wilt.
“Daddy will take her now,” Juna says, her eyes still closed, though somehow she knows I have yet to hand off the child.
“I won’t let her go,” I say, swiping a finger through the baby’s mouth, wiping it on my apron.
Daddy stands next to me. I can smell the whiskey and cigars and hear each breath he draws through his nose.
“Take her, Daddy,” Juna says.
Her eyes open. Here in the house where the light is faint and scattered, they are like two holes cut into her head. They are empty, hollowed out.
“I won’t let him,” I say. “She’s your girl, Juna. Give her a name. Let Abraham give her a name. Daddy should go for him, let him see his girl.”
Juna lifts onto her elbows.
“Now, Daddy,” she says. Her voice is soft, sweet almost, and she tilts her head like she does. “Look how big she is after so short a time. She ain’t right.”
I turn a shoulder so Daddy can’t see that the baby is as big as any mother would hope her baby to be and yet she’s been such a few months in coming. She’s wrapped up tight, the blanket wound around her and tucked under like the ladies told me to do. He grabs me first by one arm. He’s taken off his gloves, and his fingers pinch the soft skin above my elbow. He doesn’t throw me or push me but turns me enough that he can reach the child. He threads one hand around her small body, tucks her under like he might a load of wood.
“That’s it,” Juna says.
She’s sitting up, her legs hanging over the side of the bed. There’s blood, must be blood, but it’ll be dark, and in so little light, I can’t see it.
“Take her, Daddy.”
Her voice is louder and higher, and her eyes are stretched wide.
“You take her or she’ll curse you.”
I grab the back of Daddy’s jacket with both hands, squeeze until my knuckles ache.
“Leave her to me,” I shout, hanging from Daddy, looking back at Juna.
“Take her. Take her away.”
Juna is screaming. Her kerchief has pulled loose, and her yellow hair hangs in her face. She tries to stand but stumbles backward and rests against the bed. Over and over she screams for Daddy to take the baby. She means for him to take the baby away and see to it she never returns.
“She’ll curse you, Daddy. She’ll ruin us all.”
We use the piece of wood in the spring to prop open the shutter John Holleran hung for Juna and me some years ago. He hung it on the inside of the house so we could open and close it as we liked. The board we use is three feet long, two inches thick, four inches wide. It’s sturdy, has to be to hold open the heavy slab of wood. That board is all I have, so I grab it. I don’t mean to hurt Juna but only to silence her. She frightens Daddy, always has. Since she was a little girl, all she had to do was look at him just so, brush up against him, linger too near, and he was afraid. He was afraid of what more pain would come into his life. He was afraid of more failed crops and dry springs and a life lived alone because no other woman would have him after Mama died. He was afraid to lose his sight and afraid to lose his only son. And then Dale died, and now Daddy is afraid of Juna, and because she tells him to take the baby, he’ll do it.
I lift the board. Juna is screaming at Daddy to take it away, take it away so she never has to see it again. It, she begins to call the little girl. Over and over again, she calls this baby an it. I draw back the board, and I swing. It strikes the side of Juna’s face. Her black eyes are stretched wide. She falls to the side, slides off the bed. I lift the board again and strike her from above. One more time. One more time and she is gone.
22
ANNIE’S FIRST THOUGHT had been to return the cards to Ellis and tell him she didn’t know who they belonged to. She would make a big show of telling him all the folks she questioned-Mama, Daddy, Grandma, Caroline, even the sheriff. But Abraham took the cards so Annie has nothing to return and no way to explain what became of them unless she tells the truth.
All her life, Annie has kept an eye out for the Baines. If it rattles, choose a different path. If it looks like a Baine, do the same. She’ll walk no closer than the fence. She’ll tell him she lost the cards and she doesn’t know where they came from. They’re just plain old cards. Faded and tattered and all bent up. Could have come from anywhere. From the drugstore, most likely. Or maybe the market where they sell playing cards near the batteries.