The Last Thing You Surrender, page 41
“I hate it.” Thelma made this confession in a low voice that did not sound like hers. She swallowed, felt fresh tears spring to her eyes. “I hate this baby,” she said. “I know that’s wrong. Baby ain’t never done nothin’ to nobody. Baby innocent as anything can be. But I can’t help it. I hate it. I hate knowin’ some part of that man is growin’ inside me. I just feel like I’m the dirt where he planted his seed.”
Hearing her own words, Thelma was appalled. “What kind of mother I’m gon’ be to this baby, Flora Lee?” she asked, helplessly. “What if it look like him? Every time I see it, it gon’ remind me of its daddy. How can you be a mother if you hate your own baby?”
The question hung suspended in a long silence broken only by the sound of Thelma sniffling into a handkerchief and the indistinct murmur of other conversations. A full minute passed.
Then, with a furtive glance to her left and her right, Flora Lee said, very softly, “You ain’t got to have it, you know.”
Thelma looked up. “What you mean?” she asked. Though of course, she knew.
Flora Lee’s brown eyes were steady upon her. “I mean you could get rid of it,” she said.
Thelma stared at her. Flora Lee gave a slight nod as if to confirm some unspoken question. “You done already thought about that, I expect,” she said.
Thelma said, “Yeah.”
Flora Lee said, “Seem like that solve your problem, then. Just promise me you won’t try to do it yourself. I done seen gals die who tried to do it theyselves.”
Thelma shook her head. “They’s a root woman I know about. Her name Mother Suggs. I ain’t never met her, but I done heard a lot about her. They say she know how to do them kind of things. They say she done helped a lot of women when they got theyselves in trouble. If I do it, I guess I go to her.”
Flora Lee gave another shallow nod. “Well, there you go, then,” she said, as if the matter was now settled.
“I done thought about it,” admitted Thelma. “Thought about it a lot.”
“What’s stoppin’ you, then?”
“It ain’t easy as all that,” said Thelma. “It’s a baby, Flora Lee.”
“It’s Earl Ray’s baby, Thelma.”
Thelma sighed. Then she said, “Flora Lee … I was pregnant once before.”
“You was?”
“Yeah. When I was a teenager. Me and Eric, that’s the fella got me pregnant, we got married on account of it. But I lost the baby. My baby was born dead.” Thelma paused, dabbing her eyes. “I bled a lot,” she said. “And the doctor, he said afterward that I probably wouldn’t never be able to conceive again. So you see, this baby I got inside me, you might say it’s kind of a miracle. I mean, I hate it, Lord knows, but it’s also a miracle. Can I go to the root woman and ask her to get rid of a miracle?”
Flora Lee pondered this for only a moment. Her nod was decisive. “Yes,” she said. “Sure you can.”
Thelma was surprised. “I can?”
“You don’t love this baby,” explained Flora Lee. “Ain’t that what you said?”
“I hate it,” corrected Thelma.
“Well, you asked the question yourself,” said Flora Lee. “How you gon’ be a mama to a baby you hate? Child comin’ into the world where even his own mama hate him, he better off if he weren’t never born at all. Don’t you think?”
“So you would get rid of it?” For some reason, Thelma found herself whispering.
“I would,” said Flora Lee. “And I wouldn’t worry about no miracle, neither. Miracle supposed to be a good thing, ain’t it? You carryin’ a child by Earl Ray Hodges ain’t no miracle. That’s a curse. Take it from me. I was married to the bastard five years.”
“But it’s against the law,” said Thelma, weakly.
Flora Lee shrugged. “Who gon’ tell the law?” she asked.
The guard called out, “Time’s up.”
Thelma barely heard him, but Flora Lee stood automatically. She regarded Thelma with a fond smile. “You was the only friend I ever had,” she said. “You take care of yourself, hear?”
Thelma looked up helplessly.
And then Flora Lee was gone. For a long moment, Thelma just sat there, unable to move. Other prisoners were filing out, other visitors leaving the room.
She sat there.
You was the only friend I ever had.
It wasn’t until the skinny guard was looming over her, staring down expectantly, that Thelma thought to follow the last of the visitors to the door.
She felt buffeted by her own emotions. Thelma was leaving Flora Lee to face alone whatever fate John Simon and the Mobile County district attorney would cobble together for her. But she couldn’t help it. Colored and white were not meant to be friends. If Earl Ray Hodges had taught her nothing else, he had certainly taught her that. And even if he hadn’t, how could Thelma ever look at Flora Lee the same way when the very sight of her brought back her husband, brought back that awful morning when she had felt his weight pressing her against the deck, brought back the thing that had happened next, that thing she never called by name, that thing so awful and hateful that she’d had to leave her own body to escape it?
What kind of friendship could that be? But still, she and Flora Lee had been close once. And how could she have abandoned a woman who considered Thelma her only friend? Not just her only friend now but her only friend ever? How cramped and constricted must Flora Lee’s life have been up till now that she could say such a thing? So yes, this way was harder, this way caused her pain, but in the end, this way was the only way it could be. Thelma walked out of the jail toward the bus stop and promised herself she would never return.
She did not look back.
But the woman who was no longer her friend had broken some chain inside her, let loose some logjam in her soul.
She did not have to have this baby.
And yes, this was something her mind had already known. But it had not yet whispered that secret to her soul. Flora Lee had bridged the gap for her and now, it was all Thelma could think about.
She did not have to have this baby.
It wasn’t really a baby anyway, was it? No, it was a thing. It was a tumor.
It was Earl Ray Hodges …
Here, nigger, nigger, nigger.
… having the last laugh from beyond the grave.
But he would not. That thought had hardened into a certainty by the time the bus came and she paid her fare. Thelma barely heard the driver bark at her to get off and reboard in the back. She barely felt the bodies that she squeezed through to find a place to stand. All of her was concentrated on that shining revelation.
She did not have to have this baby.
The decision was hers. And her decision was no.
It took an hour and a bus transfer to bring her back to the little house on Mosby Street. Gramp was sitting in the front room when she opened the door, his pipe clamped in his teeth, listening to a baseball game.
“Afternoon, Gramp,” she said.
“You sound like you in a good mood,” he said.
The realization made her pause. Then she said, “I suppose I am.”
“That’s good. Miss Flora Lee doin’ fine?”
“Well as can be expected.”
“We got anything back there for supper? I’m starvin’.”
It was Sunday and Mrs. Foster was at church.
“I’ll fix you somethin’ in a minute,” said Thelma. “Right now, I got to talk to you.”
She sat down in the chair on the other side of the radio. He turned expectantly toward the sound of her, and for a moment, she just studied this face she had known all her life. They had always had a special relationship, she and Gramp. He loved Luther and Luther loved him, but Luther had been a prickly boy with a temperament as unpredictable as a March breeze. He brooded a lot and needed time to himself. As a result, Luther had never been especially close to their grandfather—or even to her, now that she thought about it.
But she and Gramp had been another matter. Back when he had not yet lost his sight, they would go on long walks together with no particular destination in mind. The walking itself was the point. She could ask him anything and he would tell her. They talked about slavery and baseball and even where babies come from. She told him her secrets and he even told her his. So it seemed the most natural thing in the world to her that she would share what she had decided.
“I need to tell you somethin,’” she said. And she paused, looking for some way to slip easily into what needed to be said. But, she realized, there was none, so she plunged ahead. “I’m not gon’ have this baby,” she told him.
Puzzlement knotted her grandfather’s features, the sightless, rheumy eyes gazing somewhere off to the left of her. “What you mean?” he asked.
“You ever hear of Mother Suggs?”
“Yeah. She a midwife.”
“Yes,” said Thelma carefully, “she a midwife. She help them that wants a baby to bring it into the world. But she also help them that don’t want no baby to get rid of it.”
His mouth opened just slightly. Then he said, “You mean, you want to get an abortion?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, Thelma.”
It was all he said, but the tone of his voice expressed his disappointment more eloquently than a sonnet could have done. She felt an anger that was becoming all too familiar flare beneath her breastbone. It burned her good mood away like tissue paper in a furnace.
“‘Oh, Thelma’ what?”
“Just …” He palmed his bald head with his right hand, exhaled heavily. “Are you sure?”
“Why wouldn’t I be sure?” snapped Thelma hotly.
He looked startled at her vehemence. “Thelma, I’m just sayin’, you go to one of them old hoodoo women, ain’t no tellin’ what they do to you. I done knowed ’em to give a girl gunpowder to drink mixed in with whiskey. Or stick a knittin’ needle up in there. You could get bad hurt. You could even die. It’s a mighty risk you’d be takin’, Thelma. You sure you want that?”
“Ain’t but one thing I’m sure of, Gramp. I don’t want to have that man’s baby.”
Again his sightless gaze was somewhere to the left of her. “Baby can’t be blamed for who it come from, Thelma. Baby don’t know nothin’ about that.”
Anger yanked her to her feet. “But I’ll know! And I’ll hate that goddamn baby just like I hate its goddamn father! I already do! How the hell am I gon’ be a proper mother to some goddamn half-white bastard and every time I look at it, it reminds me of … reminds me of …”
It was no use. She could not make herself go on. Thelma paused, chest heaving, eyes streaming. The old man’s face was uncomprehending.
“Thelma,” he said, uncertainly.
“Just leave me alone,” she told him. “For God’s sake, just leave me the hell alone.”
And she stormed out of the house, feeling as if its very walls were pressing in upon her. The door rattled in its frame as it slammed behind her.
Outside, she breathed. It felt like the first time she had done so in a week. Thelma sat on the steps. From someone’s backyard, a chicken’s desperate squawking came to an abrupt end, and she knew the unfortunate bird would end this day as someone’s Sunday supper. Across the street, the jump rope girls, Ruthie, Mildred, Vivian, and Aggie, were walking home from church. They would run into their houses and change clothes and within three minutes, she knew, they would be back outside, jumping double Dutch. They waved energetically to her now, four skinny, dark-skinned girls in homemade church dresses. Thelma lifted a desultory hand in response, thinking of how much simpler life would be if all she had to worry about was jumping rope with her friends until the light faded and her mother yelled at her to come in for dinner.
The thought almost made her weep. Thelma was conscious that something was wrong with her. Tears always seemed to be lurking just beneath the surface of her. And when she wasn’t sorrowful, she was mad. Lately, she had become so snappish, so easy to anger. When had she ever yelled like that at Gramp before? Not even when she was a teenager and thought she was in love with Eric Gordy and Gramp had tried to keep her from seeing him had she treated her grandfather with such disrespect.
But she couldn’t seem to help it. Her moods were so brittle, her temper so hair-trigger. She had the sense that she had lost her very self, like a wrong turn on an unfamiliar road, and she was struggling to get back again. She was glad her brother was not here to see this. But then, if her brother had been here, none of this would have happened. How blithely she had challenged Earl Ray Hodges, how impulsively she had taken Flora Lee into her home, robbing that cruel little man of what, in his crude way, he had actually held dear, wounding his pride in the process. What little thought she had given to how he might take revenge—even after Ollie’s terrible beating.
But would she have done it if Luther were here? Luther, who seethed with such fierce hatred of white people that he could not abide their very presence? She probably would have chafed under the restrictions imposed by her brother’s presence. But at least she would not be in the situation she found herself in now, pregnant with a hated baby. If Luther were here, she would never have known Flora Lee Hodges beyond nodding to her in the shipyard. She would not have thought of calling some white woman her friend. When Earl Ray slugged his wife for the sin of being thankful, Thelma would have felt bad about it, but she would have known better than to extend her hand to help.
And what was to happen next? Just what did Gramp think she ought to do? Was she supposed to give birth to this little mulatto bastard? And then what? Give it away? Who in the hell would want it? What orphanage would even take it?
Or did he actually expect her to keep it?
How, exactly, would she explain that to Luther? What would she say to him when she presented him with his little half-white nephew? How would he ever respect her again? How would she even look him in the eye? Especially if he asked how she had come to have such a child and she was forced to admit it was because she had been … because she’d had … forced relations with a white man? What would that do to him? Luther was already half-mad with his abhorrence of white people. To come home and find one—even half of one—suckling at his sister’s breast would probably drive him completely over the edge. That was another reason it was best just to get rid of the thing.
The sound of the jump rope girls drew her up out of herself. Sure enough, they had come back out on the street, having changed into play-clothes. Aggie and Ruthie were swinging the two ropes, Vivian and Mildred were holding hands in the middle, pigtails bouncing as they jumped. And the girls chanted an old singsong in time to the swing of the ropes.
Oh Mary Mack, Mack, Mack
All dressed in black, black, black
With silver buttons, buttons, buttons
All down her back, back, back
It made Thelma smile to see them. She watched for a few minutes, then got up and went back inside the house. The front room was empty. Apparently, Gramp had gone to his room, the door of which was pointedly closed. In the kitchen, a Wonder Bread bag was open on the table, slices spilling out. Next to it was an open can of Spam; half of its contents had been crudely sliced out by the knife that lay near the can.
Just as he had felt around to find the bread, the Spam, and the knife, Thelma knew her grandfather was perfectly capable of putting those things back where they belonged once he was done with them, blind or not. But she had promised to fix his lunch and instead had yelled and cursed at him. This was his way of getting back at her, of telling her she had not been fair to him. Thelma sighed. Sometimes, Gramp was a hundred-year-old child. She was tempted to leave it all right where she had found it, let the bread turn hard, let the Spam change color. But it was foolish and unpatriotic to waste food with a war on. She didn’t even have aluminum foil, which was nearly impossible to get, to wrap the Spam.
Sighing, fighting down an anger that was, she knew, out of proportion to the offense, she closed the bread bag and put it back on top of the icebox. She dug the remainder of the Spam out of the can, put it on a plate, covered it with another plate and put it inside the icebox. It wouldn’t keep for long like that; she would have to cook it in the morning with scrambled eggs. Then she stomped the Spam can flat, opened the back door, and dropped it into the box where they were collecting metals for the war. She tossed the knife into the sink.
Finally, she went back into the front room, fished a cigarette out of her purse, which still lay where she had dropped it when she came in, and sat in her chair next to the radio. The ball game was still playing. She switched over to the news, lit her cigarette, and sat there smoking as she listened.
The announcer told her about reports of mass killings in eastern Poland as the Nazis took over entire villages, slaughtering the peasants who lived in them in order to make room for ethnic Germans to settle there. And he spoke of how a city named Hamburg in Germany had been reduced to rubble by British bombs, with a death toll over three nights that was believed to be near forty thousand.
Sitting there on a Sunday afternoon in her front room in Mobile, the faint sound of little girls chanting “Oh Mary Mack” coming through the thin walls, it was difficult for Thelma to conceive that such a thing was real, that it was happening right now, in the very same world.
Mass killing? How did you even accomplish such a thing? Did you just stand there and shoot unarmed people until you ran out of bullets? How was such a thing possible for human beings to do? And forty thousand people dead? In just three days? How could you even fathom such a number? How could you pretend to comprehend such a slaughter? It gave her an odd, unsettled feeling, as if civilization itself had never been more than a veneer and now the war had stripped it away to show mankind as the brutish animal it really was. The whole world had descended into a chaos of violence, hatred, and killing on a scale impossible for her to understand.
Forty thousand people dead. In just one tiny corner of the war. In just one city. In just three days. Thelma had never done much praying. But sitting there in her front room, listening to the news, she breathed a prayer out loud.
