Between, Georgia Read online

  The Fretts were meticulous, order incarnate. The Crabtrees lived in unimaginable squalor. The Fretts lived within convention and tradition, while the Crabtrees spread like kudzu, generating chaos and more Crabtrees, generally without benefit of marriage.

  The Fretts had both money and the respect of the town. They were the royal fish in this tiniest of ponds, and the Crabtrees fed along the bottom.

  This defied what the Crabtrees felt should be the natural order of things, because the Crabtrees, like everyone else in Between, were white. They were paper-white, pure Irish, most of them, 9

  maybe a little French or English or German blood in some of the branches. It was merely annoying when morally solvent white folks looked down on them, but it was maddening to take it from the Fretts, the children of a white father and a mother who was, as Ona put it, “half a damn squaw-Indian.”

  Hazel had closed her eyes for a moment, resting. Genny looked down at Hazel’s pale eyelids, so smooth and dewy, and said, “Goodness grief, honey, how old are you? Bernese, you be sweet. She’s a baby herself !”

  Bernese said, “Apples don’t fall off trees and land all the way downtown. She’s almost sixteen, and I think her mama is my age.”

  “I hate you,” said Hazel to Bernese, and then her eyes opened wide again. “Oh no, it’s coming.”

  “This time you push,” said Bernese.

  “I don’t know how to push,” said Hazel, looking desperately to Genny. “Oh no, please do something. Do anything.”

  “Push like you’re going number two,” said Bernese, and Genny said, “Bernese! Really!”

  “How many babies have you had?” Bernese barked, and Genny dropped her eyes. “So shut up and let me help this girl.”

  “Do something,” said Hazel to Genny. “Talk to me. Anything.

  Sing.”

  Genny shook her head, but she opened her mouth and started to sing in her quavering soprano. “ ‘There’s not a friend like the lowly Jesus . . .’ ”

  Hazel lashed up at Bernese with one foot and screamed, “Oh fuck, please not Jesus.” Bernese caught her thrashing leg at the knee and bent it back toward her abdomen. “Get ready,” said Bernese, anchoring the heel of her other hand at the top of Hazel’s swollen belly.

  “I’m not ready. Help me,” Hazel wailed to Genny, and twisted on the floor while Bernese wrestled with her leg. “Help me. Sing. But not about Jesus.”

  Genny patted frantically at Hazel with her free hand and sang the first thing that came into her head. “ ‘Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, / Men were deceivers ever . . .’ ”

  Hazel thrashed and writhed. “It’s here! It’s here!”

  Bernese bore down, saying, “Push, you hear me? You better push.”

  Genny kept singing. “ ‘One foot in sea and one on shore, / To one thing constant never . . .’ ”

  Hazel was shaking her head but pushing anyway. Genny saw my head coming out, slick with blood and slime, and she paled and felt her head getting light. Hazel’s death grip on her arm was the only thing keeping her upright. She closed her eyes, weaving herself back and forth, and sang, “ ‘Then sigh not so, / But let them go, / And be you blithe and bonny; / Converting all your sounds of woe / Into hey nonny, nonny.’ ”

  “It’s crowning. Where is Stacia?” said Bernese. “Genny, get between her legs and catch this baby.”

  But Genny had reached her limit. “ ‘Hey nonny, nonny,’ ” she sang with her eyes squinched tight.

  Stacia came in from the kitchen with a pan of hot water and clean dish towels, scissors, and string. She set them down and knelt between Hazel’s legs as the next contraction hit.

  Hazel pushed as Bernese bore down on her abdomen, and my head came out of her. I arrived faceup, staring into the light with my eyes open and angry. It seemed to Stacia that I was staring up 11

  at her. My eyes were puffed almost shut, slitted, but she thought my gaze was meeting hers. I looked aware to her, so angry and alive. My face was framed by the darkness that was eating the edges of her vision, and in that moment there were only the two of us. Not even Hazel existed.

  Stacia dipped a finger into my mouth to clear it. As she did so, my eyebrows lowered and my lips opened wider. I looked like I was squalling, but it was airless and silent, my body still compressed inside Hazel. As Stacia stared at me, I spun slowly in the birth canal, rotating, turning facedown. Stacia cradled my forehead in her rough palm as another contraction hit. I came slithering out, slick as a fish into her waiting arms.

  “Is it done? Is it done?” Hazel said.

  “I think so, honey,” said Genny, peeking. The skin around her eyes and mouth had turned green. “Oh please, please, I think it’s over.” Stacia looked across Hazel’s prone body, and her eyes met Genny’s. Genny signed one-handed, Boy? Girl?

  Stacia slid her thumb down the side of her right cheek.

  “A girl,” said Genny, rocking herself and nodding. “That’s good. That’s not scary. Look, you have a sweet little girl.”

  “My cooter hurts,” said Hazel.

  Stacia stayed where she was, holding me with the cord trailing down into Hazel.

  “Is it out?” asked Hazel. “Why is it coming again?”

  “Again?” Genny squawked.

  “It won’t be half so hard this time,” said Bernese to both of them, and she leaned down and grasped the cord, easing out the afterbirth as Hazel contracted. Genny shut her eyes and started singing again, “ ‘Hey nonny, nonny, so weep no more, my 12

  ladies.’ ” Hazel relaxed, snuffling, and Stacia busied herself cleaning me up and tying off the cord.

  “Genny, shut up that caterwauling,” said Bernese.

  “ ‘Hey nonny,’ ” Genny sang, trailing off. “Please, is it over?”

  Hazel released her, and when Genny opened her eyes and looked down, she saw perfect red handprints braceleting her wrist.

  “Who is Nonny?” asked Hazel in a puny voice.

  “What?” said Bernese.

  “She was singing ‘Hey, Nonny.’ Who is Nonny? Is that the baby?”

  Stacia stood up, holding me wrapped in a towel. I was wide awake, staring up into her cloud-gray eyes, solemn and interested. Bernese had moved between Hazel’s legs.

  “You look good. No tearing. You want to hold your baby?” said Bernese to Hazel.

  “No,” said Hazel, and she turned her face away, looking at the shattered terrarium. A caterpillar had negotiated its way out over the glass and rubble and was oozing down the sideboard.

  “It’s a nice little girl, and she is looking much cleaner,” said Genny. She sat slumped and exhausted, flat on her bottom on the floor by Hazel’s head, faintly rocking herself.

  Stacia looked up from me at last, and Genny signed that she should hand me to Hazel, but Stacia did not move. She looked at Hazel as Hazel said, “I don’t want it,” shaking her head petu-lantly. Stacia curled her lip and held me tighter.

  “Maybe later,” said Bernese.

  Stacia stamped her foot to get Genny’s attention and signed one-handed, cradling me in her other arm.

  “Stacia says it’s her baby,” said Genny.

  “Obviously,” said Bernese. “Give the girl a minute. She’ll take it.”

  Genny shook her head. “No, I mean Stacia’s saying, ‘This is my baby. I want her.’ Stacia wants the baby.”

  There was a long silence as everyone digested this. Bernese looked from Stacia to Genny and back again and then snorted.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” She tilted her face and bellowed up the stairs, “Lou, leave the boys for a sec and throw me down some sheets. The oldest ones we have. And any old towels you see in that linen closet.”

  “Stacia says, ‘I am not being ridiculous. She came to me. She’s mine.’ I think she really wants this baby, Bernese.”

  “Oh good,” said Hazel to Genny. “Take it. It can be y’all’s Nonny.”

  “Let’s get you to the hospital,” said Bernese.

  Hazel immediately sa
id, “No hospital. They’ll call Mama, and I’ll never get away. She’ll keep me. And she’ll make me keep it.”

  Her eyes filled up with tears. “Please, I’m fine. Just let me sleep a little and then I’ll go away. Y’all can have that Nonny.”

  “You need to see a doctor,” said Bernese. “You could have a complication and bleed out on my floor.”

  “I won’t do that. I promise,” said Hazel, and the tears spilled down her cheeks. “You said I looked good. And if you make me go to the hospital, I’ll throw myself under a truck. I really will.

  I’ll throw Nonny, too.”

  Stacia stamped her foot again, signing, and Genny said, “Stacia’s insisting. She says, ‘This baby is my baby. I know it. I don’t know how to do it, how to keep her, but Bernese does. Bernese, you do it.’ ”

  Genny got up and walked over, folding back the towel to look at me. “Oh, goodness grief, look at all that red hair. And the teeny feet.”

  “This is not like a hamster, Genny,” snapped Bernese. “This is a person. A little Crabtree person.”

  Lou’s pale face appeared at the top of the stairs. His brown hair, thin and gingery, was rumpled, and his comb-over was hanging down past his ear on one side. He had wrapped the sheets and towels into a bundle, and he tossed it over the banister to Bernese.

  “Get back with the boys,” Bernese commanded, and he disappeared. Bernese began gently packing the towels under Hazel’s bottom to catch the fluids that were oozing out of her and soak-ing into the carpet.

  Stacia was signing again, rapid and angry, her free hand flashing. Genny interpreted, and as she spoke, she got the roller-coaster look that she always got when she had to say things out loud for Stacia that she would not have said for a million dollars on her own account. Her eyelids lifted so high that the whites were visible all the way around.

  “She says, ‘Don’t lecture me, and don’t dare patronize me. I am telling you something real here, if you aren’t too stupid to hear it.

  So shut up and help me.’ ”

  Bernese ignored Stacia; she was still carefully arranging the old sheets and talking to Hazel. “Are you comfortable? You want some water?”

  “Please don’t tell,” begged Hazel.

  “Your mama’s Ona Crabtree?” Bernese said.

  “No,” said Hazel.

  But Genny said, “Yes, that’s her mama.” Over Hazel’s head, Genny’s eyes met Bernese’s, and Genny mouthed, “Drinks,” then bobbed her head in a wise nod.

  Bernese wrapped the afterbirth in the nastiest towel. She noticed Genny’s hands creeping back up her braid and said,

  “Genny, for the love of Baby Jesus, get your hands off yourself.

  Don’t start picking now when it’s all over but steam-cleaning the carpet. Do you need a pill?”

  Genny shook her head and rubbed at her forearm for a second, then went back to signing what Bernese was saying for Stacia.

  Bernese said, “Good, then make yourself useful. See if that girl won’t nurse her baby. She should nurse it while it’s awake. I am going to go get some trash bags, and I will call for an ambulance from the kitchen.”

  Bernese headed up the long hall, her arms full of filthy towels.

  Hazel watched her go, panting, and then she rolled over painfully and got to her hands and knees.

  Genny said, “Honey, you should be still.” Stacia, holding me, hesitated. She tried to hand me to Genny, but Genny, still dizzy and faintly green, did not take me. Stacia walked toward Hazel, holding me, and Genny followed, saying, “Honey, you need to lie down on this pad, you are . . . Oh my. You are leaking things.”

  Hazel crawled miserably across the foyer. She left the doorway to the den and crept back into the glass. It bit into her knees as she headed for the long table. Stacia followed, with Genny cluck-ing and tutting along behind her. Hazel reared up suddenly on her bleeding knees and grabbed the gun off the sideboard. Stacia froze, and Genny almost ran into her.

  Bernese was at the end of the hall when Hazel called, “If you go one step more, I will shoot you.”

  Bernese stopped and turned around. Hazel was so weak she was swaying drunkenly from side to side, trying to hold up the heavy gun so she could aim down the hall. “I will shoot you if you tell my mama.”

  “Put that down, you idiot. I don’t need more holes in my woodwork,” Bernese said.

  “I mean it,” said Hazel.

  “Spare me,” said Bernese contemptuously. Blood was trickling out of Hazel, oozing in rivulets down her thighs. “You can barely stay erect. You couldn’t hit me if I stood dead still and gave you all six tries.”

  “Fine,” said Hazel. She twisted at the waist, bringing the gun around. Stacia was close behind her, and Hazel pressed the barrel into Stacia’s belly, under me.

  “Bet I can hit her, ” Hazel said.

  Bernese became very still, and it was silent for a long, ugly moment.

  “Jesus, help us,” whispered Genny, barely above a breath.

  “Will you stop with that Jesus? I told you!” Hazel’s voice was shrill.

  Stacia moved her free hand up very slowly to sign, making no sudden movements, and Genny managed to look away from the gun and focus on the familiar sight of Stacia speaking. “Hazel, Stacia wants to know where your sweetheart is,” said Genny. Her voice was tinny and high.

  Hazel looked in confusion from Stacia’s slowly signing hand to her face and said, “My sweetheart?”

  Genny was so afraid that all she could do was watch Stacia’s hand and repeat after it, saying what Stacia’s hand was saying, not looking at anything else. “You have a baby. You must have had a sweetheart.”

  Hazel sucked air in through her nostrils, loud. “I had a lot of sweethearts,” she said. She shrugged. Bernese knelt down silently and set her armful of towels on the floor.

  “I had a sweetheart,” said Genny for Stacia, her eyes locked on Stacia’s fingers. “Just the one.” Stacia signed, her movements gentle and slow, as the luna moths fluttered up around the light and the barrel of the gun pressed into her soft belly. “His name was Frank. I don’t have him anymore. He did something stupid, and I’m done with him. I thought I’d marry him and we’d live with Genny. Me and Frank and my sister, and I would have my own babies. But that’s not going to happen now.” Stacia kept signing, but her gaze lifted, and she looked over Hazel, meeting Bernese’s eyes as Bernese stood and began creeping up the hall toward them, step by silent step. Stacia glanced back down at Hazel, at her trembling hand on the gun, and then back at Bernese. “Do you know what Usher’s syndrome is?” Genny said for her.

  “No,” said Hazel. Her thin arms were trembling with effort, and Genny was terrified that she’d inadvertently pull the trigger.

  Genny kept her eyes on Stacia’s hand and interpreted, hardly aware of what she was saying. The gun pressing into Stacia’s belly was a black beast in her peripheral vision.

  “It means I’m deaf,” Genny interpreted. “I was born deaf. And it means my eyes are going. I’ll be blind in another ten years, fifteen if I am lucky. The edges are closing in already. It’s dark beside me, like shutters are being drawn. At some point my depth perception will go, and I won’t be able to work anymore. I’m a sculptor; I make molds and cast dolls in porcelain. That’s my work. So I’ve lost my sweetheart. And I’m losing my work. And here’s this baby.

  “This baby is mine. You brought her to this house, and she slid into my arms. No one is going to call your mama, because no one is going to take this baby from me. Frank is gone, my work is going, and I’ve been asking God, ‘Why does my heart keep beating?’ And you brought me the answer. Don’t worry about Bernese. She won’t do a thing to take this baby out of my arms.

  She’s going to help me keep this baby. Once she sees my side—and she’s seeing it now—she won’t worry about what’s practical or legal or even what’s right. She’ll make it happen. I’ll take this baby, and you can go home. Home or anywhere you like.”

  Stacia looked h
ard into Hazel’s eyes and signed, and Genny said, “But if you shoot me, Bernese is going to have to call your mama.”

  After a long moment, Hazel’s arms dropped, pointing the gun down into the carpet. She sagged, and Bernese ran the last few steps up the hall and caught her before she slumped into the glass. Bernese peeled the gun out of her limp hand, flipped the safety on, then set it carefully back on the table.

  “Help me,” said Bernese, and Genny darted forward, panting, and together they lifted Hazel out of the glass and half carried her back to her pad of old sheets and towels.

  “All right, then,” said Bernese. “Let’s make sure you haven’t ruptured anything. What a mess.”

  Hazel closed her eyes. The sun was rising, spilling pale light across the lawn. Stacia turned and shut the front door. After a few minutes, Bernese got up from between Hazel’s legs.

  “You look okay,” Bernese said. Her gardening shoes were sitting by the front door, and she slipped them on and crunched into the glass. She picked up the phone.

  “Bernese!” said Genny. Hazel’s eyes flew open and she started crying again, making piteous mewling noises deep in her throat.

  But Stacia smiled and shook her head, meeting Bernese’s eyes with a cool and level gaze.

  “Don’t get your pants in a bunch, Genny,” said Bernese. “I’m calling Isaac.” She added to Hazel, “That’s my lawyer, so stop with that fuss. You sound like a kicked cat.”

  Bernese dialed from memory and stood waiting for the phone to wake up Isaac Davids.

  “It’s me,” she said when he answered. “Yes, I know what time it is, but this is an emergency. You need to walk down here, quick as you can . . . I know, but pull some pants on and hurry down.

  Stacia needs us to help her steal Ona Crabtree’s grandbaby.”

  CHAPTER 2

  WITH SUCH A loud beginning, small wonder I grew up to be a person who studies silence. The Fretts and the Crabtrees spent the better part of my childhood chafing hard against each other at the point where they connected, and I was painfully aware of it because that point was me. I was barely out of diapers when Ona Crabtree found out I was her grandchild and appeared on our front lawn, drunk and howling for me.