Between, Georgia (2 page)

door at a dead run. Her long black hair was unbound, and it unfurled behind her like a banner.

Genny stared openmouthed for a moment and then said, “Goodness grief !” She ran after Stacia, waving frantically in a futile attempt to catch her eye, signing,
Wait! Wait! Call police! Help!

Wait!
at Stacia’s implacable back.

She chased Stacia in this manner all the way across the lawn to Bernese’s front porch. She stopped short of the stairs and leaned down and grabbed up a pinecone, ripping up a chunk of sod with it. She threw it as hard as she could past Stacia, through her line of sight. It thunked against Bernese’s siding, and dust puffed out of it all the way around, like a firework going off. It left a black smudge on the porch, like an outsize thumbprint on the wood.

Stacia paused to give Genny an irked look over her shoulder before she disappeared through Bernese’s front door.

Genny stood a few steps outside the glow of the porch lights, tugging at her long black braid. Her nervous fingers climbed up, following the weave of her braid, all the way until she touched the fine hairs at her nape. She gathered two or three in a pinch and ripped them out, twiddling her fingers together to shake off the loose hairs and then immediately seeking out another pinch. A luna moth came fluttering drunkenly out the front door and wafted up, disappearing into the night. Genny watched it go, and then she scuttled up onto the porch. She peeked inside.

Bernese and Stacia were helping Hazel to the other side of the foyer, picking their way through shattered glass from the terrarium. Hazel was moaning and naked from the waist down. Her sweatshirt had hiked up over her grossly distended abdomen. The rest of her body was so skinny that Genny could see her ribs.

Hazel’s thighs were streaked with blood. Glass fragments sparkled 6

in her hair, inappropriately festive. Three or four of the luna moths were dancing up around the light fixture, and one was fluttering in Hazel’s wake, as if drawn by her bright hair. Genny saw the gun sitting by the phone on the sideboard.

“What’s happening?” Genny squawked, jerking out another pinch of hair at her nape. “Is she shot? Was she shot in her pants?”

“No one is shot,” said Bernese. “It’s a baby coming, and it’s coming now, very fast. Help me here.”

Bernese and Stacia lowered Hazel back down to the carpet in the doorway to the den. They tried to get her to squat, but she flopped onto her back and lay there, thrashing back and forth as another contraction took her. Stacia signed rapidly, and Genny said, “Stacia wants to know, what do you need?”

“Boiled string. Scissors. Clean towels,” said Bernese as Genny repeated her words in sign. “Hot water. A doctor, but that’s not going to happen. I think this baby is coming now.”

Stacia nodded curtly and ran down the long hallway into the kitchen. Bernese knelt by Hazel until the contraction subsided and she was still again. She was sobbing quietly on the floor: “It has to stop. Make it stop.”

“It will stop,” said Bernese. “We have to get this baby out is all.

Genny, come sit by her head.”

“Me?” Genny squeaked.

“Unless you want the naked end,” said Bernese, staying beside Hazel. “Breathe,” she said.

“Oh, oh, oh, oh,” said Genny. She stayed right where she was in the doorway, rocking back and forth, her gaze flicking around the room, glancing off the moths and Bernese and the blood and the gun on the table, unable to light on anything. Her busy fingers sought hairs to pull as she rocked herself faster.

“Another one is coming,” said Hazel. “Make it not come.”

“You want it to come,” said Bernese. “It will get this baby out, and then it will all stop. So let it come.”

“No, no, no, I don’t want it to come,” Hazel moaned, but it came anyway. It came relentlessly, and she was helpless in it, with Bernese roaring at her to push.

Genny was weaving harder, panting, tugging at her hair. Bernese glared at her. “Quit that picking and get by this girl’s head. Now.

And quit panting. I don’t have time to drag your big butt out of the way if you faint.”

Hazel shook her head wildly back and forth, twisting her body as she fought the contraction. Genny, watching, dug her finger-nails into her forearm hard enough to draw blood and then stared down at her arm for half a beat. The pain cleared her head, and she accessed the thread of Frett resilience buried in her, deep under her nerves. She stilled her hands and scurried over to kneel beside Hazel’s head.

“There you go. You and her breathe together,” instructed Bernese. Once Genny was in place, Bernese braced herself against the doorway and put the heel of her hand at the top of Hazel’s belly. She leaned in to it, bearing down and saying, “And you, girl. Push hard from here.”

Hazel shoved at Bernese’s hand, weeping. She slumped again as the contraction ended, and Bernese said, “Next time you push like that at the start.”

Hazel said, “I don’t want a next time.”

Genny reached out and patted ineffectually at Hazel’s shoulder. Hazel grabbed Genny’s wrist, looking up at her, beseeching,

“Please tell her to quit it.”

“Oh, honey,” said Genny, pity softening her horror. “No one can make Bernese quit anything.”

“I hate you,” said Hazel to Bernese. “I hate you, you dumb whore.”

“Why, this is Ona Crabtree’s girl!” said Genny. “This is little Hazel Crabtree!”

“Course it is,” said Bernese, a world of Frett contempt ripe in her voice. The two families had nothing in common and had long regarded each other with animosity. The Fretts were a proudly emotional bunch. No Frett lips ever touched liquor (they even sipped grape juice at communion), but their moods could sweep through them as fierce and fast as any drug. Their decisions came from the gut, and they didn’t care one fig for what outsiders thought of their actions.

The Crabtrees, on the other hand, almost universally had the deadeye, and their emotional range ran from sullen right on up to enraged. Wary and canny, they felt nothing more keenly than the gaze of the disapproving world, a world that was out to get them. Their responses to feeling judged were shrugs and sneers followed by lashings of great, cold violence.

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 said, “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.”