Bittersweet (7 page)

Her mother stroked her hair, singing softly. Sarah’s hand slipped from Margaret’s shoulder. She had fallen asleep. Mam lowered her carefully to the pillow, still humming. She pushed the hair back off her forehead and kissed her before stealing from the room.

EARLY IN JUNE, IMOGENE PACKED TWO VALISES AND LEFT FOR PHILADELPHIA
. Her train arrived five hours late, but William Utterback was there to meet her, standing on the sun-drenched platform, his years pooled in arthritic knobs on his fingers, his back straight and proud. Imogene saw him as the train heaved into the station, a great cloud of steam engulfing him as he returned her wave. She pulled the small valise out from under the seat and took her place at the end of the queue of weary travelers waiting to detrain.

Mr. Utterback stepped through the crowd, unruffled by the heat and the noise. “Imogene, it is good to see thee.”

Imogene took his hand like a man, then kissed him on the cheek. “You look wonderful! I don’t know why I sound so surprised, it’s not been so long—not a year.” She looked around her, breathing the thick air appreciatively, her head cocked to the side. The street was alive with people and wagons, the traffic sounds punched over one another: bells and shouting, creaking harness and rumbling wheels. “It seems like a lifetime.”

When the crowd had thinned, Imogene picked out her suitcase from the other luggage on the platform. Mr. Utterback took it from her as they walked into the shade of the elms lining the street. “I know thee can carry it,” he said as she started to protest, “but I’d take it as a favor if thee would let me.” Imogene let go of the handle
and fell into step beside him. “I hoped thee would come for the used textbooks thyself. Mrs. Utterback so looked forward to thy visit she all but forbade me to send them.”

Over the weekend, Imogene relaxed, enjoying the company of the Utterbacks. But first thing Monday morning, she was outside her old schoolhouse. Her eyes traveled down from the neat belltower and over the shingled roof to the clean white walls with their skirting of foliage. “I love this school. I’m almost afraid to go in. I’ll remember what I’ve been missing.” Mr. Utterback held one of the doors open for her and she smiled, shamefaced. “Thank you. I’ve allowed myself enough self-pity for a day.”

Rows of coathooks ran down the sides of a gloomy central hallway above low benches built onto the walls. Two doors opened to each side: Imogene pushed open the first door on the right. “I can smell the chalk. I think if a child hadn’t set foot here for a hundred years, there would still be the smell of chalk.” Orderly rows of wooden desks, holes for inkwells black in the upper right-hand corners, awaited the autumn’s crop of children. Imogene walked between them, trailing her fingers over the scarred wood. She stopped at an unremarkable desk three rows from the front of the room, pressing her palm against the wood as though its history could come up through the oak.

“How is Mary Beth?” she asked. “And that boy she was to marry? Kevin, wasn’t it? Kevin Ramsey.”

“She is with child. Mrs. Utterback says it is due the end of July.”

Imogene smiled and leaned back against the desk. “A baby! God bless her. She’ll make a wonderful mother.” She was still for a moment, smiling, her eyes soft. Mr. Utterback folded his crippled hands in front of him and looked away, leaving her to her private thoughts. She laughed aloud. “Mary Beth a mother. That is good news.” Straightening, she dusted one hand against the other. “I’d best not see her. Will you tell her I asked after her?”

“Of course I will. I seldom see her, but Mrs. Utterback sometimes calls.”

“Could I leave something with you? For the baby. If it would be awkward, perhaps you might say it was from you.” Imogene’s face puckered with concern, making her look younger.

“Thee may leave anything but the textbooks.” He preceded her out into the hall. “There are thy children to think of as well.”

Imogene spent every morning for the next several weeks im
mersed in the storeroom’s dusty treasures. William worked with her when he could, and sometimes Mrs. Utterback came by with cool drinks and conversation. In the afternoons, when the wet heat of July weighed heavy and the close room became intolerable, Imogene walked through the streets and lanes of Philadelphia, visiting the places she had known as a child. She spoke to no one. She went alone to the house that had been her home. The garden was little more than dirt, and one of the shutters on the gabled window hung crooked, the hinge wrenched and broken by the wind. Two grubby children, apparently untended, poked at an anthill near the gate. Imogene stopped and the toddlers left their game to stare up at her with solemn eyes. She gave each a penny and bought two smiles. As she left, one of the bright coppers disappeared into a dirt-streaked mouth.

In the fifth week of her stay, she and Mrs. Utterback were in the backyard at a table under the spreading branches of an oak, surrounded by the glue pots and papers. Piles of mended books lay drying in the late afternoon sun, boxes of broken and torn primers were scattered under the table and around their chairs. Mrs. Utterback delicately dabbed glue onto the spine of a
Webster’s Speller
that had been new when she was a girl in school. Imogene had just started for the house to fetch more lemonade when the side gate banged and a disheveled Negro child ran into the yard—a little girl not more than seven years old. Gulping for air, she pulled herself up short in front of Mrs. Utterback, too much out of breath to talk coherently. Imogene stopped on the back steps.

“It all gone bad,” the child gasped. “an’ she been cryin’ for you. It all gone bad an’ Momma sent me.”

Mrs. Utterback took the child by the shoulders and pulled her through the tangle of boxes and onto her lap. “Melissa, sit quiet until thee can breathe.” She held out her glass and the little girl drank the last swallows of lemonade. Her thirst quenched and her excitement abated, she started again.

“Mary Beth Ramsey havin’ her baby an’ Momma ’fraid it go bad. She go over to help, but Missus Sankey say she don’t want no nigger woman around, so Momma stay under the window ’cause she like Missus Ramsey. Momma said it all gone bad.” Melissa had worked herself back into a fright; she leaped off Mrs. Utterback’s lap and pulled at her hands.

Imogene ran down the steps. “Quick, child, run. I can keep up.” She turned to the older woman. “I’ve got to get to her.”

Mrs. Utterback was halfway to the house. “I’ll get Dr. Stricker and follow you.”

Melissa grabbed Imogene’s hand and darted out the gate. It was more than a mile across town to the Ramseys’ house, and when the child tired, Imogene carried her, her long strides throwing her skirts before her. The shady lanes, with their tidy border of homes, grew ragged, the fences leaning and unpainted. Dogs wandered unconfined, sniffing at corners and poking their noses into refuse dumped in the street. The air was foul with the odor of rot, and clouds of flies buzzed over the garbage.

“There!” the girl cried finally, and pointed to a small house near the end of the street, the unfenced yard overgrown with weeds and only the memory of paint still clinging to the weathered wood. Imogene broke into a run. Melissa’s mother, a heavyset woman of indeterminate age, was there to meet them.

“I told you to git Miss Utterback!” she scolded.

“She’s coming with the doctor,” Imogene intervened.

“You better do somethin’ now,” the Negro woman warned, “or there goin’ to be no need for the doctor; Miss Sankey goin’ to kill that child.” She took Imogene by the arm and propelled her up the steps. “You get in there an’ you do somethin’ now, you hear? This nigger’s goin’ to wait here by the door an’ she want to hear somethin’ happenin’.”

The spare front room was empty. The bedroom door stood ajar and Imogene pushed it open slowly. The last light of the sun poured through the window, flooding the room with orange light. A double bed, piled high with clothes and rumpled bedding, took up most of the space. A narrow-faced girl lay amid the covers, her eyes closed. In the corner, by the head of the bed, a sluggish, blowzy woman jabbed at something and there was an angry cry.

Imogene stepped to the foot of the bed. “Is she all right?” she whispered. The woman stared at her with glazed eyes. The air was heavy with the smell of whiskey and blood. Her mouth was slack, and she held a pin in her hand, poised above the protesting form of a newborn infant almost hidden behind a mounded blanket. The baby’s hair was slicked against its head, and a gelatinous mass of afterbirth extended from it like a snail’s trail. The umbilical cord, uncut, disappeared into a fold of heavy wool behind the infant’s
head. The baby turned milky eyes on Imogene and smeared its mouth with a tiny, bloody fist.

The sun dipped below the sill, and the orange light drained from the room. Without the food of color, the blankets showed their black banners of blood, and Mary Beth’s white face was staring in contrast. Imogene leaned over the bed, her hands hovering above the still figure.

“Mary Beth,” she whispered, stroking the girl’s cheek with the back of her hand. “No. No, Bethy.” Jerking back the covers, she pressed her ear to the girl’s chest.

When she looked up, her face was like slate. Her nostrils flared slightly, two white dents appearing on either side of her nose. The midwife still poked drunkenly at the whimpering baby, trying to diaper it before the cord had been tied off or the blood and afterbirth washed away.

“Get out,” Imogene said quietly. The woman looked up stupidly, focusing with difficulty. She pawed the hair away from her eyes.

“
You
git,” she said thickly. “Nobody tellin’ me my business. You git! Cow.” She snorted and a thin line of mucus ran from her nose.

Imogene was around the bed in three strides. She clamped her hand on the woman’s wrist and the midwife cried out, dropping the diaper pin on the bed. Imogene jerked her away from the baby, slamming her into the wall. Her fingers clenched into a white fist, Imogene raised her arm.

“You got no call to go hurtin’ me,” Mrs. Sankey blubbered. Her flaccid, puffy face quivered and crumpled. Imogene dropped her hand and, grasping the woman by the dresstail and the back of her neck, ran her from the bedroom.

Melissa and her mother crowded the narrow steps, peering in. When they saw Imogene, stonefaced and bloodless, drag the midwife from the bedroom, they scattered like chaff before a storm. They were just in time. Imogene wrenched back on the woman’s hair and the seat of her dress, hauling her just off the floor, and hurled her though the door. She landed in a bawling heap at the bottom of the steps.

Imogene caught sight of Melissa and her mother cowering in the twilight.

She pointed at the Negro woman. “You! Get me some warm
water and soap. Send that girl for clean linens.” She yanked a leather coin purse from her pocket and flung it toward them. “Clean. Do you hear me?” The woman picked the purse out of the dirt and handed it to her daughter.

“You do like she say, Missy. You git yourself to old Julie’s, she get laundry from white folks, she have somethin’.” Melissa ran off, clutching the purse. The woman planted her fists on her ample waist and glared at the darkened doorway where Imogene had been. “Eunice is gettin’ that water,” she said, “but it ain’t fo’ you. It fo’ that baby an’ her baby.”

Eunice carried the pail of water into the Ramseys’ house, setting it down in front of the bedroom door. “You in there?”

“Come in.” It was a command.

The big Negress pushed the door open. The bedroom was dimly lit by a lamp and two candles. Imogene sat stiffly beside the bed, her bodice and skirt streaked with blood, the baby lying naked in her arms. “Bring it here,” she demanded.

Eunice brought the bucket over and set it down hard, slopping the water onto Imogene’s dress. Then her eye lighted on the still figure in the bed and she let out a long, low moan.

“It too much fo’ that baby.” She laid her hand, black and strong, against the narrow white brow and murmured a prayer, tears welling up in her eyes and coursing down her cheeks to drop unheeded on her wide bosom.

Imogene mechanically dabbed water from the pail and flicked it onto the inside of her wrist. “Water’s too cool.”

The black woman turned from the bed. “She dead an’ don’t need no doctor, so I got no use for you.” She jabbed a finger at Imogene. “Eunice is goin’ to take care of that baby. Here, you holdin’ it all wrong.” She scooped the sticky bundle off Imogene’s lap and examined it deftly, crooning all the while. “You a fine baby, fo’ all you bein’ so little.” She turned to Imogene. “You move yo’self. Find me somethin’ big enough to wash this child in.” Imogene stood slowly; she was unsteady on her feet and clutched at the back of the chair. Eunice looked at Imogene’s stricken face and softened. “Honey, you just sit.”

There was a clatter and Melissa appeared, peeking timidly through the bedroom door, an armload of white cloths pale in the dark. Eunice took the bundling from the little girl. “Fetch y’ momma the tub.” She tweaked the round chain. “You bein’ such
a big girl today, your momma be surprised if you ain’t wearin’ long dresses tomorrow mornin’ when she get up.” Melissa vanished noisily into the dark.

Eunice laid the cloths and the baby down on the bed. “You hold that lamp close.” Imogene picked up the lamp and crowded near the bed as the black woman dug through the few implements the midwife had left behind and found a serviceable knife. She soaped it thoroughly and sluiced it in the pail.

Imogene stepped between her and the baby. “What do you mean to do?”

“I’m goin’ to cut that cord an’ tie it off neat.” She shouldered by Imogene. “I delivered more babies than you can shake a stick at. An’ most of them live just as robust as you please. They was most nigger babies and they hardy, but this baby, she want to live, too.”