Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (30 page)

“Don’t tell me no, Willetta,” I said. “Please don’t tell me no.”

I threw on a pair of camel wool slacks and a black sweater, and reapplied my lipstick. I looked tubercular. My hair was getting thinner every day. I found hairs on my pillow when I woke up in the morning.

After I drank my dinner at Chastain’s, I could not bear to say goodnight. “Oh, don’t be party poopers,” I told Teensy and Chick. “Please don’t call it a night yet. Let’s drive over to the Theodore for an after-dinner drink.”

“Love to, Vivi Dahlin,” Chick said, “but we’ve got to get home and see if our
petits monstres
have destroyed the house yet.

“Teensy, can’t
you
stay? I don’t want to go home yet. Come play with me.”

“Vivi
Bébé,
” she said. “I am exhausted. My babies woke me up early this morning, and I didn’t get my nap today. Rain check?”

“Absolument,”
I said, then I kissed them both goodnight.

“Vivi,” Chick said, “why aren’t
you
tired? We’ve only got two kids, you’ve got four, for God’s sake.”

“Not to mention the fact that Shep seems to think
that
he
has none,” Teensy said. The Ya-Yas didn’t like the way Shep left me for the duck camp. Necie called me the Duck Widow.

“I’m not in the least bit tired, really!” I told them. “I could go all night.”

“Gimme whatever you got, then,” Chick said. “We could make a million if we bottle it!”

The truth was I was tired way underneath my skin. I was tired where even I couldn’t see. I do not know how that happened. How I ended up like that. It all happened so fast.

I loved the sound of Shep’s voice. I loved the way the sun shone on the blond hairs on his forearms. I thought: we will have beautiful children, he has good bones, good eyes, he’s from an old family. I thought: he is not Jack, but I cannot have Jack.

Shep brought me to see Pecan Grove. He drove me across the eight hundred acres in his convertible, showed me the spot where he wanted to build a house. I felt sexy with him. I felt something like love.

I did not know what it would take to wake up every day and see Shep. He was not the man I wanted, he was not the man I truly loved.

I adored actually being pregnant. I adored walking into a room with my latest p.g. outfits that I designed myself and had Mrs. Boyette tailor.

But then there were these four creatures who depended on me. They wouldn’t go away. You couldn’t take them back because they kept getting bronchitis. I didn’t mean for it all to happen. I didn’t mean for it not to happen. I just drifted into the mother club like a boat without a rudder. I did not know what motherhood would smell like.

I did not know that being a mother meant I would
lie awake in torture, the weight of responsibility biting into my skin. Was I doing it right? Was I giving my babies what they needed? Was I doing enough? Was I doing too much?
Would I burn in hell if I did not put them before me in every Goddamn thing I said and did?
Did I have to be the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Holy Mother herself, rather than Vivi Abbott Walker?

If I had known what I was getting into, I would have said no to all of it. Would have taken off running at the mere mention of babies.

Willetta left when I got back from Chastain’s. I gave her a tip for coming over at the last minute. She would not spend the night like I asked. These colored women were suddenly all saying no to me. Chaney came and got her. He came up to the door and brought her an extra sweater, and they turned around and walked down the sidewalk to the pickup truck with P
ECAN
G
ROVE
written on the side.

I had not slept more than five hours a night in over four years. I was a woman who used to sleep ten, eleven hours a night. Sleep was so sweet to me I could taste it. I could taste a good nap like a bacon, lettuce, tomato sandwich on fresh French bread.

It was not only the rest I missed. I missed my dreams, God, I missed my dreams. Even the dark ones. Even the Jack dream. It had been so many years since I’d dreamed. Always being uprooted to warm a bottle, lead a sleepy-eyed kid to the bathroom, and return to bed angry as hell, knowing I’d be exhausted the next day.

On good nights, I used to dream of lying in a pool under a waterfall and how my body could dip under the water and live without air, then pop up and begin to fly. I used to fly all over the place during
those good deep sleeps, and when I awoke I would be smiling.

With my kids and Shep, I couldn’t do what I wanted. I wanted to run away with a stranger and be rich rich, filthy rich. I wanted no responsibility. It’s not that Shep was a bad man. He wasn’t. We were building a big new house on a Goddamn plantation. In the meantime, though, we lived in that ratty little rental of his father’s. Six of us living in two bedrooms where I could not breathe.

How was it that I came to hate Shirley Fry for winning the U.S. Women’s Singles? I used to love winners. I used to
be
a winner. I used to play tennis, I mean really
play
. I was so strong. My stomach so flat, my legs so tan, my hair so blonde.

I mixed another drink, a stiff one. I watched the television sign-off, cried at the “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Lit a ciggie in bed. I tried to read, but that last bourbon must have been stronger than I realized. Hard to focus on the words.

So I peeked in on the four of them again. God, they were beautiful. My children were perfect, each one of them more gorgeous than I could have ever imagined. I thank God for not giving me an ugly child. It’s so much easier to love them when they’re beautiful. I made good babies.

Lulu snored like her father, but her eyes were bigger. Sidda with those cherry-stained lips, perfect little lips, and red hair any one of the Ya-Yas would’ve died for, not to mention those lashes. Little Shep with his toy tractor that he
insisted
on taking to bed with him every night. Such a muscular little boy terror.

Baylor in his crib. I stared down at him, tufts of cotton-top hair sprouting, little pea thumb in his mouth, puffy little breaths like he was blowing feathers.

The nightlight was on, but I tiptoed over and turned on the closet light as well. If they woke up, I didn’t want them to be afraid. I didn’t ever want my children to be afraid.

Back in my room I closed my eyes and thought about Jack.

Pictured his neck. Pictured him lifting me high into the air the way he used to do, out of nowhere, just out of sheer joy. Pictured what our babies would have looked like.

I must have drifted off. I was pulled back by somebody coughing. I waited for it to stop. Where was Melinda? Why wasn’t she taking care of this?

My body was heavy. I tried to lift my arm, but it would not move. I thought I’d gotten out of bed and slipped into my robe.

More horrible coughing. Sidda, unable to clear the phlegm from her chest. I had to get up. I had to go to her.

I thought I was on my feet. Thought it was Father coughing. I brought him hot lemon juice in his chair by the fire in the house on Compton Street. He did not see me. “Father,” I said, “here, drink this.”

And then I woke with a start. My father was dead. He rounded the curve going too fast when Sidda was an infant, soon after I lost her twin, not long after we lost Genevieve.

Sidda was standing next to my bed. Her hair was tangled. It was not hair like mine. She was not a true blond. She could not stop coughing. I imagined I could see the inside of her body, could see her small ribs about to crack. I sat up in bed, pulled her to me, and circled my arms around her rib cage.

“Baby,” I whispered, “try to hold on to just one long breath.”

It only made her cough harder.

“It hurts, Mama,” she said.

I reached for the glass on the night stand. “Darling, here, can you swallow just a little sip of water?”

I held the cup to her mouth and she swallowed.

“Yes, sweet baby, good, that’s good. Swallow slowly, darling. That’s it.”

She gagged and spit the liquid out of her mouth and started coughing worse. I took the glass from her hand and smelled it. It was not water. It was bourbon. If I had had a knife I would’ve used it to cut my heart out.

“I’m sorry, Buddy. I’m sorry all this is happening to you.”

“It’s okay, Mama,” she said. “I came to tell you that Lulu and Baylor are sick.”

“What do you mean, they’re sick, Dahlin?” I asked her.

“They made a lot of poo-poo.”

When I stepped back into the children’s room, I was slapped in the face by the smell of shit. It was pouring rain outside, all the windows were shut tight, heat was blasting up through the floor furnace, and the whole room smelled like crap.

Lulu was sitting up in her bed sobbing. When I went to her, I could see she had diarrhea. It was dripping out of her diaper, all over her legs and onto the covers. Somehow it had even managed to get in her hair.

I picked her up. “Oh, Baby. Shh-shh, Lulu-Cakes, it’s okay.”

Her baby poo-poo rubbed onto my gown, against my arms. Baylor started crying when he heard the sound of my voice. I walked over to his crib carrying Lulu, reached down to feel his diaper. It was full. The
world was filled with baby crap. I thought it was all I would ever smell.

“Baylor,” I said to my youngest baby, as if he could understand, “I beg you, please do not start up.”

He cranked it up, though, wailing at the top of his range.

Then Sidda started that deep coughing again. I turned to look at her, and that is when Lulu threw up on me. Her baby puke soaked my gown. I could feel the wetness against my breasts. I could feel my whole body start to itch.

I ran to the bathroom with Lulu, the overhead light so cruel and bright. As I bent down to position her over the toilet, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I did not know who it was.

The wet washcloth was in my hand. What to wipe first: Lulu’s face or bottom. When would I get to wipe my own soiled body?

Then Sidda was in the doorway, her long red hair falling down over the shoulders of her nightgown. Her coughing racked her body, shook her shoulders.

“Is that all you can do is cough?!” I said. “Stop that coughing this instant! Can’t you see I’ve got my hands full? Go back into the bedroom and pick up your baby brother. I need some help around this house!”

My four-year-old daughter looked at me, covered her mouth with her hand, and then obeyed. When she returned, she had Baylor in her arms and Little Shep by the hand. I wanted to kill them for putting me through this.

Where was my husband? Where was the father of those four children? You show me where it is written that only mothers are supposed to smell crap. I could’ve shot him for leaving me alone like that.

“Sidda, wipe off the baby. Just take that washcloth and wet it and clean Baylor up.”

Holy Mary Mother of God, where are
your
soiled gowns? Didn’t the Son of God crap all over the place, the odor mingling with the animal smells in that manger? Why do you always look so Goddamn sweet and serene?

Sidda had Baylor in the bassinet, changing his diaper as best she could. When she started coughing again, Little Shep said, “Bad Siddy. Mama say no cough!”

Lulu finally stopped throwing up, and I cracked open the bathroom window. Still pouring rain and freezing outside, but I could not take the stench any longer. The wind blew in on the five of us, on the little Holy Family as we puked and shat and cried and coughed and slowly lost our minds.

Finally they were all clean. I had changed the shit- and puke- and snot-filled sheets and diapers and underwear and pajamas. I had flung the bedroom windows open and cranked the heat up to ninety.

Outside it was still raining.

Lulu, exhausted, had nodded off, her pudgy leg sticking out of the covers like it always did when she slept. I’d given Little Shep, who was now wide awake, a box of animal crackers, and he sat in his bed playing with his tractor and biting the heads off giraffes.

The baby was on his stomach, making little fretting noises. I rubbed his back in little circles. “There, Bay-Bay, be quiet. Please be quiet for Mama.”

Sidda’s next coughing jag went on forever, making me close the windows, although I hated to.

I crossed to her in her bed and looked at her. Why was her face pinched? She was only a child. “Siddalee Dahlin, when did we last give you cough syrup?”

“I don’t know, Mama,” she said, and started to cough again.

I got the cough syrup out of the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and returned to her side. “Sit up, Dahlin,” I told her. “Here, let me prop up your pillow.”

I poured the amber liquid into a spoon. “Here, Sidda, swallow slowly, okay?”

Her coughing momentarily stopped. I looked at the cough syrup and decided to pour myself a spoonful. It couldn’t hurt.

My hands were shaking. I pushed Sidda’s hair out of her face. I placed my hands on her cheeks.

“Feels good, Mama.”

“You’re my big girl, Sidda,” I whispered. “You’re my oldest. You have to help me take care of the little ones, you promise?”

“Yes, Mama,” she whispered, her eyes starting to close.

Back in my bedroom, I lay down, my eyes wide open. It took me a while to realize that the stench now came from my own nightgown, which I hadn’t yet changed. Without getting up, I slipped the gown off me and lay on the bed naked. I looked down at my body and tried to pray.

But the smell was too strong. I rose, walked to the closet. I took out my ankle-length off-white cashmere coat, a Givenchy that I bought for myself with part of my inheritance after Father died. The single most expensive, extravagant item I had ever bought for myself. I pulled on socks and boots and stepped out onto the small side porch.

The rain was still falling, and an oyster-colored light was starting in the east. It was cold and damp, but at least it didn’t stink.

Holy Mother of the Redeemer, if only once I could see baby throw-up stains on your lovely blue garments, if only once I could see your own palms itching to slap the Savior in his bawling face, then maybe I would not now feel like such a piece of human crap. You Goddamn Eternal Virgin, if you would wipe that insipid pastel smile off your face for one moment and look at me like we were in the same shoes, then I might not despair.