Lily of the Springs (19 page)

The baby felt so warm against my hospital gown, and she smelled of Ivory soap and sweet, milky formula. My heart rose, feeling as if it were climbing up through my chest to lodge somewhere between my chin and my throat. I’d never felt emotion like this. Such love, such tenderness.
So…this is what if feels like to be a mom
. I felt special, as if I’d accomplished a great feat—like climbing Mount Everest--even though I knew I’d only done what billions of women had done since the dawn of time.

I felt the nurse watching me and gave a tremulous smile. “I still can’t believe it,” I whispered.

“It’s a true miracle, isn’t it?” Captain Johnson returned my smile. “I see it happen every day, and I’m still filled with wonder when a new life comes into the world.”

A soft sound came from the baby―a teeny, tiny burp—nothing at all like the shots heard around the world that Davy could expel, and I brushed my lips over her downy, golden head. I repositioned Debby Ann into the crook of my arm and looked up at the nurse.

“Should I try and feed her more?”

Captain Johnson shook her head. “She looks mighty content to me. You still have some time before we take her back to the nursery, though. Why don’t you just love on her a while?” She turned to go. “You call if you need me. I’ll be back in a little while to pick her up.”

“Oh, Captain Johnson!” I called out as the nurse headed for the door. “Still no word from my husband?”

A guarded look crossed the captain’s face. “We’re still trying to locate him, hon.”

My gaze dropped back to the baby. I lovingly ran a hand over her soft down. “That’s okay,” I said. “I know what happened. He’ll be here directly, I reckon.”

***

Jake arrived just as Captain Johnson took the sleeping baby from my arms to transport her back to the nursery.

“Is that my youngun?”

At the sound of his raspy voice, both me and the captain looked over at him.

He was hung-over, I saw immediately. I could tell by the bloodshot eyes and pasty skin. Not that I was surprised. When he hadn’t shown up at the hospital last night, I’d known he was getting himself liquored up—and here in Arkansas, he could do it without breaking the law.

Captain Johnson eyed him up and down, her jaw tight, and then turned to me. “Does this boy have the right room, sweetheart? He your husband?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said tightly.

“Well, then…” Captain Johnson walked over to Jake, cradling Debby Ann in her arms. She stopped a few inches away from him and stared him in the eye. “Private Tatlow, is it?”

He straightened as if someone had stuck a cattle prod up his hind end. I guessed that meant he’d suddenly remembered he was in the military and was being addressed by an officer.

“Yes, Ma’am,” he said smartly.

A slow smile spread across the nurse’s face, but her eyes remained frosty. “Well, now, Private Tatlow, it took you quite a while to park the car, didn’t it, soldier?”

A tide of red crept up Jake’s neck and over his cheekbones. “Yes, Ma’am,” he said again, his eyes fixed straight ahead.

The captain nodded as if she understood. “Let’s see…your baby girl here, was born at 12:55 this morning; that makes her just over ten hours old. Why, you must’ve parked plumb over the Texas state-line and walked back. What else would take a young man so long to get back to the wife he left in hard labor at the ER doors?”

A muscle flexed in Jake’s jaw and his flush deepened. He swallowed hard. “Ma’am, I…”

I could see his brain spinning, trying to think of a plausible explanation. But obviously the liquor had pickled it inactive.

“
Quiet, Private
!” The smile had disappeared from the captain’s face. Her dark eyes bored into Jake’s.

I could hardly believe this was the same sweet-faced nurse who’d been instructing me on how to feed the baby. It was as if she’d had a complete personality change. On one hand, I felt some satisfaction in the captain’s dressing down of Jake—he deserved it for being such a selfish fool—but I also felt a little scared. Jake didn’t take no guff from anybody, and now, here was this colored woman ripping him a new asshole, as Betty would put it. What if he talked back to her or—Heaven forbid!—hauled off and hit her? I knew that look in his eyes. He was madder than a wet hen. His jaw was rigid, his eyes sparkling with fury. He was seconds away from exploding.

“Captain Johnson!” I called out. “It’s not Jake’s fault. I told him to stay away…” I thought quickly. “He was dog-tired, poor guy, making that drive from Texas. I told him to go get some sleep in the car.” Even as the lie came out my lips, I knew how ridiculous it sounded—and I also knew that the Army nurse wouldn’t buy it. “See, he’d just got off a double shift, and hadn’t had no sleep in twelve hours. And I always heard that first babies took a while to be born, so I thought he’d be back with me in plenty of time…” My voice trailed off.

Captain Johnson stared at me with something like pity in her eyes. Then she shook her head slowly, snuggling Debby Ann closer in her arms. “Honey,” she said softly. “I’ve been where you are, and I know what it’s like to make excuses for a man. I did it for twenty years before I wised up and kicked his sorry ass out. And I’m telling you right now, I wish I could have those twenty years back. I wouldn’t have put up with him for a New York minute.” She turned back to Jake, giving him a look that would’ve frozen hot cocoa. “I can’t stop you from visiting your wife if she wants you here, but if you want to hold your daughter, Private Tatlow, you come back at two o’clock. That’s the next feeding time. But before you do, you find yourself somewhere to take a sponge bath because you reek of beer, and I don’t want this sweet little girl to have that be the smell she associates with her daddy. You understand me, soldier?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Jake barked.

Captain Johnson turned on her heel and strode out of the room. As the swish of her starched uniform faded down the hall, Jake’s posture settled back to normal, but his eyes remained furious. He moved toward my bed, and was still a few steps away when I smelled the stale beer. I wrinkled my nose in distaste.

“Uppity nigger, ain’t she?”

A hot bolt of fury ripped through me. “
Jake!
That’s just downright
mean
!”

It wasn’t as if I hadn’t heard the word before. Living in Kentucky all my life, I’d heard it bandied about, usually by old men in overalls sitting out on the porch of Red’s General Store, chewing tobacco. But I’d never heard my Jake say it, and it sounded particularly ugly on his lips.

“She’s been nothing but nice to me, Jake Tatlow, and if you say one more bad word about her, you can leave right now. We just brought a new soul into this world, and I’m going to protect her from the ugliness just as long as I can. And if that means I have to protect her from you, so be it.”

I glared at him and waited for his infuriated response, determined not to back down this time, not just for my sake, but for Debby Ann’s.

To my astonishment, Jake’s blue eyes swam with tears. I gaped at him as shock radiated through me. “Jake!” I finally gasped. “What is it?” My stomach clenched in fear. Was something wrong with Debby Ann, and they’d told him so he could break the news to me?

Jake shook his head and reached blindly for a chair to draw over to the bed. He sat down, reached for my hand and grasped it like it was a rope saving him from a tumbling death. His red-rimmed eyes stared into mine as tears tracked down his handsome face.

“Jesus save me, Lily Rae. They’re sending me to Korea.”

Lily’s Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

1 c brown sugar

1 c sugar

1 c margarine, softened

2 c flour

1 egg

1 cup raisins

1 c cornflakes, crushed

3/4 c oatmeal

1 t soda

1 t baking powder

1 t vanilla

Cream margarine and sugars. beat in eggs & vanilla. Sift soda and baking powder with flour. Stir in flour mixture. Add raisins, cornflakes & oatmeal. Drop by teaspoon onto ungreased cookie sheets. Bake at 375 degrees for 8-10 minutes.

J
ake had been gone exactly a week, and I could barely function. If it weren’t for Debby Ann, I probably wouldn’t have been able to drag myself out of bed.

During the day, I found myself crying at the drop of a hat, and nights were no better. I was either awake and pacing the floor with a cranky baby, both of us bawling, or I was tossing and turning in bed, missing the warmth and musky scent of Jake’s body, and tensing at every little creak in the apartment, sure it was a mad-dog killer breaking in to rape and strangle me. Most of the time, I hadn’t bothered to get dressed in the mornings, wearing my baby-doll pajamas throughout the sweltering Texas days. What was the point? I wasn’t going anywhere.

I barely had the energy to run a brush through my hair, much less put on any make-up. Dirty baby bottles and a few stray dishes were piled up in the sink, waiting to be washed. Since there was no one to cook for, and because I had little or no appetite, I’d been surviving on Trix Cereal, Ritz crackers and Cheez Whiz, and an occasional tuna fish sandwich.

Thank God for Betty! Like clockwork, she’d come over every single afternoon, plopping Davy down on an old quilt on the living room floor. Then she’d spend the next couple of hours trying to
keep
him on the quilt—he was just starting to crawl—while making a gallant attempt to cheer me up. Both tasks seemed just as impossible, I thought. Davy was a strong-willed boy who’d suddenly realized that knees and hands came in quite handy when you wanted to see a different view of the world.

And I, on the other hand, missed Jake so much, it felt like a wild raccoon had made itself at home inside me and was gnawing away on my heart. I’d thought it was awful the first time Jake had left me, back when he went off to boot camp. But at least then I’d had my family close by. This time, within hours of seeing him off at the train station, it had hit me that I was all alone here in this big, unfamiliar state of Texas—just me and a helpless little baby. But at least there was Betty─a lifesaver.

A wail came from the bedroom. Lying on the couch in the living room, I glanced up at the atom clock on the wall. Right on time. Debby Ann might have her days and nights mixed up, but she sure knew when it was feeding time—every three hours on the dot. Not every
four
hours, like the nurses at the hospital told me it would be. I sighed and swung my legs over the side of the couch. My head swam dizzily as I sat up.

That’s what you get for laying around all the time and not eating
, I told myself. I sat there a moment, rubbing my aching forehead with my fingertips as the cries from the bedroom grew louder.

When Debby Ann had first arrived home from the hospital, I’d really tried to follow the nurses’ advice to feed her every four hours. That meant listening to the baby’s steady fussing for an hour before each feeding time. Finally, in desperation I’d turned to Betty for advice.

“For God’s sake, feed the kid every three hours, Lily,” she’d advised. “The world isn’t going to stop turning because you’re feeding her on
her
schedule rather than the hospital’s.”

So, that’s what I’d been doing. Every three hours, day in and day out, around the clock. Only trouble was, Debby Ann would feed greedily for the first five minutes, and then fall asleep with the nipple still in her mouth. Which was fine, really, in day-time. But at night—
every
night, it seemed—as soon as I put the baby down into her bassinet, she’d wake up and start crying. Not just crying, but shrieking as if some evil person was poking her with a hot stick. The first time it had happened, I’d checked to make sure her diaper pin hadn’t opened; I’d been
that
sure something was causing the baby unimaginable pain. But when it kept happening, night after night, I’d called the hospital in a panic, only to be told that the baby was suffering from something called “colic,” and there was nothing to do but “let her grow out of it.”

But I was worried all the same. It didn’t seem like Debby Ann was getting enough to eat. Well, how could she? She always fell asleep before she’d taken in a couple of ounces. But even though she seemed hungry, when she was in the middle of one of these colic attacks, she wouldn’t feed. At first, she’d act like she wanted the bottle; she’d start sucking away like she was starving. But a minute later, she’d rear her head back, scrunch up those little dark eyes and let out a banshee wail. And I’d be up, walking the floor with her for the rest of the night.

The shrieks coming from the bedroom had grown more piercing. I stood up on wobbly legs, and began to make my way to the kitchen. “Just hold on, baby doll,” I called out. “I got to heat up your formula.”

I took out a baby bottle from the Norge, noticing with dismay there were only two bottles left. Time to mix up more formula and sterilize it. One
more
thing to do.

I grabbed a saucepan from the cabinet, filled it with water and put the bottle into it. Then I placed it on the coiled burner and turned the electric stove on medium.

Lord, I’d had no idea how much work it was to have a baby in the house. I’d never been so dog-tired in my life. Then again, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a good night’s sleep. God knows Jake hadn’t been any help in that department before he left. He’d made it clear that taking care of the baby was
my
job.

Three hard raps came at the apartment door. “Knock, knock!”

Debby Ann’s cries were beginning to reach the screeching level. I felt like screaming, too, as I headed for the door. I wondered if it would help.

I opened the door to let Betty in. Watching “Love of Life” together had become a ritual even before Debby Ann was born, first in Betty’s apartment on her nice RCA, lately on the second-hand Airline Jake had bought at a yard sale. But today, I knew right away something was different about this visit. Betty breezed into the apartment dressed in a coral summer dress with a white Peter Pan collar cinched at the waist with a white patent leather belt and matching heels. On her head, she wore a jaunty white wide-brimmed hat.