Rapture of Canaan (29 page)

And in the afternoons when I kept him, I played with his hands, thinking if I pulled them hard enough, and if it was God’s will, they’d fall apart just the way the little black vine stem had fallen from his navel after he was born.

But it didn’t happen like that.

He would sit there with me while I worked on his rug. I’d make him a little pallet on the pack house floor and then sing to him while I wove.

By that time, I’d taken one of James’ old flannel shirts and cut it into strips. I was weaving my hair, James’ shirt, tobacco twine, and a part of an old altar cloth into a rug for Canaan, but I was working on it slowly, waiting for the right pattern to happen.

I was also working on a rug for Ajita Patel. Canaan’s rug was on the weaving machine, but Ajita’s was on the loom Daddy built. I wanted hers to be special too. I knew I wanted to use some of the Indian fabric she’d sent to me through Pammy. And I knew I wanted to use some of my hair. But I’d kept Pammy’s hair, because it was so vivid, a color that seemed to want to set the world on fire like I did, and I started weaving her hair in Ajita’s rug instead.

My fingers wound rope over, under, over, under, and I found myself studying my design and forgetting about Canaan, then periodically remembering him and looking over to see him watching the rafters of the pack house, always looking up. It was dark in there, though I kept the back door open and had a big light hanging overhead. From the corners, old spiderwebs long since deserted draped heavy with dust and sagged. Shreds of cured tobacco leaves and bits of twine and dirt from work boots hid in the deep ridges of the old wooden floor, even though we swept it out. I loved the way the pack house smelled, so musky and tobacco-honeyed and oaty like feed sacks emptied of their grains. I liked having Canaan out there with me so that he could learn to love those smells too. And sometimes I’d roll up pieces of old tobacco leaves and weave them into the rugs as well.

Then when Canaan started whimpering, I’d pick him up and carry him over to the corner where it was dark and there were heaps of burlap tobacco sheets hilled up on the floor, and I’d sit down with him there, holding him close, rocking him and trying to teach him to say Ninah.

“Nigh-Nuh,” I’d instruct. “Can you say it? Nigh-Nuh.”

He’d look at me and bob his little head against my breasts and shake his arms.

“Nigh-Nuh,” I’d tell him again, and I couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t talking because he was nearly old enough, and at the same time, I was glad he hadn’t said anything else, like Mamma, before I’d taught him to say my name. I was glad my name had the same sort of sound as Mamma because at least I could pretend.

I felt a pull in my breasts, with Canaan’s face nuzzling there. My milk would not dry up. It’d been eight months, and I still had to pump them out into the sink, and I still had to wear flannel in my bras. Nanna said if I’d quit thinking of Canaan as my own, the milk would go away. But it didn’t.

“Are you hungry?” I asked him. “You must be hungry.”

He kept nestling in, and I was almost glad that he didn’t have usable fingers because he was doing a fine enough job tugging at my breasts with his praying hands.

“No, Canaan,” I told him, and pushed him back like always.

He began to cry, out loud, like his feelings were hurt.

“Shhh,” I coaxed.

But it didn’t help.

I knew that if Laura or David were there, if Grandpa Herman was, they’d have claimed that his bellowing was a plea to the savior. Anytime Canaan cried, people assumed he was calling to God.

Then one day, when he wouldn’t stop tugging at my shirt, when my breasts were leaking, and we were sitting on the tobacco sheets in the darkest corner of the empty pack house, I pulled out my aching breast and let him nurse.

The feeling of lips, even tiny teeth on my lonesome, crusty nipple, pulling at it, dragging from it, smacking and humming as he worked, his seamed hands held up above my breast, the feeling reminded me of times I’d been with James during prayer partners, hoping to not be caught. Canaan tugged and sucked, and I let him, knowing what I was doing had to be wrong because it felt like that milk was being pulled up from between my legs and I heard myself breathing, hoarding that cured tobacco air.

 

 

 

I
kept feeding Canaan for a time after that. I couldn’t imagine
myself denying him that right. But I felt guilty about it, worrying that by that time, my breast milk might be poisonous. He didn’t get sick though. He got better and fatter, and he started making the noises that come before words, and he managed to stand up on his own even though he kept falling back down on his diaper.

“You see,” Laura said. “If God hadn’t meant for his hands to be together, he wouldn’t be able to stand up by himself at just ten months. You’re a miracle, ain’t you, Canaan?” And she tickled the bottoms of his feet and cuddled him tight.

Nobody even tried to tell her that he was simply normal—because to Laura, that would have been like saying he was retarded. And I wanted to shake her until she broke and all the stupidness jingled out because she just couldn’t understand that what was normal was miraculous enough.

Nights, in bed, I prayed that God would give me a sign if I should stop nursing him. I wasn’t so worried about being caught. It was just that I didn’t want to sin. The risk wasn’t sleeping in a grave anymore—or the strap or the nettles. It was bigger than that.

I didn’t want to hurt Canaan, but I needed to give him something. The milk was all I had left.

Nights, I prayed that God would take my milk away or make Canaan stop wanting it if feeding him was a sin. I prayed for a sign until I got one.

One night I woke up to find the moonlight waltzing in and James sitting at the edge of the bed.

“Hey, Ninah,” he said, and smiled. I’d always heard that in Heaven, all imperfections disappear. But James still had his broken tooth, after sixteen months in Heaven. And after the shock of seeing him had passed, all I could think about was the feeling of that tooth’s slant on my lip. My nipples poured.

“What are you doing here?”

“Just came to tell you you’re doing real good,” he said.

The moonlight shadowed James like a harmony. My eyes were so heavy, but I was afraid I’d lose him if I blinked.

“Is he God’s baby?” I asked him, thinking James would surely know.

“Yeah,” he answered. “All babies are.”

“But James, you know what I mean.”

“It don’t matter. Let’s go see him.” He stood and walked over to the side of the bed where he took my hand and pulled me up. I half-expected to grab air, or to feel his hand cold or dripping wet. But he just felt familiar.

We slipped outside in the frost, crept across the yard. He ducked low, like he didn’t want to be seen, and I started giggling because he was there. When he nudged his way behind the shrubs outside David and Laura’s bedroom window, I heard them rustle. It wasn’t just me.

We looked inside for a long time. Canaan rocked in his crib until he rolled himself over on his side, looking through the slats of wood towards the window.

“He looks like you,” James said.

“No he don’t,” I protested. “He looks like you.”

“You’re doing fine,” James said again, staring at me, encouraging me. I thought I might cry. I thought he might kiss me, and I think I wanted him to. But he brushed my hair away from my face and let his hand graze my ear, then stay there for a long moment before he moved it. I memorized his touch, knowing somehow that I wouldn’t feel him again.

“I have to go,” he said.

“Where?”

“I have to leave,” he repeated. “I’m going to see my boy first.” And then he stepped closer to the house, then looked back one more time. “I hear you when you pray,” he said.

For some reason, I felt embarrassed and tried to remember all the things I’d prayed about since James died. I might have closed my eyes for a second, but I don’t think so. In the next instant, he was standing by Canaan’s crib, and I tensed up all over, thinking that if David or Laura woke up, we’d be in a mess. James knelt by the crib and looked at the baby. A part of me was scared for James to touch him. A part of me didn’t want Canaan to miss his touch.

I walked away because I didn’t want to know what would happen. I worried for an instant that James might not have been in Heaven at all.

But I didn’t go back inside. Because behind the church, I saw Jesus and the cross again. Once more he had the dying azaleas in his hand, and I decided that if I was really awake, if James had really visited me and if Jesus was really crucified in the yard next to the church, I didn’t want to miss it.

I headed for Jesus, half-scared that Canaan would be gone the next morning, kidnapped by his ghost-daddy. I told myself I was dreaming. I figured I needed to pray.

But there was something wrong with my sense of distance. The cross was right in front of me, but I walked and walked and couldn’t get there.

I started to wonder if James was really James or if James was really Jesus answering me with James’ face. Then I wondered if that’s all God ever is—somebody who loves you enough to come back from the dead to visit every now and again. Or if that’s all other people ever are—different faces of God walking around.

I wondered if it mattered if I was dreaming.

If all things work out in the end, if all things have a purpose, then I wondered if we needed a God at all. I wondered, walking to Jesus. Would I go to him anyway if I thought he did nothing but watch?

A cross, Jesus in a loincloth, the crown of thorns, azaleas, the blood, all right there, watching me. I studied them as I got closer, one at a time. It took me a while to see that this Jesus wasn’t nailed to his cross. He was bound to it.

By the time I reached him, he was fading. He was sinking, the cross being swallowed by the earth even though my own feet held steady. I stood so close his toes brushed against my nightgown, slid down between my breasts, his thighs parting them. The virgin on the cross, beaten and humiliated, sliding between my breasts. Don’t go, I tried to tell him, but he could only shake his head from side to side. When he opened his mouth, I could see his tooth was chipped in front, maybe from a blow. He sunk so low that his mouth passed across my forehead, nose, scratching me with his thorns, across my mouth, neck. He crossed me at my breasts, dampening his mouth with Canaan’s milk, and going lower, lower, until he wasn’t there at all. He left me standing at the place where he had been, which is, perhaps, all we can ever ask of our gods.

N
anna always said that Grandpa Herman would die in the
pulpit, preaching himself right into Heaven. I think he would have liked for his life to end that way, so wrought with the power of God that even his muscles and skin couldn’t hold him. But that’s not what happened.

That next Christmas Eve we were all celebrating. The children of Fire and Brimstone had just put on a play, our standard reenactment of the birth of Christ. And that year I was Mary and Canaan was Baby Jesus. Barley played Joseph, and Mustard was a wise man, and Pammy was a common shepherd, her red bob covered with a belted towel. We’d walked down the aisle of the church one at a time while Aunt Kate and Uncle Ernest played Christmas tunes on their guitar and banjo, and then when we were all on stage, we began singing carols with the whole congregation. Right in the middle, Canaan started crying, and when I picked him up, he nudged my breasts in front of the congregation, but nobody noticed.

Afterwards, we had special Christmas treats in the fellowship hall. We even had a tree, for the very first time, covered with ornaments the youngest children had made in Sunday school, but we didn’t have flashing lights on the tree because Grandpa Herman said they were of Satan.

Everybody fixed their plates and settled down at the tables freshly covered with white sheets for the occasion. There were tiny branches from holly trees on each table, and I fingered a red berry until it came loose and rolled free.

After a while, David said, “Grandpa, ain’t you gonna read us the Christmas story?” and to everybody’s surprise, Grandpa said, “Why don’t you do it, son. I believe I’ll sit back and listen this time.”

There was something about his voice that sounded a tiny bit unfamiliar—like he had a piece of candy stuck in the back of his throat, like he was trying not to cough.

So David went up to the podium, opened his bible, and began to read. People turned their attention to David, but from where I was sitting, it was easier to look at Grandpa Herman. Something about his eyes looked like James’ did on the day I said I was pregnant. I didn’t think he had anything to be afraid about, but didn’t know what would make his eyes so electric.

I looked back down at the holly branch, began to pluck off other berries, and then glanced back at Grandpa. His face was pulling to one side, and his mouth gaped open like a squirrel hole in a tree.

From the front, David’s voice rose up. “And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings ...”

I reached over to Mamma to get her attention. Then right in the middle of the Christmas story and decorations, the nut cake and costumes, Grandpa Herman fell sideways from his chair, knocking into Nanna and thumping them both onto the floor.

Daddy rushed over and pulled Nanna from beneath him. Other people moved in closer, but I held back, shocked and pressing holly berries into the sheet.

“Everett, get the truck,” Daddy hollered. “Do you want to go with us to the hospital, Leila?”

Nanna paled and hobbled off to get her coat.

“You know he wouldn’t want to go to the hospital,” David tried.

“Do you want him to die?” Daddy said sarcastically, and David, who knew at least to honor his father and mother, shut up.

We all stood around, looking at Grandpa laying there so blank. His eyes were open, but it was like he didn’t even know us. Mamma threw a tablecloth over him to hold in his heat and leaned up against the wall with her hand over her mouth.