Calling Me Home (29 page)

I started to hit redial on my phone, but it was the same button to answer an incoming call. I had just enough time to register the scrap of Marvin Gaye and the name on the caller ID as my finger pressed the button. Teague. Now?

But what could I do? Hang up? I closed my eyes and gathered a big breath and said hello.

“Dorrie!
Finally.
Girl, I’ve been worried about you all day, thinking you might be stranded somewhere or hurt or I don’t know what. Do you know what you put me through?”

Our silences blended awkwardly.

“I’m sorry,” he said, finally. “I overstepped there. I was worried because, well, I care about you, Dorrie.” He sighed. I cringed. I hated that I’d stressed him out, when I was just trying to salvage my own pride in the name of keeping him from having to deal with my mess. And I’d never had anyone apologize for overstepping boundaries before. In fact, I’m not even sure I realized I was entitled to boundaries until that very moment, when someone acknowledged pushing them.

I forced myself to smile, hoping it would come through in my voice. “It’s okay. As a matter of fact, we are stranded, but we’ve got the Triple A coming any minute now. Probably a belt, nothing serious. I’m sure we’ll be on our way in no time.”

“Dorrie?”

My smile fell away. I knew what was coming. Boundaries or no, he had that note in his voice. He was going to ask about the break-in again.

“Why didn’t you want the police involved in your burglary?”

And I still didn’t have a good answer. If I told him the truth, he’d back out of my life faster than he’d become a part of it. That might hurt more than ignoring him, letting him think it was all about me until he dropped it and went away. Either way, he was going to bolt. I guarded my voice. “So you called them back? Told them to forget about it? They said okay?”

“Yes, but—”

“And the door?”

“It’s boarded up tight until you get home, and I’m planning to run by every day to check on things, but Dorrie—”

“I appreciate it. I really do, and—oh, hey, I see a tow truck in the distance and I’m willing to bet it’s for us, so I’ve got to go. I’ll talk to you … later, okay? Thanks again, Teague.”

I disconnected and dared to look over at Miss Isabelle. She shook her head enough for me to detect it. “What?” I said, and gestured behind us, where a tow truck was rapidly approaching. It pulled around us and parked on the shoulder.

“Nothing, Dorrie,” Miss Isabelle said. “Nothing.”

She didn’t need to say anything.

Eventually, the mechanic called from under the hood, “Yep. Gonna have to tow her in. And I know for a fact I don’t have that belt in stock. I’ll have to chase it down in the morning, but it’ll be a quick fix. Sorry, ladies.” He dropped the hood and brushed off his hands.

He drove us to a hotel near his shop and promised to call first thing in the morning. Miss Isabelle fretted while I paid for the room—this time aided by Mr.
Nice
Manager—and rolled our bags down the hall. She was worried we’d be late for the viewing and visitation the next evening. But I assured her if the guy fixed up the car as fast as he’d promised, we’d arrive in plenty of time. It was only a hop and a jump across a river to Cincy once we got back on the road—even I’d begun calling it Cincy in my head after hearing Miss Isabelle say it enough times.

I bought our dinner at a convenience store down the street. After a few hours of television, I went out for the cigarette I’d been telling myself I wasn’t going to smoke, checked in with my mother, and had a quick word with Bebe. I didn’t bother asking for Stevie Junior. We went to bed early. There was nothing else to do. I settled into the scratchy pillows and was drifting when Miss Isabelle sighed.

“Don’t worry. We’ll get there,” I murmured across the few feet between us.

“I know, I just—” Another sigh made me nervous. Even when the doctor had made Miss Isabelle quit driving, she’d seemed completely in charge. She’d adjusted. But now her inability to let go of her worry concerned me. My temper tantrum earlier probably hadn’t helped.

“Miss Isabelle. Trust me?”

“I do. I’m tired, that’s all.” That was better. A minute later, she even chuckled. “Hmmph. Imagine your Teague if he heard you talking about trust. Hello, pot, I’m the kettle, and just so’s you know? We’re both black.” Then her bed shook as she silently laughed at her own joke backfiring. Full recovery—or maybe slight hysteria.

I flipped to face the other wall, pulling the extra pillow over my eyes to block the streetlight glaring through the crack between the dusty blackout curtains. Where was a hair clip when you needed one?

The only person I needed to trust was myself. The other road had too many curves, and I wanted to see straight ahead.

29

Isabelle, 1940

M
OTHER CALLED FOR
Mrs. Gray, and together they managed to walk me to the claustrophobic room behind the kitchen where we kept an old bedstead. Cora had slept there overnight when it had been too late for her to walk home safely and my father wasn’t available to drive her—though I’m sure nobody ever admitted it.

Mrs. Gray spread a sheet over the lumpy mattress, and I fell onto my side, drawing my knees high, groaning at the pains, which were coming faster now. I heard Mother dial the telephone in the kitchen and speak. A short while later, another woman entered the room. My pain had begun to peak. If it hadn’t already stolen my breath, the sight of her face would have.

A Negro.

A midwife, come to deliver me of my baby. Apparently, colored was good enough now the baby was coming. I might have laughed had my insides not been boiling like molten lava trying to erupt from the volcano of my body.

I closed my eyes, thankful for someone with a notion of how to get me through this. Later, I realized I never saw my father the whole time I was confined to that tiny room. As a physician, he should have checked how things were progressing—especially given how early the baby was. Perhaps he stayed in the kitchen, advising the midwife, too ashamed to examine his own daughter.

She prodded me, gently explaining each step. I was too focused on the pain to be self-conscious. She assured me the baby would emerge as it should—even if I felt I was going to split in two—and that it wouldn’t take long.

Her worried eyes, however, revealed that her expectations were low. Perhaps she sensed if she voiced her worries about the timing of the birth, I might stop working to get the baby out. As it was, I struggled to follow directions, distracted by my fear for the baby and anger with my mother, which recurred every time she entered the room. Mother stood to the side while the midwife briefed her, then left again. Finally, the midwife said she should remain. I would need to push soon, and the pushing would be more productive if she functioned as an anchor.

My mother took her place at my knee, her face a muddle of anger and concern. I looked away, focusing on the midwife’s features as she alternated instructions to push or wait or push again. My lower body seemed to have a mind of its own by then, disconnected from my mind, and though I tried to do as she commanded at one point—to wait and gather my strength for the next wave—I had a sudden, uncontrollable need to push the baby out.

The rest passed in a blur, the midwife reporting I’d delivered the head, then the shoulders and body, and this series of events I couldn’t see or comprehend resulted in a tiny bundle wrapped in white toweling and rushed from the room. I strained to hear a cry, a wail—something to tell me my baby was alive. Silence pierced silence.

The midwife left me alone with my mother, and I shook, suddenly cold, even enveloped as I was by the sweltering heat. My body was foreign and new again. The shock chilled me.

“The baby?” I asked, and Mother remained silent.

I asked the question several times, and each time she turned away, until I became frantic, pleading for a simple answer. Finally, she studied me with what seemed the smallest measure of pity. “It was so early,” she said, shrugging. “It was for the best.”

Another cramp clenched my abdomen, and this time it seemed it came from the pain of learning my baby was gone, as though my body were mourning the loss before I even knew of it. A wail budded low in my chest and emerged from my mouth whole. Though I wanted more than anything to prevent my mother from witnessing my anguish, I couldn’t conquer it.

“No,” I cried. And again. “No. I want my baby. My baby.” I turned my face from hers and moaned into the pillow, tears mingling with the sweat of my labor. She left the room.

The midwife returned and reseated herself at the end of the bed. She pressed on my abdomen, as though she were trying to expel my grief from my body, and with each wave, my sobs diminished, until they finally ran out. She explained that the afterbirth had been delivered. She took it away, and when she returned, I clutched her arm, my eyes asking the question I couldn’t voice again.

She barely shook her head and looked away, and my eyes flooded again, though this time my cry was silent.

“Was it a boy or girl?” I asked. I watched her battle with the question, her eyes flicking toward the door, though it was firmly closed.

“A girl,” the midwife whispered.

“I want to see her.” I struggled to sit up, but the woman pushed me down again, though gently, her hands and arms strong and versed in the care of new mothers. But without my baby, what was I?

“Honey, you lie still now. I need to check things and get you cleaned up. And…” She hesitated and looked toward the door again and shook her head. “I’ll do what I can.”

“Mother!” I screamed, and the woman started at the force and volume of my cry.

Mother opened the door only enough to let herself in.

“I want to see my baby,” I said, my voice dead calm now.

“It would be a bad idea, Isabelle.”

“Maybe just for a minute, ma’am?” the midwife said. “Just to say her good-byes? Sometimes that helps.”

“It would only make things more difficult. And it isn’t your concern.” Mother’s voice was flat, too, her face harder than I’d ever seen it. It was impossible to believe I’d once been
her
baby girl.

When she stepped out of the room again, I grasped at the midwife. “What will they do with her? I need to know where she’ll be.” I knew my mother would never tell me. Someone might see me mourning, and our secret would be no more.

“She’ll be in a good place, don’t you worry.” She paused to listen to the rain, which still drummed against the roof. “Safe and dry … and in God’s hands. You’ll see her again one day. I know it.”

Her platitudes didn’t help. I screamed again, over and over, long after Mother had left the room, through the whole process of the midwife bathing me and soothing me with warm cloths as though I were an injured child, through the examining and stitching of the jagged tear that would take weeks to heal properly, that throbbed constantly like a separate heartbeat, reminding me of what I had lost.

30

Dorrie, Present Day

T
HE MECHANIC RECLAIMED
us at the hotel the next morning and sent us on our way. Miss Isabelle had been tight-lipped about the day she went into labor, but once we were settled into our route again, aimed the right direction and an hour and a half or so from Cincinnati, I’d quietly asked her what happened after she fell down the stairs.

My questions felt cruel, but more and more, it seemed she needed to tell this tale, to purge some of her pain before we arrived. (Forty down, five letters: “to flush out or eliminate.”
Purge
. Even thinking the word was painful.) As though in the retelling, she would work her way through a kind of healing.

When she told me about her mother’s refusal to let her see her baby, her monotone exposed her grief. This time, tears did drip from the sides of my eyes as she fell silent. I blinked as long as I could, then casually reached a finger to rub them away, hoping she’d think my eyes watered because of the late-morning sunlight gleaming through the windshield.

“What made her that way?” I asked, a lump in my throat choking my voice. “I’m so afraid I’ll let my kids down, Miss Isabelle.”

I thought of Stevie Junior, home alone with his dumb mistakes, faced with ultimatums from both sides, right or wrong, but equally critical. How was the kid supposed to deal?

I’d talked to him briefly that morning. He’d been subdued and embarrassed that Miss Isabelle had witnessed his temper tantrum. He apologized for screaming at me, which made me feel hopeful. I told him I felt like I ought to be there—
wanted
to be there now that we’d both calmed down some—but he said it was okay and promised to sit tight another day or two. Bailey had agreed to wait to tell her parents and to not do anything hasty—at least until I returned home, as it would only be a few more days. He’d given Bebe the money for safekeeping, and though she’d pestered him to tell her where it had come from, all he told her was that he needed her to keep it in a safe place he didn’t know about. I chuckled a little over that. My mom was there, but twelve-year-old Bebe was the one you could trust with the money. We all knew it.

“All you can do is act the way you’d like them to act,” Miss Isabelle said now. “They’ll watch you, and then they’ll make their own decisions. You cross your fingers over your heart and hope to God they make good ones. But you’re not going to let them down, Dorrie. No more than any imperfect mother who loves her children more than she loves herself.”

“But how did she cross the line? Why did your mother let you down so hard?”

“It was a different time, Dorrie. And I had crossed an unforgiveable line, too … for that time. Though it’s hard to accept, any other mother we knew might have reacted the same way. And you’re hearing this story through my eyes—my seventeen-year-old eyes. It’s an irony that young people mostly see things as black and white, Dorrie. All or nothing. Sometimes, in spite of their enthusiasm for embracing change, it takes years of experience before they truly see the whole picture. Still, I don’t believe my mother ever really learned how to love me properly. Her basic needs were scarcely met as a child, and all she could do as an adult was clutch at the status she believed would save her. I really do think it all boiled down to fear. She was so worried about what the people around us would think, she forgot about …
me.
”