Mary Coin (21 page)

34.

S
ickness spread through the camp. There was not a day when one of Mary’s children didn’t have a nose running yellow. Their dry coughs were terrible memories of Toby’s last days, and she had to keep herself from being harsh with them when they complained of aches or pains, her fear congealing into anger. Mary paid a half-wit named Lucille to look after her kids when they were sick. She’d spend the day in the groves worrying that Lucille would not be smart enough to come find her if someone’s fever rose. Despite being near her term, Mary had lost weight and she worked slowly. There were times when exhaustion came over her with such force that she had to stop what she was doing and rest. She carried this new one like she had carried all the others, and the swell of her stomach was unmistakable. She was sure that any day the foreman would give her job to someone else.

The five-o’clock whistle blew. Mary dragged her orange baskets to the end of the row. When the truck finally pulled up to collect the day’s take, she was shocked to see Charlie at the wheel. He had been true to his word, and she hadn’t seen him for months. But now here he was, stepping out of the truck, as clean and golden as she remembered him. Before she could figure out how to hide herself, he noticed her. At first, his face opened with uninhibited pleasure as if he was remembering the way he whispered into her ear while he moved on top of her, murmuring words and half sentences Mary was never able to make out. But as his eyes traveled the length of her body, his expression turned to one of disbelief. James came running over and stood by Mary. Charlie looked at the boy’s dirty face and his dusty clothes that were too big, and Mary could tell that he would consider the child in her belly as just another wretched thing.

She knew he would be waiting on the road for her later that afternoon, so she was ready for him. She didn’t care if he followed her or if he watched her go to the bathroom. Let him know what it was like for her to live and shit and clean herself.

“Is it mine?” he said.

“It’s mine.”

“I talked to that doctor.”

“So why are you asking me what you already know?”

The shouts of camp children playing games of chase and skip-rope reached them. Why did the sound of a child’s happiness make her sad?

“Why are you doing this?” he said.

“I told you I wouldn’t say a thing about what happened, and I won’t. Now walk away from me before someone sees you.”

He hesitated.

“Do it,” she said. “Go.”

At the end of the week, she went to exchange her chits for cash. The bursar told her to sign her name and then handed her double the amount she was owed.

“That’s not right,” she said.

“If you have a problem with the pay, there are other farms down the road.”

“You made a mistake to my advantage,” she said.

He looked at her like he was trying to search out her strategy.

“This is twice as much as I got last week for not nearly the same amount of baskets,” she said.

He looked at his paperwork. “I don’t know anything about last week. It says here this is what you’re due.”

“I don’t know,” she said uncertainly. She didn’t want to be accused of stealing.

“If you don’t want the money, give it to the next person in line,” he said. “If my accounts don’t balance at the end of the day, I got a bigger problem than a crazy lady doesn’t want her pay.”

She closed her hand around the money. She walked past the long, patient line, looking down to avoid the gazes of the other pickers, certain they would know she had been privileged and why.

The next time she saw him in the groves, he did not acknowledge her, and there was no way for her to tell him to stop what he was doing. And then the bigger she got, the harder it was to work at a decent pace, and she stopped thinking about the fact that she was taking his money for her silence. Her children’s stomachs were full.

Three weeks later, as she climbed down the ladder and hoisted a full basket onto her hip, she felt a stabbing pain in her stomach. She dropped the basket and clutched herself. James looked up at her in confusion. His face was a blur. And then he and everything around him became black.

When she came to, she was on her back. There were shadows above her.

“She needs to get back to the camp before she drops this baby right here,” a woman said.

“Some of ’em come so fast you don’t even bother to stop what you’re doing.”

“We need to find a doctor.”

“Not likely.”

And then women were holding her upright, urging her to move. “Come on, now, honey,” one said. “It’s not too far.”

She pitched forward, slipping out of the women’s grasp. She tasted dirt and vomit.

•   •   •

S
he woke in a rush of terror. Hands worked between her legs. “Don’t kill my baby!” she screamed, to make that boy-doctor stop what he was doing with his cold instruments.

“Shh, señora.” It was a girl, sixteen or seventeen. She smiled and nodded reassuringly. She removed a bloodstained towel from underneath Mary and then put a fresh one in its place. Her hands worked precisely as she adjusted the bedclothes.

“What’s happening?” Mary said.

“Shhh, señora,” the girl repeated.

“Where am I?” And then she remembered. They had laid her on the bed of a truck. Someone had carried her up a flight of stairs. There had been a man telling her not to push yet, and then to push, push! And someone had held her hand the whole time. She remembered that. Was it this girl who was tending to her? Who was helping her recover from—

“My baby! Where is my baby?”

The girl smiled at her.

“My baby!” Her throat was raw. “Where is my baby?”

“El bebé está durmiendo.”

“Dead? Is my baby dead?”

An older woman came into the room. She leaned over Mary and gently pushed her shoulders back onto the pillow.
“Tranquilizate,”
she said.

But Mary kept screaming, her voice grating against her throat until she could hardly make a sound. The young girl ran out of the door, calling,
Señor. Señor!
After a few minutes, Charlie came into the room and stood by her bed.

Mary reached out and clutched his wrist. “What did you do to my baby?” she said.

“The baby is fine.”

“I want to see my baby.”

The young Mexican girl returned holding a bundle.
“Un niño,”
she said, leaning over so that Mary could see the tiny face shrouded by white cloth, a baby set into a dish of vanilla ice cream.

“A boy?” she asked.

“Sí, muy pequeño.”

Mary held out her hands. She was startled by the weight of him; he felt barely heavier than the blanket he was wrapped in. His face looked crushed; his brow pushed down on his eyes. The bones of his hand reminded her of the skeleton of a baby field mouse that Della had once found. It was completely intact, missing only its future. Mary looked up and, for the first time, took in her surroundings. Everything in the room was white. White bureau. White bedframe. White curtains billowed in the breeze. A small crystal chandelier swayed, and a rainbow refraction of the cut glass pieces fluttered across the wall.

“Where am I?” she said.

“You’re in my home,” Charlie said.

“I told you this wasn’t any of your business anymore,” she said.

“You could have died. The baby could have died.”

“That didn’t bother you some months ago.”

“You’re not well,” he said. “You had a hard time of it.”

“My kids! Where are my kids? Where are they?”

“They’re fine,” he said. “They’re being looked after.”

“By who?” she said. “You just let any stranger take care of them?”

“There was a woman in the camp. She says she watches your children while you work.”

“That Lucille? I have to pay her or she won’t care for them right. And how’s she gonna feed them?”

“It’s taken care of.”

She looked down at herself. She was wearing a white nightgown. Her dark skin showed through a fretwork of lace at the neck. Her hands, still crusted with dirt from the field, had left smudges on the baby’s wrapping.

“Why doesn’t he cry?” she said.

“His lungs are weak.”

“He’s not going to make it.”

“He’s here,” Charlie said. “He’s not going anywhere.”

The older woman took the baby from her.

“Where is she taking my baby?”

“Cecilia knows what to do,” Charlie said, smiling. “She raised me.”

•   •   •

S
he slept so heavily that when she next awoke she felt as if her mind had been erased, wiped clean of all memory. She stared at the white walls of the airy room and waited for her brain to piece itself back together. She’d had her baby. He was alive. Her children were at the camp. They were being fed. She was lying in a room in the big house with many windows.

The young girl was by her side. Mary’s breasts ached; her milk had come in. She made it clear that she needed to see her baby, and the girl quickly left the room and returned with him. Mary opened her nightgown and put him to her. She felt his lips on her skin, but he did not drink. After a few moments, he began to whimper. She ran her finger along the roof of his mouth in order to get him to suck on it, and then quickly replaced her finger with her long, warm nipple. But he simply dandled the skin in his slack mouth until it fell out. When she squeezed to get the milk going, her eyes watered from the pain. She needed him to relieve her. She rubbed the liquid on his lips to tantalize him, but he just continued to make soft, pathetic sounds. Mary felt helpless and ashamed and insulted by this tiny infant, this little thing that mocked her and whose birth had weakened her so that she had to be cared for by a man who’d just as soon this baby had never existed and who had no more use for Mary than he did for a broken-down tractor.

“He won’t take to me,” she said in defeat.

The girl’s expression was odd as if she, too, was embarrassed by Mary’s failure. Then Mary noticed that two lakes of wetness had spread over the front of the girl’s blouse. She remembered that from her other babies: how the cry of a stranger’s child would cause her milk to come.

“You have a baby, too?” she said.

“Lo siento, señora,”
the girl whispered.

And then Mary understood. “You’re feeding my baby?” She began to yell, repeating the question over and over as if it would begin to make sense. The girl became frightened and made for the door, but when the baby let out a shriek, she turned back, her face opening in surprise.

“Un buen grito,”
she said, patting her chest.

He howled again. Mary laughed. “I guess he’s got lungs on him now.” She held him out toward the girl. “Please,” she said.

The girl sat at the foot of the bed and opened her shirt. The baby took her milk and quieted, his little sucks and moans punctuating the silence.

“Mary,” Mary said, pointing to herself.

“Alma,” the girl said. She lifted the baby from her breast, covered herself, and then handed him to Mary. Mary patted his back and jiggled him up and down. When the burp came, both women sighed.

•   •   •

S
he begged Charlie to bring her other children to her, and early the next evening the door opened, and there they were. Della, June, and Ray ran to the bed and flung themselves across it, their dirty clothes like rain clouds against the white sheets. Trevor stood quietly by her side. Ellie stayed in the doorway, holding James’s hand. She looked like a young woman—protective and wary and fierce.

“The lady gave us iced tea in the kitchen,” Della said.

“That was nice,” Mary said.

“And the glasses have straws stuck right on them,” Della said. “And there was leaves in the tea.”

“That’s mint.”

“We could put in as much sugar as we wanted,” June said. “The lady said so.”

Alma appeared at the door with the baby. Mary held out her hands. “Here he is,” she said. “Here’s your new brother.”

“Oh!” June cried, as if she had just been given a doll. “Oh, I love him!”

James pulled away from Ellie’s grip and came to Mary’s side. He put his hand on her shoulder and looked at the baby. Mary stared into James’s dark, wet eyes, which were as mysterious to her as a horse’s.

“Lucille told us you were going to live here now,” Ellie said. “She said you got yourself a leg up in the world and that you were taking your chance.”

“Lucille has half a brain.”

“You told us never to talk mean about people who are slow,” Trevor said.

“Lucille said you made your luck on your back,” Ellie said.

Mary looked at Alma but could not tell if the girl understood. She turned back to Ellie. “Every one of you was made on my back and every one of you is my good luck. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ellie mumbled.

“Say it out loud.”

“Yes, ma’am!”

The following morning, when Mary woke up, Alma was in the room, cleaning.

“Will you get me my clothes?” Mary said.

Alma looked at her blankly.

Mary pointed to her nightgown. “My dress. I want my dress back.”

“No más vestido.”

“I don’t understand you. I want my clothes. I want to go home.”

“Es sucio,”
Alma said. She looked down at her apron and pointed to a stain.

“I don’t care if it’s dirty. I’m not gonna spend the rest of my life in this”—she grabbed her nightgown—“this useless thing.” She struggled to get out of bed. “Bring me my baby.
El bebé
.”

Alma left the room, and a few minutes later Charlie appeared at the door. “What’s this I hear about you leaving us?”

“I have to get back to my family. I have to get to work.” She sat down on the bed, exhausted. “The baby and I don’t belong here.”

“He’s plumping right up,” Charlie said. “It seems this house is doing him good.”

There was something in his voice that made her alert. “My children need me,” she said.

“I just thought, well, that he could stay here for a while.”