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“Only a year younger than you were when you married my Jesse,” May said, feeling defensive, but her words caused her to reflect on how Betty’s getting married too young had been the root of so many of their troubles. She bit her lip, then gave into an urge to provide the woman with a shred of comfort. “Don’t you go worrying about Poppy. Girl has a good head on her shoulders. She ain’t gonna get herself messed up with some boy. You wait and see, she’s gonna make something of herself.”
May stopped and took a good look at Betty. Her pasty skin and fancy clothes. Her pretty features and her selfish heart. May wanted to let the past lie in the past, find a way to forgive this woman, both for taking Jesse and for deserting her own daughters. But May soon realized that even though she might someday uncover a font of forgiveness in her heart, today was not the day it would happen. She folded her arms across her chest and took a wider stance.
“All right now, girl,” May said. “How ’bout you tell me what you really doin’ here?”
Betty moved her lips to speak, but before she could utter a word, May heard a high and piercing shriek coming from her own front porch. Her head jerked toward the sound. A baby’s cry—a tad less angry, but still just as desperate—reached her ears. She flashed a look at Betty’s crumpling face, then strode to the front door and yanked it open. On the other side of the screen door stood a young black woman, probably around Opal’s age, dressed in a dark gray maid’s uniform. Her tight lips twitched as her nervous eyes fell on May, but she continued to bounce a small bundle, the source of the shrieking, and pat the baby’s back.
May pushed the screen door open, the young woman taking a cautious step back as the door protested.
“May,” Betty said, her high heels clacking across the wooden floor as she rushed to catch up to her mother-in-law, grasping the screen door before the resentful spring could pull it closed.
May took in the sight of a shiny maroon sedan with a liveried driver—a white man—stationed at its side, but neither the man nor the scintillating hunk of steel held her attention.
“Turn it around,” May commanded the maid. “I want to see it.” The young woman hesitated, but then did as she’d been told.
May approached the bundled child, its face contorted by a degree of rage only an infant could muster. A balled-up fist flailed on the end of a chubby arm. May reached out and took the damp hand gently between her own fingers. “Yours?” May said to Betty, even though she knew the answer. The babe’s skin was the same warm copper shade as Betty’s natural skin tone. The hair on its head—a coppery red, not too very different from that of the doll Betty had brought for Jilo—caught the sun. The child’s eyes flashed open. As blue as a bachelor’s button. Just as May had suspected.
“Yeah.” Betty’s defeated voice came from behind May. “She’s mine.”
“Well it sounds like she’s hungry. If I were you, I’d stop nursing that fur you wearin’ and feed her instead.” May caressed the baby’s soft hand, then looked back at Betty, who seemed grateful to shrug off her stole.
Betty held the fur out toward the maid with one hand, and reached out for the child with the other. “Let me see her,” Betty said, then the two traded their burdens. Betty crossed to the far end of the porch and took a seat on the bench swing. She waited until the driver turned his back, and then her moment’s modesty surrendered to another piercing cry from the child. Betty shifted the baby to her left arm, and undid the buttons of her blouse with her right hand. The child took to the exposed breast, bleached pale as it was.
“I’ve been working on getting her switched to the bottle. I have plenty of formula, but these things,” she shifted so that her bosom jutted a bit forward, “just keep doing what they do.” Betty seemed apologetic.
“What’s her name?”
“Ah,” Betty said, her own face showing the relief of letting go of her milk. “I’ve just been calling her Baby, but . . .” Her words deserted her as her haunted eyes met May’s.
“But you reckon I can name her anything I want.” May felt a pain in her heart at the sight of the poor child in this hopeless woman’s arms.
“I can’t keep her,” Betty keened before managing to calm herself. “He won’t let me keep her.”
“Came out a shade too brown, did she?” May asked. Betty flinched, although May hadn’t intended to cause her more pain.
“He says I have to give her up.” She leaned back, shifting the child as she did so. “Wants me to turn her over to one of those horrible convents so they can adopt her out.” She patted the baby’s tight copper curls. “But you and I both know they ain’t never gonna adopt her out.”
May heard Betty’s real voice, her real words, not the practiced Yankee talk she’d been using since she arrived.
“You hopin’ he’s gonna change his mind, aren’t you? Hoping he’s gonna marry you.”
Betty laughed, a hard bitter laugh, as hot tears fell down her cheeks. “Mickey ain’t gonna marry me. He’s already married. And he’s Catholic.” She looked up at May. “I ain’t got no hope for nothing. I just can’t bear the thought of giving her over to strangers. Never knowing if she’s all right.”
May closed her eyes and drew a deep breath. When she opened her eyes again, she patted Betty’s shoulder. “ ’Course she gonna stay with me. I’m her nana, ain’t I?”
Betty’s eyes widened and a shudder of relief ran through her. “Thank you,” she managed before her words turned to throaty sobs.
“Now enough of that nonsense,” May said, a harshn
ess rising unbidden to her words. She braced herself, looking for the strength to give this woman one more chance to do right. “ ’Course, you could stay, too. Finish raising your girls here with me.”
Betty’s sobs stopped cold, and her eyes opened in something very near to horror. “Oh, May,” she said, her haughty Yankee tone resurrecting itself in just two syllables. “I could never stay on here.” She cast a disapproving eye over May’s entire world. “No, I have to get back home. Back to New York.” She leaned a tad forward, as if she were about to share her most cherished secret. “You see, I love him.”
May nodded. “All right, then.” She turned to the maid. “You fetch the baby’s things. Bring them inside.” At the squeak of the porch swing, she looked back to see Betty standing, already holding her infant out toward May.
May accepted the child into her arms and pulled her into her bosom, even as the baby’s natural mother fumbled with buttons to hide her own exposed breasts. May turned to take the child inside, but Betty’s voice stopped her.
“I know I ain’t a good mother. Hell, I ain’t really any kind of mother at all.” She licked her lips, then rushed on as if to prevent May from responding. “I’m not a good woman. I’m selfish. I’m vain. I’m greedy. If there is a bad choice to make, you can bet your last dollar I will make it. But in my sorry life, I have done one thing right.” She paused and fixed May with her gaze. “I have left my girls in your care. ’Cause I want them to learn something I could never teach them. I want them to grow up like you.”
