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"First you were raped and then you had to go through all this with what follows. I'm not going to sugarcoat it, honey. It's a wrenching the likes of which you'll never know again," she said. "I've seen the horror when a baby's born dead. For you, it will be just like that, I'm afraid," she concluded.
I tried to swallow, but my throat wouldn't work. Tears clouded my eyes as my heart drummed the fear Mama had stirred in my chest. Suddenly she smiled with a new thought.
"You remember once when you were a little girl you came to me with a dead baby bird and I told you the mother bird had probably thrown it out of the nest?"
"Yes, Mama. I remember. We buried the bird under the pecan tree."
She laughed. "Yes, we did. Anyway, honey, that mama bird did what she thought was best for the other babies. You couldn't accept that then. What I was trying to explain was the mama bird had to think more of her babies than she thought of herself, of her own sadness.
"That's something you're going to have to do, too. I'm just telling you this now because I want to prepare you for it, prepare you for what you have already decided to do."
I nodded, deep sadness continuing to cloud over the sunshine that had been in my heart. "You told me I had to give up ray innocence, Mama." I nodded. "Now I understand."
"I'm sorry, honey. I should have talked to you more about this before you made your decision, but you were so determined this was the right decision."
"I still believe it's the right decision, Mama," I said softly.
She closed her eyes and sighed again. "Okay," she said, patting my hand. "If you really still believe that, you'll be fine then. And be with you every moment."
She left me some of her herbal medicines and told me she would be coming around more often now that I was in what she called the downhill slide. She remarked that the baby had dropped more than she anticipated it would during the past few days. I did feel like a duck waddling around my small room and pulling myself up the short stairway. Lately I had to stop in the middle and catch my breath. I thought I looked pretty comical and burst out laughing at myself a few times.
But our conversation did leave me in gloom, and despite the prohibitions against it, after Mama left I decided I had to look out on sunlight and nature. I lifted the shade on the window to permit the sunshine to warm my face.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, it seemed, I saw a boy about fifteen come walking on his hands over the lawn on my right. He paused and did a flip, landing on his bare feet; and when he did, he set eyes on my window. I backed away quickly, but when I sat forward to peer out again, he was still there, standing fixed in the same spot, gazing up at my window. I feared he had spotted me. My heart pounded, anticipating trouble. If Gladys Tate found out, there was no telling what she would do in the state of mind she was in these days. The closer I was getting to delivery, the more nervous and irritable she became.
I moved to the side and stared down at the boy, while he studied the window, trying to decide if he really had seen anything, I imagine.
Then he smiled and did a back flip. He went down on all fours and kicked his feet up to start walking over the grass on his hands again. He turned, folded into a somersault, and then jumped to his feet, spinning like a ballet dancer. He had such grace and smoothness to his gymnastics, I couldn't help but watch. He smiled, stopped, and magically turned into a puppet right before my eyes.
His shoulders rose as if strings were attached and his arms lifted, his hands limp. His hands snapped up and he jerked his head to the right and then to the left. Before I could shake my head with amazement, he folded his body, imitating a puppet when the strings were released. As soon as his knees touched the grass, however, he snapped back up, his arms floating higher, his hands flapping. I couldn't help but laugh. It came out of my mouth before I could subdue it, but if he heard me, he didn't acknowledge. Instead, like the puppet he was pretending to be, he started to walk to his right, his legs lifting and falling with that jerky movement reminiscent of a doll on a string. He went around in a circle and then, once more, as if the strings broke, he folded to the ground and just lay there, frozen, his eyes like glass.
Finally he widened his eyes, smiled, and stood up. He gazed at me, but he didn't speak; at least, not with his tongue. Instead, he began a series of hand movements I recognized as sign language. I watched him for a while and saw the frustration when I didn't respond. Even if I could, I didn't know how to respond, what to say. Was he asking questions?
I had seen only one deaf-mute before, Tyler Joans, who was eight when I met him. I had accompanied Mama on a traiteur mission to help Tyler's mother cure some warts on the back of her hands. The Joans family had moved away years ago and I never really got to know Tyler.
The boy below stopped and put his hands on his hips. He was a tall, slim boy with dark brown hair that fell over his forehead and covered his eyes. He wore a pair of khaki pants and a faded white T-shirt torn at the collar.
I pulled back when a tall, stout man appeared carrying a rake. I heard him call, "Henry!" and then I saw him gesture angrily for the boy to follow. "Finish your chores, boy, before I tan that hide of yours." He signed quickly with his big hands and shook the rake in the air.
The boy put his right forefinger on the top of his head, spun like a top, and shot off to the left, leaving me laughing quietly and wondering who he was
That night I was drawn back to my window when I thought I heard my heron strutting, about on the balcony railing. But instead of the nocturnal bird, I found a bouquet of hyacinth tied with a string. Their lavender blossoms were pale with a dab of yellow on the center petals, surrounded by some green leaves. Surely my heron hadn't brought them, I thought, and gazed into the darkness, looking for my benefactor. How could he have known how much I missed the sight of hyacinths stretching from bank to bank on the bayou surface? I was always fascinated by the way their color changed with the changing skies, shimmering from lavender to dark purple with a passing cloud. To me it was as if a divine artist were continually repainting the world in which I lived. It was never boring, never without surprise. And that was something I craved dearly these past, dark months, shut away from the world I loved.
"Thank you," I called into the night, and waited for a response. All I heard was a mournful owl and the monotonous symphony of cicadas.
I hid the flowers under my bed before I went to sleep. I would have to cast them out the window when they faded and dried so Gladys Ta
te wouldn't find them. She lingered in my room the next morning after she had brought my breakfast, and I was afraid she knew that the strange but fascinating boy had seen me.
She sniffed and gazed about suspiciously as I ate. "Smells like spring in here suddenly," she said.
"The breeze is bringing in the scent of flowers," I replied, but she stood there, still looking suspicious.
"Octavious hasn't been here, has he?" she suddenly demanded. Terrified of what would happen if I said yes, I shook my head quickly. "That cologne he wears turns my stomach now."
"No, madame."
"Stand up," she commanded. I put down my fork and did so. She stood beside me, her hands on her stomach, and gazed at mine. "You're lower down than me," She molded her padding a bit. "Any other pains?"
