Let Me Die in His Footsteps

21

THE ROOM IS dark except for the glow of a single kerosene lantern that sits near the bed. Juna lies on her back, the round bulge in her stomach straining her skin until it’s taut like a stretched hide. She coughs-a deep cough that rattles in her chest. It’s the cold air that burns her lungs. Outside, the wind rushes down the hill and past our small house, whistling through the cracks in the walls and the ceiling and around the one small window. Every night, rushing and whistling and it never stops.

The wet cloth on Juna’s forehead has turned stiff with the cold. I douse it in water kept warm by the fire, wring it, blot it to her face. At the end of the bed, near Juna’s feet, I fuss with a wooden stool until it’s positioned just so. As I move through the lantern’s smoky light, I throw long, dark shadows. Placing one hand under Juna’s right knee, I lift it and, with the other hand, push on her shin until her leg is bent. I do the same with her other leg, help her to sit up, and show her how to hook her arms under each knee. It’s what the women told me I should do. None of them would come but instead taught me what to do and how to do it and wished me well.

“God damn this cold,” Juna says.

I press Juna’s knees up and out. Strands of her long yellow hair have pulled loose from the cotton kerchief she wears. Even in the dim light, her cheeks and forehead shine and have the same pink glow she’d have after a day walking the fields under a full sun.

“Push now. Don’t stop until I say.”

When we knew the day was getting close, I pasted strips of cloth in the room’s one small window. I cut feed bags in long, thin strips and soaked them in flour and water I mixed up on the porch. It’s meant to keep out the cold, cut the draft, but even as I lower myself onto the stool, cold air settles in around my ankles and brushes past my cheeks.

“You’ve got to push harder,” I say, and silently, I count to ten. “Keep on. Keep on pushing.”

The room is like a box, sealed up tight so no one can see inside. But really it’s not so tight. Streams of icy air stir up the flame in the lantern, scattering its yellow glow. It moves across Juna’s face, lighting up a sliver here and a sliver there. First her left eye. It catches the light, reflects it back. Then the side of her face, the hollow in her neck, the strands of hair clinging to her forehead.

“I’m too cold,” Juna says, dropping her hold on one knee so she can wipe the hair from her eyes. “God damn this cold.”

“That don’t matter,” I say. “This baby is coming.”

It’s too early, far too early. That’s what the women said when I told them I thought the time was near. They shook their heads, counted on their fingers, discussed the last full moon and when we’d expect another. Too early, they said. So early it might be a blessing. Just over five months, they counted. Five months since Joseph Carl planted the child. Too little time. If it is to come, it’ll never draw a breath. Too tiny. Not yet ready for this world. It might be a blessing.

Behind me, the bedroom door opens. The rest of the house isn’t sealed up, and cold rushes into the room. The small lantern dims. Juna falls back on her elbows. Her face disappears in the weakened light and appears again after the door closes. Footsteps cross the wooden floorboards.

“Not fitting for you to be here,” I say, knowing it’s Daddy without looking.

He doesn’t answer, but a few more steps cross the wooden planks that run the length of the room and then fall silent. The cigar crackles as he sucks on its end and smoke settles in over Juna and me. A single chair is pushed up against the wall, yet he doesn’t sit. Instead, he stands, arms crossed, feet spread wide. It’s what he does, what he always does. Next to the other men, he’s not so large and not so smart and not so good with his crop. He’ll stand like he thinks a man should.

“I’m seeing something,” I say.

I can smell him. In the small room, closed up tight with floury strips of cloth, his odor takes no time reaching me. Even over the cigar smoke filling the air, I smell him. I close my eyes as if that will stop me from breathing him in. It’s sweat, sour and moldy; damp socks rinsed and pulled on again before they’ve dried; strong coffee warmed over two, three, four mornings until the pot is empty.

“It’ll be harder now,” I say, lifting my head until my eyes lock on Juna’s.

It’s what the women told me. When you see the head, they warned, she’ll want to stop. Make her push harder. Make her push until it’s out.

“Harder you push, quicker she’ll be here.”

“She?” Juna says. “You said she. Can you see?”

With that one word-“she”-the baby is real. She has tiny fingers with paper-thin nails, pink skin, and clear eyes.

“Haven’t gotten to that end yet,” I say. “But won’t Abraham be proud? You’ll be his special girls, the two of you.”

The smell of Daddy is stronger. I taste him in the air. Juna begins to pant, and I know with every short breath, she’ll be tasting him too. I think she’ll look at him in that way she does, that she’ll tilt her head just so, raise a brow, make him afraid so he’ll leave. But she does nothing, says nothing.

“Push,” I say again.

The women told me to make Juna push or she’d starve the baby of her air.

“Push, Juna. She needs you to push.”

There it is again-she. Every week and then every day, Juna grew larger as the baby grew. She plumped up to look more like me, softer, rounder. Her upper arms grew so large we cut the seams in each sleeve of her cotton blouses, and her cheeks and hips rounded out in a way that will probably stick with her long after the baby is born.

The shadow on the west wall shifts. Two heavy boots rearrange themselves.

“Push, Juna,” I say. “You have to push.”

The women told me all that could go wrong. If it’s coming feet first, you’ll be without hope. If the girl won’t push, can’t push, you’ll be without hope. It’s a wicked time of year, they had said, to be giving birth. She was meant to come in the spring. It should take nine months, maybe ten, the ladies had said.

Folks say Abraham has been planning for a spring wedding, just before the tobacco goes in the ground. He has forgotten what I cannot. He has forgotten the other men Juna laid with and that the baby is no more Abraham’s than a half a dozen other men’s. Abraham has seen Juna over the past months, a few times in town, and so he’s seen how Juna has grown soft and round. Each time we’ve seen him, he has walked with a straighter back, his head held high again, always leading with his chin.

And while Juna is loved more and more every day, I have been forgotten. John Holleran no longer comes to the house. He doesn’t want me anymore, and Ellis Baine never did. Daddy always said I would be pleasing to a man, my softness something a man would want at the end of the day. He always said a man would want to rest his head on my chest, not Juna’s, and that he’d want me to stroke his forehead, tell him what a good man he was. Daddy always said I was pleasing, but now no man will have me.

Juna cries out. First one shoulder appears and then another. It’s quick now. They said it would be, God willing, if all went as it should. And here she is. A little girl. Not so small as we feared she would be. She’s long and lean, her skin so thin I think I can see her insides.

“I was right,” I say, standing from the stool and cradling the small body in my two hands. “A girl. Tiny as can be. A girl.”

Juna lies back and closes her eyes as I wrap the baby. I wrap her one way and then the other and draw the end up around her feet. Keep her warm, the women told me. Clean her face and nose. She cries out like they said she would, like they said she should. I hold her to my chest, but she’s still tethered to Juna. We wait for the cord to stop pulsing, and then Daddy steps up and with his pocketknife saws at it until it falls away.

“Give her to Daddy,” Juna says, her eyes still closed.

I look from Juna to Daddy and back again. He stretches out his hands, but instead of passing her off, I cradle her in one arm and, with my free hand, rub Juna’s soft stomach and tell her to give another push. She does nothing, but still it comes.

“That’s it. There we go.”

The room is quiet; even the wind has calmed. Juna lets her legs fall flat, rests her arms at her sides.

“Give her to Daddy.”

IT HAPPENS SOMETIMES, this time of year, that the weather takes a favorable turn. The sun shines strong enough to warm the ground, and slender blades of grass rise up. And then another turn. Rain and a cold snap, and in the morning, the young blades glisten with a layer of ice. Like slivers of crystal sprouting from the earth, if only for a few hours or maybe a few minutes. The fields shimmer until the icy coatings begin to thaw and melt away, and the slender young blades wilt.

“Daddy will take her now,” Juna says, her eyes still closed, though somehow she knows I have yet to hand off the child.

“I won’t let her go,” I say, swiping a finger through the baby’s mouth, wiping it on my apron.

Daddy stands next to me. I can smell the whiskey and cigars and hear each breath he draws through his nose.

“Take her, Daddy,” Juna says.

Her eyes open. Here in the house where the light is faint and scattered, they are like two holes cut into her head. They are empty, hollowed out.

“I won’t let him,” I say. “She’s your girl, Juna. Give her a name. Let Abraham give her a name. Daddy should go for him, let him see his girl.”

Juna lifts onto her elbows.

“Now, Daddy,” she says. Her voice is soft, sweet almost, and she tilts her head like she does. “Look how big she is after so short a time. She ain’t right.”

I turn a shoulder so Daddy can’t see that the baby is as big as any mother would hope her baby to be and yet she’s been such a few months in coming. She’s wrapped up tight, the blanket wound around her and tucked under like the ladies told me to do. He grabs me first by one arm. He’s taken off his gloves, and his fingers pinch the soft skin above my elbow. He doesn’t throw me or push me but turns me enough that he can reach the child. He threads one hand around her small body, tucks her under like he might a load of wood.

“That’s it,” Juna says.

She’s sitting up, her legs hanging over the side of the bed. There’s blood, must be blood, but it’ll be dark, and in so little light, I can’t see it.

“Take her, Daddy.”

Her voice is louder and higher, and her eyes are stretched wide.

“You take her or she’ll curse you.”

I grab the back of Daddy’s jacket with both hands, squeeze until my knuckles ache.

“Leave her to me,” I shout, hanging from Daddy, looking back at Juna.

“Take her. Take her away.”

Juna is screaming. Her kerchief has pulled loose, and her yellow hair hangs in her face. She tries to stand but stumbles backward and rests against the bed. Over and over she screams for Daddy to take the baby. She means for him to take the baby away and see to it she never returns.

“She’ll curse you, Daddy. She’ll ruin us all.”

We use the piece of wood in the spring to prop open the shutter John Holleran hung for Juna and me some years ago. He hung it on the inside of the house so we could open and close it as we liked. The board we use is three feet long, two inches thick, four inches wide. It’s sturdy, has to be to hold open the heavy slab of wood. That board is all I have, so I grab it. I don’t mean to hurt Juna but only to silence her. She frightens Daddy, always has. Since she was a little girl, all she had to do was look at him just so, brush up against him, linger too near, and he was afraid. He was afraid of what more pain would come into his life. He was afraid of more failed crops and dry springs and a life lived alone because no other woman would have him after Mama died. He was afraid to lose his sight and afraid to lose his only son. And then Dale died, and now Daddy is afraid of Juna, and because she tells him to take the baby, he’ll do it.

I lift the board. Juna is screaming at Daddy to take it away, take it away so she never has to see it again. It, she begins to call the little girl. Over and over again, she calls this baby an it. I draw back the board, and I swing. It strikes the side of Juna’s face. Her black eyes are stretched wide. She falls to the side, slides off the bed. I lift the board again and strike her from above. One more time. One more time and she is gone.