Chapter Sixteen

The wedding took place on Saturday at the courthouse. As the months rolled on, Murphy seemed right keen on being a daddy. So now I had a happy young married couple next door. I made up a batch of Mama’s cherry brandy and transferred it into a fancy empty liquor bottle Miz Jenkins let me have and gave it to them as a housewarming present. Margaret Mary invited me in and showed me around. Murphy’s cabin was fit for royalty. He’d built it himself. From the size of it, surely he must have planned on marrying and having a family someday, even if he did tell me when I met him he wasn’t the marrying kind. I pushed away the daydreams I’d been having about him and concentrated on the choice I made in Buck. I figured we had as good a chance as any at having a good life. The days quickly turned into months. It wouldn’t be long before Grace Annie was a year old. I could hardly believe it. I had to admit, things were going real well for me and Buck for once.

Then Grace Annie took a bad fall off the dressing table a few weeks after Murphy’s wedding when I was changing her diaper. The changing table had a plastic belt to hold her in place, and I looped it round her waist and went in the kitchen to fetch a clean didie. I’d just pulled them from the clothesline and hadn’t had a chance to fold them yet. They were still in the basket by the back door. I wasn’t gone for maybe half a minute when I heard a loud thump. I raced back to Grace Annie, my heart climbing right out of my chest. She was on the floor. She’d hit her forehead on the right side. A nasty goose-egg was already forming and she was screaming bloody beets. I grabbed her without any diaper on and raced over to Murphy’s. He drove us to town. Margaret Mary came, too. The four of us were scrunched together on the front seat of the truck, with Grace laid across me and Margaret Mary’s lap.

The doctor at the emergency room said her eyes were clear and there wasn’t any blood coming out of her ears. She didn’t seem tired or sleepy and wasn’t crying any longer, so he felt she’d be fine, but I’d have to leave her overnight for observation just to be sure. They took X-rays of her entire body and said for me to come back in the morning.

“Don’t worry, Adie,” Margaret Mary said. “Kids are tough little creatures.”

“I can’t believe I left her on that dressing table,” I said. “I thought she was safe. I—”

“Shhh,” Margaret Mary said. “Accidents happen, sugar—”

We went back to the hospital early the next morning. This man in a brown suit asked me to step into his office. He had a sign on his desk said Emmitt Carlsbad, Hospital Administrator. I thought maybe he was worried on how I planned on paying the bill, since we already owed them money for when I birthed her and for the time my leg went through the roof of the chicken house.

“I’m back to my chicken farming,” I said. “I’m pretty much all better.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I’m chicken farming again, and the money I get the end of the month, well, I can pay—”

“Miz Jenkins—”

“It’s Mrs. Jenkins,” I said. “I’m married, all proper and everything.”

“Mrs. Jenkins, I’m not here to discuss payment. County is taking care of the charges on this—”

“County?” I said. “Why are they doing that? We’re not beggars,” I said. “At the end of the month I can pay—”

“Mrs. Jenkins, County is taking your baby into protective custody pending a full investigation concerning her injuries.” He gave me a piece of long white paper, a Writ of something or other. It had words on it like parts of it came from the Bible. It said Pray the court this and Mercy of the court that.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “It was an accident. She fell—”

“If that’s the case, then you have nothing to worry about. You’ll be notified by the court when a preliminary hearing date is scheduled,” he said. “I’m afraid that’s all the information I have. Normally, Miss Mackey would be here to address all of this. You came by too early. She’s due at nine o’clock.”

“My baby. Can I see her?”

“She was transferred over to county juvenile care last evening. Surely you were informed—”

“But the doctor said they were keeping her overnight for observation—”

“Perhaps it was this morning when they took her. Really, Mrs. Jenkins, I am a very busy man. You’ll have to talk with County for the specifics. Now if you’ll excuse me,” he said and opened the door and motioned me out.

My knees shook so bad I could hardly walk down the steps and out the door to Murphy and Margaret Mary. Murphy was leaning against the truck. Margaret Mary was sitting sideways on the front seat, with the door open.

“They took Grace Annie!” I said.

“Who took her?” Margaret Mary jumped down and rushed up to me. She placed her arm around my shoulder.

“County took her. They think it wasn’t an accident!”

“We’ll see about that,” Murphy said. “Come on, get in the truck, ladies. We’re going over there right now; straighten this mess out.”

But it wasn’t that easy. Miss Mackey said we had to wait for the hearing.

“Can I see her in the meantime?” I said. “She’s never been away from me.”

“I’m afraid that’s not in the child’s best interest,” Miss Mackey said. “She’s been placed in a private home environment, and we want to give her time to adjust without getting confused.”

“But—”

“You’ll have to wait for the hearing.”

“I need to call my husband!” I said, wondering if she’d let me use her phone.

“You’ll be notified by mail.”

“But…can I least call my—”

“Good day, Miz Jenkins,” she said.

I had to hold the front of my chest walking back to the truck. It felt like it’d been caught in the hinges of the door Miz Mackey had slammed shut in my face.

I got notice of the hearing. It wasn’t for four more weeks. I fed the chickens and tended to my egg customers. Each morning I woke up and pounded my head. Wake up! Wake up! You’re having a nightmare. But it’s hard telling a nightmare to wake up when you’re already awake to begin with.

Margaret Mary came by to keep me company. Her belly was growing fast. Murphy set about making baby furniture; all hand-carved pieces; the most beautiful shapes of wood I’d ever seen. Me and Margaret Mary spent some of the afternoons after I finished my chicken chores snapping pole beans and baking pies for the church bazaar. There was such a large crop of beans we decided to pickle them and sell them at the fair, along with the pies. Kept us busy. Even so, I got lonely for Willa Mae.

At night I took Tempe’s journal out of the trunk and moved my hands over the pages, thinking that might bring her closer. Before long, the words drifted off the page and into my head, carrying me back to a time of busted dreams and crumbled lives, to a place that had shackled freedom. Tempe’s story pained me, but it let me see through her eyes what I couldn’t bear to see through mine. That life could be meaner than we counted on. That we best be brave and persevere if we expected to have a fighting chance. Tempe took up a permanent spot in my heart. She climbed into the air I breathed and whispered to me in the wind at night. On days I was the saddest, I looked for signs of her everywhere. Once I thought I spotted her outline in the dew on the grass. Another time I was sure her tears rained down when the storm clouds burst. I rocked the journal in my arms like a baby on the nights Buck was out. When I grew tired of that, I curled up under the covers, my eyes perched at the edge of the pages, the words before me hills and valleys I could get lost in.

• • •

They digs a hole and throwed his body down in that hole and kivers it up with dirt and that be all there was to it. Weren’t no talking gwine on. I kin still hear that dirt when it hit the body. “Womp…womp…” it go and soon they’s nothing left of Grady I kin see, not even the bloody shirt was all stuck to his back. Massah Major say, “Any a’ you niggers ever lays a hand on me I’ll put you in a hole just like this one, only I’ll leaves you alive ’fore I do.” Massah Major say be sure I watch what happen good and then he say he takes kere of me later.

“Git,” he say. And I gits, but mostly I be in some kind of powerful peculiar state. Nothing be’s seeming like it’s real to me. Grady dead and put in that black hole and the worser part be in the morning when I wakes up. The wagon with the speculator men show up and Massah Major sells my chilluns and puts them on that wagon and that’s when I be running alongside the oxen what pull that wagon to see’s my chillun one las’ time.

When I was a younger girl I ask my old Massah’s chillun to teach me to read some and write my name and they say, “It’s against the law we do that.” And dat older boy be Luke say, “No law says we can’t read to you.” And I sits next to Luke and has him reads to me and I say, “That what them words say there?” And Luke, who be reading say, “Yes it does. I am the best reader in the school. I am the smartest in the school, too.”

“Where it say ‘once upon one time’?” I say, and he point to the words and I say this one say ‘once’ and this one say ‘time’? and he say yep it do and it take a long time but I learn to read pretty good that way and if he so smart why he never cotch on be a good question. And dat’s a truth.

When my chilluns is born I puts my ’nitials on the bottom sides of their butts with a hot stick. The babies cries when I does it, and it breaks my heart mostly, but what kin I do? If they’s ever sold I kin maybe find them and knows they be’s mine. When they’s going off in the wagon I am happy I do’s it, even though the babies cries hard when I burns them like that when they’s small. Yes’m I burns a big letter T on der butts to shows they be’s mine, Tempe’s, but they squirms lots and the scar it makes looks like it be a cross, it do.

I don’t like to think on what happened when Grady come back in the cabin with the two-by-four that night he died, but it sits in my head and won’t go away. Grady be’s real quiet when he come back in the cabin dat night and I not eben know he be’s there. It real dark in dat cabin. Massah Major have me underneath him in the bed be hooked to the wall doing what he do and Grady stumbles over the stool sits by the door. Massah Major jumps off the bed buck naked and sees Grady in the doorway and the moon is shining in the cabin, and he can see the board in his hand and Massah Major takes the poker from the fireplace and he runs it clean through Grady ’fore Grady knows it even there. I hear Grady groan like he be already dead when that poker stick his belly and he drop down to the floor.

“Massah Major!” I’s screaming. “Don’t kills him! Oh please, Massah!” But Massah Major picks up that board Grady drop when his belly git stuck with the fire poker and Massah beats Grady’s head with that board ’til they’s a big hole in it. The chilluns from the back room is up and crying and the grown folks is out of their beds and standing round looking at what Massah done. I am on my knees begging Massah Major not to kills Grady.

“Oh Massah, mercy, Massah,” I say, but Massah is pounding at what be left of Grady. He mostly dead already, I think. And then I looks down and I know’s he dead, ’cause I see’s in that moonlight that Grady’s ’tire head, dat pretty head what habs the face I love—da whole thing—be gone.