Chapter Seventeen

BEATRICE—YESTERDAY AND TODAY

“Mama. Mama.”

Beatrice’s thin chest heaved one last time and her fingers stopped fussing with her hair. She couldn’t stop the tremulous sigh from escaping her parted lips. Brusquely swiping her caramel-colored cheek, she expelled a sigh of a different kind. “What is it, chile?”

The girl hesitated as if gauging her mama’s mood.

“What is it, Mary?” She clenched her teeth to stop herself from grabbing her knee baby by her frail shoulders.

“It’s Thomas.” Mary’s voice was even smaller than her tiny frame.

At that moment, Beatrice’s ears trained on her young son, screaming his fool head off in the front room. Her brows furrowed. “What’s wrong now?”

“H-h-he ’bout cut his finger off.” Mary’s chest absorbed her threadlike voice because that was where she’d tucked her chin.

“What?”

The three-year-old sank closer to the floor, but she looked up, revealing the panic in her hazel-flecked eyes. She held her finger aloft and pointed to its tip. “His finger. It’s bleedin’ all over.”

“Goodness gracious.” Beatrice edged Mary out of the way and stomped from her bedroom. She found Elisabeth huddled over a screeching Thomas. And Mary was right. Blood was everywhere—including the rug she had scraped together for months to buy from Fulton’s. Elisabeth was working to put a Band-Aid on the situation—even if she couldn’t put one on Thomas’s wound—by trying to shush her panicking brother and directing Little Ed and Ruthena in their unsuccessful attempts to clean the mess.

“Lord, help. Boy, what happened?” She pushed his nursemaid aside and applied enough pressure to Thomas’s index finger to make it turn blue. When Thomas yelled even louder, Beatrice slapped him, not hard enough to leave a mark, but enough to bring him to his senses.

Thomas’s cries ended abruptly as if someone had lifted the needle on a record player. He stared up at his mama, his honey-colored face streaked with blood, snot, and tears.

“I said, what happened?”

“My f-f-finger. I h-hurt m-my f-f-f-finger.”

“I can see that, boy. How did you hurt it?” She dragged Thomas from the chair into the kitchen. Elisabeth followed. The others fell into line.

“Aahh!” Thomas’s cries resumed as Beatrice ran cold water over his wound. The water ran deep Egyptian river red at first, then pink, and finally clear. Thomas continued screeching, but Mama focused on her mission, her lips moving soundlessly as she prayed. She sent her assistant for a clean rag and tore it into wide strips. Roughly she wrapped each strip around his finger and secured them with masking tape. By the time she was done, Thomas’s screams had tapered to whimpers, and his bandaged finger appeared three times its size.

“Is somebody gon’ tell me what happened?” Beatrice wiped up the blood and water around the sink. Clenching the threadbare towel, she turned to face the remaining members of her brood. Mary, wide-eyed and tearful. Little Ed, unblinking, appearing to await the next blow or an accusation. Elisabeth, who pulled Ruthena closer.

“Well?” Beatrice decided to wrest the truth from the victim or culprit, but Thomas only had eyes for his injured digit.

“What’s goin’ on here?”

All heads—including Beatrice’s—whipped toward the low voice at the door. She scowled at Henton’s lanky form.

“What’s wrong with that boy’s finger?” As usual, the words seemed to drag their way through molasses before slowly drizzling from his tongue. Henton nodded the question at Thomas, still pointing his finger toward heaven.

“He near cut it off.” Beatrice turned her back to the children and to Henton—and the scent of cheap alcohol that rolled off him in waves—as he stepped into the kitchen.

“How he do that?” Henton doffed his soft-gray hat and twirled it around his right index finger once, twice.

“You need to take off them dirty boots and leave ’em by the back do’.” Beatrice didn’t face Henton. She ignored his question even if she couldn’t ignore the acrid smell of his sweat. She listened to the door squeak open and to the clump-clump of his shoes on the stoop. The door clicked closed. “And put that dirty hat somewhere ’sides my kitchen.” Beatrice added ballast to the barrier she’d erected between them and secured it with the same words she told him every day.

Like always, Henton retreated. Without argument, he set his hat in the front room. When he reentered the kitchen, he squeezed Thomas’s shoulder, nodded to Mary, Elisabeth, Ruthena, and Little Ed, and slipped out without saying a word.

“Well, if y’all ain’t got nuthin’ to say, then get on outta here. I got better thangs to do than—” But she couldn’t squeeze out the order. Pressing the back of her hand to her mouth, she pushed Ruthena aside—who almost knocked down poor little Mary—and left the kitchen as fast as she could without actually running. Beatrice flicked away hot tears as she strode back and forth across the breadth of her room, her chest tight. She fought to suppress the sobs that threatened to erupt.

Through the window Beatrice saw Henton standing in his bare feet, watching Elisabeth, who’d returned to her chore of sweeping the front yard. “That fool-headed man. That fool-headed man.” And the dam broke. Like a madwoman, she tore at her clothes, at her hair. Beatrice pushed away from the window as Elisabeth dropped the rake and stood, mouth agape, in the yard. Beatrice clawed her throat, her chest, her thighs.

Over the loud cries that kept coming and coming and coming, Beatrice heard Elisabeth yell for Henton. Ruthena stumbled over Mary and Little Ed crouching on the floor in her mama’s bedroom doorway as she went to scoop up baby Sarah, who’d slept through all the to-do. When Mary reached for the knob to pull it closed, Little Ed swatted away her hand.

Then . . . Henton was at Beatrice’s door, his eyes looking as wide and wild as hers when they met. She could do nothing but sob and shake her head as she watched him shoo away the children. Little Ed grabbed Mary and pushed everyone toward the front room. The screen door closed with a clap.

Only Thomas, forgotten, huddled near the kitchen, shivering, still holding his bloody finger high in the air. His face was the last Beatrice saw before Henton slammed closed her bedroom door. He must have heard the lock click into place.

——————

The clicking noise worked Beatrice’s nerves.

“Now, Mama, you sure you want to do this?” Lis depressed the button on the pen, in and out, in and out.

“Gal, I ain’t got time to be changing my mind. ’Course I’m sure.” She snatched the implement from her daughter, reached into her pocket, and took out another. Beatrice removed the cap and handed it to Lis.

“Okay, well, you know there’s not much I would refuse you these days, but I’m the one who’s gotta live with Evelyn.”

“You mean after I’m dead and gone?”

Lis rolled around the pen in the silence. “So what do you want to say?”

Beatrice looked out toward a scraping noise across the road. She waved at Velma Johnson dragging her garbage cans. She’d decided to write this letter days ago.

“Mama?”

“You just like that chile of yours. In a rush to nowhere. How is she anyway?”

“Rounding out by the minute.” Her lips curved into a smile. “Beautiful. We could just send a photograph. Let the picture tell the story.”

Beatrice played with the end of her braid and chuckled. “Ain’t that the truth? But I got more to say than that.” She watched Velma return to her house. “Get that paper. I’m ready.”

“Mama, I’m sitting here with the paper and pen. You just start talking.”

“All right. Dear Kevin . . .”