“LITTLE BUNCH HAD ONE OF HER FITS,” AMANDA TOLD CHRISTIE LATER in the morning, when she was washing and changing the babies. Nannie was getting big enough to wriggle away from the eager, possessive child, Amanda said, and last night Nannie was eating a cold sweet-potato-in-the-jacket while Little Bunch tried to cuddle her. Nannie, clutching the sweet potato, slid out of Little Bunch’s lap, and when Little Bunch was accused of dropping her, she had one of her tantrums, which this time developed into a full-blown fit.
“It wasn’t near as bad as those fits Dicey Jane Burnett’s aunt has, though,” Amanda explained.
Alma, who was cleaning out the ash box of the stove, said, “Little Bunch had that fit on purpose. She just wants attention.”
Amanda, ignoring Alma, continued. “Little Bunch kept on a-jerking, and she had her teeth clenched, and she shook like somebody being hit by lightning. I made sure she didn’t swaller her tongue.”
“Was Nannie scared?” Christie asked.
“No. Nannie never even paid no attention to her, just went right on sucking out that sweet tater. But Little Bunch sure squalled after she stopped her fit.”
“That child gets stuff in her head and gets it all twisted around,” Alma said. “That’s all it is.”
“Dicey Jane’s aunt got a lick on her head when she fell out of a wagon once, and it left her with fits,” Amanda said. “I knew another man to have fits too, but his went away after he married.”
“Bunch is just a-growing,” said Alma, stirring the hot ashes in the scuttle to release the fire.
“She used to have growing pains too,” said Amanda. “I’d have to rub her legs, and she’d cry and cry. And I’d wrap ’em in hot, wet rags. She was the pitifulest thing.”
“She’s always been touchous,” said Alma. “The least little thing, like getting her finger burned on the stove or her dress tail caught in the door, and she always did squall.”
“Little Bunch was worried about this littlun,” Amanda said, as she rocked Minnie in her arms. “Bunch is so sweet-natured. She just wants to love on somebody all the time.”
Christie worried about her children living up at Wad’s house. Right now she could see the boys through the window. Clint was slicing the air with a sharp tobacco stick. He seemed to be pretending it was a tobacco knife and threatening Jewell with it. Clint had been begging to help cut tobacco this year.
“Your boys aim to kill one another,” Alma muttered when she noticed them playing. “If my brats don’t kill ’em first.”
“They’ve been playing ‘Kill the Governor,’” said Amanda.
“If they use my jar rubbers for a slingshot one more time, I’m going to wring their necks,” Alma said.
She pulled out the soot tray of the stove and aimed it toward the back door. A fog of soot lifted from the tray.
Two days passed. Minnie was declining. Her tiny nostrils were crusted, her breathing heavy. She was fevered. Dr. Foote came out twice a day. The women were always there, rushing in at the first shade of dawn. Mrs. Willy hired Thurman to look after her chickens so that she could help Christie without interruption. Jimmie Lou helped Mama with the cooking.
While trying to nurse the babies, Christie would close her eyes and listen to the sounds of the house. They were all so familiar—the squeaking of the damper closing, the grinding of a pot sliding from one eye of the stove to another; the slop-slop noise of diapers swishing in a tub; the slap-slap sound of churning, growing softer and slower as the butter began to gather; dishes rattling; baby bottles being scalded in soda water; the rumble of a rolling pin on dough; the angry spitting of flames in the fireplace.
In the midst of all the well-wishers and curiosity seekers and the busy hovering of the women, Christie scarcely noticed James. He appeared at mealtime—eating Mama’s cooking silently, with his elbows anchored on the table, shoveling his food in so he could get back to his work. He was expecting a cow to deliver. Wad had hired two hands to help plant, since the Wheeler men had to take turn-about guarding and taking care of the place. James slept heavily, but often in the night Christie woke up startled, fearful that Minnie had slipped away. In her dreams, the babies turned into distorted forms, like something she had hatched out by mistake—as if a cocoon had turned loose a grasshopper instead of a butterfly, or a goose egg had cracked open to release a groundhog. But when she was awake and saw the babies, they were themselves again—more and more specific in their identities. James Lake had taken to moving his arms more deliberately, a sign of strength and restlessness. A birthmark was taking shape on the tummy of John Wilburn, who seemed to clench his fists much of the time. Mollie kept moving her lips in a sucking motion long after she stopped nursing. Emily Sue had little red splotches on her skin. But Minnie Sophia’s skin was as pale as a cuckoo egg.
By Monday, Minnie had stopped taking milk. Then Mittens got a few drops down her Monday night, but when Christie tried again later, she was unsuccessful. Alma squeezed juice from an onion baked in ashes and rubbed it on Minnie’s chest. Then she wrapped her in a flannel soaked with tallow. The next morning, Mittens couldn’t get her to nurse. The baby was still, and she didn’t cry. Dr. Foote listened to her chest and said it didn’t sound good. He tried to get some medicine down her, but she couldn’t swallow it. He removed the tallow rag and rubbed her with something that smelled like lye. That afternoon, when the throng from the train flowed in like a flash-flooding creek, Mama held Minnie back, showing her from the far side of the bed, where she sat rocking her in her arms.
“But her wants to be with her brothers and sisters,” a woman from the train purred, pitching her baby talk across the bed in an attempt to rouse Minnie.
“Bless its heart,” Mama said, petting the baby. “Her had too much company.”
Christie could smell a pot of Great Northerns simmering in the kitchen. The four babies beside her on the bed were active, and she thought they might be hungry. The train passengers demanded to pick them up and hold them, believing they could lull them to sleep, but when an insistent woman tried to pick up Mollie, all four of the babies began crying. Their loud, piercing cries astonished the room. People laughed.
As soon as the crowd had gone, Christie took Minnie, and the women began feeding the others the bottles of sweet-milk. Jimmie Lou and Thurman were on patrol outside, told to keep new arrivals out.
“Maybe Mittens can get Minnie to eat when she comes back,” said Christie a while later. Her right nipple was burning from exposure to the air, as she tried to nurse Minnie, but Minnie wouldn’t take hold. Emily Sue had refused the bottle, but she nursed from Christie’s left breast and was sleeping now, her face contented.
Mama took Minnie again. She peeled back the oversized bonnet and touched the infant’s damp hair. She replaced the bonnet and set her down.
“She’s awful hot,” Mama said.
“I think we better call James in,” Alma said. “I don’t think she’s going to last till he comes in to milk.”
Christie didn’t want anyone to call James. If she could put off telling James, maybe it wouldn’t happen. She couldn’t bear to see the expression on his face. In the past two days, the veil of worry on his face never seemed to alter. He hardly looked at the babies, and she guessed that he, too, was afraid to love them.
“I sent Thurman after the doctor,” Alma said, who had just come in. Christie hadn’t realized Alma had been out.
“Hand Minnie here,” Christie told her mother. Mama brought the baby to Christie, who was sitting on the bed, on top of the cover, with a quilt across her lap. She held Minnie close, breathing on her face. She unwrapped her and placed the baby directly on her stomach, under her shift. The little thing squirmed and fluttered.
“Mittens will be here before James and Wad get in. Let’s see what she can do.”
Mama warmed a sugar tit and Christie held it to the baby’s mouth, forcing a drop inside. The drop lingered inside the open lips and then oozed out.
“Oughtn’t we to send for Mrs. Willy?” Mama said. Mrs. Willy had gone home when her toothache flared up again.
“No. I’m sick of that old woman being around. She’s liable to bring in chicken mites, or God knows what.”
“Now, Christie, Imogene Willy is a good soul, and she’s been a mighty big help.” Mama glanced out the window. “Dr. Foote oughter be here soon,” she said.
“He won’t do a bit of good,” said Christie. “He’s as qualified to be a doctor as a steer is to preach.”
“He hasn’t been charging, though, Christie,” argued Mama.
“If he was really thinking about Minnie, he’d be out here already, and he’d come up with some better ideas than thumping on her chest and pretending he’s found something with those silly earpieces.”
Everyone seemed too shocked by Christie’s tone to speak. Christie eased Minnie away from her and got out of bed. She went to the kitchen and got herself a glass of milk and some cornbread.
“I have to stir,” she said. She gulped the milk and cornbread, which was cold and crumbly, and got back in bed with Minnie. The baby lay quietly. Her face was pinched, her feet cold. Christie huddled the baby against her, beneath her loose shift, leaving some room for air. Alma wrapped up a hot brick and pushed it under the quilt. Some horses neighed outside, and Christie could see Joseph, in a bright red flannel shirt like a flag, waving the strangers away. Joseph’s brother, Henry, was out there too. Jimmie Lou was on the porch with the broom upended. Christie wished Amanda was with her now, but Amanda was working in the garden with the children.
The sun was low, and the men would be coming in before long. Nobody had started supper, except for the pot of beans. Alma had been in and out. Thurman had gone for Dr. Foote. No one sent for Mrs. Willy. A few visitors got past Joseph and Jimmie Lou, but Alma held them back, letting them get a look at the babies but only from a distance. Their clamor ricocheted against the walls.
At six o’clock, Minnie’s little body began to stretch out full length, rigid. Her breathing rattled, loud as the clock.
“She’s passing,” said Christie quietly. Somewhere far off she heard a cow bawling. One of the boys would be rounding up the cows.
“I’ll get James,” Alma said, striding out to the front porch in just her dress sleeves. Mama knelt by the bed and rambled her way through a prayer. Christie dreaded seeing James. She heard Alma calling—that loud, echoing holler she used when calling the men from the fields. James would hear the note of urgency in Alma’s holler. Christie heard Mittens and Sam pull up then. She recognized their mule from the tickle in his snort. Mittens had said the mule had a burr up his nose.
Christie wasn’t sure when Minnie drew her last breath, for she had been distracted by Alma’s hollering, the slant of dying sun through the window lights, and Mittens’ arrival—her dark form blotting out the sun as she headed for the babies. Minnie was limp then. Christie looked from the baby to her mother to Mittens, to the outline of Alma’s bonnet through the window. She could see Mittens’ husband, Sam, waiting outside with the wagon and mule under the budding oak tree, and she could sense the presence of the four live babies nearby in the baby bed. She could feel Minnie’s weight in her lap. Suddenly the milk and cornbread Christie had eaten surged forth, washing over the baby.
“Lands sakes alive!” said Mittens, rushing forward. “You done acting like a baby, Miz Wheeler. Set still, I’ll clean up that vomick. Don’t you worry about a thing. I’s right here.” She stopped still and shrieked. “Oh, that poor baby, that poor dead baby! That baby done dead!”
That evening, James bowed his head down at the table for a long time before eating. Christie could not force a prayer into shape in her mind. She couldn’t eat. Supper was late. Mama had managed to cook turnip greens and dried apples and cornbread to go with the Great Northerns. Wad sent down a quarter of a shoulder and some hocks from his own smokehouse. Mama urged Christie to eat, for the other babies’ sake, she said, and Christie tried more cornbread, but it was dry in her throat. She had stopped crying. She and Mama had cried together for a long time, and Amanda had broken down in tears, but nobody cried again that night.
Mittens had washed Minnie Sophia and tied her feet together with a cotton string. She wrapped her up in clean outing, and James put her out in the springhouse. As he left with the little bundle, Christie said one word: “Coons.” James reinforced the springhouse door and stopped up a hole in the back, and for safety he put the baby’s body inside the large pot Christie used for canning. He set a rock on the lid.
“Are you sure she’s gone?” Mama whispered when he came back in from the springhouse. “I knew a man that was laid out for a corpse three times when he was a baby, but he lived to be an old man.”
“She’s blue,” said James.
Jimmie Lou kept visitors out the best she could, and after dark nobody came by. The family let them alone. Amanda kept the children away. James and Christie and Mama stayed alone in the little house with the four babies, and Christie felt almost peaceful. It was so quiet. She could hear the flames in the fireplace, and a persistent pair of hoot owls courting each other half the night. She dreamed about Susan returning. It was a happy trade—a sickly, puny baby for a golden-haired sister with a sunny disposition. She dreamed of dogs tearing off Susan’s pinafore. When Christie woke up, she was sweating and cold chills of fear rolled through her like a train.