Chapter Twelve

The sound of the trains rattled in his bones, making Clyde squeeze his arms into his sides and shove his hands deeper into his pockets to hold himself together. The darkness thrummed through him, in complete control.

He hunched his shoulders up toward his ears as metal squealed against metal, grating on his eardrums. His features collapsed into an angry scowl as he ground his teeth until his jaws ached, waiting for the train to pass beyond him. He felt the people staring down at him from behind the glass of the ‘L’ train windows while he stood frozen on the street below, bodies ebbing and flowing around him.

A voice boomed to his right, the owner shoulder-checking him as he hurried past. “Big country-ass Negro ain’t got sense enough to move out the way.”

Clyde’s head pivoted around on his neck to follow the man’s retreating back, watching the dip-glide, step-stride rhythm of his walk. It was the walk he could never imitate. The walk that distinguished Clyde as different from city men, the walk exaggerating the gait of his short legs when he tried.

The two men with the stranger guffawed loudly, slapping hands as they strolled away. Clyde waited, smoldering, as the sound of their chatter faded. He imagined his legs long and straight, his shoulder dipping, slide step, slide step, as he walked up beside them, emulating them perfectly.

Slide, step, slide, step. He’d first grab the one with the fast mouth, spinning him around and caving in his face with his fist. Then he’d stomp the other two, feeling their ribs cave in under the thick heels of his boots. See who’d be laughing then.

The pounding inside his head resounded with his heart’s beat, growing heavier as his blood heated. The dark familiarity embraced him as his fingers flexed, then formed into fists inside his pockets. It eddied around his vision, threatening to blind him until he forced himself to pull it back. He inhaled and exhaled deeply, his chest expanding and contracting with the effort.

Finally, he came to himself, still standing in the street, gazing up at the now-empty tracks. Rolling the tension from his shoulders, he ambled forward, his knees knocking together as he walked.

The same old woman he passed every day, the proprietor of the newsstand, looked up at him from the crate where she sat huddled in a shawl despite the heat of the August evening. Her near-toothless mouth worked over her gums like she would ask him a question, then stopped as she caught his eye.

The stink of death that had dogged his steps since burying Eva swirled up from the street beneath him, the stench overwhelming. Reaching up with one massive hand, Clyde rubbed his nose viciously. The smell, like sewer rot, closed in around him, permeating his skin, plugging his pores, and choking him on its filth. No amount of scrubbing his skin raw with hot water and lye soap had freed him of it.

“What you looking at?” he asked, letting his eyes lock on the old woman, holding hers until she lowered her head to stare at the concrete beneath her feet and tightened her shawl. Sweat gathered on his scalp, then trickled down his forehead, leaving a wet, oily sheen on his face. He cringed, and his nostrils flared. The smell was coming from her too, old as she was.

“Whore,” he cried out and backed away from her, his finger jabbing the air, pointing accusingly. The woman’s eyes rounded, her shawl dropping from her shoulders as she gasped in horror.

His finger wavered, then dropped to his side as he turned to shamble away from her as quickly as his tired legs would allow. His hands throbbed with the desire to close around her scrawny neck and dig through the mass of wrinkled flesh until he felt bones crunching. He’d watch the light fade from her eyes and know, like the darkness knew, that she deserved the death it held for her. He was her only chance at salvation. He needed to deliver her. The darkness demanded it.

He tried to run, moving as fast as he could, desperate to escape as his mind screamed and fought the darkness with rationales. Never this close to home; people will see, know it was you. Hell, even a dog know not to shit where he eat, the darkness chided him.

Clyde slowed, reaching down to rub his knees to relieve the ache in his joints. As he rubbed, his mind wandered to Fannie, a lump rising in his throat and making it difficult to swallow around the sorrow trapped inside. He conjured the feel of her long, slender fingers massaging his scalp and sliding down his cheek. Sniffing the air, he remembered the scent of her milk, momentarily erasing the stink surrounding him. Mama.

He almost wept out loud, then paused and looked around, trying to recall if he had spoken the word out loud. But no one responded to him beyond a furtive glance before averting their eyes. People continued to move around him, their presence growing sparser as he neared his apartment building.

His feet continued their journey while his mind drifted, his knees magnetized to one another, one leg twisting to bring his foot around and pull him forward before the other leg rotated to complete the same action with his other foot, his body swaying from side to side with each step. Fatigue exaggerated his walk, and each arduous step on the unyielding concrete street reminded him that he did not belong here.

But Fannie was coming. His mother was coming. He would be special again. Things would be like they were before. When she got there, she would fix Mae and make her love him like she used to.

Looking up, he blinked several times against the evening sun. His head rocked back, surprised to find both that it was early evening and that he had arrived at home, staring up from the bottom of the stairs of his building.

He searched the brick walls for their window, the last one in the corner. Finding it, he watched Mae’s silhouette behind the drawn shade as she moved around the room. He devoured her curvy image . . . until another flicker of motion caught his attention.

Straining his eyes, he saw a barely discernable shadow beside her. He tried and failed to blink it away. The shadows took on the shape of a man who followed Mae across the room. Clyde grunted and rubbed both fists into his eyes hard enough to cause spots to form, then looked again. It was still there. A man. In his house. With his Mae.

He forced his legs to take the stairs two at a time, the rotation against locked cartilage slow and painful as his joints resisted the motion. Reaching the first-floor landing, panting, he wrenched the screen door open, hearing it slam against the wall and bounce back as he pushed through it. He barreled down the hall, his head lowered, a growl built in his chest. The reeking smell amplified, growing stronger as he neared the apartment door.

His mind flared in anguish, his thoughts tumbling one over another. She had him in there, his mind shrieked—that Jimmie asshole. The scene unrolled on the picture screen of his mind: Mae against the wall, her legs spread wide and wrapped around his back, writhing against him as she moaned out his name.

Clyde jammed the key into the lock, the metal twisting until it bent, leaving it hanging as he stood panting wildly in the doorway. His eyes roamed past Mae standing near the hot plate.

Mae stopped, her hand hesitating in the air and holding the spoon over the pot she was stirring as Clyde burst into the room. She swallowed, turned, and unconsciously stepped backward away from him, her body tightening and shrinking in anticipation of the coming blow.

“Where he at?” he bellowed, wrenching the key from the lock before closing the distance between them in four strides. The spoon clattered to the floor as he pushed her out of his path, sauce splashing across her legs. Mae stumbled, her arms waving wildly for balance.

“Who?” she stammered, bewildered. Clyde pushed her again, silencing her.

“I seen him,” he yelled, spittle flying from his mouth into her face. The sound of his open-handed slap against her cheek cracked the air. Mae stumbled backward, landing against the wall, her wrist twisted awkwardly beneath her as she hit it.

“Clyde, what wrong with you?” she squeaked, feeling his hands wrapped around her upper arms, iron bands that yanked her forward, lifted her from the floor, and shook her.

“Don’t play me for stupid! I seen him. Where he at?”

“WHO?” she screamed, her head rocking back and forth and her teeth snapping together as he shook her.

“Ain’t nobody here,” she cried, fat tears leaking from her eyes to drop off her chin.

Clyde stopped, his breath wheezing, his eyes searching the cramped space and coming to rest on the closet door. Dropping Mae to land in a heap on the floor, he rushed forward. He yanked the door open and pushed his body inside amidst the clothes, hangars, and boxes that occupied the space. Mae watched, her eyes wide and horrified, her body shaking as she rubbed her wrist. Her body curled forward protectively, arms wrapped around her knees.

She looked longingly at the closed door to their apartment, her heart racing and brain urging her to move and do it quickly. Her mind screamed for survival, telling her to stand up and run while he was turned away, burrowing into the closet. Maybe, she thought frantically, she could make it into the hallway, to the back door, and down the stairs before he caught her. She could outrun him.

A box flew from the closet, narrowly missing her, yanking her from her paralysis. She began to crawl forward, scrambling to her feet as Clyde appeared. His head thrust forward as he gripped the edges of the closet’s frame.

Clyde’s eyes protruded in his head, the sclera a muddy yellow rimmed by red, the dark centers a writhing mass. His nose spread across his face, his nostrils flared, and his lips pulled back in a snarl over teeth grown sharp and pointed.

Mae blinked, trying to flush the image from her sight. Covering her face with both hands, she screamed, then ran.

Clyde’s hand clamped down on Mae’s shoulder, halting her as she reached for the door, her fingers stretching and straining for the knob.

“Clyde, please, please.” She sobbed raggedly as he pulled her toward him, bringing her back against his chest. “What I done did wrong, Clyde? I . . . I loves you.” She wept, tears squeezing through her tightly closed lids.

For a moment, time stopped around them. Clyde’s breathing slowed, the thundering of his heart eased, and his grip lightened. He turned Mae so that she faced him, lifting her hand to place it against his cheek and holding it there.

Reluctantly, Mae opened her eyes, startled to find her hand resting against the smooth dark chocolate skin of Clyde’s face, his eyes clear and his mouth trembling. She began to stroke, her fingers finding the familiar rhythm across his cheeks and caressing the curls on his head as he leaned forward, head lowered.

“It be all right, Clyde. It be all right.” Mae’s words were soft, caressing him, and her hands stroked as she talked, her thoughts colliding with stark denial as he pulled them both down to the floor. He rested his head on her lap, relaxing under her tender ministrations, both lulled into memories of better times.

“Mae,” he whispered. The darkness receded in concentric circles, contracting and growing smaller. The faint scent of mother’s milk drifted up from her breasts, exciting him just as it had the night before. It had driven him into a frenzy, causing him to suck and pull hard at her dry nipples. He sniffed once, twice, and again, thinking of Fannie.

“Mamma coming. She be here soon.” He moaned, the words pulled into the air as Mae cradled his head.

Mae’s body stiffened, her fingers caught in the curls of his hair, her mouth hanging open before it snapped shut, and she swallowed the hope that had blossomed while they sat. She looked down into his face, a plea forming on her lips.

An avalanche of stink crashed over Clyde, and he bolted upright, using his shoulder to shove her backward and away from him, the moment between them evaporating into nothingness.

An abrupt banging on the door shredded the sudden stillness, causing both of their heads to swivel toward it.

“Miss Mae?” A muffled voice strained with emotion seeped through the wood, followed by intermittent knocking, growing louder in the spaces of their silence.

Mae stared at Clyde. The banging became stronger and more persistent, demanding an audience. Breaking eye contact, he nodded slightly, raising his head and caterpillar crawling on his back away from her.

Mae stood and turned, rising from the floor, uncertainty dancing in her eyes as she looked back at him. He rose fluidly, a move discordant with his size and malformed legs. A chill shook her as she eased the door open.

The woman standing in the hallway was disheveled, her clothing wrinkled, damp, and covered with stains. A baby rested over her shoulder. Mae’s nose wrinkled against the smell of urine and vomit, searching her memory to recall a name to match the familiar face, and failing. She opened the door wider.

“I sorry to be bothering you, Miss Mae,” the woman said, leaning to look around Mae at Clyde as he moved toward the closet to renew his search. “And how you, Mr. Clyde?” she asked, then continued, not waiting for a response.

“I don’t know what else to do, Miss Mae.” She jostled the boy on her shoulder, making her voice shake with the motion and her own fear. “My boy, Jeremiah, here, he real sick, and we cain’t affords no doctor. I heard tell you does some healing, least that’s what Miss Ruby say when I asked her,” she continued, her hands sliding up and down the child’s back.

She let the boy’s listless body slide down into her arms, shifting it to hold his head in the crook of her arm as it lolled from side to side. Her head turned to look first at Mae and then strayed to Clyde, watching the slope of his back as he moved toward the closet. Her movements became more agitated as she shifted from foot to foot.

“My name Sarah Anne. You remembers me?” Her eyebrows raised, and she released one hand from Jeremiah’s back, extending it to Mae, then dropping it helplessly when Mae left it there. “I seen you when you was hanging sheets one day with Miss Ruby,” she said, tears glimmering in her soft brown eyes. “I know I asking a lot, but I don’t wants to lose my boy. He done stopped taking my bosom, and he burning up. Look.” She squeezed his cheeks and turned his face toward Mae, displaying the tinge of blue around his mouth and nose. Her mouth trembled. “It be like he cain’t hardly breathe,” she pleaded.

Mae leaned forward, her hand pressed to the child’s chest, and felt the heat radiating from him, noting how small and fragile he looked lying limp in his mother’s arms.

“Who that?” Clyde yelled from deep within the closet where he had returned.

“It just Sara Anne from down the hall,” she called over her shoulder, jerking her hand away. “Look like she got a croupy baby. She want me to look at him.”

Clyde stepped back into the room, looking from Mae to the woman in the doorway, his eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“Who else with you? His daddy send you?” Clyde demanded, lumbering forward.

Sarah Anne shook her head and took a step back. “I ain’t gots no husband. His daddy run off,” she answered, her face coloring in embarrassment. “Ain’t nobody but me and Jeremiah,” she finished, her eyebrows bunching together, and gave Mae a puzzled look.

Clyde made his way to the winged chair, falling heavily into the cushions, his nostrils wide and his head swiveling to watch the women framed in the doorway. They both reeked. He could smell it, drifting down from between their clenched thighs where they tried to hold it in, hide it from him.

He stared at the boy, watching the slight rise of his chest as he took short, shallow breaths. The child’s arms dangled over his mother’s, the little fingers spasming and jerking.

Mae hovered over him, a barrier between Clyde, the mother, and the child. She ran her hand down the smooth wood of the door frame, sensing the danger still emanating from Clyde. It lurked just below the calm exterior he tried to present as he sat glowering at them from the chair. Dread jangled her nerves, the need to get away from him escalating, becoming an undercurrent pulsing with her heartbeat.

Then she looked at the boy again, the face of Verna’s first baby, still and blue, superimposing itself over his. Sometimes, babies just stop breathing.

Her heart stuttered in her chest, adrenaline rushing through her system. Jeremiah gasped helplessly for breath, and Mae straightened her stance, rolling her shoulders to ease the tension, and prepared herself to defy Clyde.

“It won’t takes me long, and I come right back.” She wheedled, embarrassed at the weak sound of her voice. Her hands came together in front of her, twisting in concern and worry for the baby, willing him to continue breathing.

Moving to completely block Clyde’s view, she patted Sarah Anne gently on her arm, whispering conspiratorially, “You go on and takes him back down to your place, and I come right down.” She swallowed hard, imbuing truth into her words. “Let me gets my husband’s dinner first.”

Mae moved forward, forcing Sarah Anne to retreat until she was out of the doorway and back in the hall. “Don’t you worry,” she cautioned. Giving Jeremiah a final pat, she stepped away, then closed the door with her last words.

Clyde’s gaze slid over Mae as she turned away from the door, freezing her in place, her hand still on the doorknob. He searched her face, seeing the twisted conniving of her thoughts painted there.

Her head drooped on her neck, and she stared down at the floor. “I done seen babies go real fast too.” And she saw the dead baby lying next to her stepmother. “He real sick. I done seen my little brother and sister with the croup. But I thinks if I give him some steam, and some of my herbs, that might open him up some.” Her hand released the doorknob, and she looked up at Clyde, running her hands over her arms, then clasping them across her breasts, waiting.

Time ticked by slowly, and Mae felt Jeremiah slipping from the world. She slid her back along the wall incrementally until she had inched her way to her blue trunk and the healing herbs that would help Jeremiah.

Mae knelt quickly, her back bent over the trunk. Pulling out a quilted bag, it quivered on the end of its pull string as her hand shook. Leaning farther in, she continued digging through the trunk’s contents until she retrieved a jar of raw honey. Closing her mind to her fear, she concentrated on her search and sighed in relief when she found a vial into which she could pour a small portion of ginger.

She did not see Clyde rising from his chair, crossing the room to loom over her. His hand shot out in a flash, grabbing her by her hair, wrapping it around his hand, and pulling as she gasped and groaned. One of her hands flailed at the base of her scalp, where he held her tightly.

“I ain’t said you could go nowhere,” he screamed into her upturned face as he yanked her head backward. Mae clung to the trunk with her other hand, desperate to keep from being pulled onto her back.

“Please, Clyde, he a baby.” She forced the words through teeth gritted against the pain.

Suddenly, the lid of the trunk came down, catching her hand before she could pull it away.

“Father, help me,” she groaned, twisting and feeling her hair ripping from the roots.

Clyde latched onto her injured hand and squeezed, grinding the bones together. The scream she had been holding in split the air, and she saw him smile.

Grunting, he let go of her hand and hair simultaneously. She watched the emotions playing across his face: joy, rage, and disgust. She crawled on her knees and one arm, her other hand clutched against her chest, frantic to escape him. Pain radiated up her arm from her throbbing fingers and across her scalp. She reached up for the doorknob, an arm’s length away from escape, a petition of pleas and prayers to a benevolent God looping through her mind.

“He do be a baby.” His voice growled from where he stood behind her, his lungs tightening, a distant sensory memory pressing into his own lungs, bringing a sensation of breathlessness clawing its way up from his subconcious. “You best fix him right. And bring your ass right back, or else.” He let the implied threat hang between them.

Mae collapsed, groaning. Her stomach churned, nausea making her roll from side to side. Clyde stepped away from her with another grunt and turned away. “Don’t make me have to come and get you.”

She thought of Jeremiah again, knowing his breaths grew shorter and his life was fading. She pulled herself up, waited for the throbbing in her hand to subside enough to move it, then rose to go back to her trunk. Bent over it again, she dug around for a poultice. Finding it, she stood straight, limped back across the room, and pulled her apron from its hook by the front door, awkwardly placing it over her head.

Clyde stood and came up behind her, yanking the ties of the apron and tying it tightly. She didn’t respond, puffing and expanding her stomach to loosen the material. She leaned against the wall for support and placed all the items into the apron’s big pockets. Scurrying to the door, her damaged hand pressed against her chest, she tried not to run, fearful that Clyde would change his mind or come after her again. She looked at him again and swallowed her fear of what might happen if she didn’t come back.

“Do what you needs to do and come right back,” he added, his eyes heavily lidded and dark.

Mae waited until she was on the other side of door to lean against it and collect her thoughts, wiping the fear from her face. She pushed the pain away and ran her fingers through her hair, smoothing it back into some semblance of order. She forced Clyde from her mind, stepping forward resolutely. Jeremiah was all that mattered.