IT WAS at two o’clock on Monday afternoon when Cloma felt the first sharp pain sear her stomach. She was sitting on an empty bean hamper outside the room, watching pickers in a field across the highway. She went into the room and sat on the edge of the bunk.
Another pain came in about fifteen minutes, this one more severe than the first. She lay down on the bunk, hoping that nothing more would happen. Then another came.
Cloma got up slowly and walked around the side of the building. The cook, sitting beneath a tree to the right of the trailer, did not look up as she approached. She watched the old man as he scratched idly in the dirt, and then she said, “I might need help before the others come back. I’m havin’ pains.”
The old man looked up blankly and said, “I’s de cook. I don’ pick no ’maters no mo’, an’ I gets two bottles o’ wine ’stead o’ one.”
Cloma stared at him for a moment, then she said, “Don’t you understand? I’m havin’ pains! I might need help!”
He looked downward and started scratching in the dirt again. “I’s de cook. I don’ pick no ’maters no....”
Cloma turned and walked away before he could finish. She went back to the room and sat on the bunk.
For an hour she sat still, flinching each time the pains came. She knew that she must not panic, and that there would be no one to help her until the workers came in from the fields.
Sweat beads formed on her forehead as time passed slowly, and her hands began to tremble. She concentrated as hard as she could and tried to close her mind to the pain. She thought of Jared, and wondered where he was and if he was all right. Then she drifted back to a time when she was a little girl, helping her mother make jelly from wild fox grapes her father picked in the woods behind their house. The smell of hot biscuits and fried chicken and baked ham drifted through the dim concrete room. She remembered a Christmas when a small porcelain doll had been left for her under a tree beside the fireplace; then her thoughts drifted to the day when she graduated from the sixth grade, and of the white dress her mother made for her, and the yellow ribbon her father bought for her to wear in her hair; and of how she was chosen to recite a poem by Lord Byron, and the piano music and the people in their Sunday suits and the two American flags in stands on each side of the stage; and in the summers there were fruits and vegetables to preserve for the winter, and games to play, and long Sunday afternoons spent exploring the woods and swimming in the creek. She then remembered the day she first noticed Jared, and how lanky and awkward he looked as he bid for her box of fried chicken at the church social, and how tenderly he brushed her shoulder as they walked to a picnic table to share the food, and how shy he was until they became one and shared their lives together; and how afraid he was when Kristy and Bennie were born; and the anger and fear and then sorrow when he lost the farm. Memories flashed through her mind like patterns in a kaleidoscope as she tossed and turned on the bunk. Several times she cried out, “Jared! Jared! My bed!”
Bennie came into the room just as his mother screamed. His> face turned ashen, and for a moment he couldn’t move. Then he raced around the west end of the barracks, shouting as he ran, “Miz Bertha! Miz Bertha!”
The Negro woman was about sixty years old. She was just over five feet tall and weighed nearly two hundred pounds, and she waddled like a goose as she walked. Her head was wrapped in a red bandana. As she came around the end of the building she was shouting, “Move outen de way! Move outen de way!” There was no one in front of her.
Bennie put a bucket of water on the cookshed grille and then stood outside the closed door of the room. Each time he heard his mother scream, he felt his stomach tum over and come into his throat. He ran back constantly to see if the water was hot, and when finally it was bubbling, he took it to the room. The woman met him at the door and said, “Now you stay outen here!”
Word spread rapidly through the camp what was happening. After supper, people began drifting to the room, attracted to birth just as people are attracted to death. It was not long before every person in the camp was sitting on the ground outside the door.
Bertha came outside once and was met by the unexpected audience. She said loudly, “You folks git on away from here! Dis ain’t no circus! Ain’t you never seen a baby borned befo’?” Still the people did not leave.
It was just past eight when the sound of a baby crying came from the room. Bennie wiped sweat from his face as Bertha came outside and announced triumphantly, “It’s a boy! A fine baby boy!” She grinned broadly, then she went back into the room.
All of the people got up and left, and in a few minutes they returned. Some were carrying cans of sardines and some beans and some Vienna sausage and some pickled pigs’ feet and some slices of stale bread and some brought half-eaten pieces of hoop cheese. One by one they came to the door and placed the food on the floor just inside the room, then they disappeared again into the darkness.
Cloma looked through hazy eyes at the gifts. She said to Bertha, “They shouldn’t have brought those things. They don’t have food enough for themselves.”
Bertha said, “They wants to, Miz Cloma. They’s good folk.”
Bertha continued sitting by the bunk, bathing Cloma’s face with wet rags. Bennie darted in and out of the room, asking constantly, “Is my Mamma all right?”
Each time Bertha would answer in a commanding voice, “Yo’ Mamma’s fine! Now you git outen here! Dis ain’t no place fo’ a boy!”
About ten o’clock, Cloma sat up for a few minutes and held the baby. Bertha fed Cloma a few bites of Vienna sausage and said, “Yo’ man sho’ goin’ be proud o’ you. Dis a fine baby. What you goin’ call him?”
“I don’t know,” Cloma answered. “It’ll be up to Jared when he returns.”
At midnight, Bennie came into the room and lay on his bunk. Although Bertha had to be in the fields at dawn, she continued sitting by the bunk. watching Cloma and the baby. She was still there when the bell rang for the bus to be loaded.