Mama knocked on my bedroom door not long after Aunt Carrie left. She asked if she could come in and I got up off my bed to open the door for her.
She had one hand resting on the slight slope of her stomach, fingers rubbing at one certain spot.
I remembered how jealous I’d been of Ray after his mother’d had Baby Rosie. Seemed all the other mothers were having babies. All the other mothers but mine. I’d begged Mama to have another, promised to be a good big sister. I’d even said I’d scrub out the diapers for her.
It had to have been a hundred times I’d asked. But every time she’d said the same thing.
“I’m happy with you and Beanie,” she’d say.
I would pretend to see shooting stars in the sky so I could make a wish for a little sister. I’d even have settled for a brother if I’d had to.
But that day, Mama standing in the doorway of my bedroom, hand on her stomach, I regretted all the times I’d begged, all the wishes I’d cast. I didn’t want any baby that had no part of Daddy.
“Pearl,” Mama started and then worked up a swallow. “Would you like to go to the store with me?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, not thinking I had the choice to say no.
“I only need a few things.”
“I can go for you.”
“The fresh air might do me some good,” she said. “I don’t mind going. Just don’t want to go alone.”
“Are you scared to go by yourself?” I asked.
She licked her lips and nodded. “Yes. But I can’t stay cooped up in here until summer.”
“Is that when it’s coming?” I asked, looking down at her stomach.
“I think so.”
“Will you wear your coat?” I asked. “To the store?”
She nodded. “I’m not sure I’m ready for everybody to know yet.”
Wrapping both arms around her middle it looked like she was trying to protect the baby from anything in the world that might want to harm it.
It was wrong and I knew it, but I felt more than a little jealous of that baby just then.
Mama had picked quite a time to walk down the main street of Bliss for the first time since she’d been back.
The way gossip sparked and spread through that town, I was sure most folks knew she’d returned already. But hearing a thing was nothing compared to seeing it for yourself, and boy did the people on the street that day get themselves an eyeful.
Nobody stopped to tip a hat or give her a smile. Not one person told her “how do.” They all just glared out of the corner of their eyes and whispered behind their hands to whoever might be standing close enough.
But Mama didn’t turn back to the house and she didn’t cry. She just kept on walking toward Wheeler’s general store, her hand on my shoulder like she meant to guide me in the way I should go.
There was no line at the store, no other customers waiting to get their bag of flour or can of beans. Meemaw had often told me that most days were so full of God’s mercies we passed them by without knowing. That empty store, though, I saw as God being kind to us and I made sure to tell Him thanks for it. And to ask that nobody else would come in just so long as we were there that day.
Mr. Wheeler turned toward us when the bell over the door tinkled its announcement that we’d come. His arms were full of tins of baking soda and he finished stacking them on a shelf before coming to the counter to attend to us.
His sharp eyebrow jerked upward, forming wrinkles in his skin that ran all the way up his forehead.
“May I help you?” he asked, his voice dry and flat.
“Yes, please,” Mama started.
She spoke her list to him—salt and dry beans and some noodles. Before he turned to collect the items, he reached below the counter for his ledger.
“I assume you want this on credit,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” she answered. “If that’s no trouble.”
“Oh, no trouble at all. I’ll just need to know, is this under Tom Spence’s account or Abe Campbell’s?” He touched the end of his pencil to his tongue and I caught a glimpse of the meanest smirk tugging up at his lip. “Because Abe Campbell’s account is past due. Any idea of where I could find him?”
I thought of every dirty word I knew that I could’ve said to Mr. Wheeler. But I held those ugly words in my throat. Mama’d done at least one thing right and that was to teach me to hold my tongue when it came to grown folks. I would have gotten myself in a world of trouble if I’d let loose on that man the way I’d wanted to just then. Instead, I held my teeth together so tight I thought I was like to crack a molar.
“This is, of course, under Tom Spence’s name,” she said, holding her own voice tight so she’d at least sound calm. “And as for Mr. Campbell, I have no idea where he might be, so if you’d kindly collect my groceries I would be ever so grateful.”
At her side, her hand trembled.
I took hold of it. She squeezed my hand.
Mama didn’t say a word about what had happened at the store. She didn’t cry and didn’t slam the cupboards the way I might have. When Daddy’d asked how her day had been she’d said it was fine.
I imagined she was embarrassed about it and wished she could just forget that it had ever happened. I didn’t blame her for that one bit.
She served up supper and washed the dishes and sat to listen to the radio with the mending basket in her lap.
If I hadn’t known better, I might have thought life was back to normal. That she’d never gone in the first place. Except that when she went to bed she didn’t ask Daddy to come with her, and he didn’t give her a second look when she left the room.
I laid in my bed later that night, the house so quiet I couldn’t sleep.