The babe was barely two weeks old on August 7, 1936, when Pa lit a new courting candle, pouring the hot wax onto a glass drip tray he’d fashioned from a saucer and cementing the naked taper in the puddle to burn later for an alarming length of time. A straight thread of smoke rose toward the wooden beams, then shivered from a breeze that blew through the open window.
“This’ll do just fine,” he said. “Have to do, since I don’t have money for a new one. I can’t be digging up your old courting one and disturbing the dead like that,” Pa fussed.
I circled around him with the baby in my arms, alarm pricking my flesh. “Pa, don’t do this.”
“Daughter,” he hushed, letting me know the discussion was wearing him.
Pa leaned over and blew out the candle. Satisfied, he carried it onto the porch. He was determined. Determined to get his unwed, baby-ridden daughter hitched, and his grandbaby a pa.
I placed Honey in the crib he’d built her and followed him.
“Pa, please, I won’t marry again.”
“Cussy.” He raised the candle. “I’m gonna see you get your respectability just like I promised your mama. And make sure Honey’ll have herself a papa. This stick will hold the fire, Daughter.”
“I have my respectability—”
“Honey needs herself a father, and you need yourself a man. A good one who’ll properly care for you.”
“Please. We’re fine. I have myself good pay with the Pack Horse, and Loretta watches Honey while I work.”
“Loretta’s old…and…blind,” he rasped, swallowing several coughs.
“She can use the money I give to the doc for her each month. And she did a right fine job with Honey so far this week. Remember Lila Dawson? She’s blind, widowed, and has raised herself four babes—”
“I won’t have it!” He smacked the railing, choking. “The mine’s shutting down in a week, and I need to make sure you’ll be taken care of!”
“You can get work with the WPA, Pa. There’s so many easy jobs now for men needing ’em—”
Pa cut me a hard, scowling eye. “Beg for scraps, take the government’s relief? If a man can’t make do, he does without.”
“They have lots of respectable jobs for men—”
“You mean for me to take their Paupers’ Oath?” he said, deeply offended. A coal-stained hand flew to his chest.
I winced. It was true. Anybody who wanted a job with the WPA had to swear to poverty, take the oath, and leave their pantries and cupboards opened in case a government man might happen by and snoop around to make sure you were remaining good ’n’ poor. I’d been lucky. The officials hadn’t ventured into our cove yet. And not from lack of trying, but because we were tucked so deep, no matter how many times I’d given the proper directions to the supervisor who’d passed them on to the government men, they’d given up and turned back.
“Pa, let me take care of us. I don’t want another courter—another husband.” I wrung my hands, cracked and darkened from boiling Honey’s diapers and Pa’s clothing and sheets. “We’ll be fine, you’ll be fine.”
“Let me tell you, Cussy, a miner’s life is a short one.”
“Oh, Pa.” I fanned his words away.
“Daughter, they buried eight of ’em last January after the collapse. Sealed that pit with them eight poor souls trapped inside it.”
I had heard the horror of it all. How the men and young boys were trapped so far down in the midnight dust and crumbling rock, no one could reach them. Then a leak of poisonous gas put them to sleep. There weren’t anything left to do, no way to rescue them except to cover the tomb and have a preacher hold a burial service at the face of the mine.
“Now, I ain’t departing this earth and leaving my two girls to the likes of what the greedy man’s leaving in our hills.” Pa jutted out his chin.
I warmed at him including Honey as his, and was touched at how easily the babe had grown on him and tamped his moodiness the last two weeks. She’d brought a light into our dreary home and heavy hearts. And the warmth of it all had given me a peace like no other. Still, my belly knotted when he talked stubborn and scary like that.
“Pa, it ain’t right you working yourself up so. We could go to the city, to Philadelphia. They have fine doctors who care for coloreds.”
“Enough. I promised your mother.” He coughed for a bit more, the anger attacking his lungs.
I plopped down into the chair. “Pa.” I turned the conversation. “Who would want to marry a Blue? A Blue with a Blue baby?” I clasped my cold, fearful hands, folding them into my skirts. “It can’t be anybody any good.”
Pa cringed, and his gray eyes rested over on the creek.
“I don’t want to leave my home. Leave you,” I said.
“Cussy.” He sighed and dropped into the chair. “It is I who must leave you. The doc says I’m not in good health.”
“We’ll go to Lexington and get better medicine. To a real city hospital. Please, Pa, let me stay and care for you—”
“This place ain’t fit for you and Honey.”
“I can provide for my own babe, and I don’t need a husband to do that. I have my books.”
His voice thickened. “You and the child deserve better. Deserve what I couldn’t give you and your mama.”
“Who could give us better? Who would want to? Even the homeliest white woman is prettier than me. To them, I’m a blemish, Pa, an outcast… Pa, please look at me.”
He wouldn’t. But I saw his reddening eyes, the color peaking under his coal-stained grimace.
“There’s only a handful of eligible men left in town,” I said quietly. “Most of them already turned me down. The others are too scared.”
His shoulders dipped a little. “I have to see that you and the babe are cared for.”
I pressed him again, “Who would marry a Blue? Who?”
In the distance, someone whistled lightly, toppling a horse’s whinny. The tune trickled softly through the pines, down the singing waters, and across smooth rock.
“That one,” Pa said, and raised his pointy chin toward the creek. He picked up his hat and lunch bucket, whisked out a good night, and was down the steps and off to the mine.
Over in her stall, Junia brayed and blew warnings, hawing long bellows.
I leaned over, listening to the courter’s faint melody growing stronger, pressing my angry hands on the railing, and then over my ears.
I grabbed the courting candle off the table and tossed it out into the yard. The saucer danced violently in the air, then shattered on rock, sending the candle loose and tumbling—my signal that I was not available. I’d tell Pa the courter lit off when he got a closer look at me.
I sat back down and hummed a tune of my own, studying my hands, watching as they faded into a soft, misty blue.