September 1, 1915
My Dearest Sweetie,
Today I birthed a white baby with my own hands.
Doctor let me do it, say it was time for me to learn. One minute I’m in the front hall of Toby Manor, scraping summer mud from my boots so I don’t mess up that pretty house, the next I’m staring into the honeypot of Mrs. Charles Toby! Doctor say it’s coming, and then I reach right inside her to save that baby’s life. I feel the cord was in a tangle, a choking-rope around its neck and I yell Ma’am stop pushing. She look at me with such a fright in her face, like I was her brain and she was just a body, What do I do? she say and I move fast and natural, like my fingers have memory. I caught that lump of a child, grey and slick, with a shag of hair so thick could have been a grown man come back from a swim. He was named Charles, after his Daddy. He look like a Charlie to me.
After we were all done and cleaned up, Doctor caught me crying in the kitchen, patted me on the back and say The first time is quite scary and you kept your wits about you. But it wasn’t that. I was remembering when you came out of Mama, your whole body in a shiver, the long hush before that sweet little pout of yours opened up and fill the whole house with caterwauling. And those bright, wet eyes, like black glass marbles, finding me in the back of the room before they could even see. Oh, Sweetie. You come from Mama, but you’ll always be mine and don’t you forget it.
I know I was little but I remember. Granny bursting through the door, saying she could smell that Mama’s water had already broken—smell—like it was right after a spring rain. Mama’s bobcat yowls, how she pulled me close to touch her belly as you worked your way down, how you shot out like a cannonball. Granny caught you, and in one sweep cleared out your nose and mouth, held you up high before sliding you onto Mama’s chest like I did baby Charlie today. Sweetie, it just come to me what need to be done before Doctor had to say. Now I wish I’d paid more attention to Granny, watched what herbs she soaked the rags in, asked her how she knew when to help move Mama from one position to the next, like a dance come down from the ancestors. What was it she tucked under Mama’s tongue that made her cry from relief? Why did she rub rosewater on special spots on ankles and hands and toes and knees? What comfort was she whispering in Mama’s ear that made Mama hum, hummmm. It gonna be OK.
Doctor say I have a special talent. He say he hasn’t lost a single baby since I started coming with him on visits instead of Miss Rose but don’t go and tell her that. He say a wife like to think she bringing all the things to make her husband shine, Miss Rose especially. He call me his lucky piece. I tell him no sir I don’t want no parts of luck when it come to white folks and their babies luck runs out let’s just say talent and I’ll thank you kindly for the compliment. He laugh and laugh. I wish Mama and Daddy were alive to see me doctoring, catching babies. I wish you could see it, too.
Doctor and me were so puffed up with the glory of God’s new creation and worn out from the day, we took the short route and rode right through the center of town. Past the Post Office and Hattie’s Bakery, right on by the Railway Boys playing cards outside of Fletcher’s and the mill girls comin’ from sodas at Perkins. Yes, we still riding the buggy. Since we make calls all out in them backwoods, Doctor say an automobile not nearly as trusty as Charliehorse, especially after a rain. Even though he surely could afford one of them Cadillac motorcars with all that money his daddy leave him. He’s just old fashioned. But you know I can’t drive a buggy or even ride a horse straight, so Doctor held the reins like he was old Rudy and me next to him like I was Miss Rose, too delicate to dirty her white gloves. I kept my head down best I could but heard all the hollerin’, who does she think she is and what makes her so good she didn’t have to leave town with the rest of ’em? Daddy used to say always look at what’s in white folk’s hands, but I couldn’t see nothin’ with my head down, and I could only hear Doctor breathin’ all hard and fast next to me. That’s the thing that made my hands tremble.
By the time we got back to the house, ugly ole Dog-Face Tuttle and his posse were all there waiting. This time they brought Sheriff. Dog-Face ask why is Doctor out there showing off his help when everybody hurting so badly without their niggers? Doctor remind him that he is saving lives and bringing new souls into the world and he has special permission from the town council to keep me on since Miss Rose had taken sick, and don’t they want all the helping hands they can get if their people are in need? Doctor tell them I mostly stay at home tending to Miss Rose and helping in the clinic. Sheriff says OK but Doctor shouldn’t be driving me like I was a white lady, that a colored girl of eighteen should learn how to do the horse driving. Sheriff says I have to follow the new laws about colored people, that it would be a terrible thing if I was caught anywhere after dark without Doctor or Miss Rose. They made the dark itself a boogeyman. Made me scared in my own sleep.
Sweetie, they stood there scolding and all I could think about was how after everything they did to us the night of The Leaving, Dog-Face had the nerve to take our milking cow and the chickens. Please tell Robert that one time last week, early, before Rooster starts in, I went by Dog-Face’s coop and took all of Henny’s eggs, like it was still one of my chores. You can’t call it stealin’ cause they were stolen from us! That’s it, I swear I won’t do it again. I know you think I get too mad and forget to be afraid, but I don’t want you to worry. I know when to keep my eyes down on my boots, nodding yessir yessum until my head bobbles off. I know how to smile with all of my teeth and say a kindness that could make anyone get shy. I just think about my arrangement with Doctor and I can keep on going.
It won’t surprise you to hear that I’m teaching myself how to do the Doctor’s account books. I’ll be running this whole place soon! I make a record of each patient, what ails them, and what Doctor say is wrong. How they were treated and did they get better. I tally up who pays and who owes in the ledger, how much supplies cost and when new orders are needed. I fill up the capsules, roll the pills, and measure out calomel. I scrub down the clinic every day, boil the instruments because anything not clean can make someone sick. The busier I keep the less time I have to be with my thoughts.
I still carry on with all of my regular chores in Doctor and Miss Rose’s house, but it feels different now because I also live here. Miss Rose don’t leave her room at all anymore, and if Doctor’s not out on a call or seeing a patient, he keep to his office, sometimes up to bed and counting sheep before the sun sets. I can wander this house free as a bird, sipping tea from Miss Rose’s tinkly bone china, trying out the velvet parlor room chairs, even the ones no backside has ever touched. Reading reading reading, a library full of stories and learning, the whole world in those books. Can you see my words and penmanship got better? It’s strange to think that a place that used to make me so scared, with its echoey halls and chilly corners, filled with things that can break every time you move an arm. This is the only place I feel safe now.
Last night I come downstairs in my nightclothes to eat some blackberry pie, and I catch a look at myself in the window all wild haired and purple lipped. I stuck out my tongue and crossed my eyes—that what always made you giggle. Oh, what a happy thing it is to have a good laugh at yourself! And then I think what would Robert say and what face would you make back and how long will it be before we’re all doing googly eyes at each other again? I didn’t know there could be such a lonely laugh. I got to wondering, who is a person without their people? How am I Clumsy Clara, silly and stubborn Clara, Clara with her head in the clouds—how am I that girl without anyone who loves me saying it, seeing me?
I think, maybe I am a ghost. Maybe I died with the others.
I watch the sun all day. Even inside I know exactly where it is in the sky. I feel the dark creeping up on me until it pounces, blacking out my freedom. My face hasn’t felt starlit air in five months, not since you left. I don’t know what’s out there in the night, but it ain’t for me. The signs are up everywhere. This one right near the mill.
NIGGER, DON’T LET THE SUN GO DOWN ON YOU IN SWIFT RIVER
Everybody gone.
Gone, Sweetie. Gone.
Remember the man they call Pa Bell? The handyman who ran around town delivering white folks news so fast he got there before the operator could track down the person needing the message? Doctor used to use him sometimes like he was a human telephone. Running, running, for pennies a time. I heard he made it all the way to Florida. He’s working out on a shrimping boat. I like to picture him strolling at his own leisure to work, squinting out into the ocean for hours, pulling up his nets when they get to being full. No white folks telling him go faster, faster. Go go go.
And here’s some news oughta make you scratch your head. Folks are worried about the mill, there aren’t enough workers to keep it running much longer. Well what did they expect. White girls are either on their farms or at the paper mill. It pays more, and paper is an easier day than textile, even if the smells make your head ache bout the same. Last time Dog-Face come out here to Doctor’s he tried to say I have to work a few shifts. Doctor say slavery against the law last he checked and to go get one of his own daughters to take on extra work. There’s talk of a man up north in Canada buying the mill and bringing down his people to do the work—women and men. Doctor say they all speak like people from France. Canucks they call them. That would be something wouldn’t it? Frenchie or no, ain’t nobody ever going to run it like we did.
Has anybody heard from Gerald who worked at the butcher shop? Doctor is angry at Miss Rose all the time now because of him. She’s barely spoken more than a few sentences since The Leaving. They say Gerald out in the woods somewhere waiting for her to come to him. Sheriff and the men go out looking for him. Doctor say if she doesn’t snap out of the Melancholia, it will look like they have a weakness for Negroes and we all will be made to leave or worse. He threaten to send her to Manchester for a calming treatment. Sweetie, her sadness is something awful—thick and heavy with its own sour smell. It fill up the whole room, sometimes the whole house. He may call it Melancholia but I call it Heartbreak.
If Gerald’s not out there, that means I’m the only living colored person in all of Swift River.
It’s past nine o’clock in the evening and I’m up reading in my room. I can keep the lamp burning for as long as I please. It’s a book called Gray’s Anatomy. Doctor tell me I’ll need it for medical school at Howard University. He’s gonna give me all of his old books, that way I won’t have to pay for anything at all. He keep reminding me—if I give him two good years of work here, he’s gonna give me a ticket to Washington in the District of Columbia and pay for all my four years of medical schooling. I come out the other side a doctor. He say they need him to vouch for my good moral character, make sure I know Latin and Math and English. Doctor Clara Newberry. I know I can do anything for a time if it means I can get to Woodville with everything I need to take care of you, to take care of everyone.
I fight off sleep for as long as I can. Otherwise That Night comes back to me, over and over.
Remember how we used to run and jump in the bed, scared the wild hogs were under there waiting to eat us whole? Don’t laugh, but I do that here in my new room. Run and leap like I’m a little girl. Like all of the terrors of the day are hiding under there, waiting to grab at my ankles and pull me under.
It’s still strange to be in a bed and not to have your skinny legs wrapped around me, your knobby knees and big ole boat feet knockin’ at me like weapons. I wake myself from dreams because I think it’s you next to me, talkin’ in your sleep.
Come listen to me, Sweetie. Listen. See, I’m pretending to tell you a story like we used to do together. Remember your favorite? The love story about the stable boy and the baker’s daughter? Make up a new ending for it when you write me back. In your letter also include a better description of the new house. Is Uncle Henry and Auntie Josephine making it nice, treating you good? And say if Robert is being his rascally self? And can you tell me, was it right for me to stay behind?
You are my whole heart, beating on the outside, probably fillin’ up all of Woodville, Georgia with your love and fire.
(One more thing—I woke up in the middle of the night yelling, OK, NOW. PUSH. PUUUUSSHHH! You would have been hollerin’.)
Your devoted sister,
Clara Newberry
September 30, 1915
Sweetie my Sweetie,
Miss Rose is gone. Doctor and me find out when we come back from a three day trip to Ashfield, where we were tending to a very difficult birthing. Three days. We get back and all of Miss Rose things are still here, but no Miss Rose. Room to room we went, calling her name, lookin’ every which where, even in strange places—behind furniture, inside closets—like she might be playing a hiding game. The marital bed was made, not as good and tight as I do it, but wasn’t any rush about it. She was trying to leave the place tidy and hopeful.
Doctor asks is there a note anywhere, but I can’t find a scribble. He say maybe she went to see her cousin Mabel in Boston, now he remembers that she got a letter saying Mabel was unwell. Sweetie, I know right then he will never go looking for her.
Miss Rose been in a bad way for weeks before we left, more bad than regular bad. Could barely sit up in bed with her heavy head and floppy neck. She was so still and blank. Remember that year we found the frozen wood frog at Miller’s Pond? Its little legs stiff and straight, like the cold caught him mid-leap, his hands and arms all covered in spiky ice crystals. You say he look like a froggy wizard shooting lightning from his fingertips. We got to thinking he need a proper burial, so we bring him home and put him in a matchbox you painted black. Remember how the melting water soaked the box and we rub his wet, slimy skin one last time to pay our respects and that darn thing blink and then quack like a baby duck and we scream as if Jesus just paid us a visit? Mr. Frog come back to life.
That day we were leaving for Ashfield, Miss Rose come back to life. Her hazy ghost eyes caught a spark and melted. She could see me, see Doctor. She got up and sat in her reading chair, looked out her bedroom window with her hands on her knees, leaning forward like she was waiting for her mama to come home. There was a pink in her cheeks. Doctor kiss her on her dimples—happy, welcome back to the world I missed you kisses. She even smile a little.
I don’t so much miss her as I am scared of what her leaving is going to mean for me, for Doctor. Truth be told, the whole house feels lighter without her here. Curtains open, sun finding its way into all the corners. The quiet sound like quiet, not like someone holding their breath. The sour odor is gone. Now there’s a sweet, mournful smell, like end of summer strawberries before they turn. I bet she’s lighter too, wherever she is. I wonder what it’s like to have the kind of love that make you leave your whole life.
A feeling come over me that I need to air the place out. I open every window, every door, and the gusts blow the curtains, make any slight thing wave in the breeze. Doctor say what on earth am I doing, making it so all the critters and creatures of the town can come in and trample us. I say this house wants the wind to make it new again. We both stand in the doorway. Well then, he say, but then nothing else. We stand there a long time.
Something is weighing heavy on my mind, Sweetie.
You know how white folks sometimes tell a colored person their most private business? Shocking things, mean things, sad things, secrets that could ruin a life—with no shame? When I was a child, I remember I didn’t know what to do with the things I was told. And I couldn’t put together why. Was it me or them? I thought, maybe Miss So and So see me as her little friend? Maybe Mr. Who and Such think I’m smart? Maybe there is something in my wide-open face make ’em want to confide? Do they feel my big heart, my good-ness? Then I grow up and know it’s the opposite—they don’t see me at all. I’m an empty bucket to pour themselves into. They can talk into the deep black well of me and their secrets will never come out.
Sweetie, I thought you was too young to know before but now I confess it. Miss Rose tell me things.
Even though I been with her and Doctor for four years, it was a few months ago she start speaking to me like I just then come alive, like we are friends and colored folks are what we have in common. She say Gerald make her feel things she never felt with Doctor. She never knew that people could walk around having these feelings without floating off into the clouds. She ask me private things, have I ever had relations with a man, what’s it like to be with a colored man, what do they like and how do you take care of them? I just say I wouldn’t know I ain’t been touched, Ma’am. I don’t say, how will I ever know what it’s like to love a colored man when ain’t no colored men in sight? It don’t even cross her mind, there is no one to come calling for me. By the time I’m a doctor, I’ll be too old to take on a husband, have a family. She don’t know she don’t care.
I do think she love him, but I also think why can’t she keep it to herself. It’s one thing to tell her own secrets, but another thing to tell Gerald’s secrets, too. He belong to us. She will get him killed.
Miss Rose tell me she is leaving, that she love Gerald too much. Gerald sent word he would come for her soon and then they go to a place called Mexico where a colored man and white woman can be together. She don’t want to hurt Doctor and can’t stand the thought of breaking his heart. Well that’s just what you’re going to do I say to her. I was feeling bold. She tell me take care of Doctor. And then weeks pass and her head get heavy and I think maybe Gerald changed his mind. Decided their love wasn’t worth the trouble. I was wrong.
Since Miss Rose leave, Sheriff come to the house a few times asking how is she feeling. Finally, Doctor tell him she all better, she gone to Boston to take care of her cousin Mabel, who has the putrid fever. Sheriff look suspicious then test him with questions. Doctor tells the story in such a way that it sounds like truth, even to me who know it’s a lie. He say it so much, that’s where I picture her, now—in Boston, at Mabel’s bedside, wiping her brow with a cool rag. Gerald is painted out of that picture. I forget that he’s gone, too.
I keep thinking Doctor will hate me now, like the white boys who chase me home from the store throwing rocks, coloring me every Negro they’ve ever known, no one else to blame for their sorrows but my skinny behind. I’m colored, and the man who took Doctor’s wife is colored, too. But Doctor come to me last night and say now he know what I must feel like, losing all of the things I love in the world. We both cry together.
My Sweetie. Missing you is like a toothache, always right there, sore and buzzing under everything, even when happy things happen. Every now and again the pain stings so sharp make me jump up and howl. It don’t ever get better, I just get used to it.
I hope you don’t miss me at all, I hope your Woodville life is so easy breezy, you don’t feel a lick of sorrow. You had enough of that.
Your loving sister,
Clara Newberry