Читать книгу The Bernice L. McFadden Collection - Bernice L. McFadden - Страница 38
ОглавлениеHer new home was an old Victorian on a broad street lined with oak trees. Across from the house stood a three-story redbrick hospital.
Tass pointed her finger at the structure and said, “That’s convenient. We don’t have to go far if we get sick.”
“They don’t treat colored folk in that hospital, baby.”
The neighborhood, once all white, was now speckled with brown families. At first, the whites moved out under cover of night, but now they left in broad daylight, in a steady stream of moving trucks.
The house was a mansion compared to what Tass had grown up in. Two floors, four bedrooms, and one bathroom. A parlor, dining room, and den were packed tight with all manner of things that should have been stored in a garage or toolshed.
The lace curtains covering the windows were dry rot. At the slightest touch, the lace disintegrated into dust. The wooden floors were black with age and dirt, and the throw rugs riddled with bald spots. Who knew what color the kitchen walls were beneath the layers of grease and grime? Every pot and pan in that house was filled with nuts, bolts, screws, and nails, and the kitchen sink was piled high with dirty dishes sprouting mold.
“I know,” Fish stammered when he saw the aston-ished look on Tass’s face. “It’s a mess, but I’m sure you’ll have this house spotless in a day or two.”
Tass stared at him like he’d lost his mind. “Maybe you should have hired a maid instead of taking a wife.”
The first time Tass saw snow was on May 16, 1957, just two days after she’d arrived in Detroit. The sight of it was accompanied by thunder that clapped and marched across the sky, and fork lightning.
The snow began to fall an hour after the orchestra of BOOM—BANG—Brrrr-RUMMM drove people off the streets and into the safety of their homes. It came down soft, like tufts of cotton, and covered everything. It laid white sheets over the rooftops and the high school football field. It clasped hold to tree limbs, coated cars like flour, and sugared the daffodils and tulips.
Harsh winds swept the snow into molehills and mountains that blocked doorways and driveways. In a matter of hours Detroit was buried beneath twelve inches of late-spring snow and Tass was left wondering just how she would manage—newly arrived from the sweltering state of Mississippi without galoshes, winter coat, knit hat, or mittens.
She had set the clay flowerpot on the windowsill and now she stood there staring at the yellow blooms against the bright white of the snow and began to long for the time before that moment, when she wasn’t a wife—just Tass Hilson, daughter of Hemmingway Hilson, best friend to Padagonia Tucker, and fool in love for the first time in her life.
“What you doing, huh?” Fish called from their bed. “Come on, Tass, ole boy ain’t had his fill yet.”
She looked over her shoulder to see her husband waving his dick like a kid with a flag at an Arbor Day parade.
When it rained, the roof would leak and Tass would sob.
Pails, pots, and bowls were set out to catch the water. Tass caught her tears in napkins and spilled sick into the toilet. Her breasts swelled and her nipples started to look like water plugs. The scent of cooking meat turned her stomach. Her feet expanded like dough. The cravings for ice cream and salted peanuts nearly drove her out of her mind.
Tass called her mother and explained, “I’m gonna have a baby.”
And Hemmingway replied, “Awww, that’s nice.”
It was midnight when the first pain struck low in her womb, and Tass sat straight up in bed. Fish was across town, playing poker with friends. The second pain grew fingers that grabbed hold of her uterus and squeezed. Tass howled, stumbled out of the house and over to her neighbors. She banged on the door until her water broke.
The third pain balled its fist and punched her in the back, and Tass yanked a patch of hair from her scalp and nearly bit through her tongue. She waddled across the street and into the hospital that didn’t cater to coloreds.
Her bare feet slapped noisily across the marble floor of the brightly lit lobby. The nurse at the receiving desk blanched when she saw Tass coming toward her, panting and clutching a tuft of kinky hair in her hand.
“H-help me,” Tass yelped.
The woman opened and then closed her mouth.
The fourth contraction brought Tass down to her knees.
The nurse finally found her words and they spewed like sewage from her mouth: “Noooooooo niiiiiggers!”
Tass rolled onto her back, raised her knees, and began to push. When she screamed, the nurse threw her hands into the air and screamed too.
The first colored child ever to be born in that hospital was a big-head boy with dreamy eyes. They named him Maximillian May the second, but called him Sonny.
The hospital closed down a year later, relocated the staff, sold off the equipment, and boarded up the windows.
Drug addicts used crowbars to peel back the wood, climbed in, and gutted the building of everything they could sell. After that, someone set fire to the structure and the city bulldozed the remains and carted them away.
Now it’s an empty lot where people dump their garbage and winos gather over campfires to sing old songs.
Three months after Sonny was born, the familiar cravings started again. The morning sickness wasn’t as bad, and the rain didn’t make her quite so sad … They named the second boy James.
For a time Tass was a factory, similar to Chrysler and Ford, churning out a new model of baby every year. She and Fish would go on to produce a baker’s dozen by 1970.
The frequency with which she became pregnant made Tass feel a little bit ashamed. Hemmingway didn’t help alleviate those feelings; in fact, she added to them. When Tass called to tell her mother that she was pregnant for the sixth time in just as many years, the silence her announcement was met with was devastating.
“Mama, did you hear me?”
Hemmingway sighed, “Yeah, I heard you, Tass. Well, I guess congratulations are in order … again.”
A wounded Tass replied, “Okay, Mama, I’ll call you next week,” and put down the phone without even a goodbye.
Every year, Hemmingway spent Thanksgiving through to New Years with Tass and her family. In September of 1967, Tass gave birth to a little girl named Debra. She didn’t mention the pregnancy or the arrival of the child to Hemmingway; she just couldn’t bear to hear that tone in Hemmingway’s voice, or the disingenuous congratulations.
Two days before Thanksgiving that year, Fish collected Hemmingway from the bus depot. In the house, Hemmingway greeted her daughter and brood of grandchildren with smiles, kisses, and hugs.
She took a seat at the dining room table and Tass brought her a cup of coffee and a pecan roll. Upstairs, the new baby, closed away in Tass’s bedroom, began to wail. Her cries crept through the heating vent and seeped out into the dining room.
Hemmingway set her cup down, cocked her head to one side, and listened. Then she shot Tass a sharp look and said, “Jesus, girl, can’t you keep your legs closed?”
What occurred between Hemmingway’s visits and the delivering of babies was croup, evening prayers, diar-rhea, colds, ear infections, pink eye, broken arms, parentteacher nights, mumps, skinned knees, measles, chicken pox, first day of school, gold-starred reports, failing marks, whippings, kisses, last day of school, and summer vacation.
For many years, Tass’s life was like an echo.
