Читать книгу American Histories - John Edgar Wideman - Страница 16

BONDS

She struggles to keep him inside her. Not because she knows that in less than six months Japan will bomb Pearl Harbor and this country, flags flying, will join in the slaughter of world war and that child after child, all colors, sizes, shapes, religions, nationalities, including babies like the one she’s expecting, will be gathered up and starved, tortured, incinerated.

Struggles to keep her baby inside not because she understood the horror of war, understood that once it starts the horror never ends, young men put in uniforms and marched off to save the country or die trying, some of those soldiers young men from her colored neighborhood, two she will never meet except as names on a memorial plaque beside the door of Homewood’s Carnegie public library, where her brother Otis, who made it back from war, used to take her by the hand to borrow books, then years later took her son, men returning she will encounter in the street or in movies or on TV, some full of love for any girl or boy inside her, men who gladly would risk their lives to protect her or her children playing in the streets, but others rotten with war’s hate, men with weapons the government issues and teaches them to shoot, men who would kill, no regrets, any children she’d bear.

She struggles to keep the baby inside not because she feared terrible pain once she starts to squeeze him out. Pain scalding her they say worse than the hot comb when her mother digs too deep. Told you stop your fidgeting, girl. Holler and jump you make me burn you again. She’d never disbelieved the women’s stories about how godawful the pain. Harder to believe what they said about how suddenly easy it is afterwards, after all the suffering, your insides tearing apart inch by inch, then out comes the baby and it’s a sweet, warm bundle on your chest and you won’t remember why all the screams and carrying-on. Won’t remember you’d been thinking just minutes before you’d rather die than burn one second more.

She keeps him inside not because she knew the baby a he, not because she knew she’d be closer to the end of her life once his life begins. Not because she knew his eyes the last eyes to see her alive. Him silent on a hospital chair beside her hospital bed, book in his hands, monitor beep-beep-beeping, his eyes on a page the precise instant she’s no more, missing her last breath.

She’s determined to keep the baby inside longer not because longer might change the baby’s color or keep money always in her child’s pocket. Longer inside not because of things she knows or should or could or might not want to know. She holds him inside because she’s sure the day is Friday, June thirteen, and sure the child she carries already has two strikes against it—strike of poor, strike of colored—and no way she’s going to let a third strike— bad luck of being born on Friday the thirteenth—doom every day of her first child’s life on earth before it even gets here.

She will struggle till midnight. Then four or five minutes past midnight, she decides. For good measure. To be absolutely certain. Four or five minutes more of agony, bearable or not bearable.

Then okay . . . okay now, she will say to herself, no strength left to speak the words aloud. No one in the room but her anyway, so she thinks okay. Rolls her eyeballs up to the wall clock to be sure, an effort that almost kills her, and then okay now, she says. Lets go of all that scorching air hoarded inside her gut. Only a tiny hole for it to pass through. She gasps, hollers. Sighs and gulps. A dull pop then a pop-popping push, rush, and shit . . . oh, shit. Please, not shit. Let it be air, a fart, no, many rumbling humongous farts. And oh my, oh my, my she’s spewing water, blood, beans, those baked beans doctor and mother both had warned her not to eat. Beans, a baby, a nasty mess dirtying the bed, cleaning out her insides. A small voice in her head mutters feeble apologies, but she knows she’s smiling. Stinky. Wet. Warm. Not alone.

She struggled to hold him inside a little longer she tells him one day because on that miserable night of June 13, and with two strikes against him she had no power to change, she told herself to stop shuddering, squirming, moaning, and groaning. Wrapped herself in bonds of steel. Steel around thighs, knees. Steel tying her ankle bones together so no part of him leaks or peeks or sneaks out and gets struck by a bolt of Friday the Thirteenth’s evil lightning.

* * *

She struggled to keep the baby inside not because she feared losing her first one. Not because she feared it might be her last. Not because she understood what would happen or not happen to the boy or girl. She held on because six minutes of June 14, 1941, needed to pass before she’d let go, and now more than three-quarters of a century has passed, many, many June fourteens, and each one his birthday, him alive and breathing and her, too, he tells her, and won’t let go.