Feather Crowns: A Novel

I

Birth

February 26, 1900

1

CHRISTIANNA WHEELER, BIG AS A WASHTUB AND CONFINED TO BED all winter with the heaviness of her unusual pregnancy, heard the midnight train whistling up from Memphis. James was out there somewhere. He would have to halt the horse and wait in the darkness for the hazy lights of the passenger cars to jerk past, before he could fly across the track and up the road toward town. He was riding his Uncle Wad’s saddle horse, Dark-Fire.

The train roared closer, until it was just beyond the bare tobacco patch. Its deafening clatter slammed along the track like a deadly twister. Christie felt her belly clench. She counted to eight. The pain released. The noise of the train faded. Then the whistle sounded again as the train slowed down near town, a mile away The contractions were close together now. The creature inside her was arriving faster than she had expected. The first pain had been light, and it awakened her only slightly. She was so tired. She dreamed along, thinking it might be no more than the stir and rumble she had felt for months—or perhaps indigestion from the supper James’s Aunt Alma had brought her.

You have to eat, Alma had told her. That baby’ll starve, though by the looks of you I reckon he could last a right smart while. You’ve got fat to spare.

I can’t eat butter beans, Christie said. They’re too big.

Alma hooted. The beans is too big? You keep on with them crazy idies and we’ll have to carry you off to the asylum.

Good, said Christie, making a witch face.

In late December, when the doctor advised Christie to stay in bed, they talked about moving her back up to Alma’s house, where the women could take care of her more easily, but Christie wouldn’t go. She had had enough of that place—too many people under one roof. She said she didn’t want her children to be in their way. And she didn’t want to be waited on like James’s Uncle Boone, who wheezed and didn’t work. He believed he had TB.

She tried to turn, expecting the pain to come back, but her stomach felt calmer now. Dr. Foote probably wouldn’t want to come out this late, she thought, when the clock began to strike midnight.

Alma burst through the back door a few moments later. She hurried through the kitchen into the front room where Christie lay.

Lands, here I am again. Alma wore enormous shapeless shoes and a big bonnet with a tiny gray-leaf figure that resembled mold seen up close. A woman in a blue bonnet followed her into the room. Hattie Hurt’s here, Alma said. She grunted—her laugh. It’s just like James to run off after the doctor when Hattie was right near. Why, Hattie can dress that baby.

Babies like to meddle with our sleep right off, said Hattie cheerily. They don’t want to come in the middle of the morning like civilized company. She dropped her leather satchel on a chair and hurled off her coat all in one motion. Then she unbuckled the satchel. Where’s Mrs. Willy? she asked. She always beats me to a birthing.

She went to Maple Grove to see her daughter and grandchillern and didn’t say when she’d be back, Alma said.

Mrs. Willy told me to take calomel when the pains commenced, but I didn’t, Christie said.

You’ll feel better when you get this baby out, Christie, said Hattie soothingly.

It’s not a baby.

She’s talking foolishness again, said Alma.

Christie tried to sit up. She was in her front room, or Sunday room. The bed, directly across from the fireplace, was sheltered from the front door by the closed-in stairway to her right. To her left was the kitchen. The door was swung back all the way against the kitchen wall so that the two rooms joined into one. Christie leaned over to the bedside table for a rag, and Alma ran over to help her. Alma was rarely this attentive. Christie didn’t want to depend on her, but she was helpless. She had been helpless for weeks, and the condition had made her angry and addled. The children seemed scared of her lately.

Alma, reach me a drop of water. My lips is parched.

You done flooded the bed, Alma mumbled. She brought Christie a cup of water and a wet rag, then turned to the kitchen stove to tend the fire. This water’s going to take awhile to boil, Alma said.

We’ve got time, said Hattie, busy with her jars and tools. Her apron was freshly starched. It gleamed white as new teeth.

Christie’s belly was tight. It needed to loosen up. She tried to knead it, to make it pliable. She thought it might explode. She ran her hands around the expanse—the globe of the world, James had joked. She hadn’t needed a doctor for her other babies. It seemed that each time she had a baby her belly stretched and could accommodate a larger one. The second boy had been a pound heavier than the first, and then Nannie was so big she caused a sore that didn’t heal for weeks. But what Christie had in her now was more than twice as large as any of the others. She had a thing inside her that couldn’t be a baby—it was too wild and violent.

Hattie Hurt had visited several times during the winter, even though they hadn’t been able to give her anything more than a ham and some green beans Christie had put up in jars. Dr. Foote was sure to charge more money than they could pay, but James said he’d sell a hog.

Let me take a look at what’s going on down there, said Hattie. Can you get them drawers off?

Christie’s stomach was quiet now. She loosened her clothes and pushed down her step-ins, one of three enormous pairs she had sewed this winter. James had joked about those too, but she thought he was trying to hide his concern.

Hattie Hurt had strong hands and a gentle, reassuring voice. Her voice reminded Christie of her grade-school teacher, Mrs. Wilkins. Christie still remembered the teacher leading a recitation of short a’s: march, parch, starch, harsh, marsh, charm, snarl, spark. She remembered how Mrs. Wilkins moved her jaws in a chewing motion to stress the sound.

Hattie poked around, feeling Christie’s abdomen. She examined the place between Christie’s legs. You’re pooching out some, she said. Now just lay back and wait real easy. We don’t want to force it too soon.

While Alma worked at the stove, the children still slept. Christie could see Clint and Jewell in the loft, above the kitchen, on a feather bed. She heard them stirring. Nannie was sleeping on a pallet in the corner between the fireplace and the kitchen wall. This winter, because of her pregnancy, Christie and James had shut off their north bedroom and slept close to the brick fireplace in the front room. Ordinarily, the children weren’t supposed to enter the front room except on Sundays, but this winter they had all moved in. The front room contained Christie’s best furniture, the almost-new cabbage-rose carpet, and her good Utopian dishes in an oak china-safe. James had made their furniture when they started out together in Dundee. When they moved to Hopewell, they stored it in Christie’s parents’ stable in Dundee until their own house was ready. When the furniture finally arrived, it had some mouse stains, but Christie had never seen anything so lovely. She sanded it down and oiled it. Now her weight had broken two of the slats in the bed, and the corn-shuck mattress beneath the feather bed sagged through the hole in the slats. It almost reached the floor, until James put a hassock under the bed for support.

Is it time for breakfast? Nannie asked. She was standing beside the bed, twisting the hem of her muslin nightdress across her face.

Christie pulled the dress away and patted her child. No, hon. Go back to sleep.

I want to get in with you. Where’s Papper?

He’s outside. She started to make room for Nannie in the bed, but her belly contracted then and she cried out involuntarily.

You hurt me, said Nannie. You hurt my fingers.

Christie released her. Alma came over from the stove and steered her back across the soft carpet to her pallet. Go look for your dreams, child, she said. They’ll get away from you. Turning back to the kitchen, she said to Christie, I told Mandy to get on down here and carry the chillern up yonder to the house, but where is she? Alma cupped her ear to listen. The moon’s shining big as a Sunday communion plate, so I don’t know what she’d be scared of.

Hoboes from the train, said Christie. And devils behind bushes.

She ain’t got the sense God give a tomcat.

Amanda was Alma’s sister-in-law, married to Alma’s brother, Wad Wheeler. Alma bossed everybody in the household, but she bossed Amanda the most. She believed Amanda thought herself too good for ordinary work.

I wonder if Mrs. Willy’s back yet, said Christie.

Oh, I don’t think she knows a woman’s behind from a jackass, to tell you the truth, Alma said, scowling till Christie imagined Alma’s loose-jawed face drooping all the way down to her apron.

Christie couldn’t help laughing, although it jiggled her stomach uncomfortably. During the winter, she had grown so fat she had to enter the narrow door of the springhouse sideways. Her ankles swelled and her feet ached. She made clumsy padded house-shoes out of double thicknesses of burlap, folded and stitched on top and gathered around and tied with twine at the ankles. She shuffled through the house, skirting the ashy hearth. For several weeks, she thought she must have miscalculated her time. She kept thinking the baby was due any moment. But the storm inside her kept up, at an ever more frantic pace. And now her time had come, the full time since the heat of last June when she and James had lain in the steamy night without cover, their bodies slippery as foaming horses, while the children slept out on the porch. She recalled that the midnight train had gone by then, too, and that she had imagined they were on the train, riding the locomotive, charging wildly into the night.

Christie screamed and grabbed Hattie’s arm. A sharp pain charged through her like the train. Hattie held Christie’s hand throughout the agony, while the thing inside tore loose a little more.

Alma said, The water’s about to boil and Mandy ain’t here. I’ve a good mind to go up there and give her what-for.

The hurting passed. Christie sank into her feather bolster and pulled the cover up to her neck. Hattie wiped Christie’s face.

Bring me that likeness of my mama, please, Hattie, said Christie.

Hattie handed her the silver-framed photograph from the mantel. In the small portrait, Mama had a large smile, as though she had been caught by surprise.

She looks right young, said Hattie.

Yes, but she’d look old if I was to see her again. It’s been two years since I was home. Christie touched the bleached-out image, wishing it would come to life under her fingertip. I never oughter left Dundee, she said.

You need your mama, said Hattie soothingly. A woman always needs her mama at a time like this. But we’ll do the best we can, Christie.

On the very day Christie and James married, her Aunt Sophie told her, It’s nine months from the marriage bed to the deathbed. At the time, Christie had dismissed the words as the careless remark of an old maid—Aunt Sophie had been to a female seminary and was thoughtlessly outspoken—but lately Christie had dwelt on the thought. She hadn’t mentioned it to James, not wanting to worry him. But she was afraid she would die. No woman could pass a child this big. The commotion inside her felt like a churn dasher, churning up crickets and grasshoppers. Christie had thought she might be carrying twins, but the doctor hadn’t encouraged that idea. Christie never felt sorry for herself, but this pregnancy had been different—hard and spiteful, as if something foreign had entered her body and set up a business of a violent and noisy nature. Almost from the beginning, it seemed she could feel the thing growing oddly inside her. At first, the sensation was only a twinge, like a June bug caught on a screen door. Then it grew into a wiggly worm, then a fluttering bird. Sometimes it was just kittens, then it would be like snakes. It kept changing, until the commotion inside her was almost constant, and terrifying. One day a clerk at the grocery where they traded showed her some jumping beans from Mexico. The beans were somehow electrified, jerking as though taken by fits. She had something like that in her. She imagined there were devils in her, warring over her soul. And even at calm, peaceful moments, she knew something was not right. The baby drained her strength, and now she could barely eat. Even though her breasts had grown huge and firm, she was afraid her milk wouldn’t make.

I know you want your mama, said Hattie. Believe me, I know how it is.

Hattie worked busily, clipping Christie’s hairs and washing her with a clear, sweet-smelling liquid. She laid out the contents of her bag on the small bedside table—shiny scissors, a slender knife, cotton wool, tubing, twine, soap, a device for expelling milk, bandages, small cotton cloths, blue bottles of liniment and alcohol and calomel, a variety of ointments in tiny round tins. As she worked, Hattie repeated a story Christie had heard before, how her husband had had his teeth pulled one day and the next day was kicked in the face by a mule. He said he regretted having paid the dentist to do what the mule would have done for free.

Steps sounded on the back porch, and Alma’s brother Wad entered the kitchen. He never knocked on a door. Behind him was his wife, Amanda, Christie’s only real friend on the place. Amanda was pretty, with soft gray eyes and a warm smile. Even though it was the middle of the night, she had put on a clean dress and had pinned her hair up under her fascinator just as though she were going someplace important.

Well, fine time you picked, yelled Wad across the kitchen to Christie.

Don’t let Wad in here, Alma said to Amanda. And shut that door. You’re letting the cold night air in.

Amanda pushed her husband out and closed the door. Christie could hear him out on the back porch stomping his boots in the cold. He was many years older than Amanda—his second wife.

Amanda crossed the kitchen to Christie’s bedside. She said, Wad sent Joseph to get Mrs. Willy. That’s how come we didn’t get here so quick.

Joseph, one of Wad’s grown sons by his first marriage, lived down the road a short piece.

I thought Mrs. Willy was gone to Maple Grove, Alma said.

Joseph said he saw her driving her buggy uptown yesterday evening peddling eggs, said Amanda, pausing over Nannie, who had gone back to sleep on her pallet. I’ll gather up the younguns and take ’em up to our house to get them out of the way. Come on, precious.

Clint and Jewell were awake now, their puzzled faces peering down from the loft. Clint, the older boy, had been suspicious for some time about his mother’s condition, but Christie didn’t want James to tell him where babies came from yet. Clint was still too young, and he should see it in cows and horses first.

Where are we going? said Jewell, scrambling sleepily down the stairway.

Christie heard Amanda cooing to the children, saying that their papa had gone to get a surprise for them. It’s like Christmas and we have to go away and close our eyes for the rest of the night so in the morning we can see the surprise—if we’re real good. Amanda always took time to talk to the children. She turned even everyday events into stories. She had a way with all the children on the place, maybe because she seemed like such a child herself, although she was three years older than Christie and had two daughters.

Amanda was hurriedly wrapping the children in their coats.

Get your caps, boys, she said. Tie your shoes, Clint.

It’s a baby, said Clint.

Papper’s gone to get a baby, said Jewell. He reached out and pulled Nannie’s nightdress, and she jerked it away from him. You’re a baby, he said. Nannie’s a baby.

Stop that, said Alma, slapping Jewell. This ain’t no time for such foolishness. Get on out of here.

Wait, said Christie. Come here and give me a kiss.

She hugged each one of her children till they squirmed. Then, as Amanda whirled them away, the pain came again—a wave like the long, growling thunder that sometimes rolled through a summer sky from end to end. She was washed with pain, but she didn’t feel how deep it went because she was seeing her children’s faces go out the back door, one by one.

2

IT HAD BEEN A HARD WINTER, THE COLDEST IN CHRISTIE’S MEMORY. It was too cold for the roosters to crow. Alma beat icicles off the bushes, and the children collected the large ones for the springhouse. When the men stripped tobacco out in the barn, their hands were nearly frost-bitten. The winter wheat was frosted like lace, and the ponds and the creek were frozen solid. Some of the children went sliding across the pond on chairs. Christie couldn’t see their fun from the house, but she recalled chair-sliding when she and James were courting back in Dundee and her father’s pond froze over. James pushed her hard and fast, and she flew freely across to the other side, laughing loud and wild. That was the only time in her life the pond had frozen solid enough to slide on, but this winter James reported that six cows were standing on Wad’s pond.

Amanda had told everybody it would be a hard winter. The persimmons said so, she believed. She broke open persimmon seeds for the children. Inside each one was a little white thing, the germ of the seed. Amanda said, Look at that little tiny fork. That means a hard, hard winter’s a-coming! If it was drawn like a spoon, it would be a sign of mild weather; and if it was a knife, it would mean a lot of frost, but not too thick for the knife to cut. But the fork is the worst.

When James and the boys stripped tobacco, Alma had to wash their smoke-saturated clothes. Christie gazed outside helplessly at the bare black trees, the occasional birds huddling inside their fluffed feathers, and the cows chomping hay beside Wad’s barn, making a picture of color against the dusting of snow that had come overnight. Wad’s mercury had gone down to naught on ten different nights that January and February. A snow in early January, after the ice storm, lasted till the end of the month. None of the farmers around had ever seen such weather—but then they always said that, Christie noticed. They’d never seen it so warm, or so cold, or so changeable, or so much rain to follow a cold spell. This year, everybody said the cold winter had something to do with the earthquake that had been predicted for New Year’s.

Livestock froze: a cow who freshened too early; then her calf, stranded across the creek; then another cow who was old and stayed out in the storm. Wad and James worked to repair the barn so they could keep the cows in at night. They spread hay for insulation, piling bales in front of some of the largest cracks in the walls. The breath of the cows warmed the barn like woodstoves. Christie felt like a cow inside her tent dress and under the layers of cover on the bed. Her bulk heated up the bed so much that many nights James thrashed himself awake. They couldn’t let the fireplace go cold—the children needed its warmth—but Christie felt as if she were carrying a bucket of hot coals inside her. In the past, she had been comfortable with pregnancy because of the privacy of it. It was her secret even after everyone knew. They didn’t really know the feeling—a delicious, private, tingly joy. The changes inside her body were hers alone. But this time the sloshing, the twinges, the sensation of blood rushing, the bloating, the veins in her legs popping out—all were so intense it was as if her body were turning into someone else’s. Walking from the stove to the dishpan—barely four steps—was a labored journey, her legs heavy like fence posts.

As she grew larger, she felt as though she were trying to hide a barrel of molasses under her dress. She was used to sleeping on her back, but when she gained weight, lying like that seemed to exert enough pressure to cut off the flow of blood to the baby. When she sat, she couldn’t cross her legs. Her hip joint seemed loose, and it was painful to bend or stoop or turn her foot a certain way. The right leg seemed longer, and she walked in a side-to-side motion. She learned to minimize the painful motion, and her right leg grew stiff.

At night, James stroked her belly so sensuously she feared the baby might be born with unwholesome thoughts. As the season wore on and she grew still heavier, she retreated from James and wouldn’t let him see her belly. She didn’t want him to see the deep-wrinkled, blind hollow of her navel turning inside out. It made her think of the apron strings she made by pushing a safety pin through a tunnel of material and reversing it so the seam was inside. He seemed proud and happy about the baby, but she didn’t think he would care to know that the baby was kicking—flutters and jabs inside. Men were afraid of babies. There was so much you didn’t tell a man; it was better to keep things a mystery. One night as she was falling asleep, she felt a sharp jolt, unmistakably a foot jamming the elastic of her womb. The kick was violent, as though the little half-formed being had just discovered it had feet and was trying to kick its way out.

Sometimes a small event would soar through her heart on angel wings: the train going by, the frost flowers forming on the window light, flour sifting down onto the biscuit board, a blackbird sailing past the window in a line parallel to the train. For a moment, then, she thought she was the blackbird, or that she had painted the frost flowers herself, or that she was setting out carefree and young aboard the train. One day she heard a flock of geese and went outside bareheaded to watch them tack across the sky. The lead goose would go one way and the others would fall out of pattern, and then he would sway the other way and they would all follow, honking. The stragglers seemed to be the ones yelling the loudest. She felt like one of those stragglers, trying to keep up but finding the wayward directions irresistible. It wasn’t just her condition. She had always felt like that. She was hungry at odd times, and she would fix herself a biscuit—cold, with sorghum and a slice of onion. In the henhouse one day, gathering eggs, she leaned against the door facing, breathing in the deep, warm fumes. She cracked an egg against the door and slid the contents down her throat. Then she laughed, like somebody drunk. Several boys had been drunk and torn up some hitching posts on the main street in town not long ago, she had heard. She wondered what it was like to be drunk. It would probably mean laughing at the wrong times, which she did anyway.

Back before she took to her bed, James had a spell of sleeplessness that made him drag for several days. A farmer couldn’t afford to lose sleep, and she blamed herself for waking him up when she got up in the night to use the pot. One Saturday just before Christmas, he had hardly slept all night. He made his weekly trip to town as usual, but he didn’t stay long. He came home and slept the rest of the morning. He had never done that in his life, he said, annoyed with himself.

That was the day Mrs. Willy came visiting. Mrs. Willy, who lived by herself in a little white house, lost her husband in a buggy wreck soon after they married. She raised a daughter alone. Now she helped out women and sewed.

Come in, Mrs. Willy, Christie called. Clint, get Mrs. Willy a chair. Get her that mule-eared setting chair. But she was in no frame of mind for company. She had ironing to do.

Mrs. Willy stepped across the floor as tenderly as if she feared her weight would break a board, although she was slender and pigeonboned. Alma had remarked that Mrs. Willy hung around pregnant women like a starved dog around the kitchen door.

She settled down in the chair Clint had pulled out from the back porch.

Go on out and see if you can help Papper, Christie said to Clint. The other children were gathering hickory nuts with Amanda. James was in the barn rubbing down horse leather.

I’ve got a splinter, Clint said, holding up his thumb.

Christie felt her apron bib for a needle she kept there. Holding the boy by the daylight through the window, she picked at the splinter until it shot out. She kissed the dirty little finger.

I didn’t cry, he said proudly.

Now go on. Papper needs you.

Clint slipped out the back door. Christie had been heating an iron on the stove. She spit on it now to test it. It hissed. She started ironing a shirt.

I need to do my arning, Mrs. Willy said. She leaned toward Christie with hungry eyes. What’s that baby up to in there today?

Growing. Christie didn’t want to talk about her pregnancy. She didn’t want to satisfy the woman’s curiosity.

And how’s your man holding up?

He don’t sleep good, said Christie, aiming her iron down a sleeve.

Witches might be bothering him.

Witches?

Here’s what you do, said Mrs. Willy, untying the strings of her splint bonnet. Make him sleep with a meal sifter over his face. When the witches come along they’ll have to pass back and forth through ever hole in that sifter, and by the time they get done he’ll have had enough sleep.

Christie laughed until she had to catch hold of her side.

Don’t you believe that? asked Mrs. Willy. She was unsmiling, her face like a cut cabbage.

I can’t see James sleeping with a meal sifter on his face, Christie said through her laughter. "Anyway, I wouldn’t want witches working in and out of a meal sifter so close to my face while I was sleeping. I’d rather be wide awake."

Christie felt her laughter shrink like a spring flower wilting, as Mrs. Willy retied her bonnet strings.

You’ve got to get used to waking up through the night, Mrs. Willy said. That’s the Lord’s way of getting you used to being up with the baby in the night.

Does the Lord carry a meal sifter? Christie asked.

Why, what do you mean?

Oh, sometimes I can’t tell witches from devils, Christie said. Reckon it was witches that made our mule go crazy last summer? And what about that swarm of bees that got after Wad one spring? Christie paused to tighten a hairpin. She cast a glance at the ceiling. And that he-cow that busted out of his stall last week? Witches?

Christianna Wheeler! said Mrs. Willy disapprovingly, realizing she was being mocked. If you act ill towards people, that baby will have a ill disposition.

I can handle any witches that get in my house, said Christie, pushing her iron forcibly up the back of the shirt.

Well, Christie, when you went to camp meeting down yonder at Reelfoot, Alma said you got enough religion to get you through to your time. I hope so.

Christie didn’t want to think about Reelfoot. There was a lull, while the fire in their voices died down into embarrassment. Christie finished the shirt and lifted a sheet from the wash basket.

Mrs. Willy said, You need some new domestic. That sheet’s plumb full of holes.

This sheet’s old. I’m aiming to tear it up into diapers.

Christie was glad when the woman left. She made Christie nervous, watching her iron and waiting for a crumb of personal detail. Christie wouldn’t tell Mrs. Willy about the particular sensations—the way the blood flowed, the way all those creatures turned somersets in her stomach, the way she jolted awake. One night she had awakened after dreaming that her little sister Susan was alive again. In the dream, Nannie had been tugging on her nipple, but Nannie was Susan. The rhythm of the sucking had words, like words to a song. One of Susan’s first words was moo-moo, her word for milk. Awake, Christie remembered the time her mother made a pinafore for Susan, starching the ruffles and working the fine lace. But the dogs tore it off of Susan, chewing it to tatters. Mama had worked on that pinafore for most of one winter.

A few days after Mrs. Willy’s visit, James came in unexpectedly from the barn, slamming the kitchen door. He said, I heard you was nasty to Mrs. Willy.

Christie was standing at the stove, stirring cream corn. Mrs. Willy? She turned away from James and reached for a bowl on the shelf. Her heart pounded.

James said, Her sister’s telling how you laughed at her and hurt her feelings.

Christie set the bowl on the table and dumped the corn in it. She said, Some people like to talk.

For a second James’s face looked as hard as clay dirt baked in the sun. We have to live with all kinds, he said. You can’t just laugh to a person’s face, Chrissie.

Christie bent her head down. She was conscious of her swollen breasts, her own, not his or anyone else’s. James had never talked to her like this.

When we moved here, we promised we was going to get along with everybody, he said. You remember that.

Christie nodded. She was tired. She put her hands on her stomach, and she felt it move. James rarely got upset with her. He usually turned everything into a joke, he was so easy.

Since you and Mandy went down to Reelfoot, it’s like you come back a different woman, James said. I don’t know what’s got into you, Christie. You’re making my heart ache.

She turned, and her skirt tugged against her middle.

James’s face softened a little then. That baby’s coming sooner than we thought, he said, touching her stomach. He seemed shocked to realize her girth.

In bed that night, Christie couldn’t get comfortable. She felt monstrously heavy, as if with the weight of opinion. When she got up to relieve herself, she took the pot into the kitchen and tried to hit the side to muffle the sound. Afterward, she reached inside the warming box of the stove for a chicken wing. She gnawed the chicken, then searched for a piece of liver, the grease congealed with the crust. In the dark, she nibbled like a mouse, as quietly as possible, chewing breathlessly. She felt better. She heard Nannie stir on the pallet.

But the pregnancy dragged on, like the winter. Her mother couldn’t come from Dundee on account of her bronchitis. And Mama was afraid of the earthquake. Christie had to be helped back to her feet when she sat in her rocking chair. She was afraid of falling. She had to struggle up the steps to the porch. On New Year’s Day, she managed to cook field peas and turnip-greens-with-hog-jaws for good luck, but the cornbread burned. She hated being fat. She remembered an old woman in Dundee who told Christie’s mother, I had a fat place to come on my leg, just like a tit. The woman said, The doctor mashed it up real good and then drawed that fat out through a little hole.

Christie fell asleep early at night, curving away from James. She couldn’t sleep comfortably in any position except on her side, with a knee pulled up to support her belly. She curled her body around the baby, holding it as closely as possible—hooked to it from heartbeat to heartbeat, her blood flowing into her child.

3

THE CONTRACTIONS WERE MORE FREQUENT. CHRISTIE LOST TRACK of who was there. James still hadn’t come with the doctor. Amanda had returned with an ax, which she had placed under the bed to cut the pain.

I had five younguns and didn’t need no ax, said Alma.

We might need it, said Christie. To get the devils. To distract herself from the pain, she was pulling at a sheet tied by one corner to the bedpost.

Why, Christie, you do have an imagination, Hattie said, all smiles. Her wavy, gray hair framed her broad, gentle face.

Here, Mandy, take this rag and wash out that bucket, Alma said to Amanda. I’m going to scald it.

James oughter be back by now, Amanda said, holding the rag like a flower.

If you ask me, we can do without that doctor, said Alma. Doctors just want to get their eyes full.

It’s going to be a mighty big baby, but we’ve got plenty of time, said Hattie calmly. Her apron was so white it seemed to shout.

Chris, you better get up and walk some, said Alma. That baby ain’t gonna get out of there with you a-laying like that.

The talk went on around Christie, the sounds rising and falling senselessly, like the confusing messages of those preachers at Reelfoot. She wondered what would have happened if she hadn’t gone to Reelfoot Lake that day back in the fall. Amanda had talked her into going to the brush-arbor meeting there. Afterward, Amanda had told her not to feel ashamed, to take it easy and let the easiness transfer to the baby. That was the sort of idea Amanda believed in. Amanda wouldn’t let a post or tree come between two people walking along together. She took black cats seriously. She believed every tale she had ever heard about snakes. She had believed intensely in the earthquake that had been predicted, and she still feared it might happen. When she and Christie came home from Reelfoot, Amanda had told her husband that they had been possessed by the spirit. But in a good way, she said. It wasn’t the Devil—more like the Holy Ghost.

What do you know about the Holy Ghost? Wad had asked suspiciously.

I know he’s welcome in our house, said Amanda. That’s enough for me to know.

You better leave the Holy Ghost where he belongs—at church, said Wad.

Now, opening her eyes a crack, Christie glimpsed Amanda’s vacant stare. Wispy hair stuck out in little feathers all around Amanda’s face.

Christie pushed down on the bed with her elbows, trying to rise, but she was too heavy and she fell back against the bolster. She heard the pot of water boiling. She felt warm, wet rags between her legs. The clock pendulum swung insistently, loudly. She felt as though the rhythms inside her were trying to catch up to the clock’s. She saw a lantern light through the front window. James appeared, conferring with the women in low voices Christie couldn’t hear. Then he was standing over her, touching her steaming forehead. Was this the same man she had bounced around with long ago at a play-party in Dundee? The man who proposed marriage to her at another play-party, a year later?

The doctor’s on his way, he said. His palm was sweaty.

I don’t want him to touch me again, said Christie, pulling her hand out of James’s.

He can give you something to stop it from hurting so much.

The pain made her scream then, and James, looking frightened, backed away.

It’s supposed to hurt, Alma said sharply to James. Why, Hattie here can catch this baby. She’s delivered half the people on this road.

Now, hush, Aunt Alma, James said, frowning. This is a special case.

I ain’t going to stand in nobody’s way, said Hattie.

Christie cried, Please, God! She wanted it to be over and all the people gone. Clutching the sheet tied to the bedpost, she focused her eyes on a spiderweb in the window to the left of the fireplace—just a little thing, so frail and light, but capable of holding life.

I’m going down the road to meet the doctor, James said, backing away.

After he left, it was quiet for a while. The women waited and walked the floor. Their soft laughter and the burble of their talk were constant, like jelly simmering. Christie wished she could go to sleep and wake up delivered. She stared at bouquets of roses in the wallpaper. Through the doorway, she could see the Black Draught calendar on the kitchen wall, where she had recorded her due time with a penciled X—Saturday, the date of the full moon.

Hold on to me, Christie, said Amanda, grasping Christie’s wrist. Amanda’s hand was so light it felt like chicken bones.

Let me look again, said Hattie, raising the sheet and spreading Christie’s legs. It’s coming along. You’re pooching out more. That’s what we like to see. She prodded Christie’s abdomen with something soft. How does it feel now, hon? A little tight?

When Christie went to the doctor in town, he examined her privately while James waited in another room. James was reluctant to allow the doctor to touch her, but her condition was so alarming they knew it had to be done. And they agreed that when the time came for the birth, the doctor ought to be called. But now Christie dreaded seeing him again. Her mother had known a woman who died after a doctor pulled the baby out by its head with metal tools. The baby died too, it was so squashed and bruised.

Although she was deeply embarrassed to go out in public in her condition, James had taken her to town in the wagon. She was too big to climb up into the buggy, and Wad was afraid her weight would break a rod. She rode to town, half reclining in the wagon on a feather bed, her shoulders cushioned by pillows. She hugged her pumpkin body to herself under a quilt, hoping no one would see her. It was a muddy day, before the freezes began, and the wagon wheels ground through ruts, the mules heaving and jerking. She felt she would lose the baby if the trip went on much longer.

Dr. Foote’s office was above the drugstore, up a dark stairway that took her breath. He gave her a thin towel to put over her face, then instructed her to loosen her underclothes. She lay on a long table, listening to murmuring voices coming through the wall. He raised her dress and fastened it with clothes-pins onto some poles so that it made a barrier that kept them from seeing each other’s faces. His thick hands traveled the mound of her stomach, with her drawers still in place—a sensation that tickled and tingled. When James did that, it was more exciting than when the clothing was removed. It was anticipation that electrified her. The doctor did not seem to realize the effects of his explorations, and she held herself rigid, trying not to squirm away from the tickling. He ran his fingers over the curvature of her body. She had so much fat on her she did not know how he could feel the baby. He listened to her belly through a slim metal device that was cupped on each end. Then the worst occurred. He told her to part her legs. As she did, he pulled the drawers down and thrust his hand between her legs. The table was hard. Outside, a driver was running mules through town and there were loud shouts.

Slowly, the doctor worked his cold, thick finger up into her, while his other hand crawled over her belly.

When he finished, he disappeared into another room, allowing her to collect herself and rearrange her clothes. She kept thinking, if only she had not had her clothes on it would have been more bearable.

He reappeared, still not meeting her eyes, and spoke to her of fibroids growing inside her womb. He handed her a note for a preparation to shrink them. He said she should keep quiet and not jar herself during the last three months. There was the danger of hemorrhaging, he said. Fibroids sounded evil, she thought. The pharmacist downstairs said the preparation was the same thing as Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound, which was cheaper. They went home with a bottle of that instead. It tasted like Wad’s whiskey, which he claimed he kept for medicinal use.

If there were fibroids in her, they had not gone away.

Now Alma pushed several folded sheets underneath Christie. Each one could be removed as it got stained. Alma had also brought a stack of newspapers, for the same purpose. The room was warm, but Alma and Amanda rigged up a sheet overhead, tying a corner to each bedpost. The sheet made a tent to hold in the warmth. The light flickering through the sheet was peaceful. It made Christie think of the canopy of tobacco plants hanging from the rafters of the barn.

Her belly seized and cramped again, and she began to double up. Hattie persuaded her to open her legs and let her wash down there again with a scalding rag, and then she applied some slippery jelly.

The hardest thing is when they get hung, said Hattie. Sometimes it takes a long time to work them out.

Wad had a cow once with a calf to get hung, said Alma. He had to work that calf out like threading elastic through bloomer hems.

Don’t make me laugh, said Christie. It hurts.

Alma swished the rag into the bucket of hot water and squeezed it dry as she spoke. He needed one of them contraptions doctors use—like a post-hole digger with two or three pair of scissors opening out the sides.

You just relax, Christie, said Hattie kindly. Nobody’s going to use any sech thing on you.

Alma’s bluntness didn’t bother Christie. She had been with the Wheelers long enough now to know their crude ways. They were hard-skinned people. Christie’s children got teased by everyone in the family, and they always came bawling to her. James said they’d learn to take it, that it would make them tough. James was a Wheeler, after all. She hadn’t known what that meant until they moved here. The Wheeler clan had been a surprise to her, as if she’d gone out to the garden to pick English peas and found it full of goats.

Christie took Amanda’s hand when she passed near and signaled for her to bend down. Alma and Hattie were out in the kitchen. Christie whispered, I’m scared, Mandy.

Don’t you be scared. We’re right here with you, and we won’t let that doctor do nothing to hurt you. We’ll hold on to them knees.

If I live through this, I don’t want you to show me what I’ve got in here.

Now, Christie, don’t talk crazy.

Christie heard Alma sloshing rags in boiling water. Christie lowered her voice and said to Amanda, We never should have gone to Reelfoot.

No! Don’t think that. And don’t you say it.

I keep thinking about it.

No. Nothing happened. If you say it did, I’ll contradict you. Amanda squeezed Christie’s hand. Don’t worry, Christie.

Mrs. Willy came in then, carrying a satchel. I seen the light and knowed I’d better get in there! she said. She had a high voice like a little dog.

Get over here by the fire, Imogene, said Alma.

I brung some gunpowder to make the pain easy.

Howdy, Mrs. Willy, said Amanda. I thought you were at Maple Grove.

I was but I done got back. Joseph come riding up and yelled through the winder that Christie was a-fixing to have that baby any minute. He woke me up clean out of a dream. So I threw on my everyday clothes and didn’t even take time to find a clean apron. Mrs. Willy was tall, despite her humped back—like a tree that had lost one of its twin trunks and the stump had smoothed over with time.

Christie closed her eyes and let the women go about their business. She heard a screech owl outside, its mournful whinny like a lonesome horse. She enjoyed hearing the cry of a screech owl. She had always liked to imagine the freedom of being able to flutter over the land. When she was a child, her mother told her a story about a screech owl who had lost her husband in a barn fire. The owl went traveling through the night, telling her mournful story to all the night creatures who would listen. But her husband had not perished, after all; he had flown away to safety, carrying some mice and barn swallows with him. He thought she had burned up in the fire. Their pitiful whinnies crossed each other in the night until finally they found each other again. Christie had told her own children that story, but she was not as good at making the owl’s cry as her mother had been. The screech owl was scary, but the hoot owl brought good news. The hoot owl brought babies. For several days now, Nannie and Clint and Jewell had been listening for the hoot owl.

Waiting for James to come in with the doctor, Christie tried to endure the continuing contractions by naming every item she had seen in the drugstore: Lydia Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound, the Wine of Cardui, the cotton and gauze and bluing. She visualized the shining oak counters and the tall, glass-fronted cabinets, filled with hair tonics, worm medications, liver pills, syrups and salves and potions. She kept listening for the doctor’s horse. She thought about a time back in Dundee when she and James were newly married. One evening he came home from court day, riding up proudly on a chestnut horse, carrying two glass cake-stands just alike, with designs of grapevines entwining the pedestals and grapes clustered on the covers. The cake-stands were so beautiful they made her cry.

It was past two o’clock, and James was still outdoors. The doctor hadn’t come. During a lull in the labor, Christie was trying to name as many countries as she could think of, when the pain grabbed her and she squeezed so tightly and pushed so violently that the baby popped out. Hattie had gone to the back porch for something, and Alma was working with the fireplace, and Mrs. Willy was watching out the window for James and the doctor. Amanda was in a rocking chair sewing a button on her dress.

It’s here, said Christie, falling back, drained.

Well, I’ll be, cried Alma, bumping into Mrs. Willy in their rush to catch the baby. Why, it’s little! It’s the least little baby I ever did see!

4

CHRISTIE DIDN’T FEEL THE SCISSORS CLIP THE BABY FROM THE CORD or the twine being jerked in a knot, but she could feel the baby being taken away. Hearing his cries and muffled whimpers, she struggled to lift her head just as Hattie thrust the baby at her. Hattie had wrapped him loosely in warm outing flannel and rubbed drops of olive oil on his face. He cried louder, his face scrunching up like a shriveled apple. The little bundle rested against her cheek and shoulder. She moved her head to cradle him against her. He was tiny, no bigger than a screech owl. The owl’s cry echoed in her mind. Her belly seized again then, and the pain clutched her for a full minute before releasing. She held on to the bedpost with one hand, and with the other she touched the little body beside her. He was squirming and moving his head from side to side. His lips were narrow and parted, the forehead sharp and angled, the head coming to a slight point in a cap of wet, black down. Mrs. Willy wiped a red streak from his neck. Christie pulled at the blanket around him and gently curved her hand beneath him. The baby was hers, her creation. Yet he wasn’t at all what she expected. Mrs. Willy moved back, giving off a sour wintertime odor of sweat and dirty clothes and onions, overlaid with a sweet perfume. Christie had washed herself all over earlier in the evening when the pains began. She had put on clean clothes. Alma always smelled like food; layers of bacon grease and fried meat odors permeated her clothing. James smelled like hay and manure and fresh grass. The baby had no separate smell—just Christie’s own body, radiating warmth, the hot smell of blood from between her legs.

Let me have him again, said Hattie. I’ll wash him some more and stir his circulation.

Don’t get him cold, Alma warned. She stood by the back door across the kitchen while Hattie washed him, so that nobody would open it while the baby was exposed. The baby gave out a loud squall when the wet rag touched him.

He’s a Wheeler, all right, said Alma.

He’s got the teeniest fingers, Mrs. Willy said, touching the baby’s hand. I believe he’s the little-bittiest baby that ever was. No wonder you had him that quick a-laying down.

Where’s Mandy? said Christie, turning her head.

Right here, hon, said Amanda, moving into view. He’s so little I’m afraid to touch him. You sure surprised me, Christie! I’ve been standing here like a goose.

That belly’s still a punkin under there, said Hattie. She wrapped the baby in outing and set him beside Christie’s breast. Then she pulled the quilt up protectively.

He wants to suck, said Christie, watching the little mouth making blind motions, gaping like a baby bird.

Tell him to go right ahead. I’m going to check down there again, said Hattie. She moved the sheet and parted Christie’s legs. You’re still wide open, she said, wiping around with a fresh rag. And that belly ain’t gone down any. We might have a time a-getting that afterbirth out.

It’s them fibroids, Amanda said. They just squeezed in on this little baby and about smothered him!

It’s not really fibroids, said Christie. There’s something else in there, a-growing.

Hush, said Amanda, bringing her finger to her lips. Dr. Foote said it was fibroids, now, didn’t he, Christie?

Amanda helped her open her shift and scoot the baby in place. He was so light he could be held in a hand. Christie felt him begin to draw, but the milk didn’t come. The baby swigged and lost his hold. He sucked at air. She tried to feed the nipple back into his mouth. He caught it for a moment, then turned aside, a bubble of yellow between his lips.

It’s there, she said, easing back against her bolster. It’s there.

The baby had thick, black hair and hands tiny as baby bird wings. His fingers worked, grasping easily, as if they were destined for some handiwork, like carpentry. The little hands flexed as she guided the nipple into his gaping mouth again and he took hold. His features had that early misshapen look—the eyebrows and forehead lumpy, the forehead pushed back. The skin