This Life Is in Your Hands_ One Dream, Sixty Acres, and a Family Undone - Melissa Coleman [92]
Spring walking-to-the-bus-alone mornings were the quiet of the day waiting for itself to happen. You could hear the morning’s beginnings, little clinks and shushes like someone getting up early and fixing breakfast before anyone else is awake. I hung the heels of my sneakers from my fingers, swinging them just enough to keep balance with the pace of walking and not too much to send them flying. Telonferdie joined me, chattering about this and that, and the morning sun slanted through the trees in zigzags as the pale sky brightened to Heidi’s-eye blue. The path sweated, hard and bony here, loose and cedary there, air warming, humid, and fat. Passing from the forest, I crossed under the scent of lilac trees by the Nearings’ barn, past the sounds of Scott working behind the stone wall of the garden, and down to the bottom of the driveway, where I waited for the bus. Telonferdie drifted away when I unknotted my sneakers and put them on, my socks soaking up the muddiness to remain slightly damp all day.
On the days when Mama and Heidi walked me to the bus, I had to keep my shoes on and we sang Mama’s favorite songs along the paths. “Tis the gift to be simple, tis the gift to be free,” Mama belted out to the audience of the forest. “Tis the gift to come round where you ought to be.” Or she sang Heidi’s favorite, a round, with her nickname Ho in it: “Hey ho, nobody at home, no meat, no drink, no penny have I none, but still will I be merrrrry. Hey ho, nobody at home.” They came with me less now that Mama was so pregnant. The last time Mama had to stop three times along the path to pee.
“Mama?” I asked. “Are you peeing again?”
She looked up at me squarely from her squatting position, eyes black in the shade of the tree.
“The baby is taking all the room, so there’s no place for pee. You’ll see. When you’re pregnant someday, you’ll have to pee a lot, too.”
While waiting for the bus, I worried about what would happen if I had to pee a lot like Mama. It would be no good, though I enjoyed going to the school bathroom, with its clean tiles and running water. The problem was that I liked to use lots of toilet paper to make up for what we didn’t have at home, my favorite trick being to roll the soft paper around my hand, pretending it was a bandage. I used the bandaged hand to wipe, dropped it in the water, then bandaged the other hand and did it again. When I flushed, the white wads swirled down toward the hole in the bottom. One time, however, the water slowed, the whirlpool disappeared and the bandages rose in the yellow water toward the top of the bowl. Afraid it would overflow, I ran back to class. After that Mrs. Grindle made an announcement. She said we had to CONSERVE. That meant not using too much toilet paper and not flushing too much. She was looking right at me when she said it.
On May 14, a Friday, there was a party for a large group of students and teachers to celebrate the completion of the semester at College of the Atlantic, where Papa continued to teach his farming course. Papa asked Anner to help with the cooking, since Mama was more or less pinned to the padded benches by the weight of her belly. There’d been a full moon the night before, and she felt its pull, drawing the waters from her. The house was chattering with guests waiting for dinner when Mama motioned to Papa.
“I’m going into labor,” she said. “I need space.”
“Let’s get you to the hospital,” Papa replied. The plan was, as with Heidi, to go to Dr. Brownlow in Blue Hill for the birth.
“No,” Mama said. She’d been in for a checkup that morning, and though she was having contractions, she hadn’t mentioned them to Dr. Brownlow. He’d proclaimed her and the baby in great shape, giving her the confidence to carry out her secret plan. Over the past few weeks she’d been getting ready, sterilizing sheets in the oven, acquiring clamps and other items from a nurse friend.
“What do you mean?” Papa asked, hesitating to raise his voice around the guests, but Mama could see the fear in his eyes.
“Just get everyone out of here,” she said, suddenly in charge.