“Do your dreams come true?”
“I don’t know; it’s the first one I’ve had like it. It was so real. I saw my momma and the baby, except she was a child. I need your help. I have to find a couple to adopt her. I’ll pay for everything—”
“Won’t your husband notice the money gone?”
“I have savings.” Kitty hadn’t spent a dime of her own money in years; Nathan was generous and gave Kitty full access to his accounts even before they married. “The baby deserves to benefit from her parentage, but I don’t want to see her. No one can know I’m her mother.”
“What are you going to tell Mr. Nathan?”
Kitty hung her head. “That she died.”
Nellie sat on her bed. “What about telling him the truth? He seems reasonable.”
Kitty wasn’t so sure. “He’ll never understand me having lied to him since the day we met.” Thinking of Emma, Lucy, and the others, Kitty added, “It’s not just about me.” Kitty began to cry, and Nellie grabbed her hands to bear some of her pain.
“As Negro women”—Nellie emphasized the plural—“we make hard decisions.” She held Kitty’s hands tighter and began to pray aloud.
Kitty’s eyes fell to the ground, but she couldn’t close them. She said grace over meals and quick thank-yous when something went her way but never at length. She wanted to feel the passion that made Nellie’s brow furrow and the cadence of her speech change, but Kitty had stopped knowing what to say to God years ago. She felt ashamed to try now that she needed help. She also wasn’t sure it would do any good: although she and Hazel went to church, instead of scripture, it had been their favorite poem they recited before bed each night, like a prayer.
Nellie waited for an opportunity to induce Kitty and, in the meantime, went to Blair House, disguised as an adoption agency. Maude dressed as a White nun to meet with her. Just in case, they had to find a couple who understood they had only a fifty-fifty chance of gaining a child. Paramount was that the parents’ identities stay concealed from all parties.
* * *
Call it luck, or destiny: Nathan announced a trip to the desert to check on a production two weeks before the baby was due. He would only be about three hours away.
Nellie made Kitty a tea to help start labor as soon as he left. They hadn’t yet found a home for the baby, but his short absence made the delivery imperative. Labor lasted nineteen hours. Kitty, already proven to have no capacity for pain, developed a rash on her arms and chest that made her skin look like raw meat. Finally, the baby—a girl—took her first breath in Nellie’s arms.
Nellie handed her to Kitty, who pulled the blanket away from her body to examine her. She did, in fact, have Hazel’s cocoa tone, as in the dream. Her lashes were so long they rested on her cheekbones. “She’s beautiful. Her name is Sarah.” She had a circular birthmark in the middle of her chest that contained smaller, freckled shades of brown like God had been using her chest like a palette.
“His mother’s name, right?” Nellie said.
“Right, so it can’t be changed.” Kitty traced the baby’s tiny ear. “Don’t worry, I’m always going to take care of you.” The baby wrinkled her nose, as if she didn’t appreciate the interruption from her dreams. When Kitty kissed the top of her head, she began to faintly snore. She looked, though, like no one Kitty knew. For a second it made her feel better about what she had to do.
“Will you take her?” Kitty asked.
“I’ll wake you when it’s time to feed her.”
“Thank you.” Nellie put Sarah down in the basket she’d set up. “I know,” Kitty continued, “we’ve been talking about finding someone—but I’d prefer you over anyone.”
Nellie stared at Kitty as though she didn’t understand what she’d said.
“It’s the same deal. I’ll provide for her and I don’t want to see her. There’s no reason for us to be in contact after you leave.”
Considering it, Nellie said, “Maybe she’ll be good for us”—referring, Kitty understood, to the state of her marriage.
“Will he be good to my child?”
Nellie looked offended. “He’s a good man, Kitty.”
“But does he want a child?”
“He doesn’t know what he wants, but it’ll be hard for him to be miserable with a beautiful baby smiling at him.”
“What will you tell people?”
Nellie paused. “That she’s my sister’s child, who died.”
“Is that true?”
“No, but we’re not close. She’ll never visit.”
The baby whimpered, and Nellie jumped up to get her. She cuddled Sarah at her neck. Unable to witness her easy assumption of the role of mother, Kitty reached for the water on her nightstand, trying to ignore the pain, the flood of aching despair brought on by a loss that hadn’t even occurred yet.
Kitty spent the next two days with Sarah in the nursery. Nathan, who had always thought the baby would be a girl, had already mounted yellow block letters with her name on the wall.
“Oh, Nellie.” Kitty got tears in her eyes when she saw it. “Can her middle name be Hazel?” Kitty asked. “It’s my mother’s name.”
“How sweet. Is she still alive?”
“Lives in North Carolina.”
“Maybe we’ll go there one day. I’d be honored to meet your mother.”
Kitty didn’t have the energy to even pretend like it was possible. Her fame prevented her ability to blend in, even if she were brave enough to go back.
Kitty indulged Sarah’s every whim and murmur, fed her as soon as she wanted to eat, and watched her sleep. It was cute the way she wiggled her mouth and nose like a little piglet. Her eyes finally opened, and while she hadn’t inherited the blue-gray halo, she fixated on Kitty as though she was trying to commit her face to memory.
The easy words of the poem her mother used to recite to her also quieted Sarah. Pleased to have remembered it, she felt as though her mother was right there. As Sarah dreamed, Kitty told her the things she would probably never get the chance to say again. It took all night to explain why.
Clifford came first thing in the morning. Kitty gave Sarah to Nellie the first time she reached for her. Then she shut herself inside the nursery, leaving Nellie to let herself out. She locked it when Nathan came home after receiving the urgent message from Nellie at his hotel. He banged on the door, begging her to let him in, worried about what her grief could push her to do. She slid her fingers underneath the door to comfort him. Letting him console her for this was too much to take.
Nathan refused details of the baby’s death, even when Nellie called to offer them. He didn’t want to see the body or have a funeral. He had the nursery furniture covered and the door and windows locked. The house sold that way years later.
Kitty’s unit came by with condolences from Blair House but controlled the conversation, committed to, it seemed, a set of previously agreed-upon topics to ensure no lulls and, thus, no opportunities for the truth. Kitty was relieved not to be asked; she didn’t want to tell any more lies. They may have had their suspicions, but as always, it was safer they didn’t know.
She didn’t make plans to see them soon or suggest it. Sarah had changed her willingness to take risks; she had to be around to provide for her. Regardless of what happened to Kitty, they all could see the change. Lucy encouraged her to focus on her marriage and get back to work. Kitty never went to the mansion again but would become one of Blair House’s most lavish donors.