her pillow.
Ruby stomped her foot in front of her. “School for one, girl. But I guess you forgot about that. I ran into Rose Haydel today, and she told me that you haven’t gone in months. I argued with her. I called her a two-faced low-life lying sack of potatoes right there in front of everyone, said she was just trying to spite me and my family by making up garbage, but then her worst enemy got in my face and repeated her, said everybody knew it.” Ruby paused then, seemingly for effect. “I looked around the circle that had formed, and it was true, everyone was nodding their heads. God, Evelyn.” Her voice rose and it didn’t seem as if she were putting on a show anymore. “I’ve never been so humiliated in my entire life. I walked all the way home thinking about what they’d said, going over it in my mind. I thought the worst part was how foolish I looked out there, but the more I thought about it, the worst part was that you’ve been walking with me every day for two months just pretending, and for what, all in the service of a lie?”
Ruby walked closer to the bed now, so close she could touch Evelyn if she stuck her hand out.
“What kind of sickness has crept in your brain that you would do something like that? And to me?” Her voice was breaking now. “Answer me. I thought we were close. Sisters, yes, but more than that, I thought we were friends.”
“I didn’t say we weren’t.” Evelyn still faced the pillow.
Ruby yanked it from under her face and threw it at her. “You didn’t say we weren’t. You didn’t say we weren’t. Girl, wake up. Either you’re heartsick or you’re brain-dead or you’re—”
She stopped talking, surveying her sister’s body. She shook her head. “Can’t be.” She pulled up Evelyn’s nightgown without a fight, gasped at what she found.
“Oh, my God,” Ruby whispered.
Evelyn could see tears spring up in her eyes.
“Oh, my dear Lord,” she repeated, still shaking her head.
The relief that half the weight of all she’d been carrying was finally in someone else’s hands sent Evelyn’s words sputtering out. “I haven’t heard from Renard in weeks. I don’t know if he’s dead or alive. And even if he is alive, what if he changed his mind about me? Or what if it’s not me, if he just doesn’t want a baby?” She pulled her sister to her, buried her head in her shirt, still talking but incoherent to her own ears.
“Shh, shh.” Ruby rubbed her back. “You don’t want Daddy to hear you.”
“He’s going to have to know eventually, Ruby,” Evelyn almost screamed.
“Yeah, but not like this. Mama can help us figure out how to piece it together for him.”
Evelyn thought she’d rather have Daddy find out because one of his doctor friends delivered the baby than have him learn about it from their mother. All her life, she’d tried to combat that woman’s low opinion of her, convince her she was okay, not better than Ruby but equal. Now the thought that Mother might have been right meant something worse than inferiority. It meant that in all Evelyn’s searching for esteem, she had missed the lesson; she had tried to do things differently in choosing nursing, even in pursuing Renard, but she had ended up in the very same place her mother had predicted. Ruby, on the other hand, might go out there and do something big with her life. Whether she did or not was beside the point; she still had the chance to, and even the freedom of that desire was such a privilege.
Still, Evelyn didn’t try to convince her sister to keep silent. What would have been the point? She was six months along, and a doctor had never looked at her. If, heaven forbid, Renard didn’t come back, her mother would be the one to teach her how to bathe and feed a baby; her mother who had failed her would be most privy to Evelyn’s own failure, and that, more than the uncertainty of her situation, caused her to sob. Ruby stood and hurried for the door. A few minutes later, Evelyn’s mother walked in alone. When she saw Evelyn, she ran to her, pulled her up into her arms.
“La pauv’ piti, it’s okay, Mama’s going to make it okay.”
Evelyn shook her head. “I’m so sorry, Mama. You were right, I’m so sorry.”
“Hush your mouth, girl. That’s a life in there, a precious, precious life. And God deemed you worthy enough to carry it.”
Jackie
Fall 1986
The next morning Terry got up to make blueberry pancakes, bacon, and eggs. He dressed the baby so Jackie had more time to focus on herself, iron her clothes, set her hair with hot rollers, apply a little lipstick on her cheeks for blush. People at the nursery noticed the change.
Her mother was the first one to comment. “Jackie Marie, are you humming in this classroom?” This during her break as Jackie stapled leaves and pumpkins to the bulletin board.
“No, ma’am,” she said on instinct, though she supposed she had been. “It was just a song that I heard on the radio this morning,” she added when she realized her lie wouldn’t hold.
“Oh, I know, I recognized Anita Baker. But”—Mama paused, smiling—“is there something you need to tell me about? A new friend maybe?” She let her smile extend.
Mama had been pushing Jackie to start seeing new people, at least go out with her old friends, but she hadn’t been ready to socialize, not then. This morning, though, she felt like calling all her girlfriends, inviting them over for one of her fish fries.
“No, Mama,” she said, “just getting back into the swing of things, I guess.”
Her mother paused, looked up at her on the ladder with her eyebrows arched. “Well, good, then,” she said. “That’s real good. I can’t tell you how happy that makes me,” and she clutched her heart.
She stood there for a minute longer, waiting to hear more, but there was no way Jackie was about to tell her what the real source of the change was. She remembered the last time Terry came back, that he stayed months, that he’d said all the right things, meant them even, that the baby had started to go to him just like he went to Jackie. But that didn’t stop Terry from leaving, that didn’t stop her from having to tell her family that he was gone, that didn’t stop Sybil from saying I told you so, and Jackie would be damned if she put herself in that position again.