Aunt Ruby had a new friend, a man in his fifties, and Mama had heard Aunt Ruby say she’d never known love until now. MawMaw wasn’t looking good. Mama was thinking about bringing her up next time she came, if she was doing better. It would have been too much this time, with the baby too.
“Oh, but she did send you one of her jelly cakes. For your birthday. You should get it any day now. Make sure you call her and tell her you enjoyed it.”
Malik started to fuss, and Jackie stood. “I got his bottle right here. They only let me bring in two.” She handed it to T.C., and he popped the cap off and pushed the nipple into the baby’s mouth. Malik leaned back as he rested, let his head fall into the crook of T.C.’s elbow. T.C. smoothed his palm over his son’s thick eyebrows, marveled at his eyelashes, how much the baby looked like him, yet he was his own distinct being. T.C. bent down and kissed him.
When the baby finished eating, T.C. lifted him to his shoulder and burped him.
“Like riding a bicycle huh? You never forget,” his mama asked.
T.C. laughed. “Naw, I guess not.” T.C. kept him propped up there on his shoulder for a while, rubbing his back.
“Well, I need to get him back by four. That’s when his mama gets off work,” she said.
“Okay.” T.C. sat the baby on his knees again. “Daddy will see you next time, lil’ man. Daddy was so happy to see you. Daddy loves you, okay?” He handed him off, gripped his mama to him.
“Thanks, Ma,” he said, “for everything.”
Walking back to his cell was as hard as he feared it would be. As euphoric as he’d felt holding his son, the feeling had been dug out when he gave him back, compounded by his fear that bringing Malik to this hellhole even for a visit had somehow bound the kid to the place. No, he told himself. This life wasn’t acceptable for his seed, and T.C. would do whatever he needed to do to ensure that.
He ducked into his cell, lay down on his bed, remembering the way his son had looked up at him, with so much innocence and trust.
Malik didn’t know who his daddy was yet. And T.C. supposed he didn’t know who he was yet either. In his son’s eyes he saw so many possibilities. Maybe Malik would know him to be a warrior, someone who turned the odds on their head. Maybe he would see him as just a good man, and, yeah, he’d made some mistakes, but he loved his family, he was there for his son. For a second, T.C. could see himself through the same lens. He bathed in that vision, let it wash over him, closed his eyes. The longer he dwelled inside it, the more he could imagine it being real.
Evelyn
Winter 1945
Seven months in, Evelyn wore a big coat, but she still thought Renard might walk right past her. She’d been at the station longer than she expected. The train was late pulling in, and she’d had to wait for the white passengers to disembark before she saw Renard hustle out of the baggage car and down the steps. When she caught sight of him, she called his name, softly at first, then when he didn’t hear her, she stretched her voice past the point she was most comfortable. He turned toward her from where he’d already advanced near the station lobby, in his crisp and fitted uniform and his hat that made him seem like a different man altogether.
She forced herself to look at his eyes; his eyes were what would tell her how he really perceived her, thirty pounds heavier, breathing hard, leaning back and wobbling, with the weight of his child inside her. When she caught them, she thought she caught a glimpse of his soul too, that it was that which pressed his eyes against his sockets so hard it seemed as if they might break through.
He ran over to her. She didn’t have time to move herself. When he reached her, she collapsed into his chest, clung to the sandy pocket flap on his uniform shirt. There was an assortment of smells, some from the station, some from his coat, some from him, all congregating to hide his main one, the smell she had been carrying in her mind of him. She burrowed her head through his clothes now that he was in front of her, searching for it, but it wouldn’t be found.
“What’s the matter with you, girl?” he asked, looking down at her shaking her head back and forth like a dog in a hole.
“I can’t smell you.”
“What?” He was smiling, but he moved his head a touch away from her.
“Different countries got different smells, baby,” he said laughing.
“But you’re not a different country. You’re just yourself.”
“Yeah, I’m still myself.” He raised her head up as close to his as it would stretch and kissed her. He pressed her into him, then pushed her back.
“What’s this?” he asked, eyeing her middle, putting the context together but not so certain he didn’t need an explanation.
She just stared at him, objective and resolute. This was the moment when she would learn if her daddy had been right.
“You remember what we did last time you were here?” she asked.
“Do I remember? It’s all I could think about back there.” Then a smile spread slowly on his face.
“You serious, baby?” He opened her coat wider and squealed. “Baby, you serious?” he repeated. He tried to spin her around but stopped himself, then patted her belly with the flat palm of his hand.
He jumped up on the station platform. “Yes!” he shouted. People turned their heads, but he only repeated it. “Yes.”
Evelyn still couldn’t let herself believe his reaction.
“You mean it?” she asked. “You’re happy? You’re not upset?”
“Not upset? Baby this is what I always wanted, what I’d go to bed dreaming about since I was a boy, and for the woman to be carrying it to be you, well, that’s more than I could have dreamed, that’s more than I could have imagined deserving.”
He marched her straight to her father’s house with her hand cupped in his. When Mama said her daddy was out tending to a breached baby, Renard just waited, devoured every dish Mama offered, drank her tea, nibbled on her petit fours.
“I know you must be hungry being away all this time,” Mama said. “What was the food like over there?”
“Slop,” he said, “nothing like this.”
She smiled. “Well, you’re home now.”
When her father came in, he didn’t seem to sink at the sight of them; if anything, he just seemed resigned.
He changed clothes and washed his hands before he walked back out to the table.
Renard stood to greet him, and when he sat back down, Evelyn gripped her man’s hands under the table. She could feel them shaking, and she expected his voice to shake too the way it did in those early days, but it came out like steel.
“I know you must be disappointed. You’ve done so well for yourself, and you expected your daughter to uphold the standard you set.”
Her daddy didn’t say anything, only nodded, but he kept his eyes on Renard’s, and that was more than she’d seen him do in the last few months.
“Then we go and embarrass you further with this.” He pointed to Evelyn’s stomach.