“Who is the father?”
“White boy named Buck Harold. But it don’t matter. What I’m sayin’ is Darryl didn’t do that baby no harm.”
I nodded.
“Baby didn’t belong to Darryl and I don’t, like, belong to him, know what I’m sayin’?”
“Tell me what happened to your baby.”
“I was staying at Darryl’s place—well, it weren’t his place but he was living there, like, in one of the rooms. So, one day, like, I start having pains and I figure my time come. But the pain just keeps getting worse and worse, and nothing happens. I knew something was wrong.”
“No one got you medical care?”
She laughed, looked at me like I’d suggested she apply to Yale.
“After that night and the next day, finally the baby came out, but it was messed up.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was blue and it wouldn’t take no breath.”
Her eyes glistened. Looking away, she swiped the heel of a palm across each cheek.
A steel shaft entered my chest. I believed her story. I felt pain for this young woman and for her unbearable loss. Pain for all the Tamelas of this world and their babies.
I reached out and laid my hand on hers. She pulled back, dropped both hands to her lap.
“You put the baby’s body in the woodstove?” I asked gently.
She nodded.
“Darryl told you to do that?”
“No. Don’t know why I did it, I jus’ did it. Darryl still believin’ it’s his baby, getting off on the fatherhood trip.”
“I see.”
“Nobody did nothin’ to that baby.” Tears glistened on her face, and her bony chest heaved below the red halter top. “It was just born wantin’ to be dead.”
Tamela wiped her cheeks again, anger and sorrow betrayed by the roughness of the gesture. Then she curled her fingers and rested her forehead on her fists.
“You couldn’t revive it?”
Tamela could only shake her head.
“Why did you go into hiding?”
Tamela looked over her knuckles at Geneva.
“Go on,” Geneva said. “We’re here. Now you tell her.”
Tamela drew several unsteady breaths.
“One day Darryl gets to fighting with Buck. Buck tells him I been playin’ him the fool and the baby was his. Darryl goes batshit, decides I killed my own baby to dis him. He say he gonna find me and mess me up bad.”
“Where did you go?”
“Cousin’s basement.”
“Your father is there now?”
Two head shakes.
“Daddy’s went over to his sister in Sumter. She drove up and got him, but she won’t have nothin’ to do with us. Say we the devil’s own offspring, and we gonna burn in hell.”
“Why have you come to see me?”
Neither sister would raise her eyes to mine.
“Geneva?”
Geneva kept her gaze on the fingers curled around her Coke.
“We gonna tell her,” she said, her voice flat.
Tamela gave a suit-yourself shrug.
“This mornin’ my cousin is poundin’ on the door, yellin’ her man looking at my sister too much, yellin’ at us to get out. Daddy’s mad at us, our own kin’s mad at us, and Darryl’s wantin’ to kill us.”
Geneva’s head was down so I couldn’t see her face, but the trembling in her ponytail revealed her desperation.
“We gotta leave where we was, we can’t go home, case Darryl get out and come looking for us.” Her voice trailed off. “We run out of places.”
“I ain’t—” Tamela started, but couldn’t finish.
