The word seemed to stick in his mouth. Mama had braced herself for it, but it was taking too long to be born.
“Pregnant,” she said, finishing his sentence before spinning herself around and walking toward the kitchen.
This house seemed unsteady to her; the little blue cups in the china cabinet tinkled with her steps. She felt the eyes of the boys on her back as she made her way. It reminded her of the last time she had been here, when she came with her cousin Diane, who was not pregnant, who didn’t even like Uncle Raleigh anymore. The house seemed different now, brighter. The days had been much shorter then; by 6 p.m. it was dark out and she could hardly see Daddy’s face. He didn’t stammer at al when asking her if she had ever kissed a boy. She said yes, although she hadn’t. He asked her if she had done “anything else,” and she nodded. And now she wondered why she had bobbed her head in that lie. He had seemed older then than he did now, three months later. Then he hadn’t been parroting what al his mother had told him to do, what she had planned for him to eat.
On that earlier day, it had seemed like he and Uncle Raleigh were the men of this house, that they lived here by themselves.
Mama recal ed the black hairs sprouting from Uncle Raleigh’s Adam’s apple as he had stirred liquor into the concoction in Grandma Bunny’s punch bowl. The little glass cups hooked around the sides of the crystal bowl tapped against each other with a noise like holiday bel s. It was a dignified object, this punch bowl, the sort of thing that Miss Sparks liked to talk about when she was teaching table manners. According to Miss Sparks, this was how you could tel the difference between crystal and regular glass. Mama had insisted on drinking her punch in the proper dainty-handled cup, laughed, and asked for more. The punch was somehow sweet and hot at the same time.
As he refil ed her cup, she decided that she would have liked Raleigh, had her cousin not already claimed him for herself. She liked the way he always asked everybody how they were doing.
“How are you feeling?” he said to Laverne for no reason at al .
By this time, Daddy was sitting close to her and fondling her hair. She enjoyed the feel of his breath on her neck and even the sweet liquory smel .
He placed a tingly kiss on the very spot under her hair that he’d been warming with his breath. “Is that fine?” he asked her.
She nodded, feeling wonderful and wanting more punch. She held out her cup, but Daddy took it away from her and put it on a cherry wood end table. “Don’t drink too much,” he said.
“You don’t want to get sick.”
“Okay,” she said, obedient as a child.
“Do you want to see my room?” Daddy asked her.
“Okay,” she said again as he took her hand and pul ed her to her feet.
Her cousin Diane, leaning against Uncle Raleigh’s shoulder, said, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
The idea of this made Mama’s head whirl. Diane was three years older and the possibilities seemed endless. She laughed again.
“James,” Diane said, “take it easy with her. She’s just fourteen and she’s not used to drinking.”
“Fifteen,” Mama said, remembering the lie she’d told earlier in the afternoon. “Fifteen, remember?”
Uncle Raleigh said, “James knows how to act. Don’t worry.”
Diane put her hands on Uncle Raleigh’s head. “You know you got some good hair,” she said.
Mama pul ed on Daddy’s arm and he led her to the bedroom. “Let’s give the lovebirds some privacy.”
It was a setup, a plan between the boys. They hadn’t meant to change her life forever, to make a baby and provoke a premature marriage. It was just about the boys hoping to “get a little trim.” These were Daddy’s words to her, later that night after they’d eaten the dinner she’d ruined, chicken burnt at the skin, bloody at the bone. Daddy told her this that night, as they lay in the single beds, each on the other side of the gap. Mama slept in the clothes she’d gotten married in, her school blouse and skirt. She removed her shoes, but not her socks, and climbed into the bed. Daddy, she assumed was in his shorts and shirtless, but she didn’t know for sure because she had turned her face away when he emerged from the bathroom.
She didn’t face him until he was under the covers, less than a foot away from her. His body smel ed of strong soap and his breath carried the odor of baking soda.
“When is Miss Bunny coming back home?” Mama wanted to know. She was unsure what to think about this woman, Miss Bunny, whose instructions had led to the fiasco that was dinner and had caused her to spend what was left of the evening washing James’s school shirts with lye soap and cranking the water out before hanging them on the line in her backyard while stray cats brushed against her legs. Her hands were stil tender and she rubbed them together, concentrating on the throbbing.
“It’s natural if you don’t want to sleep in the bed with me right away,” Daddy said. God bless Miss Bunny for words to her son, letting him know not to expect too much from his young wife. Her own mother had urged her not to be shy. “You don’t want him to change his mind. Then where wil you be?” Mattie Lee had said. “I’m not raising a baby for you, Laverne. I’m too old to start over.”
“James,” Mama said, “did you know that this is what was going to happen?”
He didn’t say anything. He only breathed deeply with his eyes closed. Mama studied his face, which was softer- looking without his glasses. She observed the dip in his upper lip and the heat rash that stretched across his forehead. “Did you know?”
“Let me cut off the light,” he said.
Daddy threw the covers off himself and knelt in the center of his bed, reaching upward for the frayed string connected to the yolk of light suspended from the ceiling. He was shirtless and under his arms grew patches of nappy hair; his chest was smooth as a crystal bal . He jerked the cord, kil ed the light. She could make out the shape of him as he settled himself back into bed.
“It wasn’t supposed to be you. Your cousin Diane, she met R-r-raleigh at the picture show a day, maybe two days, before . . . you know, what al happened. She said she liked him and he asked her to come over to the house.
