Margaret Sexton: A Kind of Freedom

Jackie parked in front of the house on the corner with the baby-blue trim. She stepped out of the car, lifted T.C. She strained under his weight, though it made her proud that at six months, he was more than twenty-five pounds. It was only eight thirty in the morning, but she could hear the infants and toddlers shrieking before she reached the sign: action academy in bold red letters above the front door. She walked inside, sidestepped the babies upright in high chairs, grits dribbling down their chins. Once she dropped T.C. with her Aunt Ruby, she climbed upstairs to the Dwarfs Room, the toddler class she’d named after “Snow White.” She had wanted to keep her baby with her, but her daddy had said it wouldn’t be good for business, that the customers would think she was favoring her own child and start to look for signals of it, unchanged diapers, dirty faces.

“But you know I wouldn’t favor T.C. over anybody. I treat them all like they’re my own.”

“I know that. But you know how these new mothers are, any excuse they can think of to complain. They’re mad they can’t mind their own children, so everything becomes our fault.”

Jackie had argued with him a little longer, but he’d had the final word because he was probably right; he always was, wasn’t he? Anyway, what was she going to do? Quit with a newborn, no child support, and rent due? She hadn’t gone to law school like her sister, Sybil, and, yeah, she graduated from Xavier, but she’d applied for seven jobs after college and never got past the interview phases. She’d come home excited after each one, told Terry they went great, and he’d massage her with excuses each time they didn’t work out: They probably went with someone they knew , or They might have been racist . Finally, after seeing her hurt so many nights, he suggested she stay home. That had been before his layoff, before the drugs, back when he made enough to take care of them both.

Upstairs, the kids in her class attached themselves to every inch of her body as she walked through the door, syrup from biscuits on their hands and now her skirt. They almost made her forget her chronic grief, the guilt that tugged at her heart because despite everything Terry put her through, who knew what trouble he was in right that minute? Maybe she should have fought harder for him to stay.

She knelt beside the table where the kids ate. The talkers had already started, an avalanche of words that wouldn’t let up until nap time, and that was what she loved most about her job, how it swept her so thoroughly out of her real life, how the freshness of each moment kept her wrapped inside it. Even now, a boy named Carter was reciting the ABCs; then, without stopping, pulling her face to his, he said, “Puff was sad.”

“Puff?” Jackie answered.

“Puff, the magic dragon, he was a little sad. When his friend left. He was a little sad.”

“Oh,” Jackie said. She had read the book yesterday. “That’s right, but didn’t he feel better when his new friend came along?”

“I’m a little sad,” the boy said this time.

“Oh, no.” Jackie moved to hug him, though she could see the poster of emotions in her periphery. They’d gone over them earlier this week, and since then her toddlers would pick a feeling without warning, cling to it the whole day, clutching anger or sadness, and she’d think, You don’t know what sadness is .

“His friend came back; his friend came back!” the boy exclaimed suddenly. “Now Puff’s a little happy.” He kissed her on the cheek.

During naptime, she went for T.C., carried him back upstairs to nurse. There was a TV in the back room and Jackie had snuck an extra helping of her mama’s butter beans up from the main floor. Sometimes Mama would join her in here and they’d watch The Phil Donahue Show . Jackie turned it on today, but she barely glanced up — one woman from the audience said she would sacrifice getting married and having babies for a thriving career. Sybil said things like that too, but Jackie knew she didn’t mean it.

She lifted T.C., slipped her full breast in his mouth, pressed him up against her, inhaled his newborn freshness from the top of his head. She loved watching him nurse. These days most women preferred the formula. Breastfeeding makes your boobs sag , Sybil had warned her. You trying to get a new man, right ? But Jackie couldn’t imagine herself with someone new. In the beginning when Terry would show up still seeming like himself, all showered and shaven and good-hearted, only a fraction short of the pharmacist she married, she would cater to him as if he were still her husband. But now, she never let him in her bed, just tossed a blanket on the sofa. Sometimes she stood in the hallway and watched him. Once he was so paranoid he paced the room for hours, but another time he just slept for almost a full day. When he woke up that time, he asked her to bring him a po’boy from We Never Close. She drove all the way to Chef, stood in the line and everything, but by the time she got back, he was gone.

The last part of the day at the nursery always seemed to rush by. Once the children woke up from their naps, Jackie and the other teachers marched them around the neighborhood; while they were gone, Mama prepared their snack, usually Cheerios or pretzels. Then they’d congregate in a circle and read Green Eggs and Ham or sing rhymes Jackie and her sister had danced to as children:

Down, down, baby, down, down, the roller coaster

Sweet, sweet, baby, I’ll never let you go

Afterward the teachers cleaned up, urging the kids to stack the books in the shelves themselves and pick up their own Legos. When the last child was gone, Mama and Aunt Ruby would change into their nylon tracksuits that swished when they walked and collapse at the kitchen table.

“That lil’ Jennifer seemed to be doing better, don’t you think?” Mama asked now.

“Umhmm,” Jackie nodded, though she thought the child whined more than normal. She flipped through Ebony for pictures of Whitney Houston. People had told her she looked like a light-skinned version of that woman, and Jackie had come to agree.

“I think it’s ’cause her mama’s putting her to bed earlier,” Mama went on. “That’s important, you know. With you girls I kept you on a schedule.”

“It was too much,” Aunt Ruby interrupted, shaking her head. “I couldn’t get Evelyn to do a thing unless I went to her house and sat up on her porch. She couldn’t go shop, she couldn’t eat out. All that and she only had two kids. What did she need to schedule them for? You blink and you forget they’re even there. Now, me, I didn’t keep a schedule but I still had my seven under strict control.”

“No, I guess I didn’t need to,” Mama cut in. “Jackie and Sybil were nine years apart; by the time Jackie came along, Sybil had been in school for years, could run the house by herself if I needed her to, but children need structure, and if you don’t give it to them, they act a fool seeking it elsewhere. Then before you know it, there’s a crazy boyfriend in the picture, or worse, drugs. .” She trailed off.

Jackie knew she hadn’t meant to use that example.

Then Mama turned to Jackie as if she were seeing her for the first time that day. “What’s the matter, Jackie Marie? You seem a little down.”

Jackie shook her head. “Nothing, Mama.” She plastered a smile on her face. “I’m just tired, that’s all.”

“The baby kept you up?” Mama asked. “Well, that’s normal for his age,” she answered before Jackie could. “But in a few months he’ll be sleeping through the night, you watch. Both my kids did by nine months.”

“My jokers still don’t sleep through the night, and the oldest will be twenty-nine tomorrow.” Aunt Ruby cut her head back and laughed, a shrill tinkly number.