Margaret Sexton - A Kind of Freedom

“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.”

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.

On the other hand, what was it he had said about staying in the moment? No promises? What was wrong with her enjoying this reprieve no matter how long it played out?

Thinking about it that way, she relaxed into their new routine. She’d come home to elaborate dinners, crawfish étouffée, his mother’s recipe, or smothered chicken and rice. They’d watch movies, Raiders of the Lost Ark or Friday the 13th , play rummy or just marvel over their baby’s sleeping body, how his hairline was just like Terry’s, a sweet little M , or how he turned his nose up at strangers the way Jackie could sometimes. Jackie relished those moments she hadn’t even known she’d missed. It was rare to find someone who was as invested in talking about T.C. as she was. Even with her mama, she parceled her bragging out. She didn’t tell her the baby was trying to crawl already, that he had said the word Mama ; she didn’t admit she wanted him to be the first black president, but with Terry, she could gush, point out that it wasn’t just Mama , T.C. was forming other words too. And they would have to childproof soon because he reached for everything in sight — did Terry see that the other day he’d grasped the remote? Not only that, but he already fit in eighteen-month-size clothes, he slept through the night, he cried only when he was hungry, and all those factors together had to say something, anything, about the prospect of them as a family.

Jackie even called her old friends again; she didn’t tell them Terry was back, but she let them catch her up on the old neighborhood, who had gotten married, lost jobs, found a hookup since. She’d hang up the phone refreshed, as if life was on her side all of a sudden, as if she had accessed the formula for riding it instead of letting it ride her. Then she’d climb into bed and rest her head on Terry’s chest, listen to his heartbeat like a second hand ticking, and in the morning he’d still be there.

One day about a month after Terry had returned, she woke up to the baby’s coughs. The doctor said she didn’t have to take him in, but he had never even had a runny nose and she decided to keep him home. She called her mama to let her know they’d be missing school, then nursed him twice as much as normal. She’d been on a cleaning streak already, but she took it to another level that morning, crawling on her hands and knees to clean the baseboards with scotch tape, pouring baking soda and vinegar into the cracks in the kitchen floors, vacuuming the carpet, changing the sheets, bleaching every surface of the house someone might think to touch. When she was done, she sat down for a breather. The baby was still sleeping. She thought about making Terry a welcome-home meal. He was out looking for work; he left every morning when she did and didn’t return until shortly before, but she knew there was only so long he could slog through this city asking for something that didn’t seem to be there without becoming discouraged. She’d caught glimpses of his frustration already. Once or twice, he came home barely talking, looking off to the side of the room instead of right at her, reminding Jackie of a man she’d seen before, weeks before a relapse. She didn’t know if his favorite meal could preempt that route, but he loved her jambalaya and she’d baked some chicken thighs that might go well with it.