Toni Morrison - God Help the Child

By the time Bride and Booker got there, a small cluster of people were standing in front of Queen’s house — the jobless, several children and the elderly. Smoke was sneaking from the sills and the door saddle when they broke in. First Booker, then Bride right behind him. They dropped to the floor where smoke was thinnest and crawled to the couch where Queen lay still, seduced into unconsciousness by the smiles of smoke without heat. With his one good arm and Bride’s two, their eyes watering and throats coughing, they managed to pull the unconscious woman to the floor and drag her out to the tiny front lawn.

“Further! Come on, further!” shouted one of the men standing there. “The whole place could blow!”

Booker was too intent on forcing air into Queen’s mouth to hear him. At last in the distance the sirens of fire truck and ambulance excited the children almost as much as the cartoon beauty of a roaring fire. Suddenly, a spark hiding in Queen’s hair burst into flame, devouring the mass of red hair in a blink — just enough time for Bride to pull off her T-shirt and use it to smother the hair fire. When, with stinging, singed palms, she tore away the now sooty, smoking shirt, she grimaced at the sight of a few tufts of hair hard to distinguish from the fast-blistering scalp. All the while, Booker was whispering, “Yeah, yeah. Come on, love, come on, come on, lady.” Queen was breathing — at least coughing and spitting, major signs of life. As the ambulance parked, the crowd became bigger and some of the onlookers seemed transfixed — but not at the moaning patient being trundled into the ambulance. They were focused, wide-eyed, on Bride’s lovely, plump breasts. However pleased the onlookers were, it was zero compared to Bride’s delight. So much so she delayed accepting the blanket the medical technician held toward her — until she saw the look on Booker’s face. But it was hard to suppress her glee, even though she was slightly ashamed at dividing her attention between the sad sight of Queen’s slide into the back of the ambulance and the magical return of her flawless breasts.

Bride and Booker ran to the Jaguar and followed the ambulance.

Once Queen was admitted, Bride spent the days with her, Booker the nights, three of which passed before Queen opened her eyes. Head bandaged, its contents drugged, she recognized neither of her rescuers. All they were able to do was watch the tubes attached to the patient, one clear as glass turning like a rainforest vine, others thin as telephone wire, all secondary to the white clematis bloom covering the soft gurgle from her lips.

Lines of primary colors bled across the screen above the hospital bed. Transparent bags of what looked like flat Champagne dripped into a vine feeding Queen’s flaccid arm. Unable to rise to a bedpan, she had to be scoured, oiled and rewrapped — all of which Bride, not trusting the indifferent hands of the nurse, did herself as tenderly as possible. And she bathed her one section at a time, making sure the lady’s body was covered in certain areas before and after cleansing. She left Queen’s feet untouched because in the evening when Booker relieved her he insisted, like a daily communicant at Easter, on the duty of assuming that act of devotion. He maintained the pedicure, soaped then rinsed Queen’s feet, finally massaging them slowly, rhythmically, with a lotion that smelled like heather. He did the same for Queen’s hands, all the time cursing himself for the animosity he had felt during their last conversation.

Neither one spoke during those ablutions and, except for Bride’s occasional humming, the quiet served as the balm they both needed. They worked together like a true couple, thinking not of themselves, but of helping somebody else. Sitting among other people in a hospital waiting room with nothing to do but worry was an ordeal. But so was staring helplessly at the patient noting every stir, breath or shift of the prone body. After three days of waiting broken by what acts of comfort they could provide, Queen spoke, her voice a rough, unintelligible croak through the oxygen mask. Then late one evening the oxygen mask was removed and Queen whispered, “Am I going to be all right?”

Booker smiled.

“No question. No question at all.” He leaned in and kissed her nose.

Queen licked her dry lips, closed her eyes again and began to snore.

When Bride returned to relieve him and he told her what had happened, they celebrated by eating breakfast together in the hospital cafeteria. Bride ordered cereal, Booker orange juice.

“What about your job?” Booker raised his eyebrows.

“What about it?”

“Just asking, Bride. Breakfast conversation, you know?”

“I don’t know about my job and don’t care. I’ll get another one.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. And you? Logging forever?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Loggers move on after they destroy a forest.”

“Well, don’t worry about me.”

“But I do.”

“Since when?”

“Since you broke a beer bottle over my head.”

“Sorry.”

“No kidding. Me too.”

They chuckled.

Away from Queen’s hospital bed, relieved about her progress and in a fairly relaxed mood, they amused themselves with banter like an old couple.

Suddenly, as though he’d forgotten something, Booker snapped his fingers. Then he reached into his shirt pocket and took out Queen’s gold earrings. They had been removed to bandage Queen’s head. All this time they had been in a little plastic bag tucked in the drawer of her bedside table.

“Take these,” he said. “She prized them and would want you to wear them while she recovers.”

Bride touched her earlobes, felt the return of tiny holes and teared up while grinning.

“Let me,” said Booker. Carefully he inserted the wires into Bride’s lobes, saying, “Good thing she was wearing them when the place caught fire because nothing at all is left. No letters, address book, nothing. All burned. So I called my mother and asked her to get in touch with Queen’s kids.”

“Can she contact them?” asked Bride swerving her head gently back and forth the better to relish the gold discs. Everything was coming back. Almost everything. Almost.

“Some,” Booker replied. “A daughter in Texas, medical student. She’ll be easy to find.”

Bride stirred her oatmeal, tasted a spoonful, found it cold. “She told me she doesn’t see any of them, but they send her money.”

“They all hate her for some reason or another. I know she abandoned some of them to marry other men. Lots of other men. And she didn’t or couldn’t take the kids with her. Their fathers made sure of that.”

“I think she loves them though,” said Bride. “Their photographs were all over the place.”

“Yeah, well the motherfucker who murdered my brother had all his victims’ photos in his fucking den.”

“Not the same, Booker.”

“No?” He looked out the window.

“No. Queen loves her children.”

“They don’t think so.”

“Oh, stop it,” said Bride. “No more stupid arguments about who loves who.” She pushed the cereal bowl to the center of the table and took a sip of his orange juice. “Come on, hateful. Let’s go back and see how she’s doing.”

Standing on either side of Queen’s bed, they were extremely happy to hear her speaking loudly and clearly.

“Hannah? Hannah?” Queen was staring at Bride and breathing hard. “Come here, baby. Hannah?”

“Who’s Hannah?” asked Bride.

“Her daughter. The medical student.”

“She thinks I’m her daughter? God. Drugs, medicine, I guess. That stuff confuses her.”

“Or focuses her,” said Booker. He lowered his voice. “There was a thing with Hannah. Rumor in the family was that Queen ignored or dismissed the girl’s complaint about her father — the Asian one, I believe, or the Texan. I don’t know. Anyway she said he fondled her and Queen refused to believe it. The ice between them never melted.”