Natashia Deon - Grace

JOSEY BRINGS HER foot back to the toilet ledge, biting into her lip, shutting her eyes and rolling her head to one side. For the first time, she screams. And again. Pushing.

Screams!

The cupboard door bursts open, “What the hell you screaming for!” Sissy say coming in. “All this damn screaming!” Sissy drops a bucket of warm water on the cupboard floor. “Two hours you been in here grunting. This ain’t no proper place to have a baby. Get up!”

Josey staggers to her feet and lets herself get pulled along. Every step she takes looks painful.

Sissy sets her down in the corner of the room on a birthing mat that she’s readied for this. She take the cup and pours water in Josey’s dry mouth but Josey coughs it up.

“You need to drink something or get this over wit.”

Josey closes her eyes. “I just need to sleep,” she say. “I’m so tired now.”

“No woman’s posed to sleep for birthing.” But Josey don’t open her eyes again. Only her parched sticky lips peel open and her head rolls. Sissy shakes her awake.

“My heart feels like it’s running away from me,” Josey say. “Scattering in my chest.” Josey slides back down on the mat. Sissy nudges her again.

“You quitting on my grandbaby? Come on and get up. Drink your water.” Sissy holds the cup out but Josey don’t move.

She wakens sudden, grinding her teeth and balling the sheets in her fists from the coming pain. When it releases her again she slides back down, grimacing with closed eyes.

“What’s the matter wit’cha?” Sissy say. “You ain’t the first one ever birthed a baby. And you ain’t gon’ be. .”

“Shut up!” Josey say. “Just shut up! I’m sick and tired of hearing you flap your lips! Get away from me, woman!”

Josey hollers from new pain and pushes at the same time. Her body twists in a strange position, her hips one way, her torso the other, wrung out from the pain. When it ends, her eyes are red like each socket is its own tiny pool of blood, the colored part a blue marble dropped in.

Josey forces her way to a stand. Walks wide-legged across the room, holding her belly. Sissy’s voice trembles behind her. “I. . I just wanted you to drink your water.”

Josey stops at the farthest wall next to the cupboard, too tired to open the door. She leans back against it instead, takes a deep breath before sliding down the door into a squat. She undoes the middle buttons of her dress, tugs at the material, finally rips it off and over her head, leaving her buck naked and pearly white.

“Good Lawd!” Sissy say, blocking her eyes. “You fixin to go to hell.”

Josey’s breaths quicken and her teeth grind again. She rolls onto her hands and knees, meeting the coming pain on all fours this time. Her face reddens and the muscles on the sides of her belly lurch forward and center. Tears run down her cheeks. Breathless now, she tell Sissy, “Throw me my sheets.”

Sissy gathers ’em quickly from the mat and tries to stand with ’em. “No!” Josey say. “Just throw ’em over. You don’t need to come.”

Josey catches ’em one-handed and tangles the sheet into a ball and places it on the floor beneath her. A new nest. She squats down over it, her back flat against the wall and grunts and waits for the next push to come. Her eyes draw closed.

A drip of blood dots the sheet. Then another. A steady stream of red patters from between her legs, wetting the path where the baby’ll come. But blood like this ain’t supposed to happen.

Josey’s head flops forward, her neck sinks into her shoulders, her upper body droops between her legs but she don’t fall.

All the muscles in her belly jerk to center like before but Josey don’t make a sound. I try to touch her face. Of course, I cain’t. I call to Sissy for help but she don’t hear me.

“Josey?” Sissy finally say. She shuffles slow across the room, puts her hand on Josey’s shoulder and shakes her. Leans toward her.

Josey slumps forward into Sissy’s arms. Josey’s head tilts back and Sissy slaps her face. “Wake up, Josey!” She sees the blood soaked through the sheet and sees Josey’s belly lurch to center again. “It’s comin!” Sissy say. “You gotta wake up, Josey. Push!”

Sissy searches the room for something to use.

Nothing.

She lowers Josey in her arms, cradling her like a baby, then reaches for the mat one-handed, catches the edge of it with her fingertips, then drags it over, puts it under Josey’s hips, perches Josey’s legs up and open. “I can see the head, Josey! It’s right there. Push! Josey, push!”

A black mass rises between her legs like a bubble of dark — baby hairs coated in gleaming white and red. “Push, Josey!” Sissy say, trying to help it out. No use. “You got to push, Josey! Or else this baby gon’ choke to death.”

Josey’s belly tightens and the head comes. Sissy gives it a gentle twist to one side and the curve of its shoulders seep out. With speed, the whole body, too. “We got a boy!” Sissy yells over his stuttering cries.

She cuts the chord, joyful, and crawls to Josey with him tucked under her chest. “You gotta wake up, Josey. We got a boy to take care of.”

Josey grunts but her eyes don’t open. The sides of her belly lurch instead, and a new bulge rises from between her collapsed knees — not the gray mass of afterbirth, but something bluish and striped with strawberry colored hair.

“Sweet Jesus!” Sissy cry and lays the boy down. No sooner than she do, the next baby’s delivering itself right into Sissy’s waiting arms. Silent.

“Come on, baby,” she say, flipping it over on her forearm and patting the back. “Come on!”

Nothing.

Finally, a sputter. A cry. Might as well have been the voice of God.

“It’s a girl!” Sissy cried.

And this girl, this boy, Josey would name in freedom. So the last name she chose for them was not Graham who’d owned her. Owned Sissy. It was Freeman.

I WAS TIRED WHEN I left Soledad’s near midnight last night. Spent two hours resting three times, was sick once, and had to talk myself out of saying fuck it to everything, and letting myself die in the cold. And now, the smoldering embers of Albert’s blown-out fire are glowing in his furnace, waiting to be resurrected, warming me still. It’ll be sunrise soon.

I lay across this bench alone, in the dark, and in the soot of his workshop. A pop from the furnace starts the fire to life again, tinting the air orange and yellow, and casting the black shadows of Albert’s tools against the wall. They throb and change shape in flickers.

I snuggle down into Albert’s burnt-smelling clothes and shift his big leather gloves that I made a pillow under my head. I roll onto my back and stare at the beams on the ceiling, all four of ’em are mostly black from layers of up-floating smoke that stuck.

My hands slide to my nothing belly. I do it because I should have started my monthly cycle ten days ago. And almost thirty days before then. But it ain’t come. I tell myself that it don’t mean pregnant because strain and pressure in life can stop any peace. Any normal. And I’ve had some. And anyway, I don’t feel no different ’cept this sour stomach. Sick every morning, though. And we was careful. Jeremy pulled hisself out of me before he finished every time. And if something was growing inside my body, I think I’d know. I’ll bleed. Cycles come late all the time. I could just be sick and dizzy and weak for no reason. My breasts could be tender for no. .

“If you gon’ stay in here,” Albert say from the doorway, “I’m gon’ have to let Cynthia know.”

I sit up. Nod. Saltiness fills my mouth, directly. I spit.