Natashia Deon - Grace

“I think I’m pregnant,” I say. I’ll be sure soon. And I’ll have to provide for it. Make sure we got a place to sleep.

“Even more reason to tell her,” he say.

“Jeremy’s the father,” I say, wanting to get everything out in the open.

“I brought some eggs,” he say.

“I’m not hungry.”

Albert sits on the stool nearer the furnace, breaks the eggs into his pan, and they sizzle over the fire. The slimy clear whites look like snot — nasty! — from a big sneeze — sick! — and he’s about to eat it. I throw up red broth menudo.

“I’m sorry,” I say. Albert gets his shovel, throws dirt over it, then scoops it all together and tosses it out the doorway. “Thank you.”

He sits back down and flips the eggs over without a word, can hardly hear him breathe. I lay back down and look his way but not at him. I don’t want to talk about last night.

I shift his gloves under my cheek, then roll on my back. He dumps the cooked eggs on his plate. The yellow pieces are charred brown. He say, “Now that you’re empty, maybe you’ve changed your mind about being hungry,” and holds his plate out to me.

He’s right. I take it.

“Fork?” he say.

“A big spoon be better,” I say.

I finish before he starts his and I rest back on the bench, rub my belly. “Jeremy’ll be a good father,” I say. “We almost made it out of here. He just needed another good hand, is all. Could’ve had our new life right now.”

I think about the way me and Jeremy gon’ love each other when this baby come. When he see what we got. “If I could’ve helped him more, he’d have got that hand.”

“Is that what you believe?” Albert say.

“You just don’t know about the world and how it goes ’round. Every family needs money.”

“The greatest wealth is time and health. Love.”

“And family,” I say.

“You can always have family,” he say. “You live in health long enough. .”

“And I got one. When Jeremy gets back, we’re gonna be family. You’ll see.”

He takes my plate. “You’re welcome to stay here for as long as you need,” he say. “’Til the baby comes and only if Cynthia will allow it.”

“I have other places I can go.”

He slides my plate in a bucket of sudsy water under his seat and say, “I’ll make sure you have food, water, that you’ll stay warm.”

“And what do you expect me to do for it?”

He runs a wet rag over the plate, takes it out and rinses it in a second bucket.

“Don’t take me for a fool,” I say. “No man gives something without expecting something else in return.”

“Then you’ve got me mistaken for somebody else — maybe your baby’s father.”

I don’t want to stay here.

Albert sets the wet plate near his furnace to dry, takes his plate of food and moves hisself to the small stool against the wall — just big enough for one butt cheek. I don’t care. I don’t need him to do nothing for me. I just need to stay somewhere ’til Jeremy see what he done wrong and come back for me.

I get another egg from Albert’s basket, crack it over his hot pan and watch it bubble. He say, “You need to stand back from that fire. Could flash.”

My egg’s already done.

I put it on my plate and take a bite before I sit where I was. “Why didn’t you leave?” I say, making conversation. “When the Freedom Fighter came to take us to Mexico, how come you didn’t go with ’em? You said before it was ’cause of me.”

“I didn’t say I stayed because of you. I said you saved our lives. Your indecision. It wasn’t the first time I didn’t leave,” he say.

“You were leaving before?”

“That first night I found you was one time.” He piles some eggs on his spoon. “I planned to join the Railroad north that night.”

“I thought you said you was going south?”

“South. North. But only twice a year the Railroad comes this far south from Virginia. Only once I found them guides to be organized and timely. They stop here for my canteens, things I’d give ’em to trade.”

“Why didn’t you go then? On that day you found me?”

“Unorganized. A dozen negroes were in their party and their guides couldn’t decide who was in charge. Get everybody killed. All their signals were right, though. Their whistle first. Then the second — a strange sound like no night bird you’ve ever heard. Then the three flickers of light from the forest’s edge. But that’s where their good planning ended. On my way back I almost stepped right on you.”

He gets up to clean his plate. Takes my plate when he passes.

“Thank you,” I say. For good measure, I get up and go over to him, hug his neck, let him feel me real close.

“I already said you could stay,” he say.

Tears start coming out my eyes for no reason I know, except sorry.

Sorry for all this.

Sorry for having this baby inside me. Sorry Jeremy left. Sorry I’m desperate.

He say, “I reckon the best thing for both of us is to not say nothing else. I’ll talk to Cynthia. And if she won’t have you, I can’t.”

IF IT WERE up to Cynthia, I’d have been gone three months ago when Albert told her I was here, and pregnant was my excuse. “So long as I don’t have to see her wretched ass nowhere on this property,” was Cynthia’s compromise after she finished with her hell no’s and that bitch this ’n’ thats.

So most days I stay out back in the garden behind Albert’s workshop. I can stretch my legs back there and run in place to keep myself well. It’s what Cynthia prescribed. Not to me. But I heard her tell it to her hand, Sarah, before Cynthia sent her off: “I don’t care what that doctor say. You gon’ regret the two days of labor if you don’t get strong now.”

I walk far.

Four and five miles each way, zigzagging across Cynthia’s backfields and back roads like a mule plowing, getting stronger by the day, my belly bigger. I stopped trying to suck it in after Albert caught me standing sideways in the glass looking at myself and taking in deep breaths to make sure it weren’t just gas.

It weren’t.

ALBERT’S BEEN HEATING his black metal rods to an orange glow so he can reshape ’em into something new. Beautiful things. His hammers have tapered his metal into delicate flowers and leafs and scalloped coat hooks, turned skinny metal pieces into the thick feet of end tables, and spread fat pieces into thin fishtails and scoops of spoons. He’s twisted metal staffs into the braided hair of banisters, and punched holes to join two pieces together. . and split ’em apart. His anvil is the iron table where he bangs out the story of life — that with vision and fire, we can all be something different. And this is what he gives to Cynthia to sell so we can keep our place here. I sew and hem dresses. Men’s trousers and shirts. It ain’t much but it’s something.

Negroes on horseback pass through here a few times a month to water their steeds so Albert built a metal trough for ’em. It’s prettier and more watertight than the one Cynthia got but she don’t want to pay him for a new one.

Summer’s been a bouquet of green fields and cherry blossoms. The last buds of the season showered me in pink. The scent of Jeremy was in ’em. It reminded me of long days along the stream and our secret nights of quiet hallelujahs.

I imagine him coming home to me. That he’d pick me up and without a word, kiss me — long and open-mouthed. That when he saw our baby boy looking just like us, he’d love us both.

But it’s no time for remembering.

Not now.

Now, I got to keep Albert alive.

THERE WAS SCREAMING when it happened.