Amy Greene - Bloodroot

I don’t remember much about the ambulance coming. The ride to the hospital was like a dream. The first thing I remember is being in the delivery room with my baby moving out of me. I heard myself hollering but it was like somebody else’s voice. He was gushing out fast between my legs. When the doctor put him on my belly, the first thing I seen was his hair. Even matted down, I could tell what color it was. There was a lot of it, too. It was just like Clint’s. Then something crazy happened. My eyes was so blurry, I got to seeing things. They came back to me, them friends I had on the mountain. There was a window in the delivery room. That’s where they came from. They was pretty as ever, flitting across my belly on their shiny wings. Them fairies danced a crown around my baby’s head, dropping their blessings and kisses. That’s how come I named him Sunny.

It was nice in the hospital, with everything white and clean. I got to stay longer because Sunny was born three weeks early and they had to make sure we was okay. I was happy there with him. I liked the sounds of nurses’ shoes and carts rattling up and down the hall. I didn’t even mind when they took my blood. I tried to mark every minute of it, even the parts that hurt. I’d take Sunny to the window and show him the parking lot two stories below. I imagined he would like cars, maybe even work on them when he growed up. I wondered what kind of man he would make. But even though he looked like Clint, I’d let him be his own person. I knowed he was Sunny, with a life of his own.

The nurse showed me how to swaddle him. I slept with him in a bundle in the crook of my arm. His yellow curls always peeked out of the blanket. When his eyes started opening more, I seen they was the color of Mama’s. Clint had blue eyes, but there was no other blue like Mama’s anywhere. I knowed Sunny took his eyes straight from her. He was a content baby. He only cried when he was hungry or wet. I’d lean close to his open mouth to smell the newness of his breath. I liked them tiny pearls on the roof of his mouth and all the pink ridges and folds inside it. I even liked when his diaper needed changing, after that sticky black tar went away. The nurse called it meconium. I liked the sound of it, even if it was trouble to wipe off. I liked every part of being Sunny’s mama.

The only thing I didn’t like about the hospital was when the doctor came around. It wasn’t the same one from the Health Department but I didn’t like him any better. He looked at us funny. He’d set on his stool with his leg crossed and his pants riding up, showing his long sock. He’d ask me slow questions, like I wouldn’t understand if he didn’t form the words real careful with his mouth. I knowed he thought I was dumb, like the teachers at school did. Whatever I said, he’d lift his eyebrows and write on his chart.

Louise and the Thompsons and Debbie and Roy came to visit me. They brought flowers and some chocolate cupcakes with cream in the middle. That made me cry a little bit, thinking about Clint, but I was glad to see them. They all thought Sunny was beautiful. Louise cried, too, and I knowed she was thinking about Clint like me. They stayed for quite a while, until I got too tired. I fell asleep with Sunny in my arms.

The only other visitor me and Sunny had was Clint’s mama. When I seen her peeking around the curtain I covered Sunny’s little ears. I thought she might go to screaming and carrying on. I didn’t know if she meant to cuss me out or what, but she just walked across the room and leant over the bed. She smelled like cigarettes. When I seen she wasn’t going to make a fuss, I pulled back the blanket so she could see Sunny better. She jumped like a snake bit her. “They laws,” she said. “He looks just like Clint.” Then she busted out crying. I didn’t know what to think. As mean as she was, I felt sorry for her. After a minute I asked her if she might pour me a cup of water, to get her mind on something else. She gave me a drink and switched the channel on the television for me. She stayed for about an hour. I was relieved that she didn’t ask to hold the baby.

For that short time at the hospital, it was like there was a truce between me and Clint’s mama. Then she got her purse and stood up to go. She stopped at the foot of the bed and stared hard at Sunny. I didn’t like the look on her face. I seen it had been a mistake to ever let my guard down with her. “If they wouldn’t put me in jail,” she said, “I’d snatch that baby up this minute and run out of here with him.” My blood turned into ice water. I opened my mouth to scream for the nurse but all that came out was a tiny squeak. “You finally killed Clint but you ain’t getting this one. It might not happen today. But if it’s the last thing I ever do in this life, I’ll get that baby away from you.”

JOHNNY

There was a change in Ford after those two weeks in the woods. He was quieter and sometimes I caught him staring at me. As we worked together on the farm and spent time peddling books and selling produce from Carolina’s garden, it was hard to ignore the strain. Before long, nights in the shed grew cooler and Carolina brought a heater out. Ford and I helped her with the canning because it was more than one person could handle, the windowsills lined with half-rotten tomatoes and the kitchen floor crowded with tubs of corn and gallon buckets of green beans. When the canning was done, I helped Carolina plant the garden with fall greens, kale, spinach, turnips, and mustard. Once the tobacco was curing there was brush to clear from the fields and wood to split. I worked harder than usual on my birthday, not telling them when it came and went because I didn’t want to think about Laura. On Thanksgiving, Ford cooked a wild turkey he had shot in the woods. After we were full and Ford had fallen asleep on the couch, I left Carolina washing dishes and stepped outside to smoke. The ground was glittering with frost and the dogs huddled together for warmth, barely raising their heads when I came out. After a while the door opened again and Carolina came to sit on the top step, drawing her knees up into Ford’s coat. I lowered myself beside her and thought we would be silent together. Then I startled myself by saying, “My mama’s locked up in the state mental hospital.” For a second I wasn’t sure I had spoken out loud. I looked at Carolina and her face hadn’t changed. I tried my voice again. “She didn’t love me.” I hadn’t known how badly I wanted to say it. I told Carolina everything and she listened with her calm face. When I finished she put her hand on my forehead then moved it down over my eyes. In the darkness under her palm I felt healed, if only for a minute. I took her hand and held it in both of mine. There was no ring. She wasn’t married to Ford, not really.

The next day, Ford and I helped Carolina decorate a store-bought Christmas tree. She said that back at her house in North Carolina, they always put up their tree the day after Thanksgiving. She strung some popcorn but we ate most of it, and I helped her cut out chains of white paper doves. It was a good day, but after that the weather grew colder and Ford grew even quieter and more preoccupied. I suspected he was trying to convince himself that his troubling vision had been wrong. One morning after breakfast when he had gone off to the dump, his truck bed loaded with garbage bags, Carolina said, “I think he’s hearing the voice again. I wish he would wait for warmer weather.” But he didn’t.

At the beginning of December, I stepped out of the shed and saw that the dogs were missing. I knew Ford was gone again. I walked across the yard, up the porch steps, and opened the front door without knocking. The trailer was dim, lit by the colored lights of the Christmas tree in the living room. Carolina was sitting at the bar in her nightgown, peeling an orange. She had the same placid look on her face as when she sat on the step and I couldn’t resist going to her. I climbed onto the other bar stool as silently as I could. I wanted to be still with her, to think about nothing in particular. I focused on her long, thin fingers pulling off strips of orange skin. She separated the sections and brought them to her mouth one by one. We didn’t speak of Ford and the tree lights blinked and outside snow flurried and the morning was gray and silent. She looked down at her feet on the bar stool rung. For a minute we examined them together, ridged with small bluish veins.