Jeffery Allen - Rails Under My Back

GRACIE, JOHN SAID. He stroked her bangs and slick feather waves of hair. My Gracie.

John, you a natural-born fool.

They danced, John spinning her body, pulling her thighs and hips into tighter circles. The boards of the floor began to flex and squeak. He was above her — though she stood a head taller than him — and she could bury her face in the pillow of his scalp if she so choosed. She was lost somewhere, deep beneath the surface of her body, swimming away from her previous life. She allowed herself to be carried away by the sweep of blood.

The danger increased with her increasing belly. Hundreds of threads streamed out from her navel. She was so weak it took her half an hour to reach the bottom of the circular staircase.

John, my stomach hurt.

John opened his eyes. Sit down. Right here.

The black willing blood of the baby bubbled inside her. Her umbilical cord popped electric life, a telephone that transmitted the infant’s threats: I’m gon fuck you up. Gracie laid her hands on her belly, and felt the baby kicking the hard table of her stomach, its hot hatred sending spark-filled smoke streaming up through the coils of her intestines. She felt it, a lump of clay that had squeezed into her. And so it looked, a totally smooth face, cause someone had forgotten to punch in the eyes and had punched everything else too small, a pinhole nose and mouth.

Where the rest of it? John said.

At the funeral for the second unborn (John believing that burying this one would make him feel easier inside), John’s unseen words sizzled in the air while he watched the first clumps of dirt that thudded on the lunchbox-size coffin. You rotten inside. Polluted. And she remembered how she had felt earlier, at Cookie’s funeral, John standing beside her, his arms tight around her shoulders to keep her from sinking into the mud.

Cookie’s free now, Beulah said. She ain’t gon suffer no mo. Up there in God’s heaven.

Sho hope it ain’t St. Peter’s heaven, Sam said. He balanced on his three legs. Cause if it is, hope she brought an extra wing.

ONCE THE BABIES PINNED GRACIE IN THE STREET, between two rows of identical buildings, two lines of identical trees, one baby at each corner, stop sign-red. Their hands caressed switchblades. She screamed for help. The buildings watched her flight. Heads stuck out windows then drew back. Windows fell like guillotines.

ONCE JOHN SLAMMED TO A SKIDDING HALT to keep from running a deerlike baby down. What was that? he said.

A baby.

What?

She explained.

He drew back, as if she had shoved the stinking child in his chest. From then on, she remained silent about the attacks, fearing that any utterance would embalm her in her own words. Instead, she spoke about the ghosts of former times, a thirteen-, fourteen-, fifteen-year-old girl working miracles.

Can you still do it?

She gave him a tight look.

I mean, did you grow out of it or something?

Do you ever grow out of being yourself? One forever hears the calling.

John chuckled. That was some racket. We sure could use the bread.

She gave him a leather look, lest she knock him upside the head with her Bible. And he would come to learn, power was untouched by the test of water and time. She could tell John where he was and who he was with to the exact minute, to the number of thrusts it took to make some nasty woman come.

Once, in the middle of downtown Central, a baby began spreading its wings, flapping, and she, taloned, began lifting into the air, three feet high and rising. Luckily two kind pedestrians had the courage to grab one leg each and pull her back to the earth. (Since that day, she never left the house without her steel shank boots or fortified heels.) Enough was enough. She phoned Sheila.

Well, Sheila said. Put a glass of water beside all the doors and windows, then—

Sheila.

— nail a Scripture above each door, then—

Sheila.

— change the direction of your bed.

These are babies, Sheila, not haints. Still, she took her sister’s advice. The babies drank the water — and on a few occasions peed in it — and crayon-scribbled on the Scriptures. One night, she woke to the spinning of her bed, a whirlpool’s suck. Another night, a spitball of Scripture woke her to dawn’s first light. She phoned Sheila.

Well, talk to Father Tower.

Sistah Jones, Reverend Tower said, have you spoken to John bout this?

No, sir. Well, not exactly, you know how he is wit religion.

Reverend Tower raised the arches of his thin eyebrows. He ripped four pages from his Bible — loud leather-ripping — choosing them seemingly at random (or maybe the finger saw what his mind directed). Funny because she had never seen him read the Good Book from the pulpit.

Sister Jones, he said, set these Scriptures before every door of your house.

Gracie took the pages. Yes, sir.

Now, I should warn you, the power of the Word can only be compelled with the necessary spiritual energy. That’s why I asked you about John.

Yes, sir.

Once home, she made floor mats of the pages, to wipe clean the souls of all who entered. The babies defecated on them.

Gracie went to see Reverend Tower.

Sister Jones, we’ll mission. I’ll bring the congregation by to pray.

No, Father. Her heart ran away from the words. Terrified, she saw what she could not speak. Face flapping in delight, the baby lunges, striking from near the ground with the sharpened bone of his hand. The reverend falls. I got my own prayers.

DAY IN AND DAY OUT, all around her come and go, turn and turn, trot along beside her, a snowflake variety of babies, old and young, small and large, fat and skinny, homely or cute. One rainy day, a baby came crashing through the front door, whirling its yellow-and-black spiral legs, bringing in wild rain like a whale spouting sea. That was as far as it got, dissolving into the wet wood fragments.

Shit! John was pissed about having to buy a new window. Lucifer, Dave, Dallas, and Spokesman spent spare moments helping him improve the house. Added more tile, and wood floors, cabinets, storm windows, stairways, a garage, a new fireplace, doors, rooms, stoops, and had even raised the roof for a third floor. All this while John struggled to meet the monthly mortgage. Fuck! You know how much this gon cost me?

It wasn’t my fault. A baby. She got the dustpan, he got a broom. He helped her sweep up the mess, the broom straws, a yellow blur.

EXCEPT FOR THE ODOR OF HER BEDCLOTHES, the house was absent of human presence. Sunlight swept across the room, wiping out the last of the morning shadows. Clean bare silence. John. Her voice carried in the small music of the morning. John. She liked this window, for it afforded her a full view of the city. Thousands of pigeons wavered in the fish belly-colored sky above a wide plain of rooftops. Stooped gargoyles guarded the streets. Pointed houses like tents in the distance. Yes, this place up North is not in God’s world. Checkerboard city, John calls it. You make yo move, then hop along to the next trick. Tar Lake. The waveless lake chose a direction and flowed like a great river from one end of the horizon to the other. She could watch wool-capped sailors grab her unborn, spear them, then anchor-toss them into the water, toss them to a time remote and dim. She could study each event moving across the surface of her life. God’s eye sees through all souls, Reverend Tower used to say. Can God see the ghosts of her unborn infants inside her, circling and circling, arms reaching out? See the infants outside, hidden there in the trees? John’s departure ten years ago — like his departure this very morning, moments earlier — held like a shipwreck in her memory where no thoughts could flow past. And this memory that was almost memory that was almost thought that was almost reality that was almost memory spilled over her days.