“Coca-Cola man,” Rita says, rubbing her stomach and looking off at nothing. Erasmus can’t stop smoking, and Bertha keeps moving her hands up and down her arms.
“The Coca-Cola man?” they say together, and exchange glances before looking back at her.
“Hmmm,” Rita sounds, and looks down at her swollen bare feet. “Mama, where the pail at?” she asks as if the conversation is over.
Bertha remembers her own pregnancy and her feet, swelled up and burning at the bottoms, but she can’t go for the pail because Erasmus is reaching for another cigarette—even though the one he lit a moment ago is still burning in the ashtray.
“White man, then?” Erasmus asks, and holds his breath.
Rita’s eyes roam around the kitchen and then look up at her father. “No. Colored man,” she says, and her eyes move to the ceiling and then down to the floor and then to the window that looks out into the yard.
“Girl, have you taken leave of your senses?” Erasmus laughs before lighting his cigarette and inhaling. His laughter is reeling, and it makes the hair on Bertha’s neck stand.
“Why you say that, Erasmus?” Bertha asks, moving closer to Rita.
Erasmus’s laughter rocks him, and his cigarette falls from his mouth.
“What’s so funny? Why you laughing so?” Bertha’s head swings between her husband and her child. “Man, you crazy or something?” she asks, rubbing at the hairs on her neck and taking another step that puts her right next to Rita.
Erasmus composes himself and bends down to retrieve his cigarette from the floor. Both women see the thin sheath of hair on the top of his head, and Rita thinks that in a few years he will be bald like Manny. She shivers.
“This here is 1942,” Erasmus says, wiping the tears from the corners of his eyes and sticking the cigarette back between his lips. “And I ain’t never seen no colored man driving no goddamn Coca-Cola truck!” Laughter consumes him again, and the house seems to shake with it.
It’s too late to sit her in a tub of mustard water. Rita is too far gone for that, so they send her over to Fenton, over to Mamie Ray’s place.
* * *
Mamie Ray, black, short, and stout, with a tangled mass of orange hair that spread out around her head like a feathered hat imparting her with a buffoon-type peculiarity. She had a dead right foot that was larger than her left and hands too small for her body, or even a five-year-old, for that matter.
When Rita stepped off the bus, Mamie Ray, body lopsided from years of dragging around her dead foot, was standing on the curb, waiting.
“You Rita?” Mamie asked as she grabbed the girl’s elbow with her tiny hands. She hadn’t really had to ask that question; Bertha had described her child to a tee, and all Mamie needed to look for were the eyes. “Ain’t seen another pair like ’em, ever,” Bertha had said to Mamie on the phone.
“Yessum,” Rita replied, her eyes struggling with the woman’s orange hair and twisted body.
“How far along you think you is?” Mamie asked, looking down at Rita’s stomach.
“Don’t know.” Rita took a step backward.
“Well, you know when you ’llowed him on top of you. What month it was?”
“I ain’t allow nothing,” Rita mumbled. “Cold month, I suppose,” she added, and chanced a glance at the oversized foot.
Mamie bit her lip and scratched at her head. “After Thanksgiving but before Christmas and New Year’s?”
“I dunno,” Rita said, and her eyes moved to the tiny hands.
“Uh-huh,” Mamie sounded, and then, “You look strong; you can carry that suitcase.” She wobbled away.
The women who came to see Mamie Ray came fruitful, bellies still flush, hips spreading though, and breasts heavy and sensitive to the touch. They came dry mouthed, light-headed, always spitting puke, and always scared.
Rita thought most of them were ignorant—not ignorant about how it had happened, but how it had happened to them.
Some came wearing the cheap pieces of jewelry their lovers had given them, tacky tokens of affection that bent and turned colors, the mock gold fading and flaking away over time. Just like the men, just like their love.
Rita was too far gone for an abortion; she would stay through delivery and then return home, no one the wiser.
The other women, the ones who wore shame on their faces like masks, they would be gone, if things went well, within twenty-four hours.
Millie Blythe arrived just as June slipped into its last day. She was much younger than Rita, pale skinned with thin reddish-brown hair and large empty eyes. Feeble looking and thin, and Mamie took one look at her and was about to turn her away when her mother shoved roughly through the doorway and into the house.
“She look sickly,” Mamie said after taking another glance at Millie.
“She fine. Always look that way,” the mother said, and then hastily slapped Millie’s hands away from her mouth. “I done told you ’bout that,” she snarled.
Mamie peered at the mother and then down at Millie’s fingers. The child had chewed her nails clear down to the cuticle. “How far along is she?” she asked, her eyes moving to Millie’s vacant ones.
“Just about a month.”
“How old is she?” Mamie squinted at the girl. Millie’s body didn’t have a curve to it.
“She old enough,” the mother spat, and then shot Millie a look of disgust.
“Fourteen?” Mamie asked, ignoring the woman’s sarcasm.
“Eleven,” the woman said, and then cast a cold eye on Mamie.
Mamie didn’t stumble back in surprise, but the hand that held her cane did begin to shake. “Eleven? Lord,” she whispered. She’d never had one that young. “She still a baby,” Mamie said more to herself than to the woman.
“Look, you gonna do it or not?” The woman’s tone was like steel.
“I—” Mamie started to decline again and took a step toward the door; her fingers brushed against the doorknob just as the woman moved toward her.
“I’ll pay you double what you usually charge,” she said, and shoved three crisp fifties in Mamie’s face.
Mamie liked the horses, loved to watch them run. She knew some of the jockeys and had had the opportunity to move her hands across the strong backs of the animals, down their muscular limbs and through their shining manes. In the stands, her body quivered at the sound of their hooves galloping against the soft dirt of the track, making her feel a way no man was ever able to do.
She was a week behind with Otis the protector, who came to collect once a month. He had connections with the police department, and she had to pay him to make sure they would leave her be.
The oil tank had been empty since Memorial Day, but she was careful to keep up with the electric bill, because she did most of her work at night. For now, meals would be cooked on the hot plate, and showers would be taken in cold water. She’d straighten the mess out with the oil company in the fall just before the first frost hit.
So the money that Millie’s mother was dangling in her face could have been used wisely, but the sounds of hooves beating like a hundred hearts were already pounding away in Mamie’s ears.
“Come