“No, ma’am, Miss Delia,” Levi insisted. “Nothing going on out here to worry you about. I was just giving my best to Mr. Billy Dean on his election.”
She looked back at Billy Dean. “You!” she laughed tipsily. “Our next sheriff. How low has our democracy sunk?” Delia shook her head, teasingly. “Hurry on back in, Billy Dean. Your fiancée is getting—oops!” she said, covering her mouth in mock embarrassment, “I mean, your food is getting cold.” She gave out a giggle and went back into the kitchen.
The screen door shut behind her, and Vida felt their last hope had left with her. She could hear Billy Dean’s breathing, fast and furious. In a voice bled dry of emotion, he said, “This ain’t over,” and then stomped back into the house.
During the ride home, the car was thick with things not said. Vida could tell from her father’s clenched jaw that he was figuring hard, considering and then discarding one option after another. As for herself, she could only come up with one, and she was doing it, holding tight to her baby until the nightmare passed.
Levi parked the car next to their house, switched off the motor. He left the lights burning. He sat there motionless, looking off into the distance where the headlights cut a ghostly path across the field.
Without looking at Vida, he said, “The boy ain’t safe here with us. And we ain’t safe with the boy.”
Nate was trying to tickle Vida’s neck with her plait. She stilled his hand, struggling with her father’s words. “What you saying, Daddy?”
“You heard the man. He say it ain’t over. Nate make that man crazy.” Then he said, almost to himself, “Your momma got kin in Alabama.”
Grasping his meaning, Vida cried, “I ain’t letting go of Nate, Daddy. You can’t make me do that.”
“We ain’t got no choice, Vida.”
Then she remembered. “Rezel’s going to the Promised Land! Me and Nate can go with him!”
“No, daughter. You know better. Rezel can’t take care of you and a baby. Rezel can’t take care of hisself. I promise, you pray on it and you’ll see it my way. God going to show us the righteous path.”
Chapter Seven
MOTHER AND CHILD
Floyd made it to the hospital in Greenwood in less than thirty minutes.
“Now, everything is going to be OK,” he said, striding confidently beside Hazel as they rolled her down the corridor on a gurney. “All you got to do is lay back and let nature take its course. Do everything the doctor says, do you hear?”
“Yes,” she said, feeling a spark of irritation at her husband.
“And remember to push. That’s always a good thing.”
“Yes, I will,” she said. Yet what she wanted to say was, “How do you know? How many babies have you birthed between cotton picker deals?”
Mercifully, the nurse told Floyd he had to stop at the delivery room door. Hazel was more than relieved when she heard the sound of his footsteps retreating toward the waiting room.
With or without Floyd, Hazel could never have been ready for what came next. The pain was unlike anything she had ever imagined. Nothing anybody could possibly live through. And that wasn’t the scariest part. As she lay spread open and vulnerable on that table, pinned down and surrounded by a doctor and nurses who were demanding so much of her, her own body turning on her, with only her elbows to support her, the worst part was that this time there was no escape. No back door. No place to run. It had been put squarely on her shoulders. At eighteen she was expected to see it through all alone.
The bright lights that caromed off the sterile white walls were indifferent to her pain. The faceless doctor yelled at her, telling her to bear down. She didn’t think she could. Hazel shut her eyes against it and prayed to die.
“She’s crowning!” the doctor shouted. His tone was now jubilant, conveying to Hazel that she was doing something right. No, that they were doing it right—her and her baby, together. With the doctor’s words, from the center of her pitch-black world of hurt, flashed the most glorious realization. She could read it like lightning across the night sky. This baby was coming to save her, not to harm her.
Hazel gave in to the pain, no longer afraid, and thrilled by the prospect that somebody was arriving who, no matter what, would always be on her side. She welcomed her son into the world with a cry of joy.
Back in her room, Hazel held her baby, whispering softly to the newcomer in her arms, “My baby. My baby,” over and over, trying to get her ears used to the words. The nurse patted Hazel’s hand and said right there in front of Floyd, “You did a real good job, honey. Your son is healthy, whole, and one of the best-looking things ever to come out of the Greenwood Leflore Hospital.”
Hazel smiled at the baby. “He knew what he was doing, all right. I couldn’t a done it without him.”
“Well, little momma,” the nurse said after a short silence, “I guess I never looked at it that way. What y’all going to name him?”
Without batting an eye, Floyd announced his decision. “Johnny Earl Graham.”
“After who?” asked the nurse.
“After nobody,” he said proudly. “From neither side. Our boy ain’t gonna owe his future to nobody’s past.”
Hazel smiled, liking the sound of that. Maybe it was true. She hoped it was—that she and Floyd and Johnny Earl had been cut loose and were traveling free, floating high above all the doubts and fears that prowled the past. Maybe there was nothing ahead of them but a blue-sky future.
Five days later, as Floyd drove, neither he nor Hazel could take their eyes off the baby, which put Floyd all over the road. Peeking at the child in his wife’s arms for about the hundredth time, Floyd asked, “How’s my little monkey doing?”
“Floyd,” Hazel said, “I hate it when you call him that. He don’t look anything like a monkey.”
He patted Hazel on the knee. “That’s not what I mean by it. He’s just so cute and all.”
Narrowing her eyes at the baby, she said, “Floyd, he’s got your black hair. Your dark eyes. He even got them wide moccasin jaws. I swan, I don’t see me anywhere. Looks like you did the whole thing on your own.”
Floyd laughed, and without bothering to look he said, “He’s got your cute pug nose. Don’t you see?”
Hazel didn’t, but she figured Floyd was giving her the nose to be nice, which was perfectly fine. Right now she needed him to be real nice. Without a whole hospital of nurses backing her up, she was already struggling to keep on top of her fears. She was returning to Floyd’s world, and she was not going alone. She had a baby to keep alive. Here was this living, squirming, kicking, crying, puking, peeing, wordless ball of needs. Everything depended on her being able to decipher what he wanted quick enough to keep him breathing, so that he would grow up and love her enough to be grateful. Until then, she hoped Johnny Earl gave good directions.
“I’m so glad you went to get Momma,” she said. “I got a million questions to ask her about babies.”
Hazel’s mother brought little comfort the whole time she was there, insisting that there was nothing special to raising a child. “It’s only your first, Hazelene,” Baby Ishee said more than once. “I had fourteen. Twelve