Michigan Fall

  Chapter Eleven

  My world suddenly did open up into an interesting world of smells and sounds and tastes and people.

  My daughter fantasia was born at home with help from Miss Sweeney eight months later. Her sweet cries warmed my heart and her warm mouth suckling on my breasts brought me inexpressible joy. I was deeply relieved too when mother told me my little angel could see. She was growing very fast and soon I could hardly lift her for she had become too heavy to lift for long. Soon, she began mumbling incoherent words, crawling and before I knew it, she was walking and running around the house.

  When she made three years, I let her come with us to our weekly trips to the market. She was always eager to go from then on wards, always choosing just the right basket to sit in.

  ‘Buy me a dress mama,’ she said on our way to the market one day.

  ‘Why should I buy you a dress darling?’ I replied asking.

  ‘Coz it’s my birthday.’

  ‘No, today isn’t you birthday, simply say you want a dress.’

  ‘Okay, I simply say, I want a dress.’

  ‘Sweetie, what color then do you want?’

  ‘My favorite’

  ‘What’s your favorite color?’

  ‘Blue.’

  ‘Then blue it will be. Come hear you pear and give mama a kiss.’

  ‘Mama I want a cookie.’

  ‘No dear, your mama doesn’t have money for a cookie today but has only for the blue dress.’

  ‘And so what then mom?’ she asked.

  I often marveled at some of the words my little girl came up with.

  ‘Then, you my dear could ask grandma, or auntie Abby for the cookie.’

  ‘What if I ask my auntie Amy? She is my favorite.’

  ‘Everybody is your favorite fantasia.’

  I enrolled her in the local church nursery school tutored by a certain Miss Hunter. Word was, she had moved back to Smithville after her husband eloped with their maid servant. I always wondered where our towns’ folk gathered this kind of information, certainly not from the victims.

  We had been lucky too with regards to our property. The Judge ruled in our favor arguing that since papa, our only bread winner was in jail, we had to be given more time to pay the loan. Mother had gone on to sell off Uncle Greg’s estate in Dayton, Tennessee with the blessing of papa, and had the loan repaid in full. The balance from the sale she used to take Abby and Amy to boarding school in the town of Acme, some thirty odd miles northwest of Smithville. Life though not perfect, had slowly returned to normal. We went on with our chores on the farm and tried to forget the worst of days gone by.

  What I failed to forget no matter how hard I tried, was Adam. No one in the house spoke his name but I knew that behind my back rumors were rife. I too acted like he'd never existed and did everything in my power to remove him from my memory. The hardest part was the nights. Memories of him chocked my mind that on numerous occasions I found myself crying myself to sleep. I tried not to imagine whether he was alive or dead, for both these thoughts wrought sorrow to my heart.

  Once I heard on the radio that the Vietnam War had so far cost more than forty thousand service men’s lives and about two thousand had either been captured or were missing. My tummy had convulsed before I switched the radio off. The war it seemed was on everyone's lips, movements upon movements I heard, were springing up, some for the war others against it and all this got to me. However, inside our home at least, no one mentioned anything about the war.

  But then this happened.

  ‘Mama, today at school,' my little Fantasia addressed me, 'Shelby said I have no father. Mama, what is a father?’

  My heart leapt within me. I had been preparing for this day since the day I received Adam’s letter, but when the moment came, I was speechless.

  ‘Look honey, what Shelby said wasn’t right, you do have a father and he is far away somewhere working, but he will come to take you and me with him soon.’ I found myself saying.' I felt tears swelling in my eyes.

  ‘Shelby also said my mama cannot see, but I said my mama sees. Only, she sees different from other mamas. She sees with her hands and cane.’

  ‘Now that’s how you shut big mouth Shelby up.’ I said reassuringly before I heard her delicate toes plump away on the wooden floor. She was off to play.

  ‘I know you don’t wish to talk about him but soon you will, to her.’ mother’s soft voice came to my ears.

  ‘Talk about what to her mother,’ I shot back feeling irritated, ‘when he could be dead as we speak. Besides, she is still only a child.

  'I worry when she grows older and starts asking more questions'. Mother interjected, 'I do not know whether you'll have the strength to tell her why he left in the first place.

  'No mother. I don’t wish to ruin her innocence. Fantasia’s life up until now has been a paradise, just like mine once was. Please mother, let her enjoy it for as long as possible.’

  ‘You miss him don’t you?’ Mother was back to her probing self.

  ‘No I don’t' I replied sharply, 'I do not recall anything about him or care. I’ve moved on with my life mom, besides it was four years ago. I am not that naïve little seventeen years old anymore, besides I have a child to raise and a mother to worry about. That’s just about enough on my plate already.’ I replied.

  ‘You see Leila dear, I never told you but some weeks before your father shot Carl, he told me he’d seen someone just like you with that Adam boy on television, at a game of college football. At the time, I dismissed his allegations as fantasies.’

  I had to end this conversation.

  ‘Speaking of papa,' I interrupted, 'how is he faring?’

  ‘Your father is sad.' She said sounding sorrowful, 'He says the meals have gotten worse, and so has the treatment from the guards but, he says next time we go visit, you should come along and bring Fantasia too. He wishes to at least see his granddaughter. He also says he has forgiven you for lying to his face about Adam and he also asks you for the same, for your forgiveness.’

  ‘Mom, you know I forgave papa a long time ago.’

  ‘Yes my dear, but you have never said it to his face.’

  ‘Mama,’ Fantasia had crept back and she was pulling at my dress.

  ‘Yes my love, what is it this time?' I inquired. 'Have you been poking poor Oldie?’

  ‘No’

  ‘Or have you been stealing grandma’s sugar bowl?’

  ‘No’

  ‘So what is it my sweet beloved?’

  ‘Come let me whisper in your ear mama.’

  ‘As long as you do not stick your fiddly tongue inside my ear, I will oblige.’

  ‘Mama,’ she whispered in my ear her sweet childish tone, ‘there’s a man standing outside in our courtyard.’