Pictured his neck. Pictured him lifting me high into the air the way he used to do, out of nowhere, just out of sheer joy. Pictured what our babies would have looked like.
I must have drifted off. I was pulled back by somebody coughing. I waited for it to stop. Where was Melinda? Why wasn’t she taking care of this?
My body was heavy. I tried to lift my arm, but it would not move. I thought I’d gotten out of bed and slipped into my robe.
More horrible coughing. Sidda, unable to clear the phlegm from her chest. I had to get up. I had to go to her.
I thought I was on my feet. Thought it was Father coughing. I brought him hot lemon juice in his chair by the fire in the house on Compton Street. He did not see me. “Father,” I said, “here, drink this.”
And then I woke with a start. My father was dead. He rounded the curve going too fast when Sidda was an infant, soon after I lost her twin, not long after we lost Genevieve.
Sidda was standing next to my bed. Her hair was tangled. It was not hair like mine. She was not a true blond. She could not stop coughing. I imagined I could see the inside of her body, could see her small ribs about to crack. I sat up in bed, pulled her to me, and circled my arms around her rib cage.
“Baby,” I whispered, “try to hold on to just one long breath.”
It only made her cough harder.
“It hurts, Mama,” she said.
I reached for the glass on the night stand. “Darling, here, can you swallow just a little sip of water?”
I held the cup to her mouth and she swallowed.
“Yes, sweet baby, good, that’s good. Swallow slowly, darling. That’s it.”
She gagged and spit the liquid out of her mouth and started coughing worse. I took the glass from her hand and smelled it. It was not water. It was bourbon. If I had had a knife I would’ve used it to cut my heart out.
“I’m sorry, Buddy. I’m sorry all this is happening to you.”
“It’s okay, Mama,” she said. “I came to tell you that Lulu and Baylor are sick.”
“What do you mean, they’re sick, Dahlin?” I asked her.
“They made a lot of poo-poo.”
When I stepped back into the children’s room, I was slapped in the face by the smell of shit. It was pouring rain outside, all the windows were shut tight, heat was blasting up through the floor furnace, and the whole room smelled like crap.
Lulu was sitting up in her bed sobbing. When I went to her, I could see she had diarrhea. It was dripping out of her diaper, all over her legs and onto the covers. Somehow it had even managed to get in her hair.
I picked her up. “Oh, Baby. Shh-shh, Lulu-Cakes, it’s okay.”
Her baby poo-poo rubbed onto my gown, against my arms. Baylor started crying when he heard the sound of my voice. I walked over to his crib carrying Lulu, reached down to feel his diaper. It was full. The world was filled with baby crap. I thought it was all I would ever smell.
“Baylor,” I said to my youngest baby, as if he could understand, “I beg you, please do not start up.”
He cranked it up, though, wailing at the top of his range.
Then Sidda started that deep coughing again. I turned to look at her, and that is when Lulu threw up on me. Her baby puke soaked my gown. I could feel the wetness against my breasts. I could feel my whole body start to itch.
I ran to the bathroom with Lulu, the overhead light so cruel and bright. As I bent down to position her over the toilet, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I did not know who it was.
The wet washcloth was in my hand. What to wipe first: Lulu’s face or bottom. When would I get to wipe my own soiled body?
Then Sidda was in the doorway, her long red hair falling down over the shoulders of her nightgown. Her coughing racked her body, shook her shoulders.
“Is that all you can do is cough?!” I said. “Stop that coughing this instant! Can’t you see I’ve got my hands full? Go back into the bedroom and pick up your baby brother. I need some help around this house!”
My four-year-old daughter looked at me, covered her mouth with her hand, and then obeyed. When she returned, she had Baylor in her arms and Little Shep by the hand. I wanted to kill them for putting me through this.
Where was my husband? Where was the father of those four children? You show me where it is written that only mothers are supposed to smell crap. I could’ve shot him for leaving me alone like that.
“Sidda, wipe off the baby. Just take that washcloth and wet it and clean Baylor up.”
Holy Mary Mother of God, where are your soiled gowns? Didn’t the Son of God crap all over the place, the odor mingling with the animal smells in that manger? Why do you always look so Goddamn sweet and serene?
Sidda had Baylor in the bassinet, changing his diaper as best she could. When she started coughing again, Little Shep said, “Bad Siddy. Mama say no cough!”
Lulu finally stopped throwing up, and I cracked open the bathroom window. Still pouring rain and freezing outside, but I could not take the stench any longer. The wind blew in on the five of us, on the little Holy Family as we puked and shat and cried and coughed and slowly lost our minds.
Finally they were all clean. I had changed the shit- and puke- and snot-filled sheets and diapers and underwear and pajamas. I had flung the bedroom windows open and cranked the heat up to ninety.
Outside it was still raining.
Lulu, exhausted, had nodded off, her pudgy leg sticking out of the covers like it always did when she slept. I’d given Little Shep, who was now wide awake, a box of animal crackers, and he sat in his bed playing with his tractor and biting the heads off giraffes.
The baby was on his stomach, making little fretting noises. I rubbed his back in little circles. “There, Bay-Bay, be quiet. Please be quiet for Mama.”
Sidda’s next coughing jag went on forever, making me close the windows, although I hated to.
I crossed to her in her bed and looked at her. Why was her face pinched? She was only a child. “Siddalee Dahlin, when did we last give you cough syrup?”
“I don’t know, Mama,” she said, and started to cough again.
I got the cough syrup out of the medicine cabinet in the bathroom and returned to her side. “Sit up, Dahlin,” I told her. “Here, let me prop up your pillow.”
I poured the amber liquid into a spoon. “Here, Sidda, swallow slowly, okay?”
Her coughing momentarily stopped. I looked at the cough syrup and decided to pour myself a spoonful. It couldn’t hurt.
My hands were shaking. I pushed Sidda’s hair out of her face. I placed my hands on her cheeks.
“Feels good, Mama.”
“You’re my big girl, Sidda,” I whispered. “You’re my oldest. You have to help me take care of the little ones, you promise?”
“Yes, Mama,” she whispered, her eyes starting to close.
Back in my bedroom, I lay down, my eyes wide open. It took me a while to realize that the stench now came from my own nightgown, which I hadn’t yet changed. Without getting up, I slipped the gown off me and lay on the bed naked. I looked down at my body and tried to pray.
But the smell was too strong. I rose, walked to the closet. I took out my ankle-length off-white cashmere coat, a Givenchy that I bought for myself with part of my inheritance after Father died. The single most expensive, extravagant item I had ever bought for myself. I pulled on socks and boots and stepped out onto the small side porch.
The rain was still falling, and an oyster-colored light was starting in the east. It was cold and damp, but at least it didn’t stink.
Holy Mother of the Redeemer, if only once I could see baby throw-up stains on your lovely blue garments, if only once I could see your own palms itching to slap the Savior in his bawling face, then maybe I would not now feel like such a piece of human crap. You Goddamn Eternal Virgin, if you would wipe that insipid pastel smile off your face for one moment and look at me like we were in the same shoes, then I might not despair.
&
nbsp; I was no virgin. I stank. My hands smelled like baby poop and puke and tobacco. Even the Hovet I sprinkled on them could not erase the stink. There was nothing to erase the stink of being alive. I was afraid my children would die. I was afraid we were all dying.
In the dawn air the cold turned my breath into fog. Fog was all around me. Soon I could not see my own hands.
I made myself wait until six-thirty to call Willetta. I told her it was an emergency, and she came. While she made the kids breakfast, I put on lipstick and combed my hair. I was still trying not to cry. I went to the drawer in the bureau where Shep kept his cash, but there were only two fives. I needed more than that.
“Willetta, do you have any money?” I asked.
I was asking my colored baby-sitter for money.
“No, ma’am, just my bus money. What you need?”
“What I need is a lot of money,” I told her.
“You need you Mr. Robert B. Anthony off the TV to give you a check for a million dollars is what you need,” she told me while she gave Lulu a bottle with 7-UP in it for her upset stomach.
“Make sure Little Shep eats his oatmeal,” I said. “Otherwise he’ll be into the cookies before you can turn around.”
“Yas’m,” she said, buttering Sidda a piece of toast. “Where you going in all this rain?”
“I’m going to Confession,” I said. “I’m going to get absolution.”
“Them old cat-eyed priests mean,” Willetta muttered. “You got to look out for them old cat-eyed priests.”
“I’ll be back in an hour or so,” I said.
“Good, Miz Vivi,” she said, “because I got to get over to Mrs. Daigre’s soon as you get back. She having her a bridge party this evenin.”
They did not know me over at Saint Anthony’s. It was all Italian there. The church was darker and older than Divine Compassion, and they loved their artificial flowers, those Italians did. I had not been in that church since my childhood, when Mother took us there for the funeral of one of her friends.
Underneath my Givenchy, I was wearing only my bra and panties. Who would’ve known the difference? It was not a sin. I had my chapel veil on.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. My last confession was two weeks ago.”
I tried to take a deep breath but it got stuck in my chest. My heart slammed and I could not breathe.
I didn’t know this priest. I couldn’t confess at Our Lady of Divine Compassion. What I had to say was too Goddamn much for my own parish.
I could smell him sitting there on the other side of the screen. I leaned my nose in and smelled the screen. Scents of incense and leather-bound hymnals. The worn velvet of the kneeler scratched against my knees. I had no comfort. My whole body itched. Had been itching for four and a half days. I itched all over. It would drive me crazy if it didn’t stop. I had already gone through two bottles of calamine lotion, which had stained half my outfits, and it did no good. I called Dr. Beau Poché for something stronger, and he was supposed to have it waiting for me at Bordelon’s. Thank God for Beau. He was a baby doctor, but he took care of me too.
I was twenty-nine years old, almost thirty. I could not breathe. My sins left me breathless. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been two weeks since my last good confession.”
I pulled my Givenchy coat tight around me. “Father, I accuse myself of bad thoughts toward my family.”
“Were these thoughts impure?”
“No, Father.”
“Have you borne hatred toward your husband?”
“Yes, Father. And toward my children.”
“How many times have you borne these thoughts of hatred toward loved ones?”
“I don’t know, Father. Too many times to count.”
“What are these bad thoughts?”
I knew I had to tell him. He was a priest, the representative of God on earth. I had to tell my sins. Then maybe I could eat, then maybe I could sleep.
The palms of my hands itched. They itched right into the center of my skin. I pushed my thumbnail as hard as I could into my palm. I did not want to tell my innermost thoughts to this priest. I did not trust his cooked-cabbage smell.
But I needed absolution. I needed a prayer that would carry me back into that tiny house without murdering those four dear little children.
“In my thoughts,” I whispered, “I want to abandon my children, I want to injure my husband. I want to run away. I want to be unattached. I want to be famous.”
“Do you have the courage to make sacrifices?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Have you the necessary health and abilities to fulfill your duties as a wife and mother?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Well, then,” he said, and shifted his weight in the chair. “The married state is a road which passes over hilly regions. You accepted a life of duty and responsibilities when you received the sacrament of matrimony. Precious lessons of patience and resignation may be learned from the lifelong sorrow of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of Our Blessed Lord. Ask her to teach you how to bear your cross silently, patiently, and in perfect submission to the will of God. We are put on this earth to suffer. It is through suffering that you reach happiness, through humiliation that you attain glory. Your chief duty is to live together in love, concord, and fidelity with your husband, and to raise your children in the Catholic faith. You must banish these bad thoughts.”
“But, Father,” I asked, “what if I cannot make the thoughts stop?”
“Then you commit a sin of faithlessness in the Passion of Your Redeemer. For your penance, make a good Act of Contrition, say three Our Fathers and seven Hail Marys while slowly meditating each of the Seven Sorrows of Mary. Now, by the power of God invested in me I grant you absolution for your sins in the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. Go in peace and sin no more.”
I walked out of the church and got in my car. It smelled like my babies. I lit a cigarette. You must do penance in order to be forgiven. The car was cold. I pulled the Givenchy cashmere around me. I lit another cigarette.
I stared at the velvet box that held the ring from my sixteenth birthday. Shep did not own that ring. I did. My father gave it to me. I could not get money unless Shep gave it to me. I could charge wherever I wanted, but Shep had to hand me money. I did not have a checking account. I had nothing of my own except that ring.
Five hundred dollars. The man at The Lucky Pawn just handed over the money. Did not want to hear where the ring came from.
“I don’t want your story, lady,” he said. “I just want your pawn item.”
On the map, the Gulf of Mexico didn’t look far. Still, it was farther than I had driven by myself in years. I drove fast. Faster than that Ford had ever been driven.
That old-lady sedan came with my second baby. I had nothing to do with picking it out. It appeared in the driveway with a note from Shep, and I was supposed to say thank you. Didn’t my husband remember my Jeep? Didn’t he remember I was the queen of the road, roaring through the night with the Ya-Yas, my bare foot heavy on the pedal, my painted red toenails bright as the dials on the dash?
Nobody knew where I was. Not even the Ya-Yas. I would go somewhere and start a new life where no one knew me. I would have no roots. I would leave my husband, my children, my mother, that piss-ant priest, even my best friends behind. I would wipe the slate clean and stand naked and try to find out who was there. I would look for Vivi Abbott, a missing person.
I didn’t stop until I got to the Gulf of Mexico. I stood at the edge. All I could see was water, stretching clear down to Mexico. The air was clear. I had left poo-poo diapers behind in Louisiana. Nothing in front of me but water. It was blowing and lightly raining, but I craved a hurricane. I am a woman who loves hurricanes. They put me in a party mood. Make me want to eat oysters on the half shell and act slutty.
I leaned my body against the wind and walked. I was not the kind of woman to take off her coat and walk into that ocean, givi
ng up. But the thought crossed my mind.
I thought of that lovely, exquisite trip the Ya-Yas and I took to this same Gulf. Was it ’42? ’43? Drove all the way here by ourselves, no chaperone, no nothing. Jack and the gang drove down later. Stayed at Caro’s family’s beach house, woke up in the mornings, threw on our swimsuits, and headed straight for the beach.
I thanked God that that beach was still there. That the water was still raging. That nothing was crying but seagulls. No baby puke, no mouths to feed.
I walked for hours, and did not miss my children for a moment.
“Give me the best room you have,” I told the desk clerk at the Hotel of the Gulf Coast. “Water view.”
Postcards in a little holder on the desk read, “An Institution in Keeping with the Grandeur and Beauty of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. In a Tropical Garden on the Beach.”
I signed the register as Babe Didrikson. The clerk only nodded. Fool, I should have signed Grace Kelly.
“Have room service send up a bourbon and branch water, please. A double. Your best name brand.”
The first thing I did was draw a hot bath and climb into the tub with my drink. When I could no longer smell baby crap on my fingers, I got out. I dried my body with the plush white towel, and applied the lotion. I pulled my Givenchy around me, put on fresh lipstick, headed downstairs, and tried not to scratch in public.
The dining room looked out on the Gulf. I sat down and unfolded the linen napkin in my lap.
I ordered another bourbon and branch water and drank it quickly. I felt my shoulders relax.
I ordered a third drink. When I finished it, I felt my stomach relax. But I still itched.
I ordered a dozen oysters, and ate them with cocktail sauce hot as hell, with extra Tabasco sauce. I was nobody’s mother. I was the queen of my own sovereign nation.
A gentleman approached my table. He was graying at the temples, not hard to look at, but I didn’t like his shoes. Cheap and lacking originality.
“Excuse me,” he said. “I can’t help but notice you are alone this evening.”
I looked at him square in the eyes, and spoke with a British accent. “I am working on a story for The London Times.”