Fernandina Beach
Propped on three pillows to alleviate heartburn, Melody is too weary to heave her swollen body out of bed this morning. She’s been up and down to the bathroom all night, courtesy of this boulder of a baby resting on her bladder.
Every time she fell asleep, she drifted right back into the nightmares that have haunted her sleep for weeks. She never remembers the details much past morning, though she’s certain Travis and Cyril are in all of them.
She’d read in the paper that a local NAACP delegation had set out for Memphis in the early morning hours after the assassination. They paid their respects as King’s body lay in state, then traveled on to Atlanta for the funeral. Governor Maddox, a segregationist who considered King an enemy of the people, had denied him a state funeral. But the somber procession passed the Capitol building from Ebenezer Baptist Church to Morehouse College.
She’d searched television news footage in vain for Cyril’s face.
Riots and violence plague cities across the country. This is war, right here on American soil, and Cyril is on the front lines. Something might happen to him, could already have happened, and she’d never know. There will be no official knocking on her door to deliver the news, no outpouring of support, no one to even grasp her grief.
Ten days after the assassination, she’d attended the seaside Easter sunrise service with her parents. Watching pink and orange glaze the horizon out beyond the rustling sea oats and shadowy dunes, she experienced sharp nudges in her womb, as though that tiny person was trying to tell her something.
Yes. Dayclean.
That afternoon, she’d driven out to Barrow for the first time since April 5, keeping an eye on the rearview mirror for the turquoise Impala. She’s been looking over her shoulder for Rodney Lee even when she’s home alone, but she could no longer stay away from Cyril.
His place was still shuttered with an air of desertion, though, as if he hadn’t been back since he’d left for Memphis. Otis was there, barking inside the house, but the doors were locked. She’d scrawled a note on a napkin from the car, left it fluttering beneath the doormat and drove home to wait for him. He hadn’t come that night, or the next. He hadn’t come at all.
And she’s still had no word from Travis in Vietnam, though Doris had mentioned last week that he’d sent a lovely Easter card. She hadn’t asked whether he’d been in touch with Melody. Of course she’d assume that he had. Why wouldn’t he write to his wife?
Maybe his letters had gotten lost in the mail.
Or maybe Rodney Lee had gotten to him with his suspicions.
The police had followed up a few times, checking in on her, asking if she wanted to file a harassment report against the Negro. She’d pretended she had no idea what—or whom—they were talking about. She’d done the same with her parents.
“The only one who’s been tormenting me is Rodney Lee Midget,” she’d told her mother.
Honeybee, bless her heart, is the kind of person who can be led to recall things that had never happened, and to answer her own questions with speculation. She’d convinced herself, her husband, Raelene, and very nearly Melody, too, that Rodney Lee had been infatuated with Melody and having lost her to Travis, had decided to stir up trouble with outrageous claims.
Meanwhile, with every day that passes without a contraction, Honeybee has grown more concerned that Melody’s “modern” obstetrician has allowed her pregnancy to proceed so far past her due date without intervention.
“He’s a quack!” she’d stormed this past weekend at Sunday dinner. “What’s his name?”
“Dr. Smith.”
“What kind of name is that?”
“Smith? It’s the most common name in the country,” Melody had said indignantly.
“Well, where is his office located? I’m going to march in there and—”
“Now, Honeybee, why don’t you just leave doctoring to the doctor?” her father said.
“He’s the wrong doctor. I’m in a mind to get Doc Krebbs to pay Melody a house call just to make sure—”
“Mother, no! It’s fine! I’m fine, and the baby’s fine, just taking its time, and Dr. Smith says—”
“I don’t care what he says! He’s wrong!”
“Well, Dr. Spock says—”
“And I surely don’t care what that man says!”
“You’re the one who gave me his book,” Melody reminded her.
“That’s before I heard about all the unpatriotic rubbish he’s been spreading.”
“The war has nothing to do with his medical skills.” And it isn’t rubbish, she’d been tempted to add, but knew better. Honeybee wouldn’t tolerate her daughter’s disapproval of Vietnam any more than she does public opposition, whether from a renowned, Yale-educated pediatrician or long-haired hippies.
Raelene might share Honeybee’s political views, but she’d stepped in to offer castor oil and herbal tea, home remedies guaranteed to bring on labor. Melody had promised to try them, and gone back to brooding about the impending birth, Cyril and Travis, her parents, Rodney Lee, and her in-laws.
Tuesday, she’d seen Dr. Stevens for a checkup. He’d listened to the baby’s heartbeat and smiled.
“That’s a good, strong little person you got in there, Mrs. Hunter.”
“When do you think she’ll be born?”
“Well, now, I don’t know if she’s a she . . .”
“She is.”
“. . . and only the good Lord in heaven above knows when she—or he—will be delivered. Mid-May on, I’d say, but you pay a mind to signs that it’s coming sooner.”
“If it was sooner—like, say, this week—would everything be all right? A baby this premature could survive?”
“Oh, sure, sure. These days, babies born even two months ahead of their due dates are pulling through just fine, so long as their mamas get to the hospital. Wonders of modern medicine, and all. But your baby’s only one month out, so don’t you worry none, Mrs. Hunter.”
She’d gone home, gulped a hefty dose of castor oil, and made a cup of Raelene’s herbal tea. She’d done the same yesterday, several times.
And now—
Out of nowhere, a savage cramp, the kind that seizes her calves sometimes when she’s lying in bed, clenches her midsection. She cries out and sits up, doubled over until it passes.
Something’s happened to the baby.
Terrified, she gets out of bed and hurries to the phone. Her first instinct is to call her mother. But as she inserts her forefinger into the dial and starts to rotate it, the pain comes again, and she knows.
The baby isn’t in peril; she’s about to enter the world.
Two weeks have passed since Oran took Gypsy to a tattoo parlor in Greenwich Village to get a horse inked just above her left breast.
“In case one of us forgets and loses her way,” he’d said.
Her way. Not his way, or their way.
She’d been paranoid, at first, that he knew she was suspicious of him. But the more she thought about it all, the more she realized it was ludicrous to think that her father had not only slipped drugs into her chocolate, but is the Brooklyn Butcher. Imagine if Greg found out she’d even considered such a thing? He’d think she’d lost her mind, and she wouldn’t blame him. A couple of random coincidences don’t mean that her father is a cold-blooded killer.