“Auntie,” Lucky tells Marceline LeBlanc. “I’ve brought Cyril’s daughter. Your granddaughter. Amelia.”
Part VI
1968
Chapter Fifteen
Saturday, April 27, 1968
Jacksonville
“Hello again, Mrs. Hunter!”
Melody opens her eyes. Yvonne breezes into the room, carrying a familiar pink bundle.
Ah, Martina.
Anxious to hold her daughter, Melody grips the bed rails to pull herself into a sitting position without waiting for the nurse to raise the top half of the bed.
Yvonne notes her wince. “Oh, my. It looks like your pain medication wore off again.”
“Just a little sore still.”
Understatement of the year. Two days after delivery, every inch of her body between her neck and her knees feels battered, torn, or bruised. Her throat is raw, not from screaming, but from the general anesthesia tube. Fortunately, she can only imagine the ordeal of childbirth itself, though there’s a part of her that feels wistful, as though she’d missed out on a magical experience.
When she’d voiced that thought to Honeybee, however, her mother had gaped in horror. “Magical experience? Now why would you even say such a thing?”
“I don’t know, it just seems like it would have been nice to welcome my baby into the world.”
“You did just that.”
“But not when she was born.”
“Well, you wouldn’t want her first sight of her mama to be screaming and carrying on like a heathen like folks did in the olden days. Just thank your lucky stars for modern medicine and doctors who can put you to sleep.”
Melody supposes she’s right, and she’s also thankful for nurses who bring pain pills in little white fluted cups, provide cold compresses for her aching breasts, and administer lactation suppression medication along with advice on caring for both newborn and new mother.
She dutifully swallows the medication, aware that it won’t just take away the pain, but will make her drowsy and a little woozy.
She holds out her arms, and Yvonne places Martina in them. The baby turns her face toward Melody’s swollen bosom as if she instinctively wants to nurse, despite the tight binding and lactation suppression drugs.
“You enjoy your time together,” she says, turning the bedside crank so that the top half rises. “Someone will be back soon to get the baby and bring you your supper tray.”
“You’re leaving?”
“My shift is over, but I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Melody is sorry to see her go. A rotating staff of nurses cares for her. The others are all white. Yvonne, with her Gullah patois and sly sense of humor, is Melody’s favorite.
“Oh, and be sure you get your supshun before visiting hours. Something tells me your mama will be back here right on schedule!”
Melody had been grateful when three o’clock came and the staff went up and down the corridor ordering all visitors to leave the premises—no exceptions, even for Honeybee Beauregard Abernathy, who’d already tested the boundaries.
“How did you get in here?” Melody had asked when her mother popped up an hour before visitors were allowed, with an armload of gift-wrapped boxes.
“Why, through the front entrance!” She’d been indignant, as though Melody had suggested she’d helicoptered to the roof and rappelled down the building.
“Didn’t anyone stop you?”
“Of course not. It’s a hospital, not a bank vault. Now open these presents and see what I brought for our little princess.”
More dresses—all pink, Honeybee’s favorite color. But at the bottom of the stack, older and more delicate than the others and wrapped in layers of tissue paper, she found a pastel blue one with a Best & Co. Layette label.
“Was this mine?”
“Ellie’s,” Honeybee said softly. “This child looks just like her.”
They’d swapped the baby’s white hospital bunting for the blue dress.
“You look a little like her,” Melody tells her drowsy daughter.
She appears white, just as Yvonne had said. No one, not even Travis’s own mother, would guess that she doesn’t belong to him.
“Big blue eyes, just like her daddy!” Doris had told Melody last night.
Fairly certain that all babies are born blue-eyed, Melody had agreed. But those eyes, when they’re open, radiate Cyril’s intense awareness.
“All the pretty little horses . . .” Melody sings, rocking Martina in her arms, remembering how Honeybee’s mellifluous soprano had lulled her back to sleep with the same song when she was very young and had awakened from a nightmare.
“Well, now, isn’t that sweet,” a male voice drawls from the doorway.
Startled, Melody looks up to see Rodney Lee Midget in his white milkman coveralls and cap.
“Don’t stop singin’ on my account. You always did have a voice like an angel. All those solos in the school choir, and whatnot.”
Melody instinctively clutches her daughter close. “What are you doing here? It’s not visiting hours.”
Honeybee’s words echo in her head. “It’s a hospital, not a bank vault.”
“Not for the public, but see, I work here. Just came by with the milk delivery and thought I’d pay a friendly visit to meet the baby.” He looks over his shoulder and then steps into the room. “Little girl, is it? What’s her name?”
“Martina Eleanor.”
“That’s unusual, ain’t it? She named after someone special?”
“My sister.”
“Dead, ain’t she? Guess I forgot all about her. But her name wasn’t Martina.”
Melody had chosen the baby’s first name in memory of Martin Luther King, though she’d told her parents and in-laws that she’d come across it in an old book and thought it was pretty.
Doris clearly didn’t agree. “What about Travis?”
Melody forced a smile and an attempt at humor. “Travis is a good name for a boy, but not for a little girl.”
Her own parents, and her father-in-law, too, had gotten a laugh out of that. But Doris pursed her lips and asked if Melody thought she should have waited for Travis’s approval. Her father, bless his heart, had answered before she could.
“There’s no telling when he’ll be in touch, and a baby’s got to have a name. I think Martina Eleanor is a fine one.”
Rodney Lee crosses to Melody’s bed. He’s so close she can smell his breath, and he’s been drinking something a lot stronger than milk.
“Come on, now, let’s have a look.”
She recoils, shielding the baby against her tender breasts.
“She’s sleeping.”
“That so? Looks to me like you’re trying to smother her.”
Melody thrusts her back in alarm. But Martina is breathing, awake now, wide-eyed and staring.
Rodney Lee laughs, peers at the baby, and gives a low whistle. “Guess your mother-in-law was right. This here little girl looks exactly like her daddy.”
Melody is relieved. For a moment, there, she’d been worried he might—
“’Course . . .” He turns his head and looks her in the eye. “Like you said, a woman only sees what she wants to see.”