I began to sob, pressing my hands to my belly through the thin robe, saying over and over again that I don’t want this baby. I looked at her imploringly. “What am I going to do?” I asked her.
She said nothing for a moment, just let me cry. Finally, she touched my knee and said she thought I’d change my mind in time.
I know I won’t. This poor child would always remind me of Martin. Of that night. Of what he did. I swallowed hard, suddenly afraid I was going to be sick. I cannot stand remembering that night! The baby would always remind me of what I did, too. “This baby was conceived in a night of rape and murder,” I said. I stared hard at Aunt Jewel to make my point, but lowered my voice to a hoarse whisper. “I … don’t … want … it,” I said. If I ever do have a child, I added, I want it to be conceived in love.
Aunt Jewel nodded in silence, her gaze steady on me. She nodded for so long that I began to squirm under her scrutiny. Finally she told me that there is a white family who lives not far from the farm. They aren’t wealthy, she said, but they have a lot of love. It’s a man and wife and the husband’s parents, and they all live together. Aunt Jewel was the wife’s midwife for two pregnancies, both of which ended in stillbirths.
When the woman got pregnant a third time, Aunt Jewel insisted they go to a doctor. So the woman had that baby with an obstetrician in the hospital, and that baby died, too.
I can only imagine that woman’s pain. “What was wrong?” I asked Aunt Jewel.
“They don’t rightly know,” she said, “but the doctor told them not to try any more. The news just about killed that woman.”
I was beginning to follow her. I asked her if that family might be willing to take my baby.
Aunt Jewel thought they would. “I believe they’d be thrilled to the moon and back to have your baby,” she said. But she told me I still needed to wait to decide. She is convinced I’ll love the baby “more than you love your own life,” she said.
I shook my head slowly. She was wrong. I know I won’t. I asked her to please talk to that family for me, but she refused to talk to them yet.
I looked toward the window, thinking about handing my baby over to another woman. A woman who would never attach horror to a little innocent child, the way I always would. I looked back at Aunt Jewel and asked her if she’d tell them how the baby was conceived.
“No, Sugar,” she said. “I sure won’t.” She said my “little one” deserves a fresh start. That nobody should hear about the sins of the father.
“Or the mother,” I added wryly.
Aunt Jewel leaned forward, resting her hand on mine, and she told me that I did what anyone would have done to save her life.
“But … maybe he wasn’t really going to kill me,” I said.
“He kilt somethin’ in you,” she said to me. “The way I see it, that’s just as bad.”
Tuesday, October 29, 1940
I’m shocked to see how long it’s been since I wrote in this journal. It used to be my everyday friend, but now it feels like a reminder of all the wrong turns I’ve made in my life.
I’m so big now, I feel like a hippopotamus moving around this house. I can’t believe I still have about two months left to go, according to Aunt Jewel. My appearance has changed in other ways, too. I’ve always been fair, but now I’m downright paper white from being inside all this time. My black hair hangs down past my shoulders. The bangs I’ve worn all my life are gone and I now sweep my hair away from my face. I wanted to keep it in the style I’ve loved for the past few years—that little bob with short bangs—but Aunt Jewel says this is better. When I leave, I’ll be far less recognizable without that distinctive haircut. I hardly recognize myself when I look in the mirror. Who is that white-skinned, long-haired, rotund woman? I don’t know her.
Actually, I do know her. She looks very different than she used to and she’s been through a lot, but she finally has her sanity back. I read through this journal before writing in it tonight, and I am shocked to see how thoroughly I lost my mind after what happened with M.D. (I can no longer bear to write his name.) I don’t know who that woman was who painted the motorcycle in the mural. The knife in Freda’s teeth. I wish I could erase those weeks and months from my history. In retrospect, Jesse was extremely tolerant of my insanity. I’m sure he’d been waiting and hoping for it to pass.
Where are you, Jesse?
I catch Mrs. Williams crying from time to time and I want to cry along with her, but I don’t do it in front of her. I don’t feel I have the right. I leave her alone. I just try to make her life easier by helping all I can around the house.
Meanwhile, I am getting more and more frightened of having this baby. The bigger I get, the less I can imagine being able to push it out of me. Aunt Jewel reminds me that women tinier than me have been giving birth for all time, but that doesn’t help. I keep thinking of the white woman she knows who had the stillborn babies. I’ve told Aunt Jewel to let that woman know she can have my baby once it comes, but she still refuses to talk to her and her husband. She still thinks I will warm to this child once it’s born. Even if I did, what would I do with it? Where would I go? One thing I know for certain: I will have to leave soon after I have the baby. I can’t ask the Williams family to live this way, in fear and danger, any longer.
Monday, December 16, 1940
This will be the last time I write in my journal. I’m waiting for Mr. Williams to fix a tire on his truck and then he’ll drive me to the bus station in Elizabeth City. I don’t dare take the journal with me. If I’m caught, the journal would lead the police right back to the Williams family and I fear every one of them would be arrested for “harboring a fugitive.” I don’t know what’s going to happen to me but, no matter what, I’ll protect Jesse’s family till the day I die.
The baby was born last week. Aunt Jewel delivered him in her own bed, not wanting Nellie to be frightened by my screams of pain. I’m afraid my screams of pain probably carried through the house, out to the barn, and all the way into town! Aunt Jewel said it was actually an easy birth. I guess she should know, but it’s not something I ever hope to repeat. Not under these circumstances anyway.
The baby had red hair.
I didn’t name him. I didn’t fall in love with him, as Aunt Jewel predicted. I did hold him long enough to feel his tenderness. His innocence. But I felt no love. Once I saw his hair, it was the end for me. I know that is small and cruel of me. He is an innocent baby. But he deserves a mother and father who will see only his pure little soul with no ugly memories attached to him. That is what he now has: he is already with his new family in his new home. Aunt Jewel said his parents already adore him. I feel numb. Dull and empty. But I know I made the right decision.
I don’t know where I’ll go. I have some ideas, though I won’t spell them out here. I should burn this journal, yet I find I can’t. It has been my trusted friend. My link to my mother. I’ll tuck it deep in Nellie’s chest. It will be several years before she’ll be able to read what I’ve written here and I know that when she does, she will hold my secrets tight. There is a bond between that little girl and me. I am trusting my safety to you, dear Nellie!