The Bernice L. McFadden Collection. Bernice L. McFadden
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her, panting and clutching a tuft of kinky hair in her hand.
“H-help me,” Tass yelped.
The woman opened and then closed her mouth.
The fourth contraction brought Tass down to her knees.
The nurse finally found her words and they spewed like sewage from her mouth: “Noooooooo niiiiiggers!”
Tass rolled onto her back, raised her knees, and began to push. When she screamed, the nurse threw her hands into the air and screamed too.
The first colored child ever to be born in that hospital was a big-head boy with dreamy eyes. They named him Maximillian May the second, but called him Sonny.
The hospital closed down a year later, relocated the staff, sold off the equipment, and boarded up the windows.
Drug addicts used crowbars to peel back the wood, climbed in, and gutted the building of everything they could sell. After that, someone set fire to the structure and the city bulldozed the remains and carted them away.
Now it’s an empty lot where people dump their garbage and winos gather over campfires to sing old songs.
Three months after Sonny was born, the familiar cravings started again. The morning sickness wasn’t as bad, and the rain didn’t make her quite so sad … They named the second boy James.
For a time Tass was a factory, similar to Chrysler and Ford, churning out a new model of baby every year. She and Fish would go on to produce a baker’s dozen by 1970.
The frequency with which she became pregnant made Tass feel a little bit ashamed. Hemmingway didn’t help alleviate those feelings; in fact, she added to them. When Tass called to tell her mother that she was pregnant for the sixth time in just as many years, the silence her announcement was met with was devastating.
“Mama, did you hear me?”
Hemmingway sighed, “Yeah, I heard you, Tass. Well, I guess congratulations are in order … again.”
A wounded Tass replied, “Okay, Mama, I’ll call you next week,” and put down the phone without even a goodbye.
Every year, Hemmingway spent Thanksgiving through to New Years with Tass and her family. In September of 1967, Tass gave birth to a little girl named Debra. She didn’t mention the pregnancy or the arrival of the child to Hemmingway; she just couldn’t bear to hear that tone in Hemmingway’s voice, or the disingenuous congratulations.
Two days before Thanksgiving that year, Fish collected Hemmingway from the bus depot. In the house, Hemmingway greeted her daughter and brood of grandchildren with smiles, kisses, and hugs.
She took a seat at the dining room table and Tass brought her a cup of coffee and a pecan roll. Upstairs, the new baby, closed away in Tass’s bedroom, began to wail. Her cries crept through the heating vent and seeped out into the dining room.
Hemmingway set her cup down, cocked her head to one side, and listened. Then she shot Tass a sharp look and said, “Jesus, girl, can’t you keep your legs closed?”
What occurred between Hemmingway’s visits and the delivering of babies was croup, evening prayers, diar-rhea, colds, ear infections, pink eye, broken arms, parentteacher nights, mumps, skinned knees, measles, chicken pox, first day of school, gold-starred reports, failing marks, whippings, kisses, last day of school, and summer vacation.
For many years, Tass’s life was like an echo.
There were kind years and hard years. Long periods that found Tass and her family living from pillar to post. Months when there was barely enough money to buy beans and flour. One winter, they couldn’t afford to fill the oil tank and spent the entire season huddled together in two rooms kept warm by kerosene heaters.
When Hemmingway slipped softly away during one of the hard years, Fish’s employer advanced him his pay, which was just enough to buy bus tickets for Tass and Sonny to go down and attend to things.
Padagonia met them at the bus depot and Tass was surprised at how hard-in-the-face she looked. Tass hadn’t seen Padagonia since she’d given birth to her second child back in 1959. Considering how poor their finances were, it just made more sense for them to bring Hemmingway up north. Tass had invited Padagonia to come and visit numerous times, and she always said that she would, but never did.
Padagonia was wearing a checkered long-sleeve shirt, baggy denims, hunting boots, and a baseball cap. She looked more like a man than a woman and Tass had to pinch Sonny when he whispered under his breath, “Is she a dyke, Mama?”
“No,” Tass hissed unsurely.
The two old friends threw their arms around each other. Tass winced; being hugged by Padagonia was like being clasped by a wire hanger.
“You need to put some meat on those bones, girl!” Tass teased. “This is Sonny, my oldest boy.”
Sonny offered his hand and Padagonia took it and shook it like a man.
“Wow, last time I saw you, you were just a little tot. Now look at you, all grown up!”
Sonny grinned.
Padagonia brought her face close to his and exclaimed, “My goodness, Tass, do you know this boy got hair growing above his lip?”
Sonny blushed with embarrassment.
The funeral was small. Most of the people who had known Tass and Hemmingway had either died or moved away.
At the cemetery, Sonny couldn’t stop fidgeting. Graveyards gave him the willies, so when the coffin was lowered into the ground, Sonny excused himself and double-timed it out to the street, where he waited with Padagonia who was puffing on a black and tan, with one foot cocked up on the fender of her silver Pacer.
Tass lingered. Nearby were the graves of her uncle and the grandparents she never knew. The tombstones had begun to sink and tilt, but the names and dates on the stones were as legible as they had been the day they were etched.
“I guess I’m officially an orphan now,” Tass murmured to the air as a lone tear trickled down her cheek.
Hemmingway had never revealed the identity of Tass’s father, and the one time Tass did ask, her mother had responded sharply, “I’m your mother and your father.”
When Tass was ten years old, she and Padagonia had spent an entire summer searching for her face in those of the men around town. The two spent hours sitting outside of Bryant’s grocery store, scrutinizing the faces of the men who trailed in and out of the store. This went on until someone reported back to Hemmingway: “That child of yor’n and her friend down by the store eyeballing people like it’s nobody’s business. They keep it up and somebody gonna take a switch to their behinds.”
Tass wiped her eyes and chuckled at the memory.
As she continued reminiscing, she was suddenly overcome with the feeling that she was being watched. She turned and saw a crew of gravediggers milling about, obviously waiting for her to leave. So she started across the lawn and walked right into a spiderweb, or at least what felt like a spiderweb. She was swiping at her face when she felt the unmistakable tickle of a feather in her ear, followed by a gentle breath of air against her cheek. Little did she know that the lines of communication between the here-and-now and the beyond were now open.
Yes, Emmett’s body was buried in Illinois, but his spirit had remained here with me. Why? Because this was where the last good thing happened.
Did you forget the kiss?
What do you think he was dreaming about when those men came and dragged him out his bed?
In his dream, the road stretched out for endless miles and he and Tass walked for days beneath a clear blue sky. Their ice pops never melted