Part 34 (2/2)
She does all of this so they can a.s.sume before she has to tell them.
Her hips have already spread and people remember that she carried Rita the same way. ”That baby is all in your behind girl!” they say, just as she had planned.
”When you due?”
The questions come like rain.
”Lawd, you want another one after Rita practically grown!”
”My friend Ann had a baby late, too. Change-of-life baby. You probably won't even get your menstrual after this one come.”
Erasmus didn't like what Bertha was doing, didn't like it one little bit.
”Bertha, why we gotta hide the fact that Rita done gone and got herself knocked up?”
”'Cause.”
”'Cause what?”
”Just 'cause.” Bertha was done talking about it and went to check on the cornbread and chicken and dumplings she was preparing.
By the time Manny shows up to the house again, Bertha is a good twenty pounds heavier.
”We expectin' you know. Erasmus ain't tell you?” Bertha spouts when Manny's eyes go wide with surprise.
”Really?” Manny says and his eyes stretch wider. ”Go 'head man!” He laughs and slaps Erasmus hard on his back. ”You still gotta a little left in you!”
Erasmus just grimaces.
”So when you due?”
Bertha drops her eyes and mumbles something Manny can't quite catch.
”What's that?” he asks and leans in closer to Bertha.
”Summer. July. Maybe August.” Bertha speaks in a low, unsure voice.
”Is that right? Is that right?” he says again.
”Uh-huh,” Bertha mumbles and then looks over at Erasmus.
There's a s.p.a.ce of silence. A deep ebbing quiet that makes both Erasmus and Bertha twist their necks and examine their hands.
Manny considers them for a while and then asks, ”Where Rita at?”
”Oh she down in Gainesville, visiting with my mama. She's ailing you know, so I sent Rita on down there to help out.” The lies fall from Bertha's mouth like stones and Erasmus' body jerks with each syllable.
”She'll be back by the time the baby come. She'll be back by then.” Bertha's voice falters and the smile that had been holding fast to her lips slips.
”That's good,” Manny says and twists his ring around his pinky. ”She a good girl that Rita.”
Rita, before she was Luscious, was not called upon to change a diaper or heat a bottle, was a.s.sured that she would never be referred to as Mama or have to attend a PTA meeting. Bertha is Mama and Rita, before she was Luscious, is just older sister, eldest sibling, first child of Erasmus and Bertha, mother of none.
Friends visit; family, too. They bring pink receiving blankets, matching booties, and bonnets that smell of talc.u.m powder and everything precious and new.
They stroke the baby's tiny hand and coo at her pursed lips and Bertha grins and smiles and serves cookies and tea while Erasmus grunts and excuses himself from the sounds of women and the baby smells that swirl around him and s.n.a.t.c.h away his air.
Rita, fuller in the hips and heavy-breasted, stays put in her room and listens as the lies her mother tells about pregnancy and childbirth slip through the crack beneath the door.
They notice her b.r.e.a.s.t.s before anything else. Their eyes light on them like flies on sugar s.h.i.+t and they lick their tobacco-black lips and drag their hands through their woolen hair and some touch themselves, running their fingers across their chins or pinching the skin of their necks.
The women turn cold eyes on her and one even spits in her path, another fixes her mouth to sling an insult but catches the cold glint in her eyes and the sun fastening onto something long, sharp, and silver sticking out from her coat pocket and she thinks better of her comment, bites her tongue and turns her head away instead.
It's just before dusk and the sun is looming and orange in the sky, people are huddled in bunches on the corners, and someone is already cussing up a storm in one of the apartments overhead.
Music is streaming out of Lou's place, and Jake's Spot has set the first batch of porgies in the pan to fry.
Friday night in the Black Bottom, Paradise Valley.
Rita reaches the corner and turns left on Hastings Street. Broken gla.s.s litters the sidewalk; there are bloodstains close by and further away a chalk outline of where the body fell dead.
But that was last night and not one person is talking about it because someone else was shot dead outside of Sonnie Wilson's place and another stabbed behind The Flame.
Too many dead people to talk about, living people got other things on their minds; they move up and down the walkways and don't even seem to notice the silhouette on the ground. They trample across its hands, legs and face while they talk about fifths, f.u.c.king, no-good men, and bad-a.s.s kids.
Rita turns into the O Bar.
The door sits open but the orange sun can't even work its way past the threshold; it's already midnight inside those walls, just the flicker of cigarettes and the dim light coming off the jukebox exist there.
Rita peers in before stepping into the gloom. The two men seated at the bar turn their heads to consider her but decide after a moment that the drinks sitting in front of them are more interesting.
A woman, satin-colored, long and leggy, moves from the shadows and positions herself near the jukebox. Rita sees that the skin around her eyes is puffy and the lipstick she wears is the color of purple-black grapes.
The woman drapes herself over the jukebox, pressing the side of her face against the curved metal. Slowly, gently, she places loving kisses onto the gla.s.s, leaving plum-colored lip marks smeared across its clear face.
Rita watches her for a while before moving to the bar and taking a seat.
”Yeah,” the bartender calls from a dark s.p.a.ce at the end of the bar.
Rita squints her eyes. ”Manny here?” she asks.
”Maybe,” the voice calls back.
The two men turn their attention to Rita once more.
”He here or not?”
<script>