Queen of the Mardi Gras Ball Read online

  Stopping before a small house painted a bright yellow across the front but just as gray and weathered on the sides as the surrounding homes, Roscoe hopped down to help Beulah from her seat. She waddled to the gate in the low fence and let herself into the yard where a plaster hen, rooster, and chicks shared the space with a few real chickens. Minutes later, Beulah was back on her small porch and heading toward the wagon with a large, white linen sack slung from her shoulder. She handed the bag to Roz.

  “Don’t get no dirt on it, Peep. Dis my birthin’ bag.”

  They were off into the countryside where they passed newly planted sugarcane—acres and acres of it—rising above water-filled ditches. A stately but abandoned house sat among live oaks in a break in the fields, then, a white mansion surrounded by towering old camellia bushes and enormous azaleas. A gray-haired yardman raking fallen blossoms raised a hand as they passed.

  “My grandpappy,” Roscoe said as he slapped the mules with the reins to get more speed. “Soon he gonna be a great-grandpappy. Geddup, Blackie ’n Buck.”

  They passed another mile of cane. The team turned off the paved road into a muddy lane lined on both sides with gray shacks. Pickaninnies ran barefoot in the puddles, and a few dark women with babes in arms came out on their porches to watch the midwife pass.

  “Midwife comin’,” shouted one child. The word went from mouth to mouth down the quarters and arrived at Roscoe’s place before the mules. A hugely pregnant young woman clutching her stomach came to the door of the cottage. Not more than seventeen, Roz was sure, maybe younger, the girl wore a muslin dress printed with purple flowers and probably put together from flour sacks. The garment rode tight across her breasts and belly. Her feet were bare, and she was free of underwear, Roz noticed, the dress being so thin. They climbed the two steps to the small porch.

  “How often the pains comin’, Maisie? Yo’ water broke yet?” Beulah asked the scared girl.

  “Don’t got no watch, ma’am. Pretty often, I guess. Doan guess da water broke yet, but dere was some blood in my panties so I tuk ’em off.”

  “Where they at, child?”

  “In da basin.”

  Beulah examined the panties. “See here, Peep, dat called bloody show. Means labor gonna start soon.” Roz took a look at the mess of blood and mucus, proud of herself that she didn’t gag.

  “Roscoe, get de water boilin’. Maisie, you gots clean sheets like I tole you?”

  “Yas’m.”

  “Peep, soon as we gots hot water, you wash and make up de bed. Put this under de linens.” Midwife Senegal took a rubber sheet from her sack. “Maisie, it good to walk so long as you can. Helps bring de baby. First ones, dey don’t come fast mos’ times.”

  Once the bed was made, there wasn’t much to do but watch Maisie pace the small room. Roz and Midwife Senegal sat in straight-backed chairs while Roscoe fretted out on the front porch. From time to time, Beulah got up and measured contractions with what looked like a railroad conductor’s big watch. Once, she used some of the water boiling on the wood stove to make coffee for herself and the others, but not Maisie.

  “No eatin’, no drinkin’ once it start, Peep, ’cause it all jus’ come up or out, and dey be mo’ mess to clean up.”

  When Maisie doubled over with the intensity of the pain, the midwife helped her to the bed. Beulah scrubbed in the hot water. “Let’s see what we gots here.” She inserted her fingers into the girl’s bulging vagina. “Five fingers. Dat be half way, Peep. Now you wash her good all around dis area, and keep an eye on her. Maybe wipe her face, rub her belly. Girl, you want to scream, you do it, or bite down on a rag. Head starts to show, you come get me quick, Peep. You don’t do nothing yo’self, hear? Me, I’ll be gettin’ some shuteye in the front room.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” both the young women answered.

  Roz followed Beulah into the front room. “Wouldn’t she feel better if her mother was here? I could go find her.”

  “Her mama dead, Peep. Roscoe was raised by his grandpappy ’cause his own mama run off and his daddy dead in de Great War. We all she got, but de women in the quarters, dey come in the mornin’ to see to her.”

  As the hours passed, Roz wiped the girl’s face with a cool cloth and ran a rag dampened with water Roscoe hauled from the pump halfway down the quarters over Maisie’s dry lips. She rubbed the big belly in a circular motion she hoped soothed, and let the mother-to-be cling to her hands when the pains came. Roz had been around colored people all her life, the maids, her childhood mammy who’d gone on to nurse other St. Rochelle children, but she’d never once been in their homes or done them an intimate service. When it came to childbirth, that didn’t seem to matter. All women sat in the same boat riding up and down those waves of pain.

  “Can’t stand it no more! Dis baby comin’ out,” Maisie screamed.

  Roz checked between the girl’s bent legs. A small circle of dark curls had appeared at the mouth of the vagina.

  “Don’t push, Maisie. Let me wake Beulah!” Roz dashed to the front room and shook the midwife. “It’s time.”

  Beulah stretched and washed up quickly. “Okay, Maisie chile, you bear down ’til I tells you stop. Stop! See here, Peep, we deliver de head. Now, we turns de baby so de shoulders can come out. We got a fine big head, here, Maisie, big ears. Gonna be a great big boy, my guess.”

  “Don’t want no great big baby! He gonna kill me.”

  “No such thing. Here come de shoulders. Not too hard now, Maisie. We don’t want no tearing.”

  Maisie whimpered. Roz watched raptly as the newborn slipped into Beulah Senegal’s big hands once the shoulders were delivered. The midwife held up the child by his heels and administered one sharp slap to his backside. Fluid drained from the baby’s mouth and nostrils. He trembled, and his mouth opened wide with a big, lung-clearing cry. Beulah rested the baby on his mother’s hip and tied off the umbilical cord in two places. She waited a few beats, then cut the cord with what seemed to be nothing more than a pair of scissors. Roz flinched.

  “See here, Peep, you waits ’til the cord stop pulsin’. Then you cuts quick an’ clean. You take dis fine little man and wipe him off. No, don’t put him in de water, not ’til his cord come off. You hear dat, too, Maisie. Yes, he a big boy. Now, give him to his mama and hand me dat granite basin. We ain’t done yet.”

  Roz watched the midwife press on the girl’s belly until the afterbirth plopped out into the pan. “No tears or patches missin’. Look like it should.” Beulah waved the pan under Roz’s nose, but the white girl didn’t back away. She forced herself to observe what lay in the pan like a strange cut of meat.

  “Okay. Maisie, you want to save dis, or should I bury it?”

  “Bury it out by da fig tree.”

  “Okay, what’s our time here, Peep?”

  “Four-thirty-five a.m.”

  “Okay, you remember dat. Diaper little man and swaddle him up. Maisie gots clothes an’ blankets laid out on de dresser. I’m gonna clean up Mama, here, change de sheets. When you done, take him out to meet his daddy. What you gonna call him, Maisie?”

  “Rudy, after poor, dead Mistah Valentino, and Roscoe for his daddy.”

  “Dat a fine name, Rudy Roscoe Sampy. I give you his birth paper ’fore I leave.”

  As Roz struggled to pin the diaper onto the still squalling child and get him into a small, handmade shirt, she couldn’t help but admire how easily Beulah raised the mother, stripped the sheets and remade the bed. Roz tried twice to get a knitted blanket around the kicking child, but he kept throwing it off.

  “Here, here,” Mrs. Senegal said. “You gots to tuck de end in first, wrap de sides tight. He’ll settle down once he feel like he in de womb again. Bet you never dressed a black baby befo’, have you, Peep?”

  “I’ve never dressed any baby besides my dolls, Midwife Senegal. All I know from showers and such is that you must support their heads.”

  “Like dis.” Beulah adjusted little Rudy Roscoe in Roz’s arms. “See
how he settlin’ down.”

  The baby nuzzled against Roz’s breast. She felt a tingle not unlike sexual excitement and let out a soft, “Oh!”

  “He want his mama’s tit, but first you take him out to see his daddy.”

  Roz carried her burden to the porch where Roscoe had been joined by his grandfather and bolstered during the long hours with coffee and nips from the bottle provided by a few other men who waited with him. The young father wasn’t drunk, though. His hands trembled as he took the child, and his eyes went wide with awe.

  “Lookit da size of him. You done give me a fine great-grandson, boy.”

  “Maisie?” asked Roscoe as if he were terrified he might have to raise the baby alone.

  “She’s doing so well. You may go inside if you want.”

  Rudy Roscoe vigorously searched the front of his daddy’s overalls. “He want his mama bad.” Roscoe tried to hand the baby back to Roz, but she shook her head.

  “Carry him in to Maisie. Tell her what a good job she did.”

  The boy nodded and carried the baby gingerly into his house where Maisie waited in a clean white nightgown half unbuttoned down the front. She put the baby to her breast.

  “Oooh! Dat hurt. He a strong sucker.”

  The young couple laughed. Roz felt a pang of envy as she watched the new family forming. A crude but lovingly made cradle sat in a corner of the room. Who knew how many babies it had held or would hold in the years to come?

  In the front room, Midwife Senegal labored over her papers, which seemed more difficult for her hands than the delivery. She filled in the names of the parents and baby, date and time of birth, the sex of the child. In a cloth-bound notebook, she wrote her own record of the birth. Finally rising, she took one set of papers to the couple. Roscoe followed her into the front room.

  “I gots a bushel of sweet ’taters set aside for you, and a ham I been savin’. I put ’em in de wagon for you. Divide it how you wants.”

  “Be fine. Let’s get us back to town.” Midwife Senegal heaved herself on to the wagon where the patient mules waited.

  They rolled off into the dark of a January morning. Women came from down the quarters with pots of food for the family and small, humble gifts for the baby.

  “It a boy,” Roscoe shouted to them. “A fine, big boy.”

  “Yeah, we heard him cry all the way down de row,” one neighbor answered.

  A faint line of gray lightened the horizon as they turned on to the paved road and approached the gateway to the big house. A car careened from the drive, startling the mules that balked to a stop. The vehicle blocked the road and stalled as a uniformed black man, his jacket half undone, tore out of the driver’s seat.

  “Roscoe, they need the midwives up at the house quick. Your grandpappy saw them come, and I was praying they was still in the quarters. I’m going for the doctor, but Miz LeBlanc, she delivering early and bleeding heavy. Might be too late for Doc.”

  With Roz clutching the midwife’s bag and jolting in the wagon bed along with the ham and sweet potatoes, Roscoe turned the mules into the driveway and whipped them down the lane.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The big house sat amidst its dark bushes lit up as if a ball were in progress. A maid, disheveled and harried, answered the door after Beulah pounded stoutly on it.

  “Thank God Almighty, Vernon done caught you on the road, Miz Beulah. It real bad upstairs. Who you got wit’ you?”

  As they moved toward the staircase, the midwife looked behind her at Roz carrying the birthing bag. “Guess you could say she my ’prentice, Netta.”

  In the upper hallway, they followed a trail of dark red splotches across a small rug and along the waxed floorboards to a large bedroom. In a canopied fourposter so massive it made the occupant seem doll-like, a petite brunette woman, eyes wide with fear, lay panting. Under the covers, a small child about five years of age snuggled in at her side. He raised his curly head when the strangers entered.

  “Come on now, Bobby. Let me carry you back to Mammy. These ladies are here to take good care of your mama.” Netta lifted the boy from the bed and took him out of the room despite his tears and struggles to get back to his mother. Thinking of the distress his cries would cause the woman in the bed, Roz shut the door.

  “It was so silly of me. I ’eard Bobby crying for me and put on stupid shoes to go to him. I trip on a rug and fall ’ard against a big table. Now my baby comes early, and I bleed.”

  The woman spoke with the hard accent of the Parisian French, not the soft tones of the Cajuns. She gestured toward a pair of high-heeled pink mules edged with soft white marabou feathers. Dark stains dotted the slippers. “I am vain to wear them when I am so far along, no?”

  “Don’t matter now. Let’s see what we got down here, Miz LeBlanc.”

  Beulah raised the covers. The woman’s small hips rested on a thick cotton pad soaking up the blood and birth waters. Her delicate pink silk nightgown had been pushed up over her blue-veined belly to her breasts, but was already soiled. Roz knew she’d gone pale, but the midwife’s black face remained impassive.

  “Where can we wash up, Miz LeBlanc?”

  The woman gestured to an adjoining door.

  “Come on, Peep. We need to work quick.”

  They put on clean aprons and scrubbed up with gardenia-scented soap in an elegant basin shaped like a shell. All the hot water they could want splashed from the tap. They dried their hands on fresh linen embroidered hand towels. In the privacy of the bathroom, Midwife Senegal spoke quietly but firmly to Roz.

  “We don’t get the baby out quick, it gonna die. Mama could bleed to death, too. A doctor would cut it out, but we ain’t allowed to do dat no more. We real lucky this ain’t her first, and comin’ early, it small. My hands is too big to get in dere and pull dat baby down, so you gon’ do it, Peep.”

  “Me?” Roz said faintly.

  “You jus’ do what I tells you.” Beulah rummaged in the linen sack. “Here some stuff to make yo’ hands slicky. Hold ’em out. Don’t touch nothing when we go in the room.”

  Beulah opened the bathroom door with the hand towel wrapped around the knob and returned to the bedside. Roz followed, greasy hands held out in front of her.

  “Yes, ma’am. It be all right, Miz LeBlanc. Put yo’ knees up and spread wide for us, honey. Now you, Peep, slide both hands up de vagina. Keep goin ’til you feels de baby’s head. Good now. Cup dat head and bring it down slow. It comin’ easy?”

  “I think so.” Roz said, alarmed by the screams of the mother and the warm flow of blood seeping over her arm.

  “We praise de Lawd for dat. Least it not breach. Good, we gots de head out. Now turn it to deliver de shoulders like you seen me do wit’ Maisie. Shouldn’t be no trouble, it so small.”

  Roz carefully did the rotation. The baby, pale and bluish, bald and tiny, slid from the womb. Beulah inverted the small body and gave it a gentle tap. The little girl mewed like a newborn kitten blindly seeking its mother. The midwife quickly tied off the cord and cut it. The mother, watery-eyed and weak, eyed her daughter with concern.

  “See here, Peep. I boiled dese up at Roscoe’s ’cause you never know how soon you gots to use ’em again. Keep dat in mind,” the midwife said, setting the scissors aside.

  Someone knocked softly on the bedroom door. “May I come in? It’s Mr. LeBlanc. The doctor is on his way. Vernon called me from the clinic.”

  “No, suh. You jus’ wait a bit. You gots a daughter, and she breathin’ good, but I needs to see to yo’ wife.” Beulah delivered the placenta into a fancy blue and white china bowl from the dresser set as she spoke.

  “Rub her stomach, Peep. We needs to stop the bleedin’ See here how de afterbirth torn. Bad sign.”

  Roz rubbed the now flaccid belly as Beulah cleaned the baby and wrapped it warmly in a towel from the bathroom. She tucked the child in against the mother’s chest.

  “You let her suck a bit. It help to stop de bleedin’ and give her some c
omfort. How far along was you, ma’am?”

  “Eight months, but I did not intend to feed her myself. Granny Sue, she delivered my son and got ’im a wet nurse last time. No time to get her now?”

  “Let’s see if yo’ baby girl strong enough to feed. Doc can tell you how to stop de milk later, but it good for you now, too.”

  Reluctantly, the mother exposed one of the small breasts covered in pink silk. “Ooooh-la-la, she pinches.”

  “Good sign. Means she strong. You jus’ let her go ’til she tires. Won’t be long, she so small. Why we could put her in a shoebox to sleep. Peep, you done good wit’ yo’ white lily hands.”

  “Lilliane, a pretty name,” the new mother said drowsily. “What are you called, you who pulled my baby out?”

  “Uh, my name’s Rosamond Boylan. I’m afraid the midwives call me Peep,” Roz said, still rubbing the woman’s belly.

  “Peep, so funny, but no. Rose is better. Lilliane Rose, my daughter.” Mrs. LeBlanc closed her eyes. “I believe I have enough of the children now.”

  “Let me check fo’ bleedin’, Peep. No, I should call you Midwife Boylan now you done delivered a chile.”

  “You know, I’m getting to like Peep. Call me whatever you want.”

  Beulah drew the light blanket up over the mother’s legs. Both she and the baby had fallen asleep. “No sense in changing her clothes ’til de doctor done checked her out. Tell Papa he can come in, but to be quiet.”

  Roz was surprised to see a tall, stooped man with iron gray hair and wire-rimmed glasses enter. He could easily have been the baby’s grandfather. A.A. LeBlanc studied his frail new daughter with her lashless eyes and barely formed fingernails. He placed a kiss on the cheek of his wife who had lost her usual vivid coloring.

  “Will they live, Miz Beulah?” he asked in a whisper.

  “I thinks so. Eight mont’ babies is stronger dan they looks, and your wife was thrivin’ up ’til now. We stays ’til the doctor get here.”