Caul Baby by Morgan Jerkins (read any book .TXT) 📕

to do is say yes. We’ve agreed that since she’s your heir apparent, she has final say. And since we can’t think of a reason why she’d say no, it’s as good as done. And your family is set to profit in the millions. Enough to not have to sell caul to anyone again. Enough for all of us to do whatever we want.”

“What if this is what I want? I’ve been doing this business longer than you’ve been alive.”

“Yes, but you’re older. Much much older, if you don’t mind me saying. Don’t you want to not worry about money anymore?”

“And what about your daughter, Hallow? You’re just gonna up and leave her? Have you even told her?”

“We figured it’s best to tell her after the deal is done. Besides, she’s grown. She can get her own place like Helena, live her own life, and we can check on her from time to time.”

Maman could feel the rage welling up in her spirit—so much so that she could hardly see straight for several seconds. When her vision cleared, she saw Josephine still grinning like an ol’ Cheshire Cat and saying nothing at all. She hated how much Josephine receded next to Landon, almost like she could lose herself in his dark brown eyes, like she was in Alexandre’s.

“Well, young lady,” Maman said. “What do you have to say for yourself? You’re gonna let him do all the talkin’ or what?”

Josephine gripped Landon’s hand before speaking: “He said everything that I—we both—wanted to say.”

“Oh, don’t be such a goddamn doormat, Jo. Look me in my eye and tell me that you’re leaving. I wanna hear you say it.”

Josephine removed her grin and regarded her mother with a severity that stopped Maman’s heart. “We’re leaving,” she declared.

“I’m not giving you a dime,” Maman snapped.

“If you want to withhold money from Josephine, which will be hard since it’ll be coming through our daughter, fine. I still take my cut from the deal to begin with, and that’ll be enough for us to move on with our lives.”

“She’s not going anywhere.”

“What are you gonna do? Gonna stop me with your cane?” Josephine asked.

The doorbell rang, and Maman hesitated to get up because she needed her cane to do so. It was the first time that Maman was pushed to the brink of tears, and she could not give Josephine or Landon the satisfaction of seeing her break down. She puffed out her chest and swallowed her pride before using the cane to start toward the front door. Her roses had arrived. Perfect. She had had enough of the nonsense, and this was her best distraction to get through the day at the very least. On her way to the door she took in all of the brownstone, and her stomach suddenly twisted in knots. From one angle, the brownstone looked lopsided. From another angle, it appeared to be sliding into the earth. And then from another angle, the brownstone seemed fine. Maman blinked multiple times and tilted her head in all sorts of directions to confirm which perception was correct, but all she gathered from the experiment was nothing more than a migraine.

Outside, she crouched down to her knees and started pulling out the weeds and shrubs to make room for the roses. Just before she was about to place one into the ground, she heard someone giggling behind her back. A white woman in a sports bra and spandex tights slightly jumped when Maman snapped her neck to glare at her.

“Sorry.”

“What do you want?” Maman asked.

“I’m sorry, I—I’m one of your neighbors.”

She walked toward the gate and was about to touch it when Maman yelled, “Back up.”

“Oh.” The woman took a step backward with both hands up. “Okay, sorry. Boundaries, I understand.”

“You still ain’t tell me what you want, girl.”

“You shouldn’t put your roses in that kind of soil.”

“Excuse me? What are you talkin’ ’bout? I’ve been living here for eighty years, I know my own dirt.”

“With all due respect, ma’am, that soil is dead.”

“Wh—” Maman sputtered her words like a car engine. “What do you mean dead? This soil ain’t dead!”

“May I come in?”

“No, no! Just stay right where you are and point.”

“Well, for starters, look at it. It’s all gray in some spots and light brown in the others. That means it’s dead. Take a bit of it in your hands and smell it.”

Maman cupped her hand down into the soil and then held it to her nose.

“Does it have a slight metallic smell?”

“No.”

“Does it smell like wood debris or does it have a forest floor smell?”

“No.”

“Does it smell like rain on a fresh spring day?”

“I said no, girl! No, no, no. Why do you keep asking me these questions?”

“Because your soil is dead. By looks and smell, the soil is dead. But you can repair it.”

“Repair it?”

“Yeah, just buy some nutrients or get some compost. That’s how you start repairing it.”

“But what if it keeps getting damaged?” Maman asked while digging again into the dirt and tossing it over her shoulder before digging and digging some more like a gopher. Though the white woman was beginning to slowly back away at this point, Maman kept asking.

“What if it keeps becoming damaged, hmm?” Maman asked. “What if you keep repairing and repairing and repairing and something keeps going wrong? Then you gotta repair again and again and again and nothing works and—” Maman noticed that the entire front of her overalls was dirtied. A small tear cascaded down the round mound of her dirt-stained cheek. Then another. And another. Until her vision blurred again. She wiped her eyes with her gloved hands and the white woman was nowhere to be found. Maman grabbed her cane and started back toward the brownstone.

Back inside, she heard the sound of ecstatic lovemaking coming from upstairs and voiced her disgust downstairs, where no one else was present. She inspected the ceiling as well as the nooks and crannies, and the number of cracks and holes