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

and their lights would be turned off. I couldn’t see who was in there, but they’re there all night. Sometimes by morning they’re gone, but Valerie told me that there will be times during the day where she’ll go get groceries and she’ll feel like a car was following her, then it leaves as soon as she turns down our block. Have you seen anything?”

Josephine shook her head. “I don’t know, I—I haven’t been outside.”

“What about Maman? You know how she likes to hang near the windows.”

“She hardly is talking nowadays. Even when I give her a bath in the morning, she only says a few words.”

“What?”

“‘I give up.’”

“Man.”

“What do you think is happening?”

“I don’t know, Jo. All I know is I’m being watched, and all of a sudden I have not been able to find any new clients. I got nothing in the pipeline. Nothing. Now, your family has rejected people in the past, but I think Hallow made a mistake.”

Josephine sprang to her feet and walked up to Landon. “Which is exactly why we should leave now. If she wants to do her own thing, let her. There’s no need for us here anymore. Don’t you see?” She smiled and turned his face toward her. “This is finally our time. It’s time to go, right?”

“Jo—”

“Right?” she said more sternly.

Landon sighed and said, “Right.”

“Good. Now, that’s more like it.” She closed her eyes and kissed Landon’s lips and he kissed hers with his eyes open. He was unable to meet her in the space of her dreams when he was quietly panicking over being seen with her because of how much he was being surveilled.

22

Cars were in fact parked outside the Melancon brownstone, and it was Helena who brought this up when she finally came to visit. They convened in the dining room, where Hallow was making beef stew for dinner, and Helena asked, “How long those cars been out there?”

“Huh?” Hallow asked as she poured stew from a wooden ladle into two bowls for both her and her sister.

“Those black cars? How long they been out there?”

“What black cars?”

“Girl.” Helena sucked her teeth and shook her head. “If you’re going to be running things around here, you gotta know what’s going on.”

“I haven’t been out in a while. I was waiting for you to come and get me so we can go to Blessed Waters.”

“You still wanna go after all that with the Epelbaums?”

“What’s one gotta do with the other?”

Helena looked over her shoulder for Maman, but realized that she would not be coming down the hallway to eavesdrop on their conversation.

“Hmm,” she said. “Where’s Jo?”

“Upstairs as usual. It’s nothing.”

“All right, well, let’s hurry up and eat, then, hmm?”

“We’re gonna go?” Hallow asked, thrilled, leaving her mouth wide open after the question.

“Yeah. But let’s go out the back door, okay? I don’t feel comfortable going out the front, and I got some things to relay to you before we actually get there.”

Hallow’s alias would be Bianca Anderson, and she was getting her bachelor’s in women’s and gender studies at Hunter College. She and Helena met while Helena was doing volunteer work at a homeless shelter on the Lower East Side, and from then on, they had become friends. If anyone asked for more specifics, Helena would take over from there.

“Why Bianca? Why can’t I just go by Hallow?” she asked as they stood on the platform.

“Because—” Helena chuckled. “A lot of those women don’t like Melancons. They’re not just doulas and pregnant women. Some of them work in the community.”

“Yeah but I went to a town hall meeting months ago and no one recognized me.”

“And you didn’t tell anyone your name?”

Hallow shook her head.

“Good. But we can’t take any chances. We get in through the alias, and once you have some trust, then it’ll be easier to tell them who you are, later, got it?”

Hallow nodded. “Okay. Do you have an alias too?”

“Just my last name. If anyone asks, it’s Helena Jenkins. That’s about as common of a Black last name as you can get.”

“Why not your first too? You don’t think they can trace you back to our family?”

“No because unlike you, I don’t live there anymore and—” Helena pulled up her sleeves to show her scars. “I don’t have the caul. At least not anywhere they can see. Now come on.”

While on the train, Hallow sat so close to Helena that the seams of their jeans pressed together. Every time the doors automatically opened and more passengers boarded, Hallow leaned into her cousin, afraid that someone might grab ahold of her and rip her caul. But after the third stop, she realized that no one gave a damn about her, or anyone else on the train, for that matter. Everyone was preoccupied with a phone, a book, or the tunnels that they could watch through the windows. Everyone carved their own private space and ignored whatever did not directly affect them. After all the years of her being posited as something special, Hallow didn’t feel special at all. She disappeared into the crowd. As much as she yearned for years to be amongst everyone, now that that desire had been realized, she felt lost, unsure of who she was, which made her ease into her alias with less reluctance than before she headed to the station.

Blessed Waters Doulas was located directly above a botanica where herbs and folk medicine were sold, which was wedged between a Taco Bell and a Crown Fried Chicken in Spanish Harlem near East 103rd and Lexington Avenue. Loads of trash littered the sidewalk, and the streetlight was rapidly blinking its way into being totally inoperable. Groups of men were congregating along the intersection and outside the corner stores, and a few women were escorting their children or elderly relatives into their apartment buildings. As soon as Helena pressed the buzzer, she looked at Hallow’s stiff stance and said, “You okay?”

“Just a little nervous.”

“You’ll be fine, trust me. They’re