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

to me.” Amara closed her eyes and took in a deep breath. She opened them and started: “I knew about the Melancon women long before you were born. You see, I’m from Harlem too, and my aunt was like some of those women at Blessed: expectant and full of worries. She lost many children before they even took their first breath, and she sought the help of the Melancons, but they turned her away. She went to confront them about what they did after she lost her last child, and it was terrible, Hallow. She screamed, she cried, she pulled at the gates to try to get to them. Her mind hasn’t been the same since.”

Iris’s question about the spearheads, the sounds of the construction worker knocking them down, and the images of Maman watching from the window finally coalesced into a clarifying sense of their shared history. Hallow said, “They didn’t want me to know about her.”

“Now you see why the people are upset? The anger fueled my entire career. I can’t let you go back there. I won’t let you go back there.”

“Where else can I go? I don’t know where my sister is, and I don’t know where Landon is either.”

Amara held Hallow’s hands and folded them in the shape of a heart. “You will come with me.”

27

Like her mother, Josephine was unable to move from her bedside for a number of days. Her body faced her window and the wall where the cracks extended in infinite directions. The side of her face sank into her pillow, and her body ached from the immobility. She got lost in her thoughts as to which crack would be the first to burst, crumble the entire wall, and cause her to fall out onto the concrete below and bust her head wide open like a melon. She idealized that end if it was possible. That would be the perfect conclusion to her story: Josephine Melancon dead in the home that imprisoned her. A dark fairy tale of sorts. How she’d nurtured the dream of finally escaping with her Prince Charming for so many years seemed embarrassingly laughable, even in the midst of her private moments.

Landon had promised her that they would leave together, but he never came back. He never came back. She should’ve known that all of the meticulous planning of upholstered chairs, new paint jobs, and granite tabletops in the kitchen, where she would hear neither a creak in the floor nor smell a whiff of mildew slithering from the corners, would never be a part of her story. For all she knew, he could’ve gone back to Valerie or fled to Tangiers. Tangiers. He could’ve been anywhere in the world and he thought of her as too much baggage to accompany him along the way. Worst of all, Hallow was gone too. She hadn’t heard her footsteps or voice for days, and assumed that she too had escaped and would never look back, lest she turn into a pillar of salt. Without Landon or Hallow or the persistent bullying from Maman whom she hadn’t heard downstairs either—she didn’t feel like a caulbearer or an ordinary. She felt incorporeal, and perhaps this dissolution was the ultimate sacrifice to this brownstone.

She wasn’t sure if her room was beginning to decay or whatever was left of herself was starting to smell from not bathing. She could not separate herself from the architecture, as much as she had tried throughout her adult life. Now that Josephine was alone without her child, she felt purposeless. She figured she’d failed as a mother because she could not encourage Hallow to stay put like she did. It was a loss that gave way to her remembering Laila and her loss. On that one fateful afternoon, when she saw that bloodied and frenzied woman sneering at her from out in the street with the crowd and police surrounding her, how Josephine wished she could have just brought Laila inside and disobeyed Maman’s orders. Josephine had analyzed this scene many times over, but only this time, in her depthless quiet, did she consider a different angle: that woman was both accompanied and alone. Where was the father of her child? Where was the man who could’ve comforted her in her grief? Maybe she too had been abandoned. She wasn’t sure why she thought of this woman in her solitude, why the interconnectedness of their stories haunted her again.

Then she thought about Harlem. She could hear the sounds of the protestors outside the brownstone right from her bed. Harlem’s mouth was full of bellowing cries and obscenities from neighbors, passersby, and interlopers alike who hurled sharp insults as though they were rocks and pellets toward the windows. They pinged from many angles of the brownstone, and if this brownstone could breathe, she would be asphyxiated. Her body was already wounded beyond salvation.

Josephine writhed in her bed and imagined what would happen if the bravest person in the crowd lost their patience and became the first person to break through the doors and destroy everything. She would do nothing. She wanted them to push themselves into her bedroom and do whatever they wanted with her. In fact, she might invite them to draw and quarter her body so that she could be divided to heal the entire neighborhood. After all, that was her life’s purpose as a Melancon woman. If she had the strength, she would open all the doors and windows and wave everyone in to expedite the festivities. She’d boil hot water for tea and cook food for the revelry, where the climax of the night would be her offering. She was starting to become impatient. Hasn’t all the tension led to this moment? She couldn’t wait for the day or the hour. The brownstone had become unbearably quiet. Not even Iris emerged from the basement. She couldn’t take the ringing in her ears, the stale bedroom smell, and the creaking due to