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

would’ve been like if there was something—anything—that could have been recovered for history’s sake. A mighty era was over. No matter one’s opinion on the Melancon women and the brownstone in which they lived, no one could deny their influence. They were peerless, an empire in and of themselves. They were embodiments of both old and new Harlem now returned to dust, as everyone else would in due time.

A few days after the brownstone burned, Amara and Hallow returned to Manhattan. Amara arranged for her daughter to stay in a hotel right beside her apartment building while she handled a few things. To her surprise, Ethan was sitting on her couch with his feet on her coffee table and his hand on the remote, flicking through channels. There was a plate of food scraps beside his feet on one side and an open bottle of Heineken on the other. “Goddammit, Amara.” Ethan shut off the TV and slammed the remote down on the coffee table. He lowered his voice and said, “Do you know how much you put me through? Do you?”

“What I put you through?” Amara emphatically laughed then scoffed. “Is that all you think about, yourself?”

“I’ve been here trying to maintain your home for you. I’ve been trying to ward off the press. I even talked to your boss about letting you keep your job. But you don’t text. You don’t call. I thought we were partners.”

“Do you not understand the situation I was in the other night? I was afraid to talk to anyone.”

Ethan approached Amara and kissed the top of her head. “Where is she?”

“Who?”

“Hallow. Your daughter. Where is she?”

“She’s in a hotel.”

“Why didn’t you bring her here?”

Amara smiled. “You want to meet her?”

“Of course. We have to prep her to respond to journalists, and we don’t have much time.”

“For what?” Amara asked.

“Your boss is holding a press conference tomorrow at ten and they are expecting you there. Someone at the hotel where you were staying tipped off the office and if you refused to go, they would’ve come for you anyway. So it’s good your daughter is here now. You’re going to need all the sympathy you can get.”

Amara backed up from Ethan’s embrace and said, “No.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I’m not letting you do that.”

“You don’t have a choice.”

“I do have a choice! That’s your problem: You’re too damn controlling. Too busy trying to micromanage me to make yourself feel like you’re my equal when you’re not.”

“You’ll be lucky if you have a career by tomorrow.”

“Are you done?”

“Good luck,” Ethan said as he exited and shook his head.

As soon as he left, Amara sank to her knees and pleaded with her hands to stop shaking. They were disobedient—stopping and trembling, shaking and stopping. Amara rushed to put a phone in one of her hands to preoccupy the muscles before they became unruly again and dialed her mother. But when Denise picked up the phone on the other end, her mother announced her presence with a heavy, long-drawn-out sigh.

“Mom, I—”

“No, Amara. No. Let me go first. Please. I’ve been waiting for you to call me and I’ve been trying to figure out if I should call you. You know, Amara, I’ve always supported you. Always. I thought I could give you the best love that I was able to give, which is why this is especially hard for me . . .” Her voice cracked. “To hear that this thing—my grandbaby—was something that you felt too ashamed to tell me. Me!” Amara could hear her mother slap some hard surface as an emphatic punch to her words. “I’m your mother. I’m your mother, and I feel like I failed to see.”

Denise took a beat. “Well? Now you can talk.”

“I don’t know what to say or where to start other than I’m sorry.”

“That’s a good place to start. And I’m sorry too.”

“About what?”

“Like I said, for failing to see. Maybe parents never really know their children, and this was my lesson. God, Amara. Both me and Laila were worried sick about you these past few nights. Give me a moment.” There was some shuffling in the background and an opening and closing of doors. “Okay,” she spoke in a hushed voice. “I don’t know what’s happened to her, but a miracle came the night when the Melancon’s home burned. That crowd came for us, you know. They were going to carry Laila back to the Melancon brownstone and have her right in the front while they protested. But she refused to go. She said she knew what was going to happen because she seen it in her dreams. I thought she was having another one of her episodes. But sure enough, her dream happened. They burned that motherfucka down, Mar. Burned it all the way down to the white meat of a wood chip and then some. And the next morning, I went up to check on Laila and all her dolls were gone. She put sheets on the bed, she showered. She asked to make me breakfast! I haven’t seen her have this much clarity in so long. She was of sound mind, Amara. I almost cried. She was just like old times.”

“Jesus,” Amara said.

“Now, when do I get to meet that baby?”

“She’s here. I have her in a hotel near me. Listen, Mom. I have a press conference tomorrow. Could you and Laila be there? I can give you the address if you can swing it.”

“We will be there. On the dot.”

Amara got Hallow from the hotel and brought her back to her place, where they ordered Popeye’s from Postmates and watched movies until Hallow fell asleep. Amara, on the other hand, was on edge. Her tremors kept her awake, and she spent the early hours of the morning scribbling on index cards with notes for her speech and subsequently discarding them all. Before she could request an Uber, the front desk called and said that there was already a car waiting for her that the District Attorney’s Office