Chapter 41

Bernadette was hugging her mother, when she suddenly jumped. Marian felt something wet splash against her ankles, and looked down. Bernadette’s water had broken.

There was a contingency plan for this, and Luthor took over to put it into action. He was supposed to take Johnnie Sue and whoever went into labor first to the hospital, where Johnnie Sue would stay with the mother in labor until a husband could get there. He simply substituted Marian for Johnnie Sue. Once they were there and people had taken Bernadette away, followed by her mother, Luthor went back to the car and dug out the bag of change that was stored in the car for just this situation. He found a pay phone and started calling numbers, spreading the word for Curtis Lee to get his butt to the hospital unless he was actually in a gunfight. Curtis Lee was delivered to the hospital by his partner, lights flashing and siren blaring, even though it was a KCMO squad car, operating on the Kansas side of the city.

In all the excitement, Luthor completely forgot about Marian. When Curtis Lee asked if Johnnie Sue had remembered to grab the suitcase packed for this event, Luthor suddenly looked shame-faced.

“Johnnie Sue’s not here with her,” he said. “I forgot the suitcase. I’ll go get it now.”

Before Curtis Lee could stop him, he was gone. Curtis Lee set about trying to make sure his wife was all right. They wouldn’t let him see her, and he started to get irate, until a nurse said “The woman with her has everything under control. Just sit in the waiting room!”

Eight hours later, Curtis Lee was nudged awake.

“You wouldn’t by chance be Curtis Waggoner?” asked the doctor standing over him.

“Yessir,” said Curtis Lee, prying his eyes open.

“You interested in seeing your daughter?”

“Another girl?” asked Curtis Lee, grinning.

“Your ... uh wife ... says you owe her a son or two,” said the doctor, smiling slightly.

Curtis Lee was led to a hospital room. Bernie was lying back in bed, looking relatively refreshed. It had been a short labor this time. Her arms were empty. He stepped into the room, and saw movement in the corner. He almost fainted when he saw Bernadette’s mother, sitting there, with a tiny blanket-wrapped bundle in her arms. She was staring down into its wrinkled brown face. She looked up.

“Good evening Curtis Lee,” she said. “I’d like to introduce you to your daughter.”

Curtis Lee went and leaned over. “Elizabeth?” he said softly. He turned to Bernie. “You wanted Elizabeth, didn’t you?” Bernie smiled and nodded.

“That’s my middle name,” said Marian. “I’m honored.”

It wasn’t thirty minutes later that a nurse poked her head into the room.

“Anybody in here named Marian Wilson?”

Marian looked up, surprised.

“I am,” she said.

“Could you come with me, please?” asked the nurse, looking harried. “Your daughter is screaming that she will not have her baby until you’re there.”

Marian looked confused. “But that’s my daughter,” she said, pointing at Bernadette, who was nursing her new baby.

“Well, I sure hope this is some kind of miracle, and that you have two daughters, because that girl is going to drive us to distraction with her screaming for her mamma! She got here about an hour ago and insisted that you were here somewhere. I will personally buy you a steak dinner down at the stock yards if you’ll come shut her up.”

Marian almost laughed out loud when the same doctor who had delivered Bernadette walked up to the door of the labor room at the same time the nurse led Marian there. They had let Marian stay with Bernie the whole way, even in the delivery room, so the doctor knew her.

“We’ve got to stop meeting this way,” he said, smiling. “I don’t suppose you have any more at home like these two?”

“This is it. They always did everything together,” laughed Marian.

“Well this one’s being a problem,” said the man. “It’s her first, and she’s fighting it. I need her to relax.”

“Let me talk to her,” said Marian. “Then give her some drugs.” She grinned.

By the time Hilda Mae gave an exhausted grunt and pushed Elijah Lee Finshaw into the world, Marian was on her last legs. She had driven almost a thousand miles, and then presided, more or less, at the birth of two of her grandchildren. It was afternoon of the 16th of June, and she hadn’t slept since sometime late on the 14th. Flossie had called Nathan, to tell him his mother was there, and what was going on, and he had come to the hospital to wait with his brothers-in-law. Now, as Marian slowly dragged her feet into the waiting room, he took her in his arms and practically carried her to his car. She dozed while he took her back to the farm, and mumbled ineffectually as he actually carried her into the house and put her to bed. Then he kissed her on the forehead and left the room.

She slept for twelve hours, got up and staggered around until she found the bathroom, and then went back to bed for another four hours. When she got up, she found the suitcase she had packed into the car sitting on a chair near the bed. She felt filthy and took clothing to the bathroom, where she took a shower. Coming out of the bathroom, her hair wrapped in a towel, her nose was assaulted by the smell of food, and she followed her nose to the kitchen, where Flossie stood at the stove cooking pancakes and humming softly, while a little boy sat in a high chair banging a spoon on the wooden tray. He looked up at Marian and smiled.

“Mommy!” he said excitedly as he saw a new person in the house.

“I’m working on it,” said Flossie. “Hold your horses. You’re as bad as your father!”

“Hi!” said the little brown boy to Marian, brightly.

Marian went to him and bent over.

“You must be Nathan Junior,” she said, smiling into his open and trusting face.

Flossie turned around, startled. “Gracious me!” she gasped. “I didn’t hear you come in. I was beginning to think you’d miss breakfast too!”

Marian’s stomach gurgled so loudly that they all heard it, and the baby laughed.

“I’m amazed I could get in here without falling down,” said Marian. “What day is it?”

“Today is the seventeenth of June,” said Flossie, looking concerned.

“I haven’t eaten in three days!” said Marian, looking for a chair and sitting down heavily.

“Well, we can fix that,” said Flossie. She scooped three pancakes from the griddle to a plate. There was already syrup and butter on the table, beside a pile of forks and knives. Marian wanted to pick up a pancake with her fingers and just stuff it in her mouth, but she forced herself to anoint it with butter and syrup first, and then took measured bites, almost swooning at as the delicious taste spread through her mouth. Flossie set a glass of milk on the table beside Marian’s plate, and handed a small pancake to the baby, who took it in both hands and began taking bites out of it happily.

“He’s just so precious,” mumbled Marian, between bites.

“Thank you,” said Flossie over her shoulder at the stove. “Your son makes rather good babies, I think.” One hand drifted to her belly, which was large, and rubbed it gently.

“I see he’s been busy,” said Marian.

Flossie smiled. “She’s due in another month. When Bernie and then Hildy went into labor early, I was afraid I might follow, but all I had was a few twinges. You certainly stirred things up around here.”

“She?” asked Marian. “As I recall we were both convinced this one would be a girl.” She waved her fork at the baby, who was pounding what was left of his pancake against the wooden tray in front of him.

Flossie laughed. “One can always hope.” She sobered.

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you,” said Marian, thinking that if she were Flossie she’d be dancing in the street.

“How in the world did you convince Jesse’s parents to let him come up here?” asked Flossie, changing the subject again.

“I showed them a picture of Johnnie Sue Thorpe breast feeding a baby that obviously wasn’t Luthor’s,” she said. “I hoped it was Jesse’s.”

“You hoped?” Flossie turned around.

“Well ... as opposed to some fellow she met when she got up here, I suppose. There was always that possibility.”

Flossie shook her head. “Not if you really knew her. The sun rises and sets on those two young men.”

“Two?” asked Marian, confused.

“It’s complicated,” said Flossie, piling pancakes on a plate and sitting down. She offered them to Marian, who took two more. “I know all this has been hard for you to take - I thought it was all craziness too, in the beginning - but there are some things that still leave me staring at the wallpaper, trying to figure out what in the world that girl is thinking.”

She went on to explain about the blood brothers, and how they had grown up together, all for one and one for all.

“And she’s just going to live with both of them, and not marry either one of them?!” Marian’s jaw dropped.

“She’s just as unrepentant about that as she can be,” said Flossie, shaking her head. “We all think she’s crazy. Well ... not all of us. Luthor and Jesse seem to understand it all perfectly. It’s just such a different way of thinking that I suppose us normal people can’t get our minds wrapped around it.”

“Normal people,” said Marian. Then she started laughing. All the tension of the last months, and of the trip, and of riding a thousand miles with a black young man who impressed her more and more with every mile they drove, and of her daughters going into labor ... all of it rushed out of her in gales of laughter as she heard Flossie Wilson characterize herself and Marian as “normal people”.

Flossie was confused, at first, and as Marian seemed to fall apart before her very eyes, she replayed the conversation in her head. That, and Marian’s last comment made her realize what was happening.

When Marian finally began to calm down, gasping for breath, Flossie took a few bites and then said, “Well, when you think about it ... we are normal. We love, and hate, and get tired and cranky, and have babies, and worry about things, and laugh. All people do those things. I think you’re perfectly normal, and I think I’m normal too.”

Marian blinked. On that level, the woman made all the sense in the world. She leaned back, sighing. “I’d love to think I’m normal, but here I am, a well-trained Southern Belle, who has blessed the unions of all three of her lily white children to black Africans, and I have all these strange colored grandchildren, and I find myself suddenly in the hated North, where, at least to present, I have seen only happiness and joy, when there should only be misery and shame. I couldn’t feel normal if somebody paid me to!”

Flossie didn’t know whether to say anything or not. Her own life had undergone some things that had turned it upside down too. All she could think about was that she was a thousand times happier now, than she had been four or five years ago.

“Well,” she said finally. “Maybe it will grow on you.”

In most situations like this, there would have been news exchanged, as people who were from the same area, but had been apart, caught up on events in both places. There was none of that here, though. Instead, Flossie offered to show Marian around. Marian asked Nathan Junior if Grandma could carry him, and he happily held up his arms. He promptly laid his head on her shoulder and fell asleep, while they walked through the house, and then outside, where Flossie described the others, and who lived in them. Marian was overwhelmed with what had been accomplished in three short years.

“It looks like everything is pretty full up,” said Marian as they sat on a bench in the courtyard.

“We’ll make some room for you. If I know your daughters, you’ll be staying with us for as long as they can keep you here.” She looked at her mother-in-law. “What are your plans?”

“I have no idea,” said Marian, truthfully. “I’ve got some money from Harvey’s insurance policies ... or will when the insurance company finally pries their greedy fingers from around it. I wanted to see my Grandbabies. I know I’m not going back there.” She didn’t have to stipulate where “there” was.

“You know you’re welcome here for as long as you want to stay,” said Flossie.

“We’ll see,” said Marian. “I suppose I could try to get a job.” There was distaste in her voice, like she was thinking of rolling in the mud with the pigs. “I have no idea what I could actually do, but you never know.” She brightened. “I helped the new teacher when she got there. I was pretty good at that!”

“Why don’t you go to college and become a teacher then?” asked Flossie.

Marian looked at her like she had just stepped out of a space ship. Then she saw that Flossie was completely serious.

“Me?” she gasped. “College? I’m almost forty!”

“Okay,” said Flossie, her face calm. “So, when you finish college you’ll be forty-four. You’ll still have twenty years to teach. You’re healthy. If that’s too long, then teach for ten and then do something else.”

“This is how you put notions into my children’s heads ... isn’t it?” asked Marian, staring at this strange woman.

“Those notions have turned out rather well ... don’t you think?” asked Flossie sweetly.

Marian didn’t know what to think. Her mind had, in the last two years, undergone extreme stress, and change had resulted. Sometimes she had fought that change bitterly, but it had come anyway. Now she had another new and strange concept to grapple with. Yet, already, the reasonableness of what Flossie had suggested was seeping into her mind, soothing her terror and suggesting that much more was possible than she might have thought ... even ten minutes ago!

She looked at Flossie skeptically.

“You know ... you’re a very dangerous woman.”

“Why Mother Wilson... “ said Flossie, looking genuinely surprised. “I have no idea what you’re talking about!”

The tenseness in Marian’s body had, as often happens, transmitted itself to the sleeping child in her arms. Nathan Jr. woke and fussed. Flossie offered to take him, saying he probably needed his diaper changed. Marian held onto him.

“I haven’t changed a diaper in twenty years,” she said, standing up. “Let’s just see if I remember how.”

When Nathan Jr. had been cleaned up, and was lying happily naked on the bed, Marian ran her fingertips over his body, examining him from head to toes, gently pinching here, and tickling there, as the little boy laughed and wiggled.

“He’s just so gorgeous,” she sighed. “He should be out of diapers by now, you know.”

“I know,” sighed Flossie. “I’ve been so busy with school, and Nathan’s hopeless when it comes to potty training. Johnnie Sue has no idea what to do.”

“Well, then,” said Marian. “I have my first job. Potty training it is!” she said, grabbing Nathan Junior’s little brown penis and giving it a gentle tug. “We’ll teach you how to control this little thing right smartly!” Her eyes widened as the child gurgled. His penis had gotten stiff. “Oh my!” she chuckled. “I’d forgotten about that part.”

“It seems to run in the family,” said Flossie, looking sideways at her mother-in-law to see her reaction. “His father’s even worse.”

Marian raised an eyebrow, but then, as women have done for millions of years, they began to compare notes on the man they both loved. Nathan, had he heard, would have been scandalized at the things his mother and wife said, and the stories they told each other about him.

He probably also would have gotten an erection.

While her daughters were yet in the hospital, Marian got to know her other grandchild, Juliet, who was being taken care of in the interim by Johnnie Sue, who had her own four-month old too.

Marian examined Juliet from stem to stern too, and found her to be just as perfectly put together as her cousin. Juliet was darker than Nathan Jr., but definitely had Bernadette’s fiery temperament. As far as Juliet was concerned, the world belonged to her, and all the people in it had been put there to cater to her every whim. Marian spoiled her hopelessly, and by the time Bernadette came home with her little brother, Juliet tended to reach for her Grandma, instead of her mother.

Then her daughters were back, and she went into Grandma overload as she helped them with her infant Grandbabies. All things considered, Marian was on cloud nine.

“I never thought I’d get to see either of you again,” she sighed one time, while Hilda Mae suckled young Elijah. “Much less my grandbabies. I’m so happy now that if I followed your father I’d go with a smile on my face.”

Hilda Mae ignored the reference to her father. She looked down at her first child. She had already forgotten the rigors of childbirth, and stared at her baby lovingly.

“Elijah Lee Waggoner,” she whispered. She looked up. “I can’t tell you how happy I am that you get to see him.”

“You know,” said Marian, wondering if she was about to open a can of worms. “Your father’s middle name was also Lee.”

Hilda Mae blinked. “I never even knew he had a middle name!”

“He hated it,” said Marian carelessly. “Something about a boy who beat him up when he was little. He didn’t talk about it much.”