This Bitter Earth Part 6

"Joe, I don't want no trouble," the white man said to him one afternoon. "Just want to finish laying these tracks, so's I got to let you and them other coloreds go.... Ya understand, don't ya, boy?" Joe understood perfectly. He shook his head, collected his final pay and headed on home.

"Well, Bertie, this here was my last day," he said as he stood over her. His words were strained. "I believes I won't be pa.s.sing through here no more."

Bertie felt her heart drop. Her lip twitched as she struggled to control the tears that threatened to explode behind her eyes.

"Don't say that, Joe, please don*t," she said quietly.

Joe let out a heavy breath as his mind ran on his girlfriend, Pearl.

"Joe, up until now my life ain't been nothing special. Then you came along and made it special. I don't know why or how, and now I'm scared to death of losing you." He looked away from her; but she caught the guilt that sat on his face like an open sore.

"If you don't feel the same you tell me right here and now." Bertie was standing up now, her face tilted up toward his, daring him to mention the woman or women that Shonuff had accused him of having. There were tears forming in her eyes but all Joe could think of was kissing her.

Joe felt ashamed. What could he tell her? He couldn't tell her the truth about Pearl, the woman he'd promised himself to. He couldn't hurt her that way.

"Joe?"

Her hands were on his arms, around his waist; her head on his chest, her small sobs rocking both of their bodies.

He pulled himself from her embrace, ran his thumb beneath her eyes, wiping away the tears, and still all he could think of were her lips.

"Joe?" Bertie was pleading, pulling him back into her. "Joe," she said again, breathless this time, her lips parted, beckoning.

When Joe took Bertie Mae in his arms, Pearl's name and face began to fade. When he went to kiss Bertie Mae's lips, all that he had promised Pearl vanished and Joe, he succ.u.mbed.

Chapter 5.

BERTIE flinched as the fabric of her corset brushed against her nipples. They'd become sensitive over the last few months. She moved her hands lovingly across the swell of her stomach and smiled sadly.

She was growing quickly and she knew Ciel would notice soon. It was becoming more and more difficult for her to band her stomach down. The restriction added to her nausea, and she worried that she was harming the child inside of her.

Clemon saw the symptoms, and knew Bertie was with child even before she'd realized it. He watched her go from picking at her food to eating five times a day. He heard her in the outhouse retching and he watched her as she slept late into the mornings.

Bertie Mae's brothers knew and whispered about it amongst themselves. They made it a point to save an extra biscuit for Bertie or bring in fruit they stole off of the town carts.

Ciel didn't seem to notice at all.

Day after day they watched Bertie in antic.i.p.ation of the moment Ciel became aware that her daughter was with child and without a husband.

One evening during dinner as Ciel raised her gla.s.s to drain the last few drops of water from it, she stopped, just as the rim of the gla.s.s was about to touch her lips, and looked blankly at Bertie for so long that all the conversation that had been going on around them stopped.

"You better cut down on that eating, gal, you getting as big as a house. I can't afford to feed you as it is. You gonna have to find work soon and fend fer ya self. Either that or find a man that will marry ya homely a.s.s," Ciel finally said, and then drained the gla.s.s of its contents, before placing it back down on the table and excusing herself.

Bertie looked at the faces around the table. Everyone had their eyes on Ciel's back.

"Who going to do them dishes?" she asked before disappearing into the bedroom and closing the door.

A sigh of relief as thunderous as a falling elm settled around the table.

Clemon walked into the bedroom to find Ciel seated in front of the window, naked all but for a sheet wrapped around her ankles, babbling in a language Clemon did not recognize. He had heard these ramblings before and had ignored it, but tonight the moon was full and Ciel's madness had been dormant for much too long. He decided, as he eased himself out of the room, that he would have to confront Bertie Mae.

Bertie was out on the back porch, a quilt wrapped around her shoulders, her eyes staring out into s.p.a.ce.

"Bertie, I gotta speak to you," Clemon whispered.

Bertie blinked and then smiled before pulling the quilt tighter around herself and positioning her body in a way that would help camouflage her stomach.

"Yes, Clemon?"

Clemon gulped and took a step closer to Bertie before speaking again. "I know you got a baby coming and from the looks of you I see you already done made up your mind on keepin' this child, but I got to ask you where you plan on keepin' this child?"

Clemon expected surprise, even denial, but all Bertie gave him was an easy smile.

"Bertie, listen, your mama gonna find out soon *o later 'bout your situation. She about to get ready to go through one of her spells, and if things haven't been clear to her recently, they gone be clear to her now. I believes if you come to hera"I'll be right there wit youa"if you comes to her and tell her what the matter be, maybea""

Bertie cut him off with a bitter laugh. "Maybe what, Clemon? Maybe she'll understand? Who you been sleeping with the past year? Not my mama, *cause my mama, Ciel Brown, she don't understand nothing."

Clemon took a step backward. He had never heard Bertie speak that way, ever.

"Is the man who done did this to you gonna take responsibility?" Clemon asked, still stunned by Bertie's response.

"He don't know nothing *bout this," she said, opening the quilt and rubbing her stomach. "I ain't seen or heard from him since we ..." Her words trailed off and for a moment she was the young innocent girl Clemon had grown to love. "Well, I ain't seen or heard from him," Bertie said again.

Clemon looked over his shoulder before creeping closer to her. "He gotta know, though. I mean, he was the only one there, right?" Clemon knew he was overstepping his boundaries and asking the question for his own selfish reasons, but he felt he needed to be direct with Bertie Mae, didn't make any sense to beat around the bush now.

A look of surprise spread across her face, but she said nothing.

Clemon cleared his throat and straightened his shoulders. "Well, do you know his name?"

Bertie Mae shook her head and laughed. "Of course I know his name, but that don't matter, he got his own life to live."

Clemon insisted, pushed and practically begged until Bertie got up and said good night, leaving him alone to the porch and its blackness.

Two days later, Ciel walked in on Bertie as she struggled to pull her nightgown down over her stomach.

"Mama, Ia"" was all Bertie was able to get out of her mouth before Ciel attacked her.

"Wh.o.r.e, wh.o.r.e, wh.o.r.e!" Ciel screamed as she pounded Bertie across her shoulders and back.

Clemon rushed in and grabbed Ciel by her shoulders. "Ciel, stop, stop!" he screamed as he struggled to pull Ciel off of Bertie.

Ciel turned on him, wild-eyed. "You did this to her. YOU! You always wanted her. Why? Why? Wasn't I good enough, wasn't I good enough?"

Clemon put his hands up to protect himself and stepped backward. "Ciel, now Ciel, I ain't touch that child and you and I both know it. Nowa""

Ciel didn't let him finish. She pounced on him, clawing at his face and ripping at his clothes.

Bertie slipped around them and stumbled out of the house and onto the front porch, where she collapsed.

Ciel found her curled up on the ground in a pool of blood. The sight of the blood pulled at something deep inside her, something maternal, some might say. The sight of her daughter's blood and her swollen stomach snapped Ciel sane.

"Get her legs," Ciel screamed at Clemon, who was standing behind her with his hands clasped around his head. "Hurry up!" she yelled as she slipped her hands beneath Bertie's armpits.

Together they carried her into the house and rested her gently down onto Ciel's bed. The baby was coming, and it was coming fast. Bertie's screams traveled deep into the night. She called out to G.o.d, but mostly she called out for Joe.

Her blood loss was hefty. The midwife told Ciel she might look into having the undertaker come in and measure Bertie. Clemon had the preacher come in and pray over her.

Three days later, Bertie's eyes fluttered open.

When she awoke, the first person she saw was Margaret Slate, who lived on the other side of town. She was b.u.t.toning the top of her dress and smiling down at something Bertie couldn't yet see.

"Ciel!" Margaret yelled as she turned her one good eye on Bertie. "Lord, girl, you put a scare on all of us. But I told your mama, she young, strong, she'll pull through."

Bertie tilted her head to see the middle drawer of Ciel's bureau pulled out. Margaret peeked in, adjusted something and then turned back to Bertie.

"She sho' is a fine baby. You done real good." Margaret patted Bertie on the hand before giving her a toothless grin. "She a greedy thing too. But she full for now. I'll be back in about two hours, she ready to eat again then."

Bertie wanted to see her baby. Her daughter. She tried to lift her head, but the room swam around her.

"Margaret been nursing your baby while you been sick. You know she had them twins a few months back and got plenty of milk." Ciel's voice floated in from the doorway. Bertie could barely make her out in the shadows.

"Still got some decent people *round here," Ciel said and then stopped to pick something from her teeth.

"You had a fever for a while and you lost a lot of blood, but I believe you should be okay in a couple of days." She glanced over at the open drawer and then back at Bertie. "Then you and your baby gotta go."

Ciel disappeared into the shadows and Bertie allowed the darkness to swallow her again.

Chapter 6.

BY the time Sara finished her story dawn was coming in pink and blue, and roosters all across Short Junction announced the beginning of another day.

Sugar s.h.i.+vered in the early morning chill that suddenly consumed the room as her mind slowly digested the information Sara had just unloaded on her.

"That's how I ended up with you?" Sugar asked, even though she already knew the answer.

"She didn't have noplace else to leave you and she was afraid of taking you with her. Afraid that she would end up crazy like her mama and do to you what her mama did to her."

Sugar hugged herself and rocked a bit before she asked the next question. Sara had, Sugar thought quite conveniently, left Shonuff Clayton out of the remainder of the story.

"What happened to Shonuff Clayton?"

"Who?" Sara said, suddenly developing amnesia.

"Shonuff Clayton, Sara. What happened to him?"

Sara turned and looked out the window. She took a deep breath but said nothing.

"Sara, please." Sugar needed to know. Needed to hear it.

"I loved him, you know?" Sara said in a voice that should have belonged to a child.

"Sara," Sugar pleaded. "That part is just hearsay." Sara spoke slow and quiet. "I don't much believe it myself, but seems you need to know." She turned her head so she could look at Sugar full in the face.

"Some say, the whole time Joe was courting your mother, Shonuff was watching. Well, he worked *longside Joe for some time, laying tracks, digging ditches and such. Shonuff never much liked work, didn't like getting his hands dirty, he said," Sara said with a sorry laugh. "He had pretty hands, you know, delicate like a woman's." A look of nostalgia spread across Sara's face.

"People talk, you know," Sara said and then bit down hard on her lip. "People make up things in place of things they don't know about, you know?"

Sara's eyes were wet, and she'd left out the part about how she came across Bertie Mae in town one day, how she'd run her fingers through Bertie Mae's hair, complimenting her on its thickness and s.h.i.+ne before turning and walking away with five strands of Bertie Mae's hair locked between her fingers.

She wouldn't tell Sugar about the handkerchief, the blue-and-white one that had belonged to Bertie Mae, the one she used one day to mop the sweat from Joe's brow as he shot c.r.a.ps at the side of the house, beneath the hot sun.

She would leave out the night that Shonuff made love to her, not even speak on the fact that his touch was intoxicating and when he requested the objects he'd asked her to secure for him, she had gladly handed them over to him.

She loved him.

Those things, those things she'd keep to herself.

"Some of the menfolks that worked with Shonuff and Joe said that they had had words about Bertie Mae, low angry words."

Sugar nodded her head.

"Well, like I said, he was jealous of them two, Joe and your mama. Don't know why." Sara's voice was filled with spite. "But he was, and set about taking care of them. Or so the story goes."

"Taking care of them?" Sugar was confused.

"Yes."

"Well, how did he do it, Sara, how did he take care of them?"

"I don't know how," Sara said and waved her hand.

"You know, Sara, tell me." Sugar's voice was stern.