Camellia

Lorraine McCabe, wearing the blue dress she made from her old bedsheets, let the white boy touch her breasts. The boy was red-haired, skinny and full of freckles. He tried to push her down, using her firm bosom as a button.

"You sure is pretty," said the boy. "That blonde hair and baby-blue eye. Hard to believe you is a nigger."

Lorraine unhitched the boy's overalls, bearing his dickey and dirty drawers. She heard the branch, the stream rush by, and glanced at the brambles dark in the night. She was glad she was in nowheresville with this boy. He looked so common. She wouldn't stroll with him downtown. If it was legal, she'd pick a white man of more quality. Lorraine kicked off her shoes and lay on the grass, the mosquitoes buzzing faintly in the coolness. The white boy sat beside her and pulled up her skirt, exposing her black garters and stockings, showing her full white thighs. The boy unlatched the garters, his breath coming in and out heavily. Lorraine smiled as she yanked down the boy's underwear. She smelled his sweat, his chewed tobacco. The boy then mounted Lorraine, a skinny snake against her body. She wrapped her legs around his back, moved along with him. The boy was white, anonymous. Lorraine liked her men that way. She didn't kiss the boy.

Lorraine stayed at her sister Anna Brown's house, a pink Victorian in a neighbourhood formerly white but now middle-class Negro. Anna, white like her sister but darker-haired, darker-eyed, sat at her vanity wearing a white kimono and spreading on red lipstick. She saw, in the mirror, Lorraine leaving the bathroom. Lorraine's blue eyes were watery, her mouth set in a sick frown. Anna stood up and approached her sister.

"I'm sick," Lorraine said. She pressed her hand on her stomach.

"Ate bad food?" Anna said.

Lorraine shook her head. "I haven't been bleeding none. For two months."

Anna narrowed her eyes, like she was trying to focus her eyes on her sister. "You pregnant?"

Lorraine sighed. "I'm saying nothing."

"Lorraine," Anna said, "are you meeting men in the bushes, like that girl Etta Mae Raleigh?"

Etta Mae was a skinny, chocolate-brown girl, just thirteen when she started growing a belly. After giving her a beating, her mama and papa wondered who the father was. Etta Mae never told; people in the Negro community said she got pregnant by a solider in the bush. Etta Mae, around Anna's age, also started to call the McCabe girls "funny trash of a nigger dad and cracker mom." She joined the whole community in setting apart Anna and Lorraine. The girls felt like white lint on a creamy fudge cake.

"I won't say," Lorraine said. "I say I was raped."

Anna cringed. She imagined the sallow eyes of the prostitutes on Howard Street, there because some man stole their honour young. "Don't be joking with me. What happened to you?"

"I won't say," Lorraine said.

Anna sighed and went back to her vanity. "I ain't getting a bucket of talk from you."

"I don't want the baby," Lorraine said.

Anna pursed her lips together, to make the lipstick even. "Someone has to raise it."

"I want to get rid of it," Lorraine said. "But you and Albert deserve a baby."

Anna smiled faintly. "Albert wants the baby."

Lorraine sighed, put her hands behind her back. "Anna," she asked, "are you mad over having no baby?"

Anna turned red; she eyed her stockings drawer next to her thigh. "I hadn't been mad since I was fourteen. Disappointed, yes. Mad, no. Do you want to go to Dr. Robbins?"

"No," Lorraine said. "He don't treat love babies no good."

Anna nodded. She thought about Dr. Robbins at church, sitting at the front pew and sternly nodding to the preacher's sermons.

"Okay," Anna said. "I just hope the baby sorta looks like Albert."

God, he won't, thought Lorraine. She returned to the bathroom. In the yellow dimness, Lorraine sat on the toilet. The baby's father was white, that was for sure. He was one of those nameless whites who had her, whether they knew she was Negro or not. Lorraine thought about meeting a Negro man of quality, or going north to pass and marry a respectable white man. She shuddered. Marriage meant being tied to a community. Lorraine never wanted to settle down.

Anna named the baby Albert Jonathan Brown, even though she always called him Jonathan. He was born on July 1, on a hot, sticky day. Lorraine lay in bed, pinched from the long labour and the heat. Anna held the baby in soft blue blankets. After the blood got washed off, Jonathan looked white like flour. He had thin blond hair, and when he opened his eyes, you could see a brilliant blue. He had Lorraine's eyes. Mama's eyes. Anna pursed her lips as she heard Albert approach the room. Albert was a big, dark-brown man, muscular and fit in his brown suit and fedora. He studied at Tuskegee and spoke even more proper than Anna.

"How's the mama?" he asked as he kissed Anna and scooped up the baby.

Anna nodded. Albert then scanned the baby. His face turned hard, like he saw a threat. He took the baby away from his body. He didn't want to love this baby.

"Anna," he asked, "please explain this."

Anna smiled faintly, took little Jonathan from Albert. "Our baby," she said. "Isn't he great?"

"What kind of fool do you take me for?" Albert yelled.

"It's my baby," Lorraine mumbled from bed.

Albert shook his head. "I won't accept this. Not at all."

Anna pointed her finger in the baby's mouth, stopping his crying. She liked how wet his gums felt. "The baby looks like Lorraine. The father's probably some light-bright solider from the base."

Albert shook his head. "More like some worthless cracker. That's what everybody will say."

Anna thought about her neighbours, looking away or smiling to themselves when she and Lorraine walked down the streets. Anna was used to being stared at all her life. She didn't let any pain show. But Albert was all of that community and never let Anna forget the attitudes. Anna walked out the guest room, into the modestly cool kitchen. She saw the Gerber formula and bottle by the stovetop, the black kettle still boiling water above a blue flame. She cradled Jonathan. He started to cry again. She remembered Mama at the hot plate, boiling water in a pan and smashing raspberries in those porcelain cups with Chinese designs. Mama made tea, a sweet tea that soothed your backaches, stomachaches, heartaches. Only while making tea did Mama smile, brighten her blue eyes. She'd give the tea to Anna and Lorraine, her steps as light as a little girl even through she was heavy. Anna cherished her memories of Mama, but nobody, black or white, cared about them. She was a little half-breed, of a nigger papa and a white mama. Anna didn't belong to Albert Brown. He never respected her, except probably for her porcelain-white skin. Anna started to believe the rumours. Lorraine probably had a clandestine affair with a white man. She probably liked the strangeness. Lorraine had been a stranger, even to Anna, all her life.

Lorraine, by the middle of July, felt good enough to put her little dresses back on and run errands around town. Anna wanted diapers for Jonathan, so Lorraine went to Welsey's General Store in the black downtown. Welsey stood behind the counter, a wiry reddish-brown man wearing a beige apron and frizzy grey hair sticking up. He told his new wife Ethel, sitting by the window, to stop eating so much ice cream, she'll gain a big behind. Ethel was plump and pretty, with pale skin and red hair. She looked only slightly darker than Lorraine. Lorraine went to a pile of diapers, between the cans of lye and the rows of kettles. She grabbed ten cloth diapers, five cents each. She pressed them to her chest and reached the counter. Welsey added up the diapers, a smirk on his face.

"Hello, Lorraine," Welsey said. In this community, unmarried women were always called by first names. Lorraine hated the custom. She was considered a little girl, even though she had spent twenty-seven hours in labour.

"Hello, Mr. Welsey," Lorraine said. "How is your day?"

"Good," Welsey said. "Trying to tell Ethel to eat like a lady, 'stead of like a hungry hog. Right, honey?"

Ethel stuffed more ice cream into her mouth. She nodded.

"How you been?" Welsey then said.

"I'm thinking about a job," Lorraine said, as she eyed the tin can on the counter, full of stick candy.

"Will you be going north?"

Lorraine turned red. She wanted to leave this town, but she hated Welsey's presumptuousness. "I may go to Canada or England."

Welsey stuffed the diapers into a brown bag. "Funny," he said. "You just-a might fit in. That's fifty cents."

Lorraine put the two quarters on the counter. "There," she said. "My sister is enjoying her new role."

"Good," said Welsey. "I really feel glad for your sister."

"I do," Ethel said. "I wish my baby had good hair like y'all baby. My daughter Veronica has Welsey's hair: nappy as heck."

Welsey laughed. "She has my good looks too."

Lorraine nodded weakly and took the paper bag. She sighed, the heat was too much now. She walked outside, the main street empty save for a couple of boys by Welsey's rival, Natty's General Store and Cafe. The hot sun was pale yellow, unyielding. It was like a mother making the children obey. Lorraine walked across the street to Natty's. She wanted to buy iced tea, probably eat an egg sandwich. But her leg brushed against the table where the teenage boys sat. They laughed harshly, whistled.

"White girl in Niggertown," said one of the boys. He sounded like Berke, Etta Mae Raleigh's son.

"Yeah," said the other boy. "How much money for white meat? White boy satisfied you enuff?"

Lorraine turned away, her eyes red with tears. "You know I ain't no cracker girl."

"Naw," said Berke. "You ain't white. Just some half-breed getting loving from some dirty redneck." The boys continued to laugh. Lorraine clutched her paper bag as she crossed the street. The day was too hot. Lorraine wanted the cool shelter of Anna's house, with Anna cradling the baby and speaking softly. The parlor was dark and chilly.

"Anna?"

"Yes?"

"Why did Papa stay in this town?" Lorraine asked. "He coulda did well in New York with Mama."

Anna, sitting on the parlour sofa, holding a tea cup, looked hard. "You know good well Papa wouldn't happy in New York. Too cold and the white folks ain't even nice. He coulda gone to Paris. But he don't speak French."

Lorraine nodded, as she peered through the translucent curtains. She then took her cup of tea, sipping the sweet raspberry flavour. It tasted like Mama, like love. But a nail of doubt still pinned her down.

"Was Mama a prostitute?" Lorraine then asked.

Anna turned pale. "Why would you say that?"

"All the people in the town," she said. "All these years. I wondered if I ended up like her."

"Mama came from Savannah," Anna said. "Her mother did run a brothel, and Mama did work there briefly. But she came to this town to change. The white folks hated her, because she didn't want to submit to a man. She worked with Welsey's papa at his store. The Negroes accepted her, and so she thought she could do whatever she wanted. Papa told me all this before he died."

Lorraine nodded. She sipped more tea, but still felt distant, aimless. That nail wasn't holding her completely. Why didn't Papa tell me all this? she thought.

"Mama musta known you don't mess with a coloured man," Lorraine said.

"Yep," Anna said. "But she got treated bad a lot, and she finally found some place that loved her. She thought they'll still love her if she married a Negro."

Lorraine shook her head. "She was wrong."

"What happened today?"

Lorraine smiled. "Just some nasty boys saying things to me. They ain't got no home training."

Anna pursed her lips together. She ran her pinkie on the porcelain of her teacup. Her heart raced.

"Lorraine?"

"Yes?"

"Be serious with me," Anna asked. "Were you raped?"

Lorraine smiled, her small nose a bit wider. "Why you ask a question like that? I wasn't raped, and even if I was, it don't matter."

Anna gasped, her mouth open. "It does matter. Albert is terrible to me these days."

"Anna," Lorraine said, "Albert always been bad to you."

"Albert doesn't want this baby," Anna said. "Jonathan looks nothing like him. It's a true embarrassment to him."

Lorraine shook her head. "Me being pregnant with no husband was an embarrassment too. The way we got treated by the community's an embarrassment. You let that old man get you with child when you were a child. You couldn't have a baby because of that. Remember?"

Anna licked her lower lip. "No," she said, "I don't want to remember. But I loved Walter. I was young, but I loved him."

"You loved his dark skin," Lorraine said. "In his arms, you could forget Mama."

Anna stood up, wandered behind the sofa. The baby started to cry again.

"The baby's father is white," Lorraine said. "That's all I gonna say."

Anna nodded, her profile visible. Lorraine saw the full lips but the pointy nose, the paleness like a camellia or a silk sheet. Lorraine sipped more tea, too faint to say any more. She never felt sturdy anyplace.

On most nights, Lorraine stayed in her white room with the baby. She had to smell him, hear him cry, rock him back and forth to calm him. Jonathan now bigger, even more cranky. But his blond hair stayed. His blue eyes stayed. On Thursday night, Lorraine placed the baby on the middle of the bed, wiggling around the peacock-blue coverlet. She turned on the radio, to a station that played "Stormy Weather." Lorraine imagined being Lena Horne, singing regret. She reached the window, crouching by the trunk below it. The trunk had no locks. Lorraine imagined Anna taking them away, making this discovery earlier. Lorraine opened the lid. She smelled old moth balls, old perfume, old wisps of sweat. There were a lot of clothes, with the frills and details of the turn of the century. Lorraine touched the fabric, shiny and soft and textured. She held gold necklaces and emerald bracelets, stocking sheer and black and even red. Red was the colour of a whore. Under the clothes and jewellery sat photographs. Mama... hair like straw, pale eyes, lips like a rose. She looks pretty in her white dress, don't she? Holding a bicycle to her side, wearing her straw hat, right outside Welsey's dad's store. Welsey's dad is next to her, holding her hand. They look lovey. Mama, blonde like me, with a rose about her. Welsey's dad like an Indian -- his mama was a full-blood Cherokee. Mama, happy. Mama, alive, not in bed with a dead boy, 'bout to die herself. Mama, kicked away from love, because she took a good coloured man from a good coloured woman. Hypocrites, no better than white folks. Jonathan's crying. He'll look handsome, blond and blue-eyed with a good tan. His hair could brown though. Lorraine stood up, scooped Jonathan from the bed. His face was red, contorted in need. Lorraine went to the night stand, where the bottle of formula sat. Breasts don't have to ache, she thought. Just give him bottle. She stuffed the nipple in the baby's mouth, cradled him a bit. She left the guest room, floating in the darkness of an August night. Lorraine felt better than usual. It's been a drought the whole summer and the mosquitoes hadn't been biting as bad.

In the dining room, between the parlour and kitchen, Lorraine saw a peach-colored glow from the lamps, heard slow jazz play from the RCA phonograph. She heard steps, of slow dancing. She felt embarrassed to be invading in Anna and Albert's intimate times, like they were her parents. But she cradled the baby, heard what they had to say. Albert told Anna to kiss him. Anna said no. Albert did anyway -- Lorraine heard the smack.

"Anna," Albert then said, "you're a good woman."

"I guess so," Anna replied. "How much wine have you been drinking?"

"Only one glass," Albert said. "You had plenty to drink."

Another kiss. Anna giggled.

"Is Lorraine up in the room with that baby?" Albert asked.

"Yes," Anna said. "You're always asking that question."

"I just don't wanna see a baby tonight," Albert said. "Especially if it isn't mine."

"You'll get a baby soon," Anna said.

"I doubt it, Anna." Lorraine then heard Albert walk to the RCA, take the needle off the record. She clutched Jonathan closer to her breast.

"What the hell was me suffering childbirth over?" she told herself. The baby choked a bit on the formula. Lorraine took out the nipple, making the baby cry. She sat on the sofa, pale in the darkness of the parlour

"What the hell is that crying?" Albert asked.

"What?" Anna asked.

"The crying from the parlour," Albert said. "I don't want to hear that baby."

Anna walked closer to the parlour "All right, Albert I'll deal with it." Lorraine turned and saw Anna come near her. Anna folded her arms on her chest, like a schoolmarm dealing with a bad child.

"Lorraine?"

"What?"

"It's late," Anna replied. "Jonathan has to sleep."

"He wakes up in the middle of the night," Lorraine said. "I gotta calm him down."

"Good," Anna said. "I hope you have a nice night with him."

Albert leaned on the doorway, a murky smirk on his dark face. They teach you in Tuskegee to be a cur, Lorraine thought. She stood up, cradling Jonathan. He still cried. Lorraine walked all the way to her room, with the white walls and blue coverlet, smelling strongly of baby. Jonathan wouldn't stop crying.

Lorraine hated Albert and Anna. But she dutifully kept Jonathan away from their sight. She shopped for the baby, changed the diapers, fed him formula and strained vegetables. Jonathan started to sit up on Lorraine's bed, his arms moving about to grasp this new world he was in. Lorraine wanted the baby to remember those sweet, curious times. He'll enjoy them when he gets older and life kicks him in the rear, she thought. Anna started to sit with the others at church. She sat in the sea of huge hats, coloured lavender and orange, covered with huge silk flowers and tulle. Lorraine always sat by the window, a seat or two beside her on the pew. It came from the days when she and Anna had to sit alone because they were illegitimate. Needless to say, their mother the white girl was never welcome in the church. Lorraine developed a resigned atheism.

After church, Albert went to Welsey's to get food and blankets for a picnic. Lorraine sat on the back seat of the Packard, Jonathan wearing white cotton and asleep on her lap. The sun, hot for October, reddened his skin. Lorraine was afraid he'd get skin blisters. Albert drove into the country, by tobacco fields and sharecroppers in their dilapidated shacks and worn denims.

"Anna," Lorraine said, "my Hershey Bar's in the wicker basket."

Anna took the candy bar from the basket sitting by the gear shift. Lorraine took it and peeled off the brown paper, the aluminum foil. She took a bite.

"Taste new," Lorraine said. "For once, Welsey ain't acting cheap." She laughed softly, ate more chocolate. Albert slipped a stick of Juicy Fruit into his mouth. Anna looked out the window. She laughed softly.

"You like the name Edward?" she told Albert.

"Edward?" Albert said. "That's my second cousin in Frankfort, Kentucky. He owns the largest black law firm in the state. But some of my relations didn't like his wife. They said she was common."

Lorraine smiled faintly. She knew that Albert's cousin married a nurse, a graduate of Howard, but dark-skinned.

"Why you mentioning baby names?" Lorraine asked.

Anna laughed. "It sounds so silly."

"Go ahead," said Lorraine.

Albert said, "It's a private matter between Anna and I."

"Go ahead," Lorraine said. "I'm serious."

Anna continued to laugh. "It's dumb, real dumb. You'll consider it outrageous. You wouldn't like it."

"Go ahead," Lorraine said. Jonathan yawned a bit, but returned to sleep.

"Lorraine," Anna said. "We want you to have another baby, a baby with Albert."

Lorraine laughed along with Albert and Anna.

"I can't," Lorraine whispered.

"I can have a real son to carry on the family name. It'll make Anna happy."

Lorraine shook her head. "You's a couple of queer-headed people, that's for sure."

"Are you joking?" Anna said.

"No," Lorraine said. "Not at all. I made a mistake. I'm not going to be your brood mare."

Albert drove by a roadstop cafe, Garrison's. It had a whites-only sign. "You're a lot of other things, Lorraine."

"When will you go to this park?" Lorraine asked. "Two hundred days?"

"You don't want me, Lorraine?" Albert said. "You're better than me?"

Anna put her hand on Albert's shoulder. "Calm down, Albert. The baby's sleeping."

"It's not my kid," Albert said.

Anna ran her hand along Albert's back. "Albert, you don't mean it."

"Why the hell is this baby here anyway?" Albert said. "I can't stand that little rabbit."

"Jonathan is not a rabbit," Lorraine said. "I mighta not have the best morals, but I don't regret having him. I gave him as a gift to you. I oughta known better."

"I think Jonathan is a beautiful baby," Anna said. "Like Mama."

Albert sighed, chewed on his gum. He then mumbled, "Serve me the sandwiches first. I don't want Lorraine and the baby getting things first."

Lorraine ate more chocolate. She caressed Jonathan's head, covered with a cotton hat. Lorraine wore white, had blonde hair, carried a baby in white. Outside was hot and pale, the sunlight dashing on the shacks and fields of tobacco. Through one patch, Lorraine saw a thicket, trees hiding a farmhouse, a Chevrolet, a stream -- anything. She wanted to be there, away from the fetters of town and community.

It was almost a year since Lorraine met that redneck boy by the branch and brambles. She went back there, on a night cool and full of quiet energy. The sky was a purple brilliance, full of fireflies. Lorraine, wearing her blue dress, stood by the water. Mud smeared on the bottom of her Cuban-heeled shoes. She waited for the rustling of bushes, by men ready for some fun without consequences. Redneck boys, soldiers from the base, fancy-educated college men. No Negro soldiers. Lorraine knew that not even the northerners would risk sex with a girl they didn't know was a Negress. She was a half-breed girl, of a nigger dad and white mama. She was aimless like a white feather in the air. These nights of passion, all cold in the morning, were all right for her. Some fun, then they is gone. Lorraine sighed. She clutched her bra strap, leaving it open to a mosquito bite. Damn bite. Shoo, shoo away. Lorraine rubbed the bite and pulled down the bra strap, the right one then the left. She closed her eyes briefly. She then opened her eyes, lowering them to see her breasts. Free, with no one unwanted looking.

 

Behlor Santi has had fiction and poetry published in online magazines, including Darkstormy Magazine and Morella. She lives in Yonkers, New York and is working on a collection of short stories.

---