Girls Like Us Read online

“Yell into this, Ruby,” said Mary. “No yelling out.”

  “Thin walls,” Lillian added. “Doing great there, gal.”

  Ruby nodded at Mary first, then Lillian, and then Missippi, which made her feel like a part of the circle. She loved that feeling.

  “I’m about to examine you internally,” Ms. Pearline told Ruby. “Ready?”

  Lillian and Mary shut their eyes tight and held on to the stick.

  “Ready,” Ruby panted.

  Missippi watched Ms. Pearline stuff what looked like her whole arm into Ruby’s private place. Ruby cringed and wriggled like she desperately wanted to scream out.

  “You haven’t dilated at all, Ruby girl.” Ms. Pearline slowly removed her hand. “But your cervix is fully thinned.”

  Lillian and Mary grinned and shook Ruby’s arms encouragingly. They knew what thinned cervix and dilated meant, but all Missippi heard were words. It reminded her of the chunks of names in the Old Testament. They could go on and on for a whole chapter about whose son was whose daughter and whose brother was their son’s son. Missippi never skipped over them, though. She sounded them out and said them aloud, because they were actually people who had lived and deserved to be called out. Cervix meant something important, Missippi thought, dilated, too.

  Ms. Pearline must have read her mind. “Cervix is here.” She placed her hand onto Ruby’s low belly. “Any other day, it’s about the size of a second finger, but today, for Ruby, it’s wide, thin, and ready for baby.”

  Missippi smiled. “Baby rides it down like a sliding board?”

  All four, including Ruby, chuckled at the question. “That’s one way to put it, yes,” Ms. Pearline replied.

  “And dilate.” Missippi was eager to soak up the moment. “What’s that one mean?”

  “Hold on a minute.” Ms. Pearline focused all of her attention under Ruby’s nightdress. “Breathe through this one, Ruby. One, two, three, breathe in deep. Okay, now out. Open your eyes; look at me. Breathe in with me. One, two, three, breathe in deep. Okay, out through your nose. You’re ready for the tub. Lillian, go run the water. Mary, stay there holding the stick tight. Get ready to set your timer, Missippi. In three, two, one, set it now.”

  Ms. Pearline wasn’t nervous at all, Missippi noticed. Her hands weren’t shaking, and her chest wasn’t all jumpy. Actually, she seemed energized by the chaos.

  “Good girl, Ruby. You can rest a few minutes,” Ms. Pearline said as she rubbed lotion into Ruby’s left foot and turned her attention to Missippi. “Dilated means the cervix has opened enough for baby to come through. Hold up your ten fingers.”

  Missippi gently placed the timer at her side and lifted all ten fingers into the air. Ms. Pearline began pulling her fingers down one at a time. “One centimeter dilated. Two centimeters dilated. Three centimeters dilated…”

  She kept going all the way until she reached the last finger. Missippi loved being touched by female warmth and beauty. Every time Ms. Pearline touched a new finger, Missippi felt joy deep down in her guts. The pure bliss of a mamaless girl being told what was what by an earnest woman. She’d thought she wanted a mama like Evangelist, but she now realized she was wrong. She wanted a mama like Ms. Pearline. A smart mama who spoke well and didn’t judge young girls with swollen bellies. An artist who knew about culture and pepper grinders and cervixes.

  “Got it?” Ms. Pearline asked with a small, tepid grin. “It’s important that you know every bit of this.” She glanced down at Missippi’s stomach. “I think you might be having two.”

  * * *

  As Ruby lifted her nightdress and squatted down in the tub filled with warm water, lavender, and clover, Missippi thought of two.

  When Ms. Pearline smiled at her and said the word two, Missippi accepted, for the first time, that meant two babies. Two is usually a good thing. Two shoes, two hands, two-step biscuits. But two babies was a lot for anybody, especially a fourteen-year-old girl.

  She thought about Mrs. Dixie at church, who was married to a deacon and carrying around a bonnet-headed monster of an arm-baby named Daisy. She was cuter than any baby in the wide world, Daisy was, but she was also meaner than a bed rail sticking out. Covered, tiny head to tiny foot, in pink lace and eyelet, that child would slap the daylights out of any man or girl that dare come near her. Missippi had once seen Daisy snatch a wig off the head of a church mother and hold it so tight God himself couldn’t take it away. Poor Mrs. Dixie, one Daisy had given her a full head of gray and permanent lines between her eyes. Two Daisies would’ve killed her dead.

  “This helps,” Ruby said through clenched teeth. “Add in a little more hot.”

  Lillian turned the hot water lever to a trickle, and Ruby’s eyes rolled back into her head. The heat must’ve given her a fair amount of relief.

  “I need to check your dilation, Ruby.” Without hesitation, Ms. Pearline lowered herself into Ruby’s tub, and her hand disappeared into the water. “Four centimeters dilated. Good girl. Baby should be here by morning.”

  Ms. Pearline then stepped out of the tub, the bottom of her slip covered in pinkish slime, but she didn’t even bother to wring it out. She knelt by Ruby’s side, seemingly unbothered by it.

  After that, the contractions came thick and fast. Ruby kept asking Lillian to warm her cooling water back up, and Mary took a wide-tooth comb and green grease to Ruby’s scalp. All three speaking positivity and love over her.

  “You’re doing it, Ruby.”

  “Almost there.”

  “You look beautiful, girl.”

  Then came the neighbors. In succession, one after the other after the other, ladies from next door and down the hall and a few floors down to the left showed up with freshly knitted booties and bonnets. Others came with chicken and dressing, and cabbage filled with salt pork, and baskets of blueberries. But the main unit was the five of them—Ms. Pearline, Lillian, Mary, Ruby, and Missippi.

  Missippi wanted to cry as she watched them. She had always loved watching people walk by her small house back in Valdosta. Making up stories about where people were coming from and going to. But she never could’ve imagined a love so pure as this. Love conquering pain and anguish. Love pushing out hate. Love banding together to splash color onto the gray and the drab.

  Missippi wanted to cry so badly that she allowed herself to.

  * * *

  Ms. Pearline was right. By morning, a baby boy had come into the world, and just like Missippi’s dream, he was wrapped up in a blue blanket. His voice, however, didn’t sound at all like wind chimes in the spring. He was a screaming little something.

  “He won’t take it, Ms. Pearline.” Ruby cried all morning like a sad camel. “He don’t want my ninnies.”

  Ms. Pearline, still calm and completely collected, rubbed Ruby’s feet and smiled. “He’s an hour old. Give him time, my love.”

  “How long?” Ruby asked frantically. “He hates me.”

  Ms. Pearline gently placed Ruby’s foot on top of a stack of pillows and went to her side. “Take your shirt off, and his, too.”

  Missippi wondered if she ought to look away. Naked breasts were not the norm where she was from, after all, but she stared as Ms. Pearline placed the tiny, yelling baby boy on Ruby’s lower belly. “A few short minutes ago, this was his home.” She placed Ruby’s shivering hand under his naked behind and her other hand on her own breast. “Babies are born who they will become. This baby will grow up to be an independent man. Let him find his way to your breast himself.”

  Ms. Pearline stepped back and joined Lillian, Mary, and Missippi as they all watched the nameless little boy rooting around for his mother’s nipple.

  “It’s called the breast crawl,” Ms. Pearline whispered, as if not to disturb him on his search. “See? His face is going side to side and now up and up. It’s a reflex in every baby. Some more than others, but they all have it. He wants to find his own way. Forge his own path.”

  Missippi could hardly believe her eyes as an hour-old baby slowly inched to
Ruby’s nipple and began to suck.

  * * *

  On his two-week birthday, baby boy still had no name. Lillian called him Red, since he was always hollering bloody murder, while Mary had given him the nickname of Scooter for no reason at all. Ms. Pearline and Missippi agreed to call him Baby Boy until Ruby herself came up with something. It was, after all, her baby to name.

  “I can’t think of nothing,” Ruby kept saying.

  She was the saddest girl Missippi had ever seen. It was so strange. Ruby was chipper and young before she’d had her baby boy, but after, she turned blue. Missippi tried asking what was what with her. She only shrugged in response. Ms. Pearline called it the baby blues. Mothers get that after they push out all the hormones, she said. It seemed that Ms. Pearline had a name for everything Ruby was going through. Even her hair coming out in the front had a name—alopecia, the quick loss of hair after giving birth.

  Ms. Pearline made Missippi want to know more about everything. She was a woman who knew what she was talking about, and Missippi would love to be one of those kinds of women one day.

  Missippi followed Ms. Pearline to the easel in the corner to watch her finish up a painting of Baby Boy wrapped in blue and surrounded by kites and sailboats. It was a painting that belonged in a little boy’s room and then in his keepsake box, where it should never be lost or sold or given away to thrift. It was a masterpiece, just like he was.

  A single knock at the door shocked everyone to attention. Lillian and Mary stood, flanked at Ruby’s and Baby Boy’s sides like guardian statues. Ms. Pearline closed her coat tight around her and began to shake. She was nervous again, Missippi thought. Her calm was replaced by the opposite of calm. And then the baby began wailing.

  Ms. Pearline walked cautiously to the door. “Who’s there?”

  “Ruby’s granny!” a woman yelled from the other side of the closed door. “Come to see my grandbaby.”

  Ms. Pearline turned to Ruby with such sadness in her eyes. Missippi wanted to tell her not to open the door. Let the woman stand outside where she belonged. This was Ruby’s family now. She didn’t even know if Ruby’s granny was good or bad or mean or sweet, she just knew that she didn’t want any outsiders inside. Their union was forged and earned. No one else had any right to sit at the foot of their bed. No right to lay their foreign eyes on their Baby Boy. Blood was thinner than water in that place.

  Ms. Pearline opened the door to reveal a stout woman in a flowery dress and hat. She looked like she could bake delicious cookies. Like a granny from a storybook or a fairy tale, a good one at that.

  “Where’s my great-grandbaby?” She spoke in an upbeat peep that matched her appearance. “Where is my little man?”

  She made a slow beeline to Baby Boy, and Missippi’s instinct was to pounce on her flowery throat. When the woman lifted Baby Boy from Ruby’s arms, Missippi felt her nostrils flare and mouth clench up. She loathed this kind-looking woman with an unexplainable passion.

  “Get your things, Ruby,” the woman said, staring at Baby Boy with so much love in her eyes that she looked like she might burst. “Let’s take this sweet baby home.”

  Missippi jumped up, unable to control her anger. “No!” she yelled. “You can’t just waltz up in here and take our Baby Boy off somewhere. This is his home, lady!”

  “Missippi.” Ms. Pearline went for her arm.

  “No!” She wouldn’t allow Ms. Pearline to finish. “We can’t let this happen.”

  Lillian and Mary tried to stop hysterical Missippi, but there was no calming her. She was a wild bull let loose. “It’s not right, y’all! Why are you just standing there and letting this happen?” Missippi began to cry inconsolably. “You can’t take them away. You can’t.”

  “Come here, you,” Ruby said to Missippi with a sad smile. She held her hands open as Missippi fell into her. “I’ll miss you more than you know. I’ll miss all of you.”

  Lillian and Mary joined the hug clump and also began to cry.

  “This part doesn’t get easier, does it?” Lillian asked Ms. Pearline, who was shaking and frazzled in the corner.

  “Never,” she replied before joining the hug. “If anything, girls, it only gets harder.”

  * * *

  Ruby and Baby Boy left Ms. Pearline’s apartment on a clear blue Sunday afternoon. Missippi cried a flash flood until the sun rose on Tuesday.

  “Where’d Ms. Pearline go off to?” Mary asked, still mourning. “She’s been gone since last night.”

  When the streetlights blinked off, Missippi began to worry. “Should we go out looking, y’all?”

  “Yes,” Lillian replied sarcastically. “Three big-bellied detectives searching Chicago for a woman covered in coats in the dead of summer. They’ll lock us all up in the crazy house.”

  Missippi knew she was right. They were all showing now. No way they could go out without everyone asking questions.

  Then the key turned in the lock, and two figures appeared in the doorway. One, blanketed Ms. Pearline, and the other was even more covered up. A quilt covered the second girl’s head, and opaque stockings blocked legs. Missippi couldn’t make heads or tails of it. She searched the second figure for clues, and she saw the bottom tip of an acoustic guitar covered in flower stickers and branded peace signs.

  “Uh,” Missippi said. “Ms. Pearline, who is this?”

  “This,” she replied, “is Susan. It’s okay now; you can take the blanket off. It’s safe.”

  Missippi, Lillian, and Mary gasped when they saw her.

  Dirty-blond pixie cut, pink cheeks, and holding two fingers in a peace sign.

  “Hi,” she said to them. “They call me Sue for short. A girl named Sue.” She laughed a little and then stopped.

  They all stood silent, mouths gaping.

  In the highest peak of the tallest tower, in the middle of Chicago, stood seventeen-year-old Susan. Ms. Pearline’s very first white girl to come to the apartment.

  “Come on in, Sue,” said Ms. Pearline before wrapping her arm around her. “Let’s get you something to eat.”

  SUE

  11 Weeks—A Few Days Prior

  The streets of Washington, DC, filled with all kinds of people holding on to pictures of blown-up little kids.

  Sue didn’t understand how anyone could support such a war. Kids were kids, whether from San Francisco or North Vietnam. Kids were clueless about life and war and death. Or they should be, anyway. They should be whole and innocent and free of worry.

  It was an emergency protest, organized by the National Peace Action Coalition, Sue’s favorite group of people in the whole world. Her high school’s chapter, back in Kenilworth, Illinois, was led by the most passionate boy on earth, Michael Matthews. His longish hair and skinny waist made Sue swoon, but it was his zeal for justice that made her love him. If he had said it needed to be done, she would’ve done it. Absolutely anything for Michael Matthews. So when he told her to get on a bus to DC with him, she packed up her guitar and got on a bus to DC.

  The week before, they’d been writing letters to senators, including her baby-killing father, Senator Day from the great state of Illinois. Then, after a lengthy bus ride, they stood in the midst of history in Washington, DC. A coming together of souls in support of the human race. Sue couldn’t stop smiling.

  In the crowd, she spotted a yellow flower about to get stomped by an angry protester. “Hold up, Mikey!”

  She kissed him, put down her guitar, and ran to the flower, elbowing and excusing herself to reach it. She covered the tiny burst just before it was about to be crushed, picked it up, and placed it on the helmet of an armed officer.

  “Peace to you,” she told him with a smile.

  “Fucking hippie,” he spat in response.

  She pranced back to Michael’s side and tuned her guitar. “What should I play?” she asked him. “They’re getting angrier. Maybe something mellow.”

  “Anger is necessary, Sue,” Michael sputtered. “Don’t be naive. Look at those pict
ures over there. If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention.”

  Sue shook her head. “I can’t see any more pictures of kids like that. It turns my stomach.”

  “It fucking should.”

  Sue ran through her mind, searching for the perfect song to sing. Joan Baez was her hero. Sue cut her hair the same week Joan did. Taught herself guitar when she first heard “I Live One Day at a Time” and “Joe Hill.” She didn’t have Joan’s vibrato or her lower register, but she’d do her best.

  “I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night, alive as you and me. Says I, ‘But Joe, you’re ten years dead…’”

  A small crowd formed around her. A few left crowns of flowers, and some even flicked coins her way. She sang from her low belly. The song wasn’t right unless she felt it rising up from inside. When she reached the end of the short song, she was out of breath. Singing from her heart exhausted her thin body.

  “Can we hear another?” encouraged a sweet-faced, older woman wearing tie-dye.

  “How about ‘Chelsea Morning’ by Joni Mitchell?” asked a middle-aged man in bell-bottom jeans.

  Sue was afraid of “Chelsea Morning.” It was too high for her, and she never sang a song she couldn’t do justice. Music was life, and as a musician, Sue knew when someone believed what they sang. Both Joans believed it—Joan and Joni—and so did she. A song as beautiful as “Chelsea Morning” deserved to be believed in by its singer.

  A nervous rumble came up from her stomach, and Sue was shocked by its power. Reverberating through her body were tremors of anxiety. She rarely felt this way. After what seemed like thousands of talent shows and impromptu sidewalk performances, Sue was a professional at this. She’d worked out all of her fear over time and never got nervous anymore. Was she coming down with something? she wondered. She froze with fear as the small crowd began to chant.

  “‘Chelsea Morning,’ ‘Chelsea Morning,’ ‘Chelsea Morning…’”

  She looked over to Michael for help, but he, too, was chanting along with the crowd. Dizzying, mind-numbing confusion tilted her understanding of the world, and she thought she might faint. Her dry mouth began craving wetness. Water, she thought. Someone please get her water now.