“Are you feeling better?” These words tumble out of my mouth because I woke up thinking she would be. She should be. But I don’t think she is. I don’t think she is feeling better.
“Maggie, listen to me,” Mama says, and then she coughs into a handkerchief spotted with something dark. I don’t want to think about what has made those marks.
“Maybe you should rest, Mama.” The heavy thing inside me wants to push me out the door and back down to the sitting room where Alex is cooing and kicking and trying to grab happy pictures off the covers of books.
“Listen.” Mama takes away the cloth from her face. “You did the right thing, Maggie. That baby... he would have died if not for you. You did the right thing. I should have told you that the first day. I’m sorry....”
Her words fall away and a barking cough takes their place. I can’t think of a thing to say. I want to reply, “It’s all right, Mama. I’m not mad at you. You don’t have to say you’re sorry.” But it’s like there’s a door at the back of my throat where the words get out and it has just slammed shut.
“Tell your papa I said that,” she says. “Tell him I want the baby to stay. I want him to be ours.”
Why can’t you tell him?These five words just won’t come. I think them but I cannot say them.
“I want you all to raise him and care for him and never let him think for a moment that there was a time when someone did not love him,” Mama says. “All the love you still hold in your heart for Henry, you give it to that little boy. Will you do that?”
Tears are spilling down my cheeks. I want to say yes. I want to say, “Stop talking like that!” Nothing gets past that door in my throat except a sob. Just one.
“You’re my brave girl, Maggie,” Mama says when I say nothing.
Inside my head I am shouting “Mama,” but no sound comes from me. In an instant and before she can tell me not to, I run to the foot of her bed. The only parts of her that I can reach are her feet. They barely shudder under her blanket when I fall across them. One of her big toes fills that triangle spot at the end of my neck and as I cry, it feels like that toe is trying to help me stop. I know I can’t stay here. I know for Alex’s safety I must leave her. I must.
“Don’t go!” I finally sputter, as if she is the one about to leave the room.
“You’re my brave girl,” Mama whispers, and then she pulls her feet up and away from me. The front half of my body is now lying across just bed and blanket. Mama has curled up into a ball and turned to the wall.
She will get better,I say to myself as I back away from her bed. It’s the fourth day. Later today she will start to feel better. I turn toward her door.
I am almost at the doorframe when I turn back around. “We named him Alex. Is that all right?”
I wait for a response. It seems like a long time goes by before I get one.
“It’s perfect,” Mama whispers, and then those two words are lost in an avalanche of coughs that chase me the rest of the way out of her room.
•••
Papa arrives by train from Fort Meade, near Baltimore, in the late afternoon. The army let him get on the first train to Philadelphia after Uncle Fred’s phone call. He is wearing a uniform that makes him look like he belongs to other people in some other place. When he left for the camp in September, we all went to the station to see him off. Today, Uncle Fred went alone to pick him up. When I hug Papa, he doesn’t smell like my father; he smells like new wool and metal and train smoke. He has only been gone from us for a month, but it seems like so much longer.
“Mags,” he whispers into my hair when he puts his arms around me. His embrace is light and quick. He has an eye toward the stairs, and the bedrooms, where Mama is.
He hugs Evie next. Tears spill from her eyes at his touch, and she pretends that she’s not starting to cry. She’s trying to be brave. He breaks away quickly from her, too.
Next, he bends down over Willa, who is lying on the sofa in a pile of blankets and whimpering for him. He bends down to kiss her forehead and says, “How’s my little Willow?”
His voice sounds stiff with emotion. Willa starts to cry, too. “Did you bring me a present?” she says. And Papa smiles and says she can have the Hershey’s bar in his travel bag if she takes a little rest.
Baby Alex, lying awake in his bureau drawer by the hearth, had been kicking his little legs quietly when Papa came in. Now he makes a gurgling sound that is nearly a laugh. He is amused by his own feet. Papa looks down at him now and I can’t read what my father is thinking.
“This is the poor orphan baby Mama and I found,” I say, sensing the need to come to Alex’s defense.
“I told your father all about this child on the way home from the train station,” Uncle Fred says, frowning. I can just imagine what Uncle Fred said about Alex.
“We don’t know his name, but we’ve been calling him Alex,” I continue.
“I named him,” Willa says in a hoarse voice from the sofa.
“Yes,” Papa says, but he’s just staring at the baby with no expression on his face. He’s not angry or happy. I don’t know what he is.
For a second everyone is just watching Papa watching Alex.
