Plantation (10 page)

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hallway. Two-twenty-five, another spasm. I held on to the kitchen counter and breathed through it. The overhead light came on.

“I knew it,” Millie said, coming over to me and putting her arm around my shoulder. “Come on, sit. I’ll get your mother, you call the doctor, and I’ll tell that damn fool downstairs to sober up and get us a cab.”

“Okay.” That was all I said. What else was there to say?

Richard! I had to call him! I went to the kitchen telephone, took his number from the bulletin board, and dialed. It was seven-thirty in the morning in London. The operator at the hotel rang right through to his room. A woman answered the telephone. I’d have known that voice anywhere. Lois.

“Ha-low? Ha-low?” she said in her nasal Long Island drone.

I replaced the telephone on the hook, mumbled
You sunuvabitch,
and called my doctor. I buzzed Eddie to get a cab. Off we sped to Mt. Sinai Hospital. Dr. Sheldon Cherry, who had been my gynecol-ogist since I had moved to New York, pronounced me dilated enough to go to the delivery room.

“When they tell you to push, push, you hear me?” Mother said.

“Don’t worry, she will,” Dr. Cherry said, laughing, “she wants that baby out more than you do!”

“See?” Millie said, “I’m not the only one who can put you in line!”

Mother squeezed my hand and rubbed my hair away from my face. “Good luck, sweetheart, I’ll be praying for you.”

“Thanks, Mother,” I said.

I was going into the delivery room to bring my child into the world. My husband was shacked up with Lois, but I had more pressing issues. Of course I felt betrayed and was outraged, but I had a baby inside me fighting to be born. I’d have plenty of time later to plot my revenge.

The doors swung open and the next thing I knew they were lifting me onto another table.

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D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k

“I am so sorry y’all have to do this!” I said. “I must weigh a ton!”

“Don’t even think about it, honey,” the nurse said. “We do this every day.”

“I can’t wait for this to be over,” I said.

“Is this your first?” the nurse said.

“Yeah, I just want to see the baby, you know?”

“Got six myself,” she said and smiled at me while she attached a blood pressure cuff to my arm and a heart monitor to my chest.

Dr. Cherry appeared and I hardly recognized him in his green scrubs. He held up my sheet and examined me again. “Got a crown!” he said. He checked the baby’s heart monitor and mine too. “Okay, Mrs. Levine, ready to have your baby?”

I was puffing short breaths, trying not to push until he said I could, but the urge to bear down was all-consuming. “Now?” I said.

“Take a deep breath,” he said, “and give it all you’ve got.”

I filled my abdomen lower and upper chest with air and concentrated on the light fixture above me. With all my strength I bore down and, in one push, I slowly released the air and the baby’s head.

“Got the head, Mrs. Levine, just hold it for a minute.”

Dr. Cherry was turning the baby a bit or something. I couldn’t see.

“Okay, once more!”

“That baby looks just like you, Mrs. Levine! He’s blond, blond, blond!”

“I think he looks like Dr. Cherry,” another nurse said.

I couldn’t even giggle. With another push, I felt a huge release, and the baby was born. Then came a thunderous wail, so loud that everyone laughed. Dr. Cherry held him up. He was an exquisite, fat little baby boy with white hair and the reddest face I had ever seen.

“Look who we have here!” Dr. Cherry said and put him right on my chest. “Here’s your momma, son.”

A son! The first thing I remember is that he was so beautiful—

even screaming he was beautiful. My tiny infant opened his eyes, P l a n t a t i o n

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looked at me, and became quiet. I began to cry. He just stared and stared at me. I wept and wept.

“Oh, good,” Dr. Cherry said, “now the baby’s quiet and the mother’s crying!”

Everyone, and there must have been eight people in there at that point, stopped and looked. My son was just studying me with the most incredible expression.

“Would you look?” the nurse said. “In twenty years I have never seen a baby look at a mother like that!”

His skin was velvet, his eyes were navy, and his eyelashes were thick and blond. He had all his toes and fingers. In my arms was the true love of my life. I didn’t have a care in the world. I could’ve spent the next year just looking at his perfect little face.

This child was my miracle. Life just didn’t get any better than that.

On Sunday afternoon, Eric Boswell Levine and I were home. I had named him without consulting Richard. I was propped up in bed, nursing Eric, when Millie came in with a tray. His bassinet and changing table were right next to my side of the bed. Richard didn’t want to give up his study for a baby’s room until the last possible moment. That suited me just fine. I wanted Eric as near to me as possible. Maybe I’d keep him in the room with me and kick Richard out.

“Yanh, you got to eat something,” she said. She just stood there with the tray.

“Thanks,” I said, “he’s asleep now.” She took him from me and put him back in his bassinet. “Okay, Millie, what’s up? I can tell from your face.” I munched on a piece of chicken she had fried that morning. It was delicious.

“Your mother is resting and I don’t want her to know we talked.”

“About what?”

“Extension telephones. I picked it up the other night without thinking.”

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D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k She had obviously heard the woman answering the telephone in Richard’s room.

“Oh, well,” I said, “it’s not great, huh?”

“That’s all right,” she said, “I can fix him iffin you want me to, make the hag ride ’em.”

“The hag
was
riding him!” I said. The hag I referred to was Lois; the hag Millie spoke of was another matter entirely. “It was Lois, but if you want to send him another one tonight, be my guest.

In fact, make it a double.”

Millie winked at me and said, “Drink that tea. It’s good for what ails you.”

In the ACE Basin, the “hag” is notorious. It’s generally accepted that the hags are spirits who exist in a parallel world and the root doctor (someone like Millie) can summon them at will.

They come in your house through the chimney, a keyhole, or any kind of opening and ride you while you sleep. Some of them make you have sex with them. All night. And, once they figure out how to get to you, they are not easily expunged. I hoped she could send Richard a big old hag with bad breath and screaming desire.

Richard didn’t know who he was messing with. You don’t cut any fool with Millie’s girl or there would be the devil to pay.

When Richard finally arrived home, he was ragged-looking beyond description. Unshaven and hangdog. Millie had fixed him but good. I decided to say nothing about Lois. It would be something I would save and use only if I needed it.

M i s s L av i n i a ’s J o u r na l
Never in the world has there been a more loving and wonderful
little boy than my grandson, Eric.The dear little fellow sends
me articles torn out from the
New York Times
that he
thinks will interest me. I’m going to buy him wonderful
miniature trains for Christmas this year! Trip always loved
trains when he was little. I’ll tell you one thing: he’s a lot
smarter than those Neanderthals my daughter-in-law brought
into this family! And, sometimes I’ll answer the phone and
hear his dear little voice! I’m glad he calls me because he can’t
write worth two hoots. But, Lord, he’s sweet.

Seven

Eric

}

1995

IKE most married couples, Richard and I lived in a reasonably peaceful groove. I had no indication that L he ever stepped out on me again. He had been a good husband and a dutiful father to Eric. I wasn’t
positive
of his fidelity, but I was pretty sure he wasn’t running around. There were no strange matchbooks or numbers written on crumpled paper cocktail napkins. For the most part, I put his one tryst with Lois out of my mind and concentrated on Eric, my business, and being such a good wife that I hoped Richard would never betray me again. In fact, our little family was pretty cozy. Life was all right. At least, it seemed to be.

Raising a child in the city was such a difference from my own childhood on the plantation. When I was a child, the ACE Basin of South Carolina was my whole world. I grew up planting vegetables, gathering pecans, arranging flowers, riding the Edisto River, and worshiping my ancestors, like a typical Lowcountry girl. I could P l a n t a t i o n

7 3

not even imagine New York City outside of the images of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade or the occasional picture in a magazine of a child playing in water spewing from a fire hydrant.

From the time Eric could sit up in his carriage, I began to work a little less, taking on fewer clients. We spent hours roaming museums, public parks with playgrounds, and the cavernous New York Public Library. When it was time for him to go to prekinder-garten, I cried like a baby. What would I do all morning? I’d miss him so much! The bonding thing had proved itself and there were other by-products. For example, I learned more about art and history in those years than I did in the rest of my life. New York seemed to offer everything and Eric was my excuse to take advantage of it.

By the fall of 1995, Eric was newly entrenched in the second grade. His backpack had all sorts of gadgets hanging from it and when he threw it over his shoulder, he sort of walked with a manly swagger. Four feet tall, as skinny as a string bean, thick blond hair and dark blue eyes like mine. He was all energy and simply adorable.

He loved our routine of walking to school together, meeting again at the end of the day, and going to Central Park or the Gardenia Coffee Shop on Madison Avenue for a Coke. We’d talk about the day, go home, do homework together, and I’d cook dinner while he played Nintendo or Legos with John Hillman, a boy on the eleventh floor.

He loved building things and my brother, for some unknown reason, was always sending him craft kits and models. Eric would always pick up the telephone and call him to say thanks. Trip did this on his own, but every time he did, it served as a reminder that I never reciprocated with his children. At least Eric’s manners were good. The most recent gift was a beautiful remote control sailboat to use in Central Park. Eric was thoroughly thrilled. It made me gasp.

I guessed I should have been sending something to Frances Mae’s horrible little girls. Trip shouldn’t have been doing this. It wasn’t 7 4

D o r o t h e a B e n t o n F r a n k like they came to visit or that Eric even knew him. He’s seen him twice in his whole life! I had enough stress without pretending to like Frances Mae. Nonetheless, all through September, I took Eric to the park with Trip’s boat. At the very least, I had to admit it was a very thoughtful gesture. I didn’t know why I was so annoyed.

In the middle of October, I was called to his school for a conference with his teacher. As soon as I sat down, Ms. Daniels started running her mouth. She told me that she suspected Eric had attention deficit disorder and perhaps some other issues. She wanted to put him through a full battery of psychological tests to determine the nature of his suspected learning disabilities and then meet again to discuss our alternatives. She said all this without one visible shred of emotion. My jaw was on the floor.

“I’m very concerned about him,” she said.

“Attention deficit disorder?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Are you qualified to make that judgment?”

“No, but I haven’t missed a call yet.”

I didn’t like the way she spoke and I didn’t like her. What was she saying? Eric was not a hyperactive child. Energetic perhaps, but very well behaved. I knew Eric’s handwriting wasn’t as clear as the other children’s, and artistically his work was inferior when compared to the paintings and models of his classmates. But so what?

He was just a little boy!

On the other hand, if you asked Eric about the history of mankind, his eyes twinkled as he took you down the timeline from one era to the next. If you wanted to know about dinosaurs, he could tell you everything there was to know. He watched Boyd Matson and the
National Geographic Explorer
endless hours upon end, virtually memorizing everything. Between television, museum visits, and books we read together, Eric’s beautiful mind was filled with information and imaginings I’d never had at his age.

There was nothing, I repeat, nothing wrong with my son.

I had been warned about teachers like this woman, this Ms. Ice P l a n t a t i o n

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Cube Daniels. They can’t teach worth a damn so they blame it on the children, picking away at them, searching for justification of their own ineptitude.

She went on to say he was too easily distracted, had to be constantly reminded to get “back on task.” I told her I thought he was probably bored to tears.

She claimed that he had social issues with the other children, that he was a loner. Big deal, I said, Eric doesn’t like to play soccer.

He is a more cerebral child. That remark set off some kind of pyrotechnics in her miniscule brain.

“Mrs. Levine?” she said, and not very nicely, “I’ve been teaching for ten years and it doesn’t take too long for me to spot a troubled child in my classes.”

“Ms. Daniels? Do you have children?”

“That is irrelevant to this discussion.”

No children. Probably hadn’t been laid in ten years either, from the looks of her.

“Eric’s only seven years old! Cut him a little slack!”

“Mrs. Levine, I’m required to bring these things to the attention of the parents and the administration. If you don’t wish to accept my recommendations, you’ll have to discuss it with the headmistress.”

I sat back and looked at her. Who was this horrid woman trying to attach a label to my son? Over forty, unmarried, graying hair pulled back in a clasp, long denim jumper over a striped turtleneck, huge eyeglasses. As plain a Jane as has ever tormented children.
And
parents. I did not like this woman.