The Darkest Child by Delores Phillips Read Free Book Online Page A

screamed. “Get it out!” “Rosie, I’m doing the best I can. You gotta help me.”
    Something horrible was taking place behind the sheet-curtain we had mounted over our mother’s doorway. For hours, Mama had been making hooting owl sounds, and Miss Pearl’s voice had fluctuated between low coaxing and high swearing. They would not allow anybody in that room, except Tarabelle.
    “Kill me, Pearl! Just take something and knock my brains out. Oh, Lord! Sweet Jesus. Kill me, Pearl!”
    “I declare, Rosie, you ain’t never carried on so. You just having a baby, and it sho’ ain’t the first one. You know we can’t rush this.”
    In the front room, Harvey paced the short distance before the coal stove, back and forth, stopping every now and then to warm his hands, or just to stare at the forbidding curtain. Sam knelt beside the stove, smoking a cigarette and flicking ash into the opening of the grate. He was still wearing his work overalls even though it was close to midnight. The overalls were clean, which meant he had spent another idle day.
    “You think Miss Pearl know what she doing?” Harvey asked.
    “She know,” Sam answered, blowing a string of smoke toward the stove.
    Harvey continued to pace, changing directions several times, coming within touching distance of the better of the two armchairs that Martha Jean and I shared. We had left the other one for him, but he seemed unable to sit. In contrast to Sam’s overalls, Harvey’s would need two days of soaking before going into the wash. They were frayed at the hems, patched at the knees, and dotted with greasy stains that were visible even in the dim light of the kerosene lamp.
    “I wish Mushy was here,” he said, nervously running a hand through his short, auburn hair. The hair curled around his fingers, and for a moment he stood massaging his scalp.
    “What?” Sam asked. “Mushy done went to Ohio and learned how to deliver babies?” “Nah, man. I just wish she was here.”
    “If I was Mushy, I wouldn’t never come back here,” Sam said. “When I leave, don’t none of y’all look on me coming back.”
    “Why don’t you leave, Sam?” Harvey’s deep, baritone voice was laced with frustration. “What’s stopping you? You ain’t doing nothing to help out, and I’m getting tired of working to feed you. You don’t give a damn ’bout nobody but yo’self. Why don’t you leave?” He glared down at Sam, who refused to be intimidated, although Harvey, at the age of twenty, was two years older and at least twenty pounds heavier.
    Sam inhaled the last of his cigarette, flicked the butt into the stove, then stood to face Harvey. “I don’t leave for the same reason you don’t. I can’t.” His voice, though not as deep or angry as Harvey’s, seemed to convey just as much strength. “Yo’ mother,” he said, bowing slightly at the waist and sweeping a hand toward the curtain. “Yo’ mother won’t let me go.”
    “What you mean she won’t let you go?” Harvey asked. “She ain’t stopping you. She didn’t stop Mushy.”
    “She couldn’t stop Mushy,” Sam countered.
    “Man, if you wanna go, just go.”
    Sam stuck his hands into the pockets of his overalls and brought them out empty. “Wit’ what?” he asked.
    Harvey’s jaw stiffened, but before he could respond, Miss Pearl stepped from behind the curtain. “I can’t do this by myself,” she said breathlessly. “You boys gon’ have to run and get the midwife.”
    We stared at her in disbelief. We were forbidden to even approach Selman Street where the midwife lived, and Miss Pearl knew it.
    “Nooooo!” Mama yelled, as something in her room crashed to the floor.
    Wallace, who had been quietly studying us from the doorway of the kitchen, turned and pulled the flashlight from the kitchen shelf and placed it in Harvey’s hand. Harvey and Sam, without a word to each other, left the house together, united in their decision to get Mama the help she did not want.
    “You know