Birth Days

Massa came out, wrapped his hands around Olivia’s hair and pulled. She followed neck churned in an ungodly fashion. All the slaves on the plantation stopped for a moment of prayer. There was no movement besides Becka tearing through the field screaming, “No, Massa, no! Don’t take my baby way, please!”

But she was afar off and by time she had reached the spot where the little girl’s hair was wrenched, Massa was in the shack behind the main house. The other women gathered round Becka and told her everything was gonna be alright. They was lyin’ of course. But they didn’t have any vocabulary beyond a lie and a truth, and this was Becka’s first time experiencing something worse than her own rape.

Massa emerged and went back inside the main house for a cool glass of lemonade.

Becka and the women pushed open the door of the shack and saw Olivia rolled in a ball so many times after that day it seemed to be deja vu. They would rap her in a blanket and carry her back to the slave quarters. The women would clean the girl up best they could, finding unsoiled patchwork scraps to dress any exposed part, softly brushing the long coils into two pig tails that spoke loudly; I AM A CHILD.

But that was a lie too. Becka wiped away tears where there were none, and said, “Hush now, chile, Mommas here,” to whimpers non-existent. In the midst of Becka’s prayers, Olivia would just get up and walk out to finish her chores.

Becka didn’t get dandelion bouquets, the chance to kiss booboos on scraped knees, or a warm hug after singing a lullaby. Becka tried hard to bring back the girl who giggled in her sleep, hummed non-stop, and hung close to the other girls, eyes shut tight, beseeching God, when Massa came out. Now she could stare the Devil down.

Becka never understood how Martha could mutter under her breadth, “Killa, killa dead,” at the site of her newborn. Some said she evil. Others said she virtuous.

The elders say, “Naw, she just be a mother.”

Olivia was early delivering. Her eyes lit wide with hope, she grabbed her Momma’s hand and wouldn’t let go, “Pray, Momma, pray.” But Becka couldn’t stop crying long enough to say one single word to Jesus. Crying cause the feeling of being a mother after three years rushed in on her all at once; crying for all the tears Olivia couldn’t shed herself. The women smacked the baby on the behind and it wailed nicely.

“Hell, naw!” Olivia spat venom when the women tried to take the baby off to get cleaned and wrapped up. The women turned back with the baby so Olivia could see what she and her Daddy had created. Straightaway, the life seeped from Olivia’s small frame. The infant looked healthy, but only time would tell.

The women exhaled, and turned back to get the baby cleaned, but Becka stopped them this time. Two days later, Becka wrapped the stillborn in the pretty blue quilt Olivia had scrapped together. She laid her in the box with her Momma.

The elders say, “She just be a grandmother.”