Twelve

I already knew Frank, and it wasn’t long before my monthly bleeding stopped again.  Once I started seeing my father and mother and Akin in the cotton field with me again, I left and took myself up to see Momma and Granny in the big house.  The house was busy already.  Several new babies had recently been born and one of the women had to stay up from the field to nurse them.  I saw another girl I recognized from the field heavy with child herself.  She was helping Momma fix dinner for Master and Mistress in the kitchen.

“Do you think you have two this time?” Granny asked me from her rocker.  She held two babies in her lap.  One was swaddled tight and the other sat on her knee bouncing and giggling as she watched a girl with a stick doll playing on the floor.

“I don’t think so,” I said.  “I only feel one moving this time.”  My belly was bigger already than it was with the twins, and now I was sure of the movement I was feeling.

Granny put the swaddled infant down to sleep on the floor, and set the other baby down to play.  She took the stick doll from the child and tied it with a string.  She hung it over top of my belly and watched it swing freely.

“Oh, it’ll be a girl,” she proclaimed.  “I can tell by the way it swings.”

She patted my belly and held her hands there to feel the girl kicking.

“She’ll come out right way first too.  You’ll be fine.”

Her hands seemed certain and reassured me.  I wondered aloud how much time I would have to wait.

“Not long.  Maybe a few more weeks,” Granny said.

She sat down in the rocker once more and took another infant from the nursing mother, swaddled her and started patting her to sleep. 

Granny told me the nurse’s name was Zena.  I looked at all the babies, trying to figure out who was oldest.  When the babies were sleeping, they were laid on a thin mattress on the floor with blankets to keep off the draft.  Three of them were sleeping now, and the nurse fed the fourth who seemed to be the smallest.