Twenty

            Granny got up from her rocking chair to come to me and the baby then. 

            “By what name will she be called?” she said. 

“She will be called Adamma,” I said.  “She will be given the name my mother was given, for she is also a beautiful child.”

             Granny took the baby, and used the rag in her hand to wipe away the mucous from the baby’s mouth, ears and nose.  The baby had a round belly and long, spindly arms and legs.  She cried a strong cry once her mouth was cleared.  Zena took the baby and gently cleaned her some more.  Granny used sewing thread to tie a knot around the umbilical cord that attached the baby to the afterbirth.  She wiped the knife with the rag, and swiftly used the knife to slice through the infant’s cord.  As Zena helped me to put the baby to my breast, Granny delivered the baby’s afterbirth.  It looked like the insides of the slaughtered pig I had seen the night I met Frank again.  I remembered the smell of the roasting pig meat and the crisp taste of the pig’s ears.

             The baby nursed.  She looked up at me with dewy eyes, and I had never known such wonder, such love as was in her eyes.  I was a queen.  The baby slept on my breast.  I looked her over, every inch of her.  I saw she had ten fingers and ten toes and a head full of dark hair just like her Baba.

Mothering was somewhat instinctual but I had also learned skills from Zena and Granny and Momma just in the few weeks I had been here at the house. 

After a few days when my milk came in, Zena returned to the fields to work and to her bunkhouse for sleeping, and I took over the nursing duties for all the babies in the house.  I was up many nights nursing all the babies, each one in turn.  Zena had been sent back to the fields to plant the cotton.  Oh yes, Zena put up a fuss, but really she knew she didn’t have a choice.  Whatever Master said was the rule and she never stood a chance when she argued with him. 

It was planting time and the master said everyone to the fields who is able, and so Zena had to return to the fields even though she didn’t want to. 

I knew what I was missing because I had been there last year.  After the hard ground remaining from the cold winter was tilled and turned to make soft soil, the cotton seeds were planted in rows.  We would walk up the row, making a hole to plant, and then drop the seed in the hole, cover it over.  Those steps were repeated again and again to plant three or four seeds in each foot in the row for row after row of fields.  When you looked out over the land, all you could see was dirt that would be cotton land in a short while.

Almost 2 weeks after the seeds were planted we would have the seedlings.  Then the first few months after that everyone needed to work to keep weeds from growing.  Master had even the littlest children in the fields picking weeds to keep them from growing over the cotton plants.  The overseer, who was Momma’s husband, would be sure the men and women thinned the cotton crop enough so the plants wouldn’t crowd each other as they grew larger.  The plants needed lots of sunlight and water to help them grow strong enough shoots to hold the cotton.