Read Online Bloodroot by Amy Greene - Free Book Online Page B

Jack and Sue when they came along, one right after the other. For a time I was nursing both of them at once, like twins. I used to set in a rocking chair in front of the kitchen door catching the breeze with one in each arm. I felt a contentment when I was nursing my babies that I reckon I’ll never know again.
    Then all three of them, Patricia, Jack, and Sue, died of the diphtheria one winter. It was the year that Sue, my littlest, was turning two. I liked to lost my mind. I didn’t take them to the doctor right at first. It was before the road came through and we was snowed in that winter. Sometimes it’s like I dreamt them up, it’s been so long ago. I still can’t figure out how come me and Macon not to catch it. Them first days after the last one, Patricia, passed on, I waited for the fever to come. I wanted so bad to get sick and die. It was like a bridegroom had left me at the altar. I went out of my head and Macon didn’t know how to tend to me. Mammy and Pap came up the mountain to stay a few days but Mammy couldn’t do much with me, either. She tried putting on a cheery face and talking like I hadn’t lost my babies but I laid on the bed I’d birthed them in and wouldn’t get up. I didn’t want to eat and they had to pry my jaws open to force broth down my throat. I’d look past them as they fought me to Pap, standing there watching with bright light shining all around him. I don’t believe I imagined it, even in the state I was in. He never fussed or paced the floor or begged me to eat like Macon and Mammy did. He just stayed there in the room. Day or night I could open my eyes and he’d be setting at the foot of the bed, watching over me. I guess, looking back, I decided to come back to my life because Pap was still in it. I got better, but for a long time I went through my days living over and over that time when my younguns was getting sicker and nothing could be done. I got to where I thought it might not have really happened. I made up my mind they was still alive, just off somewhere playing. I don’t know when I figured out the bridegroom wasn’t coming for me and started putting one foot in front of the other again.
    I guess some part of me must have died anyhow because it was easier when my boy Willis got killed. It’s awful to say but it’s the truth. I had Willis in 1924, three years after Patricia, Jack, and Sue was gone. I didn’t want to have no more babies for a long time because I was scared of losing them, but Macon begged me to. I never seen that man beg to nobody before, but he got down on his knees as I was trying to hang the worsh and clung to my legs. “This house is too lonesome, Byrdie,” he said. “I can’t stand it.” People might have thought Macon didn’t have no feelings, but his heart was softer than just about anybody else’s you could find, including mine. He loved youngunsand animals better than anything, and couldn’t be happy unless there was a child or dog underfoot. I gave in because I couldn’t stand to see Macon that way, and we had Willis.
    Willis wasn’t no good, from the time he was little. He’d bite my nipple hard as he could soon as his teeth came in, and would fight me with his fists anytime he didn’t get his way. Willis broke my heart every day he was alive. I don’t know what went wrong with that boy. I reckon it had to been something me and Macon done. Someway or another, we wasn’t cut out to raise younguns. That might be how come the Lord took them from us. All I can figure out is we spoiled them too much. I believe we ruint Willis and Clio both by smothering them, and I reckon we did the same thing to Myra when she came along. I treated Willis like a little king, made him sugar cookies every day until nearly every tooth in his head rotted out, and he still hated me and Macon both.
    Whatever made Willis that way, he was meaner than a striped snake. He got stabbed in a bar fight when he wasn’t but twenty years old and bled to death.