Chapter 11 #4
I gathered my belongings, knowing better than to ask Miss Peterson if she wanted to keep the birthing sac.
Plantation women despised “heathen” practices.
Instead, I descended the wagon and stretched the tightness from my back.
My body ached, as did my breasts. They were heavy with milk and needed Hattie as much as she needed me.
Hopefully Lovie gave her a sugar tit.
Suckling a small square of cloth filled with sugar or honey wasn’t the same as a mother’s bosom. But something was better than nothing.
“My poor babies.” I waved the lantern that had, thankfully, been aboard the wagon to signal the ferrymen. Sounds of our caravan crossing had filled the birthing wagon throughout the day. Now, in the sweet stillness, I craved reunion with my children.
Our navigation was swift. Minutes after settling Miss Peterson and her newborn safely on the skiff, we were at the riverbank. As the new mother and child were celebrated and welcomed, I eased away, searching out my beloved.
I didn’t go far before hearing my girls’ delighted squeals. “Mama!”
My Annabelle and Abigail barreled towards me, their path lit by campfires and starlight.
I bundled them both in one hug. “What’re you two doing up? You should be asleep.”
“We wanted to wait for you and make sure you were okay.”
I kissed Annabelle’s head, appreciating her thoughtfulness. “Did y’all eat?”
“Yes, ma’am. Aunt Lovie fed us. But not Hattie. She was fussing up a storm and wouldn’t take the sugar tit, so Miss Alretha took her to the nursing woman.”
I was weary from the day’s journey and midwifery, but Abigail’s words jolted me. I was my children’s mother and had never put them on another woman’s breast. That was my sacred service. The idea of Hattie feeding with someone else was upsetting. “How long ago was that?”
Annabelle shrugged. Abigail was silent. “Y’all go back to the oxcart and get your sleep.
I’ll be there promptly.” I waited until they obeyed before turning to fetch my infant, telling myself Alretha hadn’t meant harm in her actions.
Good-natured though she was, Hattie could raise Cain with her wailing when hungry.
Solacing her in my absence had been the objective.
“Zinnie, you brought in another baby?”
I turned to see my sister waddling my way. “The Petersons got themselves a girl.”
“You don’t look too happy about it. You exhausted?”
“Yes, but that ain’t what’s bothering me. The girls said Alretha took Hattie to the nursing woman—”
“She didn’t.” Even in the dark, Lovie’s confusion was evident.
“We were serving supper when we saw your lantern signal. Hattie was fussy and wouldn’t take the sugar tit so Alretha said she’d take her and meet you at the riverbank.
” My sister’s voice drifted into silence as she noticed my empty arms. “She didn’t meet you there? ”
Something seismic ripped through my belly. It whirled me towards that river, had me running.
I’d crawl a mile in hell to hold her again.
Those were Alretha’s words. After losing her own child, and Miss Tandy, had Alretha grown desperate enough to walk away with mine?
Running, I felt nothing save blood storming my veins and horror burning my limbs. I was deaf to Lovie’s calling after me, numb to rocks and hard earth tearing at my feet—didn’t stop until I reached the river’s edge and heard wailing.
“Hattie!” I spun around at my child’s cries, only to fall on my face trying to locate her in the dark. Panicked. Disoriented. I crawled. Cried tears of terror before finding her atop a configuration of massive tree roots Mother Nature had provided as her crib. “Oh, dear God!”
Ella and Lovie were suddenly beside me, bearing witness to my shuddering relief as I knelt, rocking, cradling, comforting my littlest bit.
“What in hell was Alretha thinking, leaving this baby here by herself?” Ella’s voice shot fire into the night.
“Shhh…” Clearly, Lovie heard what I did. We both rushed to the river’s edge.
Drifting downstream beneath pale moonlight was Zion’s skiff. Without Zion in it. It was an eerie, empty apparatus seemingly moving of its own volition. Except I saw the woman. Or rather her outline pressed against the bottom.
“Is that Alretha? Is she…” Ella’s words were a hiss she failed to finish.
I grabbed her wrist when she moved forward for further inspection. “Don’t look, Ella!”
“But if that’s Alretha—”
“You heard me!” I turned her, forcefully.
“She’s running.” My whisper coiled around us like a serpent.
“Once plantation folks know she’s gone, who you think they gonna interrogate?
When they do, we can speak the God’s honest truth.
” I pulled her forward. “We didn’t see her leave. Hurry, now. Quietly.”
Heaven must have approved of Alretha’s escape, keeping us undetected. Plantation people who hadn’t retired for the night were too busy celebrating the newborn addition to their Mormon kingdom to notice us.
Quieter than fieldmice, we made it to our oxcarts. The pact of silence that bound us was dense as I lay with my daughters, nursing my infant. The mother in me shook with fury, wondering if Alretha intended to take my child before experiencing a change of heart.
But the woman in me who longed to be free shivered with hope and prayed Missouri’s river would take her far away long before night melted into day.