Same Blood, Same Bone, Same Blessing

EXCERPT FROM OPULENCE Same BIoOdx Same Bone, Same Blessing Crystal Wilkinson Editor's Note: This is a chapterfrom a novel in progress. It is 1962. The bright red eye of the sun peeps through the silver maples. Inside the house, Minnie Mae Goode rubs the low swell ofher granddaughter's belly. The child is curled there like a question mark. "Not long before she comes," Minnie Mae says rubbing there again then thumping Lucy's stomach as if it's a ripe melon. She pushes in a bit to feel the girls' form. "And good size, she is." Minnie Mae moves back to the counter, cracks eggs into a blue porcelain bowl, adds salt, pepper and a bit of paprika. "She?" Lucy pulls a jar of fresh cream from the refrigerator and dribbles a bit into the eggs. Then she watches her grandmother's face for the signal to stop pouring. "Not too much, that's it." Minnie Mae's eyes meet Lucy's. "Yes, she." The answer is final and sure. Tookie sweeps the floor in long, slow strokes, stopping when she hears this. She hopes her daughter will have another boy. Everything be sweet with a boy. She checks the biscuits, turns the bacon with a fork. "Sure as I'm Minnie Mae Goode, that's a girl in there." Minnie Mae pats Lucy's belly again. "Uh huh." She shakes her head, yes. "Long as its got eyes, ten toes and fingers." Lucy pulls plates from the cabinet. The stretch upward makes the skin across her stomach taut. "And good sense," she adds, blowing through her teeth. Minnie Mae groans. Tookie makes a clicking noise in her throat. The three of them are in agreement. Kiki plays under the kitchen table. If he cranes his neck toward the ceiling he can see their faces, but he already knows the expressions they make, exactly where they are in the kitchen. He knows their dance well. He burbles "vroom, vroom" each time the wheels of his toy touch the floor. The smell of breakfast makes his stomach tap against his ribs, and he pushes the car along the floor again, this time letting it crash into the table leg. The impatient roar grows louder in his throat and blends with the scraping, the humming, the scooting sounds of the women and their work. He waits. Lucy pours the coffee. Minnie Mae retrieves a stick of butter. 27 Tookie, who is now stirring a pan of sweet rice, can't stop herself from thinking her new grandchild should be another boy. Minnie Mae is sure of the mounting signs when she sees a rare bird on the ledge. Not a Kentucky bird that she can identify, a rare bird with a breast of red, freckled with yellow dots, eyeing her through the window. The skillet weighs heavy on her wrist as she sinks it into the water and the bird perches there on a branch just outside the window. It holds her stare until Minnie Mae whispers, "Won't be long." This particular knowing is as familiar as her own two hands. Back when she was a girl, the women down home approached her mama's kitchen door looking to know during what sign of the moon to cut a baby's hair, when to wean it from its mother's tit or whether the ball of woman's belly contained girl or boy. Even the white folks came with their toothaches and their babies full of colic needing to know what to do. Now Minnie Mae is up in age and the one who can spot a woman in the family way before anyone else can, sometimes even before the mother knows herself. She's caught many a girl. Has nothing to do with the belly, has to do with that look around the eyes when they're baby-full. She's delivered some of them too, though they don't do that sort of thing anymore. Seen more tail than most men. Seen just about every woman from Opulence to Dry Ridge on up across Patsy Rife and clear on up to the Tennessee border in that position...