Baby Celeste worked beside me every day with her little hoe and rake. She mostly enjoyed inserting the seeds into the wet, prepared earth. I watched her do it. She focused so clearly and firmly on each seed as if she could easily envision the plant to come. Her soft, sweet lips moved with each planting-, making it appear that she was reciting some prayer Mama had taught her. I had little doubt she might have done just that.
A little after two in the afternoon months after Dave's funeral, we both heard the sound of a van turning onto our driveway. Pausing, we watched it approach the house. It was a quite beat-up, white van with a cracked windshield. As it drew closer, it rattled louder, then finally squeaked to a stop, the disturbed dust rising to encircle it, seemingly to keep it from coming any closer.
For a long moment, no one emerged. I moved to Baby Celeste's side and watched and waited. Finally, the passenger-side door opened and Betsy stepped out with a baby wrapped in a blue blanket cradled in her arms. She wore a red-and-black bandanna around her forehead and her hair was long and string-v. She was dressed in a one-piece, tie-dyed garment and wore a pair of sandals. The driver, a tall, thin man with a black ponytail streaked with Gray halfway down his back, emerged, went around to the rear of the van, and produced two well-battered suitcases, one tied closed with a rope. He set them at the foot of the porch steps before returning to his van.
Betsy spoke to him, stood up on the balls of her feet to kiss him, then remained there watching him get into the van, back away, turn around, and drive off. She stared after him and waved as if she were watching the love of her life, her last hope, depart. Then, she turned and looked our way.
"Noble!" she cried. "Help me with these suitcases." I looked at Baby Celeste. She wore the strangest expression, a mix of amusement in her eves, but a tightness in her lips.
"C'mon, Celeste," I said, taking her hand. "Looking at you makes me feel like I never left this place," Betsy said as we approached. "You're still in that stupid garden."
"You have a baby?" I asked.
She smirked and turned the infant, who was, remarkably, asleep.
"It's not a sack of potatoes. This is Panther. I named him myself, seeing as I gave birth to him in a motel called The Panther Inn. Fortunately for me, the owner's wife was a nurse. Even so, it was a filthy mess." Betsy moved the blanket off Panther's face. "Look at his hair. Black as the inside of a witch's heart,' she said, laughing. "That's what Wacker said. He's the idiot who just brought me here. He believes in some of that hoodoo, voodoo junk your mother believes in, but he took care of me for nearly a month. Then he read his astrological chart and decided it was time we parted ways. Good riddance. I say. He was getting on my nerves anyway. Why are you just standing there with your mouth open? Take in my suitcases. Where's my father? Is he at work or what? I've got to show him his new grandson."
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I couldn't speak.
"Oh, forget it," she said impatiently. She started up the stairs
I reached for her suitcases and followed as she entered the house. Baby Celeste remained alongside me, just as transfixed on the events unfolding.
'Dad!" Betsy screamed when she stepped into the entry-way. "Im back!" She woke her baby, who immediately began to cry.
Mama appeared at the top of the stairway and looked down at her. I stepped up behind Betsy. Baby Celeste still right beside me, but now with her arms around my leg as if she were anticipating an earthquake. The suitcases weren't heavy so I continued to hold them. For a long moment. Mama just gazed at her. Then, she began a slow descent, speaking as she took each step.
"Why haven't we heard from you? Where were you?"
"Away," Betsy said, raising her voice over the baby's cries and bouncing him too roughly. I thought.
"Why didn't you ever call or write your father?"
"I ran out of stamps and small change. Where is he? Is he at work?"
"No, he's not at work," Mama said, reaching the bottom steps. "He'll never be at work again."
"What's that supposed to mean? Panther, would you wait," she told her baby, turning him and then cradling him in the crook of her arm. The moment Panther set eyes on Mama, his crying subsided.
"Ive got to feed him and I don't breast-feed. It spoils your shape," Betsy told Mama. Then she looked back at me. "I bet Noble was breast-fed. Maybe he still is," she added with a gleeful smile.
"I
see your experiences have done little to make you mature and responsible," Mama said.
"Right. So where's my father?"
"Your father passed away months ago. Mama's words felt so heavy, even for me."Sometimes, death is so hard to take, it feels like an illusion. I couldn't count how many days, how many times during a day, I expected to see Dave appear and think all that had happened was just a bad dream.
"What? 'What's that supposed to mean? Passed away where?" Betsy looked at me and then back at Mama.
"Your father died. Betsy. He had heart failure. It shouldn't come as a shock to you, considering all you did to make him miserable. to put darkness and pain in his poor troubled heart."
Betsy shook her head. slowly at first, and then so vigorously, I could feel the pain in my own neck.
"You're lying. You're just trying to make me feel bad. Where is he?"