Tea Party #17 ~ Fiction
Toys, Robert Fuentes larger version
Barren | Tamara Madison
Fearful and confused by the fits from their bodies, the women piled into the clinic where they were herded into corners, draped behind an uncaring curtain and thrust rapidly out the door. The waiting room convulsed from their presence. Some of the women held hands; others dabbed stinging tears and profusely bleeding noses. All sat with knees glued together, praying that the river rushing from their erupting wombs would suddenly, miraculously halt. Sharp pains ricocheted from the tips of their breasts to the enlarged lips down below, leaving their swollen insides wounded and exhausted from battle. Mothers, daughters, grandmothers, sisters and aunts skillfully avoided the horror and helplessness in one another’s eyes. Violated, they questioned themselves, searching for answers and reasons as the life dripped from their bodies. Like they had closed themselves customarily during their moons, they now shamefully hid themselves from their fathers, husbands and sons, carrying alone the burden of the gnawing curse.
“Next” is simply how and what the women were called. “Strip from the waist down. Lie quietly. Feet in the stirrups,” the nurse commanded blankly as soon as each woman had eased herself from the bench and dragged herself behind the blood-stained curtain. One by one, the doctor recklessly slashed them from breastplate to pubic bone, plowing stubbornly through their bodies to find evidence in support of his “experiments.” Foggy from the gas seeping through their nostrils, the women lay petrified as their wombs splattered and shuddered against the cold, clammy porcelain of the sink nearby. Then the doctor sewed them back together like patching ragged dungarees, numbly humming hymns of praise to some motherless, blind god. Boosted by pride, he had convinced himself that he would save many lives in the near future. Someday, the world would thank him for his courageous research and small sacrifice.
*****
Without as much as a single sacred breath or prayer, the remains were dumped in a covered earthen pit behind the clinic. Observing from a short distance, Luttie Belle May heard the earth moan and felt it shift in great anguish beneath her feet. For three days and three nights in a smoke-filled house, she fasted and prayed, fasted and prayed, fasted and prayed for her people. When the clinic closed for two weeks on vacation and left no one in its care, Luttie Belle May commenced to gathering her own research. She sat loyally at the bedside of every woman who died after lying beneath the white man’s knife. But some of the women did recover, and Luttie Belle May tended them as she had always done in the past.
In the dead of winter, Luttie Belle May plowed the rock-frozen ground and planted. Blood boiling in her veins, she worked arduously, establishing neat rows, cradling the seeds in her hand and blessing each one before softly burying it in the earth. Daily she tended them, watered and weeded them, singing all the very while. Folks in West Indigo passed by smiling. This must truly be a good sign—Luttie Belle May never, ever sang before.
From powerful prayers, tender tending and the breath from the Creator's own lips, the seeds took root and unfurled beneath the ground. Swaddled in lush collard-green leaves, the seeds all grew anxiously to full term. This time, the earth shifted in the pain of labor and joy of birth as warm rains showered all over West Indigo. Neighbors in East Indigo stood in their yards, staring in disbelief at the bright clouds bursting rainbows over that disgusting little shantytown. For months, the fields and landscapes of East Indigo had suffered drought and still no rain came to their side of the tracks. "Must not be enough nigra blood," thought many while gazing upon their barren fields, shaking their heads and not knowing how very wrong they were. » next page »