The next day, I got up early and prepared to spend the day baking. The afternoon before, Corinne, a young sergeant’s wife from across the street, knocked on the door just as Angel was leaving. “Hi, Corinne,” Angel said as she stepped outside. “Hi, Angel.” Her lips pursed into a tight, polite smile, and I gathered Corinne didn’t appreciate the greeting. “How’s Bob?” Angel asked, lingering on the doorstep. Corinne was a petite woman. The top of her head barely reached Angel’s shoulder. Her strawberry blonde hair was cropped high above collar and gave her an elfish look that set me ill at ease. She wore a taupe-colored dress that was perfectly tailored and pressed. The seams were straight and even, and the boat neckline lay flat on her thin collarbones. In her earlobes were set tiny pearls that made her plump cheeks seem delicate, and her wide round eyes blinked incessantly in an exaggeratedly feminine way. Next to Angel, Corinne appeared to be a perfect paper doll, and she set Angel in a terribly sour light. “He’s fine, thank you,” Corinne replied, and she offered nothing else. “Good,” said Angel. “Have fun at the coffee tomorrow.” Corinne bristled, and as Angel sauntered off in her singular way, Corinne made a face and stepped in close. “I was hoping I’d get to you before she did,” she whispered. “I didn’t quite know a polite way to respond, so I simply smiled and invited her in. Eileen stood next to the coffee table, her little hands clutching the rim for balance. The ant bites had swelled, and their pinpoint heads had stained to a bright red. She looked pathetic and diseased, with spots of calamine lotion dotting her body. Corinne’s eyes widened. “Poor thing! Did you catch the chicken pox?” Corinne turned to me and crossed her arms. “It’s going around. It wouldn’t surprise me if one of Shelley’s little ones gave it to her. Those children are always sick. I tell ya, it’s because Shelley keeps those windows open all day long. “At my house, I raise the windows until after breakfast, and that’s all it takes to keep the house fresh. I tried to tell Shelley that, but I have yet to see her windows closed at noon.” I scooted across the room and scooped Eileen up into my arms. “She got into an ant bed,” I interrupted, rubbing my hand briskly over Eileen’s bare, bumpy back. “Ants?” Corinne gasped. “How awful! Where? In your yard?” “Out back,” I said. “On Angel’s side?” It was becoming clearer and clearer to me Corinne reserved an especial distaste for Angel. I had no idea why, but I suspected it had something to do with her hair. “No, right in the middle of my back yard.” Corinne trod across the room to the back door and peered out the window. “Now that’s a shame,” she said. “That’s all we need.” I kissed Eileen’s cheek, and I was thankful she didn’t seem to be in any lingering pain. “They ate her up,” I said. “They were on ‘er so fast. I’m glad Angel was out there hangin’ laundry. She yanked Eileen up s’ fast--by the time I got over there, she had most of ‘em off ‘er, but they crawled everywhere. In her diaper, too.” Corinne made an awful face, as if she’d tasted a rotted lemon. I wondered how Corinne would react to a leaky diaper or mucousy spit-up, daily occurrences in any mother’s life. I thought of Angel, and it occurred to me she visited with me a whole hour, and I never learned whether or not she had children. I suppose a part of me just assumed she didn’t. I didn’t see any babies crawling around in her yard, or bikes or scooters lined up along the house outside. She didn’t mention any children, and yet, something in her manner gave me the impression she was a mother. Corinne, on the other hand, was indeed not, if my instincts were correct. Her eyes darted to and away from the spots covering Eileen’s body, and I got the feeling she might faint. Mothers are not squeamish. And if they are, they are indeed miserable. Corinne drifted back to the living room and toward the door, eyeing Eileen from a distance. “She’s a precious child,” she said. "Her name’s Eileen.” “That’s a nice name.” Corinne straightened and peered around the room. Her eyes grazed every surface, along every wall, and into every corner. “I came by to invite you to the wives’ coffee tomorrow afternoon. I suppose Angel already mentioned it?” “No, she didn’t.” Corinne gave a self-affirming nod. “That’s not surprising. She usually doesn’t make an appearance. Well,” she paused. “We’d love to have you come. We’ll be meeting over at Minnie’s house at noon.” “I’m sorry,” I said, shifting Eileen onto my hip. “I don’t think I’ve met Minnie, yet.” “Oh, you haven’t.” She seemed satisfactorily surprised. “She’s in the house right on the corner.” She pointed toward the entrance of the cul-de-sac. “Is it alright if I bring Eileen?” I asked. Corinne blinked her eyes and pursed her lips. “We don’t normally allow children to the coffees,” she said. “You might take her to the nursery. That’s what all the other ladies do.” I glanced at Eileen. I’d never left her at a nursery before. I’d never left her in anyone else’s care before, and I wasn’t quite certain I was willing to. Corinne gave an awfully nasal chuckle that grated on my nerves. “You’ll just have to let the ladies there know she’s not contagious.” “I’ll see what I can do,” I said, promising nothing. Corinne seemed satisfied. She scanned the room once more, then smiled her thin little smile. “Hope you join us,” she said, then she left, pushing the door firmly in place behind her. # I leaned over to see how the cake was doing when the phone rang. "Hello?" "Rita...." It was Roger. "Goodness gracious, I wasn't expectin' ta hear from you." "I don't have much time," he said. "You'll have to speak up, Roger--I can't hear you." "It's gonna be another two weeks." I couldn't hear him well, but I heard him clear enough to gather what I'd face for the next two weeks. "That can't be right," I protested. "You were supposed to be home at the end of the week." "Nothin' I can do about it, Rita," he said quickly. "I did all I could to get out of it, but this is how it's gonna be." I thought of the bedroom, how luxurious it looked now, what a shame it was the bed hadn't even been slept in after I fixed it up. Now, I wished I never thought to make it nice at all. "How's Eileen doin'?" he asked. "She's fine," I began. "She got into an ant bed yesterday--" The line crackled, and for a few seconds, I thought I'd lost him. Then, his voice broke into the silence, but his words were chopped, and I could only make out a few things he was trying to say. "Make s-- --p --o-- ---m- -all Mama and -f --o -al- -o try ta call you again -f --et -----ce." "I can't hear you, Roger." "Okay, ok-- s Eileen --r m--. -- ---v you." "I love you, Roger." And the line went dead. All I'd learned is that Roger would be gone for two more weeks. I should've been used to his absence by then. Eight months of training when he first joined was only the first eight months without him. A week after he left for boot camp, I discovered I was pregnant, so I moved back home to Mama’s. There had been many phone calls, and Roger asked how I was holding up, how I was feeling, if the baby was healthy. He wasn’t there to see my belly swell up to the size of a good watermelon. He wasn’t there when I felt the baby’s first kicks in my side. He wasn’t there when the first labor pain sliced through me like a knife. Mama called the base in Texas when we got to the hospital. They put her on hold while the nurse wheeled me off to the labor ward. I looked back over my shoulder as we began down that long hall, and Mama looked awfully pained to be tethered to that phone. My bed was only on the other end of the wing, but it felt like I might never see her again. The separation from her, no matter how slight, brought me to tears. The nurse scolded me as she helped me out of my dress and into the dismal blue hospital gown. “Cryin’ already!” she said. “You’re not even in that much pain yet.” That only made me want Mama more, and a fear like I’d never felt before stung through me from the inside out. I was shaking like a leaf, and when the nurse unfolded those metal stirrups with a loud clack, I thought I’d shake apart. It felt like Mama was away from me for hours, but when she finally appeared, it had only been forty-five minutes. She rushed to the bedside, sat on the edge of the chair and took my hand. The worry on her face made her look ten years older, and I was afraid something terrible had happened. “What is it, Mama?” I cried. “I couldn’t get through to him, Sweetheart.” She put a warm hand on my cheek. “I had to leave a message for him.” At once, I was angry and frightened and confused and hurt. Why couldn’t Roger be there? Millions of women in the world had babies. Thousands of babies were born every day, and I was sure every one of them had their daddies pacing and smoking and sweating in the waiting room the entire twelve hours it took for the mother to push her child out of her body. Why did it have to be different for me? I’d heard how Mama had me, driving into Roe alone and catching the city bus when the car stalled. I knew how Mama walked into this same hospital on her own two feet, without a soul to help her. There was no husband to call, and she laid in her bed as I did now, without her mother there to hold her hand. I knew the story well, and I was convinced from early, early on it would never be that way for me. Roger would be there in the waiting room, cigars in his pocket, and when the baby was born, he’d give a whoop and come sailing into the ward to kiss my forehead and tell me what a good girl I was. Bullcorn. Roger was hundreds of miles away in San Antonio, doing anything else but what I imagined. And as I pressed the soles of my feet deep into the mouths of those horrid stirrups, he was elsewhere and oblivious. The bitterness gave me a strange strength that I used to will my child out of my body, and at 5:45 PM that suffocating afternoon in August, Eileen Matilda Rosalind James was born. Mama cried as much as Eileen did, as she ran her hand over Eileen’s red, red tufts of hair. “She’s a Rosalind, alright,” Mama said through her tears. And that satisfied me more than anything else, even than the end to all that pain. Roger came home a week later, and he fell in love. To him, it seemed like Eileen had been conceived and born overnight. But to look at me, swelled up twice the size as when he last saw me, the flicker in his eyes made me feel like I was a stranger. “You look beautiful,” he told me, but his words seemed too purposeful to be sincere. But at Eileen, he stared for hours, a transfixed expression of enchantment etched onto his face. He held each of her little fingers one at a time and ran his thumb over every little slope on her face. “Little Leen,” he kept calling her. His “Little Leenie.” Roger was enchanted, but Mama was spellbound. Long afternoons dripped by, and I slept for many days. Roger helped tend to the large chores around the house that had gone undone for years, and Mama spent every hour holding Eileen in the porch swing, talking to her, singing to her, smoothing her feather-fine eyebrows and tracing the rosebuds of her lips. She doted on Roger so excessively, I thought she’d lost a piece of her mind. She cooked three full meals a day for him, meat with each one. She brought him tea and coffee throughout the day, asked him if he’d like a slice of ham to snack on, or a piece of that carrot cake. Mama washed and pressed every thread of that man’s clothing and had it hanging up for him to wear as soon as he was ready--strings trimmed and creases sharp as wire. And when she spoke to him, she cooed and trilled in a way that made me sick to my stomach. “You do such a fine job with that baby, Roger James. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a good father as you. Now I know my Rita is going to be the happiest woman in Roe, no doubt about that. You are a catch.” Roger ate it up. He writhed in the attention like a fat cat in the sun, and I thought I might scratch his eyes out if he didn’t snap out of it. One night, when I was particularly intolerant of his and Mama’s antics, the phone rang. “It’s for you, Roger,” Mama said as she took his pie plate from him and rinsed it in the sink. “Yes, sir,” Roger said into the receiver. “First thing tomorrow morning, yes, sir.” Mama wheeled around when he said those words, and at that moment, Eileen began to wail from her bassinette in Mama’s bedroom. Mama darted out of the kitchen, and I sat at the table, stabbing my piece of blackberry pie with the tines of my fork and scowling into my plate. “You, too, sir,” Roger said stiffly. Then he placed the phone gently back into its cradle. Mama swept into the kitchen again with Eileen propped on her shoulder. She bounced the baby in the crook of her arm as she rubbed firm circles into her back. Roger grasped the back of a table chair and sighed, his chin on his chest. “I’ve got to go back in the morning,” he said. “Naturally,” I said, shoving a too-large bite of pie into my mouth. Roger withered and peered at me pathetically. “I can’t help it, Rita.” “I know,” I said. “It’s not the end of the world.” Mama kissed Eileen’s forehead. “Well, don’t worry about us, Roger,” she said confidently. “I’ll take care of Eileen and Rita, too. We’ll be fine here.” “I sure do appreciate that,” Roger said. “Sure does make life a lot more bearable to know Rita and the baby are in good hands.” And we were. I never worried when Mama was around. I was so secure, in fact, I did little else than plan and pine for our next adventure. Since Roger and met, it had been one adventure after another. Our courtship was short and fervent. Just three months after we met on the dance floor at B. B.’s Club in West Roe, Roger proposed to me under a large oak tree at the annual First Methodist Church Picnic. By Thanksgiving, we were married and living in our own little apartment in Roe, and by Christmas, I was pregnant and he was off at boot camp in San Antonio. All that time, I waited for our life to begin. After Eileen was born, I expected the world to shift and make a tiny space of room for Mr. And Mrs. Roger James to settle into and claim. So far, there had been no shift at all, except for the Roger shifting to and from one duty to another. What’s another month or two? I asked myself. I’m not sentenced to live my life out here in Roe in my mama’s house. That time, Roger was gone for four months. Each time he called, he offered the same phrase: “Just a little longer.” Then one day, he called, and he was so excited I could barely get him to speak slow enough that I could understand what he was saying. “Honey, we’re going to Hawai’i.” “Hawai’i?” I asked, bewildered. “Are you sure?” “It’s all settled,” he said. “Have your mother help you get your things packed. We leave in three weeks.” “Three weeks?” That hardly seemed like enough time to ready ourselves for a move clear across the ocean. But I’d spent more than a year in Roe. Eileen was almost six months old, and Roe was all she’d known. I might not have believed we were moving our family to a tropical island. I’d guessed we’d end up in North Carolina or California or maybe Texas, practically next door. But I never imagined Roger would receive orders to go to Hawai’i. I’d heard enough about the place from Nancy Cline’s runny mouth, and I’d heard enough to wish we might be as fortunate. But a reality, I’d never considered. It was a reality now. Roger hung up the phone after gushing and fawning over me, assuring me life for us was going to be all manner of idyllic now. Three weeks was not much time, but when the day came, we’d be ready.