My Drowning by Jim Grimsley Page B

daddy, don’t you?”
    Otis glared at him. “You ain’t nothing but a goddamn gimp-legged cornhole shit-ass, I don’t see why anybody has to put up with you.”
    Later we would tell the story this way: that Mama laughed so hard she went into labor and had Corrine almost on the spot. The truth was close to that; Mama’s labor did come on her during the laughter. She told us to find the colored midwife in Holberta
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    Uncle Cope went white, then red, then flung a crutch at Otis. He wanted to bellow, but Mama started to giggle with her hand over her mouth, and that stopped him short. When Mama started to laugh, so did Daddy. That gave Otis the courage to repeat, “A goddamn cornhole shit-ass.”
    Now the laughter became general, and even I joined in it, though I was not sure why the words were so funny or why they made Uncle Cope so angry. He was speechless and got crimson as the laughter continued, and tears sprang to his eyes, but he had only one crutch and was trapped on the bed. He rubbed his stomach like it was tender. He sat there like that, waiting for us to stop laughing.
    Mama could hardly get her breath. When she did, the look in her eyes had turned inward and she made a sound like something deep opening up inside her. Like something waking up. There was a kind of convulsion across her, I saw it run through her like a ripple across a river. It was the first time I had ever seen her go through a contraction. The sound and the motion quieted everything else in the kitchen.
    â€œMy water broke,” she said to Daddy. A wet patch was spreading down her skirt. “Carl Jr. is going to have to get the colored midwife, we ain’t paid Miss Rilla yet for the last two times she come.”
    Uncle Cope’s humiliation lay forgotten in the confusion of Corrine’s birth. But I remember him, curled up like a ball of spite in his bed
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    Nora handed Madson to me and I carried him like a sack of shit to his blanket. By then he was old enough to walk but he was lazy and liked to be toted and petted. I hated to hold him or to be near him, but I did what Nora said. Wanting to watch what was happening to Mama, I hurried the job, and Madson bumped his head on the stove and started crying just as the first clap of lightning lit over the woods. Otis rushed to get Carl Jr.’s bicycle from under the house, and Daddy gave him his logger’s rain slicker to wear. Otis lit out for Holberta with the rain starting to spatter. He would be riding in the mud, which was what he liked best, whenever he could get the excuse to steal Carl Jr.’s bicycle.
    Daddy helped Mama to their bedroom. The first pain passed and she could move on her own, but Daddy was feeling generous because of Uncle Cope’s embarrassment. Nora set a pot of water on the stove in case it was needed, and I wiped Joe Robbie’s mouth with his towel. That was when I looked at Uncle Cope. He was still sitting on the edge of his bed, twisted to a knot, with that useless leg dangling free. His whole body was quivering with fury, and nobody saw it but me. I was the one who finally thought to bring him the crutch he had thrown, that had not landed anywhere near Otis. When I handed it to him, he looked me in the eye andsnatched it. His eyes were full of hate all the way out to the whites. His mouth was like a pale slash across his face. Now when I close my eyes I can recall it exactly, down to the fat mole on his chin that sprouted a cluster of gray hairs.
    WHEN HE WALKED in on my bathing, it was not the first time he had spied on me. It would be hard to say when I first became aware that he lurked in the doorway or the window on afternoons when I could get the room alone to wash.
    I had a fear of being naked in front of anyone, even my sisters. The fear came on me early. I would never take my dress off and let Nora see my dark nipples, I was ashamed of them. I would never take my drawers off in front of her. The same with Mama,