Moonrise Over New Jessup by Jamila Minnicks

Author:Jamila Minnicks
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2023-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

sixteen

Even the sprinkling of carols from the supermarket speakers seemed unable to soothe Percy into conversation at first. He followed me around the store like a man who never set foot inside a grocery: hovering at my shoulder, watching me check prices and pick the brands I thought best, peering at the labels like he was newly discovering the idea of selection. When we reached the end of the aisles, he placed a hand on the front of the buggy, telling me to wait while he looked left and right, like we were crossing an intersection in the car. We only started talking in earnest about halfway into the trip, just when we reached the baking aisle.

He was only with me because Dot twisted both our arms after he showed up to the house full of Christmas cheer for everybody, and a slight winter’s chill just for me. Me and Dot spent mornings together while the men walked, and worked, the job site before breakfast—her, rubbing a seven-months round belly and eyeballing my flat one. Squirming and shifting, she breathed hard, trying to get comfortable as the baby twisted around inside her.

“Mama Cat always told me these Campbell babies are hard to birth, but easy to love,” she said, rubbing her stomach and trying to put a brave face on the baby giving her fits. But she seemed pale and tired, like being big hurt her, though she insisted I lay a hand on her belly to feel the baby kicking. That child kicked three times—whack, whack, whack—not once, and I joked that she was too small to be expecting such a mean-seeming baby.

“My baby isn’t mean,” she scolded as she winced and grabbed her back like he was mean. “Just active, and that’s a good thing. Besides, you know any child of Percy Charles Campbell has to start life fussing about something.” She winced again and put her cup down, changing the subject.

“You wouldn’t even know there’s a house being built out there,” she said, looking out the window towards the pines.

“It’s just a big patch of mud right now, but it’s supposed to be done before Easter,” I said. “Harold says after the holidays, it’ll go quick. But Harold always says it’ll go quick.”

She nodded absentmindedly as she sat back in her chair, looking out the window. Her eyes didn’t even register my joke; instead, she just looked outside at our land, deep in thought, with the common sigh, and the drifting eyes, of a Negro woman somehow exhausted by the world. Her eyes squeezed at some memory she kept to herself, and I dared not ask what ached her other than the baby, because she would tell if she wanted to tell. I needed not know the particulars of slight to know the look and language of hurt, to know the world well enough to know how hard she was working to keep this wound from stilling her heart. But her voice—breathy, soft, and slower than I had ever heard—surprised me with something other than the sadness behind her smile.

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