Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Author:Dolen Perkins-Valdez [Perkins-Valdez, Dolen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2022-04-12T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-SIX

I had not fellowshipped with a family like this in a long time. All of my grandparents were dead by the time I turned thirteen years old. Daddy was an only child, and Mama just had one sister with no children. I didn’t have the dozens of cousins that so many Alabamans had, so being in that house fed my soul. We ate, rested and talked, and then ate again. We must have sat at that table for hours. They were talkative people, and it took the pressure off. I just listened and nodded.

After dinner, we sat around the table drinking coffee. There was Ricky, an auto mechanic from Lowndesboro who had married a much younger woman, Dina. They had three boys all under eight years old, who ran around the house chasing one another with toy guns. Dina kept an eye on the boys, punctuating their squeals with “Stop that running now!” Ricky just smiled and picked at his teeth with a toothpick. During dinner, the youngest boy sat in his daddy’s lap and ate from his plate.

“His first wife passed away. They never could have children,” Mrs. Williams whispered when we cleared the tables and moved into the kitchen to stack plates. “He love them boys more than a dog love a bone.”

Just as Nellie had said, Patsy and Doe were tall for women. They were sisters and had once babysat India and Erica. Both of them were magazine-cover pretty with identical puffed Afros and hoop earrings. Patsy sat beside India at dinner and kept refilling her lemonade and offering her more food. I caught Doe just staring at Erica, as if weighing what life would be like now for the girl, as if trying to determine if this barrenness was something you could see with your eyes.

Although we had not spoken about it at dinner, I was all but certain everyone had heard about the surgery. When Nellie introduced me, they observed me for a second longer than normal. At one point, a latecomer showed up—Tim, Mace’s brother-in-law. It was Tim who broke open the dam while we were sipping our coffee.

“Y’all see the news today?”

In the back of the house, the high-pitched voices of the children drowned out the din of a TV set. Only the adults were still seated at the table. I leaned back in my chair, focusing my eyes on the dusty light fixture overhead.

“Which channel?” asked Nellie. “We don’t get all the channels out here.”

“All of ’em,” Tim said.

Mace touched a finger to his temple. I took another swallow of coffee, and the movement drew Tim’s eye. He looked at me as he removed a section of the paper from his back pocket, unfolded it, and spread it out on the table. I wiped at some crumbs on the table where my plate had been and sneaked a peek at the paper headline.

Lawsuit Filed in Federal Court Against Montgomery Family Planning Clinic. Everyone looked down at it. Nobody had to read to know what it was about.

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