“No, honey, just got sick of it. Benjy’s been writing down my songs as I sing them. Benjy.”
“Listen, Granny, I got to go, I got Mona Mayfair with me. I’ve got to take her up to the attic where it’s really warm and dry.”
“Yes, oh yes, please,” Mona whispered. She leant against the walls which tilted away from her. Why, you could lie right on a tilted wall like this, almost. Her feet throbbed, and the pain came again.
Mama, I am coming.
Hold on, sweetheart, one more flight of steps to climb. “You bring Mona Mayfair in here, you bring her.”
“No, Granny, not now!” Mary Jane came flying out of the room, big white skirts hitting the doorjamb, arms out to reach for Mona.
“Right on up, honey, right straight, come on around now.”
There was a rustling and a clatter, and just as Mary Jane turned Mona around and pointed her to the foot of the next stairs, Mona saw a tiny little woman come scuttling out of the back room, gray hair in long loose braids with ribbons on the end of them. She had a face like wrinkled cloth, with amazing jet black eyes, crinkled with seeming good humor.
“Got to hurry,” Mona said, moving as quickly as she could along the railing. “I’m getting sick from the tilt.”
“You’re sick from the baby!”
“You go on ahead, and turn on those lights,” shouted the old woman, clamping one amazingly strong and dry little hand to Mona’s arm. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me this child was pregnant. God, this is Alicia’s girl, like to died when they cut off that sixth finger.”
“What? From me, you mean?” Mona turned to look into the little wrinkled face with the small lips pressed tight together as the woman nodded.
“You mean I had a sixth finger?” asked Mona.
“Sure did, honey, and you almost went to heaven when they put you under. Nobody ever told you that tale, about the nurse giving you the shot twice? About your heart nearly stopping dead, and how Evelyn came and saved you!”
Benjy rushed by, headed up the stairs, his bare feet sounding dusty on the bare wood.
“No, nobody ever told me! Oh God, the sixth finger.”
“But don’t you see, that will help!” declared Mary Jane. They were headed up now, and it only looked like one hundred steps to the light up there, and the thin figure of Benjy, who, having lighted the lights, was now making his slow, languid descent, though Mary Jane was already hollering at him.
Granny had stopped at the foot of the steps. Her white nightgown touched the soiled floor. Her black eyes were calculating, taking Mona’s measure. A Mayfair, all right, thought Mona.
“Get the blankets, the pillows, all that,” said Mary Jane. “Hurry up. And the milk, Benjy, get the milk.”
“Well, now, just wait a minute,” Granny shouted. “This girl looks like she doesn’t have time to be spending the night in that attic. She ought to go to the hospital right now. Where’s the truck? Your truck at the landing?”
“Never mind that, she’s going to have the baby here,” said Mary Jane.
“Mary Jane!” roared Granny. “God damn it, I can’t climb these steps on account of my hip.”
“Just go back to bed, Granny. Make Benjy hurry with that stuff. Benjy, I’m not going to pay you!!!!”
They continued up the attic steps, the air getting warmer as they ascended.
It was a huge space.
Same crisscross of electric lights she’d seen below, and look at the steamer trunks and the wardrobes tucked into every gable. Every gable except for one, which held the bed deep inside, and next to it, an oil lamp.
The bed was huge, built out of those dark, plain posts they used so much in the country, the canopy gone, and only the netting stretched over the top, veil after veil. The netting veiled the entrance to the gable. Mary Jane lifted it as Mona fell forward on the softest mattress.
Oh, it was all dry! It was. The feather comforter went poof all around her. Pillows and pillows. And the oil lamp, though it was treacherously close, made it into a little tent of sorts around her.
“Benjy! Get that ice chest now.”
“Chère, I just carry that ice chest to the back porch,” the boy said, or something like it, the accent clearly Cajun. Didn’t sound like the old woman at all. She just sounds like one of us, thought Mona, a little different maybe….