Pages of Geechee Descent

I peeled the rat-eaten sheets from my clammy skin and tried my best to avoid the bed creaking as I got up, but that was pointless. Everything creaked in this busted-down house, from the rotten floorboards to the walls when the wind blew. I didn’t want to wake my husband, Earl, and I damn sure didn’t want to wake the three little ones we shared our bed with.

“Take the lantern,” Earl called after me, his Geechee accent deep and beautiful.

“I can get to that outhouse with my eyes closed.”

“When a snake bite yo’ ass, I don’t wanna hear no hollerin’.”

I lit the oil lamp both grumbling and grinning to myself. I made it to the outhouse just in time not to piss myself. After 10 babies, my bladder ain’t what it used to be, but that was alright. All 10 of my babies were here earthside with me.

The hairs on the back of my neck and my arms stood up and my mouth dried real quick before I heard that sickening and familiar sound. The screams from the three babies. Three distinct cries from the field over yonder where we left them. My stomach knotted up real tight. My blood chilled. When I gathered my courage I busted outta that outhouse. The piss streaking down my legs. I had to get away from the cries that surrounded me. “Go on now,” I yelled. “Ya’ll go on now. Jesus waiting on ya. You don’t belong here.” But they never listened.

You’re wondering why I don’t take them babies up in my arms and bounce them til’ they stop cryin’ and then take them to their mamas. But these babies… they dead. They have been dead a long time. I hear you asking why they hauntin’ me and only me? Cause I’m the midwife, one of the few midwives in Berkeley County, SC. I delivered over 100 black babies on account of whites won’t let us in their hospitals like we’re dirty or somethin’. Hell, I even delivered some of their babies in a pinch. I deliver the babies, me, my daughter, Maude, and my rusty scissors. But all of those babies don’t make it. Now most of them make it, but some are born still. Others live for a few days, a few months, or even a couple of years. But when they die, they haunt me somethin' awful. Unless…

Lantern lights moving fast in the pitch-black sky stopped me mid-run. “Neffie Lee’s baby’s comin’.” A sigh leaves my mouth cause it ain’t the Klan. This time.

Nonetheless, my heart squeezes cause when the dead babies visit me with their vicious howling, it’s cause they comin’ to get another baby, and my cousin Neffie done lost 6 already. “Thanks, Buck. I’ll wake Maude.”

“What’s her name?” I asked Nettie with my heart paining me.

“Don’t start that mess?” Nettie’s mama, my aunt, whispered like an angry snake. They know about the way the babies haunt me when they go but they rather pretend I'm crazy.

I whispered back. “I need to know.”

“We’ll deal with all that later.”

I looked at Neffie’s hollowed eyes.

I nodded but I needed to know the baby's name.

“Billy,” Nettie said. “Like Billy Holiday.” Her face crumpled. “I thought for sure this one would live.” Then her tears began to flow as she kissed the stillborn baby. She handed the pretty little thing with dark brown lips to me and told me to take good care of her. I nodded and walked her to the graveyard that held her dead siblings and cousins.

Before I placed the swaddled baby in the grave that her angry and heartbroken father dug up, I handed the baby to Maude who placed the baby in the tiny coffin, and I pulled out my black notebook. My sister gave me this here book, it was a gift she sent me from Harlem. She said some cute comedian gave it to her. She said I could write anything in that book that I wanted to come true. I thought she was talkin' nonsense. I took out my pen and wrote down the baby’s name, Billie, the date, and the words “rest easy.”

When Pearlie gave me this book, she said that her comedian friend had gotten the book from Zora Neale Hurston herself and the book had a good kinda curse on it. It had been blessed by a Hoodoo priestess when Zora was down south learning about Hoodoo for her books. I don’t fool too much with that Hoodoo stuff, I thought, as the neighborhood men passed all the little chirren' in the neighborhood over the baby’s fresh grave so that the baby’s spirit wouldn’t attach to their vulnerable souls.

The book’s power was real, however, cause whenever I wrote a dead baby’s name, the date, and the words “rest easy” or “rest in peace”, they didn’t bother me none. What about the babies that do haunt me? I reckon they do so on account of their mamas never naming them and they can’t be written into my black book. I tried naming them myself, but I guess it was too late because the three still terrorize me.

7 Months Later

It had been 7 months since the babies came to haunt me. This time they came during the cool winter day, and I knew it was going to be Sue Ellen who lost her baby. She was the only one due.

“Bring me my book.”

Maude gave me a look of fright. “The babies came back?”

I nodded.

She went to my room but when she returned she said, “I don’t see your book.”

“It’s on the chair beside the bed like always.”

“It ain’t there.”

“Girl.” I got up to retrieved the book myself. But Maude was right. My chest tightened and I got the hollerin’ “Boys did ya’ll mess with my book. Y'all were in my room, any?”

“No ma’am.”

There was a knock at the door. Maude answered while I tore up everything looking for that book.

“Ma. It’s Sue Ellen.”

This time we buried the baby and there was no book to put the name in. Maude said we could write the baby’s name after we found it, but that wouldn’t work. It was too late. Now four babies would haunt me.

When we returned home, there it was, my black book right on top of my chair. I snatched the book up, opened it up to make sure no pages were torn or written on by the kids but I stopped. Something had been written on the page opposite of where I had written the babie's names, and it wasn’t my writing nor anyone else’s in this house. I walked over to a gap in the wall slats and used the daylight streaming in to read the neatly written words.

“Can you see this? I believe you are my great-grandmother. The names in this book are of the children in our family who died. I bought your land because some people were about to buy it in an auction cause the taxes hadn’t been paid, but thank God I found out about the auction just in time. I found this book in your house. I’m restoring your house by the way. You wouldn’t be happy with the condition that it’s in. When I first found this book, it had 3 names. The next time I opened it...it had four names. Every few months or so, there are somehow more names added in this book and no one has touched this book except me. Believe me. I treasure this book. I think that somehow...I can see what you’re writing in the past. I know it makes no sense, but perhaps you can prove me right or wrong by writing something … anything. Are you Ruby Thompson?

I closed the book. I thought about the Hoodoo priestess and the curse. I thought someone was toying with me, but barely anybody could write in this neighborhood.

I grabbed my pin and shakily I scribbled, “Hello. I don’t know what’s going on but I’m Ruby Thompson. What’s your name?” Now what. I’m losing my mind. I closed the book then went to cook dinner but I was so fidgety that I kept dropping things. After dinner, I took a deep breath and opened the book praying to hear from whoever or whatever this was, even though it might be something evil.

“Oh my God. I’m Tamika. Wow. What year is it? How is this possible? It’s 2021 here.”

I told her about the priestess. She told me about the...future. She was a doctor and she delivered babies too! I cried. And she said I was a legend in her time for all of the babies I helped deliver. Me? We wrote back and forth until we’d filled nearly ten pages. She was Maude’s granddaughter. Maude’s granddaughter! Lordy.

“Let me try something,” Tamika wrote one day.

“What?”

When I opened the book again there was a gold necklace.

“Did you get it?”

“Oh lord, yes.” I put it back in between the pages of the book and sent it back.

“No, it’s yours.”

“Chile, I can’t. Black folks don’t have nothin’ like this round here.”

“I want you to have it.”

We talked every day. I didn’t tell Maude or my husband or anyone. It was the most amazing feeling, whatever this magic was.

One day the book was stuffed with so much cash money I couldn’t count it. Every time I removed a stack and closed the book, there’d be more.

“Girl, what is this?”

“$20,000.”

“I can’t take this.”

“I knew you would say that. It’s not for you. It’s for the babies. You’re going to build your own birthing center and clinic.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I believe some of those babies’ deaths could have been prevented if you had better equipment and training.”

“Excuse me. I know what I’m doing.”

“I know but you can do so much more with this money and in your time $20,000 will go far. It will help our community and leave a little bit for you to do what you wish.”

“What about you? You can just give away $20,000? Don’t you need this money?”

“It’s yours. Don’t you worry about me.”

“These white folks gon’ think I done stole somethin’. They’ll never let me spend this.”

“Look. You build that clinic no matter what. Don’t let them stop you. Our family and so many people need you. Tell them the church raised the money for you.”

“The church ain’t got no money like that.”

“Tell them a distant relative left you the money.”

“This is crazy.”

She wrote, “What’s crazy is babies dying because they don’t have access to healthcare like white people do. Now take it.”

I took a shaky breath. “Okay.”

A year later the Ruby Thompson Clinic was opened and while not all of our babies lived, we lost far fewer. I even started training other women and some big papers wrote stories 'bout me. Who would have ever thought a black book, $20,000, and my great-granddaughter from the future would save so many lives.