67 - Where's Mommy?

The darkness was palpable now. Leroy cradled his candle, and seemed to search its flame for a moment. As if trying to remember something, or debating how to start. Then he spoke, in a low, sepulchral tone:

"This story is called

WHERE'S MOMMY?

There's no old folks' home in Dagon's Hollow. We still have old folks here, but when they get to the point where they can't fend for themselves anymore, they stay with their children—or they get a caretaker to come into the home to take care of them.

Miss Jenny, she was assigned to take care of old Mrs. Haversham. Folks say Mrs. Haversham was the first person in Dagon's Hollow to live to be a hundred years old. Outlived her husband and only daughter, also named Jenny, outlived all her people. She only had Miss Jenny to take care of her, to cook her soft food and help her bathe, to get her up and dressed in the morning and put her to bed at night.

It was tedious work for one so young. Miss Jenny was only nineteen, and had no folks of her own, no money, no other place to stay. All her friends had gone on with their lives, and she had no time out for herself, to dance or go to movies or any of that. It was a lonely life, and Miss Jenny only had old Mrs. Haversham, and Mrs. Haversham only had Miss Jenny.

I should say now that Miss Jenny was a fine young Black woman. She straightened her hair, so that it fell down to her shoulders, and was strong and fit, with small, firm breasts; whereas Mrs. Haversham was white, stooped with age, with silver-grey hair that fell down to her waist. Didn't matter what vittles Jenny cooked, because Mrs. Haversham ate like a bird...but her mind was still fit. She read in old books, Mrs. Haversham did, and when her eyes grew too tired, she had Miss Jenny read to her.

Sometimes Mrs. Haversham asked Jenny to read from the Bible, though never those parts of it that Miss Jenny liked. The books that weren't the Bible were such as Jenny had never read. Tales from the islands in the Caribbean, what folks believed and did down there, up on the mountains and out in the swamps. Stories from New Orleans, about Marie Laveau and her daughter of the same name. Tales from old Africa, the religions which white folk knew so little about but wrote anyway. Miss Jenny, she said once while at the grocery that old Mrs. Haversham soaked up those stories like a toad or snake soaks up poison.

Yet age told apace, ever for old Mrs. Haversham. Her mind must have wandered a bit, because she started to ask, all through the day:

"Where's mommy?"

Now imagine a woman a hundred years old calling for her mother? A woman who must have been dead and gone fifty, sixty, maybe seventy years or more. Miss Jenny, she didn't pay it no mind. She knew how old folks get, their mind wandering. She had found a picture of Mrs. Haversham's mother, a fine-looking woman holding a young baby that must have been Mrs. Haversham as a child, and hung it up by the breakfast table where Mrs. Haversham could see it.

Except I wonder if Mrs. Haversham's mind really did wander. For there was a change that came over her, even as she asked "Where's mommy?" all the time. The old woman ate more. Her frail body filled out. At the same time, Miss Jenny started to notice a change. The photo of Mrs. Haversham's mother was still that of a white woman, but now it looked to Jenny like maybe the woman had a bit of the plantation in her. It was a strange impression.

Days passed. Always Mrs. Haversham asked "Where's mommy?" and Miss Jenny had no answer. She saw the old woman get fitter and fitter, dark streaks coming back into her hair. Yet at the same time she noticed the photo of Mrs. Haversham's mother looked, for lack of a better word, blacker and blacker. The shape of the nose was different, the hair kinkier, and even in the old daguerrotype, the skin looked darker. Miss Jenny wasn't sure what to make of it.

Because for all that the young woman in the photo was wearing an old-fashioned dress, she looked an awful lot like Miss Jenny. I went into the house once and saw the photo for myself, and the likeness was uncanny.

Then one day, Mrs. Haversham said:

"Mommy, gimme milk."

And Miss Jenny, who'd never had a child in her life, felt a sudden twinge of soreness in her breasts. From then on, it was no longer "Where's mommy?" It was "Mommy, gimme milk." Miss Jenny, she served Miss Haversham glasses of cow's milk three meals a day, but it wasn't that old Mrs. Haversham was hankering for. Those small, firm breasts of Miss Jenny began to swell, day by day. The small nipples grew darker and thicker, and the soreness grew as that brown skin stretched, like tomatoes ripening in the sun. It wasn't any surprise when one day Miss Jenny woke up and found Mrs. Haversham standing over her in bed, and Jenny's night-shirt was open, those swollen teats there with drops of white milk on the nipples.

"Mommy, gimme milk," Mrs. Haversham said.

And she bent down and pressed those withered lips to those titties and drank.

That much Miss Jenny told to me, when she came to the grocery store. I could see the swell of her breasts stretch out the front of her dress, like she was nursing a child. Only there was no child, nor had she been with a man since she'd gone to work for old Mrs. Haversham. It was all beyond Miss Jenny's experience, and she didn't know what to do.

Yet something drew her back there. I saw Miss Jenny get a faraway look in her eyes, and she whispered: "She's calling for me. She's calling for mommy."

I did not see Miss Jenny after that. She didn't come anymore to the grocery store, but orders were placed by phone and the boy delivered them. One day I passed the house as the delivery was being made. A woman stood there, with black hair down to her waist, straight and tall, with full breasts and clear eyes. It couldn't have been Miss Jenny, for she was Black; and it couldn't have been Mrs. Haversham, for this woman couldn't be more than fifty years old. Yet when the door opened wide to allow the delivery boy in, I saw—just for a moment—a figure in a chair by the breakfast table. A figure whose breasts were massive for her slim frame, like a pair of watermelons, so big that they lay on the table top. And there behind her was the photo of old Mrs. Haversham's mother, and perhaps I'll be damned for saying so, but from that distance it looked to my eyes like the breasts in the photo were just the same.

Leroy hesitated a moment, as if to say more. Then he blew out his candle.