We stopped counting after she had the ninth child. They just kept coming every year, baby after baby. My mother used to send over a salve for her nipples. Not sure if she needed it, but Mama said, “Those things have to be tired as hell.” Every time she pulled a child off her breast, that child looked content and sleepy like they had been utterly fulfilled. It felt like she did everything with a child on her breast. She chopped vegetables, wiped down furniture, waved at the neighbors, and she seemed completely at ease with a baby always pulling on her.

            Everybody came to see Cristina on her porch. She had a big rocking chair with stacks of quilts she would sit on. Each quilt stacked on top of each other, all different colors and shades, they looked like a rainbow of fabric. And next to that rocking chair, she had a little table that was propped up on one side with a piece of wood and the other with a small rock. On the table there was a pitcher of water, books, a knife for preparing food, and dolls for the babies.

          For those few minutes when a child wasn’t getting nourishment, she would always encourage her older children to come up for a hug or a nuzzle or another form of her touching. Even the old ones, the ones that looked like mothers themselves, would lean in for a nuzzle or an arm rub. Whenever she touched someone, you could see the muscles in their face relax and a sort of calm come over them. Children that had seen way too much of the switch used to cuddle right into her long skirt in hopes of having a pet or two from her large hands.

             One Sunday evening, I remember it was a Sunday, I tripped over Elijah’s tricycle on purpose, in order to scrape my knee, right in front of her house. I wanted to feel her hands on me and see what all the fuss was about. I was a shy kid and clung to my mama’s skirt all the time. I wanted to feel what the others felt. I thought for sure her touch would be similar to Mama’s, although I knew maybe it wouldn’t. I was lucky that day, the scrape broke through the skin and I had just enough blood on my hands and knees to warrant a lot of attention from the kids outside. Like always, she was sitting up on the porch feeding a baby. I saw her calmly pull the baby from her nipple and hand him to another child. She slowly walked down the seven steps from the porch, her hips moving back and forth, big like a truck. She gathered me up with her left hand and held me to her left breast whispering in my ear, “Now child, it will all be fine. Close your eyes and let me heal you.” I did as she said and a warmth like nothing I had ever felt came over me. She felt like taking a warm bath, lying in the sun, and eating warm peach cobbler all at once. She smelled different, like the leaves do right after a rain. Her breath was soft and not stinky, light like a breeze on my head. I never wanted her to put me down.

            After that day, I started watching her more closely. I would hide over in her neighbor’s yard, behind the big plants that I liked that mama said were just ugly weeds. I watched as she moved around the porch holding a child, hugging on others. I watched as she hollered to all the neighbors, asking them about their day, inquiring about their sick ones. She never forgot anyone’s name. It was like she knew every single person around us.

            She looked real pretty, too. Her skin was smooth, there were some wrinkles around her eyes, I think because she was always smiling. But her hands, they looked different. Everyone else’s hands around here were rough and scraped from all the working. But her hands, well they were smooth like a baby’s. Even from the other side of the porch, I could see how perfect and smooth they were. I wondered if she had some special lotion she rubbed on them at night right before she went to bed.

            I remember the first time the men came. I was hiding and playing in the weeds watching her house and the porch. No one payed much attention to me. They never did. You see, I was an only child, no sisters and not even a brother. I learned when I was real little, basically a baby, to play by myself. I could build towns out of sticks and rocks, and write my letters in the sand, and I didn’t really need to have friends around to play my games. I was perfectly happy sitting in the weeds, playing, and watching everything. I think I saw them first. Well before she did. They were dressed in suits, they all had hats, and their shoes were real shiny. I saw their shoes first as they passed by my spot in the weeds. They all seemed really tall, and one in particular his hair stuck out just a little bit of his hat which made his hat look kind of tipsy.

            They walked over to the porch although they didn’t stand on the porch, just a bit back, almost as if they were scared to put their feet on the first step. As I watched them, I noticed a string of eight ants (I counted) walking across the last man’s shoe. They first asked Cristina if she could put the baby down and she laughed and said, “I ain’t putting someone down in the middle of their supper and would you like to be interrupted the next time you eat supper?” Then, they said something to her about a husband and the Lord. And she said something back about not needing either of those, that she was just fine on her own, and could take care of hers. They asked again, and this time one of the men, well, he sounded kind of angry. Actually, they all started to look a little angry. I recognized the look. It was the look that lots of the men made when they were mad or questioning women. It’s the look they made at the meetings on Wednesday night and on Sunday, and it was the same look they had when they collected the money on Friday evening.

          All of a sudden, the men started raising their voices and shouting. I wasn’t sure what they were talking about, but they finally said they would be back next week and by then Ms. Cristina better have found both the father of those children and the Lord.

          That is when I noticed I knew two of the men. One of them lived in the red house two behind us and the other one lived in the green house next door to the red house. We still called them the red and green houses, even though the dry dirt made them mostly brown. Usually when I would see a man I knew, I would smile politely and then look down. This time, I looked down but I didn’t smile.

            I watched them walk away. They were holding a leather book and the one man was shaking his head something furious at the others. I looked over at the porch to see if she was scared. She didn’t look scared at all, in fact she still had one of those babies on her boob and she was just smiling and rocking.

            That night I went home and told Mama about the men at the door. Usually when Mama is cooking dinner she pretends to listen, but just nods at my stories. This time, Mama looked real worried as soon as I mentioned the men with the hats and shiny shoes. She quickly put on her sweater and told me to stay put. She was going to get the ladies together and talk about what to do. That night, eleven women came in to our home. I counted all of them. Some of them were not that much older than me, like my cousin Cissy and her best friend Pato. The others, well, they looked as old as my great aunt Nell, and some were Mama’s good friends from the meetings and the store. The women were kind of loud when they first got in. Mama was busy offering them tea or coffee and some breads she had toasted up for them with some butter. They all shuffled in and at first tried to sit around the kitchen table, but with only four seats it was too crowded, so they moved to the living room. The older ladies sat on the couch and chairs and the younger ones lined up along the walls at their feet. I sat in the hall out of the way enough so that they would forget I was there, but close enough that I could hear everything.

          Linda spoke first. “She’s a healer, there are always healers.” And a few of the women started shaking their head agreeing with her and then someone said. “No, Ma’am, she is something different. Raise your hand, ladies, if she has put her hands on you. Raise your hands if she has saved you from one of our men who got you in trouble and you know what I mean.” I am not sure who said that because I didn’t recognize the voice and I had gotten temporarily distracted by a spider that was walking up and down the wood in the hallway. When I looked up again to see the hands, almost everyone’s hand was raised, even Pato. I noticed though that while their hands were raised, their eyes weren’t. It was like all of a sudden the floor was very interesting. It didn’t look different to me at all.

          After what seemed like a long time, Nadine, she’s our neighbor on the other side, spoke. “I have never known someone like her. When she puts her hands on you, you can almost feel the light coming through. She is what I always imagined God to feel like.” All the women nodded in agreement with Nadine.

          “Well, then, how we gonna get her and all those children out? There must be 10 of them by now. We better have some kind of good plan.” That was Ms. Linda speaking. She was the preschool teacher and knew all the children by first name, last name, and middle name when they were misbehaving. “She really don’t have no man you’ve seen sneaking around there? She has to have a man to have those children.” And that is when Mama got real quiet looked everyone in the eye and said, “She says they come from God and quite frankly I believe her.” Everyone stopped talking, you could hear the wind through the curtains and the silence lasted what felt like ten minutes and then Linda said, “Well then, let’s get her out of this town and hope that God don’t take those children back.”

           “Amen,” Aunt Nell whispered.

          “Won’t they see us? We know what happens to those women that question and disobey.” That was Cissy asking the questions. She was always worried about the men. They seemed to treat her worst of all, they were always poking her or pulling on her clothes. I am not sure why they were always touching her. Mama said it was because she had ‘the curse.’ She said Cissy had the curse of being beautiful and that made men hate her and like her all at the same time. When Mama told me that, it made no sense to me because what I saw the men doing to Cissy always seemed like hate, it didn’t seem like any man was nice to her.

          “Whatever it is, we can’t let those foolish men know what we are doing. Nothing we say leaves this house,” Linda whispered to the women, but she made sure everyone could hear.

            After that the older women moved to the kitchen table, where they started drawing up plans on paper and talking about the ‘logistics.’ Pato motioned for me to join her on the couch. I traced the letters along Pato’s arm. They are curvy and all go together. I try to make out what it says but I can’t read the writing. Instead, I just keep tracing back and forth and back and forth over them. It seems calming to have her arm on my chest heavy and strong. She lets me trace her arm whenever I want and usually she just closes her eyes. I wonder if she is trying to sleep. We are all in the living room, me, and Cissy, and Pato. After I have traced Pato’s arm fifteen times, I count each time, I ask Pato why she has the writing on her arm. She’s the only person I know that has letters on her arm. She keeps her eyes closed and doesn’t answer. From the other side of the room, Cissy says out loud but not really to anyone in particular, “To cover the pain.” And then I feel Pato stir underneath me. She pulls her arm away, looks directly at Cissy shaking her head. She then cups my head with her hands and puts her two hands around my ear and I know that she doesn’t want anyone else to hear and she says to me, “It isn’t to cover the pain. It is to remember the joy of knowing that for a short time I wasn’t alone.” I nod at Pato because I am happy that she has confided in me and I can tell that there is something important about the secret she has told me. It is just that I don’t really understand what she means. So I just keep nodding and then she puts her arm back on me and I begin tracing again.      

After a while, I notice that Pato is sleepy and so am I. I lay my head on her chest and fall asleep to the sounds of the women talking in the kitchen. When I wake up, I am in my bed and my blankets are pulled up tight over my arms, I am sweaty and thirsty.

            That morning Mama doesn’t say anything about the women meeting at our house, Ms. Cristina, the plan, or anything and I know better than to ask.

            Every day that week, I went and sat in the weeds watching Cristina with the children on her breast and those smooth hands chopping the onions and potatoes on that little table. When I went back to my post on Friday, she wasn’t there. The table and the rocking chair and the blankets were there but not Ms. Christina. I walked around the yard real quiet trying to see if I could find her. I had never been in the backyard because I know better than to go in other people’s yards without asking. At first I couldn’t even find the gate, but when I did it was covered with a vine. The vine went around the handle, weaved through it, and then kept going like it was passing by and just wanted to open it. I slowly opened the gate, and I looked out into the most beautiful garden I had ever seen. There were plants everywhere. Tall and small with rows and rows of what looked like vegetables or food growing everywhere. I was amazed by how green it was. We tried to grow tomatoes and nothing seemed to work in our yard. I even thought I saw what looked like a pineapple. Then I heard the voices.

            “Come on, get the bags ready. I will take the older ones and then we will come back for the babies.” It was Ms. Linda and she sounded like she was talking in her stern teacher voice. Ms. Christina still dressed in a nightgown said, “Don’t you worry. Everything will be fine. Let me just get the rest of our stuff.” All the sudden, I heard what sounded like an elephant in the backyard. I couldn’t figure out what it was. I looked in the direction of the plants, and I heard it again only louder. I creeped toward the noise and I couldn’t believe it. Behind all those plants was a garage. The door was open and there was a big car in there, its motor was running and I could see at least five or six kids jumping around and laughing. Pato was in the driver’s seat, she had on a big-brimmed hat  and I could see the sweat coming down her forehead. “Now shush, everyone,” she said, “we don’t want everyone to hear us leavin’.” The kids looked at her for a minute then kept on laughing and screaming. “No, really,” she yelled. “You need to be quiet!” This time I think they got it, because they all sat down. The big ones shushing the littler ones. Pato looked over and saw me. “Oh no, child,” she said, “you get out of here. Go on, and don’t tell no one what you saw.”

            I snuck back out of the garage door and went back to the front of the house.

I stayed in the weeds and it wasn’t but five or so minutes later when Mama came out the back door and grabbed me by the shirt. “If you’ve got to be nosey, then you are going to help. Go out to the front to your spot, and you start yelling my name if you see those men coming. You let me know right away.”

            “Yes, Ma’am,“ I said, and I watched her turn around and walk back into that house.

            I went back and sat in the weeds looking every which way down the sidewalk for those men. I figured I would hear them coming because those shiny shoes made a sound when they hit the pavement. After I had already gone through my letters five times, they still hadn’t come. I wanted to sneak back and look in on the garden and the house but I knew better then to do that.

            It came around the corner so fast, I didn’t even have time to see it. It parked right in front and the men just started piling out. By the time I realized it was them in a car and not on foot, I stood up and started running to the back door, one of the men grabbed me by my shirt. “Is your mama home?” He said to me, and I could see he was mad. I realized then that he thought Ms. Cristina was my mama. I said, “No, sir.” And he looked at me and said, “What were you doing in those bushes?” I looked at him and I could feel my whole body shake. “Just playing like always.” He looked at my dirty hands and my hair and seemed like he believed me. He let my shirt go and said, “Well, get on home.” At this point, I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t know if I should run home to my home or go into Ms. Cristina’s house. I figured it would probably best not to be separated from Mama. I ran around the back of the yard to the back door. Luckily, he didn’t follow me. By then, the rest of the men were pounding on Ms. Cristina’s front door. I heard one say, “Please come out now, we need to talk to you about something real important.”

            I jumped through the garden, quietly opened the back door and said, “Mama?” She didn’t answer, so I tip-toed farther in and that was when I saw them. Mama was trying to hold back Ms. Cristina, she was saying, “Let me just talk to them. I know what to say.” Mama looked desperate. She was pulling at Ms. Cristina’s clothes, saying, “No. We need to go out the back. The babies are in the car. Come now!” I could see that Mama was starting to shake and her baby hair was wet where the sweat was dripping down on her forehead. She had Ms. Cristina’s hands in hers and she was holding them tight, the way she held my hands when we were in a crowd. Ms. Cristina just looked at her, then at their hands, and I could see her slip her fingers out from Mama’s hands. It wasn’t easy, but she did it.  She stared real serious and said, “I will be fine. I have no fear.” And with that she went to the front door, opened it, walked on to the porch, and closed the door behind her.

            Mama looked like she was being pulled by a rope in both directions. One part of her looked like she wanted to follow Ms. Cristina and the other looked like she was heading toward the garage. The garage must have won because she turned in my direction, not registering who I was at first. I said to her in a whisper, “They didn’t come walking, they were in a car.” I was starting to cry. Instead of comforting me like she usually did. She grabbed my hand real hard and said, “Run to the garage.” And we did run. We ran through the stalks of corn, the squash blossoms, and the overgrown chives. We ran hard and when we got to the car all the babies were sitting real sweet and none of them were crying. Mama looked at me and said, “Get in the back and hold on.” And I did. I wedged myself between two of the babies and I held the hand of the older one and my Mama drove that car out of the garage and down the street. It was about twenty minutes before either one of us took a breath.

***

            When Ms. Nadine told the story later that night, sShe told it to my mother and Cissy in whispers. And she said it wasn’t anything quick. She said they beat her first because she wouldn’t tell them the father’s name. Then when they asked her to accept the teachings, she refused again and said “I know God and what you keep talking about is different than what I know.” Then they tied her up.

          Ms. Nadine said she prayed for her spirit all day. She asked if they could give the body a decent burial. Ms. Linda shook her head and said. “They dragged her through town tied up to the back of the car. Driving real slow, yelling ‘whore’ and things I will just never repeat.” She said when they tied her up behind the car, they all had to look away. She thought Cristina would make a noise, maybe a scream or a whimper. Cristina did none of that, when they pulled off with her body bouncing behind the car, she was silent.

          My stomach felt queasy and I wanted to stop listening. But I needed to know what happened to Ms. Cristina.

          “I think they dumped her at the rock quarry, but a few of us went there this evening and we didn’t find anything.” Ms. Nadine said. 

          “Maybe the men are lying?” Cissy asked

          “I don’t think so.” Nadine said. “When we said we couldn’t find her. They followed us to the quarry and pushed rocks around with their feet and hands to prove us wrong. After about twenty minute of searching the men got real angry. After an hour they had sweat through their white shirts and they were starting to scream at each other. Saying so and so moved her or so and so didn’t do it right. We didn’t even find a scrap of her clothing. We stayed there well over two hours looking and looking. I thought maybe we would at least feel her presence. At least feel her like we did before, but there was nothing. It was as if her body had disintegrated into those rocks and left nothing behind.”

          “And how are the children?” Ms. Nadine asked. “Did they tell them?”

          “I don’t know.” Pato said. “When we went to drop them off with the uncle. He said he had a plan and they would be fine. He took them all in a big van and drove away.”

            “After all of that, you just gave those children to a man?” That was my mom and I had never heard her so mad.

            Pato looked at my mom and she said quiet and firm. “He is not the same as our men. He was different. He was definitely a brother to Ms. Cristina.  When he touched my arm, I could feel it for hours afterward and I knew he was family to her.”

            Pato looked hard at my mom, she kept talking about Cristina, but I had stopped listening. I was watching my mother’s face and I could see my mother relaxing, first her jaw, then her entire face. She looked like one of Cristina’s babies right after they were pulled off the nipple. Satisfied and sleepy.  And then my mother said out loud. “They are all together. They are all together.”