Death, and the Life Thereof

Death, and the Life Thereof 

The day Mama died, the barn burned down and we got our second set of twin sisters. It had been a dry spell, and me and my brothers and sisters had been watering the garden when suddenly Daddy came bursting out of the house with Mama waddling right behind, hollering that we better get that car started up; the baby was coming right now. Dallas and Dan fired up the engine in our old Model-T while Della and Darcy got the rest of us in our shoes. We piled in and had no more than shut the door when Daddy hit the gas.

“Hold on, Emma!” He shouted over the roar of the engine. “We’ll be there in no time!”

Mama smiled weakly, and true to Daddy’s word, five minutes later, he was helping her out the door and up the steps to the doctor’s office. The lady at the front desk of Rocky Mount’s brand new hospital took one look at Mama’s protruding belly and quickly ushered them back into a room. When some of us younger ones tried to follow, she shooed us back into a waiting room, gave us a piece of peppermint, and ordered us to stay there until someone came to get us.

So we sat there, all nine of us, ranging from 17 to 2 in age, for what seemed to us to be two full days watching nurses and doctors come and go from Mama’s room.

I guess I should probably tell you who all my brothers and sisters are. There’s Dallas who’s almost eighteen. He’s retarded but Daddy always spanks us if we call him that, so we just call him slow in the head. After Dallas come Della and Dan. They’re the first set of twins and they think they’re the boss of us since they’re sixteen and the oldest, not counting Dallas. Then there’s Darcy; she’s thirteen and probably the most annoying sister ever because she’s always complaining about something. Devin’s twelve, then there’s me, who’s ten, and then Donald who’s only five. He’s kinda pesky, but I’d rather put up with him than Dolly and Dixie, who are two and spoiled as rotten as a whole bushel of three month old tomatoes, no thanks to Della and Darcy.

I guess we all thought after Dolly and Dixie, there wouldn’t be any more kids, so we were real surprised when Mama and Daddy told us that there was going to be one more addition to the family.

We sure attracted a lot of looks from other patients while we was sitting there in that waiting room in our muddy clothes and scuffed shoes. We were all fidgety, especially Dixie and Dolly, who kept begging for more candy. We were loud, too. I know because the lady at the desk kept looking at us over her glasses and frowning. Somebody had to go to the bathroom at least once every fifteen minutes. That’s a lot of trips to the bathroom, considering we were sitting there nearly all day.

Finally, when Della had just laid Dixie and Dolly down on a pile of coats and told them to sleep or they’d get a whopping from Daddy when we got home, a doctor came out of Mama’s room and walked down the hall toward us. He didn’t look too optimistic, Della whispered and then the doctor told us we better go back there and see our mama and our new sisters. We all rushed down the hall, and when we got in the room, Daddy was standing over Mama with tears in his eyes. She looked real bad laying there on the bed. Her skin was white and her eyes were droopy. The two bundles of baby must’ve passed through our minds for the moment as we just stood there and stared at Mama.

Della and Darcy started to cry and Dan’s chin sort of trembled. I just looked at my mama and thought that something sure wasn’t right about this. Weren’t we supposed to be happy because we got new sisters? Dallas slammed his fist into the wall, making us all jump. Daddy quickly put his arms around him, his face crinkled up, and he started to cry. I tiptoed over to the side of the bed to look at Mama. She reached over and grabbed my hand.

“Dalton,” she whispered. “Watch after your brothers and sisters for me.”

I nodded my head because I knew that’s what she wanted me to do, but I didn’t really understand what she was telling me. She would be home in a few days and I was only ten. If she needed someone to look after us kids, why didn’t she ask Della or somebody older than me? I couldn’t make anybody do their chores or go to bed on time or get up to go to school.

Suddenly Mama’s hand slipped from my hand and sort of flopped on the bed. Daddy grabbed it back up and made a weird choking noise in the back of his throat.

“Daddy? What happened?” I questioned, but he wouldn’t look at me. Della squatted down and wrapped her arms around me tight.

“Is she dead?” Donald’s breath tickled my ear. My own breath caught up in my throat. Surely Mama wasn’t dead. Having a baby couldn’t kill you, could it? I looked up at Della and her chin trembled when she nodded. Tears burned my eyes. I blinked fast a few times to clear them up. Dixie and Dolly just stood in the corner looking at us all crying and then Darcy grabbed them and squeezed them real tight. She didn’t let them go until they let out a loud squeal.

A few minutes later, Daddy told Della and Dan to round us all up and take us on home, he’d be there shortly. So we all went out and got in the old car and drove the few miles back home in complete silence. We had almost got there when Dan let out a shout and pointed out the window. There was a pile of black smoke pouring up from somewhere near our house. The neighbor’s house must’ve caught on fire, I realized with a start. There hadn’t been any rain for two months and it was dry enough that anything could start a fire, said Dan. But when we got closer, I could see that it wasn’t the neighbor’s house. It was our barn.

Dan skidded the car to a stop in front of the barn and we all tumbled out. Dallas ran off to the house to grab some buckets and Dan went to the pump and started pumping water. Della shoved Dixie and Dolly in the back of the car and then she hopped in the driver’s seat and sped off to the neighbors’ to get help. The rest of us kids ran to help put out the fire. We tried our best, dumping buckets and buckets of water on the flames and stomping out the little sparks that flew everywhere and burned our arms and ears and faces. The flames didn’t get any smaller, not even when Della came back with more people to help. The water was slowing to a trickle and it was useless to try anymore so we all just kind of stood back to let the barn finish burning.

What a day. I flopped down on the ground and stared into the flickering fire that consumed our barn. Imagine what Daddy’s face would look like when he got home from the hospital. It was right then that I remembered the babies. Where were they and who was going to take care of them? I jumped up and ran over and asked Della. They’re with Daddy, she assured me, and we would all help take care of them.

It was dark that night when Daddy got home; he had a little bundle of baby in each arm, and we were all waiting for him on the porch. He stood and just looked at the barn for a minute, and then he just shook his head a little small shake and walked up the steps with sagging shoulders. He gave one of the babies to Della and the other to Darcy and then he gathered all of us up in a hug. Nobody said anything and we all just sat there, Daddy on the top step and us kids all around him, smelling like smoke and thinking about Mama. Finally, Dallas broke the silence.

“What are their names?”

Daddy closed his eyes for a long time and then he opened them back up. “Mama named them before she, uh, before she passed.” He reached over and touched both of the little babies on the cheek. “This one’s Dinah, and this one’s Diana.” Della handed the baby back to Daddy and then Darcy did too. He sat there on the top step with the new babies in his arms just staring out into the darkness where our barn used to be. Suddenly he popped up from his seat, nearly dropping the babies, and shouted, “Rain!”

Sure enough, if you listened, you could hear it hitting the tin roof on the house. I felt a big warm drop hit my forehead. We all got under the porch roof and almost immediately, it started to pour down rain. It was a miracle, Daddy told us and all of us kids, except for Della and Dan, ran out into the rain and started to twirl around. I stuck out my tongue and caught a big drop on the very end. Boy, did it taste good. When I was completely drenched with water running down in my eyes, I ran up on the porch and jumped on Della. She let out the biggest shriek and then she just laughed. I grabbed her hand to pull her out in the rain, but she slipped her hand out of mine. Then she turned around, looked at Dan, and then looked at me. I smiled real big because I knew what she was thinking, and then we both grabbed up Dan and dragged him off the porch. He sputtered a little bit at first, but then he finally snatched up Dixie and spun her around in circles. We stayed up real late that night, sitting on the porch wrapped up in towels, just watching and listening to the rain and taking turns holding our new sisters. With a sigh, Daddy looked around at all us kids. We’ll be alright, he whispered. We’ll be alright.