Blog - Sharon Marshall

Excerpt from Deep Rivers

Chapter 6--Keisha Brown, November 1995, pg. 53

Bianca wouldn’t stop crying. Everyone was looking. Keisha was on the Uptown 2 platform at 42^nd Street.

“Damn girl, can’t you shut that baby up?” someone said behind her. She was coming back from taking Bianca to see Aunt Shirley in Brooklyn. The platform was crowded. A girl and a boy about Keisha’s age were making out against one of the poles. The boy’s hands were deep inside the girl’s puffy jacket.

“Y’all better stop for you get yourself one of those.” Keisha wheeled around to see who was speaking. A homeless man with matted hair and an armful of newspapers grinned back at her. The couple ignored him.

“Mind your business,” she said.

“This is my business cause you in my home.” He grinned again. He took a step towards her. She raised her hand to ward him off. He shrank back. “I ain’t gonna touch her. Don’t be getting all salty. Them lungs of hers, now that’s a weapon.”

Bianca was so heavy—four months old and eighteen pounds. She ate too much. She was always hungry.

“That one big baby. She huge,” Aunt Shirley said. “Who’s the daddy? The Incredible Hulk?” Shirley laughed at her own joke, and that upfront gold tooth of hers that Keisha always hated gleamed. Keisha felt herself retreating, going back to the place inside where she usually stayed unless she had cause to venture out. She wondered why she had brought the baby to see Shirley. She should have known there would be no warm welcome or tenderness there. Shirley was not her kin. She wasn’t someone who loved her and could love her baby. There wasn’t anybody like that. She was just one in a succession of foster mothers Keisha had lived with since she was eight and the last one before they sent her to the group home.

The diaper bag was heavy too, and it hurt her neck. The nurse at the clinic tried to get her to keep breastfeeding. But she was scared. Bianca was so greedy. It’s better for the baby. But Keisha was afraid because Bianca was always sucking. She was afraid the baby would eat her up. She weighed less than a hundred pounds herself. She knew it was bad to be that hungry because you were never going to get enough.

She was eleven when she went to live with Shirley. And the reason why it felt like family and maybe the reason why she had gone there today was because there were two other girls. Carmen, another foster child who was half-Puerto Rican, and Jessica, who was Shirley’s real niece. She remembered how Carmen taught them Spanish curses and how once when Shirley wasn’t home she suggested that they take their clothes off and get in bed together to practice kissing. Carmen was fourteen and she was warm and soft. Keisha found out later that men have different bodies.
A grandmother lady came up to her speaking Spanish. The lady’s eyes were sweet. She was not a puta. She chattered away as though she didn’t realize that Keisha didn’t understand her.

“She won’t stop crying,” Keisha said.

“Hungry?” The woman asked in English.

“She always hungry.” But the milk was gone. Keisha showed the woman the empty bottle. Bianca wailed. Keisha shifted the weight from one foot to another. The train did not come. The woman put the pacifier pinned to the fabric of the baby carrier into Bianca’s mouth. The pacifier fell from her mouth and dangled from the string. The ululation continued. The woman shuffled off with an embarrassed smile that didn’t hide the discomfort around her heart. People leaned over the tracks and looked anxiously for the train.

"Somebody need to shut that baby up," Keisha heard some woman say behind her. She looked across at the downtown side and it seemed as though everyone, even across the tracks was staring her down wishing she would disappear. She wanted to disappear. She wanted to throw Bianca onto the tracks or stuff her into the trash.

"That’s what happens when babies be having babies," the woman said.