Beulah

How can an unborn child kill me?

Estimated Reading Time: 15 minutes

A warm liquid suddenly squirmed beneath Carlotta’s legs. At first, she thought it was Mohammed’s, but as it went between her breasts and legs, she recognized it as unearthly. Carlotta’s husband was anything but a godly man. The places she ached in could not be grazed without the taste of tequila between them. Maybe tonight was the night, Carlotta thought, tonight is the night when he would succumb to her longing and make something useful of her. But as she reached for her husband’s chest, she was met with a dark velvety liquid and a chewed squelch.

Carlotta was, unfortunately, a judicious woman; it was one of the many things that she could not shake. Despite all the years of reciting the Bible from cover to cover, she still criticized Moses and Judas, as she thought she would have done better by her God, her Jesus, her Mary. Despite her teachings, spankings, and corner punishments, she sentenced anything that wasn’t her own to a corner of her mind that only she had control over. It was seemingly obsessive, her judgment, as it permeated through the lens of whatever she could physically control.

When a random white woman would run from loose serial killers in the movies, she’d lean into her husband’s arms and question the obvious in a high-pitched whisper, “She can’t run no faster? Why she not screamin’? Ain’t nobody got ears down there?”

She would look between the screen and Mohammed, Mohammed and his legs, his legs and the movie. He would sometimes catch her and look at her with the bark-brown glassy eyes that aged into the colors of the leaves that trees bore. She finally accepted that eyes could age into so many different colors when she looked into those eyes again, and they had faded from brown to green to black.

If she were to see the way she groaned over Mohammed’s thick blood avalanching down from her fingernails to the crevices of her elbow, Carlotta would’ve scoffed at the television and turned to Mohammed while she slid her hands around the large of his thigh. She gagged as the blood seeped into the night she had bought for him ten, or maybe twelve, Valentine’s Days ago, when he stopped looking at her with those soft bark-brown eyes. She could tell that, upon the birth of their son, he began to realize she was not a good wife.

Everything was either too salty or too sweet. Her cornbread stuck to the pan, eggs were crunchy, and the oats were dry. There was always a stain or burn in Mohammed’s shirt that was seemingly always missing a button. Yet, Mohammed never yelled nor beat her; he loved her all the same, for a while at least.

It was their son’s seeming growth to mimic his mother that sent Mohammed into a spiteful silence. He no longer gazed at Carlotta’s body with those eyes that sought nothing besides pleasure; he looked now for how there was semblance in both his son’s and wife’s hips, for what was missing from her and him and them. Carlotta had not wanted to hate her son for desiring her, but it was a betrayal to be scrutinized by the only man she was not taught to love. So, to spite them both, she bought a nightgown she’d seen in a magazine. The silk, traced with lace around the hems, hugged her, and she hugged herself every time she wore it, as she was afraid to become a woman and lose the girl Mohammed had fallen in love with—or worse, lose the daughter her mother had raised. Mohammed had walked in on her trying it on, arriving home in an audacious frenzy—something about the White’s and their home burning down.

“Lotta baby?” He called from the front door, peering out through the crack.

She was standing in front of their wooden mirror, pulling her outsides inwards as the sides of her dress exposed where too much flesh caressed others. Her wide hips begged for the width of the mirror to expand, and it did as she commanded it to. Carlotta wasn’t ashamed of her body, but fearful of it. It was all she had that kept her here; without it, she was nonexistent, without Mohammed, she was nothing.

“I was tryna surprise you,” she turned away from her husband, dismayed and disgusted. “But, I don’t like it very much.”

“You look beautiful.”

He winced as his work boots teetered on the rotting wood. He had been reluctant to steal wood planks from his new job working on the highway coming into town. He had to do something, and despite James Melman’s insistence that he’d be a good man for Climax’s fire department, he had felt hopeless. All he had was this woman, and he would have her.

“You very much are beautiful.”

The only way Carlotta knew how to say thank you was to lie across his lap. And in return, he gave her Beulah.

The pregnancy was difficult. Morning sickness would triumph over any remedy her mother had advised with Thurgood nine years earlier. She found herself often crying out to her late mother in the coldest hours of the night when Beulah would stir inside her. She’d moan, and Mohammed would turn over in his sleep, place a hand underneath her rounded belly, and lift it gently. Usually, she’d sigh in relief as he kissed the back of her neck or in pain as he tugged at her underwear afterwards. Either way, Beulah would rest, and so would she, sooner or later.

Closer to Beulah’s birth, Carlotta grew infectious. She’d stomp heavily around the house, vomit unexpectedly, and constantly lose her breath. She had raised Thurgood to be too gentle, and at her demise, he’d cry at her oversized belly that hurdled between her legs, watching her struggle on all fours, crawling to her phone to call her husband or that strange woman who lived with Emmaline. Thurgood wouldn’t allow the door to open without a whimper, even on days when Mohammed would return home with glossy eyes and swollen feet covered in dirt. He whined and cried, begging for his father to save his mother from Beulah, yet Mohammed would only scowl at his son before kissing his wife’s belly.

“Only thing she killin’ is my back,” Carlotta complained, and Mohammed would laugh his big ole’ laugh each time.

She loved that Thurgood loved her wholly, with his entire soul, just like his father. It was the constant whining, the need to whimper before her, that irritated her the most. How could he grow into a man when all he did was love her and only her? She loved him so much that she beat him into silence; his screaming dwindled, and bile and guilt and mercy would run rampant in her through with each blow.

So she’d always kiss the back of his hands and neck and cradle him like a newborn whenever she was finished. It was the only time she allowed him to cry as though he was being starved of something that she did not own. Thurgood was a teenager by the time he grew out of his incessant whimpering, and Carlotta was glad for it. But the boy’s constant need grew unmoderated, which birthed a son inseparable from the womb he had been taken from. It was such that terrified Carlotta, and that’s why she shot him.

After seeping her hand in her husband’s blood, Carlotta threw herself from the bed. Her feet being tangled within the sheets caused her to fall atop her rounded belly and onto the splintering floor she had forgotten to buy a carpet for. Mrs. Taylor had offered her one that was the perfect size for the side of the bedroom, and she had asked Thurgood to call and tell her he had picked it up on his way home. It was getting late now, and she knew he had forgotten because, as much as he loved her, he was still a man. She let out a scream that was as soft as the sheets wrapped around her ankles (which she would’ve judged if anyone else had done it), as she struggled to unchain herself from reality.

She whimpered through the pain and whispered, “Mama. Oh, Mommy, help me” into the floorboards.

Then there was a creak; a crick; a cracking of the floor. Carlotta slid her hand along the width of the nightstand where her husband hid his pistol. She clutched her stomach and the gun and breathed through the sweat and the smell of drying blood, which she could not differentiate from Mohammed’s and her own. Her ragged breaths heightened the ringing in her ears, beat throughout her skull, and muffled the sounds of whatever was coming toward her.

An opal shadow then arose from one of the corners of her room, and she shuddered as the ringing bells muffled the baritone emanating from the darkness. She could not make out the words, and the body moved in a way that was unfamiliar to her. All she could see was the man’s bare feet hovering over the lifted pieces of wood before slamming into the ones beside it. She slapped the cold metal against her head as an attempt to straighten her vision, but the pain from Beulah’s squirming had grown too strong. Bile softened the back of her throat, and what felt like sweat trickled down her legs.

The bare feet stopped and stepped into the shadows born in the places that the moon neglected. Carlotta attempted to turn herself and Beulah into a ball under the bed, but she could not fit. Her hips hit the belly of the bedframe, and it screamed. She had no choice but to grip the gun tighter as the feet turned abruptly toward her. She opened her mouth to scream, “Who’s there? Get the hell out my house!” but clumps of rice and green mush had come out instead. She outstretched her arms, the heavy metal between the palms of her hands, and pointed it at the shadow man as she vomited.

Darkness began to consume her, and the room suddenly smelled like when she and Mohammed first met. It was the crunching of the bare feet tiptoeing around her vomit that pulled the safety pin from its home.

Someone gone find us. We ain’t dyin’ here, she thought.

Motherhood was the only time a woman could be selfish; she had learned with Thurgood that selfishness suited her well. She wanted to exercise her motherly right with the daughter her husband, her dead husband, had given her. I’ma do right by you, Beulah, she promised. Maybe she should’ve started with going to morning service on Sunday, and the barefooted man that she could not see would not be hovering over her, extending its arms, and her husband would not be dead in the only place she had ever loved someone.

The misty figure lunged toward her; the gun fired. Yet she only heard her son’s familiar whimpers. Nobody could whine, “Mama? Mommy?” like her baby.

“Baby?” She finally said, finally hearing. “My Goodie baby?”

“Mama? You shot me, Mama.”

“Oh,” She lunged, holding her belly as he hiccuped and shook. “Oh, my baby. My baby. My baby. Oh, oh my. Jesus, don’t you forgive me. Oh, my baby. Beulah? My baby. Oh, oh, you. Shh. Thurgood, oh. Laaaaawwwwwd! Laaaaaawdddd! Thurgood, baby, open your eyes. Yeah? You see your Mama now? Yeah? Don’t you kill me. Don’t you do this to me, Thurgood. I’ma die. I’ma die without you. She gone kill me. Your sister gone kill me, and I’ma die without you. Your father, now you.”

She whispered to him as the life moved slowly through him. She pressed his wound as hard as she could against the wall, and she watched the cream paint she had picked on a random day in spring to be painted deep red.

“Don’t forgive me,” she whispered to her son, who coughed blood that kissed the corners of his mouth. “Don’t you forgive me.”

Thurgood tried to mouth words as the blood pooled in the back of his throat. She had seen her and her husband’s blood pool on the floor, and she watched the levees of her son’s insides break and flood into the well of the only land she had ever owned of his. She would have ridiculed the way she sat and watched him die, stopped screaming as his gasps grew louder, holding his hand and sitting silently as the moon rose over his father’s eyes and her nose and their lips. It was a loud death; she heard everything from the stopping of his heart to the gasping and gurgling of the liquid in his lungs. She pulled her stomach toward her as it lurched and twisted.

“Beulah,” Carlotta whispered. “Just let me be with my son ‘till his last breath. Just let me have this.”

“Mama?”

Carlotta’s head whipped around behind her to find a man with shiny objects hanging from him. The voice she had known from practically raising it, noticing its deepening and swirling with age.

“Oh, Marshall!” She said softly. “Marshall. I shot him. I ain’t mean it, but I did it. Don’t you forgive me, either. I done shot my son, Marty. He dying. My husband. Oh, my Mohammed. Someone stabbed him. I woke up to it, his blood. That’s him touching me finally, isn’t it? Now, I shot my son. Marshall, my baby!”

Marshall took two steps forward, his gun drawn, saw the blood painting Mohammed’s entire chest, and his eyes widened toward Carlotta. If they could extend any further, he would’ve been holding them in his shaking hands as he saw his best friend bleeding into the floor where he often hid from his own parents.

“Mama,” he flew into Thurgood’s arms, “what is going on? What did you do?”

“Marty…” she dragged out the syllables, “Beuuulahhh.”

He was by her face now, and she whispered into his ear, “Beulah.”

“Mrs. Williams,” he lay Thurgood on his back and applied a heavier pressure than Carlotta could. “Mrs. Williams.”

“Don’t you wish on my baby to die. I done raised you, don’t kill my baby like that.”

Marshall looked at the woman with all the compassion he could muster as the organs of his best friend slowly pumped into his hands. Thurgood twitched beneath Marshall’s palms, and though they had not said a word to each other, the other knew exactly what needed to be said. It was when Thurgood released his final groan into the still and bloodied air, tilting his head toward the open window that Marshall screamed, “Rudy!” His chest made a squelching sound as Marshall pressed his palms further into it.

“Shit, man,” Marshall whispered to him, and only to him. “Why you always leaving me behind? Why you always leavin’? I got you. I got you.”

“He dead?”

Marshall shook his head toward Carlotta, who was holding her stomach, and his anger could not supersede the melting happening in his hands. “What you say?”

“My Goodie boy, he dead?”

Carlotta knew how much Marshall hated that name, and even in her son’s last moments, she wanted someone to kneel. Suffering the death of her husband and son, she became the woman she scorned. The one who belittled and mocked those around her because she believed that no one would ever understand the pain of no longer being anything to anyone. She was no longer a daughter nor a wife, and Beulah’s birth meant she would only ever be known as a mother.

Cursed, she breathed, I’m cursed.

As she pressed herself against the bed frame, finally getting upright, Marshall glared into whatever was left of her lying on that bedroom floor.

“What did you do!?” His voice was deeper, begging her for the umpteenth time.

He looked between her and the body, adding more weight to it and sinking further inside the man he loved. They listened to his blood pool and rush and breathe into the air. A sudden annoyance occupied Marshall’s eyes as he relinquished fate to take hold of Thurgood. At the sight of Thurgood’s blackened pupils, widened and still, he rubbed his bloodied hands across his waves, patting his head before realizing what was on it. Marshall choked down what was left of his pride before falling onto his knees, his hands seizing.

“What,” he sighed. “What the f-”

“Watch yo’ self.”

“Mrs. Williams. Mama,” He gestured to Mohammed and then to Thurgood, and finally rested his hands on top of his head once more. “What? What could’ve…What could’ve possibly? What did you or…or, what did someone come here to do? Why did you have a gun? Why is Mr. Williams dead next to you? What is going…what is going… what did you do?”

It was the first time Carlotta had ever seen him cry, and it was for someone else.

“What happened!? What is happening? Who did this?” He crawled toward her. “Answer me, please?”

“I told you,” Carlotta remained still even as he shook her. “I told you.”

“Who? Tell me ‘gain.” He begged. “Tell me ‘gain, Mama.”

“You know who it is.”

“Mama, just tell me. Please. So, I can call it in.”

“Marshall is a Marshall, sho’nuff.”

“Mama!”

“Who gonna love me now, Marshall? Hm?”

“I love you, Mama. Who did this? The ambulance coming. They coming.” His voice broke into a slight shiver. “They coming now. So, tell me who did this.”

“I told you already,” Carlotta closed her eyes. “I told you.”

Marshall stood and hovered over Carlotta’s limp body before lifting her. She leaned into his embrace as she tried to remember the last time her husband had carried her like this. Their wedding? No, before when she had gotten drunk at his brother’s birthday party. He had taken her home and brought her inside, laying her on the couch, and undressing her without waking her up. She felt her shoes slip off, then her socks, and finally her pants. But when she awoke, she was fully clothed, and the clothes she had worn hung on a wire in the backyard. That’s when Mohammed had loved her. Two hours ago, he had only lived with her.

As Marshall descended the stairs, her belly jumped and curled. Instinctually, she reached forl just as she instinctually tried to rip Beulah from inside her as one would do with an alien clawing at your insides, kicking through your flesh, parasitically eating as you do. She groaned and begged while in Marshall’s arms, and she could tell he was yelling her name, though it was no longer for him to call. She allowed it as Marshall would’ve been her son if Mohammed had loved Thurgood more.

“Beulah!” Carlotta cried, “Stop! Stop, please.”

“Who’s Beulah?”

Through her gasps of breath, Carlotta looked up at Marshall, “What?”

“Who Beulah? Is that who did this? Beulah?”

Reaching the front door, Marshall effortlessly turned the knob with one hand, opened the door, and carried Carlotta through. She twisted in his arms until he lowered her on the dewy grass, where she squirmed away from him, holding her belly.

“What you mean, who? You see me everyday, boy. Whatchu talkin’ ’bout now?”

Marshall tilted his head in puzzlement as he held his phone to his ear, considering that maybe shock had befell her like a newborn baby, rendering her useless. He kneeled toward her, reaching for the red liquid lining her stomach and between her legs. His heart sank at the same time rage rose within his voice at the reminder of his negligence. On his knees before her now, he cried again, begging for the forgiveness of the woman who raised him and the man he lost and loved, as his mind was plagued with everything that could’ve and did happen.

He opened his mouth to plead once more, when she yelled: “Lawd, this baby gonna kill me! Just take me, not her, just me.” She begged, tugging at the space between her nightgown and flesh.

Marshall dried his eyes and watched Carlotta swirl and spin and breathe as though she was in labor. The possibility of something truly being wrong with Carlotta had risen within his chest and fell heavy into his knees as he regained his senses: the bloodied soles of her feet, her clean fingernails, the absence of scratches and marks, no sign of forced entry.

“Mama,” he trailed, “what you doing?”

“Where the ambulance? They coming? I’m in labor, Marshall. Marshall, I think she coming now! Ain’t that something? Do you hear her coming from me? Do you hear her crying for me inside the womb? She just knows that my Mohammed died, she just knows it. The only man who gonna love her like a child, like the child she is, is dead. Oh, my son. My son. My baby.”

“Mama, what baby?”