Hazel remembered cupping a hand to her open mouth when she first saw Miss Dawn’s backyard. Where the fields and fields of baby’s breath came from, Hazel was too stunned ever to ask, but the white fluff covered everything. Looked like snow had fallen in one particular spot in the South in early June. An old, cracked gazebo became the altar. Turned-over milk crates padded with quilts from her mother’s front room became seats.
Stanley had given her away. The morning after Myron proposed, Hazel set out early for the deli with determined steps. She pushed past the line of women already gathered to purchase their thin-cut turkey slices, their hand-churned butter and fresh, warm sourdough bread. Hazel issued “excuse me, ma’am” after “pardon me” until she reached Stanley, who had one hand around a can of pickled beets while the other held up a bouquet of river trout.
“Miss Thomas,” Stanley said with surprise in his voice.
“It’ll be ‘Mrs. North’ soon enough,” Hazel said, breathless and beaming. She held up her left hand. No one could miss the sapphire perched on her ring finger.
She heard the cries from the women behind her:
“Girl, don’t you see this here line?”
“God bless the child, maybe she’s crazy.”
Stanley’s eyes misted over, and he looked like he was struggling to compose himself. “Now isn’t that good news,” he said, and packaged the trout and handed it to the annoyed waiting woman. Took the grocery order from the next in line but kept his eyes on Hazel throughout. “Good news,” he repeated.
“Mr. Koplo.” Hazel’s bottom lip quivered. She grabbed at her rosary, twisted it in her fingers, and bit down on her lip hard to keep it from moving uncontrollably.
She thought about telling him about Myron’s draft papers. How he was being shipped off to Stanley’s own homeland to fight in a war…No. The look on Stanley’s face stopped her. So did the terrifying thoughts of war. No, she decided. Not today. She would think about the war when she was a wife. For now, on this morning, she was a bride-to-be.
“Mr. Koplo, will you walk me down the aisle?”
Della had thought it just right that Hazel should ask Stanley. When Hazel returned from the deli, her mother was in the front room. “The only white man on this earth I trust,” she said and went back to sketching the pattern for the wedding dress.
Hazel began gutting another catfish. In the ten years since the war ended, the only thing missing from her and Myron’s life was a baby. They had their work: Hazel had her own loyal customer base now, and Myron had joined the police academy. But they wanted children desperately, had built bedrooms for two or three, but month after month, the blood came—faithful as a tide. Sometimes Hazel would despair, feeling she’d failed them, but Myron wouldn’t let her blame herself. “It’s just not our time yet” was his constant refrain. “One thing’s for sure, though—our baby’s stubborn as her mother, making us wait till she’s good and ready. And when she is, we’ll be ready for her, too.” He kept the faith for them, always working on some project around the house while Hazel sewed and stitched just about everything under the sun—quilts, curtains, tablecloths, pillow covers. In a way, the house had become their child for those ten years. Until the beginning of this year, when Hazel missed her cycle for the second time in a row.
Hazel paused with a cold fillet in her hands, let out a long sigh. At first, she’d thought it was the grief. Della had died earlier that winter. Unexpectedly. Hazel shuddered, remembering how she’d discovered her mother slumped over her Singer, in the midst of mending, of all things, pants for Myron. A heart attack took her. Died before Hazel could tell her she was pregnant.
Hazel shook the thought from her mind. No more death, now, ya hear? No more, she chastised herself. There was a pain in her gut. Her craving for fried fish became overwhelming. She winced from the sharp stab of hunger and hurried in her work. Threw herself into it. She was going to clean and fry up this fish. Eat a big plate. Then take it down to Myron. Her love. Myron, who had just made homicide detective. The first Black man in Memphis to do so. She would take him this lunch. Have his baby in a week. God as her witness. Standing at the sink, scraping out fish guts, Hazel simply, understandably, didn’t want to think about the fact that she was an orphan. Her only kin on this earth Myron and the baby inside her.