Free Maude by Donna Mabry

sleeping that much. Doesn’t she ever cry?”
    “Not much, only when she’s hungry. I fed her
before I came over here, so she’s got her usual
afternoon sleep time. She won’t wake up now ‘til four
o’clock. Then I feed her again, and she’ll sleep ‘til her
daddy gets home. You ought to see him. He wakes her
up and carries her around talking to her ‘til dinnertime.
He’s going to spoil her rotten.”
    “That’s nice, Maude, that’s real nice. She won’t
be a baby for long. Next thing you know, she’ll be
tearing up the house.”
    Helen’s girl, Faith, was petite like her mother,
and Lulu was sturdily built, like James and I were. I
could tell it wouldn’t be long before the girls were the
same size, even if they were almost two years apart.
There we were, Helen and Maude, the sisters who
looked so different and whose ways were so opposite,
rocking and sipping our iced tea together, watching our
babies and taking great satisfaction in our peaceful
lives.
For the first time in my life, I didn’t envy anyone
in the world.

Chapter 7
    I turned sixteen in the summer of 1908. Lulu was one
year old and learning to walk. James and his father
were building onto the cabin to make a room for Lulu
to have for her own place. I hadn’t conceived again
yet, but Mom Connor told me that as long as I was
nursing Lulu, I probably wouldn’t start another baby.
That was all right with me. I wanted more children,
just not right away, at least not for another year or two.
It wasn’t unusual for the other mothers in the town to
breast-feed for three years or more to put off getting
another baby. Sometimes that worked, and sometimes
it didn’t.
    I was enjoying each part of Lulu’s growing up.
James loved to watch her and see her learn to crawl,
sit up, and then take her first steps. She was the light
of our lives. When James was home, he carried her
around or played games with her almost the entire time
she was awake.
    He was away from home some Saturdays,
playing baseball against the teams from other towns. I
took Lulu to the ball field on the Saturdays they played
at home, and she and I cheered him around the bases.
Lulu would clap her little hands together and whoop
along with me. James would tell Lulu that he loved her
the most, me second, and baseball third. I wasn’t
jealous of that, because as much as I loved James, I
loved Lulu more.
    Even if she did take after me in the way she was
built, she was a beautiful little girl, with a pink
complexion, long fingers, and rosy cheeks. Her hair by
then formed soft curls around her neck, and her big
round eyes were the same bright blue of her father. I
was glad that she took after James. I hoped that if any
of our children inherited my own looks, it would be
the boys. My daddy was a handsome enough man, but
I’d known my plain looks all my life. James told me I
was beautiful, and it made me feel wonderful, but I
knew it wasn’t true. I still compared myself to Helen.
    Neither one of us had ever received a single
piece of mail in all our lives. One Monday afternoon
that spring, James came running in the cabin with a
letter in his hand. He waved it back and forth in front
of me, dancing around. He grabbed my shoulders,
hugged me, then held me away from him far enough
to kiss me all over my face. “It’s from the St. Louis
Browns, Maude, they’re sending a man down here to
see us play. We beat every team we played so far this
year, and they want to take a look at us. This could be
it for me. If I can hit like I’ve been doing, maybe
they’ll sign me up to play professional.”
    He looked so happy. I set aside my thoughts of
him being a real baseball player, for money, and being
away from home all the time. “Oh, James, it’s your
dream come true, isn’t it?”
    We laughed and danced around the house. “I got
to tell Mom and Dad,” he said, and ran out of the cabin.
I couldn’t hold back the tears, both happy and sad. Of
course, they would hire him. My James