Louisiana Lament

Talba.”
    Talba felt her own eyes fill up. Had he really included her too? And he’d called her Talba, not Sandra.
    Miz Clara said, “Come here. Come here, son.” She opened her arms to him.
    Once again, Corey clung to his mama. She said, “I guess we don’t have to call ’em just yet. Let’s sit down. Let’s sit down now.” She led him to a chair.
    Talba was feeling slightly like a voyeur, but on the other hand, he’d said he wanted her there. When they were children he’d been there for her, sometimes when she was so little she couldn’t remember and had to be told once she grew up. Sometimes in ways she remembered—he babysat while Miz Clara worked her housecleaning jobs.
    And then, because she felt he’d become a snob who’d forgotten the values—and the people—he was raised with, they’d grown apart. Part of that was just her own jealousy—she realized that now—and part was Michelle, but they were over that. They were close again.
    Michelle.
    Michelle who might be in there dying right now.
    She wasn’t though—she couldn’t be. Corey was just upset because she was his wife. His wife whom he loved so much he was crying on his mama’s shoulder.
    Talba glanced at the other two. They were holding hands now, heads bowed. They were praying.
    She felt embarrassed. She shouldn’t be watching this. And yet she certainly wasn’t watching with cool objectivity. She couldn’t get her heart to slow down.
    She tried deep breaths, thinking of Michelle lying on a table, her belly a mound rising out of her snaky body, her legs apart, blood gushing out.
    Worse, she saw Michelle’s face, saw her pain.
    Oh, God, I see why Corey called us. The worst thing is to think about it.
    What if they did save the baby and not Michelle? That was almost the worst case scenario. What was Corey going to do with a tiny baby?
    She felt so sorry for him it was like an ache. This couldn’t happen to her only brother. Just couldn’t. He was so happy…
    Happy?
    She had never thought of Corey as happy with Michelle. But she thought back to the night they’d told her she was pregnant, a night she’d dropped in on them unexpectedly, very late, demanding information. An entirely untactful episode, in which she’d been focused largely on herself.
    They’d stood in the kitchen holding hands, Michelle’s belly barely beginning to curve, the light shining on Corey’s bald head. And now that she thought of it, they were radiant. They were the image of a happy couple, a couple at the beginning of their lives together, looking forward to their baby.
    She isn’t supposed to make me happy. She’s supposed to make him happy.
    Talba’s eyes filled again. Who was she to judge Michelle? She could put up with her. Oh, yes. If she could just have her back, she could put up with her. At that moment, she realized, she wanted Michelle for a sister-in-law more than anything in the world.
    She had to do something. She couldn’t just sit here driving herself crazy. “Corey,” she said. “You want me to call the Tircuits?”
    He stared up at her. “You?” She knew what he meant and it shamed her. He was the older brother, accustomed to doing for her. She’d never made such an offer before.
    “Give me the number. I’ll be glad to.”
    He nodded and pulled out his address book.
    The Tircuits couldn’t have been more different from the Wallises if they’d been white. They were descended from Louisiana’s Free People of Color, who had thrived in the nineteenth century, and they were virtually royalty in New Orleans. They were light-skinned, straight-haired blacks, called “Creoles” in this day and age, and they had money. They had an extremely successful business dating back to antebellum times.
    They’d never given Talba the time of day.
    But, then, she hadn’t gone out of her way to befriend them, either.
    Only when she had the number and had gone out to the corridor and turned on her cell phone did it occur to her she had no idea what to say. She was going to have to wing it. A woman answered. “Mrs. Tircuit?”
    “No, this the maid. Let me get her.”
    A maid. These were black people who had a maid.
    “Hello? This is Ardis Tircuit.”
    “Mrs. Tircuit, this is Talba Wallis. Corey’s sister?” She made the statement a question and hated herself for it.
    “Yes?”
    “Michelle’s having her baby and—”
    “Michelle isn’t due yet.” The woman spoke with authority, but Talba heard the fear in her voice.
    “I