But time was running out. Earle could tell that whatever initial love Geraldine might have felt for her daughter was drying up. In a desperate attempt to cure the colic, Earle began adding Pepto-Bismol to Emilia Mae’s bottles when Geraldine wasn’t looking—a drop or two here and there.
Late one afternoon, after Emilia Mae had been wailing for two hours and filled three diapers with inky liquid diarrhea, Geraldine scooped her out of the crib and held her overhead like a trophy. The gesture only made Emilia Mae scream louder. That’s when Geraldine noticed her tongue. She dumped Emilia Mae back into her crib and ran to the living room, where she telephoned Earle at the bakery: “Come home immediately,” she shouted, her voice panicked.
“Is everything all right? The baby? Did something happen?”
“The baby is alive. But no, everything is not all right. Nothing I care to discuss on the telephone. Please, come home now.”
Earle ran the ten blocks home and threw the door open. “What’s wrong?” Geraldine thrust Emilia Mae into his arms and pried open her mouth. “That,” she said, pointing to the baby’s tongue. “That’s what’s wrong!”
“What am I looking at?” asked Earle. “I don’t see anything.”
“Are you blind? Do you not see the color of her tongue? Look again!”
Earle lifted Emilia Mae so she was facing him. “Oh, it’s black. I see it now. I’m sure it’s completely normal.”
“Normal? Are you crazy? A baby with a black tongue is not normal.” Her voice rose with each sentence. “You know who has a black tongue, don’t you?”
“I have no idea,” said Earle.
“The devil, that’s who.”
“Oh Geraldine, you don’t really believe that, do you?”
“I most certainly do. How else can you explain it?”
“I’m guessing there are at least twenty other explanations, none of them having to do with the devil. Jeez, Geraldine, you take this church stuff too seriously.”
“You don’t know a Goddamn thing about my church stuff. But I’m telling you, we are seeing the work of the devil in our child.”
Emilia Mae was sobbing now, a low, sorrowful wail different from her colicky screams. Her mother’s voice was shrill, and her father was holding her too tight. It was as if she knew she was swaddled in trouble.
“Tell you what,” said Earle, trying to keep his voice calm. “I’ll take her to Dr. Rogan just to make sure everything’s okay. Why don’t you stay here and get some rest?”
“That old guy won’t know any more than we do,” said Geraldine.
“I’ll take my chances,” said Earle, as he bundled up the baby.
Dr. Rogan examined Emilia Mae while Earle told him how Geraldine saw the devil’s work in the baby’s black tongue. Dr. Rogan waved his hand as if sweeping away cigarette smoke. “Bah, she’ll be fine.”
He asked Earle what they fed her. “Have you added anything to her formula? Juice, medicine, anything like that?” Earle thought for a moment and mentioned the Pepto-Bismol. He told Dr. Rogan how he’d given Emilia Mae a spoonful now and again to quiet her colic.
Dr. Rogan had a pale, wide face with squinty gray eyes. His lips were always pressed together, as if he was trying to puzzle something out. It was startling when he opened his mouth wide enough for Earle to see his bridgework and let out a guffaw. “There’s your devil. I’m afraid the culprit is the Pepto-Bismol.” When he pulled himself together, he told Earle that Pepto-Bismol contained a chemical that, when combined with sulfur in saliva, formed a black compound called bismuth sulfide. “You tell that wife of yours that the devil, in this case, is her own husband.” He laughed again. “Next time Emilia Mae goes colicky, try a hot water bottle on her stomach. The colic should go away within a month. Pepto-Bismol! The devil! Honestly, I thought I’d heard everything.”
When Earle came home, he told Geraldine that he’d been feeding the baby small doses of Pepto-Bismol. “Dr. Rogan says that stuff can turn a tongue black. He had a good laugh about the whole devil thing.”
“Well, Dr. Rogan may think that’s hilarious, but he doesn’t live with this child.”
“Oh, Geraldine. Come now, she’ll be fine. Dr. Rogan says it will just last a few more weeks.”
Geraldine’s body went slack. “All that screaming, it’s gotten to me. I can’t seem to do anything right with her. Why didn’t you tell me about the Pepto-Bismol?” She started to cry. “Really, I’m at my wit’s end.”
“I know, honey,” said Earle, wrapping his arms around his wife. “I’m sorry. I was only trying to help.”
“I’m trying too, Earle, I really am.”
“I know you are. She’s an infant. Her tummy hurts. She wants us to make it go away. But she can’t tell us, she can only cry. That’s what babies do when they hurt. She needs your love.”
“I love her, I do. I just don’t like her very much.”
“You’re a good mother, you really are. Remember, only a few more weeks.”
“A few weeks seem like forever,” said Geraldine, wiping her nose on Earle’s jacket. “Anyway, no more Pepto-Bismol, okay?”
“Deal,” said Earle. “Can we just love this child and go back to being Mr. and Mrs. Earle Wingo?”
Geraldine leaned her head on his shoulder. “I’d like that.” She smiled. “I’ll do my best.”
Chapter 2
Geraldine tried.
She sang to Emilia Mae, songs her mother used to sing to her.
She went back to brushing her hair more than one hundred times a day, but it never got back the gloss of its youth.
She dressed Emilia Mae in lacy bonnets and hand-knit sweaters.
She worked for years to lose the weight she’d put on while pregnant.
She took Emilia Mae to the park each day and pushed her back and forth on the swing.
She tried a fashionable up-do hairstyle, but it made her Romanesque nose jump out of her face.
At night, she read stories to Emilia Mae.
She dabbed on Guerlain, Joy, and Evening in Paris, but no one told her she smelled of gardenias.
She’d read that getting angry made you furrow your brow and cause permanent wrinkles. She tried not to furrow her brow.
Geraldine was older now, old enough for men to pay her no heed other than in a polite way.
She tried to love her daughter, and in a familial way, she did. But she still couldn’t forgive Emilia Mae for stealing the part of her that had turned heads and run wild. Even her own husband, who used to come at her with renewed hunger every time they made love, seemed to have lost his appetite for her since Emilia Mae’s birth. Emilia Mae had made Geraldine a mother, and for all the poetic things said and written about mothers, no one seemed to think they were sexy.
The next years lurched by like that, with Geraldine intermittently resentful of her daughter and trying to be a mother whose daughter actually liked her. When Emilia Mae was in fifth grade, The Wizard of Oz came out. The first time Earle took Emilia Mae to see it, she gasped when the movie blasted into Technicolor after Dorothy opened the door to Munchkinland. The second time, she went with her friend—really, her only friend—Nina Tyler, and grabbed her arm every time the green Wicked Witch of the West alighted. The third time, she went back with Earle and was thunderstruck by the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion. It was like the time she walked by the Touch Up Salon near the bakery and saw herself reflected in their storefront glass, hunched over, a big girl trying to shrink herself. The Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion took up residence in her imagination as the Oz brothers as she became their leader, Dorothy. At night, Emilia Mae would lie in bed and envision them sitting next to her. They’d have conversations about the day, about school, and how she would speak out in class and bring cupcakes from the bakery to school and make friends with other kids. Although words were never spoken, she always felt that they were cheering her on, and in the morning, she could swear she saw the indentations on her blanket of where the Oz brothers had been sitting.