The Bad Luck Child
Old man in a bar down in New Orleans be telling a story, and it goes like this:



“Once upon a time there was a girl, and she was a bad luck child. Her mammy, well, the Master called her Ethel, and no one knew what name her own mammy gave her, so Ethel’s how she was called. This Ethel, she was a fine looking girl, and one day she’s working in the Mistress’ garden when the Master comes up to her tending to the roses and upshot of it is, she fell upon shame. Nine months done gone and her pains begin, and oh boy everybody on the whole plantation felt them pains. Near about screamed the hut down, Ethel, pushing that baby out. The men in the fields they worked ‘til the sweat poured down their backs, singing loud so they wouldn’t have to listen, and the women sat round shaking they heads and said it all come of mixing what ought not to be mixed and nothing good would come of it. Well, eventually nature took its course, and out popped not one baby but two. One was plump and brown and wailed fit to send the devil back to hell, but the other was shrivelled and black like a dried up pear, and she never made a single sound. The women they crossed themselves and prayed to all the gods, because when a baby kills its twin you know that child is a bad luck child. But Ethel, she soothed the live baby so it stopped wailing and began to suck, and wouldn’t hear none of what the others had to say. The women took the dead baby and they buried it where the dogs wouldn’t find it, and Ethel she named her girl Petal – said it would have been Rose but half a twin ain’t complete and it’d be lying to pretend otherwise.

“Petal grew up tall and strong, knowing she was bad luck, and whenever the cotton withered on the stems or a storm drowned the crop, people would point at her on her little mat and say, ‘she done brought the rain, she done brought the drought’. Petal just sat there smiling and hardly never answered, and folk started to say she was touched. Well, touched or not, pretty soon she was old enough to work in the fields, and pretty soon after that she was old enough to get into trouble like her mammy before her, and sure enough she did. The Master bought a new boy, come all the way from Tennessee, with shiny white teeth and skin so black it was blue. He sat in the hut that first night and didn’t say a word, but he smiled big and sad at Petal and she felt like he’d told her his soul. Old Prudence, so old she was born on the boat, she took one look at him and declared he was a devil in disguise, and wasn’t no surprise he should make a bee-line for that bad luck girl, them two was made for each other. Petal made space on her mat and she and the boy sat face to face, not talking, just staring at each other like they’d never seen a person before.

"Three days later he ran away, was halfway to the next town before the Master’s dogs got a hold of him. They brought him back his legs ripped all to shreds and tied him to a post in the yard. Petal sat with him and neither of them spoke – matter of fact, nobody ever heard them say one word to each other that whole time they were together. The end came quick, and the boy from Tennessee reached out his hand and put it on Petal’s flat brown belly and flashed her those big white teeth. Then he died, quiet as a mouse, the only sound the buzzing of the flies on his poor broken legs.

"Soon enough, Petal’s belly starts to swell and Ethel, she hangs her head and sees she bore a bad luck child after all. The women mutter dark things under their breath and keep to the other side of the hut, in case such badness be catching, but Petal just smiles to herself and strokes her swollen stomach, cooing to the dead-daddy baby inside.

"The baby comes quiet one baking afternoon in the fields, into the gray dust and prickly broken cotton stems, and Petal picks him up and puts him to her breast, and then she carries on picking, for there’s nothing else she can do. She calls the baby Tennessee, and he’s a handsome looking boy, near dark as his daddy and smiling all the while. Even the sourest of the women soften to him, and the men shrug and say maybe the devil took a holiday the day he was born.

"One day Ethel falls down in the fields and don’t get up again, thirty four and bone tired. The men carry her back to the hut and somebody fetches Petal from the well, Tennessee clinging tight to her skirt. Petal drops to her knees and begins to wail like she’s new born over again, crying mama, mama, don’t you die. Ethel lifts up a hand and quiets her, saying hush now, child, don’t be raising all this fuss. Petal swallows her sobs and sits holding her mama’s thin hand, and Ethel she smiles like a skull and says, you smell them roses, Petal? Ain’t they beautiful? Petal says, sure, mama, I smell them. Then Ethel she breathes a shallow shaky breath, says bad luck child and doesn’t breathe no more. Petal strokes her mama’s gray face ‘til all the warmth is gone from it, and Tennessee crawls into her lap and says mama, ain’t you gonna say hello to the lady? What lady, says Petal, kissing his little head, and Tennessee looks up at her with those big old coal black eyes and says, her name’s Rose. She came to take granmammy away, didn’t you see? Well Petal she freezes up and holds onto her boy real tight, and she whispers in his ear don’t you be saying you saw her to nobody else, this be a secret between you and me. Tennessee nods and wriggles away, for he’s just a baby and he don’t understand why his mama’s afraid, he don’t know he’s a bad luck child as well.

"Well time passes and Tennessee, he’s near to grown and the Mistress she says it’d be a pity to waste such a handsome Negro in the fields, and wouldn’t he look fine in a new blue uniform, a-waiting on me in the house. So Tennessee gets a shirt and a pair of cotton britches and learns how to open doors and wave a fan not too fast, not too slow. He steals food for his mama when he can, and Petal she’s proud of her boy. Tennessee is fifteen years old and he wakes up one morning on the verandah where he’s been sleeping in the heat, and he can’t move his legs. Elias, he says to the old slave by him, Elias, I can’t move my legs. Elias he sits up and squints at Tennessee with his rheumy yellow eyes, then says in surprise, boy, your legs done withered away to nothing in the night! Tennessee looks down and sure enough, his legs be grayish-brown below the knee and shrivelled like the flesh just melted off of them. Elias he gets up and says wait there, I’ll get your mama, and Tennessee calls back I ain’t going anywhere, Elias, you count on that.

"Petal comes running, shirt flapping open round her thighs, mouth a big round hole in her face, takes one look at her boy’s withered legs and faints dead away. She comes to and the Mistress is on the verandah, fretting what people would think if they saw such a commotion, this is no way to keep a house, but she’s fond of Tennessee in her way and she don’t drive Petal off. They pull Tennessee to his feet, Petal and Elias, and he stands wobbly like a new born foal, but he don’t fall down and he whispers to Petal, last night I had a dream about my daddy and his legs was all ripped to shreds. Petal she nods and says it was the dogs, honey child, it was the dogs. Why’s this happened to me, mama, he asks, and Petal strokes his head, reaching up to him, saying you and me, Tennessee, we’re bad luck and no bones about it.

"Tennessee learned to walk again, slow and crippled like an arthritic old man, and the Mistress gave him a pair of long trousers to hide his withered legs. Everybody knowed how he’s bad luck now, like his mama before him, you can hide his legs but you can’t hide his soul. Well soon enough the war breaks out and folks are saying how there’ll be a secession, and the Master and his son they go off to fight and the son comes home in a bag and the Master he don’t come home at all. Well, Tennessee being up in the big house with the Mistress grieved and alone, he hears things, and one of the things he hears is how those slaves as escape to the North be considered contraband and don’t have to be slaves no more. So Tennessee goes to his mama on his withered legs and says mama, I’m going to escape, come with me. But Petal, she looks at her son and says baby, I’m too old for such things and besides, how you going to escape on them no-good legs of yours? Tennessee just shrugs and says I’ll do it, mama, you wait and see. Sure you won’t come with me? Not with my bad luck, Petal says, you just make sure and send for me when you’re up there a free man. She hugs her son tight to her and murmurs in his ear, you get in trouble, call on your daddy, you just call.

"Tennessee waits ‘til dark one night and then he starts off half-running, half-stumbling ‘til he comes to the river, and he sets to wading to throw the dogs off the scent. Soon enough there’s barking and howling raised up in the woods all along the river bank and Tennessee splashes faster through the water with his legs atremble and about to give. The barking gets closer and there’s torches blazing through the trees and men shouting, and Tennessee falls to his knees and calls daddy, daddy! The men with the torches hear him calling and they fall about laughing, hear that, the damn fool nigger be crying for his daddy, ain’t that the cutest thing you ever heard? Well they ain’t laughing for long, for there’s a man rising out of the trees ahead, and his teeth is shiny white and his skin’s so black it's blue. This man, he’s eight feet tall and ringed in fire, and the dogs cringe and whine at the sight of him, and first one and then another turns tail and flees back to the plantation, ‘til there ain’t no dogs left at all. The men they drop their guns and torches, cringing like their no-good hounds, and the fiery man moves toward them on legs all bleeding and torn. Tennessee he gets painfully to his feet, watching from the river, and his daddy turns to him, eyes flashing red, and he roars in a hell-voice loud enough to shake the trees, RUN!

"Well Tennessee, he don’t need telling twice. He runs, and it’s like his legs be whole again, so fast he flies through the water, running ‘til the plantation be far behind, and he don’t stop running ‘til he’s in Fort Monroe, Virginia. But after that his legs never worked right again, and that bad luck boy be crippled ‘til the end of his days.”

Someone buys the old man a drink. “What happened to his mama?”

The old man drinks the drink. “His mama, well, she never made it to the North, though he looked for her up and down. I guess her bad luck got her in the end.”

“Bullshit,” says someone else. “You ain’t said a true word all night, boy.”

The old man drinks someone else’s drink, says you just ain’t been listening right, gets up and walks out on his two old withered legs. And that’s a true story, you heard it from me.