She had a toothache.
There was no way around it, the tooth just below her right eye was throbbing, sending thick waves of pain through the bridge of her nose. Just thinking about eating lunch made her stomach curl. She had to do something.
The thought of telling her mother crossed her mind, but was instantly dismissed. Not even getting this pain to stop was worth that…she could hear it now… “What? You haven’t been brushing your teeth, have you? I know you, this is just another attention-getting device, isn’t it? Where the hell do you think I’m going to get the money to pay for a dentist? Money doesn’t grow on trees, you know, and I’m not made out of it, either! Goddamned spoiled brat, just ‘gimme, gimme, gimme’ all the time!”
She bent to the water fountain to take a drink, but the cold water striking the tooth brought tears to her eyes. She had to do something, and soon, or she’d be crying without the impetus of the icy water on a bare nerve…and then there would be hell to pay for sure. She pondered going to the school nurse…a last resort, surely, because if Miss Connie slipped up and called her mother again, she’d be in for another horrifying week like the one she endured when the school called and told her mother to get her some glasses or else she would be turned in to the authorities for child neglect. The nearest appointment with the optometrist was a week out, and that had been one of worst weeks of her entire life. The screaming, the tantrums, the carrying on, the threats…in a week’s time she had gone from wishing she didn’t need glasses---what 12 year old girl wants them, after all?---to praying that she not only needed them, but that her prescription was stronger than her mother’s, so there would be no room for lingering accusations of malingering and attention-seeking. Her prayer had been answered, but only after enduring a terrifying ride to the clinic in which she was told she was about to be “found out,” that the doctors…unlike that gullible, bleeding-heart school nurse…could tell when you were faking, and when the eye test was over and she was revealed for the fraud she was, she was going to pay like she had never paid before. Maybe telling Miss Connie wasn’t the best idea, after all.
Her best friend came upon her leaning disconsolately against her locker, her right hand plastered tightly against her cheek. It took an exchange of fewer than ten words, and the next thing she knew, she was being propelled forcefully down the ancient, musty smelling hallway into the antiseptic-scented lair of Miss Connie, RN. She had known Miss Connie since she was five years old and she had administered the required booster shots for her to enter school…and had treated her feverish little body when it turned out she was allergic to at least one component of the shot. Miss Connie had comforted her when she fell from the jungle gym and split her chin open, necessitating stitches…and Miss Connie had defended her from her mother’s wrath “She’s not stupid or wilful,” she had responded to her mother’s furious accusation. “She’s six and these things just sometimes happen. It’s part of being a kid.”
“Toothache,” her best friend said, pointing out the obviously reluctant patient. “Thank you,” Miss Connie said to her friend, her tone of voice dismissing her. “Sit down, dear,” she said solicitously. “Open up and let me take a look.”
“You can’t tell my mother,” she muttered. “I got in lots of trouble over the glasses, Miss Connie. You can’t tell my mother about this. Just give me something to make the pain go away and I’ll be fine.”
“Mmmm,” Miss Connie said, peering inside her mouth, tongue depressor and little light in hand. “Mmmmm.” She put the instruments in her lap and sat back. “When was the last time you went to the dentist?” she asked.
“Uh…I dunno…I don’t think I’ve ever been…”
“How old are you now, dear?”
“Um…fourteen. And a half.”
“Fourteen and you’ve never been to a dentist?”
She shook her head “no.” And she didn’t want to go, either, to judge from her mother’s experiences. Teeth cleaning had to be the closest experience to torture allowable in this country! Not that cleaning them ever did any good…her mother’s teeth were still yellowed and stained with nicotine, even after a harrowing afternoon with the hygienist. All that pain and no visible improvement? No thanks!
Miss Connie was looking thoughtful. “You need fillings, dear. At least four of them.” She could feel her eyes widen with horror. Fillings! That meant injections in her mouth! She shook her head “no.” She would rather die that have a needle in her mouth! She shook her head again.
“You can’t tell my mother, Miss Connie. She’ll kill me for just coming here and if she has to pay for a dentist…she can’t afford to pay for a dentist.” She was speaking in a rush, her words tumbling over each other almost incoherently. “Please, please, don’t say anything to my mother…can’t you just give me something to make it better for a while?” she finished abruptly, unaware that her hands were so tightly clasped that her fingers were bloodless.
Miss Connie turned on her little swivel stool and opened one of the narrow glass-fronted cabinets that lined the wall of her consulting room. A strong spicy odour escaped as the door swung away, perfuming the room with its heady scent. Removing a small, dark brown glass bottle, a tiny vial, and a pair of long curved tweezers, she closed the cabinet door, leaving the fragrance lingering in the air. “This will only help for a little while,” Miss Connie warned her, extracting a tiny cotton pellet from the vial with the tweezers and dipping it into the dark bottle, the source of the pungent scent. “Open up,” she said and packed the little cotton bit, purple with the overpowering oil, into the cavity of the tooth.
“Yow!” she flinched. “Augh!” But the shock of initial contact quickly wore away, and a pleasant warmth began to soothe away the pain. Oil of Cloves the label on the little bottle read. “Better,” she said, tapping her cheek gently. “You won’t tell my mother, will you?”
Miss Connie shook her head. “But the pain will be back. Let me call the County. They have programs where you can get that taken care of for free. It won’t cost your mother anything…let me at least look into it for you…”
* * *
Miss Connie was right. The relief was only temporary. Mother would be home soon and she had the house tidied up, but she couldn’t concentrate on her homework for the throbbing under her eye. She heard the car door slam, uncharacteristically loud, she thought, but then the pain seemed to magnify everything. She swept her hair back from her face, put her sore cheek in her hand, and tried again to concentrate on the textbook in her lap. The front door slammed open and she was instantly afraid. Something was wrong. Really wrong.
“Where are you, you lying little bitch?”
Her stomach knotted and she felt suddenly cold all over. “I’m in the kitchen,” she called out. “What’s wrong?” She rose from the cot lest she be dragged to a standing position by her hair. She knew what she needed to do, and composed her face accordingly.
“What’s wrong?” came the mocking sing-song from the other side of the curtain just before it was swept open. “What’s wrong?” her mother roared. “How about you tell me how the County got the idea that I’m too poor to pay for my daughter to visit the dentist? Then we’ll know what’s wrong!”
Her hand had unconsciously crept up to cover the throbbing spot in her upper jaw, probably not the best action to take at that precise moment, as her mother grabbed her wrist in an iron squeeze and dragged it away. “Open up!” she commanded. “Open up, I said, and let me see this gaping hole that sent you whining to that busybody school nurse.” Reluctantly, she opened her mouth, her tongue involuntarily touching the throbbing spot. “Move your goddamned tongue so I can see!” her mother commanded and, after a moment, flung her wrist and numbed hand away.
“I do not know what to do with you,” her mother complained through gritted teeth, her eyes rolling skyward. “You have absolutely no sense at all. Why didn’t you just tell me you had a toothache so I could send you to the dentist? Why involve that big mouth nurse who had to go call the County? Now, thanks to you, Miss Troublemaker, a social worker is going to be here next week to check things out. If you dare put one foot wrong, you will rue the day you were born, do you understand me?” That last, spoken in a barely audible hiss, was more frightening than then the roaring bombast that has accompanied her mother’s entrance. Standing stock still, feeling like the mouse caught in a snake’s mesmerizing gaze, she nodded slowly. Yes, she understood. She understood very, very well.
Showing posts with label insensitive. Show all posts
Showing posts with label insensitive. Show all posts
Friday, March 16, 2012
Long Way Home
“Your mother will be here tomorrow to pick you up,” Nana said offhandedly, her eyes carefully focussed on the dirty dishwater swirling down the drain.
The flimsy tin pie plate that she had been drying fell from her nerveless fingers, clattering noisily on the kitchen floor.
“No.” The word popped unbidden from her mouth. “No!’ This time it was more of a wail. “You can’t let her take me, Nana,” she begged, hands twisting the damp towel, knees threatening to buckle. “You can’t!”
“It’s the end of the summer, dear,” Nana said tonelessly, rescuing the towel from her torturing grasp. “Run along down to your room now and get your things packed up and ready. She won’t want to stay long.”
The cardboard boxes were nested in the cellar where she had stored them after unpacking three months ago. All of her efforts…desperate efforts…to dispose of them, as if destroying the cartons would somehow render her unable to be snatched back from her idyll and thrust again into the looking-glass chaos of her real life, had met with solemn resistance. And as much as she would pretend that this life of predictable, rational calm was her reality, her Nana knew better…the cartons had been relegated to a corner of the cellar where she did not have to endure their taunting presence daily, but they had never truly gone away.
She flung open her closet and drawers, stuffing the contents willy-nilly into the cartons until there was nothing left to fling. She couldn’t see to pack anyway, her vision obscured by the endless fall of hot tears, her head stuffed tight with silent sobs. It was not yet dark when there remained nothing to stuff into the betraying boxes, and she sat down on the pretty pink tufted chenille bedspread and buried her head in her hands. She would not give in to the sobs…if she gave voice to even one, they would swallow her whole.
“We can’t keep you, punkin,” her grandfather’s voice came from the door. “Much as we’d like to, we can’t.”
She looked up, unheeded tears cascading down her face. “I’d be good, Grandpa, I swear I would,” she pleaded, her voice choked and thick. “I wouldn’t get into any trouble, I promise! I’ll do good in school, I’ll go to church every Sunday, do my chores without reminding, help out more around the house…” His apologetic expression did not change. “Please, Grandpa,” she begged. Please don’t make me go back. You don’t know what it’s like…”
He shook his head, the few hairs combed over the top miraculously staying in place. “There is nothing we can do, honey. She’s your mother and she wants you back for the school year…”
She held his unwavering gaze a few seconds longer, then put her face back in her hands. Dread stole over her and settled on her shoulders, a dark, suffocating weight, and she suddenly felt inestimably old and incalculably tired. Raising her despairing eyes back up to the door, she saw her grandfather had gone as silently as he had arrived. She was now entirely alone, and there was nothing she could do to stave off the arrival of morning.
* * *
It was the smell of coffee that awakened her, although she was sure she had not really slept at all. Her throat was raw, her sinuses full, her eyes swollen nearly shut, her temples pounding. No…it was not the smell of coffee that had pulled her back to awareness, it was a voice. “Get out of that goddamned bed!” the sound slammed through the closed door to reverberate painfully through her aching head. Mother was here.
She considered pulling the covers over her head and pretending she didn’t hear, but experience told her that was not the wisest course of action. The presence of her own parents had only the barest mitigating influence on her mother, and once they were alone later, Mother would make her pay doubly. “Coming!” she called, her voice barely a croak. She groped for her bathrobe and trudged slowly to the deceptively sunny, plant-filled kitchen. She noticed the parakeet and his cage were missing…Mother detested birds and undoubtedly Nana had moved him on that account. She missed the cheerful distraction of his twittering.
“Well, there she is,” Mother’s voice boomed with false gaiety…there was an undertone of criticism that would be examined in excruciating detail later, when it was just the two of them, trapped in the car together for 24 hours. “Trying to sleep your life away?”
She shook her head and pressed her fingertips to her throbbing temple. “I woke up with a headache…” she began.
“What’s the matter with your face? Have you been bawling again? I don’t…”
“She had an allergy attack yesterday,” Nana interrupted quickly. “She was sneezing all day, isn’t that so, Grandpa?” He, who was constitutionally incapable of lying, gave a brief, stiff nod of consent as Nana’s penetrating look bored into him.
Mother was unconvinced, but declined to challenge her parents’ version of the tale. “Get dressed and get your things together, we’re leaving in half an hour,” she said curtly, turning back to Nana with a patently fake smile.
She silently rose to do Mother’s bidding, her last breakfast growing cold on the table as she slowly made her way back to her room. She had no appetite, no energy, no desire save to disappear. Why did it have to be this way? Why did each summer end in exactly the same way, like a recurring nightmare that could be neither avoided nor changed? A night spent sobbing into the silence, her gentle, nurturing grandparents suddenly turning into cold, unfeeling caricatures of themselves, light simply disappearing from her life as she was enveloped again in an evil miasma. What did she have to do to make it end differently?
“Let me help you with those,” Grandpa said as she dragged the boxes out to the car. It was a new car…she wondered if Mother had wrecked the last one or just got tired of it.
“It’s OK, Grandpa,” she said. “I can do it. Go on back to the kitchen where it is warm and visit with Mother. We’ll be gone soon.” Truth was, she could use the help, but she wanted some time alone with her thoughts, some time to prepare. She was resigned now to the return, but she needed time to toughen up, to don the armour of thick skin, to polish up the weapons of her perceptions so that even the most minute clue as to mood or direction would not go unheeded.
* * *
“Allergy attack, huh?” her mother finally said. They had been on the road for nearly a hour, a blessedly silent time during which she pressed her throbbing temple against the cool glass of the side window, praying for relief…and an infinite continuation of the peaceful silence. It was not to be.
She nodded her head. “Lots of sneezing,” she said, her voice still husky and thick. “Still got the headache.” Maybe Mother would have some sympathy for her pain and let her suffer in more of that blessed silence?
“What do you suppose you got a snoot full of?” Mother’s voice was deceptively smooth, almost sympathetic. Her radar went on instant alert…there was a trap in the making here, she could feel it...
“I don’t know,” she said slowly, as if being thoughtful. “We went out to Archie’s to get milk yesterday, maybe it was something out there…” she ventured.
“You sure you didn’t spend the night bawling again?” Mother asked pointedly. “I told you if you did that again, it would be a cold day in hell before you came back, remember?”
She nodded miserably. “I’m sure. I sniffled all night, though. The sneezing stopped before bedtime. So maybe it was something at Archie’s. The barn, maybe…or the cats. I played with the cats.”
Mother's face took on a deep scowl.
Success! She had given Mother something to latch onto and harangue her about, something that would distract her from the dangerous topic that could put an end to her only respite, her summers with Nana and Grandpa. “Playing with the cats!” her mother yelled. “Well, no surprise there! You know better than to play with a cat. I don’t suppose you washed your hands and changed your clothes right away afterwards, did you?” She shook her head “no” and Mother gleefully plunged on. “For a girl who is supposed to have a genius IQ, you are without a doubt the stupidest child anyone could ever be burdened with! You know you have to clean up after touching a cat or…are you listening to me, young lady, or should I pull this car over and give you a really good talking to?”
“I’m sorry, Mother,” she said softly, “My head hurts…”
“Be that as it may, you look at me when I am talking to you, do you hear me?”
She nodded slowly, so as not to jar her head too much. At least the subject had been changed…she could endure this…there was no implicit threat, only endless castigation.
“Now, what is this crap about you playing with Archie’s filthy cats? Out there on that farm, who knows what kind of disgusting shit they have been rolling around in…”
She settled her aching head against the cold relief of the window and slid her gaze to her mother’s rapidly moving lips, fuelled by strong black coffee and little white pills. It was going to be a long, long way home.
The flimsy tin pie plate that she had been drying fell from her nerveless fingers, clattering noisily on the kitchen floor.
“No.” The word popped unbidden from her mouth. “No!’ This time it was more of a wail. “You can’t let her take me, Nana,” she begged, hands twisting the damp towel, knees threatening to buckle. “You can’t!”
“It’s the end of the summer, dear,” Nana said tonelessly, rescuing the towel from her torturing grasp. “Run along down to your room now and get your things packed up and ready. She won’t want to stay long.”
The cardboard boxes were nested in the cellar where she had stored them after unpacking three months ago. All of her efforts…desperate efforts…to dispose of them, as if destroying the cartons would somehow render her unable to be snatched back from her idyll and thrust again into the looking-glass chaos of her real life, had met with solemn resistance. And as much as she would pretend that this life of predictable, rational calm was her reality, her Nana knew better…the cartons had been relegated to a corner of the cellar where she did not have to endure their taunting presence daily, but they had never truly gone away.
She flung open her closet and drawers, stuffing the contents willy-nilly into the cartons until there was nothing left to fling. She couldn’t see to pack anyway, her vision obscured by the endless fall of hot tears, her head stuffed tight with silent sobs. It was not yet dark when there remained nothing to stuff into the betraying boxes, and she sat down on the pretty pink tufted chenille bedspread and buried her head in her hands. She would not give in to the sobs…if she gave voice to even one, they would swallow her whole.
“We can’t keep you, punkin,” her grandfather’s voice came from the door. “Much as we’d like to, we can’t.”
She looked up, unheeded tears cascading down her face. “I’d be good, Grandpa, I swear I would,” she pleaded, her voice choked and thick. “I wouldn’t get into any trouble, I promise! I’ll do good in school, I’ll go to church every Sunday, do my chores without reminding, help out more around the house…” His apologetic expression did not change. “Please, Grandpa,” she begged. Please don’t make me go back. You don’t know what it’s like…”
He shook his head, the few hairs combed over the top miraculously staying in place. “There is nothing we can do, honey. She’s your mother and she wants you back for the school year…”
She held his unwavering gaze a few seconds longer, then put her face back in her hands. Dread stole over her and settled on her shoulders, a dark, suffocating weight, and she suddenly felt inestimably old and incalculably tired. Raising her despairing eyes back up to the door, she saw her grandfather had gone as silently as he had arrived. She was now entirely alone, and there was nothing she could do to stave off the arrival of morning.
* * *
It was the smell of coffee that awakened her, although she was sure she had not really slept at all. Her throat was raw, her sinuses full, her eyes swollen nearly shut, her temples pounding. No…it was not the smell of coffee that had pulled her back to awareness, it was a voice. “Get out of that goddamned bed!” the sound slammed through the closed door to reverberate painfully through her aching head. Mother was here.
She considered pulling the covers over her head and pretending she didn’t hear, but experience told her that was not the wisest course of action. The presence of her own parents had only the barest mitigating influence on her mother, and once they were alone later, Mother would make her pay doubly. “Coming!” she called, her voice barely a croak. She groped for her bathrobe and trudged slowly to the deceptively sunny, plant-filled kitchen. She noticed the parakeet and his cage were missing…Mother detested birds and undoubtedly Nana had moved him on that account. She missed the cheerful distraction of his twittering.
“Well, there she is,” Mother’s voice boomed with false gaiety…there was an undertone of criticism that would be examined in excruciating detail later, when it was just the two of them, trapped in the car together for 24 hours. “Trying to sleep your life away?”
She shook her head and pressed her fingertips to her throbbing temple. “I woke up with a headache…” she began.
“What’s the matter with your face? Have you been bawling again? I don’t…”
“She had an allergy attack yesterday,” Nana interrupted quickly. “She was sneezing all day, isn’t that so, Grandpa?” He, who was constitutionally incapable of lying, gave a brief, stiff nod of consent as Nana’s penetrating look bored into him.
Mother was unconvinced, but declined to challenge her parents’ version of the tale. “Get dressed and get your things together, we’re leaving in half an hour,” she said curtly, turning back to Nana with a patently fake smile.
She silently rose to do Mother’s bidding, her last breakfast growing cold on the table as she slowly made her way back to her room. She had no appetite, no energy, no desire save to disappear. Why did it have to be this way? Why did each summer end in exactly the same way, like a recurring nightmare that could be neither avoided nor changed? A night spent sobbing into the silence, her gentle, nurturing grandparents suddenly turning into cold, unfeeling caricatures of themselves, light simply disappearing from her life as she was enveloped again in an evil miasma. What did she have to do to make it end differently?
“Let me help you with those,” Grandpa said as she dragged the boxes out to the car. It was a new car…she wondered if Mother had wrecked the last one or just got tired of it.
“It’s OK, Grandpa,” she said. “I can do it. Go on back to the kitchen where it is warm and visit with Mother. We’ll be gone soon.” Truth was, she could use the help, but she wanted some time alone with her thoughts, some time to prepare. She was resigned now to the return, but she needed time to toughen up, to don the armour of thick skin, to polish up the weapons of her perceptions so that even the most minute clue as to mood or direction would not go unheeded.
* * *
“Allergy attack, huh?” her mother finally said. They had been on the road for nearly a hour, a blessedly silent time during which she pressed her throbbing temple against the cool glass of the side window, praying for relief…and an infinite continuation of the peaceful silence. It was not to be.
She nodded her head. “Lots of sneezing,” she said, her voice still husky and thick. “Still got the headache.” Maybe Mother would have some sympathy for her pain and let her suffer in more of that blessed silence?
“What do you suppose you got a snoot full of?” Mother’s voice was deceptively smooth, almost sympathetic. Her radar went on instant alert…there was a trap in the making here, she could feel it...
“I don’t know,” she said slowly, as if being thoughtful. “We went out to Archie’s to get milk yesterday, maybe it was something out there…” she ventured.
“You sure you didn’t spend the night bawling again?” Mother asked pointedly. “I told you if you did that again, it would be a cold day in hell before you came back, remember?”
She nodded miserably. “I’m sure. I sniffled all night, though. The sneezing stopped before bedtime. So maybe it was something at Archie’s. The barn, maybe…or the cats. I played with the cats.”
Mother's face took on a deep scowl.
Success! She had given Mother something to latch onto and harangue her about, something that would distract her from the dangerous topic that could put an end to her only respite, her summers with Nana and Grandpa. “Playing with the cats!” her mother yelled. “Well, no surprise there! You know better than to play with a cat. I don’t suppose you washed your hands and changed your clothes right away afterwards, did you?” She shook her head “no” and Mother gleefully plunged on. “For a girl who is supposed to have a genius IQ, you are without a doubt the stupidest child anyone could ever be burdened with! You know you have to clean up after touching a cat or…are you listening to me, young lady, or should I pull this car over and give you a really good talking to?”
“I’m sorry, Mother,” she said softly, “My head hurts…”
“Be that as it may, you look at me when I am talking to you, do you hear me?”
She nodded slowly, so as not to jar her head too much. At least the subject had been changed…she could endure this…there was no implicit threat, only endless castigation.
“Now, what is this crap about you playing with Archie’s filthy cats? Out there on that farm, who knows what kind of disgusting shit they have been rolling around in…”
She settled her aching head against the cold relief of the window and slid her gaze to her mother’s rapidly moving lips, fuelled by strong black coffee and little white pills. It was going to be a long, long way home.
Moving Day
At first she hadn’t liked the little room above the bar, but it didn’t take long to discern the advantages. Mother slept downstairs, in the rooms behind the bar, and because the bar was open until two in the morning, Mother was still sound asleep when she slipped into the makeshift kitchen for a quick breakfast and scrounged something to take to school for lunch. The downside, of course, was that Mother was there when she got home from school in the afternoon, but ordinarily she could quickly escape upstairs with the magic word: “homework.”
The room was tiny, dingy, shabby, and sparsely furnished. When they moved from the little flat, Mother had brought all the furniture, but she had crammed everything except the cot and a small chest of drawers into what was meant to be a storeroom behind the bar, and moved into the space herself. The bar had a sink and toilet for patrons, so Mother only climbed the steep, rickety wooden stairs that clung precariously to the outside of the weathered old building when she wanted to use the shower upstairs. It had turned out to be a heavenly arrangement, for although she spent most of her time alone, without even a television or radio, it was blessedly silent and solitary. She had her books and even though the room had no heat and it could get a bit chilly, being only half a block from the ocean and its brisk winter breezes, she could fold the blankets in half and snuggle beneath them to read. It was the most relaxed she had been in a long while.
OK, the noise from the bar downstairs was sometimes a bit loud and annoying, but it kept Mother well occupied, and that made the noise almost welcome. She stayed “out of sight, out of mind,” as her Grandpa liked to say. She would show up punctually at suppertime and make her way into the short-order kitchen to partake of whatever Mother had cooked up as the “Daily Special” for her customers, wash the accumulated pile of dishes, then unobtrusively melt out the door and back up the stairs. It was a peaceful time and she had come to almost look forward to the end of school each day, rather than to dread it.
Spring was in the air, the sharp nip of winter beginning to give way to warmer days, even while the mornings were still quite frigid. It was difficult to choose clothes appropriately, for that which was warm enough to withstand the chill ocean blasts at 7 am while standing on a street corner awaiting the school bus, was sweltering hot by midday, and heat stroke-inducing by afternoon. Her wardrobe was spare, but adequate, her thin cotton shift dresses working well in a layered arrangement to provide warmth in the morning and an armload of clothing to drag about in the afternoons. It could be a bit awkward, trying to carry an armload of books and another armful of jackets and jerseys, but she made it work. She needed the clothes for warmth, the books to while away the long, blessedly solitary and silent evenings, and having always been something of an outsider, she was inured to the sometimes odd looks she got from her peers as she carried around what looked to be the better part of her closet.
It was Friday, the Friday before Easter Vacation. She had gone to school chilly this morning so as to free her hands up to carry extra books on the way home. She had secured permission to visit the public library on the way home from school by saying she had to do a book report over the holiday and the book she needed as not in the school library. Not entirely untrue, as she had intentionally selected a book that was too new to be carried in the school library, her actual mission being to have access to the public library’s greater selection and bring home books from both libraries in sufficient quantity to get her through the week-long holiday. She struggled to carry the tall stacks of hardbound volumes from the bus stop to the stairs, reckoning she would have to make two trips to get them all to her room.
Her first inkling that something was wrong was that the bar was silent and the doors were closed. The bar always open in the afternoon and never, ever closed on a Friday…Friday was payday for a lot of folks and Mother wanted them to cash their pay checks in her bar and spend the proceeds before they went home. The sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach told her something was wrong.
She put the books in two piles at the foot of the steps and climbed the swaying stairs two at a time. Her key still fit the lock to the hallway…it still fit the lock to her room…but her sigh of relief was premature, for when the opened the door, the room was bare. Everything was gone, the empty closet door gaping open, even the thin, faded curtains gone. She felt tears prickle the back of her nose as her breath came in short, sharp little gasps.
“You’re 16, you’re not a baby” she chided herself as she raced down the stairs and headed for the back of the bar. “Maybe something awful has happened and Mother needs help…”
But her mad dash through the alleyway ended at the storeroom door, padlocked as usual, with nothing appearing to be amiss. Except the curtain over the window in the door was askew and she could see that Mother’s quarters were also empty. Her stomach squeezed tightly and she gasped for breath. What on earth had happened? Mother, she who could pinch a penny until Lincoln screamed, would never close the bar on a payday unless something awful had happened, would she? Surely, if something had been planned for today, she would have been told before she left for school today, right? She hurried back to the front of the building and cupped her hands over the glass, trying to see inside. It was dark, but as far as she could tell, things looked neat and normal…and empty.
Puzzled, and growing more alarmed by the minute, she went to the side of the building and sat down on the steps. The clock on the parking lot entrance across the street gave the time as 3:30…she would ponder her options until 4:00 before taking any kind of action.
And then what? she asked herself. She had no money, not even a dime for the phone. She wasn’t allowed to have money except for her bus fare and six cents for milk doled out to her daily. And even if she did have money, who would she call? The whole family, except for her father, lived more than a thousand miles away. And her father? Would he help her? Yeah, he would, but calling him would just open up a whole new set of conflicts between the two of them, and she had seen the inside of the juvenile court enough times. She had no intention of going back.
Four o’clock. Still no word from her mother. She had walked around the building again, thinking that maybe, in her initial panic, she had missed the note that Mother must have left for her. Maybe the note had been blown away by the brisk wind…or stolen by some prankster? A few bar patrons came by, puzzling at the locked doors, but she could not answer their queries as to when the place would open and refused to respond to their less-than-proper queries otherwise. By five o’clock tears had begun to leak from her eyes, despite her efforts to withhold them, and she began changing her mind’s occupation from where was her mother to where was she going to spend the night. Upstairs, in an unfurnished room with no bed, no blankets, no heat? Definitely better than sitting outside in the cold. Her stomach rumbled. It was nearing time for dinner, and she was thirsty and needed to use the bathroom, but if she ran upstairs, even for a minute…well, what if her mother drove by and she wasn’t there? She squeezed her muscles, wrapped her arms around herself, patted her feet, and waited, wiping her cheeks on her shoulder every few minutes for the tears simply would not stop flowing.
As dusk began to fall and she could no longer read the clock across the street, the wind from the ocean picked up. She curled herself into a ball, huddled against the side of the building, and pulled her skirt down over her bare, goose-fleshed calves. Her hands were tucked up into her armpits for warmth and she had tried to construct a little wall with the books to deflect the brunt of the ocean wind, but to no avail. She was shivering in earnest now, hungry, and thirsty…but still did not know quite what to do. “I’ll wait until dark,” she promised herself, “Then I’ll go upstairs because it isn’t safe to sit out here after dark…”
Wiping her cheek against her shoulder and turning her face to the wall, she sighed and closed her eyes. Was she an orphan? Had someone killed or kidnapped her mother? What about her stepfather? Where was he? Should she go to one of the neighbouring bars and beg a coin or two to call her father? What was she going to do if her mother never came back?
Her ruminations were interrupted by the blare of a car horn. “Hey,” bellowed a familiar voice, “Miss Priss! Cut the daydreaming and get your ass into the car. I don’t have all night…”
Mother!
She leapt up, scooped up the books into a single precarious armload, and bolted for the car. Without a word, she took the passenger seat, the books spilling from her arms onto the floor and the seat space between them, causing her mother to give her a glaring look in the waning light. One look at her tear-stained face and Mother’s lip curled with disgust as she rolled her eyes skyward.
“Oh, Christ, bawling again. What is it with you, anyway?”
“I didn’t know where you were,” she said, a little catch in her voice.
“And so you were sitting out there on the steps bawling for everyone who came by? For Chrissakes, you have more attention-getting devices than Carter has little liver pills. You knew I’d be here eventually, didn’t you?”
She was silent a moment, pondering the consequences of either possible answer.
“Well?” her mother repeated, a menacing note having crept into her voice. “Didn’t you?”
She nodded her head quickly in assent, prepared to hear yet again the litany of her never-ending sins over the past sixteen years…which was seldom accompanied with slaps, smacks or punches, making it an infinitely preferable form of punishment.
“Where are we going?” she asked, hoping to put off the inevitable just a few moments longer.
“Home,” her mother said, and put the car in gear. “We moved.”
The room was tiny, dingy, shabby, and sparsely furnished. When they moved from the little flat, Mother had brought all the furniture, but she had crammed everything except the cot and a small chest of drawers into what was meant to be a storeroom behind the bar, and moved into the space herself. The bar had a sink and toilet for patrons, so Mother only climbed the steep, rickety wooden stairs that clung precariously to the outside of the weathered old building when she wanted to use the shower upstairs. It had turned out to be a heavenly arrangement, for although she spent most of her time alone, without even a television or radio, it was blessedly silent and solitary. She had her books and even though the room had no heat and it could get a bit chilly, being only half a block from the ocean and its brisk winter breezes, she could fold the blankets in half and snuggle beneath them to read. It was the most relaxed she had been in a long while.
OK, the noise from the bar downstairs was sometimes a bit loud and annoying, but it kept Mother well occupied, and that made the noise almost welcome. She stayed “out of sight, out of mind,” as her Grandpa liked to say. She would show up punctually at suppertime and make her way into the short-order kitchen to partake of whatever Mother had cooked up as the “Daily Special” for her customers, wash the accumulated pile of dishes, then unobtrusively melt out the door and back up the stairs. It was a peaceful time and she had come to almost look forward to the end of school each day, rather than to dread it.
Spring was in the air, the sharp nip of winter beginning to give way to warmer days, even while the mornings were still quite frigid. It was difficult to choose clothes appropriately, for that which was warm enough to withstand the chill ocean blasts at 7 am while standing on a street corner awaiting the school bus, was sweltering hot by midday, and heat stroke-inducing by afternoon. Her wardrobe was spare, but adequate, her thin cotton shift dresses working well in a layered arrangement to provide warmth in the morning and an armload of clothing to drag about in the afternoons. It could be a bit awkward, trying to carry an armload of books and another armful of jackets and jerseys, but she made it work. She needed the clothes for warmth, the books to while away the long, blessedly solitary and silent evenings, and having always been something of an outsider, she was inured to the sometimes odd looks she got from her peers as she carried around what looked to be the better part of her closet.
It was Friday, the Friday before Easter Vacation. She had gone to school chilly this morning so as to free her hands up to carry extra books on the way home. She had secured permission to visit the public library on the way home from school by saying she had to do a book report over the holiday and the book she needed as not in the school library. Not entirely untrue, as she had intentionally selected a book that was too new to be carried in the school library, her actual mission being to have access to the public library’s greater selection and bring home books from both libraries in sufficient quantity to get her through the week-long holiday. She struggled to carry the tall stacks of hardbound volumes from the bus stop to the stairs, reckoning she would have to make two trips to get them all to her room.
Her first inkling that something was wrong was that the bar was silent and the doors were closed. The bar always open in the afternoon and never, ever closed on a Friday…Friday was payday for a lot of folks and Mother wanted them to cash their pay checks in her bar and spend the proceeds before they went home. The sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach told her something was wrong.
She put the books in two piles at the foot of the steps and climbed the swaying stairs two at a time. Her key still fit the lock to the hallway…it still fit the lock to her room…but her sigh of relief was premature, for when the opened the door, the room was bare. Everything was gone, the empty closet door gaping open, even the thin, faded curtains gone. She felt tears prickle the back of her nose as her breath came in short, sharp little gasps.
“You’re 16, you’re not a baby” she chided herself as she raced down the stairs and headed for the back of the bar. “Maybe something awful has happened and Mother needs help…”
But her mad dash through the alleyway ended at the storeroom door, padlocked as usual, with nothing appearing to be amiss. Except the curtain over the window in the door was askew and she could see that Mother’s quarters were also empty. Her stomach squeezed tightly and she gasped for breath. What on earth had happened? Mother, she who could pinch a penny until Lincoln screamed, would never close the bar on a payday unless something awful had happened, would she? Surely, if something had been planned for today, she would have been told before she left for school today, right? She hurried back to the front of the building and cupped her hands over the glass, trying to see inside. It was dark, but as far as she could tell, things looked neat and normal…and empty.
Puzzled, and growing more alarmed by the minute, she went to the side of the building and sat down on the steps. The clock on the parking lot entrance across the street gave the time as 3:30…she would ponder her options until 4:00 before taking any kind of action.
And then what? she asked herself. She had no money, not even a dime for the phone. She wasn’t allowed to have money except for her bus fare and six cents for milk doled out to her daily. And even if she did have money, who would she call? The whole family, except for her father, lived more than a thousand miles away. And her father? Would he help her? Yeah, he would, but calling him would just open up a whole new set of conflicts between the two of them, and she had seen the inside of the juvenile court enough times. She had no intention of going back.
Four o’clock. Still no word from her mother. She had walked around the building again, thinking that maybe, in her initial panic, she had missed the note that Mother must have left for her. Maybe the note had been blown away by the brisk wind…or stolen by some prankster? A few bar patrons came by, puzzling at the locked doors, but she could not answer their queries as to when the place would open and refused to respond to their less-than-proper queries otherwise. By five o’clock tears had begun to leak from her eyes, despite her efforts to withhold them, and she began changing her mind’s occupation from where was her mother to where was she going to spend the night. Upstairs, in an unfurnished room with no bed, no blankets, no heat? Definitely better than sitting outside in the cold. Her stomach rumbled. It was nearing time for dinner, and she was thirsty and needed to use the bathroom, but if she ran upstairs, even for a minute…well, what if her mother drove by and she wasn’t there? She squeezed her muscles, wrapped her arms around herself, patted her feet, and waited, wiping her cheeks on her shoulder every few minutes for the tears simply would not stop flowing.
As dusk began to fall and she could no longer read the clock across the street, the wind from the ocean picked up. She curled herself into a ball, huddled against the side of the building, and pulled her skirt down over her bare, goose-fleshed calves. Her hands were tucked up into her armpits for warmth and she had tried to construct a little wall with the books to deflect the brunt of the ocean wind, but to no avail. She was shivering in earnest now, hungry, and thirsty…but still did not know quite what to do. “I’ll wait until dark,” she promised herself, “Then I’ll go upstairs because it isn’t safe to sit out here after dark…”
Wiping her cheek against her shoulder and turning her face to the wall, she sighed and closed her eyes. Was she an orphan? Had someone killed or kidnapped her mother? What about her stepfather? Where was he? Should she go to one of the neighbouring bars and beg a coin or two to call her father? What was she going to do if her mother never came back?
Her ruminations were interrupted by the blare of a car horn. “Hey,” bellowed a familiar voice, “Miss Priss! Cut the daydreaming and get your ass into the car. I don’t have all night…”
Mother!
She leapt up, scooped up the books into a single precarious armload, and bolted for the car. Without a word, she took the passenger seat, the books spilling from her arms onto the floor and the seat space between them, causing her mother to give her a glaring look in the waning light. One look at her tear-stained face and Mother’s lip curled with disgust as she rolled her eyes skyward.
“Oh, Christ, bawling again. What is it with you, anyway?”
“I didn’t know where you were,” she said, a little catch in her voice.
“And so you were sitting out there on the steps bawling for everyone who came by? For Chrissakes, you have more attention-getting devices than Carter has little liver pills. You knew I’d be here eventually, didn’t you?”
She was silent a moment, pondering the consequences of either possible answer.
“Well?” her mother repeated, a menacing note having crept into her voice. “Didn’t you?”
She nodded her head quickly in assent, prepared to hear yet again the litany of her never-ending sins over the past sixteen years…which was seldom accompanied with slaps, smacks or punches, making it an infinitely preferable form of punishment.
“Where are we going?” she asked, hoping to put off the inevitable just a few moments longer.
“Home,” her mother said, and put the car in gear. “We moved.”
Missing...
They had been robbed!
Horrified, she stood in her bedroom, the closet door open, and surveyed the bare floor where her toys used to be. Her doll crib and cradle, the little high chair, the box of doll clothes…almost all of her dolls…gone! All gone! She ran out of the room crying.
“Mommy! Mommy!” tears streamed down her face. “Mommy, somebody robbed us!” she wept.
Mommy was in the kitchen, peeling potatoes. “What are you talking about?” Mommy said, looking down into her tear-flooded face. “And why are you bawling again?” Mommy smiled tightly. “Would you like something to cry about?”
She sniffed deeply and shook her head, stemming the tears and swallowing her sobs. “Somebody stole my toys!” she said, an indignant note creeping into her voice. “I opened my closet to get hangers to hang up my school clothes and my toys are gone!” her voice quavered, and tears pricked the back of her nose. “Somebody stole them!”
Her mother rolled her eyes and turned back to the potatoes in the sink. “Nobody stole them. What a drama queen you are! The Salvation Army came by looking for donations and I cleaned out your closet. Now go change your clothes and do your chores.”
She stood there for a heartbeat, staring at her mother incomprehensively. Mommy had given them away? She fought the urge to ask for a reason, knowing to question such things risked being branded “insolent,” the thin leather penalty for which hung, innocently, limberly, menacingly, on the back of the kitchen door. Before Mommy could question her hesitation…another dangerous situation…she turned and headed back to her room.
….*…. ….*…. ….*….
She didn’t like liver. In fact, she hated liver. It was tough and sinewy and as difficult to chew as leather, and it had a powdery, granular texture, and it left a nasty, gag-inducing aftertaste in her mouth. She could not imagine why Mommy insisted she eat it…or why Mommy ate it with such obvious relish. But Duke liked it…and if she could push the pieces around on her plate long enough, dinner would be over and she would be left at the table alone. Then, maybe, she could slip the offending bits to the dog.
He was a collie, big and blonde and hairy, like Lassie. And all the neighbourhood kids loved him. Before they got Duke, nobody ever came over to ask her to come out to play, but once they got the dog, kids came over every day. At first they came to play with her “Lassie dog,” but then, later, they came to play with her, too.
Duke was like a magic talisman. He loved her, she could tell. He was always happy to see her when she got home from school, and he came to her room and licked the tears from her face when Mommy spanked her and she cried. He comforted her when she was afraid, wrapping his hairy body around her and licking her until she relaxed in his furry embrace. She didn’t care if he made her sneeze or her throat tickle. He was her dog, even if Mommy said he was the “family dog,” and she loved him.
Mommy was saying something. “…daydreaming again. Eat your goddamned dinner!” Mommy was barking at her. She spooned up a mouthful of potatoes and shoved them in her mouth.
“I gave Duke away today,” Mommy said to Daddy just as she removed the spoon from her mouth. “The people will be coming for him in the morning.” She gagged, nearly choking on the potatoes.
“Noooo!” she wailed, swallowing quickly. “You can’t!" she cried. "He’s my dog! You can’t!”
Mommy looked at her incredulously. “What did you say to me?” she hissed, her eyes narrowing down to slits. “He is not your dog and where did you get the idea that you can tell me what I can and cannot do?”
She shook her head, tears pouring unnoticed from her eyes. “Why?” she sniffed piteously. “Why? I love Duke!”
Mommy rolled her eyes…not a good sign. “Because you are allergic to him and besides, you don’t take care of him. His coat is in a big knot and I can’t afford to pay grooming fees every time I turn around.” Mommy was right…she had tried to brush him but her seven-year-old arms just weren’t strong enough to drag that wire brush through his thick coat…and he did make her sneeze, but she didn’t care.
“Please,” she begged, choking on sobs, “Please don’t give him away! I love him!”
Mommy eyed her with a look of incredulity on her face. “Stop that blubbering this instant! He’s a dog, for Chrissakes! The way you’re carrying on, you’d think I was giving Brother away!” When the quiet sobbing continued in the form of soft hiccups, Mommy scowled at her. “Eat your supper,” she commanded, sternly eying the pieces of liver still heaped on the plate.
She followed Mommy’s gaze to the plate and immediately gagged. “I’m going to be sick!” she cried, bolting from the table towards the bathroom, barely making it in time. She retched miserably into the toilet, gasping for breath between waves of stomach contractions.
“Oh, Jesus,” came Mommy’s voice from the bathroom door, dimly heard through the buzzing in her ears. “You sure have an inventive imagination, I’ll hand you that,” Mommy said, shaking her head. “But your tricks may fool Daddy and Nana, but they don’t fool me at all. The dog is going in the morning. Now fetch the strap and go to your room. Eventually you will learn not to try these dramatics on me!”
….*…. ….*…. ….*….
Nana had an aviary way out at the far end of her huge back yard. Nana called it “the birdhouse,” but it was big enough to walk around in. It was bigger than the shack they used to live in out on Gramma’s farm that Gramma now used as a chicken house. And the birdhouse had nearly a hundred twittering, chittering, fluttering jewel-colored parakeets flitting about in it, to her utter delight. She loved the birdhouse, with the warm smells of the little birdy bodies and the homey scent of the large burlap sacks of their feed. And Nana let her come out with her on Wednesdays to feed the birds and to band the ankles of the newest babies. She loved the birds. She loved Wednesdays. She loved summer. She loved Nana.
Nana had a nestbox open. “Look, honey,” Nana was saying. “Your little nestling is fully fledged now! Before long he’ll be out in the flight cage, stretching his wings!”
She stood up on tiptoe and peered into the nest. “Oh, Nana! He’s so pretty! He’s so green! When can we take him inside?”
“As soon as he can eat by himself, dear. It should only be a week or so…”
Nana knew her birds. In just over a week the little parakeet was ensconced in a pretty brass cage suspended from the hook in the kitchen dinette. She carried his cage up every morning where he could have bright sun, and where Nana could help her hand tame him. His little beak was sharp and her hands bore the marks of his displeasure, but she didn’t care. This was her little birdie, and she was going to tame him and train him and love him. Nine wasn’t too young to have a bird all your own, Nana said so.
Mommy wasn’t pleased. Mommy hated birds. And now Mommy was going to have to drive for 24 whole hours with a bird in the car. That the bird was in a cage didn’t matter, and Mommy was mad at her. But Nana had taken Mommy out to the back of the garden to talk before they left, and when she got in the car all Mommy said was “You are going to carry that Goddamned birdcage in your lap every inch of the way home, is that clear? Every Goddamned inch. In your lap. Understood?” She had nodded silently, settled the cage in her lap in the back seat…where she could have put it on the seat next to her if Mommy had permitted it, and settled herself for the long, silent drive home.
She enjoyed having the little green bird she had named “Pesky” in her room. Mommy refused to allow it in any other part of the house. The little brass cage stood on the upended orange crate that served as her bedside table, and every day she let him out to exercise…but only in her room…while she cleaned the cage and replenished his food and water. He had learned numerous little tricks, was beginning to learn to talk, and would flutter excitedly in his cage when she arrived home from school each day. She kept her bedroom door closed because Mommy didn’t like him…no point in “borrowing trouble,” as Grandpa liked to say.
She opened her bedroom door on a warm, sunny autumn afternoon and the first thing she noticed was the lamp standing where Pesky’s cage should be. She felt a sudden hard, shrinking coldness in the region of her heart as she looked down to find his bag of seed and her T-stick missing. Pesky was gone. And she knew…she knew…
“Mommy!” she ran to the telephone and dialled her mother’s number at work. “Mommy!” she cried when her mother picked up the phone. “Mommy! Where’s Pesky?”
“How many times have I told you not to call me except in an emergency?” her mother snarled. “Your Goddamned bird is not an emergency. Now get off this phone and get your chores done!”
“My bird!” she cried. “Where’s my bird?”
She could almost see Mommy’s eyes roll. She was gonna catch hell over this when Mommy got home, she knew it.
“He made you sneeze. He got feathers all over the room. He stunk.” Mommy said.
“Where is he?” she wailed, fearing the worst, visions of Pesky's delicate little neck unnaturally twisted, his brilliant green plumage decorating a trash heap some where. “Where is my bird?” she sobbed.
“Christ on a crutch!” Mommy swore. “It's a goddamned bird! Quit carrying on like it was something important. I gave it to Nick and Ida. Their kids aren’t allergic to the damned thing. Now get off this phone and get your chores done. I’ll deal with you when I get home!”
….*…. ….*…. ….*….
“Sit down and eat,” Mommy said, plunking down a pot of sliced wieners stirred into several kinds of beans. It smelled foul. “Sit down, I said!”
She looked around the kitchen. “Daddy’s not here yet,” she said, looking at his place at the table where there was, curiously, no plate.
“And he’s not going to be here,” Mommy snapped, fixing her with that “or else” look. “Now sit down and eat.”
Did this have something to do with the bloody handkerchief she had found in the kitchen this morning? It was Daddy’s and it was folded neatly next to Mommy’s purse, that fashionable basket-weave purse made of chrome spindles and stiff strips of coloured aluminium woven through them…she thought she saw blood on one edge of the purse, but she needed to go to the bathroom. And when she came back to the kitchen, the purse and hankie were gone, as if they were figments of her overactive imagination. She had dismissed it until now.
“Where’s Daddy?” she asked, knowing she was treading on thin ice and edging slightly away, out of arm’s reach.
“I threw the bastard out,” Mommy said through a mouthful of beans. “Now sit down and eat and, so help me God, if you start blubbering, I’ll knock you ass over teakettle all around the room!”
She sat. She ate. She tasted nothing.
….*…. ….*…. ….*….
The kitten was sleek, black, and had the greenest eyes she had ever seen. And her sister was the most precious calico, with the sweetest, deceptively soft little white paws. Pussywillow, their mother, was an ordinary grey striped tabby, but somehow she had produced two absolutely gorgeous little kittens. “Aphrodite,” she named the sinuous black one, for they had been studying Greek and Roman mythology in her seventh grade Social Studies classroom, and surely this classically beautiful creature deserved such an evocative name, “Calico Boots” she called the other, a fluffy little minx that loved nothing more than to frolic with a bit of string or even a blade of grass. She adored them.
School was out and it was time to go to Nana’s for the summer. She stepped out of her last class of the day and heard a car horn blaring almost as soon as she stepped onto the pavement outside. Mother had come to pick her up from school! What was wrong?
She ran to the car and jumped in, noticing the back seat full of boxes. Were they moving again? “Where are we going?” she asked, glancing towards the boxes.
“To Nana’s,” her mother answered, putting the car into gear and bulling her way into the congested road. Another car honked at her, but Mother ignored it and accelerated into the opening she had created. “School’s out, time to go to Nana’s.” Mother turned on her with that trademark narrowed glare. “Or would you rather spend the summer here with me?” she asked, her mouth forming into a parody of a smile.
She looked away, shaking her head briefly. “I didn’t think so,” Mother said with a more genuine smile, aiming the car at the main highway and wrenching the wheel sharply to put them on the road. She could swear Mother smiled at the jostling she took, but focussed her eyes out the window.
Two hours into the drive she suddenly thought of her sweet little cats. Mother liked cats, though…maybe she would take care of them? “What about the cats?” she finally said, after pondering the wisdom of inquiring.
“What about them?” Mommy asked.
“Will you take care of them for me while I’m gone?”
“Sure,” Mommy said. “They don’t eat much.”
At summer’s end, after enduring another 24-hours trapped in the car with Mother’s endless opinions and vicious criticisms...even of those people she called her friends, they arrived home. She dragged the first of the boxes out of the car and to her room…why Mommy packed everything she owned for just a summer at Nana’s---toys, books, school clothes and junk drawer included---she would never understand…and ran to the back door to greet the kitties. She hoped they remembered her… She flung open the back door to be greeted with only the bare cement of the back yard. She looked around for a moment before noticing the food and water dishes were missing.
She didn’t even bother to ask.
….*…. ….*…. ….*….
“Mama! Mama! Somebody’s at the door!” her four-year-old daughter called loudly. Hoping it wasn’t Mother again, who had an unnerving propensity for showing up at her door unannounced and then heaping her with unwanted…and ultimately ignored… “advice,” she put down her book and made her way to the front of the little house. Looking through the window she was surprised to see a stout, stern-looking, tweed suit-clad woman peering boldly in at her. The woman flashed what looked like a badge and jerked her thumb towards the door, mouthing the words “Open up!”
Puzzled, she opened the door, only to be roughly shouldered aside by the woman just as a police car pulled up abruptly in front of the house. What on earth?
“I am Mrs. Delacourt,” the woman announced loudly as a uniformed police officer took a position blocking her front door. “I am from Child Protective Services,” she proffered a business card, “...and we have had a complaint about the condition of your house and the welfare of your children…”
Horrified, she stood in her bedroom, the closet door open, and surveyed the bare floor where her toys used to be. Her doll crib and cradle, the little high chair, the box of doll clothes…almost all of her dolls…gone! All gone! She ran out of the room crying.
“Mommy! Mommy!” tears streamed down her face. “Mommy, somebody robbed us!” she wept.
Mommy was in the kitchen, peeling potatoes. “What are you talking about?” Mommy said, looking down into her tear-flooded face. “And why are you bawling again?” Mommy smiled tightly. “Would you like something to cry about?”
She sniffed deeply and shook her head, stemming the tears and swallowing her sobs. “Somebody stole my toys!” she said, an indignant note creeping into her voice. “I opened my closet to get hangers to hang up my school clothes and my toys are gone!” her voice quavered, and tears pricked the back of her nose. “Somebody stole them!”
Her mother rolled her eyes and turned back to the potatoes in the sink. “Nobody stole them. What a drama queen you are! The Salvation Army came by looking for donations and I cleaned out your closet. Now go change your clothes and do your chores.”
She stood there for a heartbeat, staring at her mother incomprehensively. Mommy had given them away? She fought the urge to ask for a reason, knowing to question such things risked being branded “insolent,” the thin leather penalty for which hung, innocently, limberly, menacingly, on the back of the kitchen door. Before Mommy could question her hesitation…another dangerous situation…she turned and headed back to her room.
….*…. ….*…. ….*….
She didn’t like liver. In fact, she hated liver. It was tough and sinewy and as difficult to chew as leather, and it had a powdery, granular texture, and it left a nasty, gag-inducing aftertaste in her mouth. She could not imagine why Mommy insisted she eat it…or why Mommy ate it with such obvious relish. But Duke liked it…and if she could push the pieces around on her plate long enough, dinner would be over and she would be left at the table alone. Then, maybe, she could slip the offending bits to the dog.
He was a collie, big and blonde and hairy, like Lassie. And all the neighbourhood kids loved him. Before they got Duke, nobody ever came over to ask her to come out to play, but once they got the dog, kids came over every day. At first they came to play with her “Lassie dog,” but then, later, they came to play with her, too.
Duke was like a magic talisman. He loved her, she could tell. He was always happy to see her when she got home from school, and he came to her room and licked the tears from her face when Mommy spanked her and she cried. He comforted her when she was afraid, wrapping his hairy body around her and licking her until she relaxed in his furry embrace. She didn’t care if he made her sneeze or her throat tickle. He was her dog, even if Mommy said he was the “family dog,” and she loved him.
Mommy was saying something. “…daydreaming again. Eat your goddamned dinner!” Mommy was barking at her. She spooned up a mouthful of potatoes and shoved them in her mouth.
“I gave Duke away today,” Mommy said to Daddy just as she removed the spoon from her mouth. “The people will be coming for him in the morning.” She gagged, nearly choking on the potatoes.
“Noooo!” she wailed, swallowing quickly. “You can’t!" she cried. "He’s my dog! You can’t!”
Mommy looked at her incredulously. “What did you say to me?” she hissed, her eyes narrowing down to slits. “He is not your dog and where did you get the idea that you can tell me what I can and cannot do?”
She shook her head, tears pouring unnoticed from her eyes. “Why?” she sniffed piteously. “Why? I love Duke!”
Mommy rolled her eyes…not a good sign. “Because you are allergic to him and besides, you don’t take care of him. His coat is in a big knot and I can’t afford to pay grooming fees every time I turn around.” Mommy was right…she had tried to brush him but her seven-year-old arms just weren’t strong enough to drag that wire brush through his thick coat…and he did make her sneeze, but she didn’t care.
“Please,” she begged, choking on sobs, “Please don’t give him away! I love him!”
Mommy eyed her with a look of incredulity on her face. “Stop that blubbering this instant! He’s a dog, for Chrissakes! The way you’re carrying on, you’d think I was giving Brother away!” When the quiet sobbing continued in the form of soft hiccups, Mommy scowled at her. “Eat your supper,” she commanded, sternly eying the pieces of liver still heaped on the plate.
She followed Mommy’s gaze to the plate and immediately gagged. “I’m going to be sick!” she cried, bolting from the table towards the bathroom, barely making it in time. She retched miserably into the toilet, gasping for breath between waves of stomach contractions.
“Oh, Jesus,” came Mommy’s voice from the bathroom door, dimly heard through the buzzing in her ears. “You sure have an inventive imagination, I’ll hand you that,” Mommy said, shaking her head. “But your tricks may fool Daddy and Nana, but they don’t fool me at all. The dog is going in the morning. Now fetch the strap and go to your room. Eventually you will learn not to try these dramatics on me!”
….*…. ….*…. ….*….
Nana had an aviary way out at the far end of her huge back yard. Nana called it “the birdhouse,” but it was big enough to walk around in. It was bigger than the shack they used to live in out on Gramma’s farm that Gramma now used as a chicken house. And the birdhouse had nearly a hundred twittering, chittering, fluttering jewel-colored parakeets flitting about in it, to her utter delight. She loved the birdhouse, with the warm smells of the little birdy bodies and the homey scent of the large burlap sacks of their feed. And Nana let her come out with her on Wednesdays to feed the birds and to band the ankles of the newest babies. She loved the birds. She loved Wednesdays. She loved summer. She loved Nana.
Nana had a nestbox open. “Look, honey,” Nana was saying. “Your little nestling is fully fledged now! Before long he’ll be out in the flight cage, stretching his wings!”
She stood up on tiptoe and peered into the nest. “Oh, Nana! He’s so pretty! He’s so green! When can we take him inside?”
“As soon as he can eat by himself, dear. It should only be a week or so…”
Nana knew her birds. In just over a week the little parakeet was ensconced in a pretty brass cage suspended from the hook in the kitchen dinette. She carried his cage up every morning where he could have bright sun, and where Nana could help her hand tame him. His little beak was sharp and her hands bore the marks of his displeasure, but she didn’t care. This was her little birdie, and she was going to tame him and train him and love him. Nine wasn’t too young to have a bird all your own, Nana said so.
Mommy wasn’t pleased. Mommy hated birds. And now Mommy was going to have to drive for 24 whole hours with a bird in the car. That the bird was in a cage didn’t matter, and Mommy was mad at her. But Nana had taken Mommy out to the back of the garden to talk before they left, and when she got in the car all Mommy said was “You are going to carry that Goddamned birdcage in your lap every inch of the way home, is that clear? Every Goddamned inch. In your lap. Understood?” She had nodded silently, settled the cage in her lap in the back seat…where she could have put it on the seat next to her if Mommy had permitted it, and settled herself for the long, silent drive home.
She enjoyed having the little green bird she had named “Pesky” in her room. Mommy refused to allow it in any other part of the house. The little brass cage stood on the upended orange crate that served as her bedside table, and every day she let him out to exercise…but only in her room…while she cleaned the cage and replenished his food and water. He had learned numerous little tricks, was beginning to learn to talk, and would flutter excitedly in his cage when she arrived home from school each day. She kept her bedroom door closed because Mommy didn’t like him…no point in “borrowing trouble,” as Grandpa liked to say.
She opened her bedroom door on a warm, sunny autumn afternoon and the first thing she noticed was the lamp standing where Pesky’s cage should be. She felt a sudden hard, shrinking coldness in the region of her heart as she looked down to find his bag of seed and her T-stick missing. Pesky was gone. And she knew…she knew…
“Mommy!” she ran to the telephone and dialled her mother’s number at work. “Mommy!” she cried when her mother picked up the phone. “Mommy! Where’s Pesky?”
“How many times have I told you not to call me except in an emergency?” her mother snarled. “Your Goddamned bird is not an emergency. Now get off this phone and get your chores done!”
“My bird!” she cried. “Where’s my bird?”
She could almost see Mommy’s eyes roll. She was gonna catch hell over this when Mommy got home, she knew it.
“He made you sneeze. He got feathers all over the room. He stunk.” Mommy said.
“Where is he?” she wailed, fearing the worst, visions of Pesky's delicate little neck unnaturally twisted, his brilliant green plumage decorating a trash heap some where. “Where is my bird?” she sobbed.
“Christ on a crutch!” Mommy swore. “It's a goddamned bird! Quit carrying on like it was something important. I gave it to Nick and Ida. Their kids aren’t allergic to the damned thing. Now get off this phone and get your chores done. I’ll deal with you when I get home!”
….*…. ….*…. ….*….
“Sit down and eat,” Mommy said, plunking down a pot of sliced wieners stirred into several kinds of beans. It smelled foul. “Sit down, I said!”
She looked around the kitchen. “Daddy’s not here yet,” she said, looking at his place at the table where there was, curiously, no plate.
“And he’s not going to be here,” Mommy snapped, fixing her with that “or else” look. “Now sit down and eat.”
Did this have something to do with the bloody handkerchief she had found in the kitchen this morning? It was Daddy’s and it was folded neatly next to Mommy’s purse, that fashionable basket-weave purse made of chrome spindles and stiff strips of coloured aluminium woven through them…she thought she saw blood on one edge of the purse, but she needed to go to the bathroom. And when she came back to the kitchen, the purse and hankie were gone, as if they were figments of her overactive imagination. She had dismissed it until now.
“Where’s Daddy?” she asked, knowing she was treading on thin ice and edging slightly away, out of arm’s reach.
“I threw the bastard out,” Mommy said through a mouthful of beans. “Now sit down and eat and, so help me God, if you start blubbering, I’ll knock you ass over teakettle all around the room!”
She sat. She ate. She tasted nothing.
….*…. ….*…. ….*….
The kitten was sleek, black, and had the greenest eyes she had ever seen. And her sister was the most precious calico, with the sweetest, deceptively soft little white paws. Pussywillow, their mother, was an ordinary grey striped tabby, but somehow she had produced two absolutely gorgeous little kittens. “Aphrodite,” she named the sinuous black one, for they had been studying Greek and Roman mythology in her seventh grade Social Studies classroom, and surely this classically beautiful creature deserved such an evocative name, “Calico Boots” she called the other, a fluffy little minx that loved nothing more than to frolic with a bit of string or even a blade of grass. She adored them.
School was out and it was time to go to Nana’s for the summer. She stepped out of her last class of the day and heard a car horn blaring almost as soon as she stepped onto the pavement outside. Mother had come to pick her up from school! What was wrong?
She ran to the car and jumped in, noticing the back seat full of boxes. Were they moving again? “Where are we going?” she asked, glancing towards the boxes.
“To Nana’s,” her mother answered, putting the car into gear and bulling her way into the congested road. Another car honked at her, but Mother ignored it and accelerated into the opening she had created. “School’s out, time to go to Nana’s.” Mother turned on her with that trademark narrowed glare. “Or would you rather spend the summer here with me?” she asked, her mouth forming into a parody of a smile.
She looked away, shaking her head briefly. “I didn’t think so,” Mother said with a more genuine smile, aiming the car at the main highway and wrenching the wheel sharply to put them on the road. She could swear Mother smiled at the jostling she took, but focussed her eyes out the window.
Two hours into the drive she suddenly thought of her sweet little cats. Mother liked cats, though…maybe she would take care of them? “What about the cats?” she finally said, after pondering the wisdom of inquiring.
“What about them?” Mommy asked.
“Will you take care of them for me while I’m gone?”
“Sure,” Mommy said. “They don’t eat much.”
At summer’s end, after enduring another 24-hours trapped in the car with Mother’s endless opinions and vicious criticisms...even of those people she called her friends, they arrived home. She dragged the first of the boxes out of the car and to her room…why Mommy packed everything she owned for just a summer at Nana’s---toys, books, school clothes and junk drawer included---she would never understand…and ran to the back door to greet the kitties. She hoped they remembered her… She flung open the back door to be greeted with only the bare cement of the back yard. She looked around for a moment before noticing the food and water dishes were missing.
She didn’t even bother to ask.
….*…. ….*…. ….*….
“Mama! Mama! Somebody’s at the door!” her four-year-old daughter called loudly. Hoping it wasn’t Mother again, who had an unnerving propensity for showing up at her door unannounced and then heaping her with unwanted…and ultimately ignored… “advice,” she put down her book and made her way to the front of the little house. Looking through the window she was surprised to see a stout, stern-looking, tweed suit-clad woman peering boldly in at her. The woman flashed what looked like a badge and jerked her thumb towards the door, mouthing the words “Open up!”
Puzzled, she opened the door, only to be roughly shouldered aside by the woman just as a police car pulled up abruptly in front of the house. What on earth?
“I am Mrs. Delacourt,” the woman announced loudly as a uniformed police officer took a position blocking her front door. “I am from Child Protective Services,” she proffered a business card, “...and we have had a complaint about the condition of your house and the welfare of your children…”
New Beginnings
They were moving again.
She sat on the front stoop as Daddy folded up the louvered flaps over the engine and peered into the hot, dark cavern that contained the rattling beast that made the car go. Mommy was fussing about something in the back of the car while she was supposed to be watching Brother who, blessedly, seemed to be very engaged in tormenting a line of ants that were attempting to march up the sidewalk to the house. The ants would find easy pickings in just a few minutes, she mused, because once the car pulled away from the cracked and grass-studded driveway, Mommy would no longer be there to stomp and spray them with the Flit.
She wondered what the new house would be like, thinking back to the places she had already lived in her four short years. She liked the wide open spaces at Gramma Janssen’s farm. She liked the chickens and Mike, the dog that never barked except when something was really wrong…you could trust Mike, Gramma said…and she liked the little goats and that her cousins lived just across the field and that they were all girls so they could play dolls all day, once the chores were done. She didn’t like going outside to go to the toilet, though…the outhouse was stinky and scary…she was always afraid she was going to lose her balance and fall through the hole into the dark and smelly pit. She didn’t like going to the woods, either, unless Daddy or Grampa was with her. Mommy said there were bears in those woods, and bears eat little girls. The shack at Gramma’s was very cold, even when there was a fire in the stove, and she hoped the chickens that lived there now had enough blankets to be warm.
She had liked living at Nana’s house. Nana had a big back yard where she could play all day, just as long as she stayed out of the flower beds. But that was OK. Nana had planted a flower bed just for her where she could pick all the flowers if she wanted, and she got to choose what had been planted there. She had pansies that looked like they had little faces, and snap dragons that had “jaws” that moved if you pinched the blooms just right. And she had fragrant tiger lilies, her favourite, and buttercups that would leave bits of yellow on your chin when you played with them. She liked living with Nana…Mommy came to visit once in a while but Nana never left them alone together and Daddy came to visit and took her out for ice cream. Nana let her pick the quince and the blueberries and Grandpa let her pull carrots and radishes from his vegetable garden for a snack if she was hungry. She was never hungry at Nana’s. She absently rubbed her grumbling stomach. It had been a long time since breakfast.
She thought she had lived some other places, but her memories were hazy, just out of grasp. Nana said she should forget about those things, but it bothered her that she could not recall. Remembering was very important. Forgetting things got you in trouble, and Mommy always had a shoe or a hairbrush or a stick nearby to “help you remember.” She had a vague notion of a dark place with a powdery smelling lady standing silhouetted in a doorway, and a tantalizing glimpse of a large room full of wood desks and chairs and brusque, businesslike people whispering words like “abandoned” and “adoption,” but she didn’t know what those words meant. She thought they were bad things, from the way people glanced at her and tried to keep her from hearing, the way grownups often did.
Then there was this house. She didn’t like it. It was creaky and smelled old. Mommy didn’t like the red and white linoleum floors, or the old stove in the kitchen or the sand pile at the side of the house, which she thought was silly because the sand pile was the best part of the house. Her lower lip quivered as she thought of Blackie and how she loved burying him in the sand and how still he would lay for her. Nana was taking Blackie to her house so he would be OK, but she missed him already.
“What in God’s name are you blubbering about now?” Mommy snapped at her from the car. “Get your brother and get in the car. It’s time to leave.”
…*… …*… …*…
She was hot. She was tired. Her back ached and her bottom hurt from sitting on the hard little wooden chair in the back of the car where the back seat should have been. Brother was sprawled out on a pallet of blankets on the floor beside her, his flushed, chubby little face glistening with a sheen of fine perspiration. They were stuck and Mommy was mad.
The old car that someone had painted green with a paintbrush so the brush strokes still showed, had overheated. She wasn’t surprised because she felt overheated. Who would have believed it could be so hot so high up on a mountain?
Daddy was hurt but Mommy was too mad at him to do anything but yell about “this old piece of shit,” and “if you were any kind of a man,” and something about Godforsaken places, but she wasn’t sure if Mommy meant this place or the house with the sand pile. When the car had clattered to a rattling, shuddering stop, Daddy had set the handbrake and jumped out to put the rock behind a tire just to make sure the car stayed in place on the incline. He went to the front of the car while Mommy sat in the front seat, eating an apple and reading a movie magazine. But by standing on her little wooden chair in the back of the car and looking over the front seat, she could see through the windshield and watch Daddy try to fix the car. He put a rag over the top of the cap on the front of the car and the next thing she knew pink water was spewing up into the air like a fountain and Daddy was backing away shaking his right hand and cursing like the devil himself. She sat back down in her chair and picked up her doll when Mommy got out of the car and started cursing, too, and hollering at Daddy. It was best to be very busy doing something else at such times.
Daddy climbed down the hillside into the ravine below carrying a little trash can with him. He was going for water, he said, but as soon as he was out of sight, she became frightened. What if he got lost? What if he ran away because Mommy was hollering at him? What if he got more hurt? She bit her lower lip to stop its quivering and sniffed as quietly as she could, but she was not quiet enough.
Mommy’s head swivelled around as if it was on a pivot. “What in the name of Christ are you blubbering about now?" she yelled. “Jesus, aren’t things bad enough without you bawling your head off?”
“There’s something in my eye,” she lied, inspired by the dustmotes dancing in the hot shaft of sunlight that filled the back of the car. “It’s making me water.”
Mommy grabbed her chin roughly and tilted her face up to the light, then thrust her away. “I don’t see anything,” she said suspiciously, her eyes becoming mere slits. She blinked rapidly and reached up to rub, but Mommy struck her hand away. “Keep your dirty paws away from your eyes! All I need now is a doctor bill on top of everything else!’
Daddy’s face appeared suddenly in the window. The oval-shaped tin trash can, painted pink with brilliant red roses on it, was in his hand, one of the sharper curves of the oval somewhat smashed into a point to provide a pouring spout. Obviously, Daddy had found water and he set about pouring it into the car. He made several more trips down the steep slope, sliding with the dirt the whole way and working his way back up carefully so as not to spill a precious drop. When the car was full again and the engine started, she heaved a sigh of relief and sat back down in her little wooden chair.
“You stink,” Mommy said from the front seat and she looked up, sniffing the air slightly. Had Brother done a nasty in his pants while he slept? Mommy was talking to Daddy. “For Chrissake, Eddie, the least you could do is rinse off a little and dust yourself off. Now I have to ride with your stink for another…what?...four hours?”
Four hours? They would be there in four hours? She felt her stomach knot with anticipation and dread as the old car clattered and banged its way back on to the highway and began its slow chugging ascent of the long hill ahead.
“I’m hot,” she whined from the back of the car, the sun beating down through the open window. “Can I have a drink of water?”
“Well, la-de-dah!” Mommy snapped from the front seat. “Like the rest of us aren’t hot, too. No, Miss Princess, you can’t have a drink of water. If the radiator blows again, we’ll need every drop of water we have to get us out of this Godforsaken place! Now find yourself something to do and knock off that whining!”
She sat back down on the little chair, the sun-baked seat scorching the tender backs of her thighs. She couldn’t see anything to use to wipe the sweat from her face, so she surreptitiously lifted a corner of her hem and blotted her brow and upper lip, watching to make sure Mommy didn’t catch her. But Mommy was busy yelling at Daddy again. She wondered briefly why Mommy yelled so much, why she didn’t just talk.
She looked down at the floor of the car by her feet. Brother was still sleeping…he could sleep through anything…a damp halo darkened the blanket beneath his head. She wished she could sleep, but once awake in the morning, she was unable to sleep again until it was dark…unless she was sick. But the motion of the car was making her drowsy…she blotted her face with the hem again. Her stomach was a little queasy…but she never got carsick like her stupid cousin Sally…except that one time in Nana’s car. Her face reddened with remembered humiliation. She slid off the hard little chair and lay down beside Brother, hoping he would not kick or punch one of her bruises in his sleep…they were sore enough already. She closed her eyes, thinking about the cold glass of water she would ask for…in four hours…when they got there…wherever “there” was.
She sat on the front stoop as Daddy folded up the louvered flaps over the engine and peered into the hot, dark cavern that contained the rattling beast that made the car go. Mommy was fussing about something in the back of the car while she was supposed to be watching Brother who, blessedly, seemed to be very engaged in tormenting a line of ants that were attempting to march up the sidewalk to the house. The ants would find easy pickings in just a few minutes, she mused, because once the car pulled away from the cracked and grass-studded driveway, Mommy would no longer be there to stomp and spray them with the Flit.
She wondered what the new house would be like, thinking back to the places she had already lived in her four short years. She liked the wide open spaces at Gramma Janssen’s farm. She liked the chickens and Mike, the dog that never barked except when something was really wrong…you could trust Mike, Gramma said…and she liked the little goats and that her cousins lived just across the field and that they were all girls so they could play dolls all day, once the chores were done. She didn’t like going outside to go to the toilet, though…the outhouse was stinky and scary…she was always afraid she was going to lose her balance and fall through the hole into the dark and smelly pit. She didn’t like going to the woods, either, unless Daddy or Grampa was with her. Mommy said there were bears in those woods, and bears eat little girls. The shack at Gramma’s was very cold, even when there was a fire in the stove, and she hoped the chickens that lived there now had enough blankets to be warm.
She had liked living at Nana’s house. Nana had a big back yard where she could play all day, just as long as she stayed out of the flower beds. But that was OK. Nana had planted a flower bed just for her where she could pick all the flowers if she wanted, and she got to choose what had been planted there. She had pansies that looked like they had little faces, and snap dragons that had “jaws” that moved if you pinched the blooms just right. And she had fragrant tiger lilies, her favourite, and buttercups that would leave bits of yellow on your chin when you played with them. She liked living with Nana…Mommy came to visit once in a while but Nana never left them alone together and Daddy came to visit and took her out for ice cream. Nana let her pick the quince and the blueberries and Grandpa let her pull carrots and radishes from his vegetable garden for a snack if she was hungry. She was never hungry at Nana’s. She absently rubbed her grumbling stomach. It had been a long time since breakfast.
She thought she had lived some other places, but her memories were hazy, just out of grasp. Nana said she should forget about those things, but it bothered her that she could not recall. Remembering was very important. Forgetting things got you in trouble, and Mommy always had a shoe or a hairbrush or a stick nearby to “help you remember.” She had a vague notion of a dark place with a powdery smelling lady standing silhouetted in a doorway, and a tantalizing glimpse of a large room full of wood desks and chairs and brusque, businesslike people whispering words like “abandoned” and “adoption,” but she didn’t know what those words meant. She thought they were bad things, from the way people glanced at her and tried to keep her from hearing, the way grownups often did.
Then there was this house. She didn’t like it. It was creaky and smelled old. Mommy didn’t like the red and white linoleum floors, or the old stove in the kitchen or the sand pile at the side of the house, which she thought was silly because the sand pile was the best part of the house. Her lower lip quivered as she thought of Blackie and how she loved burying him in the sand and how still he would lay for her. Nana was taking Blackie to her house so he would be OK, but she missed him already.
“What in God’s name are you blubbering about now?” Mommy snapped at her from the car. “Get your brother and get in the car. It’s time to leave.”
…*… …*… …*…
She was hot. She was tired. Her back ached and her bottom hurt from sitting on the hard little wooden chair in the back of the car where the back seat should have been. Brother was sprawled out on a pallet of blankets on the floor beside her, his flushed, chubby little face glistening with a sheen of fine perspiration. They were stuck and Mommy was mad.
The old car that someone had painted green with a paintbrush so the brush strokes still showed, had overheated. She wasn’t surprised because she felt overheated. Who would have believed it could be so hot so high up on a mountain?
Daddy was hurt but Mommy was too mad at him to do anything but yell about “this old piece of shit,” and “if you were any kind of a man,” and something about Godforsaken places, but she wasn’t sure if Mommy meant this place or the house with the sand pile. When the car had clattered to a rattling, shuddering stop, Daddy had set the handbrake and jumped out to put the rock behind a tire just to make sure the car stayed in place on the incline. He went to the front of the car while Mommy sat in the front seat, eating an apple and reading a movie magazine. But by standing on her little wooden chair in the back of the car and looking over the front seat, she could see through the windshield and watch Daddy try to fix the car. He put a rag over the top of the cap on the front of the car and the next thing she knew pink water was spewing up into the air like a fountain and Daddy was backing away shaking his right hand and cursing like the devil himself. She sat back down in her chair and picked up her doll when Mommy got out of the car and started cursing, too, and hollering at Daddy. It was best to be very busy doing something else at such times.
Daddy climbed down the hillside into the ravine below carrying a little trash can with him. He was going for water, he said, but as soon as he was out of sight, she became frightened. What if he got lost? What if he ran away because Mommy was hollering at him? What if he got more hurt? She bit her lower lip to stop its quivering and sniffed as quietly as she could, but she was not quiet enough.
Mommy’s head swivelled around as if it was on a pivot. “What in the name of Christ are you blubbering about now?" she yelled. “Jesus, aren’t things bad enough without you bawling your head off?”
“There’s something in my eye,” she lied, inspired by the dustmotes dancing in the hot shaft of sunlight that filled the back of the car. “It’s making me water.”
Mommy grabbed her chin roughly and tilted her face up to the light, then thrust her away. “I don’t see anything,” she said suspiciously, her eyes becoming mere slits. She blinked rapidly and reached up to rub, but Mommy struck her hand away. “Keep your dirty paws away from your eyes! All I need now is a doctor bill on top of everything else!’
Daddy’s face appeared suddenly in the window. The oval-shaped tin trash can, painted pink with brilliant red roses on it, was in his hand, one of the sharper curves of the oval somewhat smashed into a point to provide a pouring spout. Obviously, Daddy had found water and he set about pouring it into the car. He made several more trips down the steep slope, sliding with the dirt the whole way and working his way back up carefully so as not to spill a precious drop. When the car was full again and the engine started, she heaved a sigh of relief and sat back down in her little wooden chair.
“You stink,” Mommy said from the front seat and she looked up, sniffing the air slightly. Had Brother done a nasty in his pants while he slept? Mommy was talking to Daddy. “For Chrissake, Eddie, the least you could do is rinse off a little and dust yourself off. Now I have to ride with your stink for another…what?...four hours?”
Four hours? They would be there in four hours? She felt her stomach knot with anticipation and dread as the old car clattered and banged its way back on to the highway and began its slow chugging ascent of the long hill ahead.
“I’m hot,” she whined from the back of the car, the sun beating down through the open window. “Can I have a drink of water?”
“Well, la-de-dah!” Mommy snapped from the front seat. “Like the rest of us aren’t hot, too. No, Miss Princess, you can’t have a drink of water. If the radiator blows again, we’ll need every drop of water we have to get us out of this Godforsaken place! Now find yourself something to do and knock off that whining!”
She sat back down on the little chair, the sun-baked seat scorching the tender backs of her thighs. She couldn’t see anything to use to wipe the sweat from her face, so she surreptitiously lifted a corner of her hem and blotted her brow and upper lip, watching to make sure Mommy didn’t catch her. But Mommy was busy yelling at Daddy again. She wondered briefly why Mommy yelled so much, why she didn’t just talk.
She looked down at the floor of the car by her feet. Brother was still sleeping…he could sleep through anything…a damp halo darkened the blanket beneath his head. She wished she could sleep, but once awake in the morning, she was unable to sleep again until it was dark…unless she was sick. But the motion of the car was making her drowsy…she blotted her face with the hem again. Her stomach was a little queasy…but she never got carsick like her stupid cousin Sally…except that one time in Nana’s car. Her face reddened with remembered humiliation. She slid off the hard little chair and lay down beside Brother, hoping he would not kick or punch one of her bruises in his sleep…they were sore enough already. She closed her eyes, thinking about the cold glass of water she would ask for…in four hours…when they got there…wherever “there” was.
Doctor's Visit
She had never felt so humiliated, so embarrassed, so absolutely mortified in her entire life. Half-propelled, half-carried by the Boy’s Vice Principal, she was sped through the corridors of the school, listening to the man mutter imprecations under his breath that she could just barely hear but did not fully understand.
“Miss Cornelius!” he shouted, coming to a halt in front of the school nurse’s door. “Miss Cornelius, open the door!” She shuddered in his grasp, reminded of Mother.
Like an animated Impressionist painting, indistinct colours began to wave and pulse behind the pebbled glass in the top half of the door. Pinkish flesh tones surged and receded with a swath of sterile white as Miss Connie unlocked the office door, releasing a wave of antiseptic and clove oil scents. She felt herself thrust forward and she stumbled weakly into Miss Connie’s surprised embrace. “I found her in the telephone booth, draped over the stool. She can barely stand. I think she’s drunk,” Mr. Rathburn’s sternly disapproving voice floated in and out of her ears. “Report to me when you have this under control.” She heard the glass door pane rattle and felt the concussion of Mr. Rathburn’s slammed exit.
“What’s wrong with you, dear?” Miss Connie said gently, wiping her straggling damp hair back from her eyes. “You don’t smell like you’ve been drinking.” Miss Connie helped her to a chair where she gratefully sat down, her knees being unaccountably unreliable today.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I just feel real tired. I can’t hardly stand up.”
“What were you doing in the phone booth?” Miss Connie inquired.
“Resting.”
At the nurse’s puzzled look, she mustered up the effort to frame a more complete reply. “I was on my way here. My legs were just so tired, I had to rest for a minute. But Mr. Rathburn caught me.”
Miss Connie nodded in that slow, comforting way of hers and drew a thermometer out of the little glass beaker full of alcohol in the nearest cabinet. “Open up,” she said. “Let’s see what is going on.”
She sat quietly for a moment, then sat up with alarm. “I need a sanitary pad,” she said urgently, pulling the thermometer from her mouth. “Right now!” If she got blood on another pair of panties, Mother was going to kill her!
Miss Connie looked puzzled for a moment, then handed her the necessary supplies, waiting at the door of the tiny antiseptic closet of a bathroom for her to come back out.
“Lie down on one of the cots, dear,” Miss Connie directed her, popping the thermometer back in her mouth. “Tell me about your periods…”
She wasn’t sure when she dropped off to sleep, but from a fuzzy, hazy place she could hear Miss Connie’s voice in the distance, soft and quiet. “I was right about the pneumonia last term, wasn’t I?” she was saying. “Believe me, Mrs. Janssen, your daughter is quite ill and needs to see a doctor immediately. Her period has been going on for three weeks and this is simply not normal.” There was a pause and then the nurse’s voice resumed, stronger and more commanding this time. “The child is haemorrhaging, Mrs. Janssen. I have seen it with my own eyes. Now, if you are not prepared to take her to a physician this afternoon, I will call Child Protective Services and they will pick her up and take her to the County Hospital for treatment. Do I make myself clear?”
She sighed. She wished Miss Connie had not called her mother. There was going to be hell to pay when she got hold of her, and probably another spanking for tattling to the nurse. She sighed again and pulled up the blanket. She was cold. She didn’t care. She was too tired to care.
* * *
Mother had a death grip on her hair and her head was yanked back so that her neck felt like it was breaking. “All right, you little tramp, who was it?” she hissed.
After silently helping Miss Connie put her in the car and carefully pulling away from the curb, Mother drove a mile or so away from the school then pulled the car over with a jerk. “Don’t pull that Miss-Innocent-I-Don’t-Know-What-You-Are-Talking-About act on me, you little slut. You may be able to fool your father and your grandparents and even that dimwit nurse, but you sure as hell don’t fool me!” She had no idea what Mother was talking about, but her eyes spouted tears as her head was dragged even further back.
Mother jerked her head back and forth by the fistful of hair she gripped. “Who was it?” she shouted. “I swear to God I’ll get his name out of you and I will sue his parents for every dime they have and ever will have! You are only thirteen years old and that’s statutory rape, your consent doesn’t mean shit in a court!” Mother thrust her suddenly away, her head banging painfully against the window.
“I don’t understand…” she began.
“Do not give me that!” Mother raged, pulling the car back out into traffic with a sharp yank of the wheel. “You Goddamned well understand, and perfectly. I was not born yesterday, I know the symptoms of a miscarriage when I hear them, and you, missy, are well and truly caught! Hoist by your own petard!”
Miscarriage?
“I called your father…do you think I have the money to pay one of these big-time doctors to take care of this? Your precious father,” Mother sneered the words “said that if you were pregnant at thirteen, you were no daughter of his. How’s that for you?” Mother finished with a smug, cat-that-ate-the-canary smile. She was too tired to care.
The doctor was a stranger. She wasn’t sure why Mother had chosen a strange doctor in Las Brisas…this guy had to be expensive---everything in Las Brisas was expensive…rather than Dr. Byrd, their regular doctor. Mother hurried her in through the back door of the office and directly into an examining room. Just as well, she didn’t want to fall over asleep in the reception room. She was so tired!
She struggled out of her clothes and into the stiff white examining gown and sat shivering on the table. The doctor came in and spoke quietly with Mother in a corner for a moment and Mother handed him a white envelope, which he put in a drawer near the examining table. When he came to the side of the table he looked at her briefly, then back at Mother, who nodded silently. “Lay back on the table,” he said. “Bend your knees and scoot your bottom down to the edge.”
* * *
Someone was screaming. She could hear someone screaming. Why didn’t anyone help? She couldn’t breathe, something heavy was on her chest, and her arms and legs were tangled up in the blankets so she couldn’t move. She hated nightmares like this, where she couldn’t move, she couldn’t cry out for help…wait…that screaming…she was screaming. What was going on? Another lick of fire stroked through her lower belly and another scream boiled up and ripped its way out of her throat. It was Mother on her chest…that’s why she couldn’t breathe! “Mommy! Mommy!” she cried desperately. “Mommy! It hurts! Help me!”
Mother just pressed down harder and fixed her with a look that promised murder. “Shut your mouth!” she commanded in a deep, hushed voice, hazel eyes boring into blue. “If you make another sound I will beat you absolutely stupid when we get home, do you hear me?” Before she could nod a streak of searing fire blazed through her belly again but when she opened her mouth a tongue depressor was thrust between her jaws and a strange voice said “Bite.” She bit the stick in half, the muffled shriek finding its way out through her nose. Another wave of pain washed over her but before she could make a sound she saw stars and black and then nothing at all.
“Her hymen was intact,” she faintly heard a man’s voice in the distance, “…just an infection…sometimes just happens....” She thought she heard Mother’s voice but she wasn’t sure, for the blessedly soft blackness came back and embraced her.
“Get up and get dressed, you goldbricking little bitch,” Mother hissed in her ear. “Knock that shit off…they didn’t give you any gas, so I know you’re not knocked out. Stop with the dramatics and get your clothes on!”
She struggled to a sitting position on the narrow table, a thick wad of something jammed between her legs. Her wrists were sore, her throat felt torn open, and her lower belly was on fire inside. She doubled over with a sudden cramp and Mother caught her by her long hair. “Do not try any of your little tricks on me, miss,” Mother said with menacing softness. "I have never been so humiliated in my life with that screaming act of yours…everybody in the waiting room thought someone was being murdered in here! Just you wait until I get you home…”
“Miss Cornelius!” he shouted, coming to a halt in front of the school nurse’s door. “Miss Cornelius, open the door!” She shuddered in his grasp, reminded of Mother.
Like an animated Impressionist painting, indistinct colours began to wave and pulse behind the pebbled glass in the top half of the door. Pinkish flesh tones surged and receded with a swath of sterile white as Miss Connie unlocked the office door, releasing a wave of antiseptic and clove oil scents. She felt herself thrust forward and she stumbled weakly into Miss Connie’s surprised embrace. “I found her in the telephone booth, draped over the stool. She can barely stand. I think she’s drunk,” Mr. Rathburn’s sternly disapproving voice floated in and out of her ears. “Report to me when you have this under control.” She heard the glass door pane rattle and felt the concussion of Mr. Rathburn’s slammed exit.
“What’s wrong with you, dear?” Miss Connie said gently, wiping her straggling damp hair back from her eyes. “You don’t smell like you’ve been drinking.” Miss Connie helped her to a chair where she gratefully sat down, her knees being unaccountably unreliable today.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I just feel real tired. I can’t hardly stand up.”
“What were you doing in the phone booth?” Miss Connie inquired.
“Resting.”
At the nurse’s puzzled look, she mustered up the effort to frame a more complete reply. “I was on my way here. My legs were just so tired, I had to rest for a minute. But Mr. Rathburn caught me.”
Miss Connie nodded in that slow, comforting way of hers and drew a thermometer out of the little glass beaker full of alcohol in the nearest cabinet. “Open up,” she said. “Let’s see what is going on.”
She sat quietly for a moment, then sat up with alarm. “I need a sanitary pad,” she said urgently, pulling the thermometer from her mouth. “Right now!” If she got blood on another pair of panties, Mother was going to kill her!
Miss Connie looked puzzled for a moment, then handed her the necessary supplies, waiting at the door of the tiny antiseptic closet of a bathroom for her to come back out.
“Lie down on one of the cots, dear,” Miss Connie directed her, popping the thermometer back in her mouth. “Tell me about your periods…”
She wasn’t sure when she dropped off to sleep, but from a fuzzy, hazy place she could hear Miss Connie’s voice in the distance, soft and quiet. “I was right about the pneumonia last term, wasn’t I?” she was saying. “Believe me, Mrs. Janssen, your daughter is quite ill and needs to see a doctor immediately. Her period has been going on for three weeks and this is simply not normal.” There was a pause and then the nurse’s voice resumed, stronger and more commanding this time. “The child is haemorrhaging, Mrs. Janssen. I have seen it with my own eyes. Now, if you are not prepared to take her to a physician this afternoon, I will call Child Protective Services and they will pick her up and take her to the County Hospital for treatment. Do I make myself clear?”
She sighed. She wished Miss Connie had not called her mother. There was going to be hell to pay when she got hold of her, and probably another spanking for tattling to the nurse. She sighed again and pulled up the blanket. She was cold. She didn’t care. She was too tired to care.
* * *
Mother had a death grip on her hair and her head was yanked back so that her neck felt like it was breaking. “All right, you little tramp, who was it?” she hissed.
After silently helping Miss Connie put her in the car and carefully pulling away from the curb, Mother drove a mile or so away from the school then pulled the car over with a jerk. “Don’t pull that Miss-Innocent-I-Don’t-Know-What-You-Are-Talking-About act on me, you little slut. You may be able to fool your father and your grandparents and even that dimwit nurse, but you sure as hell don’t fool me!” She had no idea what Mother was talking about, but her eyes spouted tears as her head was dragged even further back.
Mother jerked her head back and forth by the fistful of hair she gripped. “Who was it?” she shouted. “I swear to God I’ll get his name out of you and I will sue his parents for every dime they have and ever will have! You are only thirteen years old and that’s statutory rape, your consent doesn’t mean shit in a court!” Mother thrust her suddenly away, her head banging painfully against the window.
“I don’t understand…” she began.
“Do not give me that!” Mother raged, pulling the car back out into traffic with a sharp yank of the wheel. “You Goddamned well understand, and perfectly. I was not born yesterday, I know the symptoms of a miscarriage when I hear them, and you, missy, are well and truly caught! Hoist by your own petard!”
Miscarriage?
“I called your father…do you think I have the money to pay one of these big-time doctors to take care of this? Your precious father,” Mother sneered the words “said that if you were pregnant at thirteen, you were no daughter of his. How’s that for you?” Mother finished with a smug, cat-that-ate-the-canary smile. She was too tired to care.
The doctor was a stranger. She wasn’t sure why Mother had chosen a strange doctor in Las Brisas…this guy had to be expensive---everything in Las Brisas was expensive…rather than Dr. Byrd, their regular doctor. Mother hurried her in through the back door of the office and directly into an examining room. Just as well, she didn’t want to fall over asleep in the reception room. She was so tired!
She struggled out of her clothes and into the stiff white examining gown and sat shivering on the table. The doctor came in and spoke quietly with Mother in a corner for a moment and Mother handed him a white envelope, which he put in a drawer near the examining table. When he came to the side of the table he looked at her briefly, then back at Mother, who nodded silently. “Lay back on the table,” he said. “Bend your knees and scoot your bottom down to the edge.”
* * *
Someone was screaming. She could hear someone screaming. Why didn’t anyone help? She couldn’t breathe, something heavy was on her chest, and her arms and legs were tangled up in the blankets so she couldn’t move. She hated nightmares like this, where she couldn’t move, she couldn’t cry out for help…wait…that screaming…she was screaming. What was going on? Another lick of fire stroked through her lower belly and another scream boiled up and ripped its way out of her throat. It was Mother on her chest…that’s why she couldn’t breathe! “Mommy! Mommy!” she cried desperately. “Mommy! It hurts! Help me!”
Mother just pressed down harder and fixed her with a look that promised murder. “Shut your mouth!” she commanded in a deep, hushed voice, hazel eyes boring into blue. “If you make another sound I will beat you absolutely stupid when we get home, do you hear me?” Before she could nod a streak of searing fire blazed through her belly again but when she opened her mouth a tongue depressor was thrust between her jaws and a strange voice said “Bite.” She bit the stick in half, the muffled shriek finding its way out through her nose. Another wave of pain washed over her but before she could make a sound she saw stars and black and then nothing at all.
“Her hymen was intact,” she faintly heard a man’s voice in the distance, “…just an infection…sometimes just happens....” She thought she heard Mother’s voice but she wasn’t sure, for the blessedly soft blackness came back and embraced her.
“Get up and get dressed, you goldbricking little bitch,” Mother hissed in her ear. “Knock that shit off…they didn’t give you any gas, so I know you’re not knocked out. Stop with the dramatics and get your clothes on!”
She struggled to a sitting position on the narrow table, a thick wad of something jammed between her legs. Her wrists were sore, her throat felt torn open, and her lower belly was on fire inside. She doubled over with a sudden cramp and Mother caught her by her long hair. “Do not try any of your little tricks on me, miss,” Mother said with menacing softness. "I have never been so humiliated in my life with that screaming act of yours…everybody in the waiting room thought someone was being murdered in here! Just you wait until I get you home…”
Choice
“Don’t take off on one of your marathon ‘walks’ tomorrow morning,” Mother said, slamming the frying pan down on the counter near the sink. “We have an appointment.”
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Just never you mind,” Mother said. “Just you be ready to go at eight and bring along a change of clothes.”
“I’m not going,” she said flatly, looking back to the book in her lap. Out of the corner of her eye she could see her mother doing a slow burn, a dull red flush creeping up her neck, her jaw going rigid.
“Don’t you sass me, young lady,” Mother said through clenched teeth. Her right fist was clenched, too, her arm rigid at her side. “You still aren’t eighteen and you will do what I tell you to do.”
She looked up, keeping her face carefully expressionless…no point in pressing the provocation unnecessarily. “If I don’t know where I’m going, I’m not going,” she looked down at her book again.
“We’re going down to Mexico,” Mother finally said, putting the finishing touches on Frank’s plate. “We have an appointment.”
“What kind of appointment?”
“Just an appointment. Just be ready.” Mother walked out to the living room with Frank’s dinner and coffee.
“I’m not going,” she said again, more to herself than to anyone else.
Mother suddenly materialized in front of her, eyes blazing. “Do not get defiant with me, miss! We have an appointment tomorrow morning and we will keep it, if I have to tie you up and drag you there!”
She shook her head again, her face closed and mulish. “Then that is what you will have to do because unless I know where we are going and why, I’m not going.”
Mother’s hand flashed out but stopped just millimetres away from her face. She had not flinched but continued to stare defiantly at her. “I won’t go,” she reiterated, “Unless I know where and why.” She did not feel as calm and collected as she hoped she looked. Dear God, what if Mother dumped her there or sold her into a whorehouse or something? She wouldn’t put anything past her any more.
“You’ve sure gotten cocky, these last few weeks, haven’t you?” her mother sneered. “But you won’t be pregnant forever and then you will get what’s coming to you, I promise!”
“I’ll be eighteen by then,” she replied. “Eighteen. Legal. Adult. And gone!”
Oh, no you won’t!” Mother shot back at her. “Your birthday isn’t for a month after your sore-footed little bastard is due. But even that’s moot. You just be ready…”
“Oh, for the love of God, Georgia,” came a bellow from the other room. “Tell the girl and get it over with so I can hear my program!”
Mother’s eyes shifted to the curtain dividing the kitchen from the living room with a look of supreme annoyance. “Frank, this is none of your Goddamned business, so…”
“It’s my Goddamned business if it’s drowning out my Goddamned TV!” he interrupted with an indignant roar. “Your mother’s taking you to Tijuana for an abortion!” he continued. “Can we have some quiet now?”
She sat there on the cot, stunned. This was her mother’s first grandchild and she was planning to kill it before it was even born? She was incredulous…she had not thought even her mother capable of such a thing. She shook her head to clear the buzzing in her ears, then looked up at her mother who was standing in front of her, arms akimbo. “That’s illegal,” she said simply.
“Not in Mexico,” Mother said. “Not if you’ve got the money.”
“Then you will have to drag me kicking and screaming to the car and you will have to tie me up and gag me because I will jump out and run away at every red light. And if you succeed anyway, I will call Daddy when we get back and I will tell him. And I will call police and tell them,” she paused for effect. “And then I will call Nana and Grandpa and tell them.” She gave Mother that slit-eyed look that had come to signify seriousness between them and held her gaze unwaveringly. Mother clamped her jaws tightly together and left the kitchen without a word.
She spent the next morning in a state of nerves, skittish as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, to quote her grandfather. She kept waiting for Mother to sneak up behind her and drag her down to the car, but Mother had made herself scarce. By early afternoon she had begun to relax her vigilance a bit, and then Mother came in from one of her outings and sat down on the cot beside her. She instinctively moved away, knowing that to be within arm’s reach was to be in peril.
“So,” Mother said conversationally, “What are your plans?”
She was nonplussed. “Plans?” she echoed dumbly.
“Yes,” Mother said, continuing conversational tone, “Your plans. Exactly what are you going to do? Having a baby isn’t free, you know. How do you plan to pay for your prenatal care? Your hospitalization? How do you plan to support this baby?”
She hadn’t thought that far ahead. “I don’t know yet,” she hedged. “I thought we had medical insurance?”
Mother laughed. “Yes, but it doesn’t cover the illegitimate pregnancy of a dependent,” she said. “So what are you going to do?”
“Mark will help out,” she said, even though she and Mark had barely spoken since she found out she was pregnant.
“Really?” Mother laughed again. “Have you spoken to him lately? I had a conversation with his father this morning and they are both claiming the baby isn’t his. Where does that leave you and all your fine plans?”
She bit the inside of her cheek to control her indignation. Of course the baby was his! There wasn’t anyone else! Assuming a calm demeanor, she shook her head. “I wouldn’t believe anything Mr. Hornung says,” she replied. “He thinks we aren’t good enough for his family.”
“Is that so?” Mother bristled. “And just what makes him think that, pray tell?”
She shrugged noncommittally. “Because of the bar,” she said.
Mother looked uncomprehending. “What is that supposed to mean?”
She shrugged again. “Mark’s father thinks we are white trash and not good enough for his family because you used to own that bar. He’ll say anything to put as much distance between me and Mark as he can. So you can’t believe anything he tells you.”
Her mother sat silently for a few minutes, digesting that bit of information. She could see it rankled her mother, being thought “not good enough,” for it was something she watched her mother struggle with all of her life. Mother’s face cleared.
“Be that as it may, you still haven’t told me what your plans are. Since getting rid of it is apparently not an option, you must have had something in mind.”
Mother’s conversational tone was unnerving her. She could sense she was being lulled, lured into a trap of some sort, but she just couldn’t see where the hook might be. She shook her head. “I hadn’t really planned very far ahead yet,” she admitted cautiously.
“Well, then, I have a plan for you,” Mother said brightly, the uncharacteristic cheeriness more frightening than comforting. “Actually, more than one plan so you have something to choose from!”
She began wishing she had begged harder for Nana and Grandpa to keep her with them. This was beginning to sound a bit scary, and she wondered if she would have a chance to call them for advice before a “choice” was forced upon her. She stayed silent, knowing Mother would reveal these “choices” whether she wanted to hear them or not.
“There are lots of people who can’t have babies themselves and would be happy to adopt…”
“It’s my baby and I’m keeping it,” she interrupted flatly.
“Let’s not be hasty,” Mother said placatingly. “You haven’t heard me out. These people will give the baby a good home and give it all the things you can’t. They’ll pay for your prenatal care, your hospitalization, even give you some money to help you get your life back on track after the baby is born. And you can stay here, live at home, during the pregnancy.”
A warning bell went off in the back of her mind, but she remained sullenly silent.
“There’s also a home for unwed mothers here, the Florence Crittenton Society. You can go live there and they will take care of everything and you can keep the baby if you want.” Mother sat there expectantly, a parody of a smile painted on her face.
She turned the information over in her mind a few times, then took a deep breath. “It’s my baby and I am going to keep it. And I don’t want to go to a home for unwed mothers, either.”
Mother’s eyes narrowed. The gloves were off. “Well, miss, you don’t have any other choices…unless you want to make that trip to Mexico. If you think you are going to live here and waddle around pregnant in front of the all the neighbours and then bring a bastard child home with you, you had better think again because it is not going to happen! You want to keep your little bastard, fine…but you’ll go off somewhere so that I won’t have to put up with the gossip!”
“You mean that my choices are to give away my baby like an unwanted piece of trash or you’re going to put me in an institution?” she cried, her composure evaporating. “Is that what you are telling me?” She couldn’t believe that shrill voice was hers! She braced for the mind-numbing slap that she knew had to be coming but instead, Mother just laughed. Loudly. And long.
“Yes, ma’am,” she smiled, “that’s about the size of it. It may be your brat and I can’t have any say in the decisions about it, but you are my brat and I have full power over you!” Mother was virtually crowing.
“Daddy won’t…”
“Oh, don’t even think about that, missy,” Mother grinned thinly. “With that fat-assed broad of his and those three little curtain-climbers, not to mention Brother, the last thing he wants right now is a pregnant teenager in the house. He doesn’t want you, missy. I am all you’ve got!” From the look on her face, Mother was positively delighted.
“And how much time do I have to think about this?” she finally asked. “It’s a big decision. It will affect the rest of my life…and this baby’s,” her hand went protectively to her lower abdomen.
“Tomorrow morning should be fine. I need to give the people at the Home an answer so they can reserve a space for you. You’ll stay here until you start to show, and then off you go.” Mother stood abruptly and brushed her hands together as if dusting them off. “Think on it. Sleep on it. You have three choices. Give me your answer in the morning.”
She felt deflated. She sat there on her cot after Mother had gone and wondered what to do. Nana and Grandpa would go for the adoption idea…they had already suggested it. Daddy didn’t want to have anything to do with her. Mark was only six months older than she was…he wasn’t exactly in a position to spirit her away to a place of safety, even if he wasn’t scared spitless about having made a baby with her…besides, he was adopted, so it was a pretty good bet that he’d weigh in on that side as well. Why didn’t anybody understand that this was her baby? Flesh of her flesh, blood of her blood, bone of her bone? All of her life she had wanted someone to love without reservation, without fear of rejection, with the certainty of reciprocation, and now, with that just within her grasp, why was the whole world conspiring to snatch it away from her before she even had a taste?
She lay down on the cot and turned to the wall. Despite the warm temperatures she curled into a tight little ball and buried her face in the pillow and felt a gaping, cavernous, echoing hollow open in the region of her heart. What was she going to do?
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Just never you mind,” Mother said. “Just you be ready to go at eight and bring along a change of clothes.”
“I’m not going,” she said flatly, looking back to the book in her lap. Out of the corner of her eye she could see her mother doing a slow burn, a dull red flush creeping up her neck, her jaw going rigid.
“Don’t you sass me, young lady,” Mother said through clenched teeth. Her right fist was clenched, too, her arm rigid at her side. “You still aren’t eighteen and you will do what I tell you to do.”
She looked up, keeping her face carefully expressionless…no point in pressing the provocation unnecessarily. “If I don’t know where I’m going, I’m not going,” she looked down at her book again.
“We’re going down to Mexico,” Mother finally said, putting the finishing touches on Frank’s plate. “We have an appointment.”
“What kind of appointment?”
“Just an appointment. Just be ready.” Mother walked out to the living room with Frank’s dinner and coffee.
“I’m not going,” she said again, more to herself than to anyone else.
Mother suddenly materialized in front of her, eyes blazing. “Do not get defiant with me, miss! We have an appointment tomorrow morning and we will keep it, if I have to tie you up and drag you there!”
She shook her head again, her face closed and mulish. “Then that is what you will have to do because unless I know where we are going and why, I’m not going.”
Mother’s hand flashed out but stopped just millimetres away from her face. She had not flinched but continued to stare defiantly at her. “I won’t go,” she reiterated, “Unless I know where and why.” She did not feel as calm and collected as she hoped she looked. Dear God, what if Mother dumped her there or sold her into a whorehouse or something? She wouldn’t put anything past her any more.
“You’ve sure gotten cocky, these last few weeks, haven’t you?” her mother sneered. “But you won’t be pregnant forever and then you will get what’s coming to you, I promise!”
“I’ll be eighteen by then,” she replied. “Eighteen. Legal. Adult. And gone!”
Oh, no you won’t!” Mother shot back at her. “Your birthday isn’t for a month after your sore-footed little bastard is due. But even that’s moot. You just be ready…”
“Oh, for the love of God, Georgia,” came a bellow from the other room. “Tell the girl and get it over with so I can hear my program!”
Mother’s eyes shifted to the curtain dividing the kitchen from the living room with a look of supreme annoyance. “Frank, this is none of your Goddamned business, so…”
“It’s my Goddamned business if it’s drowning out my Goddamned TV!” he interrupted with an indignant roar. “Your mother’s taking you to Tijuana for an abortion!” he continued. “Can we have some quiet now?”
She sat there on the cot, stunned. This was her mother’s first grandchild and she was planning to kill it before it was even born? She was incredulous…she had not thought even her mother capable of such a thing. She shook her head to clear the buzzing in her ears, then looked up at her mother who was standing in front of her, arms akimbo. “That’s illegal,” she said simply.
“Not in Mexico,” Mother said. “Not if you’ve got the money.”
“Then you will have to drag me kicking and screaming to the car and you will have to tie me up and gag me because I will jump out and run away at every red light. And if you succeed anyway, I will call Daddy when we get back and I will tell him. And I will call police and tell them,” she paused for effect. “And then I will call Nana and Grandpa and tell them.” She gave Mother that slit-eyed look that had come to signify seriousness between them and held her gaze unwaveringly. Mother clamped her jaws tightly together and left the kitchen without a word.
She spent the next morning in a state of nerves, skittish as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, to quote her grandfather. She kept waiting for Mother to sneak up behind her and drag her down to the car, but Mother had made herself scarce. By early afternoon she had begun to relax her vigilance a bit, and then Mother came in from one of her outings and sat down on the cot beside her. She instinctively moved away, knowing that to be within arm’s reach was to be in peril.
“So,” Mother said conversationally, “What are your plans?”
She was nonplussed. “Plans?” she echoed dumbly.
“Yes,” Mother said, continuing conversational tone, “Your plans. Exactly what are you going to do? Having a baby isn’t free, you know. How do you plan to pay for your prenatal care? Your hospitalization? How do you plan to support this baby?”
She hadn’t thought that far ahead. “I don’t know yet,” she hedged. “I thought we had medical insurance?”
Mother laughed. “Yes, but it doesn’t cover the illegitimate pregnancy of a dependent,” she said. “So what are you going to do?”
“Mark will help out,” she said, even though she and Mark had barely spoken since she found out she was pregnant.
“Really?” Mother laughed again. “Have you spoken to him lately? I had a conversation with his father this morning and they are both claiming the baby isn’t his. Where does that leave you and all your fine plans?”
She bit the inside of her cheek to control her indignation. Of course the baby was his! There wasn’t anyone else! Assuming a calm demeanor, she shook her head. “I wouldn’t believe anything Mr. Hornung says,” she replied. “He thinks we aren’t good enough for his family.”
“Is that so?” Mother bristled. “And just what makes him think that, pray tell?”
She shrugged noncommittally. “Because of the bar,” she said.
Mother looked uncomprehending. “What is that supposed to mean?”
She shrugged again. “Mark’s father thinks we are white trash and not good enough for his family because you used to own that bar. He’ll say anything to put as much distance between me and Mark as he can. So you can’t believe anything he tells you.”
Her mother sat silently for a few minutes, digesting that bit of information. She could see it rankled her mother, being thought “not good enough,” for it was something she watched her mother struggle with all of her life. Mother’s face cleared.
“Be that as it may, you still haven’t told me what your plans are. Since getting rid of it is apparently not an option, you must have had something in mind.”
Mother’s conversational tone was unnerving her. She could sense she was being lulled, lured into a trap of some sort, but she just couldn’t see where the hook might be. She shook her head. “I hadn’t really planned very far ahead yet,” she admitted cautiously.
“Well, then, I have a plan for you,” Mother said brightly, the uncharacteristic cheeriness more frightening than comforting. “Actually, more than one plan so you have something to choose from!”
She began wishing she had begged harder for Nana and Grandpa to keep her with them. This was beginning to sound a bit scary, and she wondered if she would have a chance to call them for advice before a “choice” was forced upon her. She stayed silent, knowing Mother would reveal these “choices” whether she wanted to hear them or not.
“There are lots of people who can’t have babies themselves and would be happy to adopt…”
“It’s my baby and I’m keeping it,” she interrupted flatly.
“Let’s not be hasty,” Mother said placatingly. “You haven’t heard me out. These people will give the baby a good home and give it all the things you can’t. They’ll pay for your prenatal care, your hospitalization, even give you some money to help you get your life back on track after the baby is born. And you can stay here, live at home, during the pregnancy.”
A warning bell went off in the back of her mind, but she remained sullenly silent.
“There’s also a home for unwed mothers here, the Florence Crittenton Society. You can go live there and they will take care of everything and you can keep the baby if you want.” Mother sat there expectantly, a parody of a smile painted on her face.
She turned the information over in her mind a few times, then took a deep breath. “It’s my baby and I am going to keep it. And I don’t want to go to a home for unwed mothers, either.”
Mother’s eyes narrowed. The gloves were off. “Well, miss, you don’t have any other choices…unless you want to make that trip to Mexico. If you think you are going to live here and waddle around pregnant in front of the all the neighbours and then bring a bastard child home with you, you had better think again because it is not going to happen! You want to keep your little bastard, fine…but you’ll go off somewhere so that I won’t have to put up with the gossip!”
“You mean that my choices are to give away my baby like an unwanted piece of trash or you’re going to put me in an institution?” she cried, her composure evaporating. “Is that what you are telling me?” She couldn’t believe that shrill voice was hers! She braced for the mind-numbing slap that she knew had to be coming but instead, Mother just laughed. Loudly. And long.
“Yes, ma’am,” she smiled, “that’s about the size of it. It may be your brat and I can’t have any say in the decisions about it, but you are my brat and I have full power over you!” Mother was virtually crowing.
“Daddy won’t…”
“Oh, don’t even think about that, missy,” Mother grinned thinly. “With that fat-assed broad of his and those three little curtain-climbers, not to mention Brother, the last thing he wants right now is a pregnant teenager in the house. He doesn’t want you, missy. I am all you’ve got!” From the look on her face, Mother was positively delighted.
“And how much time do I have to think about this?” she finally asked. “It’s a big decision. It will affect the rest of my life…and this baby’s,” her hand went protectively to her lower abdomen.
“Tomorrow morning should be fine. I need to give the people at the Home an answer so they can reserve a space for you. You’ll stay here until you start to show, and then off you go.” Mother stood abruptly and brushed her hands together as if dusting them off. “Think on it. Sleep on it. You have three choices. Give me your answer in the morning.”
She felt deflated. She sat there on her cot after Mother had gone and wondered what to do. Nana and Grandpa would go for the adoption idea…they had already suggested it. Daddy didn’t want to have anything to do with her. Mark was only six months older than she was…he wasn’t exactly in a position to spirit her away to a place of safety, even if he wasn’t scared spitless about having made a baby with her…besides, he was adopted, so it was a pretty good bet that he’d weigh in on that side as well. Why didn’t anybody understand that this was her baby? Flesh of her flesh, blood of her blood, bone of her bone? All of her life she had wanted someone to love without reservation, without fear of rejection, with the certainty of reciprocation, and now, with that just within her grasp, why was the whole world conspiring to snatch it away from her before she even had a taste?
She lay down on the cot and turned to the wall. Despite the warm temperatures she curled into a tight little ball and buried her face in the pillow and felt a gaping, cavernous, echoing hollow open in the region of her heart. What was she going to do?
True Confessions
“Oh, no you don’t, Miss Priss,” Mother’s voice stopped her as she was half-way into the passenger seat of the car. “You get your smart ass in the back seat with the dog, where you belong.”
She was beginning to think she was crazy. She had no idea why she was being dragged to the juvenile court…she hadn’t been arrested…she hadn’t gotten in any kind of trouble at school…her grades were good…she didn’t talk back to Mother or defy her rules. What on earth was going on?
“You incorrigible little bitch,” Mother snapped from the driver’s seat. She could see the garish red-lipsticked mouth in the rear-view mirror…almost as if it was dripping blood. “I don’t know what you think you are up to, conspiring with your father against me, but let me tell you, you won’t get away with it! Not this time, not ever!”
“Daddy?” she said. “What does Daddy have to do with this?”
“As if you didn’t know,” Mother sneered, twisting around in the seat to face the back. “You and your precious father…you two think you’re so goddamned smart, but you’re not. He thinks he can run me broke by dragging me back to court for custody but it’s not going to happen because before this day is out, you’ll be out of his reach.”
She must have looked puzzled, because Mother laughed. “I have outsmarted you both, this time! There won’t be any more lawyers and court visits and trouble because you are going up the river, my girl. Up the river!”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she replied, keeping a tight rein on her fear.
“You know, this is all your own fault, don’t you?” Mother said, almost conversationally. “This whole thing centers on you…but then you always did like to be the center of attention, didn’t you?”
She shook her head slightly. Actually, she preferred to be as close to invisible as possible, at least around Mother. It was safer that way.
“Well, you’re going to get your wish, little girl! You are going to be the real main attraction here! This whole hearing centers around you, and when it’s over, your father will have to pay the court fees, my lawyer’s bill, and a whopping monthly maintenance bill.” Mother paused to wipe a tear of laughter from one eye.
“Yessiree! Your father and his pasty-faced little paramour are going to rue the day they crossed me! And you are too!”
She shook her head again, wiping the beads of sweat off her upper lip. It was hot in the backseat, with the windows rolled up tightly. “I don’t understand.”
“Well then let me spell it out for you, Miss Genius,” Mother laughed scornfully. “Your precious father is taking me to court again for custody. But before that hearing, you have a hearing in chambers…I’m having you declared an incorrigible child, the judge is going to send you to reform school, and when your father gets to his custody hearing, all he’ll get from the court is a bill!” Mother’s laugh was triumphantly self-congratulatory.
She paled, sitting immobile in the back of the car. Reform school? Wasn’t that where girls who rob and steal and stab each other get sent? She wracked her brain for even a single transgression sufficient to warrant such a sentence. “What did I do?” she wailed, suddenly overwhelmed with panic.
“Incorrigible child,” her mother said smugly. “The law says I can have you committed as an incorrigible child and that is exactly what I am going to do!”
She wept. “If you don’t want me, why can’t I just go live with Daddy? Why do you have to do this?”
“Because he wants you,” Mother said through thinned, tight lips. “Because he wants you and I will be Goddamned if I will give that man anything he wants!”
“Why?” she said through her tears. “Why?”
Mother lit a cigarette and blew the smoke into the closed interior of the car. “This is all your fault, you know,” Mother said, resuming her conversational tone of earlier. “If you hadn’t been born, none of this would be happening, my life would be different…better. But no, you had to come along and ruin everything!”
Mother blew a couple of smoke rings before continuing. “You know, I had it all figured out. Your grandfather, that rigid, old-fashioned old fart, wouldn’t let me go out or do anything. Oh, Pete and Gary could come and go as they pleased…they were boys, and even though Pete was two years younger than me, Grandpa let him do whatever he wanted while I had to ask permission to do just about anything other than take a pee.”
Sounds familiar, she thought to herself, but held her silence rather than break the spell of Mother’s memories.
“And then one night I was at a high school football game and there was this cute sailor in the stands, home from the war. And I flirted with him and when the game was over we went off on his motorcycle for some ice cream and he took me home.”
Mother took another deep drag off her cigarette, rolled the window down an inch and blew the smoke out the window, then cranked it up tight again.
“I had to sneak out after everyone had gone to bed to see him, Grandpa wouldn’t let me go out with him because he was Hill People…you know, poor dirt farmers who lived in houses with no plumbing or electricity. But I knew he was my ticket to freedom.
“So one night, just after school was out for the summer we sneaked away and got married. He was 21 and I was almost 17. His leave from the Navy was almost up and he was going to be shipped out to China…the Navy was going to send me money every month as his wife for living expenses…and as a married woman I wouldn’t have to answer to Grandpa anymore. I could take that money, move out of the Godforsaken little gossip-ridden hick town, and live my own life, no father…and no husband, either…to tell me what I could or could not do.”
Mother stopped talking and looked out the window, a faraway look in her eyes. “At least that was the plan,” she said softly.
“But things didn’t work out that way,” Mother resumed, her voice tinged with bitterness. “Gramma Janssen wrote to the War Department and told them that he was their only son and they needed him to help out on the farm and the War Department discharged him. There went my freedom…he wasn’t going to go to China and there wasn’t going to be a monthly check from the Navy and before my father could put together an annulment…” Mother turned her hard, embittered face to the backseat, “…guess what happened?”
She shook her head slowly, afraid to hazard a guess.
“I found out I was pregnant. With you. And then it was all over for me.” Mother opened the car window again and flicked out the burning butt. “I swelled up like a poisoned pup. I got stretch marks all over my belly, my boobs, I got so fat I would barely waddle. Then, when I went into labour, you wouldn’t come out. I was in labour for 36 goddamned hours before they finally decided to do a caesarean section…your head was pointed from being crammed against my pelvic bones for so long! And then I almost died. I had to have a live transfusion from Grandpa because that tiny little shit-assed town didn’t have a decent blood bank. I got milk fever. You lost weight because I didn’t have any milk and those blockheaded nurses wouldn’t give you formula.
“And once I got you home, all you did was cry. All day, all night, you cried. Then you got the goddamned eczema and had raw, open sores all over you and I had to keep your diapers and your bedding and your clothes sterilized…but we were living in that drafty old shack next to Gramma Janssen’s house with no electricity or running water. And I couldn’t drive, so I was stuck out there living like a goddamned heathen, only ten miles from town, but I might as well have been in the goddamned middle of nowhere! So there I was, stuck out in the sticks with a screaming baby…it wasn’t at all what I expected, you know. You can’t put a baby back in the closet and close the door when you are tired of playing with it. I was stuck in that horrible little shack with Gramma Janssen always looking over my shoulder and telling me what to do and no way out!”
Mother paused for emphasis, fixing her with an unmistakable glare of enmity. “And all because of you. If you hadn’t come along, I’d have had that annulment and found another way to get away from Grandpa. But you ruined it all.”
“But…” she hesitated.
“What?” Mother snapped.
“But what about Brother? If you hated it so much, why did you have another baby?”
Mother shrugged and lit another cigarette. “When your life is already ruined with one screaming, demanding brat, what the hell difference does two make?”
She was beginning to think she was crazy. She had no idea why she was being dragged to the juvenile court…she hadn’t been arrested…she hadn’t gotten in any kind of trouble at school…her grades were good…she didn’t talk back to Mother or defy her rules. What on earth was going on?
“You incorrigible little bitch,” Mother snapped from the driver’s seat. She could see the garish red-lipsticked mouth in the rear-view mirror…almost as if it was dripping blood. “I don’t know what you think you are up to, conspiring with your father against me, but let me tell you, you won’t get away with it! Not this time, not ever!”
“Daddy?” she said. “What does Daddy have to do with this?”
“As if you didn’t know,” Mother sneered, twisting around in the seat to face the back. “You and your precious father…you two think you’re so goddamned smart, but you’re not. He thinks he can run me broke by dragging me back to court for custody but it’s not going to happen because before this day is out, you’ll be out of his reach.”
She must have looked puzzled, because Mother laughed. “I have outsmarted you both, this time! There won’t be any more lawyers and court visits and trouble because you are going up the river, my girl. Up the river!”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she replied, keeping a tight rein on her fear.
“You know, this is all your own fault, don’t you?” Mother said, almost conversationally. “This whole thing centers on you…but then you always did like to be the center of attention, didn’t you?”
She shook her head slightly. Actually, she preferred to be as close to invisible as possible, at least around Mother. It was safer that way.
“Well, you’re going to get your wish, little girl! You are going to be the real main attraction here! This whole hearing centers around you, and when it’s over, your father will have to pay the court fees, my lawyer’s bill, and a whopping monthly maintenance bill.” Mother paused to wipe a tear of laughter from one eye.
“Yessiree! Your father and his pasty-faced little paramour are going to rue the day they crossed me! And you are too!”
She shook her head again, wiping the beads of sweat off her upper lip. It was hot in the backseat, with the windows rolled up tightly. “I don’t understand.”
“Well then let me spell it out for you, Miss Genius,” Mother laughed scornfully. “Your precious father is taking me to court again for custody. But before that hearing, you have a hearing in chambers…I’m having you declared an incorrigible child, the judge is going to send you to reform school, and when your father gets to his custody hearing, all he’ll get from the court is a bill!” Mother’s laugh was triumphantly self-congratulatory.
She paled, sitting immobile in the back of the car. Reform school? Wasn’t that where girls who rob and steal and stab each other get sent? She wracked her brain for even a single transgression sufficient to warrant such a sentence. “What did I do?” she wailed, suddenly overwhelmed with panic.
“Incorrigible child,” her mother said smugly. “The law says I can have you committed as an incorrigible child and that is exactly what I am going to do!”
She wept. “If you don’t want me, why can’t I just go live with Daddy? Why do you have to do this?”
“Because he wants you,” Mother said through thinned, tight lips. “Because he wants you and I will be Goddamned if I will give that man anything he wants!”
“Why?” she said through her tears. “Why?”
Mother lit a cigarette and blew the smoke into the closed interior of the car. “This is all your fault, you know,” Mother said, resuming her conversational tone of earlier. “If you hadn’t been born, none of this would be happening, my life would be different…better. But no, you had to come along and ruin everything!”
Mother blew a couple of smoke rings before continuing. “You know, I had it all figured out. Your grandfather, that rigid, old-fashioned old fart, wouldn’t let me go out or do anything. Oh, Pete and Gary could come and go as they pleased…they were boys, and even though Pete was two years younger than me, Grandpa let him do whatever he wanted while I had to ask permission to do just about anything other than take a pee.”
Sounds familiar, she thought to herself, but held her silence rather than break the spell of Mother’s memories.
“And then one night I was at a high school football game and there was this cute sailor in the stands, home from the war. And I flirted with him and when the game was over we went off on his motorcycle for some ice cream and he took me home.”
Mother took another deep drag off her cigarette, rolled the window down an inch and blew the smoke out the window, then cranked it up tight again.
“I had to sneak out after everyone had gone to bed to see him, Grandpa wouldn’t let me go out with him because he was Hill People…you know, poor dirt farmers who lived in houses with no plumbing or electricity. But I knew he was my ticket to freedom.
“So one night, just after school was out for the summer we sneaked away and got married. He was 21 and I was almost 17. His leave from the Navy was almost up and he was going to be shipped out to China…the Navy was going to send me money every month as his wife for living expenses…and as a married woman I wouldn’t have to answer to Grandpa anymore. I could take that money, move out of the Godforsaken little gossip-ridden hick town, and live my own life, no father…and no husband, either…to tell me what I could or could not do.”
Mother stopped talking and looked out the window, a faraway look in her eyes. “At least that was the plan,” she said softly.
“But things didn’t work out that way,” Mother resumed, her voice tinged with bitterness. “Gramma Janssen wrote to the War Department and told them that he was their only son and they needed him to help out on the farm and the War Department discharged him. There went my freedom…he wasn’t going to go to China and there wasn’t going to be a monthly check from the Navy and before my father could put together an annulment…” Mother turned her hard, embittered face to the backseat, “…guess what happened?”
She shook her head slowly, afraid to hazard a guess.
“I found out I was pregnant. With you. And then it was all over for me.” Mother opened the car window again and flicked out the burning butt. “I swelled up like a poisoned pup. I got stretch marks all over my belly, my boobs, I got so fat I would barely waddle. Then, when I went into labour, you wouldn’t come out. I was in labour for 36 goddamned hours before they finally decided to do a caesarean section…your head was pointed from being crammed against my pelvic bones for so long! And then I almost died. I had to have a live transfusion from Grandpa because that tiny little shit-assed town didn’t have a decent blood bank. I got milk fever. You lost weight because I didn’t have any milk and those blockheaded nurses wouldn’t give you formula.
“And once I got you home, all you did was cry. All day, all night, you cried. Then you got the goddamned eczema and had raw, open sores all over you and I had to keep your diapers and your bedding and your clothes sterilized…but we were living in that drafty old shack next to Gramma Janssen’s house with no electricity or running water. And I couldn’t drive, so I was stuck out there living like a goddamned heathen, only ten miles from town, but I might as well have been in the goddamned middle of nowhere! So there I was, stuck out in the sticks with a screaming baby…it wasn’t at all what I expected, you know. You can’t put a baby back in the closet and close the door when you are tired of playing with it. I was stuck in that horrible little shack with Gramma Janssen always looking over my shoulder and telling me what to do and no way out!”
Mother paused for emphasis, fixing her with an unmistakable glare of enmity. “And all because of you. If you hadn’t come along, I’d have had that annulment and found another way to get away from Grandpa. But you ruined it all.”
“But…” she hesitated.
“What?” Mother snapped.
“But what about Brother? If you hated it so much, why did you have another baby?”
Mother shrugged and lit another cigarette. “When your life is already ruined with one screaming, demanding brat, what the hell difference does two make?”
It ain't just a hobo...
“My word!” The lady said, bending over to envelop her in a fetid cloud. “Aren’t you Georgia Decker’s girl?” The lady’s voice didn’t exactly sound friendly, and her breath was awful!
“Look here, Madge,” she warbled to an unbelievably large lady wearing a painful shade of lime green. “Look! Isn’t this Georgia Decker’s girl?” The old lady looked back to her and, capturing her chin in her cold, bony hand, she bent way down to peer sharply into the upturned little face.
Madge waddled up and, after a moment’s perusal, nodded in agreement. “Where’s your mother, girl?” the one called Madge demanded, looking around with intent interest.
She wriggled uncomfortably on the hard chair and shrugged, wishing Nana would get done trying on her slacks and come rescue her.
“You don’t know where your mother is?” Madge asked. “Did she leave you alone here?” Turning to her thin companion, Madge said behind her hand, “That girl abandoned her before, you know. Took her into the city and dumped her in the Child Welfare offices, signed papers to have her adopted, and walked right out!”
The skinny woman’s eyes were wide with incredulity, a bony hand pressed to her thin bosom. “You don’t say!”
Madge nodded her gray curls confidentially. “She always was a bit wild, that Georgia, sneaking out at night and making a spectacle of herself.” She shook her head in rhythm with her clucking tongue. “And running off to get married to that Janssen boy and having those babies didn’t settle her down one bit! Why, I heard her husband caught her red-handed…”
“Good morning, ladies,” a familiar voice interrupted the gossiping. Nana!
The thin one started suddenly, then turned with a smile on her lips that didn’t reach her eyes. “Why, Blanche Decker!” she cried. “How nice to see you! We were just talking about you! Isn’t this your granddaughter here?”
Nana nodded with the same cold pretence of a smile on her face. “One of them,” Nana said, her voice very cool. “I have two, you know.”
“Of course,” said the skinny lady. “But this is Georgia’s child, if I’m not mistaken, not Gerald’s. Is she back in town, then?” The woman’s dark eyes glittered like sharp little shards of obsidian.
Nana smiled very sweetly…too sweetly…and shook her head. “No, she’s out of town and was kind enough to let us keep our darling grandchild with us. Such a wonderful cure for the empty nest, now that Pete has gone off to Annapolis.”
The skinny woman’s face suffused with colour, remembering how her own son had competed for the coveted appointment but lost to Pete Decker. “How wonderful for you,” she smiled again. “You should join us for canasta some Thursday afternoon and we can all catch up, isn’t that right, Madge?” She turned to her companion, nodding.
Ever gracious, Nana gently declined the invitation. “I’m sorry, but I don’t want to miss any time with my precious grandbaby,” she smiled back at them. “I’m sure you’ll understand when you have your own.” With that, Nana bent down and lifted her up from the hard chair, balanced her on one hip, and headed for the cashier to pay for her slacks.
“Evil-minded old cows,” Nana muttered under her breath, placing the slacks on the counter and withdrawing her wallet from her purse. “You just don’t pay any attention to them, ok?”
She looked up and realized Nana was speaking to her and solemnly nodded her head. She was not in the habit of disobeying adults.
The cashier was a friend of Nana’s and because there were no other customers, they lingered and chatted about Nana’s passion, gardening. Restless, she wriggled to get down and Nana obliged, telling her to stay close. She could see Madge and her skinny friend at the hat counter, fussing with the veiling on the smart little hats and trying them on their dowdy, frizzy curls. Even at three years old she could see the fashionable hats and the frumpy ladies were just not meant for each other. “You know, we used to cross the street to avoid having to pass her on the sidewalk,” the skinny lady was saying. “That kind of taint can rub off on a person!”
Madge nodded, the wattle under her chin flapping back and forth, the pale loose skin on the backs of her arms swaying as she lifted a tiny red satin confection trimmed with red veiling and glossy ceramic cherries atop her head. “Do tell,” Madge said, turning this way and that to admire herself in the mirror, apparently unaware that the bright colour of the hat gave her ruddy complexion a somewhat boiled look. “I certainly hope she has not influenced the other young girls in town with her wild ways!”
The skinny lady snatched the offending chapeau off Madge’s head and handed her something a bit more subdued in a dark blue straw. “Well, no one in town will have anything to do with her, and if her father wasn’t the president of the Lion’s Club and a member in good standing of the Elk Lodge and a deacon at Hilltop Lutheran, I doubt anyone would talk to any of the Deckers, either. That girl is just a disgrace, I tell you! It’s scandalous the way she ran off like that!”
“And spiteful! Just spiteful!” Madge chimed in. “Emily Johnston…her son is a friend of Eddie’s…told me that Georgia didn’t even tell that poor child’s father that she had dumped the child off at the Adoption Bureau! One of the girls overheard it on the party line and told Pansy Janssen, and she called Blanche, who went and got the poor little thing.”
“Why didn’t Pansy go?” the skinny lady asked, head cocked to one side to admire the reflection of a fussy little white straw wreathed in navy felt-dotted veiling perched precariously on top of her head.
Madge shrugged. “You know those Hill People…it probably wasn’t her day to go to town or she had some chickens to pluck or something. I can’t believe Georgia lived out there all that time without running water or anything! I can certainly see why she wanted to leave, but she went about it in the wrong way.”
“Very wrong,” the thin woman sniffed, shaking her grey curls and putting down the hat. “She made her bed when she ran off with Eddie Janssen, now she should have to lie in it!”
“Well,” Madge inclined her head towards the child who was silently examining the cherries on the red satin hat, “Her mother seems to be getting away with it. I hope for the little girl’s sake that the blood doesn’t run true.” She sucked her teeth in a clucking, “for shame” kind of sound. “It would be so tragic if poor Blanche were to have both a daughter and a granddaughter branded the town tramp.”
“Tragic,” the other woman agreed, shaking her head in sympathy. “Poor Blanche!”
“Poor Blanche what?” came Nana’s voice from behind them. Abandoning her examination of the scarlet hat, she ran to Nana’s side and slipped her soft, plump little hand into Nana’s larger, work-roughened one.
“Oh, we were just commiserating at having your time taken up with a little one again, so that you can’t join us for cards or anything,” the thin woman improvised, her neck reddening. “Do call us when you can get away!” she said with a toothy smile, then turned and hurried away, Madge’s lime green bulk waddling after her.
“Gossipy old biddies,” Nana said, watching their departure. She looked down and smiled. “Let’s go down to the Dairy Queen and get some ice cream, then surprise Grandpa at the shop, shall we?”
“Ice cream!” she crowed, delighted. “Banilla!”
Nana nodded. “Vanilla it is.”
Sitting in the car a few minutes later, carefully keeping her eyes away from the telltale stain on the carpet on the passenger side, she watched the pedestrians strolling by the storefronts. She fixed her eyes on one woman who was crossing the street in mid-block. Quickly, tensely, she looked to the direction from whence the woman had come, expecting to see Mommy. Seeing only strangers, she heaved a gusty sigh of relief, attracting Nana’s attention.
“Goodness,” Nana smiled. “That was quite the sigh. What was that all about?”
She looked up at her grandmother, puzzlement on her pink-cheeked little face. “Nana,” she queried. “What’s a ‘town tramp’?”
“Look here, Madge,” she warbled to an unbelievably large lady wearing a painful shade of lime green. “Look! Isn’t this Georgia Decker’s girl?” The old lady looked back to her and, capturing her chin in her cold, bony hand, she bent way down to peer sharply into the upturned little face.
Madge waddled up and, after a moment’s perusal, nodded in agreement. “Where’s your mother, girl?” the one called Madge demanded, looking around with intent interest.
She wriggled uncomfortably on the hard chair and shrugged, wishing Nana would get done trying on her slacks and come rescue her.
“You don’t know where your mother is?” Madge asked. “Did she leave you alone here?” Turning to her thin companion, Madge said behind her hand, “That girl abandoned her before, you know. Took her into the city and dumped her in the Child Welfare offices, signed papers to have her adopted, and walked right out!”
The skinny woman’s eyes were wide with incredulity, a bony hand pressed to her thin bosom. “You don’t say!”
Madge nodded her gray curls confidentially. “She always was a bit wild, that Georgia, sneaking out at night and making a spectacle of herself.” She shook her head in rhythm with her clucking tongue. “And running off to get married to that Janssen boy and having those babies didn’t settle her down one bit! Why, I heard her husband caught her red-handed…”
“Good morning, ladies,” a familiar voice interrupted the gossiping. Nana!
The thin one started suddenly, then turned with a smile on her lips that didn’t reach her eyes. “Why, Blanche Decker!” she cried. “How nice to see you! We were just talking about you! Isn’t this your granddaughter here?”
Nana nodded with the same cold pretence of a smile on her face. “One of them,” Nana said, her voice very cool. “I have two, you know.”
“Of course,” said the skinny lady. “But this is Georgia’s child, if I’m not mistaken, not Gerald’s. Is she back in town, then?” The woman’s dark eyes glittered like sharp little shards of obsidian.
Nana smiled very sweetly…too sweetly…and shook her head. “No, she’s out of town and was kind enough to let us keep our darling grandchild with us. Such a wonderful cure for the empty nest, now that Pete has gone off to Annapolis.”
The skinny woman’s face suffused with colour, remembering how her own son had competed for the coveted appointment but lost to Pete Decker. “How wonderful for you,” she smiled again. “You should join us for canasta some Thursday afternoon and we can all catch up, isn’t that right, Madge?” She turned to her companion, nodding.
Ever gracious, Nana gently declined the invitation. “I’m sorry, but I don’t want to miss any time with my precious grandbaby,” she smiled back at them. “I’m sure you’ll understand when you have your own.” With that, Nana bent down and lifted her up from the hard chair, balanced her on one hip, and headed for the cashier to pay for her slacks.
“Evil-minded old cows,” Nana muttered under her breath, placing the slacks on the counter and withdrawing her wallet from her purse. “You just don’t pay any attention to them, ok?”
She looked up and realized Nana was speaking to her and solemnly nodded her head. She was not in the habit of disobeying adults.
The cashier was a friend of Nana’s and because there were no other customers, they lingered and chatted about Nana’s passion, gardening. Restless, she wriggled to get down and Nana obliged, telling her to stay close. She could see Madge and her skinny friend at the hat counter, fussing with the veiling on the smart little hats and trying them on their dowdy, frizzy curls. Even at three years old she could see the fashionable hats and the frumpy ladies were just not meant for each other. “You know, we used to cross the street to avoid having to pass her on the sidewalk,” the skinny lady was saying. “That kind of taint can rub off on a person!”
Madge nodded, the wattle under her chin flapping back and forth, the pale loose skin on the backs of her arms swaying as she lifted a tiny red satin confection trimmed with red veiling and glossy ceramic cherries atop her head. “Do tell,” Madge said, turning this way and that to admire herself in the mirror, apparently unaware that the bright colour of the hat gave her ruddy complexion a somewhat boiled look. “I certainly hope she has not influenced the other young girls in town with her wild ways!”
The skinny lady snatched the offending chapeau off Madge’s head and handed her something a bit more subdued in a dark blue straw. “Well, no one in town will have anything to do with her, and if her father wasn’t the president of the Lion’s Club and a member in good standing of the Elk Lodge and a deacon at Hilltop Lutheran, I doubt anyone would talk to any of the Deckers, either. That girl is just a disgrace, I tell you! It’s scandalous the way she ran off like that!”
“And spiteful! Just spiteful!” Madge chimed in. “Emily Johnston…her son is a friend of Eddie’s…told me that Georgia didn’t even tell that poor child’s father that she had dumped the child off at the Adoption Bureau! One of the girls overheard it on the party line and told Pansy Janssen, and she called Blanche, who went and got the poor little thing.”
“Why didn’t Pansy go?” the skinny lady asked, head cocked to one side to admire the reflection of a fussy little white straw wreathed in navy felt-dotted veiling perched precariously on top of her head.
Madge shrugged. “You know those Hill People…it probably wasn’t her day to go to town or she had some chickens to pluck or something. I can’t believe Georgia lived out there all that time without running water or anything! I can certainly see why she wanted to leave, but she went about it in the wrong way.”
“Very wrong,” the thin woman sniffed, shaking her grey curls and putting down the hat. “She made her bed when she ran off with Eddie Janssen, now she should have to lie in it!”
“Well,” Madge inclined her head towards the child who was silently examining the cherries on the red satin hat, “Her mother seems to be getting away with it. I hope for the little girl’s sake that the blood doesn’t run true.” She sucked her teeth in a clucking, “for shame” kind of sound. “It would be so tragic if poor Blanche were to have both a daughter and a granddaughter branded the town tramp.”
“Tragic,” the other woman agreed, shaking her head in sympathy. “Poor Blanche!”
“Poor Blanche what?” came Nana’s voice from behind them. Abandoning her examination of the scarlet hat, she ran to Nana’s side and slipped her soft, plump little hand into Nana’s larger, work-roughened one.
“Oh, we were just commiserating at having your time taken up with a little one again, so that you can’t join us for cards or anything,” the thin woman improvised, her neck reddening. “Do call us when you can get away!” she said with a toothy smile, then turned and hurried away, Madge’s lime green bulk waddling after her.
“Gossipy old biddies,” Nana said, watching their departure. She looked down and smiled. “Let’s go down to the Dairy Queen and get some ice cream, then surprise Grandpa at the shop, shall we?”
“Ice cream!” she crowed, delighted. “Banilla!”
Nana nodded. “Vanilla it is.”
Sitting in the car a few minutes later, carefully keeping her eyes away from the telltale stain on the carpet on the passenger side, she watched the pedestrians strolling by the storefronts. She fixed her eyes on one woman who was crossing the street in mid-block. Quickly, tensely, she looked to the direction from whence the woman had come, expecting to see Mommy. Seeing only strangers, she heaved a gusty sigh of relief, attracting Nana’s attention.
“Goodness,” Nana smiled. “That was quite the sigh. What was that all about?”
She looked up at her grandmother, puzzlement on her pink-cheeked little face. “Nana,” she queried. “What’s a ‘town tramp’?”
Little Girl Lost
It had not been an easy pregnancy.
Annie was only three and Jakie was just a year and a half, she was unemployed, and desperate enough to let Rod back into her life, despite having left him five months ago after he had nearly strangled her to death. How was she to know she was pregnant at the time? She lay on the sofa, swollen feet propped up on the arm, and stared at the stained ceiling. How had her life come to this? Two toddlers, an abusive drunk for a husband, a shabby tenement with a leaking roof and rats outside big enough to saddle and ride, in a place where it was bitterly cold in the winter and suffocatingly hot and humid in the summer?
Her hand rested on her swollen abdomen. Poor baby. Like she could offer this child any more than the first two had…much as she hated to admit it, Mother had been right. Love just isn’t enough…raising kids takes money, and that was something that was always in short, short supply. At least they had enough to eat since Rod moved in…there had been stretches of days where she had eaten nothing but plain oatmeal so what little food that remained in the house could be fed to the kids. They didn’t like powdered milk and Annie was mortally offended by being offered split pea soup for a meal, peas being probably her least favorite food in the world, but faced with hunger or pea soup, the peas won out.
She sighed. Four months to go. An August birth…this would mean trying to keep a new baby comfortable and rash-free in the suffocating humidity of the summer weather while she recuperated from another Caesarean section. It was dead certain that Rod would be no more help with this child than he had been in the past…and with her entire family on the West Coast, there would be no help from that quarter. She shook her head ruefully…as if there had been any help in the past. When Annie was born, Mother had fetched them from the hospital…the military had sent her husband off to Vietnam…drove her to her little converted garage cottage and dropped her off without so much as a by-your-leave. And there she had been left alone with a ten-day-old baby…it was the day after her 18th birthday, she had nearly died in the hospital of an infection, she had a Caesarean scar on her belly that would not stop aching but, because she was breastfeeding…a positively scandalous choice forever labelling her as hopelessly low class…she couldn’t take any pain medication.
Things had only been marginally better with Jakie’s birth. Rod’s mother hated her…she wasn’t Italian, she wasn’t Catholic, she was from the wrong side of the country, and she had had the temerity to marry her precious only son…but Rod’s stepmother, Eva, had at least agreed to keep Annie while she was in the hospital for Jakie’s birth. But before the little guy had been even ten days old, she was back in her own freezing flat, healing from surgery, and caring for two children under two years of age…and a husband who was more demanding that the two babies put together.
Rod’s voice penetrated her reverie, demanding that she make him some coffee. Like he couldn’t get off his lazy ass and make himself a cup? But she knew better than to release the retort that quivered on the tip of her tongue…he hadn’t hit her since he had returned home…he hadn’t ever hit her when she was pregnant, actually…but there was always a first time. She struggled up to a sitting position, fatigue wrapped around her like a suffocating blanket, and heaved herself up off the sofa.
The next few moments were to be forever a blur in her memory. She felt dizzy, she reached out to steady herself on the nearby doorframe and suddenly a warm, wet gush of liquid cascaded down her legs, forming a spreading pool on the scarred wood floor.
“Rod!” she screamed, and the urgency in her voice must have penetrated his self-absorbed haze because he arrived at her side before her second scream had fully left her throat. Taking one look at the situation, he told her to sit back down, then ran downstairs to use the neighbour’s phone.
Amazingly, the hospital sent her home. They acknowledged that her water broke, but did nothing more than tell her husband to take her home and put her to bed, and to call her obstetrician after the holiday weekend was over. Why did she always have to choose holidays to have emergencies? she wondered, riding home in the back of a taxi listening to Rod grumble about the cost. She’d had an impacted, infected wisdom tooth on Labor Day weekend when she was eight months pregnant with Jakie, and the emergency room didn’t want to give her pain medication. Instead, they gave her a penicillin shot to which she had had a violent allergic reaction, waking up the next morning hot, red, and swollen all over, puffed up like poisoned pup. The oral surgeon who took out the tooth didn’t seem to have any compunctions against anaesthesia, but she had had to suffer for the three days before she could get the tooth extracted. Now it was Patriot’s Day weekend and she just had to go to bed and wait for it to be over.
The two flights of stairs to their attic apartment were daunting, but by taking her time, she was able to mount them. Jeanine, the teenager from the first floor, greeted them at the door and, bless her heart, refused to accept any money for watching Annie and Jakie while she and Rod were at the hospital. The little sweetheart had even washed the accumulated dishes, sparing her the back-breaking chore. Slowly, she waddled to the bedroom and stretched out on the bed and fell into an exhausted sleep.
By the next morning it was apparent that she and Rod had differing opinions on the definition of “bed rest.” She expected to stay in bed except to get up to use the bathroom; he expected her to lay in bed between accomplishing her various household tasks. Like cooking. Cleaning. Minding the kids. He conceded that grocery shopping was out and offered to do it, but her agreement was reluctant. Once out of the house without the mitigating presence of her and the kids, he would head for the nearest tavern and come home eight hours later with a loaf of bread, a quart of milk, and a belligerent attitude.
Two mornings later she awoke very early with a back ache. Too much time in the bed, she decided, and crawled out, headed for the bathroom. The first cramp seized her like a hammer blow in her lower back and she actually went down to her knees, the hollow “thud” awakening the household, sending the children into howls of alarm. “Jesus Christ!” Rod bellowed from the bedroom. “Do you have to be so clumsy?”
She struggled to stand but the pain in her back was snatching away her breath. She felt dizzy, light-headed. She thought she heard herself gasp “Help!’ but she wasn’t sure. She curled on her side, knees drawn up, and whimpered until the blackness claimed her.
She woke up in the stairwell. She was strapped to a kind of chair, two strangers carrying it down the stairs, a lot of echoing noises bouncing around her: crying children, whispering voices, bellowed commands. She couldn’t make sense of any of them. She surrendered to the blackness again, the next time opening her eyes and looking up into the face of a strange young man who had one of her eyelids pried open, a bright flashlight searing her retina.
“What’s going on?” she managed to say, but her lips felt thick and fat, and her tongue refused to be properly controlled.
Somehow the young man understood. “We’re on our way to Women’s Hospital,” he said. “You went into labour and it appears you blacked out and maybe hit your head. Just hold on and we’ll get you there in plenty of time.” He continued his probing.
“I’m five months pregnant,” she said thickly. “I have Caesareans.” His eyes widened momentarily, then he turned towards the front of the ambulance and said something she could not quite understand, her hearing as grey and fuzzy as her sight. She felt her eyes close and when they opened again it was to the punishing grasp of a giant hand digging into her lower back. Her arms and legs were too heavy to move and she could only moan at the ever-increasing intensity of the brutal grip. The ambulance bounced and bumped over sidewalks and traffic islands, the screaming siren mingling with the rushing sounds in her ears. She looked questioningly at the attendant, her ability to speak seeming to have been reduced to slow motion.
“Patriot’s Day,” he said, nodding at the window. “Opening day of baseball season, and we’re in the middle of the traffic headed for the stadium.” She nodded and closed her eyes and bit her lip against the pain, which was finally starting to subside.
She was beginning to feel a little like Alice in Wonderland. Every time she opened her eyes, everything had changed. Now she was in a little white-sheeted cubicle and someone was standing beside her, torturing her hand. “Owww!” she managed to say, feebly attempting to pull her hand free. She could see a stranger’s hand holding a cannula that looked as big as her smallest finger, and the puncture mark on the back of her hand where the stranger had tried to insert it. Before she could move or protest, a second pair of hands appeared in her field of vision and restrained her wrist and forearm while the first pair of hands jammed the thick tube into a vein on the back of her hand. She tried to scream, but her throat was too dry, her tongue too thick. What on earth was the matter with her?
When she opened her eyes the next time, the grinding pain in her back had returned. She writhed on the bed, grabbing at the bars of the headboard, and gasping for air. She heard screaming, shrieking, and terrifying howling, only to find a white-garbed nurse suddenly standing beside her and admonishing her sternly to hush, she was disturbing the other patients. “The pain,” she gasped. “Something for the pain…”
The nurse looked at her down a long, thin nose, then sniffed. “It’s too soon for pain medication,” she said, her thin lips making a prim line. “And besides, you are only having a miscarriage, it’s not like you were in real labour.”
She learned that biting down on a wad of sheet would help her ride the waves of pain. Was this labour, then? She’d had no labour with Annie and Jakie…Annie had been nearly a month past due when the doctor booked her for a C-section, and Jakie was born ten days early via scheduled C-section. Was this what labour was like, then? She had expected the pains to be in her abdomen, not in her lower back. This was excruciating! Another wave overwhelmed her and she gripped the cool steel bars of the headboard, sheets between her teeth, and twisted her body trying to escape the surge of agony that clawed at her back.
She opened her eyes to a funny sensation, a bulky feeling low in her abdomen. Almost like she had to use the toilet, but more forward. She moved her left leg experimentally and found her thighs feeling rather pushed apart and suddenly she knew…it was the baby. “Help!” she cried to the white curtains surrounding her bed. “Help me!”
That same lemon-sucking nurse snatched back the curtain. “I’ve had about enough out of you,” her bloodless lips were saying, but she interrupted.
“Something is wrong. The baby is coming. I can feel it…”
“Nonsense,” the nurse replied. “You’ve got hours to go. You were barely dilated when we checked you.”
“Look!” she cried, feeling another surge of pain gathering in her back. “Look!” She gasped suddenly, “Oh, God, it’s coming now!” She closed her eyes against the rush of pain that gripped her, clawing at the mattress with her free hand. “Oh, God. Oh, God!”
There was a cold rush of air as the sheet was snatched abruptly away from her upraised knees and the nurse started yelling. Confused, blurry images swirled around her as her bed was suddenly careening out the door of the room and rolling at an alarming speed as voices in the background made such sounds as “…get the doctor…” and “…delivering in the hallway…” She closed her eyes against the dizziness that made her want to vomit, knowing that this nurse would not appreciate having to change pukey sheets.
She was suddenly seized with what felt like a cramp. It raised her upper body off the mattress and caused her to audibly suck in air. She could not speak, but her eyes bulged in sudden terror, having no idea what was going on. Then the pain abruptly vanished and she fell back onto the sodden pillow, something wet between her thighs. She closed her eyes.
The hushed noises around her made her open them again. Like Alice, she was again in a place unfamiliar, but she recognized the green tiled walls and the massive reflective overhead light fixture…she was in an operating theatre. From the corner of her eye she could see a rubber-gloved hand extend a white cardboard carton, about the size and shape of a quart ice cream container, and then into the container was deposited a tiny, limp, wet and bloody form. Her baby.
“A boy or girl?” she managed to force out through thick lips.
“It’s not important,” that same nurse said. “It’s dead.”
“Boy or girl?” she repeated insistently, agitatedly.
“A girl,” came a soft voice from the other side of her.
“She’s dead?” she queried weakly. “Too premature?”
The thin-lipped nurse put the cover on the little white cardboard carton and set it on a stainless steel table next to the soiled towels and bloodied instruments. “From the look of things, it’s been dead for about three days.”
The day her water broke. Her baby had died that day. And they had done nothing to help her, just sent her home to rest. She closed her eyes, too tired to even cry.
A rattling, rustling sound awakened her. The person entering her room was dressed all in surgical scrubs, complete with mask, hair cover, gloves and booties, and was carrying a cardboard tray covered with disposable dishes. What was this all about?
“Oh, you’re awake!” the voice was that of a young woman. “I was beginning to wonder what colour your eyes were!”
She shook her head to clear it a bit and tried to sit up, but found she could barely move. Her tray-bearing visitor came to the bed and adjusted it to a sitting position. “Are you hungry?”
She shook her head. No, not hungry at all. In fact, she didn’t feel anything at all, except a vague sense of dread. “What’s going on here?” she asked, looking around and noting that she was alone in the room…a private room… She was a Medicaid patient…she should be in a ward.
“You’ve been very sick,” Tray Lady said. “You came in with a massive infection and for a few days there, we weren’t sure if you were going to make it.”
“You must have me confused with somebody else,” she said, shaking her head. “I came in…I was in labour…a miscarriage…at five months…”
Tray Lady nodded. “That was almost a week ago, Mrs. Martinelli. You’ve been unconscious most of that time, unconscious and on IV antibiotics. You had a massive infection…you nearly died.” She reached over and lifted a thick paper cup, “Here, try some broth.”
She shook her head. “Why all of this?” she gestured weakly to the woman’s garb and the disposables.
“Isolation,” the visitor responded. “You were so sick we were afraid that if you were exposed to anything else, it would be the end of you. Now please, eat. You need to start regaining your strength.”
She shook her head again. “My baby,” she said softly. “What happened to my baby?”
The woman shook her head. “I have no idea. Probably down to the Path Lab to find out the cause of death.” She held out the cup of broth again.
“I want my baby,” she said miserably, shaking her head. “I just want my baby.”
The next two days were days of one horror piling atop another. Nobody could find out what had happened to the baby’s body. No one could tell her if it had been baptised or given Last Rites. A nurse told her than because it was born dead, it was not necessary, but the priest who came to see her was not so encouraging. Limbo, he said. Unbaptised babies spent eternity in Limbo. She closed her eyes at his words, slow tears leaking onto her cheeks. Her room was on a maternity floor and she could hear the wailings of babies as they were taken to their mothers for feedings, each little cry stabbing into her heart like so many sharp shards of glass. Her breasts would swell and ache with remembrance, and her entire body would pulse with pain. Her baby, her tiny 15 ounce baby girl, who had no name, whose little body had disappeared and could not be baptised or even given a decent burial, was gone. She would never see sunshine, or pluck daisies or feed the squirrels on their Sunday outings to the park. She would never run barefoot in the grass or splash in puddles or taste snowflakes on her tongue. It was as if she had never existed except in her own mind. The whole thing made her feel a little bit crazy.
There was a telephone beside her bed…apparently standard issue with private rooms…and on her third day awake, it rang. At first she ignored it, knowing it couldn’t be for her, but it was insistent and she finally succumbed.
“Hello?” she said hesitantly.
“Well, it’s about time you picked up the phone,” Mother’s voice bored into her ear and yet, she felt a surge of hope, of anticipated relief.
“Oh!” she cried, tears spouting from her eyes. “Oh, Mother, the baby’s dead!” she wept. “It was a little girl and she’s dead!” She had not truly cried since coming to the hospital, and now she suddenly felt sobs forming in her throat.
“Stop blubbering,” Mother said. “I can’t understand you.”
She checked herself. The tears stopped but the sobs remained stuck in her throat as thick lumps.
“You need to pull yourself together,” Mother admonished her. “This is the best thing that could have happened, even if you don’t believe it at this point. The last thing you need right now is another brat hanging on your skirts. If you can’t keep your legs closed, get yourself some birth control. I don’t want that low-life husband of yours calling me again, complaining that you are goldbricking in the hospital and making him take care of the house and the kids besides his job, do you hear me?”
She nodded slowly. “Yes, Mother,”
“I know how you can con the doctors and elicit sympathy from them…I put up with it long enough, you know…”
“I almost died from an infection!” she interrupted. “I almost died!”
“Yeah, and I expect you will milk that one for all it’s worth, too. Well, it never worked with me and I’ve warned that husband of yours, so you might as well give up the game and get your ass back home to the two kids you do have and take care of them, do you hear me?”
Numb, she suddenly felt completely numb. “Yes, Mother,” she finally said into the phone. “I hear you.”
Annie was only three and Jakie was just a year and a half, she was unemployed, and desperate enough to let Rod back into her life, despite having left him five months ago after he had nearly strangled her to death. How was she to know she was pregnant at the time? She lay on the sofa, swollen feet propped up on the arm, and stared at the stained ceiling. How had her life come to this? Two toddlers, an abusive drunk for a husband, a shabby tenement with a leaking roof and rats outside big enough to saddle and ride, in a place where it was bitterly cold in the winter and suffocatingly hot and humid in the summer?
Her hand rested on her swollen abdomen. Poor baby. Like she could offer this child any more than the first two had…much as she hated to admit it, Mother had been right. Love just isn’t enough…raising kids takes money, and that was something that was always in short, short supply. At least they had enough to eat since Rod moved in…there had been stretches of days where she had eaten nothing but plain oatmeal so what little food that remained in the house could be fed to the kids. They didn’t like powdered milk and Annie was mortally offended by being offered split pea soup for a meal, peas being probably her least favorite food in the world, but faced with hunger or pea soup, the peas won out.
She sighed. Four months to go. An August birth…this would mean trying to keep a new baby comfortable and rash-free in the suffocating humidity of the summer weather while she recuperated from another Caesarean section. It was dead certain that Rod would be no more help with this child than he had been in the past…and with her entire family on the West Coast, there would be no help from that quarter. She shook her head ruefully…as if there had been any help in the past. When Annie was born, Mother had fetched them from the hospital…the military had sent her husband off to Vietnam…drove her to her little converted garage cottage and dropped her off without so much as a by-your-leave. And there she had been left alone with a ten-day-old baby…it was the day after her 18th birthday, she had nearly died in the hospital of an infection, she had a Caesarean scar on her belly that would not stop aching but, because she was breastfeeding…a positively scandalous choice forever labelling her as hopelessly low class…she couldn’t take any pain medication.
Things had only been marginally better with Jakie’s birth. Rod’s mother hated her…she wasn’t Italian, she wasn’t Catholic, she was from the wrong side of the country, and she had had the temerity to marry her precious only son…but Rod’s stepmother, Eva, had at least agreed to keep Annie while she was in the hospital for Jakie’s birth. But before the little guy had been even ten days old, she was back in her own freezing flat, healing from surgery, and caring for two children under two years of age…and a husband who was more demanding that the two babies put together.
Rod’s voice penetrated her reverie, demanding that she make him some coffee. Like he couldn’t get off his lazy ass and make himself a cup? But she knew better than to release the retort that quivered on the tip of her tongue…he hadn’t hit her since he had returned home…he hadn’t ever hit her when she was pregnant, actually…but there was always a first time. She struggled up to a sitting position, fatigue wrapped around her like a suffocating blanket, and heaved herself up off the sofa.
The next few moments were to be forever a blur in her memory. She felt dizzy, she reached out to steady herself on the nearby doorframe and suddenly a warm, wet gush of liquid cascaded down her legs, forming a spreading pool on the scarred wood floor.
“Rod!” she screamed, and the urgency in her voice must have penetrated his self-absorbed haze because he arrived at her side before her second scream had fully left her throat. Taking one look at the situation, he told her to sit back down, then ran downstairs to use the neighbour’s phone.
Amazingly, the hospital sent her home. They acknowledged that her water broke, but did nothing more than tell her husband to take her home and put her to bed, and to call her obstetrician after the holiday weekend was over. Why did she always have to choose holidays to have emergencies? she wondered, riding home in the back of a taxi listening to Rod grumble about the cost. She’d had an impacted, infected wisdom tooth on Labor Day weekend when she was eight months pregnant with Jakie, and the emergency room didn’t want to give her pain medication. Instead, they gave her a penicillin shot to which she had had a violent allergic reaction, waking up the next morning hot, red, and swollen all over, puffed up like poisoned pup. The oral surgeon who took out the tooth didn’t seem to have any compunctions against anaesthesia, but she had had to suffer for the three days before she could get the tooth extracted. Now it was Patriot’s Day weekend and she just had to go to bed and wait for it to be over.
The two flights of stairs to their attic apartment were daunting, but by taking her time, she was able to mount them. Jeanine, the teenager from the first floor, greeted them at the door and, bless her heart, refused to accept any money for watching Annie and Jakie while she and Rod were at the hospital. The little sweetheart had even washed the accumulated dishes, sparing her the back-breaking chore. Slowly, she waddled to the bedroom and stretched out on the bed and fell into an exhausted sleep.
By the next morning it was apparent that she and Rod had differing opinions on the definition of “bed rest.” She expected to stay in bed except to get up to use the bathroom; he expected her to lay in bed between accomplishing her various household tasks. Like cooking. Cleaning. Minding the kids. He conceded that grocery shopping was out and offered to do it, but her agreement was reluctant. Once out of the house without the mitigating presence of her and the kids, he would head for the nearest tavern and come home eight hours later with a loaf of bread, a quart of milk, and a belligerent attitude.
Two mornings later she awoke very early with a back ache. Too much time in the bed, she decided, and crawled out, headed for the bathroom. The first cramp seized her like a hammer blow in her lower back and she actually went down to her knees, the hollow “thud” awakening the household, sending the children into howls of alarm. “Jesus Christ!” Rod bellowed from the bedroom. “Do you have to be so clumsy?”
She struggled to stand but the pain in her back was snatching away her breath. She felt dizzy, light-headed. She thought she heard herself gasp “Help!’ but she wasn’t sure. She curled on her side, knees drawn up, and whimpered until the blackness claimed her.
She woke up in the stairwell. She was strapped to a kind of chair, two strangers carrying it down the stairs, a lot of echoing noises bouncing around her: crying children, whispering voices, bellowed commands. She couldn’t make sense of any of them. She surrendered to the blackness again, the next time opening her eyes and looking up into the face of a strange young man who had one of her eyelids pried open, a bright flashlight searing her retina.
“What’s going on?” she managed to say, but her lips felt thick and fat, and her tongue refused to be properly controlled.
Somehow the young man understood. “We’re on our way to Women’s Hospital,” he said. “You went into labour and it appears you blacked out and maybe hit your head. Just hold on and we’ll get you there in plenty of time.” He continued his probing.
“I’m five months pregnant,” she said thickly. “I have Caesareans.” His eyes widened momentarily, then he turned towards the front of the ambulance and said something she could not quite understand, her hearing as grey and fuzzy as her sight. She felt her eyes close and when they opened again it was to the punishing grasp of a giant hand digging into her lower back. Her arms and legs were too heavy to move and she could only moan at the ever-increasing intensity of the brutal grip. The ambulance bounced and bumped over sidewalks and traffic islands, the screaming siren mingling with the rushing sounds in her ears. She looked questioningly at the attendant, her ability to speak seeming to have been reduced to slow motion.
“Patriot’s Day,” he said, nodding at the window. “Opening day of baseball season, and we’re in the middle of the traffic headed for the stadium.” She nodded and closed her eyes and bit her lip against the pain, which was finally starting to subside.
She was beginning to feel a little like Alice in Wonderland. Every time she opened her eyes, everything had changed. Now she was in a little white-sheeted cubicle and someone was standing beside her, torturing her hand. “Owww!” she managed to say, feebly attempting to pull her hand free. She could see a stranger’s hand holding a cannula that looked as big as her smallest finger, and the puncture mark on the back of her hand where the stranger had tried to insert it. Before she could move or protest, a second pair of hands appeared in her field of vision and restrained her wrist and forearm while the first pair of hands jammed the thick tube into a vein on the back of her hand. She tried to scream, but her throat was too dry, her tongue too thick. What on earth was the matter with her?
When she opened her eyes the next time, the grinding pain in her back had returned. She writhed on the bed, grabbing at the bars of the headboard, and gasping for air. She heard screaming, shrieking, and terrifying howling, only to find a white-garbed nurse suddenly standing beside her and admonishing her sternly to hush, she was disturbing the other patients. “The pain,” she gasped. “Something for the pain…”
The nurse looked at her down a long, thin nose, then sniffed. “It’s too soon for pain medication,” she said, her thin lips making a prim line. “And besides, you are only having a miscarriage, it’s not like you were in real labour.”
She learned that biting down on a wad of sheet would help her ride the waves of pain. Was this labour, then? She’d had no labour with Annie and Jakie…Annie had been nearly a month past due when the doctor booked her for a C-section, and Jakie was born ten days early via scheduled C-section. Was this what labour was like, then? She had expected the pains to be in her abdomen, not in her lower back. This was excruciating! Another wave overwhelmed her and she gripped the cool steel bars of the headboard, sheets between her teeth, and twisted her body trying to escape the surge of agony that clawed at her back.
She opened her eyes to a funny sensation, a bulky feeling low in her abdomen. Almost like she had to use the toilet, but more forward. She moved her left leg experimentally and found her thighs feeling rather pushed apart and suddenly she knew…it was the baby. “Help!” she cried to the white curtains surrounding her bed. “Help me!”
That same lemon-sucking nurse snatched back the curtain. “I’ve had about enough out of you,” her bloodless lips were saying, but she interrupted.
“Something is wrong. The baby is coming. I can feel it…”
“Nonsense,” the nurse replied. “You’ve got hours to go. You were barely dilated when we checked you.”
“Look!” she cried, feeling another surge of pain gathering in her back. “Look!” She gasped suddenly, “Oh, God, it’s coming now!” She closed her eyes against the rush of pain that gripped her, clawing at the mattress with her free hand. “Oh, God. Oh, God!”
There was a cold rush of air as the sheet was snatched abruptly away from her upraised knees and the nurse started yelling. Confused, blurry images swirled around her as her bed was suddenly careening out the door of the room and rolling at an alarming speed as voices in the background made such sounds as “…get the doctor…” and “…delivering in the hallway…” She closed her eyes against the dizziness that made her want to vomit, knowing that this nurse would not appreciate having to change pukey sheets.
She was suddenly seized with what felt like a cramp. It raised her upper body off the mattress and caused her to audibly suck in air. She could not speak, but her eyes bulged in sudden terror, having no idea what was going on. Then the pain abruptly vanished and she fell back onto the sodden pillow, something wet between her thighs. She closed her eyes.
The hushed noises around her made her open them again. Like Alice, she was again in a place unfamiliar, but she recognized the green tiled walls and the massive reflective overhead light fixture…she was in an operating theatre. From the corner of her eye she could see a rubber-gloved hand extend a white cardboard carton, about the size and shape of a quart ice cream container, and then into the container was deposited a tiny, limp, wet and bloody form. Her baby.
“A boy or girl?” she managed to force out through thick lips.
“It’s not important,” that same nurse said. “It’s dead.”
“Boy or girl?” she repeated insistently, agitatedly.
“A girl,” came a soft voice from the other side of her.
“She’s dead?” she queried weakly. “Too premature?”
The thin-lipped nurse put the cover on the little white cardboard carton and set it on a stainless steel table next to the soiled towels and bloodied instruments. “From the look of things, it’s been dead for about three days.”
The day her water broke. Her baby had died that day. And they had done nothing to help her, just sent her home to rest. She closed her eyes, too tired to even cry.
A rattling, rustling sound awakened her. The person entering her room was dressed all in surgical scrubs, complete with mask, hair cover, gloves and booties, and was carrying a cardboard tray covered with disposable dishes. What was this all about?
“Oh, you’re awake!” the voice was that of a young woman. “I was beginning to wonder what colour your eyes were!”
She shook her head to clear it a bit and tried to sit up, but found she could barely move. Her tray-bearing visitor came to the bed and adjusted it to a sitting position. “Are you hungry?”
She shook her head. No, not hungry at all. In fact, she didn’t feel anything at all, except a vague sense of dread. “What’s going on here?” she asked, looking around and noting that she was alone in the room…a private room… She was a Medicaid patient…she should be in a ward.
“You’ve been very sick,” Tray Lady said. “You came in with a massive infection and for a few days there, we weren’t sure if you were going to make it.”
“You must have me confused with somebody else,” she said, shaking her head. “I came in…I was in labour…a miscarriage…at five months…”
Tray Lady nodded. “That was almost a week ago, Mrs. Martinelli. You’ve been unconscious most of that time, unconscious and on IV antibiotics. You had a massive infection…you nearly died.” She reached over and lifted a thick paper cup, “Here, try some broth.”
She shook her head. “Why all of this?” she gestured weakly to the woman’s garb and the disposables.
“Isolation,” the visitor responded. “You were so sick we were afraid that if you were exposed to anything else, it would be the end of you. Now please, eat. You need to start regaining your strength.”
She shook her head again. “My baby,” she said softly. “What happened to my baby?”
The woman shook her head. “I have no idea. Probably down to the Path Lab to find out the cause of death.” She held out the cup of broth again.
“I want my baby,” she said miserably, shaking her head. “I just want my baby.”
The next two days were days of one horror piling atop another. Nobody could find out what had happened to the baby’s body. No one could tell her if it had been baptised or given Last Rites. A nurse told her than because it was born dead, it was not necessary, but the priest who came to see her was not so encouraging. Limbo, he said. Unbaptised babies spent eternity in Limbo. She closed her eyes at his words, slow tears leaking onto her cheeks. Her room was on a maternity floor and she could hear the wailings of babies as they were taken to their mothers for feedings, each little cry stabbing into her heart like so many sharp shards of glass. Her breasts would swell and ache with remembrance, and her entire body would pulse with pain. Her baby, her tiny 15 ounce baby girl, who had no name, whose little body had disappeared and could not be baptised or even given a decent burial, was gone. She would never see sunshine, or pluck daisies or feed the squirrels on their Sunday outings to the park. She would never run barefoot in the grass or splash in puddles or taste snowflakes on her tongue. It was as if she had never existed except in her own mind. The whole thing made her feel a little bit crazy.
There was a telephone beside her bed…apparently standard issue with private rooms…and on her third day awake, it rang. At first she ignored it, knowing it couldn’t be for her, but it was insistent and she finally succumbed.
“Hello?” she said hesitantly.
“Well, it’s about time you picked up the phone,” Mother’s voice bored into her ear and yet, she felt a surge of hope, of anticipated relief.
“Oh!” she cried, tears spouting from her eyes. “Oh, Mother, the baby’s dead!” she wept. “It was a little girl and she’s dead!” She had not truly cried since coming to the hospital, and now she suddenly felt sobs forming in her throat.
“Stop blubbering,” Mother said. “I can’t understand you.”
She checked herself. The tears stopped but the sobs remained stuck in her throat as thick lumps.
“You need to pull yourself together,” Mother admonished her. “This is the best thing that could have happened, even if you don’t believe it at this point. The last thing you need right now is another brat hanging on your skirts. If you can’t keep your legs closed, get yourself some birth control. I don’t want that low-life husband of yours calling me again, complaining that you are goldbricking in the hospital and making him take care of the house and the kids besides his job, do you hear me?”
She nodded slowly. “Yes, Mother,”
“I know how you can con the doctors and elicit sympathy from them…I put up with it long enough, you know…”
“I almost died from an infection!” she interrupted. “I almost died!”
“Yeah, and I expect you will milk that one for all it’s worth, too. Well, it never worked with me and I’ve warned that husband of yours, so you might as well give up the game and get your ass back home to the two kids you do have and take care of them, do you hear me?”
Numb, she suddenly felt completely numb. “Yes, Mother,” she finally said into the phone. “I hear you.”
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