Four of a Kind: A women's historical fiction (71 page)

“A soldier no doubt did this,” she says, coming into the kitchen one evening and catching me rubbing my lower back. “That’s what a girl gets when whoring around town,” she adds, referring to my few nights with The Girls at the shipyard dance hall. It isn’t TJ’s hangout but I’d stopped going out altogether, in fear of running into him.

I immediately straighten and turn back to the sink. I’d never admitted to her about my condition. “For fifty dollars I can get you a potion,” she says casually, folding linen napkins at the working table. I turn to face her, eyebrows raised. “It’s legal,” she continues quickly, keeping her eyes focused on her work. “A menstrual blockage, it’s called. Advertised in the newspaper but smart women know what it’s used for. A simple drink that will cure you of female troubles.”

I think about it. So there. I’ve said it. I’m tired of the shame and I want to go home to Mama. Men don’t meet my eyes anymore and I figure my life is over in finding a beau, or even someone to dance with. Don’t get me wrong; there are many women around
that are pregnant but they proudly wear that gold wedding band as proof of decency, and talk incessantly about their husband overseas, like the women themselves wear the Purple Heart. A few have stayed here and their husbands come in from the ships and stay overnight and I have to hear bedsprings creak decently all hours of the night. I never know how to answer their questions on where my husband is fighting and sometimes I lie and make up a place. I’m getting good at lying through writing Mama. I’ve had dozens of imagined explanations with her and none of them are convincing. No matter what, she’ll only tell me that if I’d done what I promised about the birth control clinic, I wouldn’t be in this mess. She’s right. So there. I’ve said that too. Yet my conscience is part of the problem and the other part is the fifty dollars. I’d spent most of my dough from the shipyard on rent and clothing. With what little I have left, I have to buy bigger dresses.

Alright, I was almost in another lie here. If I can afford bigger dresses, I can afford …The truth is, I hand her the money for the potion, she hands me a capped bottle of dark liquid, and she never mentions another word about it. I stand in my little attic room, slowly bring the potion to my lips, and then drink it quickly before I can change my mind. The stuff tastes awful with all that lead in it. I sit on the bed. I lie down on the bed. I wait. And then I grab the chamber pot from under the bed. God punishes me by making me upchuck everything but the baby for three horribly sweaty days. Blood, diarrhea … I want to cry out for help but I’m too ashamed. Every now and then I hear footsteps and think Mrs. Worthington is checking on me, but they go away without a knock on my door. I clean up my own mess and on the fourth, I’m back in the kitchen and the baby is kicking me good. And I’m kicking myself over trying to rid of my own flesh and blood, even if part of that blood belongs to a mean-spirited cousin. I’m beginning to think I’m no better.

In my eighth month, Clary sends word that Uncle Joe has died “in a croak” and the coast is clear. I cry for the first time that I can remember, realizing that relief is where my water tap is. I’m weaker in body but stronger of mind, determined to make this work to where
I can tell Mama about it. With Clary’s letter, now I can see how to do that. First of all, Clary is a midwife, so when I show up at the Pick Plantation by taxi cab, and after her initial, “Oh Lord, child!” and my response by patting my stomach and saying, “Yes, it is!” I know I’m back to where I should be. Clary will look after that part.

Then I do the harder part. At Uncle Joe’s funeral I wear Clary’s bulky Kangeroo coat with large pockets that hide my condition. Only then do I feel comfortable facing TJ and his father, not wanting to see his father smirk at me for his successful plan. At least TJ has the propriety to look frightened when he first sees me. After the funeral I approach a very solemn TJ and invite him out to the house for dinner. I enjoy his shock and the glimpse of admiration as he nods a speechless acceptance.

I open the door to him in my one and only maternity dress; the style is tight and ties at the waist in the back and has ruffles down the front and sleeves, as if ruffles will detract. I tied it tight to stick out obscenely. His eyes enlarge, as if in need to take it all in and he blushes and stammers terribly, making this all worthwhile. He hands me a gift, a pair of rayon stockings - a rarity these days - mumbling something about replacing my ankle socks with these “much later”, meaning when I can once again wear a garter. I say nothing about the obvious, pretending it’s all perfectly normal.

Then, over Clary’s sweet potato biscuits (which always puts me in a good mood), I ask him to marry me “for the baby’s sake”. To give him credit here, he could’ve said no - Clary had told me that Uncle Joe’s dying words were cursing me and Mama and that he’d changed his will to give the plantation to TJ. Instead, a very contrite TJ grabs my hand and tells me I won’t regret it. Our wedding will make everybody happy, he claims. “And even you’ll be happy once you know that I joined the service. Yes, ma’am, I’ve enlisted for atonement. I feel plain awful for what I did. Hey,” he adds, feigning chirpy, “if you’re lucky, I’ll die of trench fever like my uncle did in the Great War.”

“Well, that’s just whiz-bang,” I mutter and take a large bite of biscuit. Not even TJ, looking his spiffy best dressed in a suit and tie
could ruin my appetite these days. “I guess your uncle is my uncle, too?” This really isn’t a question because I really don’t want to know.

TJ jumps up, takes my cigarette and butts it out, and pulls my hands to lift my bulk to my feet. “Let’s get married tomorrow. You said you won’t leave the plantation again until after the baby is born. So, I’ll bring an ordained minister out here and Daddy can be our witness.”

“Why so soon?” I haven’t thought this through, past asking.

“Yeah, what’s the rush?” he asks, patting my stomach basketball.

I have to laugh. “Okay. But only your mother,” I say. I have my limits.

“All right,” he answers slowly. “I’ll see what I can do.”

He pulls it off and ends the vows by slipping a gold wedding band on my finger. He’s wearing his service uniform; I’m wearing the maternity dress, only I loosen the tie in the back when I see the pinched lips on the minister. My first thought is,
now I can call Mama
.

TJ’s mother insists I help her in the kitchen (much to Clary’s surprise who had been peeping through the kitchen door to watch our ceremony), only to take me to the sideboard and whisper, “If it makes you feel any better, William is not TJ’s father.” I gasp and then my eyes become larger at the implications to my unborn child. “You know who I am,” I state, admiring her wise blue eyes and silver hair framing her face. Even up close she has a porcelain complexion. She continues as if I haven’t spoken. “TJ doesn’t know but his father suspects. So understand this. TJ has always tried to please a father he’s never had and who has never loved TJ, or anyone else for that matter. I hope you have a son who can love TJ back.” She kisses my cheek and leaves the room, leaving a shocked daughter-in-law slash great-niece behind in an aftermath of Coty perfume.

He leaves for basic training at Camp Wolters, Texas the next week. Before that, we stay at the plantation house for the entire “honeymoon”. I avoid the public, he and Clary avoid each other. He can’t
harm me any longer and the easiest thing to do to avoid conflict is to submit to his manhood every time he asks. And he always asks first. And he asks every night. He moves on top of me, trying not to apply weight to my stomach, and we avoid each other’s eyes. The truth is there to see and says that the only connection we have is where he’s entered me. After a few nights, he only enters from behind.

He does his thing quickly, sometimes clinging desperately. Night after night he pulls down the covers to my sacred feather bed and creeps in behind me. I keep to my side unless he taps my shoulder. “Please, baby, please?” he asks as he pulls up my ankle-length nightgown. I nod my consent, expose myself further and he’s off to the races.

I cry when he leaves for basic training, and you remember the only reason why I cry, don’t you?

Jesi is born the day after TJ leaves, as if it’s safe now to come out. She is delivered about four weeks early and takes about the same amount of hellish time as my imprisonment in TJ’s shack. I feel like I’m going through it all over again, in my room with the shades down during the day, and the all-night grips of black pain. What goes in one way must come out the same. “Don’t leave me alone,” I cry out to Clary, when she goes away to get more towels. “Don’t turn the lamp off!” I cry when she wants me to try to sleep. Clary is changing her tune, when she takes my cigarettes away and tells me to sip her herbal concoctions or when she massages my legs, which tells me she is getting worried. At long last – and with what I think is my dying breath - I scream out and bear down while Clary pushes on my stomach and I feel Jesi slip out as if there’s nothing to it. Clary cries out, “It’s a girl!” and I try to joke by asking if my heart and lungs came out with her. Clary doesn’t smile though and seems to be concentrating on what’s going on between my bent legs. “It’s a girl,” she says, softly this time, “but she’s a little damaged.”

“Damaged?” I ask, trying to lift myself up from my pillows.

“Lay still,” she says. She’s quiet for a minute. “This little ‘un’s got clubfoot,” she mutters.

“Clary?”

She looks over at me as if I’ve suddenly just showed up. “I’ll get her cleaned up and bring her back. You lie still so I can get you cleaned next.”

I’m somehow dozing when she returns, a doctor in tow. He lifts up my sheet and feels around like he knows me as wife, and gives Clary instructions on massaging my stomach to rid of afterbirth, and tells her to wash me down and change my sheets. She frowns at him for bossing her around and I can’t say I blame her now that she’s done the hard part, but she just says “yes sir, no sir”. He tells her I should’ve seen a doctor during my pregnancy and that I should’ve been taken to a hospital, like it’s her fault, and hoarsely I call out that I’m where I want to be and where the hell is my baby?

“I’ve sent her to the hospital,” the doctor says, turning on a different kinder tone. “She has birth defects that may require immediate surgery. She’s breathing poorly and she appears to have talipes equinovarus.”

“Oh God,” I say. It sounds serious. “Clary, bring me back my damn cigarettes.”

One leg is four inches shorter and curved out, the other has a clubfoot that is surgically straightened and splints applied. This is after they clear up her lung infection. She’s in the hospital for weeks and my breasts dry up like apples on the ground. I’m too tired to feel much of anything and I try not to think. Mama tries to change that.

“I was planning on coming down there for the birth,” she says in
that tone
, as if I had intentionally planned time of delivery. I immediately start feeling agitated; she just has that gift I reckon. And Lord Child, all the questions: Why was she born so early? How many months along did you say you were? Why didn’t you tell me sooner you were married last fall? Why are there birth defects? We’ve never
had a birth defect in our entire family! What kind of family does this TJ come from? And she says
TJ
as if she doesn’t believe that’s his real name. Her being so smart always takes me by surprise although it shouldn’t. Of course the more I tell her, the more she asks. “Why is Jesi’s last name the same as ours?”
It’s the woman’s way of the future for war babies
, I try to explain. She’s not buying any of it.