Vada Faith (10 page)

People around here wouldn’t understand. I knew that, because I didn’t, not fully, and I hadn’t told my mother yet. Even though we weren’t as close as I’d like us to be I wanted her to hear this news from me. I thought I had plenty of time. Now, she was off somewhere on vacation with Albert Taft, her boyfriend. I hadn’t told my little girls either, but then they were too young to watch the news.

“Mr. Roy Kilgore,” a voice came over the speaker. “Mr. Roy Kilgore.”

“Well, honey, that’s me,” Roy said, moving into the hallway, “I’m off to do my part. Good luck now.” He winked over his shoulder as the door closed.

I tried to visualize the new house out in Crystal Springs. Instead, a vision of Roy Kilgore in the next room popped into my mind and the picture wouldn’t go away. I closed my eyes tight and tried to force a vision of my two little girls. Brides coming down the staircase in the new house. Only the image of the man next door wouldn’t go away. Was this really the way to make a baby?

Then, I was on the table and before I knew it Roy Kilgore’s sperm was being inserted inside me. Roy Kilgore’s sperm. Inside me.

For a moment I thought about backing out. Just jumping off that table and running. My mouth was dry and I felt sick to my stomach. I was being inseminated with another man’s sperm but it was already too late.

“This will only take a few minutes, Vada Faith,” Dr. Fine said, patting my hand as he worked. “Are you okay?” He was kind but that didn’t help.

“Yes,” I said, “I’m okay.” I wasn’t. Not really. I needed John Wasper here to make me feel better about this. Somehow I felt violated accepting another man’s sperm into my body. A warmness washed over me, and I felt ashamed. As if I’d been violated. I suddenly disliked the doctor and everything about the procedure. I even hated the room. I felt as thought I were on fire. Then it was over.

I had to tell myself to get a grip. It wasn’t like I’d had sex but I was feeling invaded. Very intense. It was all so much more personal than I’d anticipated.

I tried not to think of what was going on inside my body. My eggs jumping around vying for some stranger’s sperm. I was glad no one could see my face, and how flushed it was. How flushed my whole body was. I was glad no one could see inside me either to see my eggs acting so improper. Most likely very improper.

When the doctor left the room he dimmed the light.

“You rest for a while,” he said. “I’ll be back shortly.”

Rest? Who could rest? It all seemed so complicated now, all those surrogacy issues. Was I doing the right thing? A million questions ran through my head.

As I waited there by myself, I pulled up the new house on the screen of my mind. I made myself concentrate on it. For all this trouble, I decided I would need one heck of a house. One with a deck and not just any deck. A mammoth sprawling deck with two levels and a hot tub. Yes, a hot tub with all the bells and whistles. Maybe even an in the ground pool.

In a short time, I was dressed and outside the clinic. I looked around cautiously for reporters, but the parking lot was empty now.

The news van was gone and my car sat alone. I was glad to be going home. It had been the longest morning ever.

“Vada Faith, is that you?” It was mama on the phone a few days later, sounding breathless. “What is going on back there?”

“Where are you, Mama?” I asked, wiping peanut butter off the girls’ hands and handing them each a juice bar. They headed out the back door to the swings where I could keep an eye on them from the kitchen window. Thank goodness they were well behaved. Right now I had all the turmoil I could stand.

“I’m in Chicago,” she said, impatiently, “where else would I be? I’m on my way home after dumping that snake Albert in Honolulu. I will never take another trip with a Taurus. Nothing like a bullheaded Taurus to ruin a vacation. I arrived at the airport here, my connecting flight is late, and I sit down in the lounge next to this bald Japanese man to watch the news and a reporter is interviewing this couple, the Kilgores, in a park that looks vaguely familiar.

Then, doesn’t Marge walk by with her bird watchers club.

“Then I say to the man next to me, did I say he was Japanese and bald? I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a bald Japanese man before. Have you? Not in person, anyway and I said, ‘They’re in my town. That’s Shady Creek, West Virginia. See the statue of our Civil War hero over there. By the little waterfall.’ He nodded and went right on reading the New York Times. Well, the woman, that Mrs. Kilgore, practically took the microphone away from the reporter and said, ‘I’m finally going to get a baby.’

“Well, wasn’t she just joyous. I kept thinking, do I care? She went right on talking. ‘We have found the sweetest girl on this earth right here in West Virginia who is going to carry the baby for us. She already has her own set of twin girls.’

“The news woman nearly ripped the microphone away and stuck it under the man’s nose and continued to ask about some shady business deal the man was involved in. I put two and two together when I heard twin girls.” She gave a great long sigh. “It’s you isn’t it? You’re going to be their surrogate. That’s why you had your tubes untied. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t get a chance.”

“I have to find out this kind of thing on national news,” she moaned. “In the Chicago airport too. When I am sick over my messed up vacation and hating that reptile Albert.”

“Look,” I said, losing my temper, “I didn’t see you going to great lengths to explain anything to me and Joy Ruth when you moved out and left us. We were only little kids. We’d have settled for any explanation. Even one on national television but you go off leaving us with our clueless father. Does a hog know when Sunday comes? No. Did Delbert Dunn know anything about raising children? No.”

“We’ve been over this territory before,” she said wearily. “How many ways can I say I’m sorry. I did the wrong thing by leaving and when I realized it your father wouldn’t let me come home. I guess I was afraid you wouldn’t want me either. Besides I’d done enough damage to you already. I thought staying away was best. That’s history. Long ago history.”

“Yes,” I said, feeling too sorry for myself to feel sorry for her, even if her voice was trembling. “A history all right. One filled with TV dinners and Kool Aid in a paper cup. Never once did we have school clothes that fit us. Daddy bought us stuff from church rummage sales until we were old enough to take ourselves shopping.”

“Delbert stayed right there with you two. He may not have been perfect but he was there for you girls. You survived and you’re okay. That’s the important thing.”

I could just see her standing in the airport, nervously shifting her straw bag with its clump of withered red flowers from arm to arm, the cell phone tucked under her chin, her straw hat bobbing on her head as she talked.

“I have apologized enough,” she said. “So, Delbert didn’t know a thing about being a parent. Well, neither did I. We didn’t know anything about being married either, for that matter. I wanted a job and I wanted us out of that trailer park. Delbert was stuck there like cement and it would have taken a bomb to remove him. This didn’t make him bad and he loved both you girls.” She paused a minute. “Hey, I was wrong, but, listen, honey, my plane is being called. We’ll talk when I get home.”

“All right,” I said. Even though I’d forgiven her, I still found her walking out on us hard to swallow. I knew our father didn’t want her back but I figured she could have come anyway just to show she cared.

“Wait,” she said quickly, “did you know that Kilgore man was accused of bilking hundreds of old people out of money? That was down in the state of Mississippi with that home improvement company of his. The news reporter said Alabama and Arkansas are bringing fraud charges against him. They interviewed his ex-housekeeper, too. She said he even paid her underage niece to have his baby. That investigation is still going on. Not only that, they said his wife, that blond, had mental problems and was having an affair with some show business person. Oh shoot, darn, they’re announcing my flight. I have to run. It’s the last call. I love you.”

Stunned, I sat down in a kitchen chair still gripping the phone. I had planned to meet Joy Ruth for lunch. In spite of all her misgivings about my surrogacy, she was finally being more supportive. She was working at the shop while I did the banking and some tax work at home. Business was slow for some reason. Unusual for this time of year. Now mama’s call had knocked me off my feet. What did it all mean?

Why would our story be on the national news? What was this about Roy’s home improvement business bilking old people out of money? Why would they report that Dottie was having an affair? That could not be true.

I turned on the television and switched it from Dr. Phil to Rachael Ray. The View with Barbara Walters. No local news. At least not anything important. I managed to find the latest dog catcher’s report, and an update on the price of corn and soybeans. Did the residents of Shady Creek have to go to Chicago to hear anything significant?

I hit the remote button again, searching for some local news but when I couldn’t find anything I turned it off.

“Don’t leave the house,” Joy Ruth shouted into my ear when I answered my cell phone on the second ring. I’d been staring into my purse at the $10,000 check. My first payment. Our verbal agreement was working exactly as it was supposed to. That surrogacy agreement was the only thing in my life that was working right at the moment.

“What are you talking about?” I asked, closing my purse. My sister had enough drama in her for the two of us. That was why she was in drama club in school and I wasn’t.

“There are reporters outside the shop. Thank God we’re closed today, Vada Faith. Please stay inside the house this afternoon.”

“Get a grip on yourself,” I said, “and tell me what’s happening.”

“Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath. “A reporter followed me inside this morning. Wanted to know if I was having a baby for someone too. He asked if I was giving it away like my sister.”

“So they know who I am. Big deal. They don’t know where I live.”

A horn blasted out in my driveway. “Oh no,” I screamed, and slammed down the phone.

With my heart thumping I hurried to the front door and looked cautiously through the peep hole. I was afraid I’d see a reporter staring back at me. It was only Charlie, the UPS man, whistling a jaunty tune and smiling back at me through the hole. I opened the door and he handed me a small package. “See ya,Vada Faith,” he said, and loped off the porch.

I closed the door and locked it quickly before a news reporter could hurl himself inside from the porch.

The package was addressed to me from Mars Jewelry. I sat down on the sofa and ripped it open. Inside was a velvet box and nestled inside it was the most beautiful diamond tennis bracelet I’d ever seen. The enclosed card said, “Love, Roy and Dottie.”

I’d always wanted a diamond tennis bracelet. This one was spectacular. I admired it as I fastened it on my arm. Oh, I couldn’t keep it, I knew that. John Wasper would go off the deep end. They sure knew how to treat a person. He did anyway. Somehow I was sure this was his doing. That tennis bracelet was from him to me. Sure as I was sitting there with it on my arm. This could mean real trouble. I didn’t allow that thought to do more than slip into my mind before I tossed it out.

I turned the bracelet this way and that letting it catch the light coming in the living room windows. This day was turning out to be full of surprises, and too perfect for negative thoughts.

“An expensive gift like that can only mean trouble, Vada Faith. Trouble. Trouble. Trouble. An expensive gift was not a part of the surrogacy agreement. Was something more expected in return? Something besides a baby?” As each thought came, I deleted it, quicker than I did words on my laptop, and continued basking in the warm glow of the diamonds encircling my arm.

That night as we got ready for bed John Wasper said, “I guess we couldn’t make love, could we?”

“I told you I agreed to take certain precautions, honey. It means not making love tonight.” I turned to kiss him goodnight as I climbed into bed.

He groaned. “Your mother might as well be in the next room.”

“Be glad she’s not.” I moved to my side of the bed. “She called today from Chicago. She’ll be back soon enough. She dumped Albert in Honolulu. She wasn’t in a very good mood. She’ll be home tomorrow.”

“How did it feel today?”

“How did what feel?” I said, pretending not to understand his question. I busied myself arranging the sheet over me.

“You know.”

I could see my husband’s outline in the glow of the night light. He was sitting up with his arms folded behind his head. It meant he wasn’t sleepy and wanted to talk.

“You mean the, uh, procedure?”

“Yeah. You know what I mean.”

“I told you it was simple. It was quick. Really. I hardly felt a thing. It was over sooner than I thought it would be. It was just like any other visit to the doctor.”

He was silent for a moment. “Do you think you’ll get pregnant?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“I hope not because I want it over. This whole awful nightmare.”

“I know,” I said, moving over beside him. “Please, hold me.”

After holding himself away from me for a minute or so, he closed his arms around me and I snuggled into him. “I just wish you hadn’t gotten involved in this.”

I knew without knowing how that he had a lump in his throat and I felt a stab of panic.

“I’m already involved and I love you for supporting me.”

“I’m not supporting you. No way,” he said, but he was relaxed against me.

“I do love you,” I said, my eyes closing, “you’re the best.” I went to sleep in his arms with the diamond bracelet on my mind. I knew I had to figure out how to get it back to the couple without him ever finding out about it.

That night I dreamed of the diamond bracelet. It was on my arm and I couldn’t take it off, no matter how hard I tried. It seemed to be super glued. Roy was shouting, “You are mine, Vada Faith. You are mine. That bracelet proves it. The whole world will know now. You will have all my babies.” Dozens of blue eyed babies surrounded me. They all looked just like the baby in the store next door to our shop. Even though I’d started looking away each time I passed by that window those babies still haunted me.