by K. D. Alden
She could smell clearly, though. The rich, sweet scent of tobacco filled her nostrils, chased off by the more immediate stench of things they passed: dirty, beery motor oil from the breakdown of an automobile, putrid carcass-rot from a small possum hit by its wheel, the concentrated offense of a pile of horse dung, into which she almost stepped.
She and Glory walked at least three miles, by her calculation—miles of doubt, buried fear and blisters. Ruth Ann’s injured toe had plenty of space, but her foot slid back in Clarence’s shoe with every step, the sweaty leather rubbing her flesh raw.
It gave her something to focus on other than dread. Step, sting, slide, sting. Step, sting, slide, sting.
She felt a moisture building in the shoe, probably blood. But what could she do about it? Wrap her foot in her spare pair of drawers? So Ruth Ann just kept putting one foot in front of the other, as she always did. The alternative was to crawl into the ditch and sleep…but giving up like that wasn’t an option when she thought about Annabel.
“Penny for your thoughts,” ventured Glory after the first mile or so.
Ruth Ann snorted. “They ain’t worth that much.”
“To me they are.”
“Why?”
“Don’t know…maybe ’cause I think you’re brave. And smart.”
“You got me confused with someone else, Glory-girl.”
“Nope. I don’t think so.” Glory smiled. “So if I had a penny, I’d give it to you—let’s pretend I do.”
Ruth Ann shook her head. Step, sting, slide, sting. “Whatever you say.”
“Here you go.” Glory dropped an imaginary coin into her unwilling palm. “So what are your thoughts?” Her angelic face was lit with actual interest.
Ruth Ann wasn’t used to anyone being interested in anything about her except how much work she could get done and how fast. Except Mrs. Dade, who had once been kind to her, especially when she was younger. She’d patted her shoulder, ironed her frock, brushed and braided her hair.
And what was Ruth Ann fixin’ to do? Steal Annabel away from her. She wasn’t a good person. She was all the things Mother Jenkins said she was…but she didn’t know exactly how she’d gotten this way.
“Hey, Ruth Ann. I gave you my penny,” Glory teased. “Talk to me, afore I go crazy from hearing nothin’ but wind.”
“Okay. Here’s my thoughts. I feel bad about what we’re gonna do. Because I know how I felt when they took Annabel—like a giant hole got torn in me. So how can I do it to Mrs. D?”
Glory stopped and just stared at her. “Uh. Do unto others?”
“It ain’t…that simple.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“One minute I agree with you; the next I don’t. Mrs. Dade was good to me.” But was she? Ruth Ann peered ahead blindly as the clouds obscured the moon and saw Mrs. D’s drawn and disgusted face.
I’m so disappointed in you, Ruthie. How could you?
It wasn’t like that, Mrs. D! I swear. He—
Don’t you lie to me on top of it. Don’t you dare.
I ain’t lyin’. He made me!
Mrs. D had raised a hand as if to slap her.
Ruth Ann shrank back, sobbing.
Get out of my sight. We didn’t raise you to be a slut or a liar. We’ve been nothing but good to you…and this is the thanks we receive? You accuse my own nephew? Get out of my sight.
The slap would have been better than the words.
Mrs. Dade, she wanted to say. Why didn’t I show you the bruises, after? The blue-black stains of shame in places no girl should have them? My wrists, upper arms…my teats…my inner thighs. Why did I hide them? Why didn’t I know this was coming?
The answer: I didn’t think it could get worse.
Go! Mrs. Dade had said again. All I can do is pray for your tarnished soul. But frankly, Ruthie, I don’t want to. I will have to pray that God sends me the strength to pray for you, to forgive you.
Ruth Ann had turned and run from the room, eyes streaming, heart shriveled above her swelling belly. She’d run into the narrow hallway, tripping on the carpet, falling forward and then failing to balance, almost tumbling backward again. She wished she had. Wished she’d cracked her skull wide open.
Glory grabbed her shoulder and shook it. “Where do you go?”
“What?”
“It’s like you’re gone from your own body. Nobody home in there. Where do you go?”
Away. Anywhere but here. “I dunno.”
“Well, come back into yourself and listen to me. That Mrs. D, she wasn’t good to you. She kicked you outta her house and then stole your baby.”
“She was good. Until she wasn’t.”
“How was she good?”
Ruth Ann sighed. “She didn’t have no daughter of her own. Couldn’t. So…she chose me. Brought me to her home. Sent me off to school for a while. An’ she taught me stuff around the house. Like how to clean and sew and cook.”
“Uh-huh. So’s you could do it for her.”
Ruth Ann shrugged. “Maybe. I done it for others, too. They paid her for my time.”
“That ain’t bein’ good to you. That’s trainin’ you like a dog: Sit, stay, roll over, fetch. Poop outside.”
Time for a change of subject. “I was always good about that last one,” Ruth Ann said drily.
Glory’s laugh floated in the moonlight, which had chosen to reappear. It echoed through the branches of a massive oak tree that sheltered a bend in the road. “You’re somethin’, Ruthie.”
Ruth Ann’s breath hitched, and she stopped in her tracks. “Don’t. Don’t call me that.”
“Sorry…?”
But she didn’t answer the unspoken question. It hurt to be called Ruthie. The two women whose love she’d lost abruptly—her momma and then Mrs. D—both of them had called her that. Until they’d called her other, hateful names. She didn’t want to be Ruthie. Ruthie was dead; only Ruth Ann remained.
“Okay, Miss Prickly.”
She felt bad again…wanted to explain to Glory. But she didn’t even know where to start. “I don’t mean to hurt your feelin’s,” she got out.
Glory touched her shoulder. “I know that.”
“How?”
“I just do.”
Ruth Ann nodded and saw that they’d finally reached Washington Street. “We turn right here. Careful—nobody can see us. We need to take the alleys.”
And so they did, slipping soundlessly along, with only one close call when a dog growled menace at them. “Ignore him. Keep walking,” Ruth Ann instructed Glory, who clutched at her hand. “He just wants us away from his territory.” Quavering, Glory tottered beside her, refusing to relinquish her death-grip on Ruth Ann’s fingers.
There was something comforting in her touch, even if it initially made Ruth Ann want to pull away and keep to herself. The hand around hers—it said she wasn’t alone. If Glory wasn’t quite yet a friend, she was at least a companion. And one who’d been handed some of the same injustices in life.
They reached the Dade homestead at last, and Ruth Ann stopped abruptly. There it was: the gray-painted cottage with two wide steps leading up to the front porch. Plain gray railings, black shutters and black front door. The house looked so unthreatening, so normal, so respectable.
Ruth Ann knew where the wood was spongy in the middle of the second step. She remembered the creak when Mrs. Dade opened the door. Directly inside were a wrought-iron umbrella stand and three hooks for coats. Mr. Dade’s field jacket would be hanging there, as well as Mrs. Dade’s dark gray woolen coat with the wide shawl collar. On the third hook would likely be the brown woolen cape they’d let her wear, still there because it wasn’t hers.
Beyond the little foyer lay the formal living room with a settee, a low tea table, two wing chairs and a harpsichord. And tucked behind that was the room Ruth Ann knew the best: the kitchen, with its brick floor, scarred but still attractive farm table and the four makeshift, oft-mended wooden chairs. The cast-iron potbellied stove flanked b
y hanging vegetable baskets and a clever alcove for preserves on one side, and a pie safe on the other.
The pie safe had never protected Mrs. D’s pies from either Patrick or her husband. If Mr. D found one cooling, he was likely to help himself without permission or thought that it might be for someone else. The only ones that made it to neighbors or friends unscathed were the rhubarbs. Cherry, peach, blueberry, pumpkin and pecan got half-devoured without conscience, no matter how often Mrs. D scolded him.
As long as one wasn’t a pie, Mr. D was harmless, even vaguely sweet under his gruff exterior. He was mostly mustache and pipe, a pair of corduroyed knees under a newspaper. One might catch a glimpse of his bushy, graying eyebrows above the paper, but just as often they’d be obscured by a cloud of smoke.
He had never laid a hand on Ruth Ann—not in affection, not in anger, not in lust. For that, she was grateful.
“What are you staring at?” Glory whispered.
Roused from her reverie, Ruth Ann put a finger to her lips and jerked her head toward the back of the house. It was one story, thank the Lord. She wouldn’t have to shimmy up a ladder to get to Annabel.
Her infant daughter would be asleep in her old bedroom directly behind the kitchen, she was sure of it. Not in the wooden sleigh bed yet—still in a crib. The Dades would be in their double brass bed in the room behind the parlor.
Her heart began to hammer now that she was actually here, though her blood seemed thick and sluggish in her veins. She moved on stiff legs around back of the house, Glory scuttling beside her. She paused outside the window of her former room, eyeing the frame, noting that the Dades had installed a new screen to keep insects away from the baby.
What are you doing, Ruth Ann? This ain’t just underhanded. It’s trespassing. It’s prob’ly kidnapping. What if you go to jail?
Seven
Horsefeathers. It couldn’t possibly be kidnapping to take back her own baby. Could it? Even if the way she was doing it wasn’t exactly aboveboard.
But how aboveboard had the nurses been to simply whisk away her newborn without asking her and giving Annabel to Mrs. Dade?
Where were her rights in this situation? Didn’t she have any?
Ruth Ann set down her bundle and put her hands flat on the window screen, feeling her way around its frame for a notch so that she could pull it off and get to the window itself. There. Notches on either side, about halfway down. She poked her thumbs into them and yanked back, hard. The screen obligingly gave way and pulled free with only a slight scrape.
She slid her fingers under the window’s frame and pushed upward. Though she expected the squeak from long experience, it shredded her nerves. She kept on pushing, until the heavy frame slid up. Then she parted the lace curtains, made by Mrs. Dade’s own hands, and poked her head inside.
The soft, milky scent of sleeping baby almost brought her to her knees. Ruth Ann’s whole body began to tremble with longing as she hung half inside the window, supporting herself on the ledge.
Get hold o’ yourself, stupid girl! Now is not the time to be mawkish. Get in, get her, then get out.
But all she could do was hang there and breathe in the essence of Annabel. She could smell the wood floor, too, and the lemon polish of the furniture, and the lavender water sprinkled on the baby’s blankets. She spied a cradle in the corner and the beginnings of a dollhouse that Mr. D must be building for Annabel. A beautiful porcelain doll sat in a miniature chair, waiting for her to get old enough to play with her.
An ache grew in Ruth Ann’s chest. Mr. D had never built her a dollhouse. But she’d been someone else’s child. They must feel differently about this baby. Maybe they thought of her as their own.
“What are you doing?” Glory whispered.
Ruth Ann took a deep breath. Then she braced herself on either side of the window casing and crawled awkwardly inside her old room. She froze at a creak somewhere in the house. Once her alarm had subsided, she rose to her feet and crept over to the cradle.
Annabel lay sleeping peacefully, her pale, downy white cheeks caressed by the moonlight. Ruth Ann’s eyes welled at the sight of her, at the chestnut lashes of her closed eyes against her milky soft skin. After three months, were her eyes still blue?
She reached down and touched one tiny fist, gasping softly when it opened and clutched her finger. A throbbing began deep in her womb, a primal, undeniable claim to this baby. Her baby. Not the Dades’.
Ruth Ann crouched next to the cradle and slipped her hands under Annabel’s warm little body, picking her up along with the blankets that covered her. The child snuffled and cooed, her eyes opening, then closing again, as she turned her head to search for a bottle. A bottle Ruth Ann didn’t have.
She rocked her in her arms and slipped a finger into the baby’s mouth, hoping Annabel would find some comfort in that. She suckled it for a moment, but then turned her head again, searching. She was hungry.
Ruth Ann had known they’d have to steal milk from the icebox. She’d known it good and well, so why was her heart just about galloping out of her chest?
Stand up tall. Hold her close. Walk to the kitchen. Open the icebox and remove a bottle of milk…
Stealing. It was theft.
And the baby wouldn’t drink cold milk, either. Would she? No. Ruth Ann would have to heat some. Mrs. D would surely hear her. She hadn’t thought this through.
She stood frozen with the baby in her arms. Annabel began to squirm, still looking for the milk she couldn’t access. Next came the gurgling. And a wail.
Shhhhhh! Don’t cry, don’t cry! Ruth Ann ran to the open window with the baby and crouched down. “Glory! Glory, take her, and try to keep her quiet. I got to find her some milk. Be right out.”
“But—”
“Shhhhh! Here.” Ruth Ann passed Annabel out the window. “Rock her.”
But Annabel was wide awake now and unused to being outside at night, unfed and in strangers’ arms. She opened her little rosebud mouth and howled at awesome decibels.
“No! No, no, no…shhhhhh, baby. Shhhhh!”
There was no way to go back in and get milk. They had to run.
Ruth Ann torpedoed herself through the window, landing awkwardly on the ground. She scrambled back up and ran three steps before she found herself facing the double-barrel of Mr. Dade’s shotgun.
“Who are you?” he growled. “Just what in the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Mrs. Dade came running out of the house, her hair wild and her night rail flying behind her. “My baby! What are you doing? Don’t hurt my baby!”
“She’s not your baby—she’s mine!” Ruth Ann said, already knowing the words didn’t matter. Her feelings wouldn’t matter, either. Nor would the “rights” she should have, just like normal people. Her rights were all wrong.
Mrs. Dade gasped. “What?”
Annabel, perhaps sensing the tension, howled again, then worked herself into a series of frantic wails.
“Give the baby to my wife. You move one muscle in the other direction, and I’ll blow your head off. Step into the light o’er here, so’s I can see you.” Mr. Dade was no longer just a pair of bushy eyebrows above or knees under a newspaper. He was defending his family, and he was deadly serious. He looked capable of anything at all.
Ruth Ann stumbled on wobbly knees and her mismatched shoes, into the light of the lantern that hung near the outhouse.
Mr. D’s jaw went slack. “You! What are you doing here?”
“Ruth Ann?” Her former foster mother put a trembling hand to her throat.
The moment of horror stretched on and on.
“I wouldn’t have hurt her” was all Ruth Ann said. “I just wanted—” Her voice cracked.
Mrs. Dade ignored her. “Give me my child! At once,” she snapped at Glory.
Noooooooo! Ruth Ann shrieked silently.
Wordlessly, Glory handed over the baby, who was still wailing, despite her best efforts to soothe Annabel.
Ruth Ann didn’t
know whether to faint or run. But this choice, too, was made for her.
“You girls get into the house,” ordered Mr. Dade. “You can’t be wandering the countryside at night.”
“That’s all right—”
“Beg pardon?” he said, the words heavy with sarcasm. “None o’ this is all right. Now get. Into. The. House.”
Aghast, eye on his shotgun, Ruth Ann beckoned a shell-shocked Glory to follow her.
Mrs. Dade brought up the rear, cooing at Annabel and stroking her sweet head.
The door had been standing wide since the couple flew out in alarm. Mr. Dade closed it with a thud behind them, parked his shotgun near the dark, unlit fireplace and went about the business of lighting lanterns.
“You’d best make some sorry attempt to explain yourselves,” he said. “You ran away from the Colony, I take it?”
“We—we were discharged,” Ruth Ann managed.
Mr. Dade set down the last lantern on the mantel, turned and folded his arms. “Is that so?” he said. He skewered her with his gaze.
She looked away. This man had been kind to her.
“They discharged you, what, to run around alone? To rob decent folks and kidnap their babies?”
“No—”
“No, what, Ruth Ann? No, we’re not decent folks? No, you didn’t snatch Annabel and hand her out the window to your friend, here?”
“I—”
“What in the good Lord’s name were you thinking, girl?”
“Annabel is my baby. I want her back.”
“That’s ridiculous. You’re a child who gave birth to a child—and out of wedlock. Frankly, you and she are both lucky that Mrs. Dade and I are willing to take her in, to turn a blind eye to the circumstances of her birth. Which are deplorable, as you well know. Shameful.”
“Yes, they are!” she flared back.
He flapped a dismissive hand at her.
The gesture enraged her. “It is shameful that I was—” She searched for the right words. “That I was taken ’vantage of, while under your roof.”