A Mother's Promise

by K. D. Alden

  Did normal folks think about silly things like this? Or just the feebleminded? She didn’t know.

  Mother Jenkins set her cup down, too, a little less than graciously. “Where is your shoe?”

  Ruth Ann thought fast. “It busted clean through and fell off a-cause of walkin’ all this way. Already had the hole, ma’am. From where the iron burned it through.”

  “That could have been repaired. So not only have you defied the rules, alarmed everyone, shirked your chores and forced me to come and get you—now you’re costing us extra money that is not budgeted.”

  Ruth Ann looked down at the floor and mumbled an apology.

  “Well, Mrs. Dade. I don’t want to take up any more of your time…”

  Please take up more of her time. Oh, please.

  Ruth Ann’s scar tissue began to itch. She knew the Belt was coming, as soon as they got back to the Colony. Beside her, Glory nervously picked at her cuticles. She’d chewed a white-rimmed, swollen sore on her bottom lip. It looked painful.

  “Oh, no, not at all,” Mrs. Dade fibbed. “It’s a pleasure to see you, Mrs. Jenkins, as always.”

  “Likewise. I only wish the circumstances were happier. These girls have caused a great deal of trouble for everyone.”

  Trouble follows me like a mangy dog—one with fleas.

  “They’ve been no inconvenience. Just a…a surprise.”

  “Well. It’s time to get them out of the way of decent folk and back where they belong.”

  I’ll never belong at the Colony, not as long as I live.

  If only she could turn back time to before Patrick had arrived. Then she could stay here again, in her snug little bed and in her own room. She could do laundry and cook for one couple instead of three hundred stray misfits, a few of whom wore diapers.

  She almost opened her mouth and begged to stay. But Patrick would of course visit here again…which didn’t bear thinking of. And where would that leave Glory? To face Mother Jenkins and the Belt alone, when none of this had been poor Glory’s idea.

  Cain’t do it.

  So she stood up dutifully and smoothed her gray dress, locking her knees so they wouldn’t shake. She ran over and pressed a kiss to Annabel’s forehead. And then she moved to the door.

  “I’m quite sure you have something to say to Mrs. Dade before you leave, the both of you,” Mother Jenkins snapped.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” Glory said quickly.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. D.” Ruth Ann locked eyes with her.

  Mrs. Dade fidgeted, seemed to want to say something. Her eyes were troubled; she opened her mouth but then closed it again. She cast a glance at Mother Jenkins. “Be well, child. All right? You take good care of yourself.”

  Ruth Ann’s mouth twisted wryly and she nodded. She didn’t really have a choice, now did she? Nobody else would take care of her.

  Out the door they went and down the steps, propelled by Mother Jenkins’s beefy palms, heavy between their shoulders.

  Clarence doffed his tweed cap and moved to open the rear door for them.

  “Don’t be silly,” Mother J snapped. “You don’t need to extend such courtesies to these little sluts.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Clarence, but continued to hold open the door all the same. He handed Glory in first and then Ruth Ann, squeezing her fingers as he did so. Placing a gentle hand at the small of her back as she climbed in.

  She treasured his kindness in much the same way as she’d treasured his shoe.

  Mother Jenkins didn’t bother to wait for him to open the front passenger door. Puffing, she hoisted herself in and pulled it closed with a bang that caused Clarence to wince.

  “I am mortified,” she scolded them. “Simply mortified. How dare you? You have caused me trouble, inconvenience, embarrassment and possibly my position at the Colony! You have worried Dr. Price and thrown his surgery schedule into disarray. And you have burdened the other girls with your work during the time you’ve been missing.”

  Ruth Ann remained silent. So did Glory.

  “Well? What do you have to say for yourselves?”

  They exchanged a glance. Glory’s hands were trembling. Ruth Ann took a page out of Clarence’s book and squeezed her fingers.

  He started the engine, bracing his stump on the wheel, and put the Model T into first gear. His other hand and his feet moved smoothly in coordination so that they felt barely a lurch even as he changed to second and then third as they picked up speed.

  Ruth Ann had only ever taken two other automobile rides in her life: one to the judge’s chambers when she was assigned to the Dades and one to the Colony. She inhaled the smells of the engine exhaust, the heated rubber of the tires, the rich loamy leather of the seats.

  She imagined briefly that she was not a disgraced runaway, but some great lady, draped in fur and riding in luxury to a ball. What must that be like? Perhaps she’d wear a headband with a feather and smoke a cigarette in a long holder. She’d seen the pictures of such women on the covers of old issues of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar and Life magazine when they were donated to the Colony.

  She imagined wearing silk stockings with the seams straightened on the backs of her legs and white leather pumps with no scuffs. A lovely handbag to match…she would use words like darling and direct gentlemen to “be a love and just fetch my coat.”

  “I asked you a question!” Mother Jenkins thundered, utterly ruining her daydream.

  Glory squeaked and shrank back in alarm.

  “What?” Ruth Ann asked blankly.

  “What do you have to say for yourselves?”

  “Um…”

  “Um? Um? That’s all you can produce?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am.”

  “What were you thinking? Of course, I’m clearly giving an imbecile far too much credit. You don’t think, do you?”

  Ruth Ann felt so blue that it was hard to come up with even a feeble fib. So she ripped pieces of the truth off the tale and waved them in surrender, like a white flag. “I…I talked Glory into comin’ with me to see my baby. Jest wanted to see her, is all. Weren’t Glory’s fault, ma’am. I was mighty persuasive. A-cause I didn’t want to go alone.”

  “And then? Then what were you going to do afterward?”

  “We was comin’ back, Mother Jenkins. We was. We just wanted to see if we could find Glory’s baby, too. Check in on her.”

  “Ridiculous. Irresponsible. Dangerous. Improper.”

  “It’s hard, not knowin’, when it’s your flesh an’ blood,” ventured Glory. “An’ nobody will tell you a thing.”

  “Did I give you permission to speak?” Mother Jenkins growled.

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Then don’t.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I said: Do not speak! The two of you have been away for more than twenty-four hours with no chaperone. God alone knows what you’ve been doing.”

  “We ain’t done nothing wrong—”

  “Nothing wrong! I beg your pardon!” Mother Jenkins’s head seemed to spin on her body, and in a feat of acrobatics, she was suddenly facing them, reaching over the seat to grab Ruth Ann by the ear.

  “Not like that—oww!”

  “Nothing wrong,” Mother J repeated incredulously. Her hot breath stank of coffee and liver; her bosom pressed ominously into Ruth Ann’s face when she yanked her forward. Strapped into an industrial-strength brassiere, it was boned and unyielding as the armor of a tank. It reeked of body odor and kitchen grease, thinly disguised by a sprinkle of eau de toilette.

  Ruth Ann wanted to vomit, but she was so scared that the bile stuck in her throat.

  “You just wait until we get back!” Mother J rasped. “And see what happens to you.” With that, she shoved Ruth Ann backward and, still clamping viciously to her ear with her left hand, whacked her face but good with the right hand as Glory cowered in the opposite corner.

  The velocity of the blow unbalanced Mother Jenkins, tipping her forward. She let loose of
Ruth Ann’s ear and grabbed at her shoulders instead, to balance herself. She hung there panting for a moment, trapped over the seat like a beetle, with her enormous bum in the air.

  That was when a hyperventilating Glory spilled into hysterical, and then horrified, giggles. She was unable to stop herself. Ruth Ann could see that, as Mother J let go of her shoulders and then lunged at the poor girl.

  Glory screeched, her teeth chattering, as Mother J’s hands encircled her neck.

  Clarence swerved to the side of the road and stomped on the brakes, which caused Mother Jenkins to hurtle backward, her bum bouncing off the glove box and her chin off the top of the seat. She bit her own tongue almost clean through at the tip and blood ran into her mouth, coating her teeth. She looked like something out of the worst kind of nightmare.

  What followed was incoherent shrieking, followed by a petrified Clarence whipping out his handkerchief and holding it to Mother J’s mouth. This stemmed the flow of blood and muffled what Ruth Ann felt sure were curses.

  “Ahwahbuuhtyouwinaninthofwahwife!” Mother Jenkins roared through the handkerchief.

  I will beat you within an inch of your life, Ruth Ann interpreted. She and Glory clung to each other, horrified. They simply stared at her.

  “Youthithlebithes! Youwihpayfohthith!” Then the old toad turned on Clarence. “Anthyou! Whahthuhhehithwrohwihyou?”

  He shook his head wordlessly.

  “Whahhahyouthoothayfohyohthef? Mohon!”

  This last word Ruth Ann discerned to be moron. It wasn’t as difficult to translate as the rest of them, even with Mother J’s freshly flapping tip o’ the tongue.

  “I were afraid we was gonna have an accident,” Clarence managed. “I ’pologize, Mother Jenkins. I’m real sorry, ma’am. Are you okay?”

  “Duhahwookokay? Dwoothing ithiot!”

  If anyone sounded like a drooling idiot, it was their keeper. In fact, she sounded more feebleminded than anybody at the Colony.

  “Lemme look at it,” Clarence said. “At your, ah…injury.” He stretched out his hand to take possession of the cloth at her mouth.

  Mother Jenkins swatted his hand, then hauled off and smacked him one.

  Clarence winced.

  Ruth Ann flinched. She knew what that felt like.

  “Gehawahfwuhme—thithithyohfaulth. Donthuthme! Thutht thwive.”

  Drive.

  Clarence seemed to translate this just fine, for he nodded, ignoring the scarlet handprint blooming on his cheek.

  And so they all set off again for the Colony. They made a right odd foursome, they did: one-handed Clarence with Mother Jenkins spitting blood in the front; and poor hysterical, throttled, quivering Glory with one-shoed Ruth Ann in the back.

  Ruth Ann squeezed Glory’s hand again, and then took herself off into a fresh daydream of a banquet with white linen tablecloths and gleaming silver, sparkling crystal and hothouse flowers everywhere. There’d be music playing, maybe Al Jolson…and she and Glory’d be decked out to the nines in loads of pearls and sparkling gowns. Clarence’d be there, too—why not? And he’d be wearing a three-piece suit with a necktie knotted just so. His hair would be slicked back from his forehead and he’d ask Ruth Ann to dance.

  They would all sip champagne—or maybe just lemonade, on account of she’d heard champagne made ladies silly and gentlemen bold. He and the other gentlemen would whirl her and twirl her like a sparkling top all over the shining parquet of the ballroom floor. They’d spin her like glass and treat her as if she were just as fragile. Precious.

  They’d be respectful and not paw at her. They wouldn’t palm the back of her head and push her face into the wall while spewing horrid things into her ear.

  That was the end of her daydream. It coincided with the turnoff to the gravel road that led to the Colony.

  Glory began to mumble the Lord’s Prayer, and Ruth Ann echoed it in her head.

  And deliver us from evil…

  Clarence caught her eye in the rearview mirror and winked at her.

  Ruth Ann tried to wink back, but she wasn’t very good at it. And there was nothing the least bit winky ’bout their situation. She knew it was just his way of reassuring her.

  But what could a boy with one hand do to protect her and Glory from a furious witch with an army of bats in her behind? And what could he do to rescue them from a doctor wielding a scalpel?

  Eleven

  Iwuhdeahwithouater,” promised Mother Jenkins, fit to be tied as Clarence helped her out of the passenger seat of the Model T.

  Ruth Ann interpreted this to mean “I will deal with you later.”

  “IhahgotheeDocPwithe.” She had to go see Doc Price. Clearly about her tongue.

  Ruth Ann allowed herself the brief fantasy that Doc Price would cut out Mother J’s tongue altogether, but such good fortune was unlikely to befall her and Glory. She settled for hoping, then, that he’d have to stitch her licker back together with a big needle and that it would hurt something fierce.

  “Gethawok!” ordered Mother Jenkins, pointing savagely toward the kitchens.

  Get to work. Ruth Ann nodded obediently and asked God’s forgiveness for her terrible thoughts. Sorry, Lord, but I’m right tired of turnin’ the other cheek.

  She also couldn’t help yet another wish—that Mother J had lost so much blood from her tongue that she’d be weak and would sleep for a week, leaving them in peace. Maybe she’d have sweet dreams, too, and forget about punishing them.

  Fat chance o’ that.

  When she and Glory entered the kitchens via the mudroom, all chatter and clatter stopped. Fourteen other girls turned to stare at them, eyes wide and avid.

  “M-mornin’,” ventured Glory with a weak, tepid smile.

  Nobody said a word. They just exchanged glances with one another and drew their skirts away from Ruth Ann and Glory when they passed them on the way to wash their hands in the big farmhouse sink. Treating them like they was germs, or viruses.

  Ruth Ann was used to this, being Crazy Sheila’s daughter, and therefore the subject of gossip and ostracism. But Glory wasn’t. Her lips trembled with hurt and humiliation. It made Ruth Ann mad on her account.

  “Afraid we’ll infect you?” she asked the room in general.

  Elbowing and snickering were her only responses.

  Big surprise.

  “Afraid we got cooties?” Ruth Ann shook her skirts at them, turning in a circle so’s to spread the imaginary body lice evenly among them all. “Go, boys! Boot-scoot, ya coots. Get ’em all. Jump into their drawers. Crawl up in their armpits.”

  Glory gasped and then giggled.

  Ruth Ann winked at her, just as Clarence had winked.

  Where she found the nerve to get up to such tricks, she didn’t know. She supposed it was on account of she knew she was gonna get walloped within an inch of her life anyways, so she had nothing to lose. It was a good feeling, sorta.

  The girls’ expressions were comically horrified. They clucked and scratched like a bunch of hens. But they still wouldn’t address her to her face—not even hours later, when the last potato had been peeled, the last onion sliced, the last pea shelled, and all the pots and pans had been scrubbed, dried and put away.

  Ruth Ann’s arms, hands, back, legs and feet ached, and she longed something desperate for a shower.

  That, of course, was Mother Jenkins’s cue to reappear and frog-march her and Glory from the sink, where they’d been working apart from the others, to the large kitchen butcher-block. She told them to put their hands flat on its surface. Then she took her time selecting just the right heavy wooden cooking spoon, while the other girls watched, tense and round-eyed.

  Glory was quite literally shaking in her shoes.

  Ruth Ann gritted her teeth and took her mind somewhere else.

  Whack! Glory screamed with the pain. Whack, whack, whack. Whack, Whack.

  Ruth Ann closed her eyes.

  “Thah,” Mother Jenkins said with another whack, “wih teath you”—whac
k!—“to stheel Cowony properthy”—whack—“anth ruh away!” Whack.

  Poor Glory shrieked with each blow to her knuckles. Tears coursed down her cheeks.

  And then it was Ruth Ann’s turn. Whack! Whack, whack, whack. Whack-whack.

  She didn’t make a sound, just braced herself for each excruciating blow that set her knuckles on fire. It seemed to her that Mother J put extra force into her punishment: she was panting like a hound in summer, and when Ruth Ann opened her eyes she could indeed see black thread stitching at the end of the woman’s tongue.

  Mother FrankenJenkins.

  There were sweat circles under her arms, her hair—the part not confined to its bun—was matted to her head, and perspiration dotted her forehead. Her eyes were dark pools of venom. She looked like a madwoman. And the person she was maddest at was Ruth Ann.

  Try as she might, she couldn’t get one tear out of her victim, which seemed to make her even angrier.

  When the agony could get no worse and Ruth Ann’s hands had been reduced to bloody meat, Mother Jenkins stopped. She marched to the sink and tossed the cooking spoon into it.

  “Thoomowoh,” she announced, “youwihgehthebehwt.”

  Tomorrow, they would get the Belt.

  And with those glad tidings, Mother J departed the kitchens.

  For a long time, nobody moved.

  Then it was Greta, Ruth Ann’s bunkmate, who without a word, ran and got wet cloths for each of them. She and another girl, Doris, helped to wrap their hands. Who knew Greta had a heart?

  “I’m sorry,” Ruth Ann whispered later, after they’d bathed and painfully washed their hair and brushed their teeth. She’d snuck over to the opposite dormitory, where Glory had already gotten into bed. “I got you in a whole heap o’ trouble. I sure am sorry, Glory.”

  The girl was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “You ain’t got no call to be sorry. I wanted to go with you. I wanted a different life. So I’m just as guilty as you.”