A Mother's Promise

by K. D. Alden

  “My plan weren’t a real good one,” Ruth Ann said.

  “Better’n mine, to be stuck here for forever and a day.”

  “It did feel pretty swell to get outa here for a while.”

  “I just wish…that we’da seen my baby, too. Someone’s got to know who has her.”

  Ruth Ann nodded. “Must be some file somewheres, with the name in it. Maybe we can look for that.”

  “Would Doc Price have it in his desk?”

  “Maybe.”

  “D’you think she got fostered out or adopted?”

  “We’re feebleminded,” Ruth Ann said bitterly. “So nobody’d want to adopt our babies. It’s bound to be a foster family and just until she’s old enough to work.”

  “Shhhhhhh!” a girl hissed. “Some of us are tryin’ to sleep around here.”

  Glory sighed.

  Ruth Ann slipped back to her own dormitory and her own bed, wondering how on earth to access Doc’s office. Volunteer to clean down there? Trade off with whoever did? She might not be so smart, but she knew how to open a door and a file cabinet drawer. She knew how to read well enough to find a name in one. And she had hands—no matter how bruised they were at the moment—that could open the file so she could read the rest of it. So there.

  There was no comfortable position, with her damaged knuckles, except for flat on her stomach with her hands palm down, above her pillow. And the pain was still excruciating, making it impossible to sleep.

  In the morning, her hands hurt worse than they did the night before. The knuckles were raw and red, the skin split open. It was painful to wash her face, brush her hair and teeth, put on her clothes and shoes.

  It was painful, too, to carry the metal tray in the dining hall, to grip the spoon for her oatmeal or the tin mug for her coffee.

  To Ruth Ann’s shock, Greta gave her the honey she was allotted for her own oatmeal.

  “You can have this. I’m gettin’ round anyway.”

  Ruth Ann squinted at her. “Why’re you bein’ nice to me?”

  Greta shrugged. “You want it, or not?”

  Ruth Ann nodded, stirring it in with a wince. She took a bite. The oatmeal tasted like Heaven in a bowl. “Thanks.” But she was still mystified.

  Greta tugged at her cap. “You were brave,” she said after a while.

  “Stupid, more like.”

  Greta smirked. “Both.”

  Ruth Ann half smiled.

  “Well,” her bunkmate said. “At least you smell better today.”

  Ruth Ann lifted an eyebrow, then took another bite of the sweet oatmeal.

  “See ya later.” Greta shimmied out from behind the wooden bench and took her own tray back to the service bin, just as a Colony nurse entered the dining hall with a clipboard.

  “Glory Southwick?” she called.

  Next to Ruth Ann, Glory froze with her coffee cup to her lips. “That’s me,” she managed.

  “I’ll need you to come with me, please.”

  Ruth Ann swallowed her bite of oatmeal and stared at Glory, who remained rooted to her seat. “What’s this about?” she asked.

  Glory’s face was blank. She shook her head.

  The nurse tapped her pen on the clipboard. “It’s a small administrative matter. Now, Miss Southwick, just put your tray away and come with me.”

  Ruth Ann wanted to stop her, but Glory nodded. She stuffed the last corner of her toast into her mouth and washed it down with her remaining coffee. Then she tidied up her breakfast things while Ruth Ann’s sense of foreboding built.

  Where was the nurse taking her? For what?

  For nothing good, that was certain.

  But Glory had no choice, and she went like a dutiful lamb to the slaughter.

  Ruth Ann knew when Glory didn’t return to work on the ironing. She knew when she didn’t appear at supper and she never saw her return to go to bed in the opposite dormitory.

  Glory had been taken to Doc Price, and he’d done the surgery on her. Ruth Ann felt sick at the thought.

  How could anyone do that to another human being unless the situation was desperate? Maybe they called it medicine, but it sure seemed like violence to Ruth Ann.

  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The Golden Rule she’d been taught in school. ’Cept it sure didn’t seem to apply to everyone. Leastways, a whole lot o’ people seemed to make up their own rules. ’Specially men with lots of fancy letters after their names.

  Do unto others…

  So how would Doc like it if they bonked him over the head, stretched him out on the kitchen butcher block and carved him open with the big bread knife? How’d he take it if they was to yank out a few of his intestines or part of his liver? And then knit him back together with kitchen string?

  He wouldn’t like it one bit, ’specially if he said no, and they was to do it anyways. Just decide for him that it was for the “greater good” that he not have that part of his liver or those few inches of his intestines.

  The more she thought about it, the angrier she got. Poor, sweet, innocent Glory would have a big red scar like Sheila, and she’d never be able to have another baby. What had Glory ever done to deserve that? She was quiet and respectful and said her prayers. She was the type to help out a strange girl stuck in the laundry all night—for no other reason than that the help was sore needed.

  And what had it got her? It’d got her gutted like a fish.

  She must be recovering in the infirmary—that had to be where they’d stashed her. Ruth Ann made up her mind to go see her as soon as she could slip away.

  But before she could do much plottin’ as to how, Mother Jenkins appeared in the dining hall and after a quick scan, fixed her hairy glare upon none other than Ruth Ann. “You!” she said. “Geth oveh heah.”

  All eyes turned on Ruth Ann. Her stomach clenched, her palms went damp and her scar tissue itched. Clearly it was time for the Belt. She wiped her hands on her skirt, finished her coffee and stood. Her heart pounded triple time as she walked her tray to the bin and then trudged reluctantly toward Mother Jenkins.

  Another frog-march, this time from the dining hall to the mudroom outside the kitchens. At least she wouldn’t take the whupping in front of everyone. The humiliation of yesterday was almost as bad as the pain. Almost.

  Left, right, left, right, left, right.

  Something squeaked with each step. Was it Mother J’s shoes, her overburdened brassiere, or the bats in her behind fighting to swarm out?

  Once again, Ruth Ann thought mighty hard about tearing out of her grasp and making a run for it. But Mother J would only hunt her down, and then it would be even worse once she got caught again. So she allowed herself to be propelled toward her fate.

  “Gethinthide,” her tormentor ordered.

  She opened the door and went in. The mudroom smelled of must, soil and ripe feet. Several umbrellas stood upright in a wooden tub in one corner. There were hooks with slickers, coats and shawls hung on them. And on the far right, from the last hook, swung the Belt. Brown leather, an inch and a half wide, heavy brass buckle on one end.

  Ruth Ann got brave enough to look over at it, just as Mother Jenkins drew in a sharp breath of surprise. “Where…?”

  Ruth Ann couldn’t believe her eyes—or her good fortune.

  The Belt was gone. It had simply vanished. But who had taken it?

  Twelve

  Evidently Mother Jenkins didn’t feel that an umbrella made the right instrument for a flogging. After a search of the mudroom failed to turn up her favorite torture device, she was stymied. The Belt, after all, was a memento of her dead husband. Maybe Mother J fondly remembered beatings he’d given her with it?

  Ruth Ann couldn’t say. But she was greatly relieved when the old toad ordered her to get to work in the laundry, so off she went.

  As she hauled buckets of water to boil, her thoughts returned to Glory. What if Doc Price slipped with the scalpel? What if he couldn’t stop the bleeding? What if Glory just didn’
t wake up after the surgery?

  She’d lit the fire and hauled more water for the starch basin when Clarence appeared, whistling jauntily. He stopped once he caught sight of her hands.

  “Lord love you, Ruth Ann—what did that old sow do to you?”

  “Nothin’,” she said, trying to hide them in the folds of her skirt.

  He stepped forward and nabbed her left wrist, bringing her fingers out of hiding. He swore under his breath.

  Every time a scab tried to form on her knuckles, it got split open again whenever she did something as simple as brush her teeth or wrap her fingers around the handle of the water pump. Then the wound would weep again, and repeat the whole sorry process.

  “Cooking spoon,” she said by way of explanation.

  “Dang it. Thought you girls’d be aw right after I disappeared Mr. J’s belt.”

  Ruth Ann’s mouth dropped open. “You stole it?”

  Clarence smiled. “Dunno. Might’ve needed some extra leather for a horse’s harness.”

  She laughed, the sound odd to her own ears, since she didn’t have a whole heap o’ things to laugh about and hadn’t in a while. “You’re a peach, Clarence.”

  He turned pink, starting with the tips of his ears. “Nah. More of a banana.” Then he seemed to find something indecent about that, because his flush darkened to raspberry. Raspberry with cinnamon freckles.

  She pretended not to notice. “D’you know where Glory’s at?”

  Clarence stilled. He kicked at a charred lump of wood at the edge of the fire. Then he nodded. “Infirmary.”

  “Did Doc Price—”

  “Yeah.” Clarence’s rainwater-gray eyes went flinty. “Bastard.”

  “Is…is she all right?”

  “Well. She’s alive, anyways. But looks like she’d rather not be.”

  Ruth Ann’s heart squeezed. “So you’ve seen her?”

  He nodded. “Doc had me come in yesterday to plane a door that was sticking and fix a broke lock on a file cabinet. So I sees her lying there, pale as death. Same color as the sheets. Ignorin’ the food the nurses give ’er.”

  Poor Glory. “Did you say hello?”

  “Yeah. Not so sure she could place me. She’s in a world all her own, a world o’ hurt.”

  “Probably a morphine kinda world.”

  Clarence compressed his lips and nodded.

  “Mother Jenkins will be watchin’ me. I don’t think I can get down to the infirmary to see her…not ’til after supper, anyways. If I get any.” Ruth Ann thought hard about any way she could cheer Glory up. “Clarence? You said you had to fix a broke lock on a file cabinet—can you pick a lock on one, too?”

  His blush returned. He shifted from one foot to the other under her gaze. “Yep,” he said, with obvious discomfort at the disclosure.

  Ruth Ann brightened. “We’re trying to figure out where her baby’s gone. Glory’s. Name of Lily. Lily Southwick. Doc’s got to have it in his medical files somewhere. Think you can look?”

  Clarence took a deep breath and looked around furtively. “If it was anyone else but you askin’ me, Ruth Ann, I’d say heck no. But it is you, so…I’ll try. Won’t be easy, though.”

  “You’re a peach!” she told him again.

  “Apple,” he said this time, the raspberry color returning to his ears and neck, then blooming in his cheeks.

  “So you think you can give Glory a message for me, Clarence?”

  He nodded. “Sure thing.”

  “You tell her…” Ruth Ann was stumped. What could she say to make Glory feel better? Make her smile? “Tell her the Belt is gone. And that there’s no more cause to be blue. That she don’t need to have more babies, on account of we are gonna hunt down the one she’s already got.”

  Clarence smiled at her. “You’re a good friend, Ruth Ann.”

  “Huh?” She was honestly taken aback. “I don’t have any friends.”

  He blinked. Then he raised his eyebrows quizzically. “What am I, then? ’Sides a peach?”

  She went to punch him in the arm, but stopped short—given the condition of her knuckles. “You’re…I dunno. You’re just…Clarence.”

  He nodded. “You tell me if that changes, you hear?” Humor lit his eyes.

  Ruth Ann stared at him. “You’re a goof.”

  “Maybe so.” He took her hand and inspected her injuries with a frown. “How you gonna do laundry like this?”

  Ruth Ann shook her head. “I just got to do it. No two ways about it.” She pulled her hand away.

  He gave her that level gray stare of his, then said, “I’ll be right back.”

  He returned in ten minutes with a gift even better than his shoe: a pair of work gloves, some cotton rags and some Rawleigh Antiseptic Salve in a brown, yellow and red tin.

  Ruth Ann had the water boiling in the huge laundry cauldron by then and was fixing to drop several shirts into it with the long stick she’d use to stir them.

  “Ruthie, put those down and give me your hands,” Clarence said. “This’ll make ’em feel better.”

  Why did a lump grow in her throat? Why did sudden tears sting her eyes? “You don’t got to—”

  “You’re right, I don’t got to do it. But I’m here anyways, so you may’s well cooperate.” He smiled at her, and her heart rolled over like a dog doing a trick. She did her best to swallow the lump, without much success. And then she extended her hands.

  Clarence used one clean rag to apply the salve, which stung a little at first, but that subsided quickly. He coated each wound and wrapped another clean cloth around her four fingers, then one around her thumb. Finally, he slipped on a work glove. Then he did her other hand the same way.

  Ruth Ann blinked furiously to keep the tears from escaping and streaming down her cheeks. She couldn’t show such vulnerability. She hadn’t felt cared for like this in years…well, except for the last time Clarence had tended to her, lancing her toe so gently.

  “You’re like an angel,” she whispered.

  “Nah. I cain’t be a peach and an angel at the same time,” he reasoned. “And a flying peach with a halo—well, that would look awful strange.”

  Ruth Ann laughed.

  “Besides, angels have big white wings, not…” He gestured toward his stump.

  Ruth Ann hesitated. “So—how did it happen?”

  Clarence was silent.

  “Sorry. Hope you don’t mind me askin’. Guess it’s rude.”

  “It ain’t rude. It would be, if that was the first thing outta your mouth when we first met. But you can ask now. It wasn’t from no accident with farm equipment or nothin’—I was born with only one hand.” He shrugged.

  “So…?”

  “So my old man thought it was some sign of the devil or whatnot. Made him less of a man to have a baby with only one hand, and he was shamed by it. Needed sons with two hands to do farmwork. So he took me right away to the orphanage.”

  “That’s awful, Clarence.”

  His expression was carefully blank. “What’re you gonna do?”

  “You can do most everything a—” She stopped. She’d been about to say a “regular” boy. Clarence wasn’t irregular.

  He shot her a knowing glance. “Yeah, I know. I work at it. I don’t let nothin’ stop me.”

  She wanted to wrap her arms around him and give him a hug. But she didn’t want him, or anyone else, to think she was “ab-whorrent,” or loose with men, like her momma. So Ruth Ann did nothing of the kind. She didn’t even punch his arm, even though she now had salve, a bandage and a glove on her knuckles, all thanks to him. Better than a gold bracelet or a diamond ring.

  “You sure don’t” was all she said. There was a pause, during which she looked down at her man’s gloves and he looked down at his pilfered shoes. She gestured toward them. “So nobody said nothin’ about them shoes?”

  He gave a wry smile and shook his head. “Nobody ’t all. Not even the gentleman I borrowed ’em from. To hear tell, he was a right miser most of
his life. But now he’s off his rocker, so he’s unaccountably generous.”

  “Imagine that.”

  “Wonders never cease. The good Lord works in mysterious ways, don’t He? Though sometimes we truly do have to be His hands and feet. So He’s gotta provide us with gloves and extra shoes, don’t He?”

  This time Ruth Ann did punch him in the arm. “You gonna get struck by lightnin’, you keep talkin’ that way.”

  “That may be. I think He understands, though. Like how’d I realize that poor horse was lackin’ a piece of harness if He didn’t show me the light and lead me to old Mr. J’s belt?” Laughter spilled from Clarence’s gray eyes like sunshine, splitting open a rainy sky by surprise.

  She punched him again. “You’d best be careful, Mr. Smarty-Pants.”

  “They says my pants is the smartest thing about me, here at the Virginia Colony for the Epileptic and Feebleminded.”

  “I mean it! Be careful.”

  “Always. A fellow with one hand—he can’t take no unnecessary risks. Wouldn’t be prudent.” Rows of even white teeth—only one in the front slightly snaggled—accompanied this whopper.

  Why did this make her want to kiss him? Ruth Ann took a step back, so as not to. She was nothin’ like her momma and never would be.

  “If you’re so bent on bein’ prudent,” she said mock-severely, “then you probably shouldn’t go pickin’ any locks.”

  “Nope, I shouldn’t.” His eyes danced. “Might lose my, what’s it? Oh yeah: moral compass. I mean, a fellow with one hand—how’s he gonna pick hisself a lock and hang on to that sucker at the same time? It’s for sure he’s gonna drop it. So he’d best not take it along on the journey, know what I mean? He’d best leave it under his pillow.”

  “He’d best,” she agreed, the corners of her mouth tugging up.

  This time it was Clarence who—lightly—punched her in the arm. He started whistling again as he walked away.

  Ruth Ann missed him instantly. She also missed Glory’s comforting presence, that pure golden innocence that wrapped her in a Glory-cloud. Part of it was that she gave without seeming to want anything back. It was a rare quality, that. And that was the kind of gal Doc Price didn’t want making more babies?