A Mother's Promise

by K. D. Alden

  “It’s not your fault. You are not responsible for your genes, or, given your mental state, for your…ah…inability to control your baser impulses.”

  Doc was spewing Greek. But he seemed to be waiting for her to nod, so she did.

  “My dear, we can either keep you here for the next thirty-odd years, or we can give you your freedom almost immediately, and the opportunity to work and marry and lead a normal life outside the Colony. Would that appeal to you, Miss Riley?” Genuine kindness shone from his eyes.

  Freedom? Life outside? Those were concepts she understood. “Why, yes, sir. Of course, sir.” Hope dawned within her. But then she remembered her recent, disastrous experience with the outside world. The sinking realization that she had made a mistake to leave and hadn’t thought things through.

  If she left the Colony, wherever would she go? Where would she live? What would she do? How would she eat?

  But Doc was still talking. “And there is also the distinct possibility, my dear, that the Dade family would take you back in, thereby allowing you to be part of your infant daughter’s life. You could help raise her, under Mrs. Dade’s supervision.”

  Oh! To have a home again. It was a dream. She’d fulfill the promise she’d made to her daughter—that she herself would raise her. Hope bloomed within her.

  To hold Annabel. Feed her. Bathe her. Rock her. Soothe her cries. Watch her grow up…the unimaginable joy of that…is he for real?

  “Would you like that, Ruth Ann?”

  Lost in the possibilities, she didn’t even hear him.

  “Ruth Ann?” Doc’s voice intruded. “Would you like that?” He cast another significant glance at Esquire.

  “Yes! Oh, yes, I most certainly would, sir.” She couldn’t keep from beaming. “Yes!”

  She glanced at Mr. Block. Had the lawyer worked this magic? He was worth his weight in gold. He lounged gracefully on the library ladder, looking like he’d stepped out of Life magazine, his chestnut hair escaping its pomade and falling over his forehead. He nodded at her.

  This was incredible. She grinned like a jack-o’-lantern—she couldn’t help it.

  Doc smiled back, forming a steeple with his hands on the desk in front of him. Far from threatening her with a scalpel, he now looked benevolent and cozy, like someone’s grandpa. “I’m very pleased to hear you say so, Ruth Ann. It is my greatest wish and highest calling to ensure the safety, well-being and happiness of my patients here at the Colony. I do hope you know that.”

  She nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  Maybe Mrs. Dade will let me sleep with Annabel in my old room at the house. After all, she needs her rest—she could do with some help. Newborns ain’t easy. Angels, yes. But demanding ones.

  “Good girl.”

  Good girl. Words she longed to hear, especially from an adult. How long had it been since someone, anyone, had called her that? Good girl. She swallowed a lump in her throat the size of Clarence’s shoe. Blinked away the sudden sting in her eyes.

  Doc Price went on talking, but to her it was some mumbo jumbo. Then they nattered on ’bout some movement—the one Clarence had heard him tell of—called YouGenics.

  Ruth Ann stopped paying attention after a while—none of it had anything to do with her. Look at that: Mr. Block’s socks had tiny pine trees embroidered on them today. Wouldn’t it be a lark to knit little pink tulips or yellow ducks into a baby blanket? She would ask Mrs. Dade to teach her how to knit. So she could make not only blankets, but hats and booties and mittens for baby Annabel.

  The trouble with so many men o’ learnin’ is somethin’ they never learn: that not every poor soul wants to be as learned as they are. Most folks just want to go about their business without a lot of nonsense rattlin’ to and fro in their skulls.

  Ruth Ann sat still, brimming with thankfulness at the possibility of a new life with Annabel, while them two suits flapped and flapped their gums some more. Lord love ’em, they gibbered until they got thirsty again. If that’s tea and not whiskey, then I’m Mrs. Calvin Coolidge.

  But she didn’t give a rat’s behind what they drank—as long as they kept their word about sending her back to live with her baby. The specter of Patrick briefly crossed her mind, but she dismissed it. She could care for little Annabel just fine—with a knife in her brassiere.

  Finally, the two gentlemen ran out of words, thank the good Lord. Mr. Block’s green eyes were a touch glassy when he got to his feet and suggested that Ruth Ann take him to meet her momma. Oh, dear. She cast a questioning glance at Doc Price.

  “It’s just fine, Ruth Ann,” he said.

  “Well…” Her face heated, then her neck. The simple truth was that she was embarrassed. She didn’t want this Magazine Man to think less of her because her momma was dirty, or foul-mouthed, or blotto. “She’s prob’ly busy.”

  “Busy?” Doc removed his spectacles again and rubbed at his eyes. “Sheila Riley hasn’t been busy since the constable picked her up for—” He had the grace to break off. “She won’t be busy,” he said.

  Ruth Ann’s face now felt sunburned. She must be the color of a ripe tomato. “I—”

  I don’t want to do this? My momma ain’t someone you should meet? How could she say either of those things?

  “Go on, now, Ruth Ann. Be a good girl and show Mr. Block, here, to the Distressed unit. Find Sheila and make the introduction.”

  A good girl…one who could live in a normal home again and mind her baby.

  “He needs to meet her for the court case,” Doc explained.

  Ruth Ann supposed that made sense. So, resigned, she cast about for a way to warn Mr. Block. “My momma…She can be, um, unpredictable. And downright fractious.”

  “I’m sure she’s charming,” Mr. Block said. “I look forward to making Mrs. Riley’s acquaintance.” He offered Ruth Ann his arm. “Shall we?”

  She was dumbfounded. He wanted her to lay her calloused, blistered, broken mitts on his fine woolen sleeve? No. She couldn’t.

  And yet she wanted to, with every fiber of her being. Just as someone else. As an elegant debutante maybe. Not Ruth Ann Riley.

  Wilfred Block raised his eyebrows and exchanged another one of those glances with Doc, who compressed his lips, got to his feet and opened the door for them.

  Ruth Ann realized that her mouth was hanging open. She closed it and got to her feet. But she did not place her hand upon Mr. Block’s arm. She moistened her dry lips and linked her fingers together behind her back, before ankling on out of Doc’s office.

  “I’m very pleased for you, Ruth Ann,” Doc told her as she left. “You’re going to be free and happy. And you’ll help us make history.”

  She would? And how was that, exactly? But she smiled politely. “If you say so, Doc.”

  Eighteen

  Mr. Wilfred Block, Esquire, did not find Sheila Riley charming in the least. She was scrawny, shifty-eyed and unkempt. Several of her teeth were missing, and the ones she did have were the color of ripe cheddar.

  “Well, ain’t you a big six,” Sheila said, eyeing him from head to toe, her glance lingering far too long just south of his waistband. “Cash or check, daddy-o?”

  His color rose. She was the coarsest, most common woman he’d ever encountered.

  “Momma,” said Ruth Ann, “this here’s Mr. Block. He’s my lawyer.”

  “That right?” Sheila half-blew, half-spat out a lungful of cigarette smoke, like a human exhaust pipe. “I got better uses for ’im. What in tarnation d’you need a lawyer for?”

  “On account of I don’t want the same operation Doc Price did on you. So I wrote to Mrs. Dade, and she found Mr. Block, here.”

  “You got a lawyer to tangle with Doc Price? He won’t take kindly to that. It’s a big mistake.”

  “It’s not,” Ruth Ann said. “Doc knows. We just had a meetin’, the three of us. He’s bein’ real civil ’bout things.”

  “Hooey. Somethin’ ain’t right, then.” Sheila turned her gaze to Block again, though she s
till addressed her daughter. “How you payin’ your fancy lawyer’s fees?”

  “I am handling Ruth Ann’s case gratis,” Wilfred said. But he realized the woman would have no knowledge of Latin. “In other words, for free.”

  Sheila blew out another toxic cloud of smoke. “Oooh, gratis, he says. Thankee, kind sir, for ’splainin’ to poor white trash such as myself.”

  Her daughter winced. “Momma…”

  “What else you handlin’ of Ruth Ann’s?” Sheila asked Block, taking a drag on her cigarette and squinting at him through a pair of eyes that looked like raisins.

  “Momma!”

  Block goggled at her. “I beg your pardon, madam?”

  “You heard me, Mr. Block.” She drew her lips back in a sneer. “What’s a lawyer want with my girl? ’Specially if you ain’t makin’ any dough off ’er.”

  “I occasionally take on cases for the, ah, less privileged members of socie—”

  “We don’t need your charity, Block-head,” she spat, then picked a tobacco particle off her lower lip and dropped it to the floor.

  Lovely. “I believe Ruth Ann has decided she does.”

  “Ruth Ann is not of age, and I’m her mother. I decide what she needs.”

  “I’m afraid that isn’t true,” Block said. “Your daughter is a ward of the state. She no longer answers to you.”

  Sheila shot him a look to kill; Ruth Ann looked as though she might kiss him. He took a step back from them both. If he’d had any lingering question about his role in all of this, it was quickly evaporating.

  “You listen to me, you big palooka,” Sheila said, advancing upon him with her cigarette. The ash at the tip glowed orange with ill intent.

  “Lord ha’ mercy,” a large colored woman said, entering the room and looking from one to the other.

  “This is Ruby,” said Ruth Ann. “Ruby, Mr. Block.”

  He nodded at her. She nodded back.

  “My daughter don’t need no fancy-pants lawyer,” Sheila declared. “Last thing I need is for Doc Price to kick me to the curb on account of you and Ruth Ann. I weren’t pleased to be brought here, but they treat me all right. I get three squares a day and a roof over my head. Unless I need a little somethin’ extra, I don’t have to suck no co—”

  “MOMMA!”

  “Shut it, Sheila!” Ruby roared.

  Block had seen all he needed to. Sheila Riley was a scourge upon humanity, a disgusting specimen. And it was alarming that she’d had more than one child. His research had disclosed that there was, indeed, another daughter out there. She must be found immediately, before she, too, could breed.

  He was finished, here, but evidently Sheila was not. “I don’ know what you up to, mister, but I can smell that it ain’t good. So you prance on back wherever you came from, and you stay away from Ruth Ann. I catch you ’round her again, I will take an’ shove the scales of justice right up your tight ass.”

  “How dare you, madam?”

  “Woof, woof.”

  “I don’t take orders—or threats—from the likes of you,” Block informed her.

  “Aw, you don’t? Too bad. How ’bout you take this, then?” Sheila struck, quick as a snake. She ground the glowing tip of her cigarette into the costly wool of his suit.

  He knocked it to the floor as she cackled maniacally. “What the—are you mad?!”

  A black hole smoldered, right above the breast pocket.

  Ruby grabbed Sheila, kicking and screaming, and hauled her away as he stood there, looking down at the hole in shock. It was a miracle the cigarette hadn’t burned through his waistcoat and shirt, too.

  “It’s the straitjacket for you, Miz Sheila,” Ruby scolded. “You behavin’ like some evil hag from a nightmare, you is…”

  Ruth Ann had gone white, her hands over her mouth. At last she dropped them and whispered, “I’m so very sorry, Mr. Block. I didn’t want to bring you here…Are you all right? Did it burn right down to the skin?”

  Wordlessly, he shook his head.

  “Mr. Block, I ’pologize from the bottom of my heart.”

  He felt sorry for the girl. She was clearly mortified. But no matter what her feelings, the degenerate line of Riley had to end, and as God was his witness, end it would.

  Not a week had gone by when yet again, Ruth Ann was summoned away from the kitchens to the main administrative building. Was Esquire—Mr. Block—here for another talk? She made a sorry attempt to smooth her hair in the reflection of a kettle on the stove. She pinched her cheeks and bit her lips as she hustled up the hill and across the green lawn that spread like a giant lie in front of the house.

  Mrs. Parsons ushered her into the same parlor, where she sat on the same settee and marveled all over again at the softness of the down pillows behind her back. And then sure enough, Mr. Block came in. Along with a little wisp of a girl, her blond hair braided tightly into two pigtails, her blue eyes pink-rimmed from crying.

  Ruth Ann stared at her. She looked familiar somehow, but…Then she saw the stuffed bear the girl clutched.

  If Ruth Ann hadn’t been sitting, she’d have fallen to the floor. “Bonnie?”

  The little girl didn’t say a word.

  Mr. Block pushed her forward. “Say hello to your sister, sweetheart.”

  Ruth Ann flung herself toward the little sister she hadn’t seen since she was seven, and Bonnie just under two. Since the horrible afternoon when Sheila had been hauled away, spitting and shrieking, and they’d all been separated.

  Bonnie shrank back, clearly terrified by the stranger lunging at her. She seemed small and young for her age. Had she been badly treated? Malnourished?

  Though Ruth Ann wanted nothing more than to take the little girl into her arms, she pulled up short. “Bonnie, do you remember me? Woothie.” She chuckled. “You used to call me Woothie.”

  Bonnie tilted her head slightly, her lips silently forming the silly name.

  “I used to carry you around like a baby doll. You and Calico Bear.”

  Bonnie slowly held up the bear for inspection. It was faded, it had been mended and patched with many different fabrics and thread, it had lost an eye—but it still had two ears and a button nose.

  Ruth Ann nodded. “Calico Bear lives!”

  Bonnie smiled. It was a shy smile, just as ragged and worn as the old bear, a smile far too weary for a child’s face, and it split Ruth Ann’s heart wide open.

  “Oh, Bonnie. Oh, honey.” She couldn’t not take her into her arms now, though her sister, like her, didn’t seem to know what to do with this show of affection. She allowed it, though, standing awkwardly in Ruth Ann’s embrace.

  She smelled of rose soap and sunshine and little girl. She smelled of the innocence Glory had just lost. She smelled like love and family. Ruth Ann had never inhaled such a heavenly scent. Her throat tightened and her eyes stung.

  At last she released Bonnie, but kept a hand on her shoulder as she turned to Mr. Block. “I can’t ever thank you enough. Not ever.” She swiped at her eyes.

  For once, he had nothing fancy to say. He stood silent and nodded, though he wore an odd expression. He looked…abashed? Was that it?

  She didn’t ponder it much. Because after nine long years, she was standing next to the dearest, most precious thing on earth besides Annabel—her baby sister.

  Mrs. Parsons and her lace collar flew back into the room with a tray that had coffee, cream, sugar and a biscuit on it. As well as a single, red, perfect strawberry. She set the tray down in front of Mr. Block and made a fuss about what he wanted in the coffee.

  The strawberry looked like the red, freckled nose of some sad creature, cut off its face and set on a plate. Ruth Ann shook off the weird sensation it produced in her; shook off the odd doubts that Block’s expression called up within her.

  He thanked “Mrs. Parker” quite graciously and begged her pardon when she informed him a bit snippily that her name was Mrs. Parsons. He lifted that coffee cup as if it contained holy water and absolution and g
ulped from it without looking at any of the women.

  Then Mrs. Parsons banished her and Bonnie from the parlor. “Ruth Ann, you’ll want to get your sister settled into the dorm. Greta has been moved to another bunk. Bonnie will have her spot above you. All right? Move along. And then you’ll report with Bonnie to Mother Jenkins. She’ll set up her schedule of chores.”

  Bonnie edged a little closer to Ruth Ann, hugging Calico Bear to her chest.

  “Yes, ma’am.” Ruth Ann didn’t want to take her anywhere near that old toad Mother Jenkins. But she reached out and took her sister’s hand, gave it a squeeze. “Does she have a suitcase?”

  “She has a crate. It’s by the kitchen door. You girls go out that way—we’ve got visitors coming for the board meeting.”

  Of course. The board won’t want to see the likes of us on that big green lawn. That’s for croquet, so they won’t be so bored.

  “You want to see where we sleep, Bonnie?” Ruth Ann smiled at her sister. Sister…she couldn’t quite believe she had one again, after all these years apart. After all this time alone except for the once-a-week visit with Crazy Sheila.

  Bonnie hesitated, then nodded. Cain’t she speak? Is the poor girl mute?

  And what would happen when she took her to meet Momma? Would Sheila treat her any better than she did Ruth Ann?

  They took three steps toward the door to exit the parlor.

  “What is that dirty bundle of cloth you’ve got there, child?” Mrs. Parsons advanced upon them.

  Bonnie shrank back against Ruth Ann and tried to clamp Calico Bear under her armpit.

  “It’s a bear,” Ruth Ann said. “She’s had it since she was a baby.”

  “Well, that’s quite long enough. You’re a big girl now, Bonnie. Give it here, to me.”

  Bonnie hid behind Ruth Ann, shaking her head no, no, no.

  It struck Ruth Ann again that her sister seemed immature for her age. Feebleminded? Or just traumatized? And she was tiny.

  “She refused to leave it behind with the Wallaces,” Mr. Block said. “They informed me that she’s very attached to it.”