A Mother's Promise

by K. D. Alden

  “Well, we ain’t stupid, just not schooled much. And we ain’t no criminals, neither. So I don’t think that’s very just justice,” Clarence said.

  “Nor do I. But it ain’t up to us feebleminded folks,” Ruth Ann said bitterly. “People like them make up the justice, and people like us put up with it.”

  Clarence grabbed the newspaper and flung it to the ground. He took her hand in his own larger one and squeezed it. “Ah, Ruthie.”

  She closed her eyes and let him draw her forehead against his shoulder. She let him slip his arm around her waist.

  “It’ll be okay,” Clarence promised. “You’ll see.”

  It wouldn’t be okay, but it was nice to hear the words, just as it was nice to have a shoulder to lean upon. They were in short supply, shoulders like Clarence’s.

  “Yeah,” she said, “I s’pose it will be. If I have the surgery, Mr. and Mrs. Dade’ll let me come back to their home, and then I’ll be able to raise my little Annabel. Doc Price said so in court.”

  Clarence stiffened. “Ain’t they the people what put you here in the first place?”

  “Well, yeah…but that was on account of the baby. They didn’t want no gossip goin’ ’round about their good name.”

  “An’ you think they’ve changed their minds about that? Why would they?”

  “I—well, Doc Price said so. In court.”

  “And Mrs. Dade is the one who found you Esquire, isn’t that right?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Then I wouldn’t trust that woman as far as you can throw her, Ruth Ann. Not to mention that fine nephew of hers who treated you so nice.”

  She winced. Blocked the memories yet again.

  She tried not to think about being naked and helpless and once again under a man’s power, even if he was a doctor. Even if the violation to her was for the good of society, and not for the pleasure or sick malice of the man.

  But dark panic rose within her, spiraled up from a place deep inside, though she did her best to shove it right back down.

  Clarence seemed to feel it right through her chest, through their clothing and through his own body. “Hey,” he murmured. “Ruthie, what is it?”

  Talking about problems only made them more real. Didn’t do a body the slightest bit of good. “Nothin’,” she whispered.

  “Nothin’s got you shook up pretty bad,” he said. “Nothin’s got your heart racin’, fit to gallop right out of your chest.”

  She struggled to articulate the jumble of thoughts and emotions rushing through her mind and body. “Clarence, what happens to a woman if you take away what it means to be a woman?”

  “Ah,” he said. “And what makes a woman a woman?”

  “Havin’ babies,” she said simply.

  He held her away from him and looked deep into her eyes. “I think there’s a lot more to a woman than that, don’t you?”

  She shrugged miserably.

  “Take you, for instance, Ruthie. You’ll always be everything it means to be a woman, whether you have more babies or not. You’re strong. You’re beautiful. You’re smart. You’re kind. You’re one of the hardest workers I ever seen. You’re a good friend, a good daughter, a good sister…I can go on and on.”

  Her eyes filled and streamed. “You’re forgettin’ de-botched and de-generous an’ unfit an’ imbecile.” She smiled through her tears.

  “No, on account of you are none of those things.” Clarence wiped the tears away with the pad of his thumb—first the left eye, and then the right. “I don’t care who says ’em: Doc Price or the Chief Justice o’ the Supreme Court or even the Devil his ownself. Those things just ain’t true.”

  “How do you know they ain’t true, Clarence?”

  “I know it because I see you, Ruthie. I see exactly who you are, right down to the core. I see your hopes and dreams and frustrations and temper. I see your tenderness and loyalty, your laughter and your love, and I also see when the hurt gets too much and hardens into hate for those who done you wrong. I see you. And you…I think you see me, the same way.”

  She nodded, more tears streaming down her face in rivulets, pooling in the corners of her mouth. Her breath caught in her throat as Clarence bent his coppery head forward and kissed them away.

  “Now,” he said when he raised his head again. His eyes twinkled with mischief. “I hear tell that you got plans to marry me, Ruth Ann Riley. It’s hot gossip, all over the Colony. So when you gonna pop the question? Interested parties want to know.”

  She stared at him in horror. How had he heard about her shameless declaration? Who had told him such a thing? It had to have been Sheila, confound her. Her no-good, rotten, de-botched and de-generous momma.

  Meanwhile, Clarence was grinnin’ as wide as an alligator. Look at all them white teeth of his! Who knew the man had so many?

  Ruth Ann gathered the scraps and shreds of her dignity about her. “I have no earthly idea what you are talkin’ about, Clarence! Wherever did you hear such a…such a fantastic tale?”

  “A little bird told me,” he said, still showin’ off every fang he could.

  Little bird? More like a monstrous big buzzard.

  “Well,” she mustered. “Little birds has got little brains, so I wouldn’t listen to ’em if I were you.”

  Clarence disappeared all them teeth and pulled a long face, long as a donkey’s. “You wouldn’t? You would scotch the rumors and dash a fella’s hopes?”

  Ruth Ann drew herself up as tall as could be, squared her shoulders and raised her chin. “I do not know what kind of rattle-trap gossip you been listenin’ to, Clarence, but I can tell you one thing: I am not so hard up as to have to beg any fella to marry me.”

  “Oooh, is that the way of it, then?” he asked.

  Was that still a twinkle lurkin’ in his eyes? Was he laughing at her? The man had a nerve.

  “Yes, sir, it is.” And without another word, Ruth Ann turned on her heel and marched back into the kitchens.

  Thirty-Four

  Doc Price didn’t give her any advance notice of the surgery. One day in October, Ruth Ann was working in the kitchen when she was summoned from her baking duties. She was instructed to walk down to the Hallifax Infirmary for a test.

  She exchanged a glance of alarm with Glory. They both knew what was going to happen. Glory dropped her rolling pin and left her pie crust on the butcher block to come and give Ruth Ann a hug. “Gonna be okay, Ruthie,” she whispered in her ear. “I love you, honey. Now you just be brave, and you’ll be up an’ about in no time. Just like me. Good as new.”

  Glory flashed her a too-bright smile when Ruth Ann pulled out of her embrace. “It don’t even hurt that much,” she lied. “I was just bein’ a sissy.”

  Ruth Ann nodded, though she well remembered Glory’s face, white and waxy with pain.

  She could handle pain. She always had been stoic that way. What was harder to handle was the idea of never having a family of her own. “Glory,” she said urgently. “Will you tell Clarence?”

  Glory nodded. “I surely will.”

  “Where are Bonnie and Izzie?”

  “They’re off picking apples.”

  “Well. You let them know I’m fine, all right? Bring them down to visit after a couple of days?”

  “Sure thing. It’s all gonna be okay.” Glory gave her another quick hug, and some of the other girls nodded and shot her glances of sympathy.

  Ruth Ann stepped outside and was surprised to see Ruby standing there, along with a very large gentleman with bulging muscles. She understood immediately and shot them a grim smile. “You here to make sure I don’t go bananas and stab some poor soul with a butcher knife?”

  Ruby blew out a breath. “Somethin’ like that. I’m sorry, child.”

  Ruth Ann lifted a shoulder, then dropped it again. “It’s fine, Ruby.”

  “It ain’t fine,” she said angrily. “It’s playin’ God and messin’ ’round with Mother Nature. It’s askin’ to pay a heavy price on Judgme
nt Day, you mark my words.”

  “What I mean is that I won’t make no scene, Ruby. You won’t have to knock me down, nor hogtie me, nor carry me down there to the Stringer-Smythe Buildin’. I’ll walk.”

  “You’s different, chile, from last year. You surely is. What’s come over you?”

  “I’m tired of this surgery hangin’ over my head, like some sword on a rope. I cain’t avoid it, been tryin’ too long. Now I just want it done and over with. An’ then I want outta this place. I want to go home. To my sweet Annabel.”

  “The Dades gonna take you back in?” Ruby said, her voice full of doubt.

  “Doc Price said so in court. Said they’d like to have me back, long’s I ain’t no danger to society an’ all.”

  “Hmmm” was Ruby’s only response.

  They all walked toward the infirmary together.

  The fall leaves had broken out in brilliant color: yellows, oranges, and deep crimson vied to celebrate their last hurrahs before they’d drift silently to the ground and darken to brown.

  A chilly autumn breeze blew the branches of the trees so that they waved their mantles of leaves like flags, doing their best to ward off winter. But winter would come anyway, just as it always did. Sometimes gently, with plenty of notice and last-minute appeals. And sometimes swiftly, with a vengeance, freezing everything in its tracks, leaving all living things in its wake frostbitten—white and icy and petrified.

  Ruth Ann spied a solitary birch tree that was utterly bare already, save for one stubborn gold leaf clinging to a branch, refusing to turn and refusing to fall. A squirrel sat chattering on a lower branch, cheeky and gesticulating with its tail.

  Another tree, this one a red maple, was bursting with rich, scarlet leaves.

  Nature makes about as much sense as human beings, Ruth Ann mused. Some trees got no more than one leaf. Others got hundreds. God struck some women barren and blessed others with a dozen children. Some poor souls died in infancy or before the age of ten; others lived to be ninety or a hundred years old.

  She tried to imagine a tree goin’ in front of a court of other trees, though. And makin’ a case for the right to have leaves and blossoms and seeds to create other trees.

  She tried to imagine nine great old trees putting their branches together in a huddle and shaking them no in a great fuss…then standing tall and tellin’ the other trees that no, they’d decided to deny them their leaves and blossoms and seeds.

  I am plumb crazy…

  No, I ain’t. What has happened to me and is still happenin’ to me is what’s crazy. Ruby is right. It goes against the laws of nature and of God.

  But I don’t expect that either Mother Nature nor God is gonna jump on into Doc’s operatin’ room and disrupt my surgery. The likelihood of that is not great.

  The same two nurses who’d defended Doc Price from her were present, their expressions just as starched and white and disapproving as their caps and uniforms.

  “Does she need a sedative?” one said to Ruby.

  “No, she doesn’t,” Ruth Ann replied tartly.

  Ruby shot her a warning glance.

  The other nurse produced a clipboard. “You are here, Ruth Ann, for a salpingectomy.”

  That word again.

  “I figured as much,” she said.

  “Would you like to have your mother present? We can send for her.”

  “No,” Ruth Ann said, belatedly adding “thank you.”

  The nurse shot her a funny look. But Ruth Ann didn’t bother to try to explain to a stranger.

  “We’ll put you in a hospital gown, and then you’ll lie down here on the operating table. We will give you anesthesia, which is something to make you sleep. Dr. Price will do a very short, simple operation on your fallopian tubes, and then you’ll wake up good as new. All right, dear?”

  Don’t you call me dear. Last time I was here, you slammed my face into a wall.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Ruth Ann said.

  “You may go,” the first nurse ordered Ruby and Mr. Muscles.

  Ruth Ann wished more than anything that she could have another of Ruby’s big, wonderful, kindly hugs. But it just wouldn’t do, here in front of the medical staff. It was already close to revolutionary to have a black woman working here at a colony for whites—even if they were feebleminded, epileptic or degenerate.

  Ruby sent her love with her warm, compassionate and lovely brown eyes. Moisture had gathered in them, it was true, but there was still plenty of room for love.

  Ruth Ann didn’t understand how she did it, but she felt it seeping into her, caressing her skin and sending the good kind of shiver down her spine. The love felt like a soft red blanket, and Ruth Ann wrapped herself in it, snuggled down. She used it to ward off all the forbidding white and the cold steel and the horrid reality that they were going to cut her open and mess about with her organs. She used it to deny that no children would populate her future.

  She used it to stay calm and warm as Doc Price came in and flapped his gums about all manner of medical mumbo jumbo, and the nurses settled a mask over her face and told her to count backward from twenty.

  You don’t scare me, Doc. I’m gonna wake up and leave you all behind. Nineteen, eighteen, seventeen, sixteen, fifteen, fourteen, thirteen…

  Somebody had drawn a nasty smile across her belly with a white-hot poker. Ruth Ann woke soaked in sweat and in blinding pain. The kind of pain that made a person wish she’d never wake again. Oh, dear God, where was the blessed, black numb unconsciousness? Bring it back, please…

  She gasped for relief.

  “Ruthie!” Clarence’s voice penetrated the pain. “Oh, thank the good Lord. You’ve gone an’ woke up at last.” His voice was unsteady. “I was afraid you’d not ever wake again. You been so still and pale as death.”

  She wanted to tell Clarence how glad she was to hear his voice, rough and husky and full of some unnamed emotion—as well as relief. She wanted to say, Thank you for being here, at my side. Thank you that I didn’t wake up alone.

  But the pain torched her powers of speech; all she could do was moan.

  “Ruthie? You all right?”

  “Noooo. Oh, God, Clarence, it hurts…”

  “Nurse!” he called. “Nurse—she’s awake, but you gotta give her somethin’ more for the pain.”

  Ruth Ann was dimly aware through the shrieking of her nerves that someone in white bustled around next to her, shoved a thermometer into her mouth and took her blood pressure. Then a needle went into her arm, and everything blessedly faded to black again.

  When she next woke, she had no idea how much time had passed.

  “Ruthie?” Clarence’s voice came again. “How you doin’?”

  “I think Doc done confused me with a cantaloupe,” she rasped in a voice that didn’t sound like her own. “Am I in two halves? Or am I still a whole body?”

  Clarence sucked in a breath and visibly swallowed fury.

  “You m-mad at me, Clarence?” she asked. What had she done now?

  “No, Ruth Ann,” he said, his mouth working. “O’ course not. I’m mad at what they done to you. I’m mad at Doc Price. I’m mad at these nurses what act like it’s normal, all in a day’s work. I’m mad at God for lettin’ this happen. But I ain’t mad at you. So never you mind. It don’t matter.”

  His eyes changed slowly back from stormy dark to rainwater gray. “Aw, poor Ruthie. I’m so sorry, brave girl. But leastways it’s over now.”

  Except for the pain. The pain most certainly was not over. It still burned in a horrible smile across her lower abdomen. She did wonder if her legs got out of bed, whether her top half would follow.

  “It’s over,” he repeated. “Doc done his so-called simple operation on you.”

  “Simple operation?” She laughed weakly. “He set fire to my insides. He oughta feel it.”

  The storm came back to Clarence’s eyes, and he cursed under his breath. “Yeah. He oughta. It hurts somethin’ fierce, even on a man. Recovery time a
in’t as bad, though. I’ll give you that.”

  He spoke as if he knew from personal experience. “Clarence?”

  He changed the subject before she could ask. “Do you want some water, Ruthie?” He held a cup to her lips when she nodded. The water tasted like cool heaven, flowing past her parched lips and down her throat.

  She swallowed, wincing at another chain of pain set off by the movement. Amazing how everything in the body was so intricately connected. Then she looked over at him, noticing how he stared into space, taking his mind somewhere else. Just as she did.

  “Clarence…did Doc do it to you, too?”

  A muscle clenched in his jaw. He refused to meet her gaze. Didn’t answer.

  “Did he?”

  After a long moment, he swung back to face her, his expression bleak but defiant. “Yeah.”

  “Oh…Oh. I’m sorry—”

  He punched the air with his stump. “Cain’t have no circus freaks reproducin’ more of their kind, eh, Ruthie?”

  “Don’t call yourself that. Don’t you talk about my friend Clarence that way!”

  He shot her a look of puzzled amusement. “Your friend Clarence?”

  “Mmm-hmmm.”

  Without comment, he offered her more water.

  “How long you been here?” she asked, wincing again as the swallowing kicked off more pain.

  “Thirty-nine hours and twenty-three minutes,” he said, after glancing at the clock.

  “Thirty-nine…!”

  “Been here since they wheeled you back from the OR.” He smiled. “With one or two breaks when Glory and Bonnie and Izzie came to see you.”

  “I slept that long?”

  “Well, you woke up shortly after the operation when the anesthesia wore off. But then they gave you morphine. So you sure have. Been talkin’ in your sleep, wailin’ in your sleep.”

  She didn’t like to hear that. It made her feel even more vulnerable—mentally exposed. It was bad enough that she’d been physically exposed—stark naked and unconscious on a table, unable to move or protest or stop anything from happening to her body. She’d been no better than a carcass missin’ a soul, a doctor and nurses slicin’ and pokin’ at her.