A Mother's Promise

by K. D. Alden

  “My, I do have quite the imagination,” Ruth Ann said.

  “That you do. So anyways, where was I? I mean, where was you? Oh, yes. You says to me, ‘Clarence, because of all them things, I just cannot live without you. Will you do me the great honor of marrying me?’”

  “I never said any of this. I never asked you,” Ruth Ann said emphatically.

  “I am quite sure that you did.”

  “Nope.”

  “Let’s look at the evidence,” Clarence suggested. “Who was under anesthesia? Me or you?”

  “Me,” she said reluctantly.

  “Ah. And who was on morphine, me or you?”

  “Most likely me.”

  “And who was asleep for thirty-nine hours and twenty-three minutes, me or you?”

  “Me.”

  “Correct. Now, here’s the kicker: do you have any witnesses at all who will testify that you did not, in fact, ask me to marry you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then. I rest my case. You did.”

  “Did not. I’m the girl. You’re the boy. The boy does the asking.”

  “Well, all right. Seems silly to me,” Clarence said. “But if you feel strongly about it, then I’ll go ahead and ask you, instead.”

  “I didn’t say…! Oh, Lord. I’m very confused,” wailed Ruth Ann.

  “Ruth Ann Riley,” said Clarence, dropping to one knee. “Will you marry me?”

  She gaped at him. “Clarence, what are you doin’? You get up off that floor this instant.”

  “No. Not until you say you’ll have me.” And Clarence pulled a ring, of all things, out of his pocket. It was a simple gold band with a tiny heart-shaped red stone set in it. It was the most beautiful thing Ruth Ann had ever seen, besides maybe Clarence’s rainwater gray eyes.

  “Where’d you get that?”

  “Stole it.”

  “What?!”

  “Kiddin’. I done saved me up a bushel o’ tips over the years, from the motorcar polishin’ an’ such. I come by it honestly, I swear.” His eyes held no humor now.

  She swallowed the lump that had grown in her throat. “You really want to marry me?”

  He expelled an exasperated breath. “No, Ruth Ann. I just go around collectin’ pretty rings for my ownself. I figured I’d wear this one on my fourth toe.”

  “Clarence, be serious!”

  “I am serious as all get out. Will you be my wife, Ruth Ann Riley?”

  “But I cain’t…you know I cain’t…give you children.”

  “And I cain’t give you none, neither.”

  “I thought I was goin’ to go back an’ live with—” Her voice broke. “The Dades.”

  “Those folks don’t deserve you, and that’s the truth.” Clarence looked away into the distance, his jaw hardening. “I’d like to tell ’em just how much they don’t.”

  Then his expression altered, softened, and he turned back toward her. “How ’bout you live with me instead? And we petition to get Annabel back?”

  “Oh!” Ruth Ann couldn’t speak more than that one syllable.

  “You like that idea?”

  Her eyes filled, then overflowed. She nodded.

  “It may be one helluva fight. You know that, right?”

  She nodded again.

  “You up for it? Once you get up outta this bed?”

  “Clarence,” said Ruth Ann. “Really? When have you ever known me to stop fightin’?”

  “Well, I’d really like for you to stop it right now, at least long enough to let me put this ring on your finger and tell you that I love you.”

  Ruth Ann gazed at him fondly through her tears. Clarence got back up off the floor. He took her left hand in his and then gently slid the ring onto her fourth finger, where it winked and glimmered under the hospital lighting.

  “I’ve loved you since I first saw you,” Clarence said, a bit too casually. “Loved you when I drained your toe. Loved you when I wheelbarrowed you to the dairy. I just didn’t know you loved me back, not until—”

  “Not until when? How did you know?”

  “When you defended me to that old vulture what’s goin’ to be my mother-in-law,” Clarence said with a grin.

  “You heard that?”

  “I did.”

  “You were eavesdroppin’ on a private conversation!”

  “How could I not, when the woman accused you of bein’ sweet on me afore I got a yard out the door? I had to know the answer, Ruth Ann. You’d a done the same thing.”

  She glared at him, but didn’t deny it…and then Clarence kissed her glare away. He kissed her pain away. He kissed her until an outraged nurse discovered them, squawked and threatened to report their immoral behavior.

  Thirty-Six

  Dr. Price wore a three-piece suit with lots of authority and a kind smile.

  He no longer looked like God to Ruth Ann. She was sure the Almighty didn’t hang out here at the Virginia Colony for the Epileptic and Feebleminded.

  A month had passed since her surgery. Outside, the wind had picked up, sending mini-tornados of leaves spiraling. Clarence hadn’t raked them, because he wasn’t here. He’d petitioned to leave the Colony two weeks ago and received permission.

  Ruth Ann no longer cared what a storm might do to the mountains of laundry outside on the lines. She was here to discuss her own departure.

  Doc checked his gold pocket watch and wrote down the time, while she turned the gold ring on her fourth finger, then turned it again so that the tiny ruby heart glimmered up at her.

  She was glad to be here, the focus of his attention, on account of that meant he was takin’ her wish to leave seriously.

  Doc asked her questions and she answered them directly. She kept her mind here in the present, in the room.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Doc, you surely know my name by now.”

  “Yes, but for the exit interview, I must ascertain that you know it, too. What is your name, patient #1743?”

  She restrained herself from rolling her eyes. “Ruth Ann Riley.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “Do you plan to marry when you leave the Colony?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “To whom will you be married?”

  “To Clarence, my fiancé.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “At work in Lynchburg.”

  “And what is his employment?”

  “He has a taxi and delivery service,” Ruth Ann said proudly. “His own motorcar.” With funds he’d saved from years of tips from visitors whose cars he’d polished, he had bought it used from a widow who didn’t drive.

  “And does he bring in sufficient income to support you both?”

  “Yes, sir. He also does odd jobs.”

  “Where will the two of you live?”

  “In the boardin’ house where Clarence already rents a room.”

  “And he is willing to adopt little Annabel?”

  “Yes, sir. He already thinks of her as his own.”

  “You are aware that you have been sterilized, Ruth Ann? And Clarence as well?”

  She managed her answer without bitterness. “Yes, sir.”

  “And you are aware that this means you will never have more children.”

  Ruth Ann took a deep breath. A lot you know, Doc. There’s plenty of children out there just like me and Bonnie who need a home and people to love ’em, not use ’em for domestic help. We will petition the court for custody of Bonnie, too, if need be.

  What she and Clarence did with their lives after they left the Colony was none of the good doctor’s business. But she nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “Ruth Ann, do you feel capable of managing a household—such as it is, a room in a boardinghouse—on your own, given your mental state?”

  She felt the old fury and helplessness rising but tamped it down. It would do her no good in this exit interview with Doc Price. She drowned her anger as she might have a pair of dirty
trousers or a soiled pinafore in the laundry water. “Oh yes, sir. I got good trainin’ an’ all with the Dades and here at the Colony. Washin’ and gardenin’ and choppin’ and cookin’ and cannin’…I can do it all myself.”

  “Yes, indeed.” He gave her that kindly old uncle smile. “You should be very proud of yourself, Ruth Ann.”

  She looked at all them diplomas on his wall: the one from some Latin preparatory school, the one from the two Johns Hopkins and the one from Harvard. And you should be right ashamed o’ yourself, Doc. All that knowledge, used to hurt people in the name o’ the greater good.

  He snapped his fingers, recalling her attention. “Ruth Ann? I just paid you a compliment.”

  “Oh. Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” She forced herself to smile gratefully at him. The scar on her belly twinged and smiled at him, too.

  He rounded his massive desk and stood next to her, gazing down fondly. “The Colony has done right by you, my dear. You have flourished here. And though you may be feebleminded, I have every confidence that you will succeed in building a life on the outside, you and Clarence.”

  Yeah, Doc? I got every confidence that we will, too. No thanks to you.

  Doc Price dropped a hand on her shoulder and patted it.

  She flinched, then froze and looked up at him. To her astonishment, he was misty-eyed.

  He stroked his beard. “I know we’ve had our…misunderstandings…Ruth Ann. But you are one of God’s children, one of my children, here at the Colony. And it is my life’s work to take good care of my flock.”

  His self-delusion was downright appallin’.

  I may be a child of God, but I surely ain’t your child, nor am I a sheep. And in my “feebleminded” opinion, Doc, God is gonna have something to say to them lawyers an’ you on Judgment Day for carvin’ on His children. But that’s neither here nor there…So please, will you stop gum-flappin’ so I can get outta here and go there?

  “I am sorry to see you leave,” Doc said. He actually seemed to mean it.

  Please, Lord, help me to not laugh…

  “But it is the right thing for you to do.”

  Now that I’m no longer a danger to society, an’ all?

  “So I will approve your petition to be discharged from the Colony, Ruth Ann.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Doc nodded and patted her shoulder again. “You’ll come back to visit your mother?”

  “Yes, sir. And—once Clarence an’ I got enough saved for a place of our own, can Bonnie come to live with us, too?”

  “I think that’s a splendid idea, Ruth Ann.” Doc drew out his pocket watch and checked it. “Our time is up, my dear. I have to see another patient now.”

  An’ good luck with that, Doc. You still, to this very day, do not truly see me.

  She got up obediently. “Goodbye, Dr. Price,” she said.

  “Goodbye, my dear.”

  And in less than five seconds, Ruth Ann and her disrespect were outside his door, dismissed for the last time. She stood there for a moment, releasing the breath she hadn’t been aware she was holding. Then she went to find Bonnie, say goodbye to Glory, Carlotta and the other girls and gather her things.

  The bright blue Virginia sky was cloudless, the sun shining down upon her face in a warm welcome to the future. In the distance, the laundry swayed upon the lines, trousers kicking in the breeze and skirts dancing. A line of crisp white shirts flung up their sleeves at her, as if to salute.

  Ruth Ann raised her hand and waved goodbye.

  Epilogue

  June 1949

  Ruth Ann’s hair lifted in the warm breeze as she planted Virginia bluebells and peonies in the flower beds that bordered the little white cottage she and Clarence now called their own. True to her dreams, her husband had added on a front porch with some help from a neighbor, built two rocking chairs for it and painted the front door, shutters and window boxes bright blue.

  A home of her very own…It still occasionally brought tears to her eyes. She’d never seen anything more beautiful in her life—other than her daughter, Annabel, of course. Her daughter was now a young woman with a teaching certificate, married to the headmaster of a nearby school.

  Annabel’s darling baby, Grace, was as lovely as her mother, with the same dent in her chin they’d both inherited from Sheila. A dent that spoke of strength and grit and determination—the resilience they’d need to take on life.

  Grace cooed and gurgled from her comfortable spot on her mother’s lap. Annabel sat in one of the rockers, smiling at Ruth Ann. “I love the way you look in that hat, Ma.”

  Ruth Ann sat back on her heels and touched the straw brim of it. “So fancy. Too fancy for gardening.” It was decorated with a grosgrain ribbon and a cluster of cherries with silk leaves. Imagine. A girl from the Colony owning a hat such as this.

  Clarence whistled as he eased out the screen door with the blueberry pie she’d left cooling in the kitchen. His once-copper hair was streaked with silver and his freckles had faded somewhat, but he was still handsome. “Ain’t nothin’ too fancy for my Ruthie.” He winked. “You look almost as fine as this here pie.”

  “That’s for supper, and you know it,” Ruth Ann said. “Bonnie’s coming by with her husband after their visit with Momma. Ruby, too.”

  “Mmm-hmmm.” Clarence still cradled the pie.

  “You put that back straightaway. You hear?”

  He gazed at it sadly. “Well, but my tummy’s rumbling somethin’ fierce, and them little ol’ blueberries? They started singin’ to me.”

  “Is that right?” Ruth Ann said, in a tone that told him she wasn’t buying it. “What were they singing?”

  Clarence didn’t miss a beat. “The Sugar Blues.”

  “The Sugar Blarney, is more like it.” She stuck her spade in the dirt and brushed off her hands.

  The right corner of Clarence’s mouth quirked up. Of course, there was no wrong corner to her husband’s smile. It still got to her—still made her heart roll over, even after all these years. Ruth Ann tried, unsuccessfully, to bite back her echoing smile.

  But he spied it and knew in that moment that he’d won. “No, I promise you…these berries got musical talent. They got soul. And they are positively clamorin’ to meet up with the trombone and the trumpet in my belly.”

  Annabel laughed, and baby Grace did, too, as her mother tickled her stomach. “Ma, let him have some pie. He pinned up all the sheets for you on the line in back.”

  Ruth Ann’s breath caught. Clarence knew how much she hated doing laundry since she’d done so much of it in her youth. That softened her up more than his blatant wheedling. She got to her feet and shook out her skirt, then wiped her hands on her apron. “Give that here, Clarence. I’ll cut you a piece. You want coffee with it?”

  “Well, now. I reckon I wouldn’t turn it down.” His gray eyes danced, caught the sunlight and turned to silver.

  “Annabel, honey? You want pie? I made a second one. I knew he would do this.”

  “That’s all right, Ma. I’m just going to sit here a spell with the baby. But thank you.”

  Clarence slid an arm around Ruth Ann’s waist once they got inside. “You do look fetching in that hat, my girl.”

  Though she was decades past blushing age, she felt her face heating. “Only thing I’m fetching is pie, and I’m an old crone, you goof.”

  “But you’re my crone, Ruthie,” he teased.

  She swatted him lightly and took the pie from him in order to slice it.

  “And I thank the good Lord every day—twice—for that.” His voice thickened.

  Ruth Ann turned to look at him, and he took her in his arms, tipping the hat to the back of her head. There was a lot more to her these days, but he didn’t appear to mind.

  The laughter had disappeared from his eyes, but the sterling remained there, as it would until the day he died. Clarence kissed her, and she felt cherished. She laid her cheek on his chest, listening to the beat of his heart, feeling more c
ontent than she’d ever dreamed she would have a right to feel.

  Outside the window, silhouetted through the screen and the lace curtains, she drank in the sight of her daughter once more. So bright and fresh and pretty, with her whole life ahead of her, little Grace in her arms. Annabel turned the baby around to face her, and bent toward her, whispering earnestly.

  Ruth Ann couldn’t make out the words between them. But she smiled, aching, as the last two drifted to her ears: “I promise.”

  There were all kinds of promises in the world. Some were false. Some were made in earnest, but easily betrayed. Some were awkwardly, imperfectly fulfilled. But the promise made by a mother to love her child…the promise that began in utero, via the umbilical cord that linked them…that promise could never be broken.

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  a mother’s promise

  Reading Group Guide

  Buck v. Bell:

  The History Behind Ruth Ann’s Story

  by K.D. Alden

  This novel is based upon the tragic life of Carrie Buck and her true legal case, Buck v. Bell.

  From the moment I encountered her—heard her actual voice in an NPR podcast—I felt compelled to bring Carrie alive on the page, writing in her own, simple point of view about a complicated topic. I also yearned to give her a happier ending than she had in real life.

  Why was this story such a must for me to write? I, too, struggled with fertility issues—though not at governmental whim. My husband and I then experienced a sequence of disastrous attempts at adoption and finally gave up. I was left so numb that I was unable to write for several years. Then, by pure chance, a friend urged me to listen to an episode of Shankar Vedantam’s Hidden Brain, “Emma, Carrie, Vivian: How a Family Became a Test Case for Forced Sterilizations,” which aired on National Public Radio on April 23, 2018.

  I ran to my laptop, flipped it open and began writing chapter one of this book as though the story were being channeled through me. I have never in my career had a stranger, virtually mystical, experience! It was only after completing chapter three that I began to research in earnest and plan out the rest of the novel.