A Certain Twist in Time

by Anita K Grimm

  Chapter 20

  The next couple of days it was hard to contain the joy inside. Every so often I broke into a wide grin for no reason anyone could see. Even the Troll’s critical grumblings had no effect on me. Brad would be at my side as school started, and maybe it wouldn’t be as miserable as I anticipated. I wished my grandmother had been this lucky.

  ~ ~ ~

  October 16, 1969

  Dear Diary:

  I can’t stand it! Not one more minute! Mother took me out of school two weeks ago because my school days were filled with finger pointing, cruel comments, name calling, and bizarre beliefs. Can you imagine people thinking I’m still a virgin? That I’ll be giving birth to the Second Coming even though that’s not at all the way the Bible says it will happen? Or worse yet, that Satan himself is the father of my child and my baby will be a demon or the Antichrist? (More people believe that because people are actually anxious to believe the worst.) I’ve heard loud whispers in the hallways that when my baby is born, the kids will stone it to death. Others say the only way to kill the little monster will be to throw it onto a bon fire. Still others tell me to my face I ought to be locked up in an institution and forced to have an abortion.

  The principal told my mother I could no longer attend school. For one thing, he said, I was “showing.” For another, I served as a bad example to the other students. Third, my presence on campus was far too disruptive.

  Now here I am at home, and it’s worse here than at school. Mother is forever haranguing me about “protecting the rapist.” She demands I reveal who the father is and threatens to throw me out if I don’t. She says she’ll never consider the baby her grandchild or heir because of the tainted circumstances of its conception. After the baby is born, she told me the only way I’ll continue to live in the Ross house is to find a job that supports me and the baby because she won’t be a party to the upkeep of a whore and her bastard. Even Simon, who has always been kind to me, doesn’t know what to say. My heart seems to have shriveled and died.

  The last straw for mother was being forced to pull us out of church. The pastor said he was sorry and all, but there were too many folks who had said if we attended services, they would no longer come. They refused to worship alongside a tart and her demon child. He asked us to leave and not come back. I know he’s mostly worried that the money in the collection plate will dry up if that many people stop coming.

  I am depressed, beyond anything I thought that word meant. It is hard for me to eat or sleep. I dread the nights for the nightmares they bring and the days for the abuse I suffer at the hands of the only family I have.

  ~ ~ ~

  A few days later, Cook managed to cajole the Troll into granting me permission to accept a dinner invitation with Brad and Matt Gordon’s family. Mrs. Gordon must have spoken to her at church as she had promised. Since I’d be supervised by adults, my great-grandmother gave in.

  Julia, Matt’s eight-year-old sister, met Brad and me at the door dressed in a pretty pink party dress. Her silky brown pigtails bounced with excitement.

  “Come see my room, Emma. Please, please, please?” She grabbed my hand and, walking backwards, towed me into her room.

  There she introduced me to each stuffed animal, each Barbie and Ken doll, her Sesame Street characters, her favorite coloring book, and half a dozen dolls for which she had created rather complicated names and backgrounds.

  Brad and Matt stood snickering in the doorway making snide jibes at Julia and her cast of characters. I shot them a few dirty looks. Julia paid them no attention.

  “Do you have a sister?” Julia asked me. “I only have a bratty brother. I’d much rather have a sister.”

  Matt laughed. “Julia tried to sell me at our garage sale when she was five.”

  “Yeah?” I countered. “No takers? Does that mean you’re worthless?”

  “No lie,” Brad put in. “Then his mom and dad tried to pay people to take him away.”

  Matt punched Brad on the shoulder as his mom appeared at the door.

  “If you kids are done insulting each other, dinner’s on the table.”

  The dining room sat off the kitchen. Brad pulled my chair out for me. I watched six people I cared about crowded around the table slinging jokes and passing mashed potatoes and salad, a platter of roast slices, a bowl of green beans. The guys laughed and bragged about how much they could pack away. Quite a far cry from the silent meals I endured with Queen Penelope, swallowing critical barbs and feelings of inadequacy between bites of food.

  “You keep stuffing that much food down your face and I’ll have to drag you by your sorry cleats all the way to the goal post while I’m blocking the entire opposing team,” Matt said, holding the basket of rolls over his head where Brad couldn’t get at them.

  “Listen, dude. I can carry both you and the football over the line and break the state high school record for touchdowns and yards rushed while I’m at it. You just stick to watching the cheerleaders while us real men do the work.”

  “Emma? You put up with this dude’s humongous ego all the time?’ Matt asked. “Someone’s liable to knock what passes for his big head sideways one of these days.” He shrugged. “Just sayin’.”

  “You still got your sights set on a law career?” Mr. Gordon asked Brad.

  Brad swallowed a mouthful of potatoes and nodded.

  Matt stage-whispered to me, “See, my dad is a lawyer. He wanted me to go into law. Guess I’m a big disappointment to him. I want to go into computer science.”

  Matt’s father tried to suppress a grin. “You’ll be the next Bill Gates, son. One lawyer in the family is enough. You given any thought to what area of law might interest you, Brad?”

  “Some days I think I’d like business law, other days, criminal defense.”

  “You ever consider family law, son?”

  Matt rolled his eyes. “See, that’s dad’s specialty. Two days a week he works for the juvenile justice system and three days a week he’s in private practice doing adoptions, custody cases, divorces, and that kind of stuff.”

  “The juvenile court system?” I asked.

  Mr. Gordon smiled at me. “Yes. There are several of us. We handle cases like yours, sweetheart. Sometimes kids need to be taken out of their homes while their parents get the help they need to become better parents. We help find foster homes for them and represent sometimes the parents, sometimes the children in court. All depends on what the court assigns us to do.”

  I perked up. “Can you get me into a foster home? I hate living with Penelope Ross.”

  Mr. Gordon wiped his mouth with his napkin and studied me for a long moment. “That’s not quite how it works, I’m afraid. Child Protective Services has to open a case with sufficient evidence against the parents for abuse or neglect. If the court agrees there are reasonable allegations against the parents, they will assign me or one of the other attorneys to represent the parents and their rights or the children and their rights. I have no choice about this.

  “I will tell you this, Emma. Think hard, really hard, about whether you want to be taken out of your great-grandmother’s house. First, charges would have to be brought against her for abuse, endangerment, or neglect. Provable charges. Secondly you need to know that Sweet Creek only has two accredited foster homes. Both of them are full at the moment and the court has been placing children in Eugene, Salem, Albany, and even Portland. The most recent case I worked on resulted in a boy being placed up in Corvallis. All those places are a long way from here, though maybe that doesn’t matter to you.”

  Brad and I exchanged glances.

  Mr. Gordon cut a bite-sized piece from his roast beef. “I don’t know what charges you could drum up against Miss Ross that Child Protective Services would deem worthy enough to look into, but if you’re serious about this, I could let you know
if a space opens up in a local foster home.”

  There it was. Being forced to wear long dresses would probably not be considered actual child abuse. In any case, I wasn’t about to take a chance on getting sent far away. I needed to be with Brad. Guess I was doomed to tough it out living with the Troll until I graduated high school, and then life would get really hard.

  Chapter 21

  September was snapping at summer’s coattails. August, in its death throes, had always made me sad. September drew close enough I could almost smell the dying freedom and new textbooks. This year the last of the summer sun dimmed under the approaching storm of scandal. School was starting in two weeks.

  Brad spent every hour with me he could arrange between his wood business and football practice. Matt acted like the big brother I never had, driving me on errands when Brad was tied up, taking me to his house for the afternoon just to get me away from the Troll who seemed to have regained enough of her former vitality to heap my plate with endless chores just so she could berate me for the way I did them. Brad’s parents invited me to go out with the family for dinner, for kayaking on nearby Granite Lake, for movies and day trips. It was Simon who gave me permission to go. The Troll’s memory seemed to be slipping a bit and half the time she never knew I was off the ranch.

  A hollowness filled my stomach each time the hour came to leave the Rylands or Gordons and be returned to the Troll’s lair. The nearer Brad drove toward my prison compound, the more I felt growing despair.

  I had found and even met my mysterious grandfather and had come to know my grandmother through the pages of her diary. The next Big Thing I had to face was that dreaded entrance into Sweet Creek High School. Brad might find some way to smooth that first day, yet my good sense told me he couldn’t fight all my battles or protect me from everything.

  My grandmother’s diary became harder for me to read. Her life seemed to be disintegrating more and more into hopelessness and depression even though the due date for her baby’s birth drew closer. I supposed the usual joy an expectant mother might feel was snuffed out by having to live with Penelope. Without Brad and Matt, it would have been difficult to keep my spirits up living with her too. I had to force myself to keep reading. I had to find out what happened.

  December 25, 1969

  Dear Diary:

  Christmas Day. What am I to think? It’s kind of hard to remember back just a year ago when the pastor promised God would not forget or abandon those who felt lost and alone. Hard to recall how faithfully I prayed for God to send me a friend. And then He did. A friend I grew to love with a passion so irresistible that the feeling has only grown deeper and more intense in the months we’ve been apart. Yet He sent me a lover in another century with whom I couldn’t stay for more than a couple hours at a time. He brought me a friend whose love cushioned me from this painful world, cocooned me against my venomous mother and the constant rejection at school. Q surrounded me with more love than I’d ever experienced in my lifetime, keeping me blissful and insulated from the Real World. God did this to . . . what? Laugh at me? His gift has ruined my life, destroying what little happiness and peace I’d had before meeting Q. Why would God do that? And why would He leave me heartbroken to the point I no longer want to live? Why would He bring an innocent child into my personal hell? A child I can’t protect from the sadistic soul of his grandmother?

  That was the last entry for 1969. I could only imagine the agony of her life shut up in the house with her vitriolic mother as winter deepened around them. At least I wasn’t pregnant out of wedlock with rumors swirling about my demon-child and carrying death threats, trapped with a woman who hated me and what I had done to her reputation. Of course, I was the daughter of the demon-child, and the scandal Charlotte unwittingly created waited to ambush me full-force when school began.

  February 1, 1970

  Dear Diary:

  I feel like a swollen hippopotamus. I can hardly turn over in bed, and never feel quite balanced when I stand or walk. My back pains me and it seems every five minutes I have to pee. I can’t tie my own shoes now, so I wear slippers and stay inside the house. At least I have been excused from milking and other chores. Now I sit and sew baby clothes and, at the demand of Mother, polish the Ross family silver. She tells me I should be grateful I have a roof over my head and food in my belly, and then in the same breath I’m reminded that two weeks after the baby’s birth, I will have to find a job or leave home. I fear the baby’s birth for that reason. At the same time I look forward to ridding my body of this unwieldy burden. Sometimes I actually dream I’ve given birth to a baby hippo. How I yearn for Q to be at my side, sharing the joy at the birth of his son or daughter. I don’t feel much joy as things stand.

  ~ ~ ~

  The closer school loomed, the more anxious I became.

  “Look,” Brad told me one evening as we walked along the banks of Sweet Creek, “from what you’ve said about your grandmother, Charlotte, the kids at school didn’t accept her because she was different. You know, dressed in those long dresses and no makeup. Kids can be damned cruel to anyone who’s different.”

  “That’s how I’ll have to dress too,” I reminded him.

  “Actually, I think there’s a way around that.”

  I rolled my eyes. “How do you figure?”

  Brad smiled and planted a kiss on my lips. “Here’s what you do. Simon will be driving you to school each day since your great-grandmother’s doctor made the DMV revoke her license, right?”

  “Right,” I said tentatively.

  “Tell Simon since your warden won’t let you take gym class that you have to get your exercise some way. Ask him to drop you off by the hitching post early to let you walk the last mile and a half, and after school to pick you up an hour late so you can walk to the hitching post and meet him there.”

  “Okay. That sounds like . . . lots of fun.” I threw him a dubious look.

  He grinned. “I’ll be parked across the street from the hitching post each morning. I’ll drive you to my house where Mom will keep all your normal clothes in a closet along with your makeup. You can change your clothes, do your hair and your makeup, and I’ll drive you to school lookin’ like a regular high school kid. After school, we’ll do it in reverse.”

  “Your mom would do that for me?”

  Brad stopped walking and folded me into his arms. “My parents have grown very fond of you, baby. Mom says what Miss Ross is doing to you is abusive, and she’d be happy to make your life easier any way she can.” He held my face in both hands and kissed me until my knees went wobbly. “Relax about school, Emma. Everyone will like you. Half the guys I know would fight the entire student body for you, and all the silly rumors will fade away when kids see how perfectly normal you are. Just remember, with all those hunks wandering the halls at school, you belong to me.”

  ~ ~ ~

  My spirits in general strengthened. One evening late, I picked up Charlotte’s diary again. I still had a ways to go before the end, and I wanted to finish it.

  March 6, 1970

  Dear Diary:

  Q would be bursting with pride. He has a perfect little son, born sixteen days ago. I named him Benjamin after Q’s father, and even though I’m still nursing a dead spot in my heart that will never heal without Q in my life, I find myself smiling again. Little Ben is the joy of my life, and the love I feel for him makes me think my heart has tripled in size. He has his father’s brown tuft of hair, and I think his eyes will stay blue.

  My mother, true to form, has a knot of ice where her heart should be and even this beautiful child cannot melt it. She calls him a little bastard who defiles her house and good name simply by existing and refuses to hold him.

  I was out most of yesterday job hunting, though with my soiled dove reputation and no high school diploma, my chances seem pretty dim. I am constantly re
minded that unless I get work and can support little Ben, the two of us will be thrown out to fend for ourselves or Benny will be taken from me and adopted out. I would die if that ever happened. It’s my plan to get whatever work I can find and save for the moment I can move out with my baby.

  I am back to doing all the barn chores and inside work, and Cook looks after Benny when I can’t be with him. Thank God for her. She loves him and takes special care with him.

  The bulk of the many entries that followed were full of Charlotte’s horrible life. She landed part-time work as a waitress at the local greasy spoon in town and part-time work as a maid in the dingy motel at the outskirts of Sweet Creek. Her hours were long and difficult, and Penelope snatched just about every dollar she made for Charlotte’s and Benny’s room and board. Saving for her escape was impossible. There were horrible descriptions of the mental and emotional torture she suffered at the hands of Penelope and of the fights they had. Much of Charlotte’s energy was spent sheltering my father from his grandmother’s anger and bitterness. Charlotte’s only outlet was pouring her pain and hopelessness into her diary. I stayed awake until nearly two o’clock in the morning before I came to the last entry.

  April 19, 1971

  Dear Diary:

  I asked Cook tonight what would become of Benjamin if something were to happen to me. She said not to bother about such things. My mother, she disclosed, had a twisted kind of pride in her grandson that she would never reveal to me, and Miss Ross would raise the baby should something prevent me from doing it. Besides, Cook said, she loved little Benny and would be there for him at every turn. She could only do so much unless she chose to risk her job, but it would be enough and the child would grow up happy and well cared for. Such a thing, she said, would never happen, and she forbade me to worry about it.