Four of a Kind: A women's historical fiction

by Russell, Vanessa

  Alright, I was almost in another lie here. If I can afford bigger dresses, I can afford …The truth is, I hand her the money for the potion, she hands me a capped bottle of dark liquid, and she never mentions another word about it. I stand in my little attic room, slowly bring the potion to my lips, and then drink it quickly before I can change my mind. The stuff tastes awful with all that lead in it. I sit on the bed. I lie down on the bed. I wait. And then I grab the chamber pot from under the bed. God punishes me by making me upchuck everything but the baby for three horribly sweaty days. Blood, diarrhea … I want to cry out for help but I’m too ashamed. Every now and then I hear footsteps and think Mrs. Worthington is checking on me, but they go away without a knock on my door. I clean up my own mess and on the fourth, I’m back in the kitchen and the baby is kicking me good. And I’m kicking myself over trying to rid of my own flesh and blood, even if part of that blood belongs to a mean-spirited cousin. I’m beginning to think I’m no better.

  In my eighth month, Clary sends word that Uncle Joe has died “in a croak” and the coast is clear. I cry for the first time that I can remember, realizing that relief is where my water tap is. I’m weaker in body but stronger of mind, determined to make this work to where I can tell Mama about it. With Clary’s letter, now I can see how to do that. First of all, Clary is a midwife, so when I show up at the Pick Plantation by taxi cab, and after her initial, “Oh Lord, child!” and my response by patting my stomach and saying, “Yes, it is!” I know I’m back to where I should be. Clary will look after that part.

  Then I do the harder part. At Uncle Joe’s funeral I wear Clary’s bulky Kangeroo coat with large pockets that hide my condition. Only then do I feel comfortable facing TJ and his father, not wanting to see his father smirk at me for his successful plan. At least TJ has the propriety to look frightened when he first sees me. After the funeral I approach a very solemn TJ and invite him out to the house for dinner. I enjoy his shock and the glimpse of admiration as he nods a speechless acceptance.

  I open the door to him in my one and only maternity dress; the style is tight and ties at the waist in the back and has ruffles down the front and sleeves, as if ruffles will detract. I tied it tight to stick out obscenely. His eyes enlarge, as if in need to take it all in and he blushes and stammers terribly, making this all worthwhile. He hands me a gift, a pair of rayon stockings - a rarity these days - mumbling something about replacing my ankle socks with these “much later”, meaning when I can once again wear a garter. I say nothing about the obvious, pretending it’s all perfectly normal.

  Then, over Clary’s sweet potato biscuits (which always puts me in a good mood), I ask him to marry me “for the baby’s sake”. To give him credit here, he could’ve said no - Clary had told me that Uncle Joe’s dying words were cursing me and Mama and that he’d changed his will to give the plantation to TJ. Instead, a very contrite TJ grabs my hand and tells me I won’t regret it. Our wedding will make everybody happy, he claims. “And even you’ll be happy once you know that I joined the service. Yes, ma’am, I’ve enlisted for atonement. I feel plain awful for what I did. Hey,” he adds, feigning chirpy, “if you’re lucky, I’ll die of trench fever like my uncle did in the Great War.”

  “Well, that’s just whiz-bang,” I mutter and take a large bite of biscuit. Not even TJ, looking his spiffy best dressed in a suit and tie could ruin my appetite these days. “I guess your uncle is my uncle, too?” This really isn’t a question because I really don’t want to know.

  TJ jumps up, takes my cigarette and butts it out, and pulls my hands to lift my bulk to my feet. “Let’s get married tomorrow. You said you won’t leave the plantation again until after the baby is born. So, I’ll bring an ordained minister out here and Daddy can be our witness.”

  “Why so soon?” I haven’t thought this through, past asking.

  “Yeah, what’s the rush?” he asks, patting my stomach basketball.

  I have to laugh. “Okay. But only your mother,” I say. I have my limits.

  “All right,” he answers slowly. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  He pulls it off and ends the vows by slipping a gold wedding band on my finger. He’s wearing his service uniform; I’m wearing the maternity dress, only I loosen the tie in the back when I see the pinched lips on the minister. My first thought is, now I can call Mama.

  TJ’s mother insists I help her in the kitchen (much to Clary’s surprise who had been peeping through the kitchen door to watch our ceremony), only to take me to the sideboard and whisper, “If it makes you feel any better, William is not TJ’s father.” I gasp and then my eyes become larger at the implications to my unborn child. “You know who I am,” I state, admiring her wise blue eyes and silver hair framing her face. Even up close she has a porcelain complexion. She continues as if I haven’t spoken. “TJ doesn’t know but his father suspects. So understand this. TJ has always tried to please a father he’s never had and who has never loved TJ, or anyone else for that matter. I hope you have a son who can love TJ back.” She kisses my cheek and leaves the room, leaving a shocked daughter-in-law slash great-niece behind in an aftermath of Coty perfume.

  He leaves for basic training at Camp Wolters, Texas the next week. Before that, we stay at the plantation house for the entire “honeymoon”. I avoid the public, he and Clary avoid each other. He can’t harm me any longer and the easiest thing to do to avoid conflict is to submit to his manhood every time he asks. And he always asks first. And he asks every night. He moves on top of me, trying not to apply weight to my stomach, and we avoid each other’s eyes. The truth is there to see and says that the only connection we have is where he’s entered me. After a few nights, he only enters from behind.

  He does his thing quickly, sometimes clinging desperately. Night after night he pulls down the covers to my sacred feather bed and creeps in behind me. I keep to my side unless he taps my shoulder. “Please, baby, please?” he asks as he pulls up my ankle-length nightgown. I nod my consent, expose myself further and he’s off to the races.

  I cry when he leaves for basic training, and you remember the only reason why I cry, don’t you?

  Jesi is born the day after TJ leaves, as if it’s safe now to come out. She is delivered about four weeks early and takes about the same amount of hellish time as my imprisonment in TJ’s shack. I feel like I’m going through it all over again, in my room with the shades down during the day, and the all-night grips of black pain. What goes in one way must come out the same. “Don’t leave me alone,” I cry out to Clary, when she goes away to get more towels. “Don’t turn the lamp off!” I cry when she wants me to try to sleep. Clary is changing her tune, when she takes my cigarettes away and tells me to sip her herbal concoctions or when she massages my legs, which tells me she is getting worried. At long last – and with what I think is my dying breath - I scream out and bear down while Clary pushes on my stomach and I feel Jesi slip out as if there’s nothing to it. Clary cries out, “It’s a girl!” and I try to joke by asking if my heart and lungs came out with her. Clary doesn’t smile though and seems to be concentrating on what’s going on between my bent legs. “It’s a girl,” she says, softly this time, “but she’s a little damaged.”

  “Damaged?” I ask, trying to lift myself up from my pillows.

  “Lay still,” she says. She’s quiet for a minute. “This little ‘un’s got clubfoot,” she mutters.

  “Clary?”

  She looks over at me as if I’ve suddenly just showed up. “I’ll get her cleaned up and bring her back. You lie still so I can get you cleaned next.”

  I’m somehow dozing when she returns, a doctor in tow. He lifts up my sheet and feels around like he knows me as wife, and gives Clary instructions on massaging my stomach to rid of afterbirth, and tells her to wash me down and change my sheets. She frowns at him for bossing her around and I can’t say I blame her now that she’s done the hard part, but she just says “yes sir, no sir”. He tells her I should’ve seen a doctor during my pr
egnancy and that I should’ve been taken to a hospital, like it’s her fault, and hoarsely I call out that I’m where I want to be and where the hell is my baby?

  “I’ve sent her to the hospital,” the doctor says, turning on a different kinder tone. “She has birth defects that may require immediate surgery. She’s breathing poorly and she appears to have talipes equinovarus.”

  “Oh God,” I say. It sounds serious. “Clary, bring me back my damn cigarettes.”

  One leg is four inches shorter and curved out, the other has a clubfoot that is surgically straightened and splints applied. This is after they clear up her lung infection. She’s in the hospital for weeks and my breasts dry up like apples on the ground. I’m too tired to feel much of anything and I try not to think. Mama tries to change that.

  “I was planning on coming down there for the birth,” she says in that tone, as if I had intentionally planned time of delivery. I immediately start feeling agitated; she just has that gift I reckon. And Lord Child, all the questions: Why was she born so early? How many months along did you say you were? Why didn’t you tell me sooner you were married last fall? Why are there birth defects? We’ve never had a birth defect in our entire family! What kind of family does this TJ come from? And she says TJ as if she doesn’t believe that’s his real name. Her being so smart always takes me by surprise although it shouldn’t. Of course the more I tell her, the more she asks. “Why is Jesi’s last name the same as ours?” It’s the woman’s way of the future for war babies, I try to explain. She’s not buying any of it.

  I change the subject to one of her liking, a long-time tactic of mine. “I’ve decided to pursue the birth control clinic.” This is true; I want to do this more than ever. I owe this to Mama for all my lies. Besides, I have time on my hands now that Jesi is in the hospital and I don’t want to think about her coming home. With the leg bandages and tubes, she’s cumbersome to hold and always cries when I do. I know how she feels. I usually spend my time with her by holding her fingers and stroking her head. Her blonde wisps of hair, wide mouth and porcelain skin reminds me too much of how she got here. Many days I feign exhaustion and Clary goes in my stead. Marge starts going every day at noon “just in case”.

  TJ comes in after basic training for a few days, on his way to France. He looks older with his hair cut so close, and he’s mean and lean-looking, too. He studies Jesi lying asleep in the hospital ward’s metal crib, then glares at me accusingly and I snap, “The doctor says it’s because we had too much sex while I was pregnant.” I leave him there with Marge and drive my Duesy home. He spends his days at the hospital or at his parents’ home and falls into my bed at night and begins snoring before I can say don’t touch me. “Maybe we should communicate by walky-talky,” he says one morning, before driving Duesy away. That’s the last time I see her. “We decided Jesi isn’t safe in a twenty year old Duesenberg and the war effort needs the scrap metal. Call Mother when you need a ride.”

  “Anytime you need it, darling,” she says with a hug.

  Two weeks later we get a telegram informing us that TJ is killed in the Normandy invasion. I feel badly for Marge.

  With the deed to the plantation now in my name, I tell the estate lawyer who is reading the will that I want to sell it. “So soon?” he asks. “You should not make decisions while grieving.”

  “Sell it? That’s preposterous!” shouts William, there in the lawyer’s office with Marge. TJ had willed his beloved slingshot to William and William looks none too impressed. I’m all the more determined. Marge smiles that knowing Mona-Lisa smile at it all and calmly tells William that they must go see Jesi at the hospital. He leaves in a huff.

  The sale doesn’t take more than a week or so, with such prime real estate. Luckily for me, the estate lawyer says, he also represents civil rights cases and doesn’t like William. This keeps William’s lawyer and interference at bay and that’s all the details my lawyer will “bother” me with. The sale goes for much less than I had hoped for and I never meet the new owner but at the end, I don’t care. With some of the proceeds I rent a duplex on one of Savannah’s park-like squares, with enough room for Clary and Jesi, arranged by Ellen Whitman and within walking distance to her home. She wants me near for her own reasons, I want out of small-minded Pickerville (“Pickleville” I nicknamed it, just to irritate TJ), and with no constant reminders of Uncle Joe, I love my new home. Clary fusses about the move but has become so attached to Jesi that I convince her to move with me, knowing she’ll tend to Jesi now that she’s home. She’s almost three months old and admittedly I’m scared to tend to her on my own.

  On the other side of the duplex, Ellen and I convert into office space and name it the Bess Birth Control Clinic, using only its acronym of BBCC on the front door. This is partly funded by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and partly funded by private donations from those women who come in for contraceptive information. Laws like the Comstock Law forbidding dissemination of contraceptive information had finally been overturned, but the religious wings are a pain in the ass. I sit as receptionist and pass out pamphlets sent by my grateful Mama, and I hire a nurse who comes in a few hours a day to privately discuss birth control methods in the back room. Ellen is a tireless volunteer; she gets the word out, prints more pamphlets and brings in more funding and soon the waiting room fills daily.

  I feel more useful here than at home. Jesi prefers Clary and we all only get frustrated with each other. I lose patience with Jesi’s slow growth and healing. Another leg surgery and brace sets her back and she’s not able to crawl and falls over easily when sitting. And that wide, bright smile of hers! I can’t bear it.

  “I’m keen on what I’m doing,” I tell Mama. “The women look so relieved when they walk out of the clinic, knowing they have some control back in their lives. Most have four or more children and can’t afford to feed another, the husband left or is killed in the war, or it endangers the mother’s health, or a myriad of sad reasons. Some come in disguises, with wigs and scarves, and about everyone comes in with sunglasses on. I joke that I’m going to go on the radio announcing, ‘Every day is a sunny day at BBCC’! Nurse Jones takes them into a private room and shows them how to use condoms or douches and for the brave and few, the diaphragm, and we discuss other methods like counting days until ovulation. We’re secretly handing out free condoms and lubricants to those who ask for our feminine hygiene products – the term we’ve given to keep them disguised - but that’s becoming risky. I’m afraid word is getting out and I’m receiving threatening telephone calls from religious groups telling me I’m killing God’s children and this wicked sin must be stopped.” I love sounding grown-up to her and talking her language.

  “I attended the Chicago Birth Control Conference in 1923,” says Mama, “and I remember one of our own, Eleanor Wembridge, saying there that it would be difficult if not impossible to teach the dull how to use birth control. In my experience, it’s impossible to teach the deacons, not the dull. I’d hoped that when Preacher Paul passed away, the younger preacher would have fresh ideas, but that’s not to be so. God never changes, he says. Church-going women remain afraid to prevent pregnancies. I’ll send you her paper titled The Seventh Child in the Four-room House.”

  I want to say that I don’t want more papers, I’m inundated with them; I want Mama here. I want to say that one of the threatening callers sounds like TJ’s father. But Mama is swamped with work at her clinic and the Lighthouse in Annan New York and promises yet again to try to free herself up to come down and help out. She recommends I screen my calls, so I begin giving out the code name of “Jesi” to only those women who come in.

  The next morning a note is tacked on the BBCC front door, scribbled with Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their magic potions, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts. Revelations 9:21.

  With a shaky hand I extend this note to Clary who promptly turns to her family Bible, its brown leather looking as spotted a
nd worn as her hands. “I didn’t think that sounded right,” she says. “Now why in the world would someone add ‘magic potion’? Ain’t God’s Word good enough?” she mutters, studying the note suspiciously.

  I suddenly feel a wave of sickness not unlike those three days in hell up in Mrs. Worthington’s attic. That’s when I have my own revelation.

  I stick this note under Mrs. Worthington’s nose. “I don’t get it,” I say. “You support abortion but oppose birth control?”

  She sits at her kitchen table and wipes her spectacle lens and reads it down her nose, through her glasses. “You should know better than to think that I judge what women do with their bodies. You can sleep with the devil for all I care.” I see she’s still angry with me for walking out on her kitchen work. “You remember Mr. Dotson, don’t you? The one you call an old coot?” She doesn’t look at me for an answer and I stand and wait. “Well, he’s also an old snoop and I catch him sneaking around here all the time. He heard us talking about the potion I sold you, and he heard –well we all heard – you vomiting all hours of the night. He told me so himself. That’s how he justified peeping into your keyhole. ‘Course that wasn’t the only time I caught him doing that. He likes to call you a sweet tart. There’s not much I can do about him. Don’t underestimate his age or the men he runs with.”