Adelaide Piper

by Beth Webb Hart

  “When?”

  “I can leave here in an hour,” she said.

  “Me too.”

  Jif promised she’d sit with Ruthie. She threw me the keys to the candy-blue Mercedes so that I could drive as fast as the German wheels would carry me down 81.

  13

  A Contrite Heart

  Because of God’s tender mercy,

  the light from heaven is about to

  break upon us,

  to give light to those who sit in

  darkness and in the shadow

  of death,

  and to guide us to the path of peace.

  Luke 1:78–79

  I’m in trouble,” I said through tears when we sat down at the truck stop and ordered two coffees. It was nearly midnight, and there were only three other people dining in the place, each at his own separate booth.

  It had been an exhausting drive down the mountain. The sunset gave way to a foggy darkness, and there were times when I could hardly see a foot in front of Marny’s Mercedes. I kept imagining a runaway truck knocking me over the side of the ridge. But I was determined, and I even prayed, Help me get there.

  Squinting to make out the lanes and the guard rails, I thought about the doubts and questions I’d written in my notebook last summer and presented before Dale and Darla Pelzer, half wanting to know the truth and half wanting to trip them up and expose their unenlightened state of mind. I suspected that I could follow the maze of each question and each doubt for years until I made a decision.

  But I didn’t have time for all of that now. I had to get help.

  “What’s going on?” Shannon said from the other side of the booth.

  I tried to talk, but when I opened my mouth, I wept so intensely that it was fifteen minutes before I actually uttered an intelligible word.

  She moved over to my side and held me, wiping my dripping nose with coarse truck-stop napkins, until I could speak.

  “I’m bewildered,” I said. “I was doing better since last summer, but yesterday I took my roommate to an abortion clinic, and she’s worse off than before, and I might be too.”

  “I’m sorry,” Shannon said. She shooed away the waitress, who kept wanting to take our food order.

  I wept without reserve in my friend’s arms as bacon sizzled in the frying pan and trucks pulled in to fill up with gas or bed down for the night.

  When I could look back up at her, I said, “I’m so weary.”

  Shannon took a deep breath. She was anxious and sympathetic, and I could tell she wanted hard for me to see.

  “You don’t have to be. You don’t have to be alone, Adelaide.”

  I was beaten to a pulp, and I wanted to believe her. I was tired of the mazes in my mind about the reality of God. If there was any hope for me, I had to step over them now and get to the other side. What other choice did I have?

  “Okay,” I said. “What do I need to do?”

  Shannon pulled me close beneath the fluorescent lights of the diner and prayed a simple prayer of my need for forgiveness and asked me to list silently the things that were weighing down my heart. Then she prayed for me to acknowledge and accept that Christ had paid the debt for the very things I’d just named and others that I might not even know about.

  I muttered, “I accept,” and Shannon thanked God for washing me clean.

  Then she pulled a Bible out of her backpack and read a passage from Hebrews 10:9–10:

  He [Jesus] cancels the first covenant in order to establish the second. And what God wants is for us to be made holy by the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all time.

  “And that is that, Adelaide,” she said. “You have received God’s grace, once and for all time, in a two-minute prayer at a truck stop off Interstate 81.”

  I actually chuckled for a moment. She knew that was exactly what I would have said, and I loved her for that.

  Though I still didn’t fully get it, I stepped across that gaping chasm that Dale Pelzer had drawn on his makeshift chalkboard. Nothing overtly supernatural happened as Shannon prayed for me—no bright light or chorus of angels—but I guessed I didn’t deserve any icing on the cake like that right now. What I hoped was that it was true, because it was the only thing I had. I had no choice but to accept the offer. And I was thankful for the chance to take hold of it.

  Then Shannon gave me such a tight hug good-bye that I thought my eyeballs might pop out. I hugged her back just as hard, because I knew I had this old friend to thank for the slight relief I was feeling.

  And though it was midnight, I scurried back to the car and started on my way back to school. As I started the fine-tuned engine and flicked on the high beams, I could see that the fog had dissipated and a Carolina moon was as clear as a prop in a play over the road before me. I rolled down my window and breathed in the cold night air, and as I exhaled, my own breath rose before me like burning incense before an altar.

  Everything looked clear. So clear that I could almost make out the corners of the stars. The thought occurred to me that I had been seeing only shadows of the world until now.

  It was two thirty in the morning by the time I got back to NBU. Jif was studying in my bed, and Ruthie was curled up with her knees to her chest. She was making a sound as if she were snoring, but her eyes were open.

  “Hey,” I whispered to Jif.

  “Hey,” she said. She nodded in the direction of Ruthie. “She’s been cramping pretty bad, but she just took two Anaprox, and she should be out any minute.”

  “Thanks, Jif,” I said.

  “No problem,” she answered. “I’m too tired to talk. Tell me about it tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  The next morning I woke up and saw Ruthie taking a Band-Aid off her forearm and pinching the incision until the blood surfaced.

  “Ruthie!” I felt such a strong mix of sympathy and frustration toward her that I thought I might explode. “We’ve got to talk.”

  Lurching, I grabbed the razor on her desk and threw it in the trash.

  I knelt down beside her bed, grabbed her tepid hand, and said, “Forgive me for my role in what happened the other day.”

  “Don’t—” Ruthie raised her hand as if to say she couldn’t bear the idea of even mentioning that day.

  “Hear me out,” I pleaded. “That morning in the clinic, you wanted me to do something, and I didn’t. I know you were having second thoughts when the nurse called you in, and I didn’t do right by you by not asking you to reconsider.”

  Ruthie hugged her knees to her chest and shook with grief as I continued, “You were looking to me, and I failed you. I distanced myself. And I ignored you. I’m sorry.”

  Ruthie pinched her arm again until crimson appeared.

  “Look, Ruthie,” I said, pulling her hand away from her arm. “I’m not going to sit here and watch you mutilate yourself. It’s sick! Now, I don’t know what to do to make things better, but I know you need help, and I’m going to tell Tag that when he picks you up. And if he doesn’t do anything about it, then I’m going to tell your parents.”

  Ruthie stared straight ahead, trancelike in the morning light.

  I pulled her pajama sleeves down to her wrists.

  “Jif said you went to meet Shannon,” she whispered.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Did it help?”

  “I’m not sure yet, but I think so.”

  Ruthie let out a guffaw and then looked up at me as if she were the last canine at the pound, and I was preparing the injection with which to put her down for good.

  I grabbed my roommate’s knees and whispered, “Ruthie, there has to be a way out of this misery.” Tears trickled down her face, and I went to the refrigerator to pour her a cup of orange juice.

  She took a sip, then whispered, “When I close my eyes, all I can see is that heart beating on the ultrasound machine. That tiny organ in a sea of gray fuzz. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I can’t walk by the mirror. What kind of person would take
the life of her own baby? Just because it didn’t fit into her neat and tidy future?”

  Then she took the cup of juice and tossed it too hard in the direction of the trash can. It hit the open closet and left a streak of orange across her dresses and shoes.

  “I don’t deserve a thing.”

  Minutes passed as Ruthie shook her head and stared into the rumpled sheets beneath her feet. Then she looked up at me and was able to make eye contact, though her brow began to furrow before smoothing out again.

  “What am I going to do?” she said, and it almost sounded like the tone of her old, strong voice before all of this awful stuff had happened.

  “Tell your folks and get help,” I said. And I sat with her as we waited for Tag to pick her up.

  When the phone rang, I answered it.

  “Adelaide, it’s Mrs. Baxter,” she said. “Tag’s car broke down on the way out of Chapel Hill, so I’m here to get Ruthie.”

  “I’ll be down in a sec to let you in.”

  This turn of events was too good not to deny a guiding hand in it.

  When I hung up the phone, I looked to Ruthie and said, “Your mama’s here. Now, let’s tell her what’s going on.”

  Ruthie nodded her head in agreement.

  The chapel bell tower rang eleven times as Mrs. Baxter sat at the edge of Ruthie’s bed and wept while she heard the account of the last few months of her daughter’s life.

  I was thankful that she didn’t come at her with anger or disappointment. She could sense her daughter’s earnest regret, and what she wanted was for her to forgive herself.

  When Ruthie pulled up the sleeves of her pajamas to show how she had dealt with the last week, her mama held her tight and said, “We’ll get you some help.”

  As Mrs. Baxter rubbed ointment from the dorm’s first-aid kit on Ruthie’s thin arms, Jif and I zipped her suitcases and lugged them down the stairs and into the car while big, papery snowflakes—the first of the season—lightly coated the quadrangle and the slate roofs of the buildings on the hill.

  After they left, I took a shower, aced my French exam, and walked around campus one final time before Jif and I headed back down the mountain the next morning.

  I was relieved to be alive. No, the sadness and regret over Ruthie’s abortion didn’t disappear, but I had confessed my part in it, and I honestly felt that I could breathe again.

  As I treaded up faculty row and by President Schaeffer’s house, I thought of the wonders that I had seen at NBU. The pastoral scenes of silos and cows grazing along the hillsides. The friendly voice of my creative writing professor, Josiah Dirkas, and the words of truth that Dr. Shaw, my religion professor, brought to life in his social justice class. A part of me would be sad to bid the place farewell, and I would tell those two professors as much if they were in their offices tomorrow morning.

  I was headed to USC. No doubt about it. But the weight of the world wasn’t on me at the moment.

  Was forgiveness real? I hoped it was. And I hoped Ruthie could find it before she cut her way up her arm and toward her own pounding chest.

  Had I “accepted Jesus” last night, like those seemingly wacko tel-evangelists used to say as I flicked their voices away from me as fast as my remote control could carry them every Sunday morning since I could remember? Would my life be radically different from this point forward? Would I really care?

  If I actually had been created for Someone’s greater purpose, if my life was not really my own to begin with, then why not submit to the One who provided a way out of the pit?

  As I walked by the gravel road that led to the campus graveyard on the next hillside, I felt that God had been drawing me to Him all along during the months following the rape. And maybe before that too. In every moment of wonder I had ever witnessed.

  The snow was falling so fast now that the wall around the graves looked like a white gate surrounding a private garden.

  I had been looking for a raison d’être when I went to college, and maybe I’d found it. It had been around me all of my life. If it had been a snake, it would have bitten me many times over. But now I could glimpse the dullest bit of it. I could put the pieces of all that I knew to be good together and barely see the edge of it.

  I didn’t really know how to pray or how to talk to God. I didn’t even know much about the Bible except for the few stories I’d learned as a child. Of all these, I liked the miracle of the loaves and fishes best.

  I remembered one morning in the run-down classroom at St. Anne’s when our teacher dressed up like Jesus and put two goldfish crackers and three oyster crackers into a basket covered with a paper towel. She lifted the basket up to thank God for the food, and when she pulled it down, it was filled with hundreds of oyster crackers and goldfish. What a great surprise!

  So, on my walk around the snow-dusted campus that day, all I saw were those pieces of bread that were broken and broken again to fill the stomachs of the hungry listeners. Can you take this loaf? I said of my life. And use it?

  I pictured each member of my family and their respective woes:

  Dizzy with her sordid high school history and DUI charges, Lou with her speech impediment and lack of self-confidence, Mama’s emotional distance, and Daddy’s decision to step away from the family business no matter what it cost his marriage or his relationship with his parents. I named each of them and my concerns for them, and then I envisioned placing them on an altar as I walked.

  And I thought about Brother Benton’s family and Peter Carpenter spending the first of many Christmases in jail after his manslaughter conviction, and I placed him on that altar as well.

  As I ascended to the colonnade and looked out over the Blue Ridge Mountains, I was stunned by the beauty of the light on the patches of white atop the great masses of jagged rock. It was as though I was seeing them for the first time.

  14

  I’m C-o-m-i-n-g Out

  The next morning Jif and I made our way back down the mountains to Williamstown for the Christmas holiday and the Camellia Club Debutante Ball. I had said a final good-bye to my favorite professors.

  On the way down the winding ridges, I told Jif about the last twenty-four hours, “No lie,” I said to her. “This God/Christ thing we’ve been hearing about all of our lives—I think Shannon was right all along.”

  Jif rolled her eyes. “Please don’t turn into a Bible beater on me,” she said. “I mean, don’t misunderstand me; you sound better than you’ve sounded in months, and I’m happy that Ruthie’s mom is clued in to the situation, but I don’t want you to make my skin crawl the way Shannon used to. I mean, she totally changed, and we lost her.”

  Jif was sincerely worried that my personality would be sucked out by this newfound faith. It was the very thing that I had worried about, too, and I wondered how to make sure that didn’t happen.

  “If I change, I think it will be for the better.”

  “Time will tell,” Jif said as she gulped down her Diet Coke and offered me a stick of Dentyne.

  Jif was looking better than ever—like a Victoria’s Secret model minus the full-sized breasts. After her exams, she shifted into high gear with her Tully Dorm Diet. For over a week she had been drinking ice water and lemon-lime Gatorade and eating only celery sticks and an occasional Slim-Fast bar. You never caught her without a piece of gum in her mouth in a constant attempt to suppress her appetite. She had even climbed up Kiki Mountain twice and attended two aerobics classes a day to burn-baby-burn those calories away. To Ned Crater’s dismay, she was turning the heads of many a frat boy as she strolled through campus during the last days of the semester in her snug size 2 blue jeans and midriff sweaters.

  But that was merely a fringe benefit of her pursuit. She was doing all of this for her deb dress. And she was going to make it into that tiny frock if it was the last thing she did. I just hoped that her obsession would end as soon as she marched her bony little fanny down the aisle at the ball.

  When I arrived home to a half-decorate
d Christmas tree and no one but Marmalade the cat to greet me, I wondered what was going on.

  Dizzy and Lou pulled up in the station wagon just after I hauled my suitcase to my room and informed me that my folks were at a Bizway convention (Mama must have caved) in St. Louis and would be home late that evening.

  I hugged them both as though I hadn’t really seen them in years, and I took them out to the new all-you-can-eat pizza joint, where we feasted on pepperoni pizza and slices of chocolate-chip pie as we caught up. Lou was sweet Lou, with a much better command of words that started with r and w, thanks to the new speech therapist at her school. And Dizzy seemed a thousand times better. She was still dressed like a witch, but she had stayed off the sauce and attended her AA meetings regularly, and she had even gone down to Harvest Time for a few services. She didn’t think college was for her, but she wanted to go to cooking school. In fact, she had been cooking up a storm on the nights she would have normally been out partying, and Lou attested to the fact that her fettuccine Alfredo and tiramisu were true culinary delights. (Only she described them as “really y-yummy.”) Dizzy had just applied to the Johnson & Wales Cooking College of Culinary Arts in Charleston, and if all went her way, she’d be enrolled come June.

  As for Mama and Daddy, they were in a bad spot. Daddy was buying Bizway supplies like there was no tomorrow, and a box of vitamins or toilet paper or cleaning products arrived at our door daily as part of his building up the necessary points to make the next level— his part in becoming a “pro-sumer” instead of a “con-sumer.”

  Every time Uncle Tinka invited him to a new town to speak about the business and tell his war story about getting the Purple Heart, or his football tales of scoring the winning touchdown against Clemson in the fall of 1967, he’d come home with a wad of cash and three or four names scribbled down on a receipt, and he’d hound those poor souls until they agreed to sign up under him or were forced to change their number.