Under Abduction

by Andrew Neiderman

  “That’s incredible. The first day I came here, I was worried I wouldn’t be able to recognize my own kid. All babies look alike to me.”

  “Oh, but they’re not alike. They’re different from the moment they’re conceived,” he told the man, and elaborated on why that was so. It was always the same speech. The excited father would listen and nod. Some were so impressed, they asked him if he was a doctor.

  “Hardly,” he would say, smiling. “I’m just a leech.”

  “Leech?”

  “I’m a blood technician. I fill the tubes and bring them down to the lab for analysis. Last week I had to do a baby, not much older than the ones you see here. I hate doing babies. I’d hate to think I was hurting a baby.”

  He actually had tears in his eyes when he said this. The new father was usually touched.

  “I know what you mean,” he would say. Or: “I can understand that. Got kids of your own?” the man might ask. Many often asked that question. They thought a man with such sensitivity had to have children of his own.

  “Not yet,” he said, smiling at the babies, “but soon. My wife’s pregnant.”

  “Oh, congratulations.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Hoping for a boy or a girl?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “I know. It shouldn’t. You should just hope the baby’s healthy, but I have to confess I was happy our first was a boy. Carry on the old name, understand?”

  “No,” he replied, but with a smile. “A baby is his or her own person.”

  “Right, right.”

  There was usually a deep silence then. He would look once more at the man’s child and then he would walk away, the crying of the babies like music in his ears.

  Sometimes, when he came down at night, he felt as if he were the father of each and every one of the babies. He would stand in the window and look at them all, a wide grin on his face. Often, the maternity nurse on duty would invite him to help with the feeding. They all said he was a man with a gentle touch, a man who understood what it meant to nurture an infant. Too bad, they said, that of all men, he was one whose wife had had her ovaries removed.

  Recently, following Mommy’s orders, he began to speak of their intent to adopt.

  “We have to prepare people for the eventuality,” she told him, “so they don’t wonder how we happened to have a baby.”

  It was one of the few times he actually initiated conversation with his fellow hospital employees, usually at lunchtime in the hospital cafeteria.

  “Congratulations,” they told him. Everyone acted as if adopting a baby were the same as having your own.

  “We’ve hired an attorney,” he told his coworkers. “It’s the best and the fastest way. People who’ve adopted children have had a lot of trouble these days because they didn’t have the right legal foundation. That’s not going to happen to us. When we get our baby, he or she will be our baby forever.”

  “They’re not babies forever,” Martha Atwood muttered between bites of her sandwich. She conducted EKGs but always looked as though she were on the verge of a heart attack herself. She was forty-one, yet she looked more like sixty with her prematurely gray hair and her deep crow’s-feet. When he told Mommy the things she said about her own children and what she looked like, Mommy said Martha Atwood’s bitterness was drying her up.

  “Martha’s right,” Tommy Patterson said. He was another lab technician, about twenty-seven, black, and gay.

  “How would you know about children?” Martha snapped. She didn’t hide her disdain for Tommy’s sexual preferences and lifestyle.

  “I got younger brothers and sisters. I got a sister just turned twelve.”

  “How many children did your mother have?” he asked, not hiding his envy.

  “Oh, it ain’t the same mother,” Tommy replied, “but the kids are a handful just the same.”

  “People shouldn’t have children if they don’t want them,” he said, “for both their benefits.”

  “Thought you didn’t believe in abortion,” Martha muttered.

  “I don’t. I mean they shouldn’t conceive.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t you also oppose any form of birth control?” Martha pursued.

  “No. I believe in abstention.”

  “Just say no,” Tommy added with a wide smile. “I do it all the time.”

  “I bet that’s the only reason you’ve never been pregnant,” Martha said dryly, and Tommy roared.

  He didn’t laugh. This was a topic that didn’t belong in the realm of humor. As Mommy said, the reason the country was in the moral decay it was in was simply because we weren’t taking our responsibilities seriously enough. Teenage pregnancy, the promiscuity of youth, the pornography permitted on television, all of it contributed to the increasing immoral climate.

  “You looking for an infant or are you combing foster homes?” Martha asked him.

  “We’re making arrangements with a young woman who is pregnant but not married.”

  “Now, that’s nice,” Tommy said. “It’s the way I would go about it. Someday I just might,” he threatened, knowing how Martha Atwood would react. Her eyes widened and her lips whitened.

  “Gay couples shouldn’t have the right to adopt,” she declared. “It’s enough young people see it out in the open.”

  “Now, Martha, don’t get Neanderthal on me,” Tommy said, and laughed. Martha muttered under her breath and then turned to him.

  “Good luck to you and your wife,” she said.

  He thanked her.

  From time to time Martha, Tommy, or others he had told asked him how it was going. He claimed the arrangements had been made. They were just waiting. All looked well. In the meantime he continued to go down to the maternity floor and look at the babies. When he returned home, he brought descriptions of the babies. At dinner he would tell Mommy about one in particular and she would ask him every day about that baby until the parents took him or her home. He would quickly substitute a new infant in his conversation so Mommy wouldn’t be depressed.

  However, now that their baby was being made in the basement, he didn’t feel as much of a need to bring home descriptions and stories about other infants. Instead he concentrated on how the nurses treated the infants. He asked questions about their rashes and their feeding. He brought home all the pamphlets the hospital provided to new parents.

  He also learned as much as he could about pregnancy itself. He went into the pharmacy and pilfered some of the medications Mommy wanted them to have in the house: tranquilizers, magnesium sulfate, and one of the betamimetics, in case there was premature labor.

  Whenever he could, he visited the pregnant women on the verge of giving birth. One woman even let him feel her contractions; another told him she wouldn’t mind if he attended the actual birthing. He was very excited about that, but when he showed up, the woman’s husband objected and he hurried away.

  Mommy told him not to worry about the birthing this time, but he couldn’t get the pregnant teenage girl’s screams out of his head some nights. Some nights, he thought he heard her pleading, crying, wailing through the floorboards again. Her stepfather, a transient hotel worker, had impregnated her. When Mommy had found out, they coaxed the girl away from the trailer home one night when no one was around. She trusted Mommy because she had met her at the doctor’s office.

  But the girl, her name was Denise, was barely thirteen and the birthing became complicated. Both she and the baby died. It was Mommy’s idea for them to take Denise and the dead infant to the old Hillside Cemetery near Mountaindale and bury them in one of the old graves. Who would think to look for dead bodies in a cemetery? Especially one that was no longer cared for and was overgrown. Some of the graves went back to the early 1800s. The cemetery was no longer utilized. Only the real old-timers even knew about it. Everyone else barely glanced at it when he or she rode by and never gave it a second thought.

  Mommy assured him things would be different with Anna Gold. She was h
ealthy and certainly old enough to give birth naturally and easily. And besides, she wasn’t really the one who was important: Their baby was who was important. After the baby was born, they would keep Anna around as a wet nurse for a few months, she told him.

  “And then?”

  “And then,” Mommy said, “it would be better if we put Anna in the old cemetery too—better for the baby, better for us, even better for Anna.”

  He agreed, of course. Mommy was usually right about most things. She would make a wonderful mother. He was actually doing what he advised most would-be fathers not to do: He was hoping for a girl. Mommy needed a girl. She had so much to teach a girl. There would be time enough for him to have his son. They had decided only just recently that they would have three children, as long as at least one was a boy.

  “They’ll learn to love and cherish each other and protect each other,” Mommy predicted. “It won’t be like your brother or my brother and sister.”

  Neither he nor Mommy had much to do with their families anymore. The alienation was mutually accepted. It was just painful on holidays.

  “Soon, though,” Mommy reminded him, “soon we’ll have little people for whom to buy presents and decorate a tree and hide eggs.”

  “And birthdays with candles on the cake.”

  “And toys, but sensible toys.”

  “And we’ll all go to church.”

  “And pray together and love one another.”

  “And be a family,” he said.

  “Yes,” Mommy said. “And be a family.”

  As he recalled this conversation today, he smiled at the babies through the window. He had come down to maternity during his lunch hour. One of the new fathers joined him. His face was full of pride, his eyes lit like birthday candles.

  “Hi,” the new father said, bursting with joy.

  “I bet I know which one is yours,” he said.

  And he did.

  14

  Anna had no way of telling time. The television set only played videos; there was no radio, nor were there windows to let her judge time of day from the sunlight. Her stomach was tied in too tight a knot to telegraph when she had hunger for breakfast or lunch or dinner. She was completely dependent on her captors to know when it was morning, so when her eyes snapped open, she lay there wondering if she had slept through the night or merely a few minutes. It added to the disorientation and anxiety.

  She sat up and took some deep breaths. Then she told herself again that she had to get control. She had to find a way to escape. She listened. There was that muffled grinding sound, but otherwise the house was cemetery-quiet. She slipped off the bed and held the chain in her hands so it wouldn’t slide over the floor. She didn’t want them knowing she was moving about the room yet. That might bring them down.

  After she unscrewed the faucet handle, she returned to the hook in the wall and pried at it, again using the handle like a crowbar. She got the hook to make a full turn and then half of another turn before she decided she had better put the handle back and return to bed. They could bust in on her at any moment. Sure enough, only minutes later she heard the key in the door lock. Fortunately, she was in bed. There was no telling what these crazy people would do if they realized she was trying to escape.

  The woman entered carrying a breakfast tray. She was still in her own nightgown, her hair looking unkempt, her face pale. She walked with her shoulders and back straight, her lips pressed so tightly they wrinkled and had a thin white line at the corners of her mouth. She had the demeanor of someone who had been in the military, perhaps a military nurse, Anna thought. Maybe, if she got into some sort of conversation with this woman, an opportunity would present itself.

  “You have two soft-boiled eggs, wheat toast, orange juice, and coffee with low-fat milk,” she recited. “Your vitamin is on the tray.”

  She put the tray on the night table and stepped back, her hands on her hips.

  “It’s chilly. Is it raining or anything?”

  “I put the heat up a little more,” she said. “Yes, it’s a nasty day. You’re lucky you’re inside.”

  “What time is it?” Anna asked.

  “You don’t have to know what time it is,” she replied. “I’ll wake you every morning. I’ll bring you your lunch when it’s time for your lunch and your dinner when it’s time for that.”

  “Why are you doing this? You can’t keep me here all these months,” Anna said softly. “People will be searching for me. I promise you, I’m not getting an abortion. I’m going to be married. I won’t tell anyone what you did. It’s only been a day.”

  The woman stared at her for a moment as if Anna had presented a viable solution. Then her face returned to its hard look.

  “Your eggs and your coffee will get cold. Start eating,” she ordered.

  “I have no appetite. I feel sick to my stomach.”

  “That’s normal during the first trimester of pregnancy. Don’t worry about it. I know exactly what you are going through and will go through, and I know exactly how to care for you.”

  “How do you know what to do? Who are you? Did you work in a hospital, a clinic?”

  “That’s not important. What’s important is that I will be a real mother to the baby after the baby is born. You should be grateful.”

  “Grateful!” Anna felt the fury rise in her again and her cheeks redden. A thought was born. If she could turn them against each other…“Do you know what your husband did to me last night?”

  “Whatever he did, he had to do. He’s a good man.”

  Anna laughed.

  “A good man? A rapist?”

  She took a step forward and slapped Anna sharply across her left cheekbone. The blow was so hard, it sent pain down the side of her neck and into her shoulder. Anna cried out and raised her arms to protect herself against another whack.

  “You’re a whore. You have no right to cast any stones,” the woman said. Her pale face had turned a light scarlet and her eyes gleamed with exquisite anger. “You don’t even know who the father of that baby inside you is.”

  “Yes I do,” Anna said through her tears. “And he is a man of power and importance. When he finds out what you’ve done, he’ll hunt you down and see that you’re both punished.”

  She smiled and shook her head.

  “Idle threats fall on dumb ears. I’ll be back in a half hour. If you haven’t eaten, I’ll tell Daddy to bring back the IV. We’ll strap you down and feed you that way for the remaining months. You’ll be confined to a bedpan. Do you understand?”

  Anna glared back at her. The woman smiled and walked out, locking the door.

  She never forgets to do that, Anna thought sadly. She sighed and looked at the tray of food. She needed the juice. Her throat was scratchy, dry. Ironically, the madwoman was right, she thought. She had to eat to maintain enough strength to effect an escape. Her stomach bubbled and twice she thought she would heave, but she managed to get down most of the egg and toast. The coffee was weak and already cool.

  After she ate, she went to the bathroom, but she didn’t return to the bed. Instead, she walked around the room slowly, inspecting it, looking for some weakness. Something did catch her eye on the far right side. She knelt down and ran her fingers over the scratches. On closer inspection, she realized someone had gouged her name in the wall: Denise. Under it were numbers. She studied them, trying to understand what they meant. Date? Time? They had been strung more like serial numbers, more like…someone’s social security number! she realized. Whoever it was wanted to be certain that whoever found this would be able to identify her.

  Anna continued to search the cement until she found more numbers, these looking like dates. If she read them correctly, whoever had scratched them into the wall had done so a little over a year ago.

  Could it be that some other poor woman had been imprisoned here? The very thought was terrifying because it would mean that these mad people had done this before and done it without being caught. Then, what happe
ned to the prisoner? Was she a pregnant woman too? Was there a baby? Where’s the baby?

  That strange, monotonous grinding noise was louder on this side of her cell. She pressed her ear to the wall and listened. It was like a machine that needed lubrication, but there was also the sound of water rushing over rocks.

  The key in the door lock triggered her instinctive move to rise to her feet.

  The woman was dressed now, her hair brushed back. She wore light lipstick but no eye makeup. In her left hand she clutched a thick, dark brown leather book with a cloth bookmark dangling from between some pages.

  “Good,” she said looking at the tray. “You ate well. The more cooperative you are, the better things will be for you.”

  “You’ve done this to someone else, haven’t you?” Anna accused.

  The woman stood there, blinking rapidly for a moment. Then she regained her stern composure.

  “You should be concerned only with yourself, and you should judge not that ye be not judged. That’s from the Bible, which I have brought you. I want you to read it and consider your soul and what you have done to stain it.”

  “You talk about evil? Look what you’re doing,” Anna said holding her arms out.

  “We’re doing good works for which we shall be rewarded.”

  She put the Bible on the bed and took the tray.

  “I have the section marked that I want you to read. If you don’t understand it or you have any questions, you can ask me about it later,” she said, “when I bring you lunch.” She smiled. “Eventually, you will understand and forgive us, just as we have forgiven you.”

  “I’ll never forgive you,” Anna said through her clenched teeth.

  “I don’t like threats,” the woman said from the doorway. “And I don’t like you festering in a pool of hate. The venom will trickle into the baby and poison her or him. If you don’t become pleasant soon, I’ll…” She smiled. “See to it that you are.”

  The veiled threat put a chill into Anna, who quickly embraced herself.

  “Read those pages and especially the lines I have marked,” the woman said, and left.