by Lisa De Jong
He pulls another handkerchief out of the end table drawer and gives his nose a good honk.
“Caroline, listen to me.” He turns my head to face him and makes sure I’m looking in his eyes before he continues. “Even though you’ve only been in my life a short time, we’ve covered more ground in one day than I ever have with any of my family, besides Eileen, of course. And it’s that way every time we’re together—was right from the start.” He grins at me. “You feel more like family than any of my grandchildren or even my own children ever did, and that’s worth more to me than I can even tell you.”
He leans his forehead over on mine for a second and I sniffle.
“Now,” he says in his gruff voice that I know isn’t really gruff, “here’s what we’re gonna do. I want you to move into this house…the sooner, the better. I’m not gonna take any more arguments about it. You don’t need to raise a baby in a tiny motel room, I won’t stand for it. And I might be old, but maybe now I can finally learn how to be a proper grandfather.” He chuckles and gives me a wink. “Or Papa—do I look like a Papa?”
I wrap my arms around him and squeeze him until he squeaks out a cough. “Oh, sorry!” I half-laugh and half-hiccup. “Yes, you do look like a Papa. And I like you far better than my own,” I admit.
He pats my leg before getting up and walking to his desk across the room.
“Well, we can just keep that to ourselves, in case I ever run into him,” he says. “Although, I do have some things I’d like to say to all of your family!”
He shakes his head sadly. He rolls back the top of his desk and pulls out a little key to unlock one of the compartments. I see his mouth shift when he finds what he’s looking for. He brings it back to me, opening my hand to give me a key.
“This is a key to the house. It’s yours now.”
I stutter and don’t know whether to laugh or start crying again.
“Thank you, Dr. H.” I hug his neck. “It’ll take a little while before I get used to calling you Papa, but know that’s what you already are to me.”
He smiles so big, his cheeks nearly reach his eyebrows. “You can call me whatever you want to, child. Now, how about you get going to that room of yours tonight, rest, get packed up and tomorrow after your appointment with Dr. Mansfield, we’ll bring your things back here to stay.”
I nod, too overwhelmed to do anything else.
He gives my hand another pat. “I’ve been wishing you’d say yes for a long time. It’s gonna be real good to have laughter in this house again, Caroline, real good.”
****
The next morning, Dr. H calls with the time for my appointment and fifteen minutes before we’re supposed to arrive, he pulls up in his pickup truck to take me to the doctor. I barely have anything to put in the back. A suitcase and a couple bags of food are pretty much all I own.
It’s handy to not have to crouch down to get in a car. I can just lean sideways and sort of fall right into the truck. I feel like I’ve grown overnight, so any little bit of help is appreciated. Spring has already jumped on ahead to summer, even though it’s not technically due for another couple of months. Apparently you can’t tell that to Kentucky, just like you can’t in Tennessee. Sweat rolls down my back and my dress sticks to my skin. My hair is pulled up in a high ponytail. If my mama could see me now. She’d be throwing out a comment about me looking like something the cat dragged in. I’m too pregnant to care.
“Let me get this air working for ya, Caroline girl. You look downright miserable.”
“I don’t know what I’d do if I were short. A lady came in the diner last week and she was a petite little thing and her pregnant belly looked like it went right up to her neck, like she was choking with baby.”
I shudder just thinking about it. I don’t think I’ve ever been so grateful to be tall as I was when I saw her trying to catch a breath.
Dr. H lets out a laugh so loud the windows of the truck give a tiny rattle. “You do say the funniest things, child.”
I grin at him lovingly. In such a short amount of time, he has become the happiest part of my day. When he calls me child, my gut aches for Ruby, I miss her every single day. I don’t know how I would have survived without Dr. H. When I’m away from him, all I can do is pine for Isaiah. I’m still angry with him and so heartbroken, but I miss him so much, it hurts. Every night, I go through a grieving process that I know needs to end soon. I can’t keep mourning the loss of Isaiah or I will be no good to this baby.
I sure wish Isaiah could meet Dr. H, though. He’d love him too. Thinking of Isaiah sobers me up quick. I look out the window and wish for the day that Isaiah isn’t always the one my thoughts lead to…
The first thing Dr. H says to Dr. Mansfield when we get inside the small office is: “I’d like you to meet my granddaughter, Caroline. She’s had a hard way to go—husband di—” he keeps talking, but it’s all mumbled and then comes back strong with, “—carrying this baby by herself. She’s a young little thing, but tough as my Aunt Euler. I want you to take good care of her, Joseph, ya hear me?”
Dr. Mansfield nods his head gravely and looks at me with sympathy. I blush from head to toe. When Dr. H leaves the room and throws a wink over his shoulder, I get a mad case of the giggles. I try to get a serious face back, to at least match Dr. Mansfield’s sorrowful expression.
After answering a million questions, Dr. Mansfield does an examination and takes measurements. It’s appalling enough to convince me to never have another baby ever again. He pulls his hand out of me and I look everywhere in the room but at him. He clears his throat.
“Everything feels good. You have the perfect birth canal for having a baby.”
I confess to tuning out to whatever he said after perfect birth canal, but my ears perk up at this:
“Given that you don’t know the date of your last cycle, I can’t give an exact due date, but I’d say you’re measuring about right for late May to early June.”
I want to ask if he can tell me when that would mean I conceived, but I don’t have the nerve. His answer doesn’t tell me anything. I still don’t know. But I’m not as upset as I thought I would be.
Brenda would say it’s a blessing because she knows my mind has been all-consumed by knowing who the daddy is. But today, it’s enough to know that my baby is okay. I have a place to call home now. And as odd as it may be, I can be happy that even though it’s small, I even have some semblance of a family.
Chapter 22
New Routines
Once again I have another new routine that I’ve fallen into, except this is one I love. Dr. H—my beloved papa—and I get up every morning, have a cup of coffee together, and then he drives me over to Shelby’s. He stays there for a little while, chats with some of his friends, and then comes back to pick me up in the afternoon. In the evenings, Brenda will come visit and we listen, enraptured, to Dr. H’s stories about the love of his life and their romance.
Not long after I move in, Dr. H comes and finds me outside, working in his garden. I can’t really get to anything too low or I’ll never get back up again, but everything higher is properly deadheaded and pruned. He comes along behind me and does what I can’t reach.
“Come here, love, I want to show you somethin’,” he says, standing at the end of the roses.
I wipe my head and pull off the gardening gloves. He holds out his arm and I hook mine through it. We walk past the gardens, past the grapes that have kept the plantation going for years, and around the curve of an outbuilding. Taking my hand, he helps me inside the barn and leads me to a spot in the floor that looks like any other. He bends down with a grunt and lifts the slabs of wood one at a time. Underneath the wood, I see steps leading down into a dark room.
“Now when you’ve had this baby and are feeling spry again, I’ll bring you back here. But I wanted you to know about this place, Caroline. And you’ll see why, even though I jest about not settin’ foot in a church and all, you’ll know I believe God brought you to me f
or a reason.”
He has my curiosity fully wrapped by now. I look at him, waiting to hear everything.
“Right down there is a tunnel. It leads all the way back to the other side of town and comes out at the railroad. Imagine the worst horrors you’ve seen of people being mistreated, and that’s what my daddy saw when he was a young man. He helped many, many people get to freedom through this tunnel, and as a boy, I helped him. Not so many years ago, I’m sad to say there was still a need for it. I’ll never understand why people see color as a dividin’ line.” His eyes look pained as he says this. “Now, I show this to you because I want you to know the history that’s here. The fact that you’re bringing your baby into this home is not small or irrelevant to me. I like to think it’s a way of the heavens thankin’ my family for what we did and blessin’ us with a new life to carry on here.” He wipes his face with his handkerchief and shakes his head, moved at the thought. “No small matter, a’tall.”
I wipe the tears from my eyes, something I’ve had to do non-stop since being pregnant, it seems, but this is finally something worthy of a river of tears. I stand there taking in all that he’s just told me.
“I’m honored to know you, Papa,” I tell him.
“No, we only did what every decent person should have done. I’m glad we were able to find a way.” He puts his arm around my shoulders and squeezes. “I’m not naive about what might happen though, when people see that baby of yours…which is the other reason I showed you this, Caroline. You need to know how to get out quickly if it were to ever come to that.”
He looks at me gravely and I swallow a hard lump. I know he’s right, but hearing it out loud makes it all the more real. He lowers his head, closes his eyes and we’re silent. I’m imagining all the people who have come through here, scared, possibly leaving everything they’ve ever known to find safety and acceptance.
I rub my stomach, thinking I will always do all I can to protect this child from knowing that pain, but wondering what challenges will face us. It feels like we’ve got an uphill battle before we’ve ever even begun.
****
The end of May will mark another birthday coming and going. Sixteen. Hard to believe. I feel like an old woman already. Lugging this massive stomach around makes me feel about thirty. They throw a shower/birthday party for me at Shelby’s a couple weeks before my birthday. As I blow out the birthday candles, I feel a mixture of melancholy and genuine happiness. I’ve eased into a new life that has been, in some ways, far more wonderful than anything I’ve known. I still cry when I get in bed, remembering my last birthday with Isaiah, but I can’t even be angry with myself for still caring. I’m accepting it’s just the way it is and the way it will probably always be. It’s just proof that my heart is unwavering. I wish he’d deserved it, but I can’t help that.
I wake up about three in the morning after my party cry, feeling very uncomfortable. I sit up and ease my feet over the bed, trying to get up. I stand up and double over. Something has changed with the baby. Everything feels lower, a lot lower. I shuffle to the bathroom, still doubled over, and before I open the door, my abdomen hardens. It hurts. I make it to the restroom and contemplate getting in the tub and washing my hair, just in case this is it. I stand there long enough to feel another pain and decide to just go lie back down.
It eases when I get settled on my side, but I still don’t feel quite right. I watch the sun rise through the lace curtains in the room I’m staying in. I can’t say it’s my room just yet, but I do know it’s the prettiest room in the house. I study every beautiful line on the furniture, the pretty arched door frame, and out the window at the magnolia tree that’s in my line of vision. Anything to distract me from what might be happening in my body.
Around eight o’clock, Papa knocks gently on the door. “Caroline girl, you okay?”
I’m normally up by seven with him.
“Come in, Papa. I’m not feeling too good.”
His forehead is etched with deep grooves of worry when he walks through my bedroom door. He comes over and puts his hand to my head, checking to see if I have a fever.
“You feel a mite warm. What’s been happenin’?”
“It feels like she’s dropped and is just sittin’ right on my bladder. I’ve been having pains, too, but they’re a little better right now. Earlier the pains were coming every three minutes, but in the last thirty minutes, they’ve stopped.”
He nods his head. “I wish you’d called me, dear. I thought I was letting you sleep in.” He gives me a sweet grin. “We’ll just keep an eye on this. It’s possible you’re in the early stages. I can call Shelby for you, tell her you won’t be in…I think you probably need to be done with workin’, Caroline. Shelby will understand. She knows you’re close now.”
I nod. I haven’t wanted to stop until the very last possible minute, but the thought of being on my feet with the baby hanging past my drawers sounds awful.
“Tell her I’ll call her later this afternoon to give her an update, but I think you’re right, I’m gonna have to slow down, if nothing else.”
He scoffs and I can hear him muttering about me ‘slowing down’ as his feet patter out the door.
“I’ll make you something to eat!” he hollers when he reaches the end of the hall.
“Thank you!” I holler back.
That whole day I stay in bed. Every time I attempt getting up, it feels like the baby is just gonna slip right out. Shelby ends up calling me in the afternoon, beating me to the punch.
“Now you listen here, Caroline, you stay home from here on. You hear me? We’ve known it could be any time and we’re gonna be all right. You just take care of you and that baby, okay?”
I thank her and take a nap. Now that I’m horizontal, I realize how worn out I’ve been.
The next morning I feel a little better and am able to get up and do a few things around the house. I mostly sit, though, and work on sewing baby pajama sacks. I resist making any in pink, even though I know this baby is a girl like I know my name is Caroline. Sewing makes me miss Nellie and sometime during the course of the day, I decide to write her a letter to let her know how I’m doing.
Dear Nellie and Grandpaw,
I’m okay. I’ve found a nice place to settle down and it’s starting to feel more like home each day. I’ve made new friends, so I’m not as lonesome for Tulma as I thought I might be. I do think about you often and hope that all is well with you. Please don’t tell anyone that I wrote. I’d just as soon everyone there forget about me, so we can all move on, but I did want to let you know that I’m doing just fine. Know that you are always in my heart.
With loving thoughts,
Caroline
I didn’t expect it, but I feel better when I write the note…like I’ve just been released of a lifetime of expectation. I love my grandparents, but there’s never been any doubt that I see the world so differently than they do. They will never accept the baby I’m carrying, no matter the circumstances in which it might have come into this world. In fact, it’s just another strike against it, if it is—well, I can’t even think about that right now. I’d rather remember my grandparents with fondness than hate them for the injustice I know deep down would occur if they were around my baby. I could never do that to any child of mine. It’s best that I got out of there when I did.
****
The rest of the week is a seesaw of stops and starts. I feel awful. I feel okay. I hurt. I’m fine. I think I’m in labor. I’m ready to clean the entire house. We get to the actual week of my birthday and I’m tired of crashing hard on the pendulum. I go for a long walk, determined to go ahead and get this baby out. No more pussyfootin’ around. Maybe we’ll end up sharing a birthday.
I walk and walk and in the last ten minutes of the walk, the pain intensifies about a hundred notches. When it eases up somewhat, I walk faster, realizing this wasn’t the smartest idea I’ve ever had. As Nellie would say, my brain is rattlin’ around like a BB in a boxcar. To make m
atters worse, I don’t see Papa’s truck out in the yard. I think he had a meeting in town and start a prayerful intercession that he will come home soon.
As I set foot into the kitchen, I have to lean onto the counter for several minutes. A pain comes sharp and fast. I grip the edges of the sink and slowly breathe in and out. Just then a little trickle runs down my leg and I panic, thinking it’s going to be a gush. As soon as my pregnancy started showing, the horror stories began, particularly at the diner. I’ve heard more than I ever needed to know, and have been terrified since, that my water would break in some sort of horrifying and embarrassing situation. I’m shocked that this tiny trickle is all there is.
The pains feel like they’re coming quickly, but I think they’re still five minutes apart. I’ve always thought I could tolerate pain pretty well, but holy cripe, this hurts. Sweat is pouring out of me. I make it to the bathroom and run the shower, determined that I’ll go in the hospital clean. It takes all the willpower I possess to be in the water for a minute. I’m in just long enough to rinse off the sweat, and when I get out, I bite down on a towel during the contraction. I put on one of the few dresses that still fits, grab my overnight bag, and sit by the door, waiting for Papa to get home. The contractions get closer together. The only sound in the house is my ragged breathing. I swipe the tears off my cheeks and when I think I can’t take anymore, I pick up the phone and dial.
Thankfully, she’s the one who answers. When she hears it’s me, she cries out and says, “Darlin’, as I live and breathe, I was just thinkin’ ‘bout you!”
“Can you come? Can you please come?” I gasp out. I tell her where I am and as soon as it seems she has it straight, I hang up.
It might be hours or it might be seconds. It feels like an eternity.
Surely I am dying.
The pain, good God and Lucifer, it hurts so bad.
How could this happen to me?
I hate everyone I have ever known.
I want to be shot.
Now. Just take me now, Lord. What did I ever do to you? I really want to know.