The knock sounded again and Taffy went to answer it. “Sorry, Stan,” she said, opening the door. “I was waxing eloquent.”
He laughed. “You’re always waxing something. You ready?”
“Absolutely. There’s my bag. Why don’t you take it out for me, and I’ll be right there.”
He tipped his hat at Jana and Eleanor, then picked up the small piece of luggage. “You ladies stay out of trouble now.”
“With me gone, things are bound to run smoothly,” Taffy teased. “After all, I’m the one who usually stirs things up.”
Stanley nodded as he headed out the door. “I’m sure that’s true.”
Taffy took her coat from the closet. “I didn’t mean to preach, Jana. I hope you didn’t take it that way. I just get disheartened when people throw the baby out with the bathwater. A relationship goes sour in some area, so somehow that negates all the good things about that relationship. It doesn’t add up for me. I hope you’ll think about what I’ve said.” She looked at Eleanor and added, “You too.”
Surprised by her great-aunt’s comment to her mother, Jana walked with her to the door. “You know that’s a good way to stir up problems,” she said under her breath as she kissed Taffy on the cheek. She hoped her mother hadn’t heard.
Taffy only smiled and patted Jana’s arm. “You can’t be afraid of conflict and confrontation, Jana. That’s what’s happened with your mom.” She glanced over Jana’s shoulder to where Eleanor remained seated. “You two have a great time. I’ll be back Sunday after the church service.” She took up a large brown felt hat and, with a flamboyant air, positioned it jauntily to one side of her head. “I’m off!”
Jana closed the door, then rubbed the small of her back and stretched. She felt so tired these days. The baby was beginning to drop a bit and it wore Jana out. She crossed the room and plopped down in a chair in front of the fireplace. The gas fire put off a nice amount of heat, and Jana basked in the warmth.
“I’m going to start lunch,” her mother said, interrupting the silence. “How does potato soup sound?”
“Perfect. I like soups in the winter,” Jana admitted. “They fill you and warm you up at the same time.” Jana yawned and closed her eyes. She thought about going upstairs for a short nap but instead decided to doze in the chair. She realized as she faded off that a few short months ago she would have felt anxious—even nervous—about being left alone with Eleanor. But now, even though things weren’t perfect, they were peaceful. Jana relished that. She needed peace in her life. She needed to feel safe and content.
“Jana?”
She heard her name being called but couldn’t figure out where the sound was coming from. Struggling to wake up, Jana realized her mother was standing over her with a tray.
“Are you ready for lunch?”
“You just went in there to make the soup,” Jana said, yawning.
Eleanor handed her the tray. “That was well over an hour ago.”
“Really?” Jana tried to balance the tray while scooting up in the overstuffed chair. “I guess I fell asleep.”
“Looks that way.”
Her mother pulled out a wooden TV tray and positioned it in front of the chair. Jana put the smaller tray atop it and breathed deeply of the soup’s aroma. “Oh, this smells so good.”
“I’ve always liked this recipe,” Eleanor said, now setting up her own tray. “I thought it might be nice to sit right here and eat in front of the fire.”
“It’s perfect. I really like the way this house is set up. I like the fireplace and the size of the rooms. I love the high ceilings. It gives it such an open feeling.”
Eleanor nodded. “It’s so unlike the house we had in New York.”
Jana turned up her nose at the memory. “I think that place was at least two hundred years old.”
“Maybe older.”
Jana laughed and cautiously sampled the soup. “This is good. I’d like to learn how to make it.”
“It’s simple. I’ll show you next time.”
They sat in amiable silence, eating and contemplating the fire. From time to time one of them made a comment, but it seemed just as well that they enjoyed the quiet. Jana watched her mother from the corner of her eye. The woman was truly beautiful. Jana had never given it much thought, but her mother had aged gracefully. Her blond hair was dyed, so there was no sign of gray, and while there were some wrinkles in her face, they only served to give her character, not the suggestion that she was nearly fifty.
“Did you get the business put on the market?” Jana asked. She knew that after much contemplation, her mother had decided to get out of the bookstore business.
“I have the lawyer taking care of it. He’ll handle the sale of my house as well,” Eleanor replied. She pushed the tray aside and went to Jana. “Are you done?”
She nodded. “But you don’t have to wait on me. I can get it myself.”
“Nonsense. I’m already here.” Her mother picked up the tray and took it to the kitchen.
Jana wondered if she’d come back and talk some more. She wanted to broach the subject of her own father and wondered if her mother would be receptive. She supposed all she could do was ask. Then if her mother got upset, she could be gracious and back down.
Following her mother into the kitchen, Jana found Eleanor rinsing off the dishes. “Mom, I don’t want to ruin the peace between us, but I need to ask you something.”
“So ask.” Eleanor put the bowls in the dishwasher and turned to meet her daughter’s question.
“Will you ever be willing to talk to me about my father?”
Eleanor blew out a long breath. “I’ve never talked to anyone about your father. I’ve never spoken of him—named him—to anyone.”
“But why? Surely people knew him since you were married.” Eleanor looked away and twisted her hands together. The action sent a realization through Jana. “You weren’t married, were you?”
“No. I was never married, Jana.” She looked at her daughter hesitantly.
“Is that why you’ve never wanted to talk about it?”
“I didn’t want to talk about it because I was convinced that if I didn’t speak about the past, it couldn’t hurt me.”
“But the man has been dead for years,” Jana said, working hard to keep her voice even. “Surely he can’t hurt you now.”
Eleanor shook her head. “You just don’t know how this truly could hurt you—hurt others.”
“I suppose not,” Jana said, realizing she probably would never get the answer to her questions. She was ready to walk away when her mother continued.
“I know I told you a bit about the commune—about my life there. But I didn’t tell you everything. I never told you why I had to leave.”
“You said your mother died.”
“Sit down, Jana.” Her mother motioned her to one of the kitchen chairs. “My mother died because she shot up an overdose of heroin.”
“Oh,” Jana murmured. She didn’t know what else to say.
“I blamed myself for a long, long time. I truly believed that I was responsible for killing her.”
“But why? The society you lived in promoted that kind of thing—drug use and whatnot.”
“Yes,” Eleanor said, coming to the table to join Jana, “but something in particular happened that caused my mother to take that final hit. Something that she couldn’t live with.”
“What? What happened to make her do that?”
“She saw my father sexually abusing me.”
Twenty-nine
Eleanor’s life had taken her from the commune to a foster family whose values were as rigid in structure as her parents’ had been loose. She didn’t understand much of anything, nor did she care to. The officials who talked to her asked her over and over if she knew where her father was, while in turn she wondered about her brothers.
“Don’t you worry about those boys,” a social worker told her in a haughty, clipped tone. “We’ve got them in a safe place. Wha
t I need to know is what your father did to you.”
But Eleanor didn’t want to talk about her father. She was still in a state of confusion and grief. Her mother was dead and her father . . . well . . . he had been her best friend, and now that was gone.
For Eleanor the days were a blur of religiosity and condemnation. Her foster parents, two rather overweight, obnoxious people who had no children of their own, were convinced she was demon-possessed and prayed for her at all hours of the day and night. At one point they brought in a gathering of church people to pray over Eleanor. It was a bizarre ritual in which they made her drink a foul-smelling concoction, then pushed her from person to person until everyone had a chance to take hold of her and pray aloud.
Before the last person could even conclude his prayers, Eleanor became violently ill, vomiting all over the floor. The people gathered said it was a good sign that the demon had left her. It made no sense to her whatsoever.
Neither did her foster parents’ actions the following day. Eleanor was awakened at four in the morning and forced to take a cold shower. The woman who’d become her foster mother then gave Eleanor a sacklike dress to wear.
Eleanor allowed the woman to take hold of her and half drag her from the bathroom to the large front room, where she’d been the night before.
“Get on your knees,” the woman commanded.
Eleanor, weary from the lack of sleep and chilled from her freezing shower, did as she was told. What else could she do? The woman’s beefy hand was already pushing her to the ground.
“Now you stay there and pray. You need to fast and repent of your sins. How evil for a child to entice a father to sin. You are a wicked girl, Eleanor Templeton. A wicked girl. The devil has chosen you as his handmaiden, but we won’t allow for it here. We serve the Lord.”
Eleanor looked at the woman in wide-eyed fear. The woman’s shoulder-length curls seemed to bounce in emphasis as she spoke, and her double chin bobbed up and down. Eleanor might have laughed at the sight had the situation been different.
“Why aren’t you praying?” the woman questioned.
Eleanor looked around the room hesitantly. “I don’t know how.”
The woman gave a gasp and a scream. She ran from the room and it was only a few moments before she returned with her husband. The man pulled on a robe as he entered the room.
“What do you mean you don’t know how to pray? Were your people complete heathens?”
“I don’t know.”
The man glowered. “This is impossible. She’s still full of sin and deceit. We’ll have to pray over her again tonight. She probably has more than one demon.”
The woman nodded in an exasperated way. “The devil won’t let her pray.”
The last thing Eleanor wanted to endure was another round of vomiting and people touching her. She got to her feet. “I’m not going to let you do those horrible things to me again.”
The woman looked flabbergasted. “It’s the demon. He’s speaking through her.”
“I’ll call the preacher,” the man said.
Eleanor ran to the room they’d given her, not caring that she’d nearly knocked the woman over as she raced past her. She closed and locked the bedroom door, then immediately searched for her own clothes. Finding them rolled up in the trash can, Eleanor quickly pulled them on and went to the window. The lock easily slid back, and while the man and woman pounded on the bedroom door, demanding she allow them entry, fourteen-year-old Eleanor slipped out the window.
She didn’t know where she could run. She didn’t know what city she was in or the people. Still, she had to escape. These people were more frightening than just about anything she’d ever encountered.
She’d only managed to get about a mile away before a police cruiser pulled up alongside her. The officer got out of his car and called to her. “Are you Eleanor Templeton?” She froze in place. She looked at the man apprehensively and said nothing.
“Come on, get in the car, Eleanor. I need to take you back to your foster home.”
She found her tongue. “I won’t go. Those people are weird. They’re doing weird things to me.”
He frowned and exhaled a deep breath. “The only choices I have are to take you there or juvenile hall.”
Eleanor had no idea what juvenile hall was, but neither did she care. “I won’t go back to that place. I’ll just keep running.”
“Okay. Your choice. I’ll take you to juvie.”
Eleanor had no idea what awaited her at juvenile hall. She rode in the back of the police car in silence, wishing that she could have been the one to die instead of her mother. She kept thinking about how her parents had taught her that the world was a bad place—filled with bad, unhappy people. They may have lied about a lot of other things, she thought, but they didn’t lie about that. People out here weren’t happy at all.
The girls’ detention center was nothing more than a jail, Eleanor soon learned. The crazy part was, she felt safer here than at her foster home. A woman dressed in a brown uniform came to take charge of her. When her records came through and they realized who she was, Eleanor found them to be almost hostile in their regard.
“You need a physical,” the woman said, looking at the chart. “You were supposed to have had one yesterday.”
Eleanor had no idea what she was talking about. Why did she need a physical? Why did she need anything from these people? It was like the world had gone suddenly crazy.
“Since you’re sexually active, you’ll have to have a gynecological exam,” the woman said, writing on the chart as she examined the papers.
Eleanor wanted to protest that she wasn’t sexually active anymore, but she figured the woman wouldn’t care. So instead of saying anything, she sat and studied the tiles on the ceiling.
“Have you ever been pregnant?” the woman asked.
Eleanor looked up in disbelief. “No.”
“Is it possible you’re pregnant now?”
Eleanor shook her head. “I don’t know.”
The woman nodded and went back to the paper. “Did you have multiple sexual partners?”
“No,” Eleanor said in frustration.
Why all this focus on sex and pregnancies? Why didn’t someone tell her the things she needed to know, like where her brothers were and where her father was? She wondered about her mother’s body and whether there would be a funeral.
“So your father was your only sexual partner?”
Eleanor hated the reminder of what had passed between her and her father. “Yes.”
“How often did he rape you?” the woman asked flatly. She looked to Eleanor as if demanding an answer.
Eleanor didn’t know what to say. She knew what rape was. Sapphira had once told her about someone being raped. But that wasn’t what had happened between Eleanor and her father.
“Look, Eleanor, you won’t be in trouble. Just tell us what happened so that we can help you. Your father, as soon as he’s found, is going to jail for a long time, but we need this information to keep him there.”
“I don’t want him to go to jail,” she said in frustration. “He didn’t rape me. He loved me.”
“Grown men—fathers—do not show love in that way, Eleanor. You may have been taught that there was nothing wrong with what took place, but this was a hideous thing. You were a victim, and you need counseling and help or you’ll never be a productive human being.” She went back to her clipboard. “We’ll have to make sure you aren’t pregnant. If you are . . . well . . . there are ways to take care of it. We can’t openly talk about that kind of thing. . . . It’s not really legal . . . but there are ways.”
Eleanor had no idea what the woman was talking about. The rest of the day gave her no more understanding, however. It turned into one nightmarish situation after another. Without being given the chance to protest, Eleanor found herself whisked away to an examination room, where she was told to strip and prepare for her exam. The experience was more frightening and painful than anythi
ng she had ever had to endure. She wept silently as they continued what they called their “exam,” then without consoling her or offering her an explanation, told her to get dressed and be ready when the nurse came to draw her blood.
Eleanor felt violated and exploited, and she longed to fight them all, but she was far too defeated. Things only went from bad to worse as she was put into the company of other inmates. The girls there were not kind or understanding. They wanted to know what crimes Eleanor had committed to land herself in the detention center, and when she refused to tell them, they beat her up.
That night as she lay in her bunk, she wondered how life had ever gotten this crazy. She wanted to make it all go away—to wake up and realize it had all been a bad dream. But for two weeks, this was the only world she knew. Invasive . . . condemning . . . deadly.
On the day the guard came to take her to the office for release, Eleanor felt no excitement, no hope. They were no doubt sending her to another foster home; they’d already told her this would be the procedure. Eleanor tried to figure out a means of escape as she sat outside the administrator’s office. Maybe she should go along with their plan, then sneak out of the foster home in the middle of the night when no one would see her. That would give her a good head start, and this time she’d know better than to just walk along the street.
“Eleanor Templeton,” the secretary announced, “you’re to go inside now.”
Eleanor stood up and entered the office. There were three people staring at her—smiling. Even the administrator was smiling. It gave Eleanor the creeps.
“Have a seat, Eleanor. I have someone I want you to meet.”
She plopped down on the red leather wing-backed chair and said nothing. The woman sat to her right and the man sat on the opposite side of the woman. Eleanor knew they were watching her, but she refused to even look at them.
The administrator took his seat behind the desk and shuffled through a stack of papers. Clearing his throat, he picked up her file. “Eleanor, this is your aunt and uncle.”
She looked at the man oddly. “I didn’t know I had an aunt and uncle.”
What She Left for Me Page 24