The Liberation of Ravenna Morton

by Suzanne Jenkins

  “Oh goodness, woman. Look at your bosom,” she said.

  Reality struck because then she glanced down at Ravenna’s midsection, still smiling, not daring to believe what her initial thought was. Ravenna was standing on the wooden floor, dripping. Peggy ripped the towel from her daughter’s grip. Hoping that starving herself would aid in the disguise, she was rail thin, but under her breasts with nipples dark brown and as big around as plums, Peggy saw the belly the size of a perfectly round basketball. She didn’t say a thing, but plunked down on the edge of her bed, handing the towel back to Ravenna.

  “I’m sorry, Mama,” Ravenna said.

  Peggy knew that the only man her daughter came into contact with was Michael. He was someone she’d trusted, who she’d taken into her home, exposed her children to, treated as if he was one of the family. Her first inclination was to take him by the throat when she saw him the following Friday and kill him with her bare hands. Then she decided she never wanted to see him again. She would confront George Patos; let him deal with the bastard. The double entendre hit her, but she didn’t laugh. He needed to offer a solution because his nephew caused the problem. Someone was going to have to pay.

  “Get dressed,” Peggy said. She left the room and went to the kitchen table to write George Patos a note in perfect English penmanship.

  Please come to the longhouse as soon as possible. She signed it Mrs. Peggy Morton. She went out to the front of the house and walked down the path, through the dense trees and brush to Riverside Trail. She cupped her hands to her mouth to yell up to the field where her son was.

  “John,” she called. “John, come here.” Within minutes, she saw him slipping down the hillside toward the road.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Get your bike and take this note to Daddy’s work,” she replied. “Give it to Mr. Patos, Mike’s uncle.”

  John looked at her, concerned. “You okay, Mama?” he asked gently.

  “Just go. We’ll talk later.” She patted him on the shoulder and turned to walk back to the house.

  George Patos read the note. John could see his eyes move across the paper, his lips moving, the color draining from his face. He looked up as he slipped the paper into his pocket and told John to put his bike in the back of his pickup.

  “What’s going on? Is there a problem at the cabin?” he asked.

  John shrugged his shoulders. “I have no idea. She told me to fetch you, so that’s what I did.” He was silent on the trip.

  When they pulled up to the path leading to the cottage, Peggy was waiting. John’s heart started beating a little harder. He’d never seen his mother with the look she had on her face. He’d seen her angry, devastated, exasperated and happy. Now, she was just furious. Getting out of the truck, when close enough, John saw that Ravenna was standing behind Peggy, cowering. He looked at her with his eyebrows down, but she wasn’t making eye contact.

  “Go around back,” Peggy said to John. “Please keep an eye on the others.” He nodded and walked down the path toward the cabin. Peggy pointed up the hill. “Follow me to the field,” she said to George.

  The snowpack was melting, and the trip up the hill was slippery, but she was determined, stamping her feet, holding on to branches that snapped back, pulling Ravenna along close behind her.

  When they got to the clearing in the field, George finally spoke. He knew it had to be bad for her to venture this far from the cabin without her children. “Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out,” he said innocently.

  She wanted to smack his face, but held back. Pulling Ravenna forward so that she was about a foot from him, Peggy pulled up the skirt of her dress, surprising Ravenna, who yelled out “Mama!” The elastic of her underpants was under her belly.

  “Look! This is your nephew’s doing,” she said, pointing to Ravenna’s belly. “She’s only thirteen.”

  Sick to her stomach in front of George, Ravenna made eye contact and saw his lips twitching, fists clenching and unclenching. She was petrified.

  Then Peggy started to cry. She’d stayed tough when her family left her and moved west, when Robert died, but her daughter being pregnant had the power to move her to tears. Ravenna felt so horrible; she’d disappointed her mother, and was responsible for making her sad.

  George Patos couldn’t take his eyes off Ravenna’s belly. He absentmindedly reached up and grasped Peggy’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he said. “But I’m sure we can figure this out.”

  Peggy pulled away from his grasp. “What’s to work out? She has to miss school now,” Peggy said loudly. “She’s going to suffer while he walks free.”

  “Can I speak to you alone?” George asked Peggy.

  First shooting a wrath-filled glance at George, Ravenna looked at her mother pleadingly, and Peggy pointed toward the path, not speaking. Ravenna was grateful for the escape and hurried away. As soon as she was gone, Peggy started to cry.

  “Oh God, what am I going to do? I can barely feed the nine I have. I could almost see freedom from the work. I wanted something more for my daughter. Now this.”

  He patted her head, shushing her. Increasing her financial support would have raised his wife’s suspicions, taking their relationship to a different place, and he didn’t want that responsibility. His wife, Andrea, did the account books for the sawmill and would figure it out. He knew he was being a coward, that he was using Peggy, the same character flaw that allowed him to cheat on his wife in the first place.

  George said, “You’re getting upset without weighing all the options.”

  “What options are you talking about? We have no options,” Peggy said. “Your nephew needs to take responsibility.”

  George scratched his chin. “His parents are going to have a fit, too.” He almost caught himself; they’d have a fit that it was an Indian baby.

  Peggy didn’t care what Mike’s parents did, and she never wanted to see him again if they could help it. But if he was going to pay, he’d have to be told. His parents would have to take responsibility until he finished school.

  “I don’t care what they do, as long as they pay for their son’s mistake,” she said. Peggy turned from him to go back to the house, but George had other ideas and pulled her into a copse of trees so they could embrace unseen.

  Chapter 7

  Regina Morton was the last child to leave her mother’s cabin the night they learned of Maria’s death. The others had jobs to get to the next day; Regina worked from home, representing her mother and two other Native basket makers. This was a busy time of year with the holidays approaching. It meant shipping baskets around the country and doing art shows nationwide every weekend until two weeks before Christmas. Relieved for the diversion her job provided and especially grateful April had taken over the duties of contacting Maria, Regina felt a distinct emptiness hearing the news. She was Ravenna’s second child, born twenty years after Maria.

  When Regina was fourteen, she became her mother’s confidante, receiving the brunt of Ravenna and Mike’s unconventional relationship. The townspeople knew the truth: they were lovers who’d had a child together as young teenagers and had reunited years later. Locals gossiped that Ravenna set out to have as many children as she could to fill the void giving Maria up had made.

  Ravenna gave birth to Maria on a Wednesday night. Peggy wrapped her and handed her to Nadie to hold while Ravenna cleaned up the birth mess. At midnight, George Patos arrived, unannounced, with a friend of his she later found out was from the Department of Social Services, and Peggy gave them the baby. They never spoke of it again. Peggy never knew if Mike or his parents knew about the baby. Ravenna went to school the following Monday as though nothing had happened, but she was suffering. Peggy was silent and guilty around Ravenna, straining their relationship further.

  “I spoke of the baby once to my mother, on her first birthday,” Ravenna confessed to Regina. “‘I wonder if they’re having a party for her,’ I said. She rushed across the room and slapped my face
so hard I fell to the floor. It was not the first time she’d struck me. My brother John helped me up. He was probably the only one in the house who knew about the baby. The others were too young.

  “After that, I felt like I could go to him. Poor brother John. Men don’t like the confessional. He preferred to go on believing the lie, that our mother was the victim with no choice but to force me to give away my baby.

  “When you were born, I felt it was a reprieve from God. You were so wonderful; you filled my life with love,” Ravenna said, grasping Regina’s hand in hers. “But when the work involved with caring for a newborn began to slow down, I started thinking of Maria again.”

  “Where was Daddy when I was a baby?” Regina asked. “Why didn’t he move in here with you? With us?”

  “I didn’t want him here,” Ravenna said bluntly. “I’d been alone since my mother died. He was married for a while, don’t forget that. I wasn’t going to get in the middle of the aftermath of his divorce. I like the way it worked out.” She got up to make tea.

  Regina sat at the table with folded hands, thinking about life on the river. Mike loved her and her siblings; it was an assumption they were able to make because he was kind and demonstrative, and they never lacked for anything. But he didn’t live with them, and that made life harder for the children.

  The family was a source of gossip in the village, but also of myth. Mike’s ex-wife moved back to Chicago after their divorce, leaving behind some juicy tidbits about him, lies mixed in with the truth. There was also a lie about the way her grandfather, Ravenna’s father Robert, died. Legend said it wasn’t in a sawmill accident, but that he was lynched by a mob of haters who travelled from the east side of the state, looking for minorities who were vulnerable. If it was true, Regina thought how fortunate it was they didn’t discover the family living by the river. The truth was boring; he’d sustained a head injury when a hoist broke loose. But the myth was perpetuated and added to the mystique the children dealt with about their lifestyle.

  ***

  Regina left Ravenna’s cabin the night after the family heard about Maria’s death, hiking on the path to what was now called Riverside Road. It was dark, no streetlight penetrated this area, and she hurried along, looking over her shoulder as the wind whistled through the trees and their shadows danced across the dirt road.

  “Hoot!” The sound surprised her, and then Walter walked toward her out of the dark.

  “What the hell, Wally! You scared the shit out of me,” Regina said.

  Walter lived down the road from his mother in a much different sort of house; this one also of logs, but of glass too, on a hill not far from where his grandmother’s family once farmed corn and beans. His view of the river was spectacular. He had a media room, where he could be found watching sports most nights while his wife was in Chicago, staying with her parents during the week while she worked.

  But tonight he was restless. He’d left his mother’s cabin soon after the exodus began, rarely lingering when the family was together because it was too nerve-racking with everyone talking at once. There was nothing for him to do at home but eat or watch TV, so he was walking back to his mother’s just as Regina was leaving.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I guess I must feel bad about what’s going on, more for the old folks than myself. I never gave Maria much thought, to be honest.”

  “I was just glad I wasn’t the chosen one. It took a lot of courage for April to make the contact and then to have the door shut in her face, well, that sucks,” Regina said. “She’s really upset.”

  “What are you going to do now?” Walter asked.

  “Gloria had a school meeting tonight, so going home to an empty house, just like you,” she said. “Want to go to The Lake for a drink?”

  Walter brightened up at the suggestion. “Yeah, you driving?”

  Regina nodded her head. They got into her car and she headed north toward Douglas. As they crossed the highway, a familiar car flew by.

  “Wasn’t that April?” Regina asked.

  Walter strained to turn in his seat. “Maybe,” he answered. “I wonder what’s going on.”

  “Do you want me to turn around?” Regina asked.

  “Hell no. Keep driving,” he said, shaking his head. “We’ll learn whatever it is that made her come back soon enough.”

  She pulled into the bar parking lot next to the only other car there. “I love midweek off-season.”

  They walked in and sat on barstools.

  “Absolut, straight up,” Walter said to the bartender.

  Regina grimaced. “Hi, Dean,” Regina said. “I’ll have the usual.”

  The bartender popped the tab on a Coors Light and put it in front of her. He turned to the TV to watch the first football game in the play-offs. They nursed their drinks, both thinking of the same thing but from different angles.

  “What do you make of this whole Maria issue?” Regina asked, wanting a door opened for her to broach a negative that was the pink elephant in their lives.

  “I don’t think about it much,” Walter admitted. “It’s sad because it’s making Ravenna sad. Mike, too. I’m glad I don’t know all the gory details.”

  Regina looked at him intently. “I know them,” she said softly. “At least some of them. I know Mama was bullied something awful in school. She said her teacher would sit by while the bullies would pull her hair and spit at her, calling her ‘dirty Indian’ and worse. She was the oldest child in their family, so she paved the way for the others. Uncle John said it wasn’t as bad for him. By the time Aunt Nadie was in school, it wasn’t a big deal to be ethnic because the Mexicans were starting to immigrate to work on the fruit farms, staying through the winter instead of coming up seasonally. We were just another brown-skinned people then.”

  “Now see, this bigotry issue is not my issue at all,” Walter said angrily.

  Regina heard the defensiveness in his voice. “It’s because people like your mother made it easier for you,” she said sharply, glad the conversation had taken this turn.

  Wanting her siblings to know that she had made a sacrifice as well, Regina was the first offspring of an unwed, mixed race couple in the seventies, when life was much different.

  “By the time you and April came along, it really was a different world. The riots in Detroit may have been brutal on real estate, but it made the American people aware of the schism between the races.”

  Walter had no interest in the history of racism in Michigan. It would always be part of life. He and his peers made a joke of it; it took too much effort to try to change another’s opinion.

  “I don’t agree with you about the riots, but what I think is irrelevant. Look, I get that you had a rough time because our folks weren’t married. But our family did fine. We’re all educated. We work. What more do you want?” He lifted his glass. “What good does it do to dwell on all of that negative shit?”

  “You need to take a trip out west sometime, where close relatives of ours still live in conditions that would shame a third-world country,” Regina replied. She tipped the can of beer and drained it.

  “What does this have to do with Maria?” Walter asked, trying to get his sister back on track before they got into a fight.

  “It has everything to do with her,” she said. The combination of exhaustion, stress and the beer had brought her to the brink of irrationality, and she could feel her blood pressure increasing along with the level of her voice. “If our grandmother hadn’t been so worried about what white people thought, Maria would have been raised with her aunts and uncles. Our people never wanted to give their children up for adoption to whites. It was genocidal.”

  Walter put his head down on the bar. He was trying not to laugh. “I thought we came here to relax,” he said, reaching his big arm around his tiny sister. “Get a grip, Regina. You’re upset about history. Nothing can be done to change it.”

  The door opened just then, and April walked in. “I thought I recognized your car,” she sa
id, sliding onto a stool next to Regina. “Ginger ale, please.”

  The bartender put it down in front of her. She took a drink and put the glass on the bar, her siblings frowning; April at The Lake was not a common sight.

  “Guess what?” she asked.

  “What?” Wally asked.

  “No, guess.” She was so excited she couldn’t wait to tell them.

  “Get on with it, April, for Christ’s sake,” Walter said, exasperated. “I’ve about had it with both of you.”

  April laughed out loud. “Maria has a daughter. Esmeralda. She’s my age, or a little younger, an editor in Manhattan,” she said. “I Googled her after I found Maria’s obituary.” April was numb from what she’d discovered that evening and her parents and siblings were draining what little reserve she had. She’d make this quick.

  “Wow! Does Mama know?” Regina asked.

  “I just left there,” April replied. “They’re taking it in. I’m going to go home and start composing a letter to her.”

  They spoke of the ramifications of having a niece. Maria’s flesh and blood. April slid off the barstool, kissed the cheeks of her brother and sister, and left the bar.

  “I’ve had enough family drama for one evening,” Walter said to Regina. “Drop me home, will you?” They paid the bill and left in silence.

  Chapter 8

  George Patos’ former lover Carolyn Leonard was the department head of the new Chicago office of the Indian Adoption Project the year Maria was born. Through George, she’d heard of an adoptable infant available in southwest Michigan from a family who already had the adoptive parents in mind. George had a cousin, Gus from White Plains, who wanted to adopt.

  “You’re saving me a lot of steps, George,” Carolyn said. It appeared there would be no coercion necessary with this case.

  “The mother is only thirteen,” he replied.

  “In most families, that’s a nonissue,” she replied.