by Julie Kibler
My father paused at the bathroom door and shushed her. The door frame creaked in the same old spot it always creaked, and I pictured him leaning against it, waiting for my mother to leave him to his nighttime ritual. She sighed, and her shoes scraped the floor as she continued to their room, as though she had no inclination to lift her feet in complete steps.
What did she wish my father to do? Who were the people she spoke of, who would help and stay quiet? A chill in my spine needled the back of my neck.
This I knew: Even if my father wouldn’t help her, Mother was determined I would not have Robert’s baby.
I knew little about my mother’s upbringing—only that she’d been desperately poor, reared in another small Kentucky town, sired by the town drunk. He’d impregnated my grandmother, then promptly absolved himself of paternal responsibility by falling from a bridge while sleeping off a bender. Documents I’d snooped out listed my grandmother’s occupation as washerwoman, but Mother’s refusal to speak of it, and, more clearly, her birth order—eldest of four—hinted that taking in laundry wasn’t the full scope of her mother’s business.
Mother obtained her basic school certificate, then moved to Louisville, where she made herself over, clerking in a millinery shop until she met and married my father. He’d just finished medical school and planned to take over the retiring physician’s practice in Shalerville. I pictured my mother remaking herself again, this time as a physician’s wife. She’d already come a remarkably long way; my father likely believed he’d swept her off her feet.
I recognized now how her half sister—my beloved Aunt Bertie—had nearly wrecked Mother’s careful positioning of our family in Shalerville society. Aunt Bertie had escaped their dreary life, too, coming to live with us after she finished school. She worked hard but was carefree and tempted by worldly things. When Mother could no longer conceal Aunt Bertie’s impropriety, she asked her to leave. Her eventual fate, plunging from the cliff in a careless driver’s car, seemed more punishment than she’d deserved.
It seemed Mother always balanced on the precarious edge of respectability, but if she’d thought Aunt Bertie’s rebellion would be what tipped the scales, she’d thought wrong.
I was the one who might bring down the entire house of cards. The image she’d cultivated and projected for so many years was in jeopardy, and after overhearing her conversation with my father, I couldn’t fathom how far she might descend to keep the McAllisters on Shalerville’s pedestal.
* * *
ONE AFTERNOON IN late spring, Mother observed me leaning to retrieve a book I’d dropped. The fabric of my dress pulled tight against my waist and belly, and it was obvious our little secret would soon be impossible to hide. My father had always said I was built like a sparrow. It hadn’t taken long for my growing abdomen to jut from the narrow space between my hips. The next morning, a dour, thin white woman served breakfast in Cora’s place, wearing a handmade gingham apron over her own worn dress instead of one of the neat uniforms my mother had provided for Cora and Nell. The woman couldn’t have been more their opposite.
“Where’s Cora?” I asked. She sniffed and went about her business, pouring coffee, stirring the scrambled eggs to bring steam to their surface so they’d appear freshly plated.
“Where’s Cora?” I asked my mother, who had entered the room behind me. My father shuffled in last, bedroom slippers paired with his dark trousers. He usually struck out early for the few Saturday visits he made. Apparently, he hadn’t been needed this morning—or Mother wanted him there to give the impression they were a united front.
“This is Mrs. Gray. She keeps house for us now,” Mother said.
Mrs. Gray? It was an appropriate name. But I was less concerned about her presence than about Cora’s absence. “But—what happened to Cora?” I asked, looking carefully from Mother to Father. He settled into his usual spot and sorted through the morning papers, reading glasses low on his nose, immediately preoccupied with the stock market report. Studied ignorance.
“Cora has a new position.” Mother’s gaze darted between my father and me. I was certain she was lying; Cora’s absence was additional fallout from my actions. She’d been let go as soon as my mother found a suitable replacement. I wondered if she really had been able to line up other work in time—whether she’d been given any warning at all.
Then my mother’s eyes flicked toward my waist, and I saw the truth. Cora’s departure had coincided with my shifting silhouette. She would not witness the bloom of my pregnancy. Had she any idea when she left that Robert was going to be a father? I’d hardly seen her since our last conversation. I’d left her alone—as she’d requested.
My mother intended to hide my condition.
I had longed, desperately, for a way to contact Robert or Nell, to learn how they’d fared. Did Robert still work at the docks, replacing the income he and Nell—and now Cora—had lost? Had he walked away from our rented room, leaving the memory of that bittersweet night and day behind? Or had he stayed on, choosing to live as an adult instead of returning to his childhood home? And what was the fate of the tiny precious thimble I’d forgotten? Cora’s warnings, however, had echoed louder than my longing to know.
I realized now that my mother would not turn me out as I’d assumed when I kept my early pregnancy a secret. I was four months along; she would have done so already. I still worried she’d find a way to rid us of the baby, but with each passing day, I grew more confident I’d be allowed to give birth.
My original intention—to escape when I found an opportunity—changed to maternal instinct. As long as I remained at home, my unborn child would receive the nourishment and shelter he or she needed, even if the situation was cold and unbending. And my father was a source of medical care. If I left without a workable plan and was unable to be with Robert, my baby would have none of these things.
For now, staying put seemed the only solution. My mother sensed my resignation and relaxed her guard, allowing me to roam the house freely. I had no desire to venture out. My brothers skirted me, shooting accusing looks at my belly. I’m sure my pregnancy was a perversion in their minds.
Originally, I counted by days and weeks, then by dragging months as my figure grew unwieldy and my center of balance shifted.
Mrs. Gray rarely spoke—only when propriety dictated. I often came across her standing still, dusting the same curios over and over. Clearly, my mother had hired her less for her housekeeping skills and more for her discretion.
Even as time stood still, summer arrived, bringing intense, unpredictable weather. One moment, it was so hot and humid that I moved, heavy and languid, as though through a dream. The next, the crash and flash of thunder and lightning jarred me into too much awareness.
One afternoon, the heat exploded into a storm, as though the sky was throwing a sudden, inexplicable fit of temper. I paced, beginning in my bedroom. I’d reread every book I owned—and the few Mother had fetched from the library—until I was certain I’d lose my sanity between boredom and the growing discomfort of the baby crowding my lungs and ribs and hips. I walked the hallway and back again and again, pausing only to study the storm through a window and to wonder whether it would exit as quickly as it had emerged or linger all evening in moody surges.
In the front room downstairs, my mother addressed correspondence from the church’s benevolence committee. At their weekly meetings, the women penned cheery little notes to shut-ins—frail widows and the terminally ill. My mother brought the notes home to address and mail. I amused myself by imagining how her committee would react if I slipped an extra note into the basket for their next meeting, one which offered our family sympathy for my unenviable condition. I was certain she’d conjured up some story about my absence—that was what happened when young girls went away in the bloom of health and returned, with pale faces and sad eyes. It was said they were on extended visits to help distant family with, say, an aging relative. I wondered whether anyone questioned my mother, surprised I’d be
en sent to help in my last school term. I assumed she’d worked out all kinds of excuses.
How many of those girls had, like me, been prisoners in their own homes? How many had been sent, instead, to places where their babies were taken from them and parceled out to new families like eggs or milk?
I doubted many shared our dilemma, where the racial identity of my baby’s father would be apparent the instant I gave birth. Perhaps those places made stipulations when the girls arrived—that the child produced must be acceptable to any young couple eager to adopt a newborn. What did they do with babies with unexpected characteristics? Perhaps a physical defect—a cleft lip?—or exotically turned-up eyes that hinted at lifetime supervision. Or a baby with dark skin, born to a young white girl. What happened to those babies?
I was tentatively relieved I hadn’t been turned out or sent away. Not yet.
After a dozen or so of my endless circuits, Mother climbed the stairs, her steps as heavy and worn-out-sounding as mine as she approached the top.
“Please stop pacing,” she said as I returned from my latest pause at the window to peer across the street into the woods. Water pooled in the street, the gravel-covered surface no match for the torrent the sky had released, and I wondered if the retaining wall Robert had reinforced the summer before would hold.
“I’m restless, Mother. I can’t help it.”
“I wish you’d thought of that when you—” She stopped abruptly.
“When I what, Mother? When I fell in love? When I married him before I got myself into this condition? When I destroyed your careful plans?”
She shook her head. My insolence appalled even me, especially when I knew it wouldn’t make a difference. It seemed impossible to shame her into empathy, into caring for more than her reputation.
My speech wasted energy, and I had little these days. Still, I pressed on. “Have you finished your notes?” I asked. “All those old women and sick people believe you’re a model citizen. Your concern for the suffering is astounding. What if they knew you kept me here, hidden as though I were a leper?”
She didn’t think long. “You know what they’d think. You know where we live and how people would feel if they knew the truth. How can you not see that this is all for you?”
“If not for your interference, I’d be with Robert. We wouldn’t care what people thought.”
“Oh, Isabelle. You’d be nothing more than fodder. By now, you’d have been chewed into tiny pieces and spit into that dirty river. Your brothers wouldn’t have tolerated it. Robert would likely be dead.”
“Only because you allowed this town to brainwash them. You’re brainwashed by your own fear.”
She’d started for her room after her last words, but this called her back. I grasped the banister where it curved around at the top of the stairs to catch my breath.
“My fear?” She edged closer. Her face betrayed what she tried to deny as she strained to remain expressionless, but it pulled at her forehead and the skin around her mouth.
“What would happen if your benevolence committee knew the truth? What if they knew your daughter had married a Negro man and would bear his child? What other secrets might they drag to the surface, Mother?”
She stepped near enough that I could smell her breath, sour, drawn quickly and released again. “Enough. You have no idea what you’re saying, Isabelle. You’ve brought this family more shame than you can begin to imagine.”
“Your father? A drunk who impregnated your mother, then fell off a bridge? A mother who did whatever it took to feed you and others who came after you, no fathers listed on their birth certificates? You keep everyone around you under your thumb to prevent anyone from knowing. But I know all your secrets, Mother. And I’m the one you can’t blame on anyone but yourself.”
She gasped. “Isabelle, stop! Why are you doing this? You have no—”
As I confronted her with my frank assessment, she seemed to shrink before my eyes. “It’s true, isn’t it, Mother?” I felt small, too, as I aimed straight at her vulnerability, but also in control where I’d had none before. “You’re afraid of what will happen if they find out. To you, not to me.”
I’d pushed too far. She grabbed my bodice—loose around my ribs, as I’d been forced to start wearing cast-off dresses of hers that would still fit my swelling belly—and she shook me. My foot slid around the post and lost traction. My body followed the foot, pitching into air, then crashing along each step until I thudded to a stop where the landing topped the turn into the last few stairs.
Later, I clearly remembered gazing up at my mother where she stood still clutching the blue-flowered print of her old dress, the piece that had ripped away with an almost human shriek as I fell. I remembered struggling to decide whether she’d reached to stop my fall or had simply let me go, allowing bare wood and sharp angles to batter not just me but my unborn child in our descent. Was the terror on her face for me? Or for herself because of what she’d done?
As the pains began in my abdomen, as liquid rushed between my legs, fast and warm like the summer rain flooding the street, I heard a wail. It began somewhere in my chest and emerged from my throat like that of a keening child.
28
Dorrie, Present Day
MISS ISABELLE’S VOICE shook, and I sat in stunned silence. She didn’t cry, but her pain cloaked the air between us.
We’d been at the side of the road, waiting for a mechanic, for nearly an hour, but thank heavens for Triple A. Miss Isabelle had rummaged in her pocketbook for her member card, and I’d called the toll-free number to report our breakdown. They’d promised someone would come out to survey the damage. Most likely, they’d tow us back to the suburb we’d passed outside Louisville. Yes, backward. We’d be going the wrong direction, but at least we wouldn’t be sitting on that highway all night picking our cuticles and trying to figure out what to do. Sometimes, I was learning, it was a blessing to be prepared. I’d always lived by the seat of my pants. It was the cheapest way to go. Unless you had a problem—then it was expensive.
“Call them back and see if they’re going to be here soon, would you?” Miss Isabelle said, her voice cranky and tired and a little querulous now. (Querulous: “whining or complaining in tone.”) Not her usual old-lady style. It took my mind off her mother.
I started to hit redial on my phone, but it was the same button to answer an incoming call. I had just enough time to register the scrap of Marvin Gaye and the name on the caller ID as my finger pressed the button. Teague. Now?
But what could I do? Hang up? I closed my eyes and gathered a big breath and said hello.
“Dorrie! Finally. Girl, I’ve been worried about you all day, thinking you might be stranded somewhere or hurt or I don’t know what. Do you know what you put me through?”
Our silences blended awkwardly.
“I’m sorry,” he said, finally. “I overstepped there. I was worried because, well, I care about you, Dorrie.” He sighed. I cringed. I hated that I’d stressed him out, when I was just trying to salvage my own pride in the name of keeping him from having to deal with my mess. And I’d never had anyone apologize for overstepping boundaries before. In fact, I’m not even sure I realized I was entitled to boundaries until that very moment, when someone acknowledged pushing them.
I forced myself to smile, hoping it would come through in my voice. “It’s okay. As a matter of fact, we are stranded, but we’ve got the Triple A coming any minute now. Probably a belt, nothing serious. I’m sure we’ll be on our way in no time.”
“Dorrie?”
My smile fell away. I knew what was coming. Boundaries or no, he had that note in his voice. He was going to ask about the break-in again.
“Why didn’t you want the police involved in your burglary?”
And I still didn’t have a good answer. If I told him the truth, he’d back out of my life faster than he’d become a part of it. That might hurt more than ignoring him, letting him think it was all about me until he dropped i
t and went away. Either way, he was going to bolt. I guarded my voice. “So you called them back? Told them to forget about it? They said okay?”
“Yes, but—”
“And the door?”
“It’s boarded up tight until you get home, and I’m planning to run by every day to check on things, but Dorrie—”
“I appreciate it. I really do, and—oh, hey, I see a tow truck in the distance and I’m willing to bet it’s for us, so I’ve got to go. I’ll talk to you … later, okay? Thanks again, Teague.”
I disconnected and dared to look over at Miss Isabelle. She shook her head enough for me to detect it. “What?” I said, and gestured behind us, where a tow truck was rapidly approaching. It pulled around us and parked on the shoulder.
“Nothing, Dorrie,” Miss Isabelle said. “Nothing.”
She didn’t need to say anything.
Eventually, the mechanic called from under the hood, “Yep. Gonna have to tow her in. And I know for a fact I don’t have that belt in stock. I’ll have to chase it down in the morning, but it’ll be a quick fix. Sorry, ladies.” He dropped the hood and brushed off his hands.
He drove us to a hotel near his shop and promised to call first thing in the morning. Miss Isabelle fretted while I paid for the room—this time aided by Mr. Nice Manager—and rolled our bags down the hall. She was worried we’d be late for the viewing and visitation the next evening. But I assured her if the guy fixed up the car as fast as he’d promised, we’d arrive in plenty of time. It was only a hop and a jump across a river to Cincy once we got back on the road—even I’d begun calling it Cincy in my head after hearing Miss Isabelle say it enough times.
I bought our dinner at a convenience store down the street. After a few hours of television, I went out for the cigarette I’d been telling myself I wasn’t going to smoke, checked in with my mother, and had a quick word with Bebe. I didn’t bother asking for Stevie Junior. We went to bed early. There was nothing else to do. I settled into the scratchy pillows and was drifting when Miss Isabelle sighed.