by L. E. Waters
“No, I got a box of it all right here, but if anyone wants it, they’ll have to pay his last week’s rent,” he says with a sneer, as if I’d never be able to afford it.
Without even asking how much it is I throw down a large bill that makes him jump back and I pick up the box without another look at him. I put the box on my cart and the girls come into the store with me to help carry my supplies out. I’ve been making many trips, trying to get months of supplies stockpiled, just in case it gets too hard for me to come out—not to mention the fact that very pregnant women are frowned upon out in public. I tell the girls again that I wish they’d come to live with me and they nod as if they’d come soon.
I take the reins and get my pony moving on the dirt road back toward home when a dimpled smile sends chills up my spine. Lucian hollers, as he grabs my pony’s harness and brings us to a stop.
“You just upped and left, Josie, without even telling me.” Anger seethes behind his wide smile.
“I thought Molly would let you know.” I know I have to be careful to protect Molly’s pigeon trick.
He tips his cowboy hat back. “I just don’t like thinking about you all alone out there without a man around.”
“I can fend for myself pretty well.” I wish I’d brought the shotgun that was leaning by my front door with me.
He stares up into my eyes. “You are just the cutest little thing. Even with your belly swelled.”
I look around me to see if we’re alone and I’m relieved to see a few men watching us from outside the hotel. “I must get back now. Thank you so much for your concern.”
“Hold up now.” He pats my pony’s mane to steady him. “If you ever need anything I want you to know you can count on me. For anything, you hear.”
Relief rolls over me that he seems to accept my independence and I know it’s never good to burn bridges, no matter how revolting they may be. “I appreciate the kind offer.” I give him a charitable smile which he returns as he releases my pony.
He steps back to allow me to roll ahead and he yells out behind me, “Come back soon!”
Chapter 24
A few weeks later, while weeding Violet’s garden with Pip on my shoulder, I spy a familiar form coming down my dirt path. Just seeing the slight limp makes me hurry to him. As I waddle near he sees my large stomach and draws in a confused breath.
I smile. “This was my complication.”
“James’s?” he says, with his mouth left hanging open, and I nod as I rub my hand on my belly protectively. He gives me an awkward hug, trying to avoid hitting my bump, but I just press it to him and laugh. Immediately he starts babying me with opening doors, pulling out chairs, and not letting me lift things, which I swat at him for. After I show him around the farm we sit in the two rocking chairs and watch the sun go down as Pip dances and struts before us.
“You know you can stay here with me as long as you want.”
Jessie turns, eyes sparkling. “Like you need any more scandal in your life?”
A strong wind blows through and takes with it my Union flag torn from its pole, which keeps rolling in the dust.
Jessie snickers. “Must have been a southern wind.”
“Or Stonewall Jackson’s ghost.” I push back in my rocker. The beat against the floor planks could lull me into a catnap.
“This war’s almost over,” he says from far away.
“Not a day too soon.” I think of what that means for James and he reads my thought.
He checks my eyes. “I think I would’ve heard of his passing by now. I might just go see if I can stumble upon him.”
Tears well up now, so I look at the flowers. As soon as I can regain composure I say, “I hope we all can meet up again.”
He then sees Violet’s garden and his look grows distant. “Oh well, I better be leaving before it gets too dark.”
“Wait just a moment” I pull my huge middle up awkwardly out of the chair he’s too late to try to help with. Pip flaps behind me. When I return with his box, he almost has a heart attack seeing me carrying such a heavy thing. He jumps up and takes it in his hands but once he sees Violet’s picture among his things he looks as if he wants to throw it across the porch. I put my arms up to steady him and take the box back to set it down.
He clenches his jaw. “She’d still be alive if I—” Something catches in his throat like he might actually cry. He brings a clenched fist up to his teeth to hold it back.
“So you strangled her?” This catches him off guard. I do my best Jessie impression. “So you see that’s the funny thing about life.” I sigh and lean back on the porch post. “You run out in front of a volley of fire and you might get killed, but it’s just as dangerous crouched behind breastworks. There’s no safe place in life.” I put my hand on his back. “You didn’t kill Violet, just like I didn’t kill Elijah.”
He scratches his chin, unsure if he wants to take his own consoling. “Well, I sure as hell killed that piece of shit and it felt good.”
I think it’s a good time to show him what else I put in the box. When I open the small wooden top, the music is released and his eyes are drawn to the sweet dancing figure. He reaches down to give me a hug and I feel the wetness from a few quiet tears soak into my dress. He closes the lid again, puts it back in the box and clutches it to his chest.
“If the Rebs haven’t done him in, James will be the worst mudsill I’ve come across if he doesn’t know what he’s got in you. You’re ace-high, Jo, and I’m proud to know you.”
I just nod, eyes overflowing, and give a tight I-don’t-want-to-cry smile, knowing it very well may be the last I see of him. As he walks down the drive, he kicks out with two legs in the air, tilts his hat and spins around, never to turn back again. When he’s barely in sight, Pachelbel’s Canon floats in off the breeze and I smile, knowing she’s keeping him company where ever he goes.
Chapter 25
Inching closer to February it gets very hard to do anything for myself. I stop going into town after Christmas and the girls come out to visit whenever they can coax Molly to make the trip out on a quiet Sunday. It seems like a mirage the day Gracie carries her bags down my drive. She trips up my porch stairs and plunks herself down, breathing heavily.
“Molly told me I should come and take care of you so close to your time and all, but decided she was too busy to give me a ride all the way to your house so she dropped me at the last crossroad a few miles back.”
I get up to get her some water and she takes it, gasping. I’m so glad to have her here. I’m starting to get nervous the closer I get to my due date, which the doctor figures to be around the end of February.
Gracie is great company. We talk non-stop about everything from the weather to the meaning of life. She’s surprisingly bright and tells me about how her father was a businessman and her mother was a teacher and taught her all the way up through grade school by the time she was twelve. Her father decided to move the family west by wagon train and her parents and younger sister succumbed to typhoid fever, leaving her with nothing. I’m hoping that she’ll stay on with me even after the baby’s born, but I can’t tell what her plans are.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
One night I awake to strong contractions. I seem to have slept through the mild contractions only to be caught in the middle of severe pain. I scream for Gracie, who sleeps in the small room next to mine, and she comes running in.
The look on my face tells her what’s happening and she just says quietly, “Do you think I have time to go get the doctor?”
I’m breathing so hard that I can barely talk. “Go, hurry. Just ride the pony in. Don’t bother with the cart, go. Hurry!”
I realize how stupid I was to only have had Gracie with me. I should’ve made Annie or Lottie come too, just in case this happened. It seems like days have gone by with how much the pain changes my sense of time. The contractions come right on top of each other with no reprieve. I’m
in a constant sweat and feel like I’m burning. I retch at the peak of every contraction because the pain is so great. I slide off my rope bed and onto the floor, pressing myself to the wood in hopes of cooling down. Finally the porch door slams and I look up drearily to Gracie, Molly, and Matilda rushing in.
“The doctor wasn’t in town so we figured Matilda had six babies so we ran to fetch her.”
Matilda reaches for a pillow, places it behind my head and lays me on my back. She then pulls up my soaking wet nightdress and says, “Your baby’s head is almost out.” She reaches for some towels she brought with her. “Gracie, get a pot of water on right away.” Matilda turns back to me. “Now you have to fight the urge to push, sweetheart, because we’re going to need that hot water when the baby comes out. Can you wait?”
She also reaches into a knapsack she brought and pulls out a pair of kitchen shears. Once Gracie returns with the steaming water, Matilda places the shears in them and dips both hands in with a wince. She blows some of her greying hair out of her face and tells me to push gently. I feel myself tearing. It’s a burning, searing feeling but I can’t stop once I start pushing. I just keep going even though Matilda tells me to stop.
Finally, I reach a point that I can hold it and Matilda looks up smiling. “The head is now out. I just have to turn it and then I’ll ask you for one small push.” When I next push, I feel a huge release as my baby slides out of me. I start crying in relief, while Gracie and Molly are in tears and cry, “A girl!”
I try to pull myself up to see her but Matilda’s busy tying the cord with thread and cutting it, all the while the baby frantically cries. Finally, she wraps her up and hands her to me and I feel the world is right. Everything makes sense suddenly. Everything happens for a reason.
I hardly pay attention to Matilda busily cleaning me up and asking me to push to deliver the placenta. Her face turns from relief to fear gradually and, once I notice, I hand Gracie the baby.
“What’s wrong?”
Matilda says, without looking into my eyes. “Once the placenta is delivered then the bleeding usually slows.”
“The bleeding’s not slowing?” I ask, and my heart quickens.
“Molly, get me some more sheets from off the bed.” She bundles them up and pushes them against me. “Honey, I think some of the placenta is still left behind.”
“What does that mean? Do I have to push some more?”
“No, I don’t think there’s anything we can do but pray the bleeding somehow slows.” Matilda holds her hands together and whispers a prayer as all of us do in our heads.
She tells Molly, “Help me get her into the bed.”
When I stand, a thick flow of warm fluid rushes down my thighs and I feel extremely light-headed. They prop me up in my bed with the extra sheets bundled under me and gingerly pile blankets on top of me as I complain of the cold. They rest the baby, all swaddled up, in the crook of my arm. I start to cry when I realize I’m dying. I can’t believe how I have just had the happiest moment of my life and just seen the thing I want to be with forever and now I will have to leave her before I even get a chance to know her. But I can’t think like this. I have so little time. I wipe my tears away and focus on her sweet little face and the dark, sparkling eyes that peer out between swollen slits. One of her eyelids has a pink birthmark and I kiss the blessed imperfection.
“Her name is Violet Belle Lyons,” I say through tears. “Her daddy’s name is James Lyons and, if he survives the war, he’ll be coming this way. Gracie, I want you to live here and raise her for me.”
Gracie nods and cries.
“Gracie, Molly and Matilda, you’re her only family now. You are all she’s got and I can’t die until I know you’ll take care of her like I would.”
Everyone sobs heavily and they nod.
“The key to Violet’s trunk is in the top dresser drawer and you’ll find more than enough to take care of both of you. Tell her all about me and about Violet.” I break down. “And make sure if her daddy comes here that he meets her, and if he can’t be found, someone go find Jessie and drag him back here come hell or high water.”
Molly and Gracie laugh at this.
“And Pip, don’t forget about Pip.”
Gracie smiles. “Of course we won’t.”
“We’ll take care of everything. Now just rest,” Molly says, as her eyes sparkle with tears.
I hold Violet tight as Matilda checks the bleeding with a grim face and gestures for Gracie to bring her another sheet as she takes away a bright-red soaked one. I’m extremely tired and dizzy. I can barely feel Violet in my arms. I give one last squeeze to the warm bundle in my embrace and close my eyes to rest.
Twelfth Life
Authentic Delusions
Chapter 1
My hands go numb from my sitting on them on the hard bench out in the cavernous hallway, but I don’t release them. I wish I could curl up within myself and disappear—no longer a problem for my parents. The knot in my stomach stayed tight since reading the sign of the train: Sonnenstein Castle Asylum. I can’t breathe deeply because of it. Even though the doctor has shut the door, I can still hear my mother and him discussing me through the thin door window.
“Dr. Evert, she’s a very lovely girl,” my mother says. “Annelie doesn’t try to be different, but she has such peculiar thoughts and dreams.”
“Hallucinations?”
Mother hesitates. “I wouldn’t call them hallucinations…it’s just that she remembers things that never happened.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, ever since Annelie was a baby, she’s talked about people we’ve never met. Places we’ve never been. Things she’s never owned.”
“When did you first realize something was different?”
Mother sighs. “She always chittered about strange things, but it first caught my attention when Annelie was no more than three and she asked me if I remembered when we were dancers, back in Kansas City. How would she even know that place? That was the beginning of many peculiar things.”
The doctor’s chair squeaks. “Does she know who she is?”
“Yes…but she sometimes calls herself other names.” I know by how her voice trails off that each disclosure is harder for her to make.
“Like she’s other people?”
“No.” My mother struggles to continue. I bet she’s staring out the door, trying to decide whether she should leave right now, but she tells him after all.
“That she’s been these people in the past.”
“She doesn’t think she’s these people now?”
“No, she knows who she is now, but she talks about these other lives in great detail. Things she couldn’t have known.”
“Famous people?”
“Some. Others are ordinary people from other times.”
“Hmm.” The doctor shifts in his noisy chair. “Do these memories interfere with her daily life?”
“Some days go by without incident, while others are completely disrupted.” Mother can’t stop revealing my secrets now. “She can burst into tears when something brings back a memory. She gets upset when people don’t remember the lives she claims she’s had with them. Annelie has even gone up to strangers and talked to them as if she knows them. You can imagine how all that goes over.”
“Is Annelie violent when she has such confrontations?”
“No. Never violent.” Her voice lightens, as if she suddenly remembers where she is and with whom she’s speaking. “Only insistent and upset.”
“Any other problems?”
“Annelie is afraid to go to sleep some nights for fear of nightmares. She talks about what is going to come in the future.”
“Delusions?”
“Well, the odd thing is some things have come true. Like she always told me that I was going to put her away in a hospital like this—” She breaks down into tears.
“She must have known how sick she was.” T
he doctor sounds unimpressed.
“I never thought I’d bring her to a place like this.” She blows her nose. “It’s just gotten so much worse.”
“How?”
“Her stories were just stories to us. We thought she was dramatic. That she had an active imagination. But she tries to convince everyone that her stories are real: religious teachers, her family, her friends, people she meets in the streets sometimes. Everything lately is connected to something she’s lived before.”
“Can you give me an example?” I hear his pen scratching furiously on his notepad.
“One of the reasons I’m here is because she accosted someone in the street. Just grabbed a man by the arm and embraced him, calling him ‘Molly’ of all things.” She gives a nervous chuckle. “The man had a look of total confusion and told her she was mistaken. Annelie insisted he was this Molly person and kept holding on to him, even as he tried to pull away. Her father forcibly removed her, and I had to beg the stranger not to inform the police—that she was just mistaken. It shook the man up terribly.”
“Did he call the police? Is that why you came?”
“Thankfully, he did not, but my husband was insistent that I bring her here. He’s afraid she’s getting worse.”
“Why didn’t he come along?”
“He’s working.”
“On Sunday?”
“He works on projects at home for extra income.”
I am sure the doctor sees through that excuse. There is no reason not to take a day off to bring your daughter into a psychiatric hospital.
“You say that she has had these delusions since she started talking?”
“Annelie called herself by different names at two. Called us different names as soon as she could.”
“What does she call you?”
“Most of the time now, Mother, but in the beginning she called me Annie, sometimes Jane.”