The Story of Beautiful Girl

by Rachel Simon

  “I bet it was Forty-two’s.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “How do you know? It’s not like he was sterilized. I’ll tell you, those places with the sterilization programs had the right idea. It saved a lot of worry. Too bad no one has them anymore.”

  “I know when they began spending time together, and the math says it wasn’t him.”

  “Well, what does it matter.”

  “What does it matter? Someone in here did it, that’s what. And then—my God, those two delivered a baby by themselves.”

  “What I mean is, what does it matter who the father is. So it’s not Forty-two; it’s another resident. So what. You know what will happen if they find that baby.”

  “I know.” Kate’s voice was very sad.

  “So why report it? Besides, what if word gets out that a resident escaped and had a baby? They’d have Collins’s head and everyone else’s. Where would we work then? What kind of jobs are there around here for folks that never finished high school? Or whose ex doesn’t pay child support like yours? The whole town’ll go down the tubes. You want that on your head?”

  “I’m not talking economics. I’m talking morality. We can’t leave a baby out there.”

  “Just forget about it.”

  “Have you lost your mind?”

  Then Lynnie was down again, dreaming of escape. She is running across the fields of the School with Buddy. Here is the ladder by the back wall; here is the ladder on the other side; here is the satchel he packed, waiting below. She turns back one last time.

  Then, ahead: woods and valleys and fields. Into a town. Into a backyard. Buddy lifts the door to a hidden cellar. There is a cot and generator and lamp and tin cans and canteens. Buddy understands them all. That’s why they rely on him. They call him a deaf-mute, a low grade, but they just can’t understand his hands. He shakes open a blanket. Lie down, his hands say.

  And through the memory dream of the birth, she heard Kate, alone again in the sleeping room: “Mother Mary, please give me a sign. Tell me what to do.”

  Lynnie woke with the shock of the sun. She could hear residents rising from bed.

  Buddy had not rescued her during the night. The baby must still be with the old lady.

  “You’re back!” she heard, and turned her head. Doreen was sitting up.

  Lynnie made to roll onto her side, but something was wrong. She couldn’t turn.

  “They tied you up!” Doreen said, suddenly noticing.

  Lynnie looked: Leather restraints were buckling her wrists and ankles to the bed frame. She fought against them, tacking back and forth, grunting with anguish, but they held.

  “Guess they’re afraid of you running off again,” Doreen said.

  Lynnie twisted her head toward the doorway, her throat tight with anger. Kate was no longer there. Suzette’s shift was over, too. And Lynnie could hear feet approaching—though not the floppy shoes of working girls coming to strip beds or the soft shoes of attendants on the day shift. They were the thuds of two pairs of boots and the scrabble of many sets of paws.

  She knew who it was. She closed her eyes.

  Paths Less Traveled

  MARTHA

  1968

  Martha sat before the tiny attic window, waiting to see the dawn. She had always felt a shivery pleasure at this time of day, after the egg collecting, before she fried Earl’s breakfast and drove to school in their Buick. Even after their child had died, when their home had stilled, she would look out the kitchen window to see Earl striding over the fields from his early chores, woolen cap on his head, his solid frame silhouetted against the lightening sky, and she would feel such a gratitude for the constancy of sunrise that her longing for all she’d lost would soften. Now, handling the chores alone, she sometimes felt so stirred as she returned to the house at this hour that she’d fancy herself heading to the second floor, opening one of the undersized windows, climbing outside, pulling herself to the roof, and spending the morning sitting at its peak, gazing up at the sky. But although she’d applauded audacity in her students, rashness was not her way. Last night, however, having sat in the dark attic, protecting the baby in the basket, dwelling upon the magnitude of a task that had arrived without warning, instruction, or duration, she could think of no better place to fix her eyes than the sky. Perhaps just gazing into its limitless depths and knowing that no matter how dark the night, the revolution of the earth always brought day, she’d find a way to answer the question of how she was to hide this infant.

  Martha and the baby couldn’t remain in the attic. It was stuffy and dim and wouldn’t prevent a baby’s cries from carrying down to the road. Besides, children gained nothing from seclusion. Martha remembered teachers who’d tried to silence class clowns and incorrigible brainy students by sentencing them to the cloakroom, though to her mind, banishment lessened everyone. The exile could not learn from others, and the class was deprived of inquisitiveness and wit. So by the first colors of dawn, Martha had already come to this much: This baby must be hidden from the authorities, but if she remained with Martha beyond this day—or, goodness knows, this week—she must be out in the world, able to see and be seen by the sky.

  There were more pressing matters, which had come to Martha moments after the sedan disappeared at the bottom of the hill and she closed her front door: I am alone in a house with a baby—and an icebox with only cow’s milk, shelves unfamiliar with diapers, an attic with no trace of baby clothes. Her stomach quaked. I have no idea what I’m doing. She’d assisted Earl with newborn animals and held her students’ infants and toddlers, but the basics of feeding and changing and dressing a child were daunting. What if I cannot rise to the occasion? Why did they come to my house? How could I have let motherhood pass me by? Why did I allow Earl’s sorrow to deprive me of something so essential?

  Stop, she’d told herself. Self-pity is a worse adversary than ignorance. Right now she did not need those answers. She just needed necessities.

  So last night, returning to the resourcefulness so familiar to a farmer’s wife, she’d taken a deep breath and gathered herself together. In the kitchen, she remembered the student who’d come from Boston last Christmas with her husband and three children and left behind baby formula, which Martha had saved to return this year. She found it in the cupboard and read the instructions. They cautioned the need to boil the bottles before adding milk. She picked around her cupboards and was just at the point of resorting to a mason jar when she remembered a few small bottles Earl had used for a motherless calf. She filled them, leaving most in the icebox, as the instructions said, and bringing one to the second floor. There, in the linen closet, she found washcloths to use for diapers, towels she wet for a sponge bath. These improvisations allowed her to make it through the night in the attic, clumsily feeding and changing the baby.

  Now, as peach light eased toward gold and the baby slept on in the basket, Martha pressed herself close to the window. Earl had made this one particularly small, but by angling herself just so, she could make out the first glow of sun above the eastern treetops, gilding the woods where the man had disappeared. He had seemed so protective, so tender. Martha remembered one of the most confusing moments last night: the officer insisting that Lynnie and Number Forty-two had to be taken into custody for their safety, then contradicting himself, saying Martha’s safety was at risk. Which was it?

  A ray of sun struck the window. She’d never been in the attic at this hour, so she’d never seen the way the rising sun lit the brick-shaped glass. Nor had she seen the crack in the lower corner, its diagonal cut a prism. She laid her fingers on the crack. The glass yielded immediately, as if it had been waiting for freedom, and fresh air swept the stuffiness from the room. And just that tiny piece of sky, in the form of an autumn breeze, and just that view of her field, still watery from the storm, brought her clarity; and she arrived at her first step for the day.

  It wasn’t that much of a step, Martha thought as she let herself down the ladder, s
lid a suitcase from under her bed, and popped the latches. Unlike the way Earl had looked far ahead with his seed purchases and crop rotations, it hardly rose to the level of a plan. Earl had felt planning was the vanquisher of chaos, though Martha had never shared this certainty; they’d planned their baby’s nursery yet failed to subjugate the cruelest chaos imaginable. So she’d limited her planning to next week’s classes or, since retirement, the open house at Christmas. Looking out into this new day, however, had reminded her that the School would resume its search, and since she could not allow them to hear the baby cry, Martha and the baby had to leave.

  Her mind fastened to the moment, she laid clothing in the suitcase. One cotton dress, one cardigan, one nightgown, one set of undergarments: enough to take them through tomorrow. Perhaps that would not be sufficient, so she added enough to last a second day.

  She brought the suitcase into her study. She’d left the ladder from the attic open but did not retrieve the baby just yet; there was still more packing ahead.

  She pulled boxes of Christmas decorations from a shelf. There, as she’d expected, was the collection of doll-sized Santas and elves and angels that a heavyset, rosy-cheeked student, Eva Hansberry, had given her over the years. A quiet girl, Eva ran a corner store in Well’s Bottom, along with her husband, Don, and their teenage son. The store had been in Don’s family for decades, a cramped place that sold canned goods and detergent and cough syrup and sodas; and every year, after Eva received their shipment of holiday knickknacks, she gave one to Martha. Martha did not like these sentimental figures; she’d saved them only because they came from Eva, who dressed them in felt-and-brocade outfits she sewed herself. Last night, as Martha wondered what she could possibly put on a newborn, she remembered these tiny clothes.

  Though now that they were in her hands, she hesitated. What kind of an adult would emerge from a baby dressed this way? Fanciful? Religious? Mawkish? Martha projected a slide carriage of images, all of them contrary to herself, only to interrupt her musing. Nothing that happened so early in a baby’s life would determine personality, and there was no guarantee that anyone who cared for this baby today would do so tomorrow. Martha packed these clothes.

  That done, she asked herself where to go. She needed a location where she could assess the next day or two. Also important were more formula, diapers, and authentic clothes—and advice on caring for a newborn. Then it came to her: Eva. Perhaps the store was inadequate for an overnight stay, but supplies and maternal knowledge could be found there. It opened at eight a.m., an hour from now, which coincided nicely with the time it would take to drive that far.

  She removed her address book from her desk. There was a pay phone at the service station between the farmhouse and Well’s Bottom. It was on Old Creamery Road, just beyond the two-lane bridge that crossed the river. Calling from there, where she’d arrive a half hour from now, would be more considerate than calling this early. She flipped open the address book and lifted her pen. Then her telephone rang.

  Martha’s phone did not ring except on December 24, when students called to ascertain whether her open house would proceed the next day, and she was always stunned out of her chair when that first call came. Now she felt more than startled. The School authorities, and perhaps the police, must already be on their way to search for Number Forty-two.

  Or—they had learned about the baby.

  What had seemed to be a hastily constructed plan suddenly revealed itself to have been absurdly slow. Why hadn’t she departed last night? Why had she wasted time packing?

  How soon could she and the baby vanish now?

  She threw the address book into her suitcase and clicked the latches shut.

  In the attic, the baby was still asleep. Martha lifted the basket gently. The baby didn’t stir. The phone completed its fourth ring. Holding the basket close, she returned to her study.

  Seventh ring.

  She held the basket with one arm around the rim, and with the other she lifted the suitcase. Then her desk blotter caught her eye. This map was her most prized possession, as precious as a family portrait; her students had moved to thirty-nine states so far, and each of their homes was marked with a dot. She worked it free and hastened downstairs.

  The phone rang for the twelfth time, then stopped.

  She seized bottles of formula from the icebox, a jacket from its hook. The phone began again as she got into her Buick, set the basket on the floor in the front, threw the map into the back. She turned on the engine and pulled around to the front field.

  The driveway to the road was flooded.

  ��Darn.” The word brought her palm to her lips. It was the worst profanity she ever thought, and she never uttered it. But the word, now out in the air, did not make her feel as coarse as she’d imagined. She set her hands on the steering wheel and steered away from the gravel drive and onto the field itself. Mud flew, her tires found traction, and she began to descend. It was a thrill, moving over the field without a proper surface. Even more thrilling was the last sound she heard as she reached a break in the trees near the bottom. It was the twelfth ring—the second round of efforts to reach her—and then silence.

  She emerged from the trees and turned the car onto Old Creamery Road.

  On her left stood the lighthouse man, waiting for the mail carrier. Would she tell her students about this event at Christmas? Would she write them letters about it later this week? The baby began to moan; Martha could not think about the future. She rounded the car past fallen branches and headed east.

  After a few miles, during which Martha saw no one on the road, the child quieted. Yet Martha herself could not calm down. She was heading toward a student she hoped would provide assistance, though she had always refrained from turning to her students for support. There was, after all, a natural law to the universe. Parents watched over their children. Wives yielded to their husbands. Teachers guided their students. Yet a mother had just entrusted Martha with her child. Martha had already done what her husband would never do. Would it truly be a violation if she turned to a student this one time?

  This much she knew: She had begun to change last night. She had climbed to the attic, and sat beside the baby, and thought, I am all you have now. And she’d felt an opening in her chest where she hadn’t known anything was closed. She had reached down into the bed of mending, and when her hands touched the baby’s flesh, she remembered that she’d never touched her son. She’d lifted the girl slowly. The baby was light, her tiny eyes closed. Martha held the baby to her chest and felt the little heart beating into hers. It was a heart she’d waited decades to hear; and she thought, What kind of life awaits you? Will you be reunited with your mother soon? Or will you never know who she is? Will I be a part of your life? Or can I only fulfill her dream for you if I say good-bye? The openness in her chest pulled her toward the baby, allowing their heartbeats to fall into step. Martha’s heart was bigger, but the baby’s heart beat louder.

  Now, hoping to hear something about the desperate flight of the School escapees, Martha turned on the radio. The news was on, though it was talking about last night’s storm, saying many roads were closed. She’d barely been noticing the road, and she refocused. She was just about to pass the one intersection that provided an alternate route, Scheier Pike, a twisting, hilly, two-lane highway. But Scheier Pike went north through the mountains for twenty miles before the next bridge. So Martha stayed on Old Creamery Road, the straight shot to Well’s Bottom.

  Soon the woods that had hugged the shoulder for the first many miles thinned to pastures and orchards, and Martha saw that low-lying areas were indeed flooded. The sports came on, and then more news. Martha listened until the reporter returned to talking about the storm. How could they say nothing about two people who had disappeared? She turned off the radio.

  Ahead was the entrance to a camp for Boy Scouts that was closed for the season. It was the last landmark before the river, and just after she passed it and the road began its long slope d
own, Martha finally saw another car. It was moving slowly, and she saw through its back window that it was following other cars. As the road tilted toward the river, their speed dropped. Then they all came to a halt.

  She waited. The man in front of her stepped onto the road, looking ahead.

  She lowered her window. ���Can you see what’s happening?”

  “I think the bridge got washed out.”

  She should have considered this. But the bridge had never been closed before.

  “Darn,” she said again, this time without her hand to her lips.

  She opened her door, hoping to see this novel sight. People ahead were already walking forward. She was around the final bend from the bridge, so the walk would not be far—yet what if she happened upon a police officer? She closed the door and rolled up her window. Her watch said ten after eight.

  They could wait this out, she thought. There was already a truck behind her, so waiting was the most cooperative option. Then she heard a whimper, and as she looked into the basket, the baby opened her mouth and began to cry.

  The panic of last night returned, though for new reasons. What did this cry mean? Was the baby hungry or in need of a diaper? Was she simply unsettled by the cessation of the car’s motion? The baby’s volume rose. Then Martha remembered she wasn’t quite the Martha she’d been yesterday. She knew how to angle a bottle. She knew she could find first steps.

  She told herself, Just do what you need to do—as any mother would.

  She made a U-turn and drove away from the river.

  This time she felt only anxiety and doubt. She had nothing to provide guidance besides a shrieking baby, the contents of the car, and the road before her.

  She moved forward, her thoughts scrambling. Then she saw the entrance to the closed camp. She could turn off the road, that’s what she could do. Quiet the baby here.

  The chain closing off the dirt road into camp was on the ground, so she drove over it. She had not been down here for years, though nothing had changed, and soon she entered a campsite with fir trees and wooden bunks. They hugged the western bank of the river, where there were swimming and fishing areas and, farther down, a low-head dam.