Little Sacrifices

by Scott, Jamie

  She knew there were back street doctors whose job it was to uncomplicate unwed women’s lives. There were herbal medicines from the old slave days. A fall down the stairs. She had all the means available, but couldn’t bring herself to go through with any of them. Ready or not, the baby was coming. Giving birth was going to be a piece of cake compared to telling her parents. She knew they were right outside the door. They’d been hovering there for more than a week. It took a while to screw up her courage before she opened her door to them.

  Her unexpected appearance startled Mister and Missus Reynolds into babbling. Their nostrils curled as they passed her and she realized she hadn’t changed her clothes since the letter came. Or brushed her hair.

  Her parents had spent so much time trying to figure out how to get into the room without knocking the door down that, once inside, they had no idea what to do next. Everyone stared at each other. Mirabelle didn’t trust her voice. The letter was on the dressing table, worn thin with reading. Mister Reynolds made short work of it, his eyes flicking to her face. ‘Oh. I see. Oh. Dear.’ Her mother read over his shoulder. ‘Oh.’ Mirabelle’s quivering chin called her father over and he hugged her as naturally as someone not used to affection can.

  Mirabelle knew she’d better spill the beans while she had their sympathy. She blurted out the rest of her news. They stared goggle–eyed at their youngest child, trying to decide if they’d heard right. They had, and within a few seconds their opinions were evident on their faces.

  Mister Reynolds’ eyebrows worked furiously on his forehead. ‘You’re what? You. I. You can’t... you’re...’

  His wife’s reaction was less ambiguous. She strode to her daughter and slapped her hard. Mirabelle felt the sting of her favorite cocktail ring, and watched her mother’s face warm up to scarlet. ‘How dare you!’ Her position in Savannah was hard won. She’d married well, above her station some said, and she wasn’t about to be brought low by a bastard grandbaby.

  Mirabelle was a disappointment and worse to her father. That much was clear from his scowl. ‘Ah Mirabelle,’ he finally managed. ‘What have you done?’ She had the crazy notion to smirk. That much at least, she thought, was obvious. Her news was too much for him all at once. He sputtered and fussed for a few minutes while his wife simmered quietly, but nothing sensible emerged.

  They didn’t ask her what she was going to do. They told her. She’d have the baby. Mirabelle let out the breath she didn’t realize she was holding. She watched her mother, who kept her eyes leveled on her husband. ‘You’ll go away and have it, and Clare and Julius will raise it as theirs.’

  She didn’t hear them right. Give her baby away? Henry’s baby? To her sister? Clare was older by twelve years, and childless. They didn’t even get along. She wouldn’t do it. She said so, a little incoherently through the sobs building in her throat.

  But she would, her mother told her. She would or Missus Reynolds would personally take her to the doctor to get rid of it. She’d do it too. Venom dripped from the woman’s words. How little she must have loved her daughter. The decision was laid out plainly, and Mirabelle wondered if maybe they’d suspected something was up all along. Their ideas seemed awfully well thought out to be straight off the tops of their unsympathetic heads. If she didn’t give the baby to Clare, her mother threatened, she’d be out on her ear to raise it as best she could with no money, no house, husband or family. Try that on for size. It was only nineteen eighteen after all. In the pecking order of shameful things, unwed mothers came pretty close to the top.

  Missus Reynolds smelled Mirabelle’s scheme hatching a mile off. ‘One more thing, dear daughter’, she continued. ‘Don’t even think about letting the child know the circumstances of its birth. Ever. Clare and Julius are going to be the only parents around. I’ll cut it off, so help me I will, the second I hear you’ve breathed a word, and all your sacrifice now will have been for nothing.’ Mister Reynolds didn’t look so sure about things, but he was loath to be drawn into his wife’s bitter orbit, so he let her keep talking.

  Mirabelle was stitched up tight, and she knew it. She was too worn out to fight. It wouldn’t have done any good anyway. She asked them to leave her alone, changed her sweat–dampened dress, grabbed her hat and left for her sister’s, with the idea of convincing her to let her keep her child.

  From the look on Clare’s face, it was clear that she had no idea what was going on. She was speechless while Mirabelle sniffled through her predicament and finally got to the part about their parents’ plans to expand Clare’s family. Clare smiled like she’d been told they struck oil in the back yard. ‘Clare! How can you be happy about this? They’re making me give up my baby!’

  ‘Yes, so it seems. But to me, dear sister.’

  Within the month Mirabelle was in Atlanta with her maternal aunt. It was a mean twist of fortune that landed her so close to Henry’s home. From the first day there, she was sorely tempted to turn up on his family’s doorstep, but one look in a full–length mirror kept her in the house. She’d never even met them. They’d keel over if she and her swelling belly showed up to tell them she was carrying their dead son’s baby. Where was the proof?

  Her last hope was to try Henry’s uncle, so one morning after weeks of tossing and turning about it, she struck out to find Albert Plunkett, the big cotton man. It didn’t take her very long. He was at the cemetery. Or to be precise, he was in the cemetery, dead a week after Henry. The letter he wrote to her was probably his last. She was out of options, and resigned herself to giving the baby to Clare. All during the pregnancy she sat in her favorite spot in the house, a big bay window in the living room, and played little games with herself to stay indifferent. She didn’t think about whether it was a boy or a girl, didn’t try out names, or imagine whether it would have Henry’s eyes. Nothing worked. She loved it just the same.

  It would have been better, she mused, if she’d miscarried. But as luck would have it, she had a strong constitution. She didn’t have even a day of morning sickness. As the time came closer she started to panic, but knew there wasn’t much choice about what to do. There was only one way it was coming out. The hard way.

  By the time the baby saw the light of day, her adoption had been arranged for months. The agency lady lurked outside with the wet nurse, but the midwife didn’t pay any attention to the rules. She put Mirabelle’s daughter on her chest, as she always did with new mothers. Mirabelle was overwhelmed by the slippery little toad belting out a hale and hearty wail. She watched her daughter’s red face and clenching fists, and couldn’t help but join her.

  Mirabelle stayed with her aunt for a little while to regain her strength, but the baby was whisked away the next day to Savannah. When she turned up at her house a week later, she saw that guilt was eating away at her father. He felt simply awful, he told her, for his part in the family drama. To make amends, he’d bought her a lovely house just like he’d promised. He hoped it would make her decision a little easier to live with. Mirabelle was grateful to him and grateful to have Cecile, a beautiful bundle of sweet smells, just next door on Henry Street.

  Chapter 26

  In nineteen forty–eight, Savannah had fifteen banks to tend to residents’ savings, and ninety nine houses of worship to tend to their souls. As one might expect, being agnostics where so many people were in the business of dispensing godliness was bound to call attention to us. In Williamstown, my irreligious condition made me the envy of my peers. While my classmates struggled bleary–eyed to catechism every Sunday I got to lounge at home worshipping St. Mattress and the Holy Pancake. When, every so often, I’d get curious about my friends’ blessed shenanigans, Duncan would pack me off to church with Lottie to see what all the fuss was about. Lottie tantalized me with the knowledge that each week the priest deposited waffles onto the waiting tongues of his flock. I had to take her word for it, not being of the faith myself. I was a teenager before I realized that the Eucharist was a wafer and that Lottie had a speech impediment. Catholic m
asses bored me stiff. They were long, solemn, in Latin, and a single one satisfied my curiosity for years at a time.

  Religion in the South involved much more than an hour–long inconvenience on Sunday mornings. Savannahians took churchgoing seriously and the sheer diversity of their faith was remarkable. Baptists, Catholics, Christian Scientists, Episcopalians, Jews, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Adventists, and Nazarenes all had their own take on God. It wasn’t so much a question of whether church was part of your life, but rather which one. Minty, Ceecee and Charlene were devoted to the oldest church in Savannah. They supported the Christ Church choir with varying degrees of talent and went to bible study by choice, not compulsion. On my first weekend in town Jim remarked that our lack of attendance was bound to be noticed. He was right, though it took a few months. Until then, we had enough other peculiarities to attract everyone’s attention.

  Jesus Christ embarrassed me. Not as a person, or son of God or whatever. But I found his everyday presence in the South a little unsettling. Everyone talked about him like they knew him personally. Jesus Christ touched me, Jesus loves me, Christ is my savior and on and on. In my house Jesus Christ only made an appearance when Ma or Duncan stubbed a toe or dropped a plate.

  When Ceecee asked me which flock I was cavorting with in Savannah, I told her.

  ‘What do you mean, you don’t go?’ Her bottom lip hung unappealingly slack.

  ‘Just what I said. We don’t go.’

  ‘But why not?’

  ‘Because we’re not religious.’

  ‘Don’t you believe in God?’

  In those days, no one made any apologies for the fact that God stuck his nose in everything, our schools, our baseball games, even our monetary system. ‘Believing in God is different from going to church, Ceecee. We’ve just never gone to church. Except to see what it’s like. I did. With my friend Lottie. She’s Catholic.’

  ‘Are your parents Catholics?’

  ‘I just said, they’re not anything.’

  ‘But they must’ve been raised something.’

  Were they? I didn’t know, had never asked. Savannah was having a curious effect on my history, corroding holes where none, at least that I’d noticed, existed before.

  Ceecee’s knee started jiggling. ‘Anyway, what’d you think of church when you went?’

  ‘Boring, so boring I wanted to cry.’

  ‘How can you say that? It’s not boring at all!’ Her eyes shone a little maniacally as she sighed. ‘Going to church is an expression of love and praise for our Creator. When the Reverend speaks, the word of God spreads through the world, and He touches me, I know He loves me. Whenever I experience God’s word, I open my heart and let him in.’

  I couldn’t hide my smirk.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s just... You’re awfully, now don’t take this the wrong way Ceecee but you’re awfully, religious.’

  ‘So? I love Jesus and He loves me.’

  ‘Well okay. My family just doesn’t go in for all that, that’s all.’

  ‘You should open your heart.’

  ‘My heart is open.’ So were my eyes, I wanted to tell her. I wasn’t fooled by her religious enthusiasm, though I didn’t doubt she felt it. She and the other girls may have sung in the choir and studied the bible but I suspected their principles. Ceecee wasn’t any more kind–hearted or forgiving than Ma or Duncan.

  At dinner, I asked about religion. Mine specifically. Duncan said he was raised an Episcopalian.

  ‘What’s that? Like a Protestant?’

  ‘No, more like a catholic, lower–case “c”.’

  ‘So you went to confession and communion like the Catholics.’

  ‘Uh huh, we went through all the same malarkey.’

  ‘Then why not just be Catholic?’

  He chased a lump of meatloaf around with his fork. ‘Fair question. Why indeed? I guess because the Powells came from Great Britain, Scotland actually, and they were Episcopalians over there. When they went to Boston they found the closest thing to what they knew. Episcopalians, Anglicans, same thing.’

  ‘So we’re Scottish?’ Kilts and bagpipes and plaid and ... bagpipes.

  ‘Aye lass we are.’

  ‘You’re American.’ Ma stood up and scraped our plates onto hers. She’d have cuffed me if I’d been as rough with our tableware.

  ‘I know, but our family came from Scotland. I didn’t know that. What about you, Ma? Are you an Episcopalian, too?’ She looked at Duncan before she answered me.

  ‘No, my family came from Russia. From Kiev.’

  ‘Russia? Like ... chicken Kiev? Really?’ Russia was even more exotic than Scotland. ‘When did they come to the US?’

  ‘I don’t know which year exactly. Your great grandparents came over when your grandparents, my parents, were little. They settled in Boston.’

  ‘Are they Catholics?’

  She paused and chewed the inside of her mouth. ‘No, they’re Jewish.’

  I looked from one parent to the other. ‘Jewish? I’m Jewish?’

  Duncan answered. ‘Technically, yes. Your Ma was born into a Jewish family and Judaism is passed down on the mother’s side. So technically, uh, yes.’

  None of us said anything while I absorbed this bit of news. Ma stopped banging the plates together and Duncan watched me.

  ‘Is that why your parents don’t talk to us? Because of Ma?’ She flinched. ‘I’m sorry, Ma, I didn’t mean that. I–’

  ‘No. It’s true they didn’t approve of your Ma, but there’re lots of reasons they’re not in our lives. They didn’t approve of me either, for one thing. It wasn’t just your Ma, it was a lot more.’

  I mulled over the implications of what they were telling me. ‘So... if I... get married... and have children, they’re automatically Jewish too?’

  ‘Technically, yes. But as I said, we aren’t practicing. So you’re not really anything.’

  But I was. I was Jewish. Uncomfortable memories sprang to mind. I’d laughed at Jewish jokes. I’d told them. I’d done it my whole life. I’d laughed right along with my friends at my own heritage and didn’t even know it.

  ‘Honey? Are you okay?’

  I got up from the table. I could feel my face burning. ‘You should have told me.’

  ‘What difference does it make? It’s in the past. It shouldn’t matter.’

  ‘It makes a lot of difference! You don’t just let someone believe one thing for sixteen years, and then all of a sudden tell them something else. I mean, it’s my history! It’s who I am.’ As I ran upstairs, Jim’s comment resurfaced to bite me. I didn’t know where I came from. And I didn’t know who I was.

  Chapter 27

  1932 Savannah

  Mirabelle played by the rules and never let on that she was more than her niece’s all–time favorite relative. She got to see Cecile every day and make sure she was raised right. And it looked like she was. She managed to melt Clare’s heart, and even Julius, the stiff old codger, doted on his daughter. She turned out to have Mirabelle’s looks and Henry’s temperament, which was no bad thing. She was smart, and proved it with top marks in school. A constant parade of friends through the house cemented Mirabelle’s view that she was the most outgoing and lovable youngster around. For years Cecile didn’t give her parents so much as a day of worry. Then, when she was eleven, she made up for lost time.

  Over the course of the summer, the happy go lucky girl gave way to a miserable adolescent. She didn’t laugh often and stopped talking to everyone, even her Aunt Belle. Clare insisted there wasn’t anything to worry about and reminded Mirabelle about her own uncomfortable growing pains. Mirabelle wasn’t having any of it. There was something wrong with Cecile. She knew it with a mother’s instinct.

  Mirabelle couldn’t stand by any longer while Cecile fell deeper into herself. She suggested an outing, just the two of them, in Forsyth Park. Cecile was smart enough to know it was just an excuse, but though she tried to beg off, she was no match for
Mirabelle when it came to stubbornness.

  The park was in full bloom, the tulip poplars keeping time in the soft breeze, and moss on the trees smudging them out of focus. It was stifling beneath their layers of crinoline, but convention didn’t bend for the weather, so the pair munched on their lunches and thought cool thoughts.

  ‘I told you, Aunt Belle, nothing’s wrong.’ Cecile picked at her plate. She wasn’t hungry, she said.

  ‘I don’t believe you. Your face tells me different.’ Mirabelle watched her, thinking she was getting too thin. ‘Is it your father?’

  Cecile’s eyes flashed. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, he’s been pretty miserable since he stopped working.’ Julius’s job disappeared in the first few weeks after the Crash, when his bank went bust. He’d spent his life making a name for himself in finance, and wasn’t the sort of fellow who rolled easily with the punches. He was no picnic to be around when he was out of work.

  ‘No, it doesn’t bother me, really. We have Grandma’s money.’ She was right. They had more than enough to spare. Cecile was just a toddler when old Mister Reynolds died, leaving Missus Reynolds alone with her memories in the house on the square. Instead of rattling around there, the new widow left it to her husband’s ghost, furniture and all. She packed some clothes and a few mementos, locked the door behind her, and moved in with her eldest daughter. So Cecile grew up in the happy position of having a grandma under the same roof to spoil her rotten. Sadly for everyone except Mirabelle, Missus Reynolds dropped dead a few weeks after the Crash. True to her malicious promise, she left almost every last cent to Clare. There was a lot of money. And since Julius wasn’t a big believer in banks after watching his own close down, Mirabelle wouldn’t be surprised to find most of his wealth buried in pots in the garden. She smiled at the thought of him in his dressing gown, digging for it while Clare held the light.

  ‘No, that’s right. There’s plenty of money. But that’s not what I mean. I mean, are things, are they, all right at home?’