Lightning Bug

by Donald Harington

  She had made you do the next best thing to it. She had kept you confined to the house for the past five months.

  “Why couldn’t,” you would ask, “why couldn’t I just wear a ring and you tell people my husband’s in the service?”

  “Too late,” she’d say. “All my friends already know.”

  “But they’re your friends, not mine. I don’t care what they think.”

  “But I do, and I’m the one with a position to keep in this town.”

  “But,” you’d say, feeling as if you could not even think straight any more, as if you were unable to grasp the slightest bit of logic, “if your friends already know, what’s wrong with anybody seeing me?”

  “You don’t have to make a public spectacle of your sin!” she’d shout.

  “But,” you’d persist, clutching at one receding straw of logic, “what does my condition have to do with your position in this town?”

  “You’re my sister, aren’t you? You think I want everybody to know I’ve got a whore for a sister?”

  “But if you’ve already told your friends—” you’d say, and stop and wonder if you were making any sense at all, if you weren’t perhaps just babbling some blathering rubbish.

  Now things were turned around, and this was more confusing yet. You were hating that creature inside you and wishing you could kill it without killing yourself…or both. Once when it was kicking violently you had pounded your fists on it until you had become quite dizzy and it had stopped and you had thought it was dead.

  But Mandy was taking a loving interest in it all of a sudden, and when she had found out you’d been pounding on it, she had upbraided you.

  “What’re you trying to do, for Chrissakes, kill it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why, for the love of Pete?”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “You don’t want it? Are you out of your mind, girl? What have you got against babies? Pore defenseless little thing…. Pore, pore sweet little thing.” And she would even stroke and pat your belly till you felt like screaming.

  “It will be a cute little boy,” she would say, “and we could name him Saultus after Dad.”

  “It will be a disfigured monster,” you would say, “and I will name it Mandyvaughn after y’all.”

  “Well, I like that! That’s a fine lot of gratitude for all me’n Vaughn have done for you! Who feeds you? I ask you. Who gives you a place to stay, huh? Who the hell you think is gonna pay the goddamn hospital bill and the doctor bill? Huh? You answer me that!”

  And that had been the day you had run away. You had walked and walked, nearly out of the city, before Vaughn’s car had caught up with you and begun to move slowly along the road beside you, for another hour or so, with her at the window, saying over and over, every mile or so, “Tired yet? Hungry yet? Shamed yet?” until you gave in.

  And there had been the time you read in the newspaper about the law permitting abortions in the case of violent rape, and you had asked Mandy if she had known about that law, and, if so, why hadn’t she done something about it while there was still time.

  “How you gonna prove it was rape?” she’d said. “Who would believe you? If ever time you’d gone off in the bushes with a feller was rape, then, sister, you’re a regular rape-catcher. Besides, you won’t never tell who done it. They’ve got to catch the feller and make him confess, and if you won’t even tell who done it, how can they? Come on, honey, for the last time I ask you, please tell me who it was.”

  “I’m glad to know that’s the last time you’re asking me,” you’d said.

  And Vaughn and his endless remarks:

  “’Course she won’t tell you who done it. She’s hopin he’ll come back and do it again.”

  “Whoever he was, he must’ve been a awful big and strong feller, to of broken down her notorious resistance.”

  “Bet he had a pecker on him so thin and tiny she didn’t know she’d been raped until she found herself knocked up.”

  “Bet she run first thing to her dad and hollered, ‘Paw, a feller just ruined me! What are you goin to do about it?’ and ole Saultus he just smiles and says, ‘first I got to take care of that feller who ruined you last week.’”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me a bit if it was a gang shay, and she has quintuplets, each one different.”

  “Well, maybe they’ll catch the feller and put him on trial and the judge’ll call on her to testify, and he’ll say to her, ‘Miss, this offense occurred on or about the middle of June. Has the man ever bothered you before or since?’ and she’ll answer, ‘I’ll say he has! It’s just been rape, rape, rape, all summer long!’”

  That small, small room—it would not have been so bad if you could have locked yourself into it, but since you had refused to leave it, they had to come into it to vent their verbal indignities upon you, and it was crowded with the three of you in that small small room which you never left except to go to the bathroom—and Mandy had taken the lock off the bathroom door after she discovered you trying to take a bath.

  “Have you lost your senses completely?!” she stormed. “Don’t you know you can’t take a bath when you’re pregnant? Don’t you know you’re not supposed to immerse that pore thing in water?”

  “How’m I going to get clean?” you’d whined.

  “Just use a sponge, you idiot!”

  And you had used sponges, and Vaughn, sometimes, in your room, would say, “Pee Yew! I’ll shore be glad when warm weather comes so we can open that window and air it out in here.”

  And because the lock was removed from the bathroom door, he could barge in on you, saying, “Oops!” but lingering long enough to take a good look.

  “Why, I’ll declare!” he had exclaimed recently, pointing. “Lookee there, sugar, yore belly-button has popped wrongside out!”

  On the faded wallpaper of the small room was a calendar, March of 1922, with a large circle drawn around March 6, and heavy black X’s over March 7, March 8, March 9, March 10, March 11, March 12, March 13, March 14, March 15, March 16, March 17, March 18, March 19, March 20, March 21, March 22, March 23, March 24, March 25, March 26, March 27 and March 28.

  You were sitting in a chair with your feet propped up on the window sill, on March 29, counting the weeds in the vacant lot next door and then reading the script in the branches of the sycamore tree, when suddenly you felt a snap in your womb and then you flooded the chair and made a puddle around it. You went to the kitchen and looked for the mop. Where would Mandy keep the mop? You looked on the back porch. But you could not find the mop. So you got a towel from the bathroom. But when you returned to your room, you found that you could neither kneel nor squat to mop the floor. Using the chair as a brace, you slowly lowered yourself into a sitting position on the floor, with your legs out straight before you. You began to mop. Then the first pains started, and you had to stop mopping. You waited. The pain went away. You finished mopping. You found then you could not get yourself up off the floor. You tried to remember where Mandy had said she and Vaughn were going. You only half-listened to anything she’d said lately. Were they out playing cards with some friends? Had they gone shopping? Were they away off up in Hunton visiting Vaughn’s relatives for the weekend?

  If you could get up, you might go on to the hospital by yourself. Which hospital? you wondered. Where is it?

  You scooted backwards across the floor to your bed, and just as another pain started you turned over and got a good grip on the bedpost and pulled yourself up and collapsed on your back in the bed.

  That is where you spent the next seven hours, and when Mandy and Vaughn came home, around midnight, you were screaming.

  “You get her legs,” Vaughn said, “and I’ll get her arms and let’s see if we can carry her out and dump her in the car.”

  “It’s too late, I think,” Mandy said. “You know anyone who has a telephone?”

  “Not around here.”

  “Then drive on out and try to get Dr. Rory and I’ll stay
with her and try to deliver it if you don’t get back in time.”

  You screamed, and you screamed.

  It seemed like days passed before Vaughn returned. “This is all I could find,” he said. “Doc Rory’s out of town.”

  The stranger came and looked at you and then snapped at Mandy, “What are you sitting on your ass for? Why haven’t you got some water boiling on the stove and some clean towels ready?”

  Mandy got up off her ass. The stranger placed his cool hand on your brow and felt your pulse. “Easy, girl,” he said. “Easy.” It was the closest approximation to pleasant words you had heard in quite some time. But still you screamed.

  “Get out of the room!” the stranger said to Vaughn.

  “Aw,” said Vaughn, “it aint no different than watchin a mare foal.”

  “Is she your wife?” the man asked him.

  “Naw, she’s my sister-in-law, Doc. She aint even got a husband. Claims the guy raped her.”

  “That true?” he asked you.

  You screamed.

  “Listen,” he said to you, “do you want this baby?”

  You screamed, and thrashed your head violently from side to side.

  “She does too!” Mandy hollered, coming in and clutching the man’s sleeve and saying, “Look, Doc, we got to have that baby. Even if she don’t want it, I do. I’ll take care of it, Doc. Me and Vaughn caint have no children of our own, so I’d be more than happy to have it. Please, Doc—”

  “Get out of here, both of you!” he snapped. “I’ll holler for you if I need you.”

  Then you were alone with him, and he went to work.

  “Relax, girl,” he would say. “I swear, I never saw anybody sotense.

  “Relax. Try to take a deep breath.

  “Now. Bear down. Hard.

  “Relax. Easy. Easy, girl, easy. Deep breath.

  “Bear down.

  “Relax.

  “Bear down. You’re not bearing down. Pretend you’re trying to evacuate if you were constipated.

  “Ease up. Jesus Christ, girl, how long have you been tying yourself in knots?

  “Come on now, press! press! press!”

  He sighed loudly. You screamed loudly.

  “I don’t want to have to do a Caesarean. Need you in the hospital for that.

  “Let up.

  “Squeeze.

  “Goddamn you, mister, I told you to stay out of here! If you show your head again I’ll come after you with a scalpel!

  “Let up. I’m sure it’s a breach. Now relax completely, I’m going to try to turn it. Easy. Relax. Relax.”

  He gave you chloroform. For a while it was paradise. You heard nothing. You felt nothing. Later you heard:

  “Mr. Twichell, come back in here a minute! Listen, I want you to telephone for an ambulance.”

  “No telephone, Doc.”

  “Then go out and get one! No, wait, just get your wife, and the three of us will carry her out to the backseat of my car.”

  You were lifted, screaming, and manhandled out to the car. The doctor knelt on the floor of the rear seat beside you. “Twichell, you drive. And I mean drive!”

  More chloroform, blessed oblivion.

  A white room. Bright lights. People all around. An old white-haired man saying to the doctor, “What the hell does a goddamn interne know about giving Caesareans anyway? Shit, you don’t even know how to turn a baby! Here, nurse, she’s rousing, let’s clap that ether coat on her. That’s eno—”

  Another room. A woman in another bed. A nurse. Mandy. Mandy saying, “Well, sister, you can go out and get raped all you want to, now, and never worry about having any more babies.”

  You opened your mouth to scream again, but a calm question came out: “What do you mean?”

  “Doctor tied your tubes. Caint have no more babies.”

  “Why’d he do that?”

  “I told him to.” Smug, self-proud.

  “Now that’s not strictly true, Mrs. Twichell,” said the nurse, stepping forward. She carried a bundle in her arms. “The doctor simply asked for your permission. He himself considered it a wise thing to do, as future pregnancies might endanger her life.”

  “Well,” said Mandy, “after you take a gander at this little monstrosity you produced, you’ll be glad you caint have any more.”

  “It’s a beautiful baby,” the nurse protested, and brought the bundle forward and placed it in your arms. It was not a beautiful baby. It was hideous. It had a horribly misshapen head as if it had been hit with a sledgehammer in several places. It bore no resemblance to either its mother or its father. Thus you could not understand why you suddenly felt such deep, overwhelming love for it.

  “Is he…is he…all right?” you asked the nurse.

  “She,” she corrected you. “It’s a girl. And she’s just fine. Weighs eight pounds, eleven ounces. Not a thing wrong with her. She’ll be a beautiful girl.”

  “But all these bumps and creases in her skull…” you said.

  “Those’ll clear up. Always do. Give her time, and she’ll have a lovely head on her.”

  Later Mandy and Vaughn came together, with the old white-haired man.

  “How you feel?” the white-haired man said. “You had us pretty worried for a while there, but everything turned out just fine. That’s a near-perfect baby. Have you been thinking any about names? I’d like to get these papers filled out.”

  “Yes I have,” you said.

  “Fannie Mae Twichell!” Mandy said. “After Momma.”

  “That’s a right pretty name,” Vaughn said, and tried it out: “Fannie Mae.”

  You had been listening to the baby crying, and there was such a sweet quality about her cries, like songs, little songs. “Sonora,” you said to the doctor. Little song. “Sonora Bourne is her name.”

  “The hell with that crap!” Mandy said.

  The doctor said to you, “I understand the infant has no father. Legally, that is. You don’t plan to keep it, do you?”

  “Why not?” you said.

  “Well, don’t you understand, there would be difficulties…”

  “We’ll keep it, Doc!” said Mandy. “Just put down Fannie Mae Twichell and we’ll keep it.”

  “The child’s name is Sonora Bourne,” you said.

  “Well, look,” said the doctor, “this is just for the birth certificate, and you can change it later if you like. Why don’t I just put it down as Sonora Twichell?”

  “Oh no you don’t!” said Mandy. “It’s our baby and we got the right to name it, and its name is Fannie Mae Twichell, and if you don’t like it you know what you can do about it!”

  “Madam,” the doctor said, “I’m trying to compromise. She is the mother, after all, and as such she ought to have the right to name the infant, at least for the mere purpose of this certificate.”

  “Doc,” said Vaughn angrily, “you heard what my wife said. Now you put down Fannie Mae Twichell on that thing, goddamit, or I’m walkin out of here and washin my hands of any responsibility. I won’t pay a cent.”

  “Sir,” said the old man, “I personally don’t give a shit for your cents…or your sense.”

  “Come on, Mandy,” said Vaughn. “The hell with it.”

  “Bye bye, sister dear,” said Mandy. “Hope you have fun getting yourself out of this fix.”

  They left.

  “Shall we make it Sonora Twichell?” the doctor asked you.

  “Sonora Bourne,” you said.

  “Very well,” said the doctor, and took out his pen.

  But two days later Mandy came back, just as the nurse was bringing the baby in for feeding. She hovered over the bed. When you gave your breast to Sonora, Mandy said, “Hey, don’t do that!” and clutched at the baby and tried to pull her away from you. You slapped viciously at Mandy’s hand. She retreated, slightly, protesting, “That’s so…so backward! And it’s also unhealthy! And it will ruin your figure, and also it’s just not nice. You’re way behind the times, kid. I’ve been studying up
on it, and all the latest modem scientific—”

  “Shut up!” you said.

  After you had finished feeding Sonora, Mandy came and took a good look at her, and exclaimed disgustedly, “Holy cow, isn’t she gosh-awful ugly, though! I’d have to be blindfolded before I’d let that creature suck on my tits. I just don’t know if I can bear to keep her….”

  But when the time came for your release from the hospital, there she was, and Vaughn with her. “Vaughn paid the bill, after all!” Mandy declared with a laugh. “I bet those jerks thought he couldn’t do it. But just wait till you see all the things we’ve bought for the baby!”

  Among all the things she had bought for the baby, you discovered when you were returned to the house on West Nineteenth, were a dozen glass bottles with rubber nipples.

  You ignored them.

  One day after finishing your bath you returned to your room and found Mandy holding the baby in her lap and trying to force a bottle on her. “Come on, Fannie Mae, sweetums, open your nasty little mouth.”

  You slapped her.

  She dumped the baby on the bed, and slapped you back. Then she slapped you once more, harder. “Damn you!” she shouted. “We paid hard money for them bottles, by God, and I mean to use them!”

  “You leave my baby alone, you,” you said.

  “She’s not your baby!” she shrieked.

  You said nothing more. You said nothing more at all, not at all, for the days and weeks following. You said not a word to either of them. You did not even talk to your baby.

  Nearly two weeks went by before it dawned on Mandy and Vaughn that you had not been saying anything.

  “Cat got your tongue?” Mandy asked one day.

  You did not reply.

  “She’s just being high and mighty,” Vaughn explained. “Just stuck up.”

  “Say something, sister,” Mandy urged you.

  You did not.

  “See if I care, then,” Mandy said. “Button your lip for the rest of your life, for all I care. Who’d want to listen to you anyhow?”

  But your continued silence began to fray their nerves.

  “Want a nice piece of custard pie?” Mandy would ask, and wait for you to respond. You did not.

  Vaughn would sneak up on you and yell “BOO!” at the top of his lungs but you would not even flinch.