The Banty House

by Brown, Carolyn

“Maybe so.” Ginger stood up and started back toward the house.

  She’d gone only to the corner when she heard a vehicle and looked over her shoulder to find Sloan pulling up to the curb.

  “Need a ride?” he asked.

  “Love one.” She rounded the front of the truck.

  He bailed out and went around the back side to open the door for her. The long bench seat was covered with a blanket and the carpet was gone, leaving only bare metal on the floor, but she felt like Cinderella again as he helped her into the truck.

  “I was in town getting some weed killer for the cemetery, and I picked up some cat food for the new kitten. Did you see it?” he asked.

  “Yep, but there’s two of them now. Hetty is the black one you brought in. But I found Magic on the back porch. She’s white and pretty close to the same size, and they seem to get along real well. Thank you for bringing food,” she said.

  “No problem,” he said as he put the truck in gear and headed on down the street. “So, what made you decide to walk to town rather than to the log this evening?”

  “It’s a little shorter distance, and it’s gettin’ harder to carry all this.” She pointed to her stomach. “If I keep getting bigger, the sisters can just roll me into the doctor’s office on Thursday. I feel like I’m filled up with concrete.”

  For some odd reason, Sloan looked relieved. Did he think she was avoiding the log because of him?

  He parked in the driveway at the Banty House just as the rain started to dot the windshield. He got out, ran around the truck, opened the door, and scooped her up in his arms. He took off in a dead run toward the porch while hail beat down on them. She wrapped her arms around her belly to protect the baby, even though it was only a few yards from the truck to the shelter of the porch.

  She’d never been carried by a strong man—or any man, for that matter—before in her life. She could feel his heart racing in her ear and her own pulse rising. The experience took her breath away, even if hailstones were falling on them.

  Betsy threw the door open and motioned them inside. “Did she faint again?”

  “No, but I heard the hail hitting the top of the truck and didn’t want her to slip and fall on it,” he explained.

  “That’s good.” Betsy slammed the door behind them. “Let’s get a good pot of hot chocolate going. You sure ain’t leavin’ until this stops, Sloan.”

  “Thank you.” He set Ginger down. She started to lean in and hug him, but quickly stopped herself. Someone as good looking as Sloan Baker would never have a romantic interest in a woman like her, she thought. Besides, she was pregnant, and she would never settle down in a place like Rooster. Her child needed to be raised in a place that had ballet lessons and maybe soccer or T-ball for little kids. Ginger wanted it—boy or girl—to have all the things she’d never gotten to experience, and it dang sure wasn’t in Rooster.

  Suddenly, Sloan jumped and then chuckled. “I guess they think I’m a tree.” He pointed to both kittens, who had their claws sunk into the legs of his camouflage pants.

  Betsy laughed out loud and pulled them free, carried them to the parlor, and put them on the floor. “They’ll have to learn manners, and I’m just the one to teach them. Y’all come on into the kitchen with me. Connie and Kate will be here soon. They’re down in the basement checkin’ on the new batch of shine that Kate’s been workin’ on.” She went to the basement door and yelled, “Sloan and Ginger are here. I’m making hot chocolate, and it’s hailing cats and dogs and baby elephants.”

  Both of the sisters appeared at the top of the steps within a minute or two, and Connie immediately looked around for Hetty and Magic. “The babies were right here under the table when I went down to the basement. Did you hide them so you can keep them in your room tonight?” She eyed Betsy suspiciously.

  Betsy shook a wooden spoon at her. “I most certainly did not. They were being bad, so I banished them to the parlor.”

  “Tough love, huh?” Sloan chuckled.

  Both kittens slid around the doorjamb, with Hetty in the lead. They stopped long enough to have a squabble under the table and then took off like lightning streaks back to the living room.

  The thought of having twins danced through Ginger’s mind again. The best thing she could ever do for her baby was give it a sibling—something she had never had. Sure, she had lots of foster siblings, all ages even. But a blood-kin sister or brother was something she’d always coveted.

  “Guess hailstorms and thunder don’t bother them so much,” Kate said.

  “I just hope that we don’t have to put a new roof on the house because of this,” Connie sighed.

  “It sounds worse than it really is since y’all got a metal roof a couple of years ago,” Sloan reassured her.

  Ginger couldn’t imagine Lucas saying something like that to Connie. He’d be too busy figuring out how much he could get for the silverware at the pawnshop, or how he could get them to give him a $1,000 down payment for a new roof. Then they’d never see him again.

  The lucky woman who wound up with Sloan would sure enough get her Prince Charming. Ginger was surprised that he hadn’t already been snagged, but then the Carson sisters had hinted that he’d been sent home from the military with some kind of problem. Maybe that’s what kept the women from lining up at his front door.

  Chapter Nine

  Kate said the rain that fell all day on Wednesday was a blessing from heaven. According to her, it was just what the corn needed to sprout and grow. Ginger wasn’t so sure she agreed with her when it was still coming down in a slow, steady drizzle and she couldn’t take her walk after supper. She went to her room and took a book that looked interesting from the shelf. She stretched out on the chaise lounge. Normally, a story would have taken her to another world. Not so that rainy evening. Minutes ticked away slowly as she stared out the window at the falling rain.

  “Hey.” Betsy poked her head in the door. “We was wonderin’ if you’d like to watch our programs with us?”

  “What?” Ginger hadn’t seen a television in the house, and she’d been in every room.

  “We have three shows we watch on Wednesday nights,” Betsy said. “Well, they’re not really on television right now, but we buy the DVDs when they come out and we watch them. I make popcorn. We have cold soda pop so we can pretend we’ve gone to the show in Hondo like we did once in a while when we were kids.”

  “I’d love to.” Ginger closed the book and laid it aside. “I’ll make a bathroom stop and then be right down.”

  “The lights go out at seven o’clock, and the shows start right after that. I’m going to make the popcorn right now. See you in the parlor.” Betsy waved and then disappeared.

  Ginger was baffled. She’d just dusted the parlor the day before, and she hadn’t seen a television. Maybe, she thought, they hung a sheet up over the fireplace and showed old home movies on it. “No, that can’t be right,” she muttered. “Betsy said DVDs.”

  The buttery aroma of popcorn floated up the stairs as she started down. Sometimes she’d keep back a few dollars of her tip money and sneak off to watch a movie when Lucas was drinking and playing his fantasy games on the television in their apartment.

  She shouldn’t have spent the money for a movie since they slept on a mattress on the floor and she cooked in pots that she’d gotten from a junk shop. They couldn’t afford cable and the only station that was clear had been one that showed nothing but news, but Lucas had his games, his DVDs, and enough joysticks so that four people could play. When he was killed, she had sold the whole lot to one of his friends and paid a month’s rent with the money.

  Only one lamp was burning when she reached the parlor. Kate motioned her into the room, pointed toward one of the crimson recliners, and said, “That’s your seat right there. Betsy and I sit on the sofa, and Connie has the other chair. Tonight we are watching two episodes of The Golden Girls, two of Designing Women, and one of NCIS. We will start the evening with NCIS.”

  “I t
hought maybe Wednesday night would be church night.” Ginger eased down into the chair and threw the lever to prop her feet up.

  Connie did the same thing in the matching chair. “Nope. God can forgive all our sins on Sunday morning. We never have gone for the midweek service.”

  Kate sat down on the end of the sofa and propped her feet on the coffee table. Betsy brought in four brown paper bags of popcorn and four candy bars. She passed them out and then went back to the kitchen and returned with a bottle of root beer for each of them.

  She took her place on the sofa, picked up the remote, and pushed a button. To Ginger’s surprise, a panel on the wall above the fireplace slid back to reveal a big-screen television.

  “That’s pretty cool,” she muttered.

  “Mama didn’t believe in modern things,” Betsy explained. “She thought we were all better off without. We had the television put in about thirty years ago, but we made a vow that we’d only watch it once a week. We hate commercials, so we buy whatever shows we like and watch them over and over. Sometimes we get a season and hate it. When that happens, we give it to the library in Hondo.”

  Ginger had seen reruns of the three shows they mentioned at the shelter, so she was familiar with them. “Do you ever watch movies?”

  “Oh, yes,” Connie answered. “When it’s my turn to choose, I usually pick two movies. I love Western movies like Quigley Down Under.”

  “And when it’s my turn,” Betsy said, “I like Justified and Longmire. You’ll have to look through everything we have when it’s your turn here in about four weeks. We just started all over this evening. Kate got to choose tonight. Next week is my turn. Then Connie’s and then yours.”

  Ginger wasn’t even sure that she’d be in Rooster in a month. Since the ladies had been so kind as to offer to let her stay, she’d given it some thought. She hadn’t settled on a definite yes or no, not by any means. If she did stick around, though, she wondered if they had seasons of Friends in their collection. She’d watched reruns of that show in the last foster home she’d stayed in.

  “We’re watching NCIS first because sometimes it shows dead bodies and autopsies and such,” Betsy explained. “Kate loves it, but then she needs to see something funny to get the images out of her mind.”

  “I understand that very well.” Ginger opened her candy bar and took a bite.

  Betsy turned off the lamp, and when the room went dark, a night-light came on out in the foyer.

  “Here we go.” Kate started the show with the touch of a button on one of the remotes on the sofa between her and Betsy.

  Ginger had never seen the episode that started on the screen. It had to do with a woman in the military having a baby that belonged to some big shot over in one of those foreign countries. The baby’s father’s people wanted to kidnap the child as soon as it was born, since it would be heir to a big oil business.

  Ginger’s hands shook when she thought about what could happen if Lucas’s folks ever found out about her child. Of course, everything turned out well at the end of the show, but life wasn’t always like that. Maybe it would be best if she told the sisters that she’d be moving on west after tomorrow.

  She needed to get settled, and the sooner the better. A permanent home was important. Her baby needed to go to the same school from kindergarten all the way to graduation. It needed to make friends that would last longer than the few weeks or months that the two of them might live in one spot if she decided to keep moving on toward the west.

  Betsy sniffled at the end of the show. “We’ve watched this episode dozens of times, but I always hold my breath during the gunfight when Gibbs is delivering that baby girl.”

  Kate handed her a tissue. “And she always cries at the ending.”

  “Well, I did always want a daughter.” Betsy blew her nose loudly, then tossed the tissue into a small trash can beside the sofa.

  Both Magic and Hetty ran into the room, did some wrestling and growling under the coffee table, then crawled up on the sofa to settle down in Betsy’s lap. “Look at you sweet babies,” she crooned. “Y’all have come to comfort me when I’m sad.”

  “You can’t have both of them.” Kate held out her hands. “I get to hold one.”

  “And I get one when this show is over. You have to share,” Connie piped up from her chair.

  “I love animals more than both of y’all, and the kittens know it,” Betsy said.

  “Maybe you do,” Kate agreed. “But that don’t mean we don’t love them at all, and they belong to the whole bunch of us, not just to you.”

  Betsy handed over Magic, and Kate laid the kitten on her shoulder like she would a baby. The comment Betsy made about wanting a daughter resonated so much with Ginger that she crossed her fingers and sent up a silent prayer asking God, if she was carrying twins, to make one of them a girl.

  “And now we have an hour’s worth of Designing Women,” Kate announced as she picked up a second remote and hit a button.

  As luck would have it, the first episode had to do with Annie Potts’s character having trouble with her ex-husband’s new girlfriend. Ginger had threatened to go back to the shelter once when she found out that Lucas had brought another woman to their apartment. He’d sworn that his three friends, Chip, Lil’ Dan, and Tat, had been there the whole time, and she’d come around to buy some product from him. The next night when she’d come home from work, she’d smelled expensive perfume on her pillow, and Lucas hadn’t come back for three days. By the time he appeared again—with his friends in tow—she hadn’t even cared enough to argue with him.

  My life would make a television series, she thought, then changed her mind. Folks would say that there was too much drama and way too few funny moments in her story, but then, the truth was always much weirder than fiction.

  It seemed only fitting that they ended the evening with The Golden Girls. From Gibbs delivering a new baby, to women running a design shop, to senior citizens—life was pretty well covered right there. Ginger put each of the ladies into the roles played out by the older ladies in the show. Kate became Dorothy, because she was tall. Betsy was Blanche, all spicy and with a deeper Southern accent than her two sisters. That left Connie as Rose, which wasn’t an exact match. Connie wasn’t ditzy, but she was shorter and a little rounder than her sisters.

  When the credits began to roll, Kate shut the power off to the television, hit the right button to slide the doors shut, and put the remote control devices into the end-table drawer. “Well, that’s it until next week.”

  “Why do you have two controls?” Ginger finished off the last handful of popcorn in her bag, then wadded it up and tossed it into the trash.

  “One for the DVD player and the television, and one to close the doors.” Kate yawned. “I love Wednesday nights. You know, we really should start inviting Sloan to movie night. I bet he’d enjoy it. Next time you see him, Ginger, ask him if he’d like to join us.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Ginger popped the footrest down and stood up. “Thank you for the entertainment. I hate to run, but all that root beer has hit bottom.” Were the ladies trying to play matchmaker between her and Sloan? If so, they were going to be disappointed, because Ginger wasn’t sure she could ever trust a guy again—not even one as sweet as Sloan.

  “Go right on. We’re all going up to our rooms, anyway. We’ll see you in the morning,” Betsy said.

  “We’ll be leaving right after breakfast,” Kate called out. “Your doctor’s appointment is at nine o’clock and then we go to the beauty shop, and after that we do our grocery shopping.”

  “I’ll be ready when I come downstairs in the morning,” Ginger yelled as she hurried up the steps and practically jogged to the bathroom. When she finished using the toilet, she took a bath and brushed her teeth, then padded across the hallway barefoot to the bedroom she’d been using.

  She stretched out on the comfortable bed and laid a hand on her stomach. “Tomorrow we find out just when you’ll be here and maybe if you are a g
irl or a boy—or twins. I love you, baby, whatever you are and however many there are of you. We’re going to figure out our lives together and do the best we can to be happy in whatever lot we get thrown at us.”

  Ginger didn’t know who was more nervous at the doctor’s office the next morning. The nurse took her back to a room, where she told her to take off her top, put on the gown to open in the front, and lie on her back on the bed. Getting comfortable on such a narrow bed was no easy feat, and Ginger feared that she’d fall off until all the Carson sisters trooped right into the room with her.

  When Betsy took Ginger’s hand in hers, Ginger’s fears floated away. If she fell, someone would catch her for sure. Connie laced her plump little fingers into Ginger’s left hand, giving her even more support. Kate took a place at the head of the bed and kept a hand on her shoulder. When Dr. Emerson came into the room, Ginger wasn’t a bit surprised to see that he was gray-haired and wore wire-rimmed glasses. That was exactly how she pictured a doctor who would have treated the ladies for most of their lives.

  “Well, good mornin’ to all y’all. Looks like there’s going to be a baby at the Banty House pretty soon. Let’s take a listen to your tummy and then measure you,” he said. “Is it a boy or a girl?”

  “She hasn’t been to the doctor yet,” Betsy answered. “This is her first visit.”

  “Good Lord, child!” Dr. Emerson jerked the end of the stethoscope away from her stomach. “Why didn’t you go get proper prenatal care?”

  “I couldn’t afford it,” Ginger answered honestly.

  “Well, you’re in my hands now, and we’ll do our best to see to it that everything goes smoothly from here on. We’ll definitely need an ultrasound today and blood work, and I’ll send you home with a bottle of vitamins. Do you have any idea how much you weighed before you got pregnant?” He repositioned the scope on her stomach.

  “One twenty,” Ginger said.

  “Well, you’re at one forty today, so that’s good,” he told her. “Healthy heartbeat. Sounds like a girl to me, and I’m not often wrong, but we’ll see what the ultrasound says. I’m going to send Linda Sue in to draw some blood and take care of that business, and then we’ll talk again about a due date.”