Rosalind

by Stephen Paden

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank the following people for their support and editing prowess. Christina Williams, Olivia Diamond and Darcy Troville.

  While this fictional book deals in dark, difficult subject matter relating to children and sexual abuse, the threat to millions of children is real. If you or anyone you know is a victim of this horrible crime, please contact one of the various organizations (which are too many to list here) listed in a simple Google™ search.

  - Stephen Paden

  © Stephen C. Paden, 2013. All rights reserved.

  Cover: Anika Hennes

  Please visit my blog at: http://www.thebusinessofbeingbirds.wordpress.com

  The right of Stephen Christopher Paden to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.

  Prologue

  "What kind of question is that?" Paul asked.

  "Do you?" Henrietta asked again.

  He sighed then smiled. "Yeah I love you, now come on."

  She laid down on the blanket and he climbed on top of her; spreading her legs and putting his tongue in her mouth. She wasn't exactly new to this routine, so she accommodated and kissed him back. When he moved his mouth down to her neck, she let out a whimper. She had never felt this good before and she could feel her panties getting wet.

  "Does that make you happy?" he asked.

  Without hesitation she nodded.

  He continued to kiss her neck and started to slide his hand inside of her blouse. Normally she would have made him go slower, but the combination of his tongue on her neck and her imagination of their perfect life together made her want him to keep going.

  Three babies, she said to herself. They would grow up to be lawyers or doctors and war heroes. She didn't care. His rough, farm-weathered hands felt good against her smooth skin. She whimpered again, and he pushed his hands under her bra and onto her breast. His fingers pressed down on her nipples and she wanted to scream, but she held it back. His tongue returned to her mouth and the sensation was something of a mystery—on one hand she was trying her best not to cry out in pleasure, but on the other, she wondered how he could balance all of this handiwork at the same time.

  No.

  No, no.

  She suddenly became frightened, but not of his advances and how good they felt on her body. It was where this was leading. Her mother had skirted around the topic of sex, mostly out of her own repression, but Henrietta's friends, Betty Miller and Joan Combs, had filled in the gaps on what to expect, what boys liked, what boys wanted from girls.

  She pushed him away, but he only lifted his head and smiled down on her, then resumed. His kisses grew less passionate and he started biting, gently at first, but then she became concerned that he was going to leave a mark. She pushed him back again, but he came back this time and put his face in hers.

  "What's wrong, Henri?"

  "I don't wanna go too far," she replied. "You know…get pregnant?"

  "Would I do that to you? Come on Henri, I already told you I loved you." The left corner of his mouth raised slightly higher than the right, and she melted beneath him. His hands wandered from her breasts to her thighs as he continued to work on her neck. She didn't care about him leaving marks anymore. He reached between her legs and pushed her slip up around her waist, pulled her underwear down, and undid his pants.

  She felt a jolt of pain as he entered her, but her reflexes caused her to grab his back and pull him closer. The pain increased, but far beneath it was a hint of pleasure.

  The pain…

  She moaned. Tears streaked the sides of her head as he moved faster and faster. Suddenly he stopped and let out a grunt. He collapsed on her and breathed heavily. She tried to breathe, but found it difficult underneath his bulky frame. He pushed himself up suddenly and rolled over against a few stalks of corn. She slowly caught her breath and turned over to him.

  "You promise I won't get pregnant?"

  "So what if you do, Henri? We love each other, right? My Pa was as young as me when he married my mother."

  "What about school?" she asked.

  "Dammit, Henri. Why you gotta ruin a beautiful moment?" He propped himself up on one elbow and turned to her. "What if I don't wanna go to school?"

  "But you said—"

  "I don't care what I said. And what's wrong with just gettin' married and havin' kids and just workin'?"

  Henrietta saw her dreams crash down from Heaven into a field of corn, most of the wreckage landing right between her legs. She felt squishy between her legs and reached down to pull up her underwear. She pulled her slip down.

  How did things change so quickly?

  They had talked about the future on several occasions and their vision was always the same—three children, white house, green yard, dinner on the table when he got home—but what was he saying now? She needed an answer.

  "I don't want nothin' to change. We talked about our life together. We had it all worked out. Don't you still want that?" she asked.

  "Yeah, I guess. I just don't think school is the answer to nobody's problems. It's too far away, for one. I wouldn't see you but every Summer. And think of it this way, we can get a head start on our family now."

  "But you said I wouldn't get pregnant. I don't want no babies."

  "Don't tell me you don't know about the birds and bees. And you wanted it as bad as I did," he said, pulling up his trousers.

  "I'm not dumb. I know about them," she said, turning away from him and laying on her side. "It hurts."

  "Don't be a sissy. Come on, it's gettin' late," said Paul. He stood up and stretched his arms toward the sky. He put on one suspender at a time and then stretched one hand out to Henrietta. "Your dad'll kill me if I don't get you home."

  "My dad would kill you if he knew what you just did to me," she said, smiling at him.

  He looked at her and laughed. "He sure would."

  He grabbed the blanket and folded it across his shoulder. They took their time walking back to her house, gazing at the stars and holding hands the entire way.

  ***

  Henrietta's life gave way to routine; the same, uneventful day repeating itself. Four years after Rosalind was born, she finally gave up the dream that she and Paul would have any of the things they talked about in cornfields on those Summer nights in Leaks Field, and by the time Rosalind turned ten, she'd resigned herself to the that fact that she was just waiting for something to happen, and she wasn't too upset at the idea that that something would be death.

  Paul had introduced her to something that helped her cope; a weed that made you feel good when you smoked it and sometimes it even gave you the giggles. In 1957, a new pick-me-up found its way into the Stump household called Codeine. The hospitals used it to help patients recover from surgery and to relax them, and when Paul started spending half of his paycheck from Tom Garrison's Auto on the pills, Henrietta was hooked and so was he. By 1959, they were full blown addicts.

  Paul would never go to college for mechanical engineering, and nine months later, Rosalind was born.

  ***

  Henrietta's friends, Betty and Joan, had gone off to college or married men who had, and they were now living the dream that Henrietta had long ago forsaken. They came back to town to visit a few times, but when Joan whispered to Betty once when they both sat on a couch in Henrietta's small trailer, they both nodded and agreed that Henrietta had become something foreign to
them, like a picture of something familiar that was faded and torn with time. They had, at length, talked about the first time they visited her when Rosalind was around six years old. Joan had even remarked that Henrietta was a great mother and Rosalind was a spectacular child, even though they didn't have much in the way of anything. But that last visit, Henrietta, Joan had told Betty on the drive back, was no longer worth their time. And Rosalind was nothing more than a ghost who never looked up or smiled or did anything that her six-year-old self had done.

  Neither Joan nor Betty would ever see Henrietta again, but in the stagnant pool of Henrietta's life, she would never notice.

  So life went on for Henrietta and Paul, and while her friends had moved on and experienced the forwardness, the progression that life had to offer, Henrietta and Paul were locked in time. And so was Rosalind.

  Chapter 1

  Henrietta knew the stove-pipe was clogged because the room was filling with smoke, and Henrietta Stump hated nothing more than smelling like burnt pine, even though everything in the house reeked of it.

  She grabbed the pliers that Paul left sitting by the stove, but they had gotten too close and were now burning her hands. She threw them on the ground, cursed Paul up and down, and then grabbed a towel from the kitchen. She wrapped it around her hand, picked up the pliers and started tapping gently against the pipe every few inches or so, hoping that this would knock loose the soot that culminated around the circumference of the black tube.

  Satisfied that the pipe was clear enough, Henrietta opened the door of the mobile home and let the remaining smoke billow out into the cold, fall air.

  Baby Jared had stopped crying, and this was just fine by Henrietta. She went over to him and pulled the unevenly knitted afghan over to protect against the chill.

  Rosalind finished the dishes and grabbed her jacket that was two sizes too big. Frumpy didn’t even begin to describe the way she looked wearing it, but it didn't bother her. She was never going to be a prom queen (she didn’t even know what a prom queen was) or even pretty, so she carried herself as such: two ponytails held up by pieces of yarn from her mother's stash, a stained white blouse, and a red skirt splotched with soot, dirt, and grease. Her skin was a complex map of scratches, bruises, dirt, and small burns from the fireplace or the frying pan, but underneath it was pale and littered with freckles.

  "Rosa, go fetch some wood. It's gonna get shit-cold tonight," her mother told her.

  "Yes, momma," Rosalind replied. She pulled her galoshes on and went outside to the cord of wood that rested between two sycamores a few yards from the back of the trailer. She came back with two, then three, then two, then two more pieces of wood and put them in the wooden box her father had built three summers ago. Once it was filled, she took her coat off and hung it by the door.

  "Now finish them dishes and make Jared a bottle. I'm feelin' real tired and I need a nap," said Henrietta. She went back to the hole-ridden couch and pulled a cover over her legs. "And we're having fried chicken tonight. I laid some out."

  Rosalind looked around the counter.

  "Momma, there ain't no—"

  "Goddamnit Rosa, I'm trying to sleep! Momma needs some rest." Baby Jared, startled by his screaming mother, started wailing. "Cover your baby brother," she moaned.

  Henrietta fell asleep a few minutes later, despite Jared's screaming. Rosalind looked at her mother on the couch and then at her brother in the tomato crate that had been turned into a bed and didn't so much as sigh.

  A few pats on the back calmed him and he fell asleep. As soon as she was convinced he was out, she went to the freezer and pulled out a package of chicken to thaw. Her father would be home in a few hours, so she filled the sink half full of lukewarm water and placed the chicken face down in it. He would want some potatoes, so she grabbed four big ones from below the sink and peeled them, cut them into slices and put them in a bowl, throwing pepper and salt on them before she put them in the frying pan. As the heat rose from the pan, her forehead began to bead with sweat. She wiped it away with her forearm and dropped the slices of potatoes into the crackling oil.

  She looked down at the frying pan. If she would have known that life could be better than what it was, she would have cried.

  ***

  "Where's dinner?" asked her father. He and Henrietta sat on the couch, smoking something from a metal pipe that Rosalind had seen them with on many occasions. It didn't smell anything like the tobacco he sometimes rolled in cigarette papers, but he'd told her once to 'shut up about it, it's medicine.' When they were done passing it back and forth, her father grabbed a small paper bag from his pocket and dumped out two pills: one for Henrietta and one for him. He handed hers to her and watched with a grin as she swallowed it.

  Rosalind watched as the baby stuck his arms out of the crate, grabbing at something only he could see or imagine. Rosalind didn't know it was and she didn't care. She didn't hate him and she didn't love him and she felt guilty for her ambiguity. But she also felt that if it wasn't for her, Jared would lay in his crate, shitting himself and starving to death.

  He'd be better off, she thought.

  She fixed her father a plate. He liked to be served first because, after all, he was the one working and providing for the family and, while they didn't have much, what they did have was all thanks to him.

  She handed the plate to him. He took it and waved her away, staring at the fuzzy picture on the television. She handed her mother her plate, and she dreamily took it and placed it on her lap.

  The milk that was on the stove was warm, perhaps too warm. She fanned the steam from the top of it and then poured it into the glass baby bottle, hoping it wouldn't burn through. She put the baby bottle to her lips and determined it was too hot, so she put the bottle in the window sill to let it cool. After it was cool enough, she took it over to Jared and shoved it in his mouth, propping it between the afghan and the side of the crate.

  Everyone looked happy (or at least content) except Rosalind, but Rosalind was the only one in the house who took notice of that. She made a small plate for herself and sat on the floor next to her father. After swallowing a few bites, she put her fork down on the plate and cleared her throat.

  "Momma?"

  "What is it?" she said.

  "I ain't been feelin' good lately. And I—" Rosalind stopped. She was entering a zone where children rarely went with their parents, but she had to know. It was her body, after all.

  "I ain't got all day, Rosa," her mother said.

  "I been feelin' sick. Most time's in the mornin'. And I don't get my monthly no more."

  "Oh, goddamnit, Henrietta! I work all day long and I gotta come home and listen to my daughter talkin' about her hole? Are you kidding me?" he slurred.

  "I'll talk to you about it later, Rosa. You know goddamn better than to talk about that shit around your father. Now, be quiet and let him watch his fuckin' shows," she said. Rosa took a few more bites and then excused herself to clean the kitchen. She went back to grab her father's plate and get him seconds(he always had an appetite, something Rosalind knew about all too well) and brought it back to him. Her mother's plate was rearranged a bit, only missing a few bites of chicken and one French fry. Once, she had dumped her mother's leftovers onto his plate and tried to pass that off as seconds, but her father saw her do it and slapped her so hard he knocked a tooth out.

  But she learned.

  She poured her mother's leftovers into the skillet and put all of it onto a new plate and covered it in aluminum foil for her father's lunch tomorrow.

  She walked through the living room to her room, convinced that no one even noticed her pass by. She closed the door to her bedroom but knew that it was just a lie. Doors were meant to protect, to provide privacy, but hers would no more protect her from her father than would throwing a pillow at a North Korean.

  She knew the drill.

  Her mother would pass out an hour after dinner (high on the pills or the weed, Rosalind didn't know) like she alw
ays did. Rosalind would go into the living room and change Jared with a fresh cloth diaper, like she always did. She'd sit there and rock him to sleep with a new bottle of milk. Her father would turn off the television and sit there in the quiet living room with her, staring at her like a frog does to a fly, and work himself up, rubbing his crotch, and once he was ready, she'd put the demon down to bed, go to her room, and get ready for him.

  She knew the drill.

  And about a week after it first started, she learned that while he was on top of her, she didn't have to be there at all; it was a trick that let her escape somewhere else while it happened. She fell down on her mattress and reached underneath it, pulling out a folded up page from a J.C. Penny catalog that had long since been burned, page by page, to keep the fires burning at Casa de Stump.

  Rosalind unfolded it and held it up to the light. Her eyes strained at first because the sun had gone down and she didn't have a lamp in her bedroom, but they quickly adjusted. Most of the image she could see from memory. She was a beautiful, blond-haired woman who encompassed the entire page; her elbows sticking out in perfect symmetry; her delicate, porcelain hands on her hips; her snow-white teeth shining at Rosalind. She drug her dirty fingers over the dress that the woman was wearing and smiled. If only she could wear this dress and look this beautiful, then her family would gasp and say that she was too high class for this town, that she ought to go up north to Louisville and become a model. No, not Louisville. New York. That's where the models went. Or Paris.

  She lay on her back and stared at the woman. Yes, she would go to New York tonight, and walk around on the avenues with tall buildings on each side of the streets. She would walk with a handsome man who wore a sharp, black suit with a bow-tie and his shoes would be shiny. And the people would stop whatever they were doing when they walked by. They would admire Rosalind. Because she was beautiful.

  She unbuttoned her blouse and pulled down her skirt and underwear. And she waited. She waited for her father to take her to New York.