Hope House

by Tracy L Carbone

“Why not?” Gloria asked. She couldn’t imagine parents turning away their grown daughters under any circumstances, much less horrible ones like the cab driver described.

  “Because then they are no use to anyone. They can make no more money to give to the family. And no one will marry them.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they have the evil now. They have white babies but don’t have no sex with the white men. No sex with no one. Mr. Puglisi only lets virgins in. And they are virgins still when they come out. They have all the white babies, with no sex. It is the bad magic and the locals are afraid of them. It is sacrilegious, a mockery of the Virgin Mary! Besides, how do they have white babies when they are black women?”

  Kurt looked across at Gloria in the dark back seat. “In Vitro,” he said.

  She nodded. Maison D’Espoir was a real place on the map which was some consolation. It wasn’t a nursing school though but rather a baby farm filled with young Haitian virgins—who somehow mysteriously gave birth to Caucasian children.

  Dr. Tad Boucher wasn’t raping the girls. He was implanting them with embryos from Caucasian eggs and sperm and so producing babies to sell through Mick’s adoption agency.

  The financial impropriety and baby smuggling, however Mick did it, were secrets the bastard would kill to protect. Especially since the biological parents on record with the courts were fictional. Names which were spinoffs of Gloria’s. Who were the real parents? Whose sperm and eggs were mixed in all those damnable Petri dishes?

  Eggs were expensive. Gloria had looked into it herself years ago, thinking maybe she’d buy someone’s egg and at least be able to experience childbirth even if the child wasn’t related to her.

  Gloria gulped. But these children were related to her. Her DNA was in Alison Gander. And all the legal donating mothers they knew about had variations of Gloria’s name, so chances were those children were related as well. Gloria wasn’t their mother but someone related to her was. But who? And how?

  Dr. Boucher would know.

  “You’ve got to take us to Maison D’Espoir. Right away,” she said. “You have to drive faster.”

  “It is a long drive up into the mountains. In the dark it is even longer. I will need more money.”

  Kurt handed him a hundred dollar bill which the cabbie tucked into his pocket. “You better buckle your belts. It is not going to be an easy ride.”

  7.

  JFK International Airport, New York, late evening

  “What do you mean all the flights are booked?”

  The hairy ticket woman glared at Mick. “Pat,” her nametag read. A fitting name. She was in her late fifties and looked like the mean crossing guard he had when he went to elementary school. Pat leaned across the counter and bared her overly whitened teeth. Mick stepped back. You have to pick your battles and maybe this one wasn’t one worth fighting.

  “What do you think people generally do when their flights get cancelled?”

  He shrugged.

  She continued, saying, “They come up here to me and book a seat on another flight, hoping the airport will reopen. Which it did. All the smart people are flying out on every available flight there is. All seats are full.” She made a “so there” face and Mick bit his tongue so he wouldn’t curse. “All flights south are full. Sorry. No seats. Not till Monday.”

  Mick would never normally tolerate that kind of disrespect but it wasn’t like he could do much about it now. He tried to calm down, tried to talk without puffing out his chest which he did involuntarily. Angie teased him and said he was like one of those little dogs, trying to make himself look bigger. He cleared his throat and talked more quietly.

  “All flights going south of Manhattan are booked? Nothing? Anywhere?”

  “Not Haiti. Not Tampa. Not Orlando.”

  Mick looked around the airport at all the teary-faced children wearing Mickey Mouse ears or Princess dresses. A lot of tantrums appeared on the horizon when so many parents finally admitted to their kids that they wouldn’t be going to the Magic Kingdom today.

  Not my problem.

  “Do I look like I want to go to Disney? Am I wearing ears?” Mick burst out at Pat, the ticket agent.

  She rolled her eyes. “Where do you want to go, Mr. Pooglissy.”

  “It’s Puglisi. Like the dog. And Leesy. Not Lissy.”

  “Figures.”

  What did she mean by that? “Listen, we’ve all had a long day here. Just tell me where I can go.”

  She raised an eyebrow and they both laughed. “Okay, fine. Just tell me where I can fly to that will get me closer to Haiti than JFK.”

  She typed quickly and picked up her phone. He couldn’t hear what she was saying above the din of disappointed children.

  “We can get you on a flight to Atlanta, which will connect to Miami, then you can get a flight to Haiti from there. It’s yours if you can make it across the airport in ten minutes.”

  “I’ll take it. Point me in the right direction.”

  8.

  Tropical backroads, Haiti, late evening

  Kurt studied the route to Maison, tried to watch for landmarks. But after the first hour and a half of going at a snail’s pace through a black jungle and up large hills with only intermittent moonlight and weak headlights to guide their way, he gave up trying. Everything looked the same. There hadn’t been street signs in over thirty minutes. Thank God they hadn’t rented a Jeep and tried to find Maison D’Espoir themselves.

  But the cabbie knew precisely where he was going and how to get there.

  Over the noise of the grinding engine, Kurt and Gloria had talked between themselves and were on the same page. True they knew a lot more than they did when they got off the plane but the burning question was still there. Where was Gloria’s place in all this?

  “Here we are,” the cabbie said. He pulled around a final patch of dense trees and in front of a large wooden fence. Sensor lights flicked on and lit up the area like a stadium.

  “Looks like the fort in F-Troop,” Kurt said.

  Gloria nodded, staring at the crude but effective prison-like compound when a huge African American man—Kurt had never seen someone so dark—walked toward them. He heaved the machine gun he was carrying around his shoulder to his front and aimed it at the car.

  “Who is there? You step out of the car now.”

  The cabbie and Kurt got out.

  “You too, in the back,” he commanded Gloria.

  Kurt watched Gloria get out from her own side and was sick that he couldn’t do anything to protect her except pray this guy wouldn’t kill them.

  “Hands up.”

  The guard walked toward Gloria, aiming the gun at her chest. “You get over there with them.” He followed her with his automatic weapon.

  “I need to see Doctor Boucher,” Gloria said as she slid closer to Kurt. He put a protective arm around her. “Doctor Tad Boucher,” she repeated. With Kurt so near, she felt emboldened, despite the circumstance.

  “No. No one can go in. What are you doing here? How did you find this place?” the guard asked.

  The cabbie said something in what Kurt assumed must be Haitian Creole.

  He spoke quickly and Kurt couldn’t understand, but he was pleading. That was clear.

  The guard lowered his gun.

  “You should not be here,” the guard said to Gloria in a deep monotone. “It will only cause you trouble.”

  “I need to see Doctor Tad. I have to know what’s going on in there.”

  “Better you do not know. You get back in the car now.” He gestured her toward the door with his gun.

  Just then the huge wooden gate of the fortress swung open and a beautiful young Haitian girl ran out.

  “Boris!” she yelled to the guard. “Anmwe! Help me. Prese. Prese. Hurry. Souple.” She stared at him. “The baby is coming and I do not know what to do. You have to come. Now!” She continued, mixing her English and Creole. “Kounye-a. Now, Boris!”

  Kurt looked at the gir
l’s midsection. Couldn’t be her baby she was talking about. She was skinny.

  “Doctor Tad can help you. I do not want to see,” he said.

  “No he cannot. He is too sick.”

  “I have business here, Martine. With the blan.”

  Blan must be the word for us white folk, Kurt thought. The girl finally noticed them. “Ki moun ki la?” she asked Boris.

  He shrugged. “M pa kone.” Even with the language barrier, Kurt was keeping up. Boris, of course had no idea who they were.

  “What is going on here? Who are you,” she asked Gloria, their eyes fixed.

  “I’m Gloria Hanes, and this is Kurt Malone.”

  The girl’s mouth dropped open. “You are Gloria?”

  She walked closer, and mouth agape, staring at Gloria as if in the presence of some mythical god. “Gloria. You are their mother.” The girl reached out and gently touched Gloria’s cheek.

  “Whose mother?” Gloria asked.

  “All of them. All of the babies.”

  Gloria looked at Kurt, her eyes unreadable. Hell, he didn’t even know what to think or what the hell the girl meant by “all the babies.” He couldn’t imagine what Gloria must be feeling.

  “Do you know Doctor Tad?” the girl asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.” She touched Gloria’s hair next. “So soft.” She put her hand down. “He wrote about you.”

  “Wrote about me?”

  “Yes, in his journal. I should not have read it, but he is dying.”

  “Doctor Tad is dying? Doctor Boucher?”

  She nodded and Kurt could see in her eyes that this girl was in awe of Gloria and possibly in love with Dr. Tad. She was heartbroken that he was dying and Kurt felt guilty for being happy about it.

  “He wrote that he was sorry. I do not know a lot of English so could not translate the rest. But after that part he recorded the births of all your children. He said you cannot have them but you can. I have seen them. I have birthed them myself. I will give you the journal to read. It is for you, I am sure. I am Martine. Martine Jean-Baptiste. I am a nurse here. And once a breeder.”

  Kurt felt like someone had punched him in the gut. Martine said she was a breeder as matter-of-factly as someone would announce they were a grocery clerk.

  Gloria shook her hand.

  “This is Boris Jean-Baptiste. He is my brother. Boris, you keep your gun down now.” The man slung his gun back around his shoulder and resumed his post.

  “Will you take me to see Doctor Tad?” Gloria asked.

  “Yes, but there is a baby coming and I do not know what to do. Anni is screaming and the baby will not come out. She is getting weak and cannot push anymore.”

  “Where is Doctor Tad?” Gloria asked as she walked toward the gate, holding Kurt’s hand firmly. “Can he help you?”

  Martine answered as they walked through the gate. Boris shut it behind them, and Kurt looked over the shoulder to see that the cabbie was offering Boris a cigarette.

  “Dr. Tad is in the room but is not much help now.” Martine wiped at her eyes.

  Inside the compound lanterns hung from poles secured on the dirt ground. There was a small brick building, which Kurt guessed to be the medical unit, the true birthing center that Hope House had purported to be. Beyond that, cozy cottages in bright colors were strewn throughout what looked like a small village. The high fence surrounded it all, as far Kurt could see. They both knew the fence and the armed guard were there not just to keep visitors out, but to keep the surrogates in.

  As they walked into the medical building, which looked like any other modern U.S. clinic on the inside, Kurt turned to Gloria. “Do you know how to deliver a baby or are you just pretending to be able to help?”

  “I edited a book written by a midwife so I might be able to be of some use.”

  “What do you think about what Martine said, about all the babies being yours?”

  “I don’t know what to think but right now we’ve got a baby to deliver.”

  Kurt froze. “I got no problem watching that stuff on the Discovery Channel but actually being in the room with—”

  “Well, you’re going to get a crash course. Come on.”

  She yanked his hand and dragged him to follow Martine to the room where some young surrogate waited to have another baby for Mick to sell.

  Kurt knew one thing. Mick Puglisi was not getting this baby or any other ones from this center ever. Even if Kurt had to smuggle the kid away himself.

  Chapter Ten

  1.

  Maison D’Espoir, Haiti, Monday February 13th Midnight

  Gloria rushed into the examination room but stopped short when she reached the patient, a pregnant girl named Anni. She was moaning and covered in a thick sheen of sweat. Her eyes looked hopeless and afraid. She cried something to Martine in Creole. “Eske mwen Mouri?”

  “No. You are not dying. You will be all right now. Help has come.” Martine turned to Gloria and said, “She is not ready yet to deliver. A little while longer. Look over here. Come see Doctor Tad.”

  Gloria turned around and gasped when she saw the illustrious Dr. Tad Boucher, the man who had taken her baby and had altered her life forever.

  He was lying in a hospital bed, with the same dead look in his gaze as Anni. Martine lifted the sheet. He wore a sweat-soaked johnny but beyond that Gloria spied the exposed collarbone and arm.

  “What’s wrong with him?” she asked. His arm was swollen and black. “Blood poisoning?”

  “Flesh eating bacteria,” Martine said. “Doctor Tad said it is like strep throat but inside your skin.”

  “I thought that was an urban myth. Something the tabloids made up,” Kurt said, while keeping his distance from both patients.

  Martine looked confused. No doubt terms like urban myth were foreign to her, Gloria thought.

  “A tabloid is a magazine that stretches the truth to make their stories interesting. An urban myth is a tale, a pretend tale that gets told so many times that people believe it’s true,” Gloria explained.

  “I wish this was an urban myth but this is true. You see for yourself his arm is real,” Martine said.

  “Yes,” Gloria said as she stepped closer.

  Dr. Tad was taking quick shallow breaths and she could feel the heat radiating off of him. Gloria set aside her anger for the time being to try to help him. She needed him alive to get answers.

  When he met her eyes, she recognized him as her OB/GYN.

  “I know you,” he said.

  “You destroyed my life.”

  He nodded his head. “But from before that. From school. Don’t you remember me?”

  “No. I’m sorry, I—”

  “Glass Menagerie,” he explained through shallow breath.

  As Gloria looked closer she saw something else. Someone else. In Dr. Tad’s weakened state, she suddenly remembered him from college from the Tennessee Williams elective. He was the man a few years ahead of her, always staring and following her around. At the time she’d thought he was just a geek with a crush and hadn’t really paid attention to him.

  He closed his eyes and clenched his jaw. Gloria could see he was in agony. The IV was nearly empty.

  “Can you give him some more painkillers?” she asked Martine.

  “It might kill him,” she replied.

  “I’m all right. Later. I can have some more later. I have to stay awake to help with the baby.”

  Gloria slid a stool over and sat bedside him with Kurt and Martine watching silently from a few feet away.

  “Please. Tell me what’s going on. What do I have to do with this place?” Gloria swept her arm around the room. “Martine said she found a journal and these babies are mine. But they can’t be mine. I can’t have children.”

  When he merely nodded and spewed forth a stuttering, “Sorry,” Gloria shouted, “Whose babies are they, and how are they related to me? Why did you take my baby?” She was shaking now and was at the end of her tether.

>   “You are beautiful, Gloria. Always were,” he said quietly, preserving the little strength he had. “So pretty and smart. Miss Bradfield.” He met her eyes again and she nodded. The last thing she needed now was validation for a stupid local pageant she’d won before she was even old enough to drink. “I always adored you. Everyone did. I knew I didn’t have a chance. You didn’t even know my name but it was enough just to watch you. To admire you from afar. And you never even knew I existed until Tommy brought you to me in that hospital in New York. You thought it was the first time we’d seen each other, but—”

  “I don’t care about that. What about my baby? Is that why you took her?”

  “It wasn’t my idea. Mick Puglisi’s family took me in and raised me. I owed them and they never let me forget it. Mick called me one day and said there was a new medical procedure he’d heard about. A scientist was going to let the family in on something big,” He blinked and looked to her, licking his lips with his dry tongue. “Groundbreaking technology. Mick said I needed to get a fetus. A female fetus. I didn’t like the idea but couldn’t say no to Mick. He was like a brother.”

  Gloria was silent. She needed to focus on what he was saying, not let herself get caught up in her emotions.

  “Mick used to buy his test answers from your husband, Tommy, so he knew how smart Tommy Carpenter was. He was handsome too, so he fit our needs. Between you and Tommy, you were going to produce an attractive and intelligent child. When Mick asked for the fetus, you were the best candidate. My patient, one I moved around to obtain, right there for the taking.”

  Gloria was too stunned to answer.

  “So Mick made your husband Tommy an offer—”

  “The law firm in Miami,” Gloria said.

  Tad nodded. “Mick promised him a partnership in exchange for your fetus.”

  “She wasn’t just a fetus. She was my daughter.” Tears overflowed Gloria’s eyes. She felt Kurt’s strong hand on her shoulder and it gave her strength.

  “Is my daughter Alison Gander? Are all of these children related to me?”

  “She’s not your daughter. She’s your granddaughter.”