by Selena Kitt
Leah would never forget that moment. She’d never seen anything like it. The sister had wrapped the baby in her wimple, having nothing else to put her in—all the towels were now wet. It was a little girl, with just about as much hair as Sister Lawrence had under her head covering—which wasn’t much. Jean announced her name, “Lizzie!” Of course, the girl Jean had adored had another name, but Lizzie was what she had called her. Someone had called the ambulance, and they had to cut the cord and deliver the placenta before putting her on a stretcher and taking her to the hospital.
It had been the strangest Thanksgiving dinner Leah had ever experienced.
Leah’s name was near the top of the chore list now. They moved Elizabeth back in with Leah after Jean had her baby, but they were alone only for a few days, and then a new Frannie and a new Marty arrived, except they called the former Frances and the latter Martha. They were nice enough girls, but Leah didn’t want to get too attached. She stayed quiet, contemplative, not telling them about the secret turret, keeping the space and those memories to herself.
She was in her last month, the final stretch, and every week Dr. Glum, whose demeanor never improved, would make her get up on the table and put her feet in the stirrups so he could shove his whole hand up inside, feeling for the baby. He said he thought it was breech. He said they’d have to cut her open to get it out. Leah didn’t want an operation, so she prayed in bed at night, whispering to her little man, encouraging him to turn around.
She finished his little going home outfit, smuggling it upstairs under her dress and hiding it under her mattress. Frannie came back to visit, before her parents arrived to pick her up. She told her birth story, giving far more detail than Lizzie had, all the blood and pain and suffering. But Leah had seen it firsthand, had watched Jean labor all day long, and no one even knew. Frannie said the ghoul told her the babies went to a nice family, a good home, together.
Leah didn’t have the heart to tell her she had overheard the ghoul telling Sister Benedict, “You get more money giving one baby to two couples then giving two babies to one couple.” Which, of course, made perfect sense when you knew Magdalene House was run by donations, and those donations came primarily in the form of money given by infertile couples who were looking to adopt. She’d overheard one of the laundry women saying some couples paid as much as fifty-thousand dollars for a baby. Even if they were giving the Magdalenes ten thousand each, the church was coming out way ahead.
She’d heard Jean had been put to work in the laundry and had already had a horrible accident and had ended up in the hospital with third-degree burns. Apparently her family—a distant cousin who had been caring for her before she came to Magdalene House—had never come back for her.
When Father Michael came to visit, he exclaimed over Leah’s belly, how big she had gotten since he last saw her. She was, as Marty would have said, “Ready to pop.” Leah just wanted to know, had he found out? Was there any word? Did he know if Robert Nolan was indeed her biological father?
“Do you know your blood type?” Father Michael asked.
“The doctor typed me. He said I’m O positive. Why? ”
“Well, according to the research I’ve done so far, there’s no way to prove parentage. Meaning I can’t ever prove Robert Nolan is your father.”
“Oh.” Leah’s heart sank.
“However, depending on your blood types, there may be a way to rule him out as your father.”
Leah’s heart soared. “So what’s his blood type?”
“I don’t know.” Father Michael sighed. “And I can’t exactly ask him.”
“What about church records? What about previous blood drives?”
“He hasn’t given blood, to my knowledge.”
“Oh, that’s right.” Leah smiled. “He’s squeamish. He never gives blood.”
“I wrangled him in as a sponsor this year. Erica and I have a plan to get him to donate blood.”
“Erica!” Leah felt a sharp stab of pain in her chest. She desperately missed Erica, so much it was almost too painful to think about her. “How is she?”
“She’s...” Father Michael smiled. “She’s Erica. She misses you.”
“I miss her too.” She had felt so light and full of hope after his visit. The blood drive was just a few days away. If Rob wasn’t her biological father, then they could be together, they could have this baby, she could have the life she had dreamed of living since she’d fallen in love with him. She thought nothing could put a damper on her newfound calm and peace.
December arrived with a wicked storm, bringing almost a foot and a half of snow with it. Leah watched with the other girls from the front room windows, knitting needles clacking, as the world was blanketed in white. The nuns let them have an hour to play in it, and everyone put on their coats and boots, and gloves, labels sewn into each, and trudged out into the snow to make angels.
Leah made a snow angel, staying there on the frozen ground, looking up at Magdalene House. When she had first climbed the long steps to the front door, it had been July, hot and humid. Three seasons she had spent, from sweltering heat to the turn of the autumn leaves and now the frigid white of winter. Three seasons of her life, a seed planted, gestating, sprouted and growing. She would meet her baby soon.
She looked up at the familiar house, a red brick prison, the green turrets with the golden crosses on top. She missed the girls. She missed Marty the most. It still felt like a dream, the night Marty had gone into labor. Had she really seen Erica, her best friend, perhaps even her sister, splayed naked on a cross? Had she seen Erica’s father filming, unawares? It was so surreal, so insane. The entire time she’d been at Magdalene House, she had hoped and wished and prayed to see her best friend and her best friend’s father again. She never in her wildest dreams could have imagined seeing them like that. I guess you had to be careful what you prayed for.
Two days later her mother came for a visit, unannounced. It was during lunch time, and Leah was starving, but the nuns made her visit with her mother in the front room. They didn’t say anything of any substance. More about the weather, her mother’s job, the ladies’ auxiliary. It was always the same. Leah had changed so much in the past few months, but her mother remained stuck in time, and seemed to expect Leah would be coming back with her, into that time warp.
“Mrs. Goulden tells me you’re having second thoughts again about giving the baby up for adoption.”
Leah continued knitting her blanket. She had learned not to sit still from the nuns more than anything. Idle hands did the devil’s work. The ghoul had been wearing her down, seeing her weekly after her doctor appointment, asking again and again about the baby’s father, about Leah’s intentions. She showed Leah a picture of the couple who wanted to adopt her baby, telling her how disappointed they would be if she changed her mind. Did she want their despair and unhappiness on her conscience? Leah was exhausted, and she was sure her mother’s visit had been the ghoul’s doing, calling in reinforcements again.
“I don’t know what to do.” Leah looked down at her knitting—knit one, purl two.
Leah’s mother looked out the window at the snow. “Remember when you were little and you asked me why I didn’t have any wedding pictures?”
Leah’s clacking needles stopped. “Yes.”
“There were no wedding pictures because there was no wedding.”
Leah just looked at her mother. She didn’t say anything at all.
“Victor Wendt was a boy I dated in high school. He was a sweet boy. But I didn’t love him. He wanted to marry me. But I was in love with someone else.”
“So you and my father… You and the man you told me you were married to… you were never married?”
“Yes. That’s true.” Leah’s mother sounded very far away, lost in a memory. “I was in love with Robert Nolan. But he loved my best friend, Susan.”
“Mom...”
“It was only him,” her mother went on. “He was everything to me. And one night, w
e got drunk and things happened. Things happened… between the three of us.”
Leah’s eyes widened. “All three of you?”
“I wanted him any way I could have him.” Her mother’s smile was bitter. “If that was the only way, then...”
Leah’s mother looked down at her hands in her lap, clutching her pocketbook. “I’m not proud of what I did. Or what happened. And I’m sorry I’ve been so hard on you.”
Leah looked around the room for witnesses. Had hell frozen over? Her mother had just apologized.
Leah’s mother raised her eyes, meeting her daughter’s gaze head-on. “I know, better than anyone, how charming he is and how easy it is to fall in love with him.”
“Oh my God,” Leah whispered.
“When I later found myself in the family way, I didn’t know what to do. So believe me when I tell you I know what you’re going through.”
“Why didn’t you tell him then?” Leah wondered out loud.
“Susan was my best friend. Like you and Erica. Put yourself in my position. Would you tell Erica?”
“I don’t know...” Leah tried, she really tried, to put herself in her mother’s place.
“Victor was going overseas. He asked me to marry him. I told him no.”
“Did Grandma know you were pregnant?”
Leah’s mother shook her head. “I wasn’t showing yet. When Vic died, I heard about it through a friend, and I decided it was a sign from God. I was going to be a widow.”
“But… how?”
“The lawyer I ended up working for, Mr. Highbrow, helped me forge a marriage license. I put Victor’s name on your birth certificate when you were born. And henceforth I was a widow. I told your grandmother we’d eloped. I could fake a marriage license, I could put on a fake wedding ring, but I couldn’t fake wedding photos.”
“So Rob really is my father?” This knowledge pierced Leah’s heart like a knife. It had never hurt this much before. She’d been holding out too much hope that it was a lie, that her mother was making up the story to keep Leah away from Rob.
“Yes. He is.”
“And you didn’t tell anyone because...”
“Susan was my best friend. She was married to Rob. Imagine the scandal!” Her mother averted her gaze, looking down at her lap. “It was easier to lie.”
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“I’m your mother, Leah.” Her mother met her eyes, and Leah was horrified to see there were tears in them. “I’m not a monster. I love you. And I want what’s best for you, I always have. Now that you’re about to be a mother—and you’ll always be a mother whether you give this baby up for adoption or you don’t—I thought you might be able to understand now why I did what I did.”
Leah shook her head. “But I don’t. I don’t understand. I don’t understand the lies.”
“How can you not understand?” Her mother pleaded with her, trying to explain. “We couldn’t have continued our friendship. We couldn’t have even lived in the same town, passing each other every week in the grocery store. The scandal would’ve killed your grandmother and it would’ve driven a wedge between me and Susan and Rob.”
“But—”
“I was selfish. I wanted to keep my baby and I wanted to keep my friends.”
“You were in love with him the whole time?” Leah whispered, her chest constricting at the thought. All those offhand remarks her mother had made over the years about Robert Nolan had hidden a deeper pain Leah had never seen.
“I care a great deal about him.” Leah’s mother’s voice was soft and small. “I would’ve married him, after Susan died. But he didn’t want me. I never in my wildest dreams thought he would fall in love with you… my own daughter.”
“It’s not like we planned it,” Leah reminded her. “We didn’t set out to hurt anyone.”
“Leah, you’re about to give birth. That changes you. It changes any woman. You’ll never be the same,” her mother said. “But you can’t keep this baby. If I weren’t Catholic, I would’ve told you to get an abortion.”
“Mother!” Leah was truly horrified.
“I said, if I weren’t Catholic. I am. You are. So there’s only one viable alternative. Give this baby up,” her mother pleaded. “You’ll have others. But please don’t ruin your life waiting for a man you can’t have. Don’t waste one more minute on him. He’s not worth it.”
“He’s my father.” It was the first time Leah had said it and believed it. It hurt more than she ever dreamed possible.
Leah’s mother shook her head vehemently. “He’s dead to you. And you’re dead to him. You have to accept that and move on.”
“How can I move on? How can I?” Leah cried. “You want me to come back home, to live in the same town, to see Erica and Rob, and pretend…? How can you ask me to do that? You want me to pretend, like you’ve pretended for the past twenty years… Mother, I’m sorry, but I can’t do that.”
“Then go to New York,” her mother urged. Leah gaped at her, open mouthed. Her mother had been adamantly against her dancing from the beginning, and had only marginally supported it. “Go dance. Start a new life somewhere else.”
“Why can’t I do that with my baby?” Leah asked a simple question.
“Because...” There were tears streaking down her mother’s face now, running her mascara. Leah couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her mother cry. “Because if you keep this baby, you’re dead to me.”
Leah blinked. “What…?”
“This baby is a monster!” she exclaimed. “It’s going to make your friend Jean looked like Einstein. There’s a reason incest is illegal, Leah. This baby is an abomination. It was conceived in mortal sin.”
“This baby was conceived in love,” Leah protested. “It was conceived in mutual love. Rob loves me. Rob loves me, Mother. In a way he never loved you. And you can’t stand that.”
“I’ve said my piece. My conscience is clear.” Leah’s mother shrugged on her coat, buttoning it and tucking her pocketbook under her arm. “I have to go.”
“Is that why you came? To clear your conscience?”
“I came because I love you,” her mother replied, swiping at her tear stained cheeks. “And I was hoping to talk some sense into you.”
“Well I’m glad your conscience is clear,” Leah said. “But that doesn’t change the fact he loves me more than he ever loved you.”
“Goodbye, Leah.”
“Goodbye, Mother.”
Leah watched her mother walk down the long front steps and get into her car, wondering if it would be the last time she saw her. She had held onto a glimmer of hope this entire journey that perhaps Robert Nolan really wasn’t her biological father. As she watched the woman she had called mother her whole life drive off, she knew hope had vanished. Patty Wendt—nee Patty Miller—would never have revealed what she had today if it weren’t really true. She would never have risked exposing herself to scandal that way, and Leah knew it. Her mother had finally told her the truth, but instead of setting them free, it had imprisoned them all.
Chapter Fourteen
St. Mary Magdalene’s Church had started holding the blood drive last year, and this year twice, once in the summer and then again between Thanksgiving and Christmas. People always seemed more willing to give, whether it was charity or blood, during the holidays or when it was sunny. Every year, there was a new sponsor. Mayor Cobo had sponsored it the year before. Erica had taken his picture for the paper, and had written up the article about it. This year, her father was sponsoring the blood drive. The problem was, her father was squeamish. This wasn’t something he advertised, but he fainted at the sight of blood.
How Father Michael had roped him into volunteering as a blood drive sponsor, Erica would never know. He must have backed him into quite some corner, Erica thought.
“I can’t do this, Erica.” Her father sank down into the passenger seat as Erica got closer to the church. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
&
nbsp; “Just don’t look.” Erica passed the school, coming up on the church. “It’s fine if you don’t look. It’s just a little poke.”
“That’s easy for you to say.”
“We’re here.” Erica cut the engine, pocketing the keys, and grabbing her camera. “Come on, Fraidy Cat.”
“Seriously, I think I’m going to be sick.” He shoved the passenger side door open, putting his feet on the ground, his head between his knees.
“I guess every Superman has to have his kryptonite.” Erica got out of the driver’s side, coming around to the passenger side to see to her father.