by Selena Kitt
They wouldn’t let Leah see her baby. She woke up in the recovery room, not knowing where she was. She reached down to rub her belly, finding not a full, rounded pregnant one, but rather a deflated balloon, empty. Void. Her baby was gone. She asked to see her baby, and the nurses said they’d bring her when she was better.
“What’s wrong with her?” Leah had seen her, held her, she was perfect. All the fears she’d had about having Rob’s baby had been dispelled the instant their eyes had met. She was afraid they were telling her lies, keeping the baby from her.
“She’s jaundiced.” The nurse explained this to Leah, something about bilirubin levels. All she knew was it meant she couldn’t hold her baby. The days dragged by. Leah had a lot of time to think. She ate her Jell-O and drank her juice like a good girl, and asked at every shift change to see her baby. Her body healed, but she was sore, and on the second day her milk came in. Her breasts swelled to bursting, painful to the touch. She told the nurses, and asked them to bring her Grace so she could feed her.
“This will help.” The nurse gave her a shot.
“What is it?”
“Stilboestrol.” the nurse said, but Leah didn’t know what that was. They wrapped Ace bandages around and around her chest, binding her breasts. It hurt and she leaked, soaking the front of her nightgown.
She woke up that night, hearing a baby cry, sure it was hers.
Finally, after Leah’s milk had dried up, and her bottom had healed, one young nurse took pity on her, and wheeled Grace down in a bassinette.
Leah spent the whole afternoon falling in love all over again. Grace was the most beautiful baby she had never seen. The young nurse, Cathy, her name tag said, brought Leah a bottle and let her feed the baby. Grace opened her eyes and looked at her mother, and Leah never wanted to let go.
Cathy said she had to take the baby back to the nursery for the night, but she would be back tomorrow. The next morning, Leah showered, humming sweet melodies, putting on a fresh gown and getting ready for her baby’s arrival. There were seven other mothers in the room, and the nurses brought the babies all at once, a parade of bassinettes and little baby burritos.
Leah counted seven bassinettes, and when she asked the nurse where Grace was, she just shook her head and left the room. Leah hoped Cathy would come on at shift change, but instead of a new nurse walking through the door at lunch time, Leah had a visitor. It was the ghoul.
“How are you feeling?” The ghoul sat down in the chair next to the bed, pulling out Leah’s file. “I heard the birth was quite an event.”
“Before you even get started, I’ve made up my mind.” Leah held up a hand in a stop right there gesture. “I’m keeping her.”
“Have you talked to your mother?”
“No.” Leah hadn’t even thought about her mother.
“You do realize if you keep this baby, you’re going to be responsible for the full financial burden. That includes your care at Magdalene House, the birth, and your hospital stay,” the ghoul reminded her.
“Fine. I’ll do what I have to. I’ll pay my debt.” Leah didn’t know how, but she would make it happen. She would do anything for that sweet little girl.
“Oh I think you misunderstood.” The ghoul opened her briefcase, pulling out a file. “The hospital bills are due upon receipt. You have to pay them before you leave or they won’t let you take your baby.”
“That’s crazy.” Leah gaped at her. “I’ll talk to the hospital administrator. I’ll work something out. I’ll set up a payment plan.”
“I have her birth certificate. We need to fill in the father’s name.”
“Leave it blank.” She had been thinking about calling Father Michael, but the nurses said there were only payphones, and she had no change. He had promised to find out, if he could, but the last visit from her mother had cinched it. Leah had decided to take her baby and go somewhere else, a place no one knew them, a fresh start. No one needed to know who the father of her baby was.
“Fine.” The ghoul stood. “I’ll be visiting your mother later today. Do you want me to have her come pick you up?”
“Yes. Would you give her this?” Leah reached over and took an envelope off the nightstand. The nurses had given her a pen and stationary to write on. Leah had spent time composing this letter to her mother, explaining exactly why she wasn’t going to be coming home. She would take Grace, get on a bus, and go to New York. She had no money, but the gold cross she wore around her neck, the one her mother had given to her at her confirmation, matching Erica’s, would pay her way. The pawn shop would give her enough to pay bus fare.
The ghoul took the letter, dropping it in her briefcase. “The doctor said you can go home tomorrow. I’ll let your mother know. Maybe by then, you’ll have changed your mind. Maybe she can talk some sense into you.”
Leah could hardly sleep. The nurses told her that her mother had called, telling them she would be by around noon the following day to pick her up from the hospital. Leah wouldn’t be allowed back at Magdalene House, even to say goodbye. Girls who kept their babies never got to come back, but Leah didn’t care. She’d said goodbye to anyone who mattered.
Morning dawned outside the hospital with another half a foot of snow covering everything. They wheeled Grace down in her little bassinette, wearing a knitted pink going-home outfit. Leah had forgotten hers, the blue one she had been knitting and had hidden under her mattress, but she recognized this one. It was the one Marty had been making for her baby. Grace was the picture of perfection in it, and Leah scooped her up, kissing her all over her sleeping little face.
They were both napping, mother and baby, Leah in her bed, Grace in the bassinette, when the ghoul arrived. She cooed over Grace in her bassinette, and remarked that Leah’s mother was late, probably because of the weather. Leah listened to her chatter, but it set her teeth on edge. She wanted the woman gone, out of her life forever.
“Well I just wanted to wish you good luck.” The ghoul smiled, all teeth. “I should get going. Oh, I almost forgot, the nurses wanted me to have you sign your release papers.”
The ghoul materialized some papers and a pen. In her bassinette, Grace was stirring, and Leah reached over to pat her on the back, quieting her. She was anxious to be off, and the baby probably sensed her mood.
The ghoul handed Leah a pen, and Leah scribbled her name, too distracted by the baby’s fussiness to pay any attention to what she was signing. As soon as Leah had put the pen down, the ghoul grabbed her briefcase, dropping the papers inside, and snapped it closed.
Then she took the baby.
Leah reacted, but not quickly enough. The ghoul had a head start down the hallway. Leah screamed, “My baby! My baby! She’s got my baby!” Running after her. She was wearing the same clothes she’d been wearing the day she arrived at Magdalene House, so she was in heels, but she made it to the door before she was confronted by a mass of white coats. Dr. Glum was leading the charge, urging her to get back into bed. Where had they all come from? It was like they had been waiting outside her door.
“She’s hysterical,” Dr. Glum announced. “Nurse, the syringe.”
Leah kicked and screamed and flailed, but they carried her, the whole mess of them, back toward the bed, where she was faced with the yawning, gaping maw of an empty bassinette.
Her baby was gone.
Chapter Sixteen
For once the weather man had been correct. They got another foot of snow overnight, but thankfully it was the weekend and no one had to work. That would have been fine, except a little over a week later on a Monday, it snowed again, and with two and a half feet of snow already on the ground, another six inches did them in. It shut everything down. Even the city buses stopped running. Of course, there was no school. On snow days, Leah and Erica had always cozied up in Erica’s living room, watching television and drinking hot chocolate with marshmallows, Solie’s specialty, made from real cocoa. She always told them the trick was a little pinch of salt.
Ev
en Solie couldn’t get to work that day, so Erica was on her own, mixing cocoa and milk on the stove, making a general mess, and her father laughed at her when he came into the kitchen, taking in her cocoa stained shirt and mouth.
“Making any progress?” Erica’s father sat in a kitchen chair, putting mail on the table.
“It’s a lot harder than it looks.” Erica stirred the bubbling milk and cocoa concoction furiously. “So there was mail? I’m surprised they delivered it.”
“Rain, snow, sleet, hail...” He flipped through the stack, muttering to himself. “Bills, bills, ads, bills… Hey, here’s ours reminder from the Red Cross. We can give blood again in six weeks. Whoopee!”
Erica looked up, seeing him rip one of the postcards in half. “No!”
He blinked in surprise as she flew toward him, grabbing the two pieces of paper, and piecing them back together.
“What are you doing?”
Erica stared at the typewritten postcard, hands trembling, her face a mask of disbelief as she looked up at her father and whispered, “AB negative.”
“What?” He sat back in his chair, looking puzzled.
“Your blood type.” Erica took a deep breath, putting the postcard into pieces back on the table. “Your blood type is AB negative.”
“So?” He shrugged. “I know the nurse said AB was a rare one. Don’t even think about trying to get me to give blood again. I’m done with it!”
He managed to look stern and sheepish at the same time, and Erica sat down at the table across from him, her knees not willing to hold her weight any longer. Her veins felt like they were filled with ice water, and she shivered.
“Daddy...” Erica lifted her eyes and met his. “Don’t you know what this means?”
“That you’re going to bother me for the rest of my life to donate blood at blood drives?” He gave her a half smile, tearing open one of the bill envelopes. “Ain’t happening. Just forget about it. I don’t care how many cute redheaded nurses are on duty.”
“Leah is O positive.” Erica pieced the two pieces together again, as if she needed proof one more time. “It means you’re not her father. You can’t be. It’s impossible.”
“… What?” Her father looked as if someone had just punched him in the stomach. He blinked at her, stunned to silence. They hadn’t talked about Leah in a long time, the uneasy truce between them dependent on their mutual silence, bearing her loss. each alone. Erica knew just speaking her name was like throwing barbs at his heart. It tore hers open too.
“I’m O positive too,” Erica whispered looking at the other postcard, the one with her name on it. She looked from that to the typewritten AB on the other postcard, just two letters, nonsense, the beginning of the alphabet. Two little letters that had just ended the world. “Do you know what this means?”
“I… Erica...” He sat there, shaking his head, denying it, but he couldn’t. She had proof right in front of her.
“You’re not my father either.”
They sat there, letting those words sink in. Erica felt as if everything was suddenly moving in slow-motion. Sound receded, the television exploding with canned laughter in the other room, a million miles away. She could hear the clock on the wall ticking, her father’s shallow breath, the thudding of her own heart, broken in half, cleaved in two, and she looked down at her chest, feeling the pain centered there, sure she would see the blade of an ax, a bloody handle, but there was nothing.
“I wanted to tell you. It was your mother who insisted we keep it from you.”
“Well that’s convenient,” Erica managed, her voice small. “She’s dead. She can’t defend herself.”
“If she hadn’t asked me, on her goddamned death bed,” her father choked, elbows on the table, head in his hands. “I promised her I wouldn’t tell you.”
“Who is my father?”
“I don’t know. You were adopted. We adopted you because your mother couldn’t have children.”
Erica had spent hours with her mother when she was young, watching her do puzzles. They had sat together, sifting through cardboard cutout pieces, putting together pictures of lighthouses and tigers and landscapes. She remembered how stunned and amazed she’d been when a picture began to develop, piece by piece. Her mother always let her put the last one in, reserving the last triumphant moment for her only child.
Erica looked up at her father, placing the last piece of the puzzle, finally seeing the full picture, but it was no bed of roses, no garden, no beautiful beach, this was a clear, dark depiction of hell, and she was living in it.
She stood up, looking down at her chocolate stained blouse, pulling it up. Her father watched her lift it, hooking her thumb in the waistband of her skirt, and pulling that down. There on her lower right abdomen was the faded, white line, a drawing in white crayon on white paper, a dash of chalk on cream.
“Did she have a scar?” Erica widened the gap between blouse and skirt, making sure he could see. “Did she have a scar like this one?”
“Yes.” He stared at her belly, nodding miserably.
“Why did you let her butcher me?” Erica sank back into her chair, staring across the table at the man she had called “Daddy” her whole life.
“I didn’t know. I was overseas. She...” Erica saw tears welling in his eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“I can never have children.” Erica blinked back her own tears. “You knew. You knew about the Mary Magdalenes. You knew what she was going to do, what she was going to let them do to me. I saw you. On All Saints’ Day, during the ritual. I was the Virgin, Daddy. It was me you were filming.”
He made a sound, deep in his throat, like an animal trapped, wounded, he put his face in his hands, and Erica saw the sobs shaking his shoulders. Her own tears didn’t fall. She blinked them back, looking at the man who had raised her, who had tucked her in at night, who had read her Dr. Seuss and fairy tales. This man wasn’t her father. How could that be?
“Leah was pregnant,” Erica told him, wanting to hurt him, wanting him to experience the kind of pain she had when she discovered she could never have children. They had taken that away from her. “She’s carrying your baby. That’s why she went away. She’s going to have it and gave it up for adoption, because she thinks you’re her father. But you’re not. You’re not even mine.”
“What?” Her father’s head came up off the table, eyes wide. The last time she remembered seeing her father cry, it was at her mother’s funeral. That wasn’t your mother… Erica sat with that painful knowledge, trying to reconcile that fact. It was impossible.
“It’s true. Leah’s pregnant. She’s going to give your baby up for adoption. Just like my parents did with me.” Erica choked out that last sentence, the words bitter on her tongue.
“Where is she? How do you know this? How do you know any of this?” His voice rose with each subsequent question, a wild, crazed look in his eyes.
“I’m a good journalist.” She smirked, swallowing the lump in her throat. “It’s my job to find things out. I know about the darkroom. I know about the pictures. I know about the movies. I know about the Mary Magdalenes. All those secrets, all those lies. I uncovered them all.”
“You don’t understand.” Her father took a deep breath, running a hand through his hair. “You think you see, but you don’t.”
“How cryptic.” Erica rolled her eyes. “How about we stop with the lying. We stop with the secrets. Tell me the truth.”
“I will.” He closed his eyes, rubbing his forehead. “I will, but I can’t right now. I promise you, I’ll tell you, but right now, you have to trust me.”
Erica snorted laughter. “Are you crazy? Why should I trust you?”
“Erica, I may not be your biological father, but I am your father. And I love you. And I’d never do anything to hurt you. I tried everything I knew to keep you from falling into...” He sighed, shoulders drooping in defeat. “Maybe I shouldn’t have kept it from you. I don’t know.”
“I have a lot of questions. And I want answers.”
“I know.” He got up from his chair, pushing it back as he stood, looking down at her. “I’ll answer them. You deserve that. But first, you need to turn off the hot chocolate before you burn house down, and we need to find Leah.”
“Oh crap.” Erica jumped up, running over to the stove. The smell of burned milk filled the kitchen, but she hadn’t noticed until that moment.
He came up to her, standing in front of the stove, looking down at her. She wanted to put her arms around him, she longed for the comfort, but she didn’t do it. How could she ask for such a thing? Reading her mind, he put his arms around her, and held her. Erica struggled, trying to get away, to run away from the truth, but she couldn’t.
“I love you,” he whispered, kissing the top of her head. She twisted in his arms, heart still fluttering in her chest like bird’s wings. “You’re my daughter. You’re mine. I don’t care what some piece of paper says. I’ll love you and protect you until the day I die. And all those times I failed to protect you are a knife twisted in my heart. You need to know that. Please believe me.”