Necessary Lies (38 page)

We chatted a while longer about her day at work and a party her neighbors had thrown, and I was glad she didn’t ask me about my work or my marriage. Or, to use my powder room! Halfway through our conversation I started wondering what I would do if she did ask, and my nerves began jangling all over again.

“Well,” she said finally, standing up. “I’d better get home and leave you to your straightening up.” She kissed my cheek. “Let’s talk before Friday night and decide what movie to see,” she said.

“Okay, Mom. Thanks for the bread.”

I watched her walk to her car and then went back in the house to find Ivy cowering on the sofa.

“You were gone so long!” she said. “I was afraid you weren’t coming back.”

“It was just my mother,” I said. “Nothing to worry about.”

I sat down on the sofa to watch the soaps with her, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to concentrate. I’d have to do the worrying for both of us.

48

Ivy

At long last, I knew how rich people lived. I was in a palace. Everything was clean and shiny and pretty, like nobody really lived here at all. I had a bathroom upstairs all to myself. The only other bathroom I ever been in was at school, and even that one was a tired old place compared to Mrs. Forrester’s. Last night, I had a bath in a real bathtub instead of trying to fit me and my big belly into our galvanized tub, and the hot water came out of a faucet like at school, instead of me having to heat it up on the stovetop.

Mrs. Forrester—she told me I could call her Jane, but it seemed wrong and I couldn’t do it—had bubble bath powder she put in the water. She left me alone and told me to relax and take my time. The only problem was I couldn’t relax. Every minute, I expected Nurse Ann or that Paula social worker to come busting into Mrs. Forrester’s house and take me away, so I was watching for them. The street was right quiet, so any car I heard go by, I was at the window, peeking out real careful so I didn’t get seen, making sure it wasn’t somebody coming to get me. When Mrs. Forrester’s mother showed up yesterday, I was sure it was all over.

I went to bed in her special room for guests after we watched more TV last night. We saw a show called
Twilight Zone
where there was ghosts in the desert and that got me thinking about Mary Ella coming back as a ghost, but I didn’t say anything to Mrs. Forrester because I could tell she didn’t believe in spirits. Then we watched a funny show with a man named Red Skeleton, but neither one of us laughed. I was thinking too much about Mary Ella and I thought Mrs. Forrester was full of nerves about what we were doing. That made me even more scared.

There was a lock on the bedroom door where I slept, but Mrs. Forrester said she didn’t have no key for it so I couldn’t lock it. That feeling of not trusting her came back then. This was her own house and she didn’t have a key? Did she want the bedroom door unlocked so they could come in and take me away in the middle of the night? I didn’t sleep too good. I cried because I thought I’d never see Henry Allen again. Then I cried more, thinking about Nonnie alone at our house, and when I finally did fall asleep I kept dreaming of Mary Ella coming back as a ghost.

The next morning, Mrs. Forrester went to the store and told me to keep the doors locked and stay away from the windows. I watched for her to come home and made a plan. If she had that Paula social worker or Nurse Ann with her when she came back, I’d go out the back door and run away. But when she came home, the only thing she had with her was a bunch of bags full of food. I never saw so much food come from a store. I was going to help her put it away, but she didn’t want me to do nothing. She brung a chair from the dining room into the kitchen so I could sit and talk with her while she put everything away.

By suppertime—she called it “dinner” and made tuna noodle casserole—I wasn’t feeling too good. I felt like I might even throw up, so I only ate a little.

“Nerves,” she said to me, and I reckoned she was right.

After supper, we played cards in the den. We sat on the sofa, me at one end and her at the other and put the cards on the cushion between us. Nonnie taught me and Mary Ella how to play rummy long ago, but Mrs. Forrester had to remind me how to do it. I was bad at it because I didn’t have no concentration at all.

I told her I’d been nervous when she went out to the store and she said she didn’t think she’d have to leave me again for anything, except Friday night she was going out with her mother. She had to do that, she said, because her mother’s feelings would be hurt if she didn’t spend time with her. She was a real kindhearted lady and I started feeling really good about her again.

“What about your daddy?” I asked. She talked a lot about her mama but never said nothing about a father.

“He died a few years ago,” she said.

“Was it a accident, like with my daddy?”

“Yes.” It was her turn to put down a card, but she just stared at the cards in her hand like she wasn’t really seeing them. She looked up at me. “I lost both my father and my sister,” she said. “Just like you.”

I couldn’t believe it. I thought of her as a lady with a perfect life, especially now that I seen her house. I felt like anybody could look at me and know I lost too much. I never would of guessed she had, too. “What happened?” I asked.

She held her cards upside down on her knee and leaned back against the arm of the couch. “It was only a couple of years ago,” she said. “My father had bought a used convertible … do you know what that is?”

“Ain’t got no roof?”

“Right. It was early summer, so I was home from college and Teresa—my sister—just graduated high school. We were going for a drive, like we did sometimes on Sunday afternoon. Daddy liked to drive out to the country. Find a farmer’s stand and buy some fresh corn or strawberries or whatever was in season. This was a special drive, because of the new car. So we drove out your way. Grace County. Do you know where that KKK billboard is not far from you?”

“I seen a couple,” I said, picturing them.

“The one closest to where you live,” she said. “We’d just passed it and a deer suddenly ran into the road right in front of us.”

“Oh no!” I knew a boy at school who got killed when a buck crashed through the windshield of his car. It was terrible.

“My father swerved and I guess he was going too fast and the car hit one of those ditches along the side of the road and we … well, I’m not sure if we hit the trees and then flipped over or vice versa, but the car ended up upside down in the woods and all of us were thrown out.”

She turned her cards over again but I knew she wasn’t seeing them. I knew exactly how she felt. “I was all right,” she said. “I didn’t have a scratch on me, though I was sore for days. My mother wasn’t badly injured, either, but I didn’t know it at the time because she was unconscious. I thought both she and my father were dead. Teresa … my sister … she was alive, but she was bleeding from a cut on her neck. So when someone’s bleeding you’re supposed to put pressure on the wound. I knew that, so I took off my shirt and pressed it on the side of her neck to stop the bleeding. But the thing is, we were in the woods and nobody could see us from the road. So I didn’t know whether to keep holding pressure on her neck or go out to the road and wave someone down for help.” She waved her cards in the air. “It was … I don’t know, the most horrifying moment of my life. So I stayed with her, holding pressure on her neck and hoping someone could see us, but no one came and my mother and father weren’t moving at all. I finally decided I had to run out to the road and get help. I left my sister and ran down to the road, but it was minutes before a car came by. It was a truck, actually. A farmer’s wife. She went back into the woods with me, but by then, my sister was gone.”

“Gone?” I asked. “You mean…”

“Dead,” she said. “She bled to death.” She looked down at the sofa, running her hand over the cushion. “I blamed myself for the longest time, thinking I made the wrong choice, even though everyone told me I did the only thing I could have. It took me a long time to believe that. I’m still not sure.”

I nodded. “I keep thinking I could of grabbed Mary Ella’s arm and pulled her back,” I said.

“You couldn’t have,” she said. “She took you completely by surprise.”

“I know that’s the truth, but it don’t change how I feel.”

She sort of smiled at me. Then she got up and opened a cupboard by the TV and I could see a big box inside. She moved some things around in the box and then came back to the sofa with a picture in her hand. “Teresa and I were two years apart, like you and Mary Ella, only I was the older sister.” She handed me the picture. Mrs. Forrester looked almost like she looked now, but her sister … her sister made me think of Mary Ella. The picture didn’t have no color, but you could tell Teresa’s hair was the same curly blond as Mary Ella’s.

I looked up at Mrs. Forrester. “She looks a little like Mary Ella.” I said.

“I know,” she said.

I looked at the picture another minute. Mrs. Forrester and her sister was both smiling. Both of them happy girls. Maybe happier than me and Mary Ella ever was. “You and me,” I said, “we both got the same kind of hurt inside us.”

She nodded, and suddenly, just like that, I knew I could trust her with my life.

*   *   *

I thought I’d sleep good that night, feeling safer and all, but as soon as I got into bed the sick feeling came over me again and I started getting a bellyache. I slept for a while, but the pain kept waking me up. Finally I got out of bed to go to the bathroom and when I stood up a puddle of water came out of me like I peed myself, though I knew I didn’t. I was so embarrassed, though. It went all over the pretty rug and I had to figure out how to clean it up before Mrs. Forrester seen what I done. I walked real quiet to the bathroom, but on my way back to the bedroom with a towel, I saw her coming out of her room, tying a robe around herself.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

My belly hurt so bad I couldn’t stand up straight. “I got a bellyache,” I said. “And water come out of me on your rug. I’m sorry. It ain’t pee, though, honest.”

Her eyes got real big. “Oh no,” she said. “I think you’re in labor.”

I remembered that word from when Mary Ella had Baby William. “No, that ain’t it,” I said. “It’s too soon. I think I just—”

“Come back to bed.” She put her arm around me, but a pain gripped my belly so hard I couldn’t take a step. I moaned and my face and head felt hot and sweaty. Mrs. Forrester talked to me, but I wasn’t really listening. All I could think about was the pain. And then, quick as it came, it left, and I stood up straight.

“It’s gone,” I said. “I ain’t never felt nothing like that before.” I didn’t want to say that maybe her tuna noodle casserole had gone bad, but that’s what I thought. Except I remembered I felt punk before supper, too.

“Okay,” she said. “Come back to bed.”

She walked me back into the bedroom. “The puddle’s there somewhere.” I pointed to the rug at the side of the bed but the room was dark and she probably couldn’t see.

“Don’t worry about the rug,” she said. “I need to know if you get that pain again. I’m going to stay here with you for a while and you let me know, all right?” She sat down on the other side of the bed from me. It was like the way me and Mary Ella shared our bed, only I was on the wrong side. Would I ever sleep in that bed again? Could the lawyer make it that I’d be safe at home without always worrying about someone taking me away and cutting me open?

“Was that the first pain you’ve had?” Mrs. Forrester asked.

“Ever in my life?”

“No, honey. Tonight.”

“I felt punk,” I said. “And I had a bellyache, but that was the first awful pain. I don’t know what’s happening to me with all that water coming out. I should mop it up.”

“I think your water broke,” she said. “That’s what they call it when you’re going into labor. Getting ready to have the baby. Your water breaks.”

I could tell she was scared. She said all them things real calm, but her voice wasn’t like it usually sounded. And if
she
was scared, I sure was scared.

“What do we do?” I asked.

She didn’t answer right away. My eyes was getting used to the dark and I could see her head leaning back against the headboard. She was looking up at the ceiling. “I’m not sure,” she said. “Right now, we just wait to see if you get another pain.”

We waited a long time. I slept off and on and when I woke up, my belly felt like it was turning inside out and Mrs. Forrester wasn’t in the room. I grabbed fistfuls of the blanket in my hands, trying not to scream, it hurt so bad. Then finally, I had to let it out. “Jane!” I screamed. “Jane! Help me!”

49

Jane

My hand shook as I dialed my mother’s number. It was four in the morning and for the past hour I’d been sitting with Ivy while she screamed and cried, and I didn’t know which one of us was more terrified. I kept hoping the pains would stop, but instead they came closer and closer together, and I knew I had no choice but to call Mom. How would I ever explain what I’d done? Right now, though, I couldn’t worry about myself. Ivy was in agony down the hall. I didn’t think it would happen like this, so soon and so quickly. I hoped that didn’t mean something terrible was wrong. I’d never forgive myself if I’d hurt her or her baby by taking her away.

“Hello?” My mother’s voice sounded muffled and worried.

“Mom?” I said. “I’m all right, but I need your help. I’m sorry to—”

“What’s wrong?” She sounded suddenly alert. She was going to be angry with me, but I felt certain she’d help me.

“It’s one of my clients,” I said. “I … it’s hard to explain, but she’s here. At my house. And she’s pregnant and going into labor. And I don’t know what to do.”

There was silence on my mother’s end of the line as she took that in. “Why did she come to you?” she said.

“She didn’t. I brought her here. I was fired this morning. Yesterday morning, I mean. It’s—”

“You were
fired
?”

“Yes. It’s too long to go into right now. This girl … she’s only fifteen and I can’t take her to the hospital. I’ll explain when you get here. She wasn’t supposed to have the baby yet and I thought I could get this attorney I know to help us, but—” My voice suddenly caught, surprising me. I was so overwhelmed with frustration at things not going according to my plan! I heard Ivy scream from the other room. “I don’t know what to do, Mom!”