Nobody's Child (11 page)

“And?”

Her eyes got wide and she took a deep breath. “I wish I'd never gone looking.” The roll of her eyes spoke volumes.

“So. Why me?” Laura Ann asked. “Weren't you afraid?”

“Afraid to try again? Sure.” She stood up, walking to the sink to place her empty glass in the basin. She stared out for a long look at the rain, and the swelling flood in the pasture below. “The experience with the father nearly ruined it for me,” she said. “But I determined to press on.”

Sophia turned and faced the table, leaning back into the edge of the sink. She moved a hand to lay it atop her stomach, looking down as she moved her fingers along the cotton print from the top to the bottom of her belly. “The first time he kicked,” she said, her hand pausing at a spot on the right side of her belly button, “that's what got me moving again.” She shrugged. “And something about your donor profile—your picture—kept coming to mind. The one of you in that beautiful print dress.”

Laura Ann looked down at the table again.

What would Daddy say now?

“There's only three things you can lose that you'll never get back,” Daddy shared with her one winter, bundled up against the cold during an early morning feeding. “Your life, your credibility — and your virginity.” His words shocked her then at age fourteen, direct words meant to help her deal with the challenges of teenage life. His lecture mixed in a tangled way with Preacher's many angry sermons on purity, pointed words that tore at her now. She'd lost something like that. Something pure. Something virginal. She'd sold something precious that she could never get back.

Sophia spoke. “You were courageous. You gave me life.”

The rumble of distant thunder distracted Laura Ann for a moment and she looked left to the living room, through the window into the distance. The few Angus she could see in the rain lay where they'd been all morning, noses into the storm.

Courageous?

Pushed against a financial wall, desperate to save her daddy's most valued belonging, she'd sold her body. Despite her success, she felt nothing but guilt — and fear. She could have sold all the cattle, leased the tobacco allotment to Uncle Jack, even sold part of the farm and kept most of the property intact. But instead she'd turned to her body for cash and a quick way out. A solution that kept every facet of life at the farm intact. But at what price?

Pastor Culpeper's words tugged at her, unforgettable wisdom from her last visit to his church. “Let go and let God,” he'd said, the words clinging to her like flypaper. Her story, of taking total control, was the antithesis of the faithful surrender he'd encouraged.

Sophia's hand moved in a slow circle about her stomach, as if massaging the baby, the fruit of a man and woman who'd never met, joined inside her to create a child that Sophia — and Laura Ann — had always dreamt of.

A baby — Laura Ann's baby — one she might never meet.

For the second time that day, her heart stuck in her throat, her breath stolen away.

She'd sold a child that might have been her own.

Drenched by the rain, Laura Ann reached across the truck's bench seat and offered a hand to Sophia, pulling her to a semblance of safety in the dusty cab. She needed to assess the flood damage, no matter how bad the weather. Sophia may as well come along. Laura Ann wished she'd swept out the dried mud and bits of hay that littered the interior, but her guest hardly seemed to notice.

“Donating eggs isn't as simple as they make it sound,” Laura Ann said. She engaged the four-wheel drive and pointed her truck out of the barnyard. Lakes of standing water surrounded them, pelted by the constant downpour. “I saw an ad for donors on a bulletin board at the hospital. I heard another on the radio. But they don't tell you much about the dark side.”

Sophia gripped the seat and the door handle with iron fists as the truck weaved up a slick clay slope toward the ridge, all four tires spinning.

“It hurts. A lot,” Laura Ann said as she drove, indifferent to the mud. “Cramps. Nausea. Bleeding. And sometimes they don't pay what they promised.” She shuddered at the memory. “Not at all like giving blood.”

Sophia sat in silence for a long time while Laura Ann shared her story of four trips to Morgantown. When the road leveled out, her arms relaxed, and she turned to face Laura Ann, eyes
glistening. “Thank you,” she said, her voice cracking. “For that sacrifice.”

“Sacrifice,” Laura Ann said with a nod, recalling the shower of sparks that drifted up from her little pyre three days ago, mixing with the nighttime blaze of a hundred billion stars. “That's a good word for it.”

Laura Ann looked to her right for a moment, slowing down. The truck guided itself in water-filled ruts as they wound through the wood.

“We'll park the truck here,” Laura Ann said, waving her hand toward a grassy spot. The narrow winding road led through tall oaks and sweetgums in the state's Wildlife Management Area, property that stood between her farm and the low water crossing. But the water no longer ran low.

From the grassy knoll, Laura Ann saw what she'd feared all afternoon. Grey sheets of rain and a dense mist in the creek bottom mixed in a fearsome way, obscuring roiling red-brown water that tore the earth apart before them. Fifty feet below the truck, a massive logjam sent water jetting thirty feet into the air, scouring away at the low-water crossing where the flood pounded down with a mighty roar.

Trees lay in a jumbled pile where the creek normally made its acute twist back to the left, flowing downstream about the jug-shaped island that was her home. Any other day, water would meander up against the dam formed by the low water crossing, in a sharp turn at the neck of The Jug, then cut hard left to make its seven-mile clockwise jaunt around an island of pastures and trees. Today, however, logs careened into that tight turn at the dam and stuck, grabbing at every heavy floating thing that came their way. In the mix of brown and grey logs, Laura Ann could see parts of rooftops, a swing set, plastic kids' riding toys — and the hood of a car. Wedged deep in the pile, it was probably one of the many old vehicles abandoned in low-lying fields upstream.

Laura Ann looked beyond the logjam, searching for the power and telephone wires that broke hours ago. Two lines lay limp on the muddy bank, disappearing into the turbulence. There would be no power or phone service for a long time.

Water shot in boiling haystacks over the wall of logs, crashing down into the creek bottom on top of the sixty-year-old concrete causeway and dam built to correct the ugly land cut made by predecessors who'd burrowed through a narrow ridge to bring water to grist mills. Water blasted at the old concrete, scouring away its foundation. The roar of water pummeled them with a low frequency vibration that worked its tendrils into her gut.

“I need to get closer,” Laura Ann said. “Stay in the truck. I'll be back in a minute.”

“It's raining,” Sophia protested. “And dangerous.”

“I'll be careful.”

Sophia nodded and waved her on, her eyes riveted on the watery drama unfolding before them. Laura Ann closed the truck door and began her trek down a slope of slick red clay, rivers of water tearing away at the ruts. Everywhere, red-brown water cascaded to its salty end a thousand miles away. The deafening roar of water thrummed deep in her abdomen. Were the sight not so awesome, the sensation would be nauseating.

Laura Ann drew closer to the concrete causeway. In drier weather, the crossing provided a man-made diversion at the upper curve of the creek, thirteen feet higher than the lower curve on the opposite side, ensuring that nature came into balance after her predecessors destroyed the creek-diverting ridge to build a ragged sluice to feed the first mill. Their plan for a water mill, positioned at a unique point of geography separating two levels of flowing water, created the scar that would soon destroy her creek. Without the man-made causeway no water could flow in a grand clockwise circle about the farm. Without the causeway dam, the waters of the Middle Island Creek would
shoot straight through this ragged sluice in the neck of The Jug and pass her by.

The first deep rumble in the earth made her knees weak, rock below her giving way in the dim light. She looked around for a falling tree or mudslide, sure she stood in the path of something about to careen into the water. Vibrating earth moved under her feet again, the moan of rock about to give way.

Suddenly the old cofferdam and causeway broke in two. The jet of water spewing over the logjam scoured so deep, and with such power, that the middle of the causeway cracked and lifted in the water. She felt the demise long before she saw the roadway buckle, then watched in horror as a monster slab of grey concrete jacked upwards, a feather in the hands of its liquid destroyer. Pushed hard by the waterfall that freed it, the slab crunched into the creek bottom downstream, upended in a strange way, then wedged against a muddy bank with nowhere left to go.

Angry water piled up on either side of the new hole, pushing on ragged edges of a broken crossing. Another deep rumble worked its way through her legs, and Laura Ann watched the ends of the causeway, now mortally wounded, lift like pancakes and flip downstream. In the span of less than a minute, her only route across the neck of The Jug piled up like stone carrion into the creek bank.

She knew what would happen next, the destruction of the only road to town. The jumbled concrete at once became a funnel, shooting a jet of water up against the raw red of an eroding mountainside. State Route 18, perched on a perilous cut above the creek, would not survive long. Furious water tore at red dirt, ripping away clay that held the road in place. Soon, the only passage from West Union to Middlebourne would be swept into the maelstrom.

Watching the bank disappear, she spied a figure in yellow and white. A yellow raincoat perched on the road above. Waving.

Granny Apple!

Her home just a few hundred feet upriver from the crossing, tucked safe against the hill, Granny Apple had come to watch the end of an era, the destruction of the old dam and causeway. Perhaps she felt that impending loss in her bones, like she felt the weather. Or like Laura Ann had felt it, in her feet and her gut. Laura Ann waved back to get her friend's attention. Granny would tell Ian. She'd let him know everything was okay.

She could imagine Granny Apple's words, were she within earshot. “Get inside, child. Nothing you can do out here.” And she'd be right. The figure in yellow and white waved one last time, then walked back in the direction of her hillside home. She'd communicated in the most elemental of ways. Both knew the other was fine. And Ian would soon find out.

She turned and headed back to the truck. Would that Granny were the one stuck with her on the farm instead of this new person, someone who dug up recent graves, a stranger who pulled the ashes of past mistakes from her tiny bonfire. She trudged through the rain, wading in red torrents that cascaded down the mountain road. Five minutes later she sat in the truck, soaked to the skin.

“I saw you waving. Who did you see?” Sophia asked.

Laura Ann sat behind the wheel, wiping a sheet of water from her face with soaked hands. “A neighbor,” she said. “She'll tell everyone we're okay.”

Darkness consumed them, daylight snuffed out by a curtain of wet grey. “No one knows I'm here,” Sophia said after a long pause. “Just you.”

Laura Ann started the truck, rechecking the four-wheel drive before she navigated treacherous mud on the downhill return to the farm. She backed the truck through a three-point turn and headed along the rutted track to home.

“What else did you see?” Sophia asked after a long silence.
Towering oaks and poplars lined their path through the hunting preserve as they descended to the farm.

Laura Ann shook her head, dreading this forced union with a single pregnant woman who bore the fruit of Laura Ann's womb like a badge of honor.

“The crossing is gone,” Laura Ann stated, matter-of-fact. “No one will drive out of here — or come to see us — for a very long time.”

She let those words hang on the air for a moment, expecting some reaction, but heard none. Laura Ann looked to her right at Sophia, her back ramrod straight, hands clenching the dash and the door as the car slid down the slope on mud slick as ice. When she looked back a second time, Sophia's jaw was clenched, sign of the steely determination that led her to this place, to this day. No cries of remorse, no worries of a departure. And no words of comfort.

Mental images of Ian came to mind as Laura Ann guided the truck. Daydreams of an evening together at the Blennerhassett, of a romantic dinner and, perhaps, a diamond ring. Nightmares tore at her, the dread of secrets revealed, of stools unsold, and a mortgage left unpaid. She set her face toward home, determined to speak no more.

With her face soaking wet, tears would never show.

Laura Ann watched her guest in the dim light of a kerosene lamp, one burning in each room of the farmhouse. Long after nine o'clock, and past time for bed, the dark meant comfort.

Sophia looked up, her thin face drawn tight over sharp cheekbones and chin. Kerosene shadows flickered on her face, a surreal brown with deep eyes that hid stories untold. Laura Ann couldn't remember the last time a woman other than Auntie Rose spent the night at her home.

“I have a bed ready,” Laura Ann said at last. “I fixed up Daddy's room for you. I hope it's okay.” Laura Ann pointed down the hall, in hopes Sophia would leave her alone and go to sleep. The constant pounding of rain on tin and caring for her stranded visitor set Laura Ann's nerves on edge. Most of all she feared Sophia's probing. She preferred to conceal her motivations and bottle up a disgraceful past.

Sophia smoothed her hair and stood, approaching Laura Ann. “I'm sorry,” she offered, her hand extended. “For putting you through this.”

Does she read minds?

“Really,” Laura Ann insisted, “it's okay.”

Sophia moved toward her, perhaps too close. She laid a hand on Laura Ann's forearm. “You're just being nice, but for that I thank you.” She backed up, her eyes glistening in the soft yellow glow of the lantern. “I'd like to know more. Tomorrow. When you're ready.”

“More?” Laura Ann asked, her voice a squeak.

“Yes, more about you. About
why
you gave me this gift.” She patted her stomach, the hand lingering on the ledge of her belly.

“I didn't give you anything,” Laura Ann insisted. “I sold myself to save our farm.” She took a deep breath and continued. “At best, call it altruism.” She paused again. “But certainly not a gift.”

Sophia moved closer. “Altruism? Maybe. But I think it was more than a concern for the welfare of someone in my situation. You sacrificed so much to make this possible, Laura Ann. That's courageous.”

That word again. Courageous.

“How?” Laura Ann asked. “How is it courageous for me to hide something I did for fear I'll be branded a slut? Courage would have been to stand up and fight for the farm without selling my eggs.” More words bubbled up, desperate to be released. “Courage would have been to trust God for the outcome.”

“A slut? I don't know what you're covering up, Laura Ann, or why you're feeling so — I don't know — ashamed? Maybe that's not the word.”

“Ashamed
is a good word. But
regretful
is better.”

Sophia stiffened. “That hurts.”

“I'm sorry, Mrs. McQuistion. But you've made me face some hard realities today.”

“Call me Sophia. Please.” She made a basket shape with her hands, framing her question. “What kind of realities?”

“I've cheapened myself. I put a price on something precious. No matter how much it helped you, that doesn't make it right.”

“How can you say that you cheapened yourself?” she asked, her voice rising. “You're wrong, and you insult me to say it.”

Laura Ann moved away, walking to the front door where it stood open to the cool humid night, rain pouring from the heavens. She looked out at the dark, no sign of a star or a light in the distance. Pitch black, like her mood.

“Is that really the way you see it?” Sophia asked. “Like you're some kind of prostitute?”

At the word
prostitute
Laura Ann gripped the doorjamb, struggling to keep herself together. The dark spot inside that she'd tried so hard to hide welled up like vomit. She could hold it no longer. Laura Ann dashed through the screen door onto the porch.

She moved to the post by the steps and wrapped her arms about the wet white pillar, spatters of rain drizzling in her face. The cool of the wet mixed with her tears in a salty damp. So many tears. Tears for Daddy. Tears for terrible pain each trip to Morgantown. And now this, confronting a past she'd tried so hard to burn away and forget.

Sophia called from behind, standing in the portal. Her voice lost its edge. “Can we talk?”