Nobody's Child (12 page)

Laura Ann circled her arms about the post, determined not
to be pried away. Peering into the dark, she considered running into the pasture, finding one of those dry spots with the Angus, and lying down. Life had to be better out there.

“Please?”

Laura Ann forced a nod.

“Can I tell you a story?” Sophia asked from behind her. Laura Ann remained silent.

“I was born in Mexico.” Sophia moved to the post at the opposite side of the steps. She clung to it, one hand on the thick round pillar, another resting on her belly. “I grew up in Nuevo Laredo. Not a great place.

“My parents were poor. My father was a police officer, one of the few good ones. We had little to support us because he wouldn't accept bribes.” Sophia's voice cracked as she told her story, staring with Laura Ann into the black.

“When I turned sixteen, I took a job as a waitress in Cancun. I know what it means to sell yourself, Laura Ann. I made a terrible mistake a few months after I moved there, determined to help my family.” She paused and took a deep wheezing breath. “You did the honorable thing. I did not.”

Laura Ann turned at last to watch her, long black hair frizzing in the damp. The profile of her high cheeks and nose were barely visible in the light of the house lamps. Despite her thin frame, she radiated strength.

“I made a decision, Laura Ann. I prostituted myself on the pretense that I did it to help my family. I pursued money, but not honor. That phase of my life didn't last long—but long enough.” She took another deep breath and leaned her head into the post.

“I came down with a bad case of chlamydia. I'd been with lots of men—college boys on the cruise ships, business travelers, even the police. I thought it was a yeast infection and went to a doctor. He diagnosed the real problem—the STD—but the medication he gave me didn't work. On a positive note, that disease scared
me off the streets and I got better. I found some housekeeping work at a hotel. I couldn't send much money home, but I felt better about what I earned. And felt better about myself.”

She backed up and took a seat in the rocker. Laura Ann watched her, then released her own post and followed her toward the chair. As Sophia sat down, Laura Ann curled her legs under her and sat on the wet porch at her side. “Years of untreated disease scarred my ovaries, Laura Ann. I couldn't have children. Unlike you, I did sell myself. I compromised my morals to raise my standard of living—and to help my family. What you did to give me life, and what I did to make a life, are two polar opposites. Please,” she said, placing a hand on Laura Ann's shoulder, “don't for a minute think you're in my shoes.”

Sophia's hand lay for a long time on Laura Ann's shoulder. “I slept with men so that I could buy dresses and shoes, and send some occasional pesos to my family. I lived a lie because I wanted to enjoy the fruits of my labor.” A sob broke free and she coughed. “You can't undo a harm. Look what it cost me.”

Wet eyes met wet eyes. Sophia moved her hand to Laura Ann's head, the gentle touch of a mother, stroking her hair. “You were a donor, Laura Ann McGehee. You took a courageous step — innovative even — to save your farm. You probably went against the grain in your community, maybe your church. But I can tell that what you did bothers you so much that you've bottled it up inside like some kind of deadly sin. You're scared to death that my presence here will expose you to everyone you love, and in doing that, you'll lose them.”

Laura Ann raised her head, her chin quivering with unspoken regret. She strained to find the right words. “I hoped—even prayed that what I did might help someone,” she said, determined not to cry again today.

“And it did. To your credit. Not your shame.”

“People talk, Sophia. They won't see my actions as some kind of sacrifice. Just a sale.” She choked back tears and continued. “The worst part? I can handle the ridicule, but the last thing I want to do is hurt Daddy's good name.” She swallowed hard. “Preacher says a woman's womb is opened — and closed — by God. If that's the case, I had no business contributing to another woman's mistake.”

“I've lived those arguments. A thousand times,” Sophia said. “Many of my friends said what I did was unethical. But they
had
kids.” Her voice squeaked, trying hard to form painful words. “They have no idea how much it hurts, to want children yet be told ‘no' in every prayer. My priest said what I did was adulterous. A single woman, taking matters into her own hands.”

“We both did that. Took control,” Laura Ann said. She imagined Pastor Culpeper reciting another of his wise morsels. “My pastor says that when we shortcut God we learn nothing, and lose everything.”

Sophia reached toward her and put a finger to Laura Ann's cheek, wiping her thumb slowly across a streak of wet.

“Do you think we did that? Shortcut God?”

Laura Ann nodded. “I do.”

Both women sat in the cool embrace of the summer rain, wrapped in silence. Sophia spoke at last. “Perhaps I'm here for a reason.”

The words struck hard. Daddy, in this rocker, his hand on her hair only months ago. Deep coughs dragging horrible stuff from his lungs, while he said goodbye in his own way.

“Maybe I'm here for a reason,” he'd said to her. “And that reason, I'll wager, is to get you a flying start on life, Laura Ann.” He patted her head with bony fingers devoid of strength. “Even if I'm only here to launch you into the world — I can be happy with that.”

Sophia turned in the rocker, her hand cupping Laura Ann's cheek like Daddy's hand had months ago. What did he say about the “little voice,” the sense of something to come? She bit her lip, determined to listen to her heart. This must be what he told her it would feel like, this sense that God had some special word, some amazing plan, and it could only be revealed if she listened and trusted. “Faith at work, trusting in little things, and gentle voices.” Those were Daddy's words.

“Here for a reason,” Sophia had said. Laura Ann reached up and took her hand. She didn't resist the touch, a small smile on her lips as Laura Ann made contact. Their connection shot tingles down her arm, a sense that there was something special about this moment. Daddy would want her to open her heart and listen with every fiber of her being. “Listen and love.” That's what Daddy would say.

She pulled Sophia's palm close. “Maybe …,” Laura Ann began, her heart finally slipping free of bonds that gripped it for months, “maybe we're both here for a reason.” She smiled, her pulse throbbing with a new vigor, a clear understanding of this message that God placed in her heart—at this moment. Pastor Culpeper's reading fell into place like the last piece in a spiritual jigsaw puzzle, her “little voice” reciting Scripture.

My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.

No little voice, the message overwhelmed her like a warm shower, wetting a parched soul where there had, for too long, been no refreshment.

Sophia's hand trembled in Laura Ann's grip, her own body vibrating with unspoken joy. From her kneeling place beside Sophia's rocker, her face inches from the maternity top, she peered in wonder at the life that hid beneath the cloth. Light poured into Laura Ann's heart with a second message, one she determined to share aloud.

“Whatever we've done, Sophia, God hasn't given up on us. Something tells me we're here for each other,” she said, gesturing toward Sophia's swelling with a nod of her head, “and
both
of us are here for
him.”

J
UNE 25

Laura Ann awoke, her hand to her face, wet drips on her forehead.

Plop.

A drip landed in the softness of her pillow. She reached under the bed, pulling out a pan she'd stored there long ago. Replacing her pillow with the blue and white antique basin, she pulled back her sheets and waited for the next drip.

Ting.

Almost five in the morning. The wristwatch at her bedside heralded the beginning of a soggy new day. Laura Ann tried the light switch on her lamp with no success. She'd hoped this nightmare would be over when she woke, an end to the flood. But nothing had changed.

She felt her way across a braid rug with her bare feet, toes as eyes in the dim light of an early morn. Only a few feet across the room, she remembered what she missed. Rain. What became of the metallic symphony of water on roof tin that lulled her to sleep last night? Silence wrapped the little farmhouse in a noiseless embrace.

Laura Ann pushed printed curtains aside to look north toward the ridge. In the grey light of a wet predawn, low fingers
of cloud drifted over the farm, damp claws that sliced through trees. A low overcast darkened the landscape.

Minutes later in the kitchen, a dented aluminum percolator received yet another charge of Folgers and water, then set to work. Laura Ann placed the pot on the gas stove to brew, her old reliable drip coffee maker defiant in the face of no power. Grandmother's kitchen gift to Daddy and Momma before she was born. It brewed perhaps thirty thousand cups of coffee for her father. She hated the stuff, but Sophia would want some when she woke.

The screen door squeaked as she stepped out the back of the house. Armored against bands of drenching rain in knee-high rubber boots and a rain slick, she waded through a miniature lake that ran from the house to the barn. Distant rumbles of thunder to the west announced the advance of the next wave of wet misery.

“Tired of this weather?” she asked drenched Angus cows that stood milling about in the feeding area of the barn. “I don't blame you.” Laura Ann bent over and scratched Lucky where he nuzzled against her boot, purring and mewing for food. “Later, fella. We have to shovel some corn.”

Laura Ann's presence set the cows moving, following her down the length of the barn. She moved along one side of a long feed stall, separated from the herd by an old board fence and oak wood troughs. The Angus pushed against one another to match her stride.

“Hungry bunch,” she commented, moving cobs of corn from the crib. Mice scattered in the dim light at her first scoop of a wide grain shovel. Lucky pounced from behind her, pawing at a grey ball of fur with a long white tail. It disappeared into the maze of cobs before he could get claws into the treat.

“You're getting slow in your old age,” Laura Ann said with a laugh. She shoveled scoops of hard yellow cobs into the troughs,
feeding black muzzles that pushed into the path of the breakfast food. Thick black heads, like elongated triangles, bobbed up and down between the grey slats of the railing. Long pink tongues, spotted with black, curled around cobs and pulled them into waiting mouths, dense teeth crunching a golden meal. Tongues licked at wet noses, like fingers emerging from hot mouths to gather a meal and clean up, all at once.

Laura Ann filled the trough for the two dozen Angus and set the scoop aside. “You ladies got awful wet,” she said, pushing her fingers deep into the thick fur on the front of a cow's head. The crushing impact of teeth on cob vibrated through her fingers, so much power from such a gentle animal. The heifer raised her hard forehead into Laura Ann's fingers, begging for more attention when she stopped scratching.

The breath of cows, their body heat steaming up the barn, made the air so moist she could swim in it. The pungent aroma of manure filled the air. Not the acrid feces of chickens, but a rich earthy smell. Daddy used to call it “the smell of money” when they shoveled the barn — a rainy day task, and today seemed as good a day as any. Without electricity, there'd be no work in the woodshop. She patted another Angus on the head and moved toward the front of the barn, grabbing at a set of gloves.

“You guys thirsty?” Laura Ann asked, putting her shoulder into the first push on a pitcher pump at the far end of a deep watering tank. Water from a shallow well gushed from the old cast-iron spigot as she pumped, providing a little for the herd to wash down the corn, not enough to quench their thirst for over ten gallons a day. Plenty of water waited in the fields to meet that need.

Low in the fields along the banks of the Middle Island Creek, brown water and floating debris swirled high, extending far into fenced pastures. Like a lakefront, pasture grass grew down to the edge of the water, fence posts disappearing into
brown muck. No wonder the cows came into the barn. In the dim light of dawn she could see all manner of debris scattered in the field. The flood rose high during the night, depositing a line of junk along the highest water level. White objects—house trash from upstream — lay scattered across the pasture. Sticks, logs, and grass clung to barbed wire along the fence, and trees bowed low in the rushing floodwaters.

Laura Ann lifted Lucky and stroked him, his purr box on full roar. Sheltered from the humid breeze of the storm she stood inside the open barn door and plucked bits of hay and cobwebs from black fur.

“Did you stay dry last night, fella?”

Lucky looked up at her with wide yellow and black eyes, like he may have understood. She'd last seen him just before the big blow. So much had transpired since she watched the passage of storms in the garden on a hot afternoon. Her own storm blew in yesterday, but she had a peace now that wiped away all the concerns she'd carried for so many weeks. Lucky nuzzled in close to her breast, seeking another scratch on the ears.

“Hungry?”

Laura Ann turned in surprise, unaccustomed to another voice in the barn since Daddy passed on. Sophia stood in the side door, peering in. “Breakfast is ready!” She wore a huge smile, like she too felt an immense burden lifted since their talk last night. Despite the torrential rain, this day dawned anew.

“I'm starved,” Laura Ann replied, setting Lucky on the ground.

“Your good luck charm?” Sophia asked, pointing at the cat. He nuzzled at Laura Ann's boot again, unwilling to be ignored.

“Daddy used to say there's no such thing as luck,” Laura Ann replied. “Said you make your own destiny. I named him ‘Lucky' as a joke. To prove that luck really existed.” She pointed at the cat.

“I agree with your dad. That reminds me of a story I want to share with you. About my James.” She gestured toward the house. “Come eat.”

Laura Ann cut into another bite of Sophia's Western omelet. Years of biscuits, gravy, and bacon had not prepared her for the delight of fresh vegetables and cheese on eggs. A devoted fan of breakfast and the early morning, she savored the omelet like it might be her last meal.

“I didn't know you were up,” she told Sophia. “I'd have stayed in to get something ready for you.”

“The smell of coffee woke me, but I'm glad you didn't cook. I needed this.” She waved a hand about the kitchen. “A chance to get ‘normal' again. When I found the tomatoes and peppers, an omelet seemed like a perfect way to start the day.” She pointed at the refrigerator. “But I don't think your freezer will last with the power out.”

“No problem,” Laura Ann said with a smile. “It runs on natural gas.”

Sophia nodded. She set her fork down and pushed the plate away. “So. I had this story to tell you. I couldn't do it last night. Too emotional.”

“About?” Laura Ann asked with a partial mouth of food.

“James. My husband.”

“I wanted to ask,” Laura Ann began, then wiped her mouth, “how a girl from Mexico ended up with a Scottish name.”

“Through the best of luck,” she replied with a grin. “I met James when I was working at the hotel in Cancun. I'd just turned twenty, and he'd flown down on a trip that he won for being the best salesman at his company.” She chuckled. “He didn't fit in with the crowds at all. Not a drinker. No suntan. I don't think he enjoyed it much. Until we met.”

“How'd you meet?” Laura Ann asked, sipping on cold milk. Sophia blushed, her deep brown face burnished a sudden scarlet. “I had an accident in his room, and he helped me.” “Accident?”

“I stumbled while making his bed and fell through a plate glass door onto his patio deck,” she said. “I was rushing to get his room finished. It's a good thing he was there. He picked me up, set me on the bed, and cleaned my wounds, then he called the front desk for help. By the time the paramedics arrived he'd patched me up, even bandaged the worst cuts. I didn't want to leave.”

Sophia cradled her hands about the mug, staring into it again like she did last night. “James spoke Spanish. It amazed me because so few Americans did. He was so tender, like my mistake had been his fault.” She paused. “That comment you made, about luck and destiny?”

Laura Ann nodded.

“James used to say something like that. He looked me up the next day at the hotel and asked me out. In fact, he asked me out every night he was in town. He came back once a month for the next year, and proposed on the first anniversary of my fall. And that's how, a few months later, I came to have a Scottish name.”

Laura Ann took a long breath, then pursed her lips while she tried to think of a way to ask her next question. Sophia watched her with an intense focus, like she had some innate ability to see into Laura Ann's heart, to know what words would slip from her lips.

“I lost him three and a half years ago,” Sophia said, guessing her question. “He passed away suddenly. A stroke.” She wiped at a tear, her head lowered. “One day we were shopping for Christmas gifts, the next he was gone.”

“I'm sorry — “

Sophia reached across the table and touched her hand. “I'm glad that we had a chance to meet, Laura Ann. James would
have enjoyed getting to know you.” She chuckled. “He loved machines. He'd be right at home on your tractor.”

Laura Ann nodded. She understood that about men. Daddy commented once that Ian came to the farm every Saturday just to drive the equipment. She agreed with him then, but preferred now to think that he'd been courting her all those Saturdays. The memory of Ian stole her smile and she lowered her head, staring into her glass of milk.

“Are you okay?” Sophia asked, touching her hand again.

Laura Ann nodded. “I'm missing something. Something big. And it hurts.”

“What?”

“I have a friend — “

“Just a friend?” Sophia asked.

Laura Ann looked up to see her smile again. She shook her head. “More than a friend. Much more.” “What are you missing?”

“Actually, I haven't missed it yet. Dinner. On Friday. At a fancy restaurant in Parkersburg, but — “

Sophia nodded. “Surely we'll be able to get out by then …”

Laura Ann felt her own eyes go wet. “Something will work out. It has to.”

“Planning a special evening?”

Laura Ann nodded, then looked down at her empty ring finger. “Very special.”

“We have power!” Sophia exclaimed from the living room, pushing a button on the front of the television. “And TV!”

Laura Ann smiled, amazed at the impact of something as simple as electricity. Daddy's emergency generator came in handy on occasion, and she confessed, bringing the well pump
back on line was nice too. No more hand pumping their water out in the barn.

Laura Ann dropped a bag of old jeans on the floor where Sophia sat scanning for a news broadcast. “I'm cutting denim today. For my stools.” She held a pair of scissors in her visitor's direction. “Want to help?”

“Stools?” Sophia asked, picking a torn pair of jeans out of the sack.

“My mortgage. Fifty stools a month to feed the bank. Fifty dollars each. I cut the denim into strips and weave a seat.”

“Then hand me those scissors and let's get going,” Sophia replied. She dove into the bag and pulled out a pair of worker's jeans, covered in white paint. “These too?”

Laura Ann shook her head. “Don't bother. They're junk.”

An hour and six pairs of jeans later, the pile of inch-wide strips on the floor grew sizable, a sure sign of progress. Sophia held up the last of her most recent pair, portions of the belt loops and zipper unusable in the process. “Another one down. And a blister on my right hand.”

Laura Ann laughed, pointing her toward the sewing machine in the corner. “If you'd like a break, we have to stitch these together into a single strip.”

“I have no idea how to use one of those things,” Sophia said with a laugh while pointing at the antique electric Singer. “You are one talented woman.”

“Because I can sew?”

“That and more. Look at this,” she said, moving to the front window and pointing out at the pasture. Cows made their way across lush green grass in the downpour. “You run an entire farm, build furniture, and inside” — she said, pointing at shelves of classic novels — “you run a small library.” She crossed the room to pat Laura Ann on the back. “Any man who catches you is one lucky fellow.”

Laura Ann sat up at that last comment, dropping the cuttings in her lap. She stared out the window in the direction of the cows, and the ridge in the distance.

“What? I said something I shouldn't have?” Sophia asked, her ebullient spirit diminished for a moment. Her hand rested on Laura Ann's tense shoulder.

“Oh, nothing.”

“I might have been raised in another country, “ she said, walking around Laura Ann to sit cross-legged in front of her, “but I'm still a woman.” A white cotton top billowed over her jeans like an upside-down lily when she settled to the floor. “There's a man standing out in that field. And you're looking right at him.”