Suburban Renewal (2 page)

“What a wonderful surprise to see you,” she told Corrie. “Now, I've only got some nice butter beans with a bit of ham shoulder. It's plain food, but it's filling and we'll dress it up with some chow-chow and some pickled beets. Would you like that? Come on in here and you can help me set an extra place. Samuel, if you don't get yourself cleaned up, we'll eat without you.”

It was an empty threat, of course. But I was very willing to hand off Corrie to my grandmother. The two liked each other a lot. And I thought it might be good to remind Corrie that those guys she met at college might be smarter and richer and more her type, but they didn't have Gram. Gram came with me. If she dumped me, she'd lose Gram as well.

I walked back across the porch, down the steps, leaped over the picket pence and trotted around to the backyard. The old washhouse that my grandfather had built in the 1920s was still in use. Gram had her Maytag installed in the little room just off the kitchen, but she still had washtubs and a scrub board for my coveralls. I stepped inside the weathered tin-roofed shack and stripped off my clothes. I washed up with lava soap in a basin of hot water carried down from the house and rinsed in the cold water from the spigot on the wall. This was the same routine that my grandfather and my uncles had followed. Clean clothes, freshly starched and pressed, hung on the hook on the back of the door. I mixed my shaving cream in the same chipped cup my
grandfather had used and brushed my teeth with his preferred Colgate tooth powder. The passage of time and changes in consumer choices had somehow passed Gram by. Either that or she saw no reason to change a system that had obviously worked. In a few minutes, I was clean and presentable. I stepped back outside and dropped the sweaty, greasy coveralls in the barrel of Gram's special oil-field cleaning solution that had to be kept out in the open, it's main component being highly flammable drip gasoline.

In the kitchen Gram and Corrie were getting dinner on the table. I knew that Corrie's family never ate before 7:00 p.m. But Gram always fed a working man as soon as he came home from the field.

I watched for a moment, unobserved. Corrie was helpful, soft-spoken, subdued. She'd only been at college for six weeks. In some ways it felt like yesterday, and in others, that she had been gone forever.

“There's our boy,” Gram said as she caught sight of me. “Come on in and take your place at the table. Corrie, you sit down as well. I'll only be a minute until this corn bread comes out of the oven.”

Corrie sat at my right. I smiled at her. She smiled back, but it was only a shadow of the happy expression I was accustomed to.

When Gram was seated we joined hands around the table as I said grace. Corrie's hand was so small in my own and it was cold. I couldn't resist giving it an encouraging squeeze. If this was the end for us, I knew I would be sick, miserable. There was no reason that she should be sick and miserable, too.

“Thy will be done,” I told God. But I was fervently hoping that He would see things my way.

The meal seemed to last forever. Gram kept up a
steady stream of talk, including a long-winded, oft-told tale of Aunt Kate sewing flour-sack drawers with the advertising along the back so that the butts read SHAWNEE'S BEST. It was one of Gram's typical old-timey stories of her and her sisters growing up in Territory Days. I'd heard it a million times, I guess. But Corrie hadn't heard it and it made her laugh. It was a wonderful sound. So I told a story or two myself. By the time Gram served up the applesauce cake the tone had changed to being almost festive.

“Why don't you two sit out on the porch while I clean up this little tat of dishes,” Gram said.

Corrie argued for a minute, but Gram shooed her away and reluctantly we found ourselves alone on the porch swing. Twilight was coming on and the overhead cloud cover made it seem even darker. I didn't switch on the porch light, but the house light seeped through the front window, giving just enough illumination for me to see Corrie's face.

She looked so sweet and pretty. Smart and sweet and pretty, Corrie had it all. It was no wonder that her parents wanted more for her than me. And no surprise that once she'd been out into the world, she'd discovered there were plenty of guys more suited to her.

I knew I would never do as well. I'd find some good-natured gal and we'd buy a mobile home on a fifteen-year lease and raise three or four kids. But I would always remember Corrie. I would always remember the girl who thought better of me than I did myself.

I pulled her close and kissed her. I wanted to taste for one last time the lips that by any reasonable accounting should never have been mine. As I moved back, I smoothed away a few strands of blondish-brown hair that strayed across her cheek.

“Don't be nervous or anxious or afraid,” I told her. “Just tell me whatever it is you have to tell me.”

A worried frown still creased her brow, but she raised her chin bravely.

“Sam, I'm pregnant.”

I was momentarily speechless, but I'm pretty sure my jaw dropped open in shock. That disbelief was almost immediately followed by irrational anger.

Some son-of-a-bitch college boy had knocked up my Corrie!

Fortunately, before I could express that thought, I realized that if Corrie was telling me, then I must be the guy who'd knocked her up. Could that be true? I always used a rubber. The last time we'd done it was in August. It was October already. Is that how it worked? You did it in August and didn't find out things had gone wrong until October? Was she sure it was true? Was she sure it was me?

I wanted to ask her all those things, but I looked into those bright brown eyes, awash with tears, and I couldn't play twenty questions.

“I'm so sorry, Sam,” she apologized. “I don't know what to do.”

“I know what to do,” I told her. “We get blood tests and a license, we say ‘I do' and live happily ever after.”

She didn't look as if she appreciated my humor.

I took her hand in my own and brought it to my lips for a kiss.

“Marry me, Corrie,” I said.

When she hesitated, I added, “Please.”

1977

T
he worst day of my life. That's how I would have described it then. And since my life experience up to that time had been mostly pampered and sheltered, it probably was.

I hadn't wanted to believe that it was true. I couldn't imagine that it could happen to me. I was smart. I was careful. I had a great future ahead of me.

Okay, so I missed a period. Sometimes that happens. New surroundings, different foods, even a change in water might cause the body to get out of its normal rhythm.

Finally, my roommate, a foulmouthed, chain-smoking cowgirl from Altus made me face my denials.

“Hey,” she said angrily when I'd unintentionally awakened her. “How many mornings are you going throw up before you trot yourself over to the infirmary and pee in a cup?”

I went that very afternoon.

“I'm sure it's not true,” I told the nurse, smiling. “I mean. Lots of things can mess up your cycle.”

She made no comment about that. She put a dropper into the cup of urine and drew out just a tiny bit. She
put that on a card and swished it around for maybe ten seconds.

“Positive,” she said, no inflection in her voice.

“It can't be,” I said.

“It is.”

“You can't know that fast.”

She held up the card for me to see. There was a big circle and a small circle. Both of them had turned color.

“Sometimes we get false negatives,” she said. “We never get false positives.”

I left the building with a sense of unreality. My life had just made a terrible unexpected turn. I felt disassociated from it. I walked to the Student Union. Ate a burger on the Starlight Terrace. Talked to two of the other girls who'd pledged Tri-Delt with me. That afternoon the greatest concern of Lisa and Janice was Saturday's game with K State.

“You're going to be there, right?” Lisa asked.

“No, no, I think I have to go to Lumkee this weekend,” I said.

“Eew, bummer,” Janice said. “Well, hurry back as quick as you can.”

“Yeah,” Lisa said. “When I go home to Shidler, I always get this irrational fear that somehow I'm going to be trapped there.”

We all laughed, but her fears were similar to my own.

But I had no choice. I had to go home, because I had to tell Sam. He was the person most concerned and also the one I felt closest to. I needed someone I could trust. I needed a calm, rational discussion to consider my options.

I could get an abortion. They were safe and legal
now in Kansas. And at less than eight weeks, the procedure would be simple and quick.

Or I could have the baby and give it up for adoption. In all honesty, I favored that idea. I imagined a happy little child, a part of me and Sam, growing up as the doted-upon only child of a loving, formerly childless family so blessed to get him. They would lavish upon our little baby everything that Sam and I had ever wanted. And they would tell him that his parents gave him up because they wanted the best for him.

The choice I gave the least consideration to was getting married. That would mean quitting school. That would mean telling my parents. That would mean public shame. That would mean the end of my life as I had known it, as I had planned it.

For me, wedding bells were the last and worst option.

It was the first thing out of Sam's mouth.

If I'd told him out on the river bluff, like I wanted to, I think I could have said no. But in the warmth and hominess that was Gram's house, somehow it seemed possible, it seemed almost desirable.

“Are you sure you want to marry me?” I asked him.

“Of course I am,” Sam insisted. “I've always wanted to marry you. You know that. You know I love you.”

“But to get married now, because of this, it just seems so wrong.”

“Nothing has ever been so right,” he assured me.

I don't remember ever actually agreeing. But I was swept along by Sam's enthusiasm.

“Let's go inside and tell Gram.”

“What?” I was incredulous. “I can't. We can't.”

“The longer we wait, the harder it will be,” he said. “When your direction is clear, you've got to move for
ward. We don't want to waste time second-guessing ourselves and anticipating what might happen. Let's get it over with.”

Like a zombie, I followed him back into the house.

Gram had finished washing dishes and was sitting out on her sunporch crocheting in lamplight. The banks of windows that surrounded the room on three sides were all open and the fresh night was alive with the scent of autumn. I had always associated that season with football games and pep rallies, youthful optimism and possibility. Now it just seemed decayed and melancholy.

“Gram,” Sam said to her. “Corrie and I have some news.”

She glanced up with a smile, but when she looked at me, her expression faltered.

Bracing herself with a chair, she rose to her feet and gestured for us to go back to the living room.

She sat in her overstuffed rocking chair with the lace doilies on the arms. I seated myself on the edge of the couch. Sam continued to stand, leaning his back against the wooden mantel that surrounded the gas heating stove.

He looked at me.

I was so scared, I was worried that I might faint. He smiled at me. He looked as if he was completely happy. He even gave me a little wink, as if to say, “Someday we're going to look back at this and laugh.” For me it felt like no laughing matter.

“Gram,” he said calmly, confidently, “Corrie and I are going to have a baby and we've decided to get married.”

The old woman grew pale and her ever-smiling mouth drew into one straight unpleasant line. She
moved to rise to her feet. Sam offered a hand to help her. She slapped his hand away.

“Samuel Braydon, I hope that you are writhing in shame,” she said. “I did not raise you to take advantage of the affections of a sweet young woman!”

Her words were whispered, obviously not meant for me, but I heard them just the same.

“No, ma'am,” Sam replied, his expression notably more solemn.

Gram came over and seated herself next to me on the couch.

“You poor thing,” she said. “Are you feeling sick? I thought you looked pale.”

She patted my hand comfortingly.

“Won't this be wonderful,” she said. “A baby in the house is always such a blessing.”

Gram cast all the blame for my out-of-wedlock pregnancy on Sam. At my parents' house, they did the same, eventually. My mother's first reaction was an irate scream.

“How could you do this to me!”

It wasn't posed as a question and I wasn't prepared to answer it.

“I can't believe it! I just can't believe it. Doc, do something!”

She looked at Dad as if she actually expected him to fix it. My father just looked sad.

“Sam and I have decided to get married,” I told them.

My father nodded, Mom looked, if possible, even more distressed.

“You can't actually mean to marry him,” she said. “It's bad enough that he got you into this mess. It
would be stupid to compound the mistake by tying yourself to this…this low-class bad seed.”

Mom made no attempt to hide her contempt for Sam. On the contrary, she said these awful things to his face. He should have gotten mad and told her to “go to hell,” but Sam didn't behave like that. He stood, eyes downcast, taking all the venomous anger my mother could dish out. And I knew from long experience that when provoked, Edna Maynard could really dish it out. Like a mama lion protecting her cub, I furiously defended him.

“Sam is not low-class and he's not a bad seed,” I declared. “He is a kind, generous, caring guy. Any woman would be proud to call him her husband and to give birth to his baby. And I…I love him.”

“Of course you love him,” Mom said with disgust. “Teenage girls always fall in love with the wrong guys. It's part and parcel of rebellion. But I will not allow you to ruin your life by getting married and having a baby.”

“I don't know how you will stop us,” I said. “I won't drive to Topeka to get an abortion.”

“Of course you won't,” Mom said. “You'll go to that home for unwed mothers in Tulsa. We'll tell people you're doing a semester overseas. You'll give the baby up to a nice childless couple and come home to get on with your life as if nothing happened.”

Honestly, that didn't sound like such a bad idea to me. It was, in fact, what I really wanted. To go away secretly, have the baby quietly and give it away. It was the best solution.

If we'd been in a calm, rational discussion, if I hadn't talked to Sam first, if Mom hadn't used that deter
mined “you'll do what I say or else” tone with me, my life might have been totally different.

As it was, I turned away from my mother and took my dad's hands in mine.

“Sam and I are getting married, Daddy,” I told him. “I want you to give me away. Will you do that for me?”

“Of course I will, pumpkin,” he said.

“George!”

“It's her life, Edna,” he said. “If Sam suits her, then he suits the rest of us.”

I rarely heard my father be firm with Mom. But he was that night. He was firm and resolute and supportive. And Sam and I got married.