Summer's Child (30 page)

“But every woman I’ve ever known has been just fine with it,” Nancy continued. “Yes, they might scream, but in a couple of years they turn around and do it all over again. It’s worth it to them. Really, Grace, you don’t want to spend this whole last month of your pregnancy worrying about that.”

Grace let her head fall back against the chair, suddenly overwhelmed by everything she had to worry about. “Worry is my middle name, lately,” she said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. How do I tell my mother? Where will I live? I only have a little bit of money in my savings. At first, I can nurse the baby, right? I won’t have to pay for food?”

Nancy stared at her hard for a moment before answering. “You’re not prepared for this,” she said, her voice now low and serious. “You need to get help from an agency. You’re in Charlottesville, you said? Write down your name and phone number for me and when I get back to Elizabeth City, I’ll do
some research and find out where you can go to get help. Okay?”

“Thanks,”
Grace said. She suddenly felt less alone. Bonnie was a good friend and a loyal supporter, but she knew just as little about birth and babies as Grace did.

“And,” Nancy continued, “I think the first thing you need to do when you get back to Charlottesville is to tell your mother what’s going on.”

She shook her head vigorously. “You don’t know my mother,” she said. “As a matter of fact, I don’t think I can go back to the house at all. I’m getting too big. She’ll know. Bonnie and I have to figure out where I can lie low during the next month.”

Nancy sighed, and Grace read disapproval in her face. “This is no way to live, Grace,” she said. “I’ll get you that information on agencies that can help you, but I want you to promise me one thing.”

“What?”

“That after this baby is born, you’ll go on the Pill. You can’t let this happen again. This baby you’re carrying should never have been conceived.”

Grace wanted to say it wasn’t her fault. She wanted to pour out the story of what had happened in Hawaii. But she could have said no to Brad; she could have said no to Joey. No one had raped her. It
was
her fault.

“I know,” she said. “Believe me, it won’t ever happen again. Not this way, anyhow.”

There were brief intervals of sunshine over the next few days, enough to encourage Nancy and Nathan to remain in Kill Devil Hills for the rest of their vacation, and enough to keep Bonnie from complaining too much. The promised storm hit on Saturday. It was not a hurricane, although there
had been talk of it becoming one. It was considered a tropical storm, and evacuation was not required, although most vacationers left the Outer Banks that Saturday morning, knowing what was coming. Grace and Bonnie did not leave, however. Their lease was up the following day; they were due to be out by one in the afternoon, but Grace was not ready to let go of her time away from home. She still didn’t know where she was going to go. She’d given Nancy her phone number so that the nurse could call her as soon as she had information about an agency that might be able to help her. She wished it were winter instead of summer, so she could cover her body more easily with heavy clothing. Maybe she could simply avoid her mother.

As darkness fell, the wind was wild and whistling, and the cottage shuddered violently, as though it might collapse around them. For the first time that week, Grace and Bonnie were glad they had not been able to afford a house on the ocean. Surely they would be washed away.

They had very little food left, and it was too nasty to go out for more, so for dinner, they made do with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. The power went out shortly after dinner, taking their lights and their TV. There was one hurricane lantern in the cottage, and they lit it and set it on the coffee table. Sitting on the sofa, they watched the flame lick at the inside of the glass chimney. And that’s when Grace’s cramping started.

“Can peanut butter and jelly go bad?” she asked Bonnie.

“I don’t think so. We just bought it a few days ago, anyway. Why?”

“I have a stomachache.”

“Oh,” teased Bonnie, “you’re probably going into labor.”

“Very funny,” Grace said. But she feared that Bonnie might be right. This was not a typical stomachache. More like men
strual cramps that came and went. But they were mild, ignorable, certainly not like labor would be. And she was only eight months pregnant.

“We might as well go to bed,” Bonnie said.

“Oh, God, Bonnie.” Grace couldn’t bear the thought of going to bed. When she woke up, she would only have a few hours left of her freedom. She would finally have to face the uncertainty of her future, and that of her baby. “I don’t want to go home tomorrow.”

“I do,” Bonnie said. “No offense. But I want to see Curt. And I bet the weather has been better in Charlottesville than it’s been here.”

“You don’t have to hide a bowling ball under your shirt when you go home, though,” Grace said.

“My mother would have known a long time ago,” Bonnie said. “She pays way too much attention to me.”

Grace glanced away from her friend. Bonnie’s words were spoken as a complaint, but she didn’t appreciate how good she had it. Grace shifted on the couch, trying to find a position that would make her stomach more comfortable. Maybe lying down would help.

“Okay,” she said, getting to her feet. “Let’s go to bed.”

Her sleep was fitful. She’d closed her bedroom window against the rain, but the glass rattled in its frame, and despite the storm raging outside, the room was hot, her sheets damp with perspiration. Even while asleep, she was aware of the pain. She dreamed she was in the hospital room, having the baby, and she was screaming. She screamed herself awake, and knew at once that she was truly in labor. This pain was not a dream.

Bonnie rushed to her side. “Grace? What’s the matter?”

The room was pitch-black. Bonnie’s voice cut through the darkness, but Grace had no idea which direction it had come from. “I think the baby’s coming.” She managed to get the
words out between explosions of pain. She let herself scream, throwing all of her breath and energy behind the sound, understanding now why women in labor felt that compulsion. No other sound would do.

“It can’t be coming,” Bonnie said, and Grace heard the panic in her voice.

Grace could not respond with words, only with gasping breaths and yet another howl of pain.

“I’ll get the lantern,” Bonnie said. “Wait here.” Then she laughed. “Like, where else would you go?”

In a moment, she returned to the room with the burning lantern, which she set on the old dresser, and Grace could see how frightened she was. She imagined her own face held that same look of terror.

“I don’t know what to do, Grace,” Bonnie said, waving her hands feebly in the air. “Tell me what to do.”

Grace felt helpless. What was happening to her had a life of its own, and she was completely unable to stop it. She looked at Bonnie, wordlessly pleading with her to take over.

“The nurse!” Bonnie said suddenly. “Nancy!” Bonnie ran out of the room, ignoring Grace’s plea not to leave her.

She screamed in Bonnie’s absence, screamed and screamed just to keep her mind off the raging pain in her body and the fact that she was alone. She was still screaming when Nancy and Bonnie rushed back into the room.

Nancy gave Bonnie instructions Grace could not make out, and Bonnie left the room. Nancy uttered words of comfort as she moved around, as if nothing unusual were occurring, and Grace suddenly felt enveloped by the nurse’s calming presence. She was only vaguely aware of Nancy rearranging the bedclothes and holding the lantern between Grace’s legs as she examined her. Nancy’s movements, her entire demeanor, were confident and unhurried.

Placing the lantern back on the dresser, Nancy sat down on the edge of the bed. “I’m going to tell you how to breathe,” she said to Grace, her voice soft and even. “It will help with the pain.” Grace was aware that Bonnie was in the room again, and she glanced at her friend’s face only long enough to know that she was crying. Fear always induced tears in Bonnie. Grace had seen it happen before.

She struggled to follow Nancy’s instructions to breathe, calmly and slowly one moment, panting the next.

“Squeeze my hand when you have to,” Nancy said, slipping her hand into Grace’s. Grace clutched at her fingers.

“Now listen to me, Grace,” Nancy said, leaning close to her. “Surely you now realize you can’t keep this baby. You know that, right? You’re simply too young to raise a baby by yourself, especially without the support of the baby’s father or your own mother. You don’t even know where you’re going to live. You’ll have to leave here tomorrow morning with a newborn baby in your arms and no diapers, no clothing, no formula and no knowledge of how to take care of it. Be honest with me, can you take this baby home to your mother?”

Grace let out a wail at the thought.

“She can’t,” Bonnie agreed. “You don’t know her mother.”

“I know you’ve had a fantasy of keeping this baby,” Nancy said. “But it was a fantasy, just that. I can help you, though. Let
me
take the baby. Let me take it to the hospital where I work. I’ll get the baby checked out and make sure it’s healthy and then I’ll arrange to have it adopted by a good family. That way, no one, not even your mother, will ever have to know that you were pregnant. You, me, Bonnie and Nathan. We’re the only ones to know. And it can stay that way.”

“She’s right,” Bonnie said. “I’m scared, Grace. I mean, it was one thing when you were just pregnant. But any minute
there is going to be a baby here. Another life! You’ve got to let Nancy take it.”

A boulder of pain pressed down on her stomach, and Grace screamed again. Her mind filled with jagged shards of thought. She could see her mother’s face, yelling at her, forcing her to tell her how this pregnancy had happened. She could see Bonnie and herself tomorrow, struggling to keep a newborn alive. Oh, God, what if her selfishness caused the baby harm? Suddenly, through the veil of pain and terror, her idea to have the baby and keep it seemed unspeakably selfish, almost cruel.

She squeezed Nancy’s hand with both of hers. “Would you call me? If you take the baby, would you let me know that it’s all right? That it’s been adopted…by somebody wonderful? Promise me you’d only let it go to somebody wonderful who could give it everything.” Her voice broke and she clutched Nancy’s hand even harder.

“Absolutely, Grace,” Nancy said. “I’d do all of that. You wouldn’t have to worry about anything. Just turn the baby over to me and I’ll take care of it.”

“This is like a miracle, isn’t it, Grace?” Bonnie asked. “I mean, you happened to go into labor a whole month early, but a nurse just happens to live next door, and she knows exactly what to do and she can find a good home for the baby. You have to do it, Grace. This is obviously the way it’s supposed to be.”

She writhed on the bed with a fresh wave of pain. The storm pummeled the window above her head. Thunder cracked in her ears and lightning lit up the room with an eerie, unearthly pulse of flight.
Let me out of this nightmare
. She’d wanted this baby so badly, now she just wanted to be free of it. Get it out of her body. Make the pain stop. Let Nancy take it away, safe and unharmed with a future better than any she could hope to give it.

“Yes,”
she wailed. “Please take it, Nancy. Please make this be over!”

The baby girl was born at four-fifteen in the morning, when the ferocity of the storm had dissipated, and Grace had reached the end of her own strength and will to fight. Through a fog, she heard the cries of her baby, and she stretched out her arms into the darkness toward the sound.

“Let me see her, Nancy,” she said weakly.

“No, no,” Nancy said. “Trust me, Grace. It will be easier for you if you don’t see her.”

“She’s right,” Bonnie’s voice came from somewhere beside her. “It might be harder for you to give it up…give
her
up…if you see her.”

She was too tired to fight, and she let herself be lulled into sleep by the release from pain and the peace and quiet that had finally come to settle outside her window.

It was nine-thirty when Grace opened her eyes the following morning, and the night came back to her like a bad dream. She felt the dampness on the bed beneath her bottom, and reached down to touch the towel Nancy, or perhaps Bonnie, had folded beneath her. She’d had her baby. She’d given it to Nancy. That had been the right thing to do; Nancy could take good care of the baby. But there was no reason why Nancy had to find it a permanent home. The baby could stay in a foster home! As soon as Grace got up on her feet again, as soon as she had a place to live and a job, she could take the baby back. All her desperate fears of the night before seemed out of proportion to the situation now.

“Bonnie?” she called out.

Bonnie came into the room, deep bags under her blue eyes. “You’re awake!” she said. “How are you feeling? Are you terribly sore?”

Grace raised herself to her elbows. “I want to see my baby,” she said.

“You can’t, Grace,” Bonnie said. “Remember what Nancy said? It’ll just make it harder for you if you see it.”

“Not
it
,” Grace said. “Her. And I’ve thought about what I said last night. What I agreed to. I don’t want her to have the baby adopted out. I was feeling crazy last night. If Nancy could find a foster home or something until I can figure out what to do, then I can take the baby.”

“Oh, Grace, you’re still not thinking clearly.” Bonnie sat down on the bed. “You have to do what’s best for the baby. And also, what’s best for
you
. You haven’t even ever had a boyfriend, Grace. You haven’t even gotten to live. I’ve always thought it was crazy that you were going to tie yourself down with a baby, but I knew that was what you wanted, so I went along with it. But this is such a perfect solution. The baby will be fine. She’ll have a better life than she would have with you—you have to admit it. And then you can get on with your own life.”

It bothered her that Bonnie could not understand. “You weren’t pregnant with this baby for eight months,” she said, starting to cry. “You didn’t carry her around right beneath your heart. You didn’t feel her moving around inside you. You talk about the baby like she’s some…nuisance, or something. She’s my
child
. I may not be able to give her every single toy she sees or dress her in perfect, matching little outfits, but I’m going to give her so much love and attention that she’s never going to feel deprived of anything.”