“Can you tell me who it is?” she asked. “The father?”
I shook my head, rubbing Baby William’s back to settle him down. “No, ma’am,” I said. “I mean, there’s only one choice, but I can’t tell.”
“All right.”
I lifted Baby William out of the tub, and Mrs. Forrester grabbed a towel off the line and helped me wrap him up in it. I hugged him to me, all clean and sleepy. My arms felt rubbery and strange. Me having a baby wasn’t sinking in yet. It was like we was talking in a dream.
“What about school?” I asked, remembering when they kicked Mary Ella out. Mary Ella’s teacher figured it out before anyone. “They’ll kick me out.”
She nodded. “You know you can’t go if you have a baby, honey.” She touched my shoulder. The way she said “honey,” it wasn’t the way other people did. Not like Nonnie or Lita. She said it like she didn’t say it to just anybody.
“I got to go to school, Mrs. Forrester,” I said. That was the plan. Me and Henry Allen would graduate and then go to California.
“I know you wish you could,” she said, but she didn’t say there was some way I could do it. I felt trapped.
“Don’t tell nobody,” I whispered. “Please.” I knew she talked to Mr. Gardiner sometimes. That would be the worst. That would be the end of me.
“I’ll wait until Nurse Ann has a chance to see you and we know for sure,” she said. “But then, Nonnie will have to know.”
I shook my head.
“You’re a minor, sweetheart,” she said. “She’ll have to know.”
27
Jane
The next morning, I sat in my car in the parking lot of the Laundromat for the longest time, putting off going upstairs to the DPW offices. There were voices in my head. Charlotte’s and Ann’s, primarily, telling me in one way or another that I was both naïve and foolish. They were right.
I could see Ivy’s future mapped out in front of me now. She’d become one of the tired, worn-down women I saw every day, half a dozen children clamoring for food and love. This pregnancy wasn’t my fault, though. I’d known her little more than a month, and she had to be four or five months along. I hadn’t missed her weight gain, but I had missed the cause of it. Yesterday, though, it had been impossible to miss.
I got out of my car and climbed the outside steps to the second floor, preparing myself for what lay ahead. I was disappointed to find Fred in Charlotte’s and my office, sitting in my chair. I hadn’t wanted to tell them both at once. I hadn’t wanted to tell Fred at all, actually, although I knew it was inevitable—he was still the director of the department, and his signature would have to be on the petition.
“May I speak with the two of you?” I asked.
“Have a seat.” Charlotte pointed to the straight-backed chair against the wall. Fred made no move to get out of my own chair.
I sat down, my briefcase on my lap like a shield. “I think…” I began, “or actually, I’m quite sure that Ivy Hart is pregnant.”
They stared at me in total silence.
“I think she’s pretty far along,” I said. This baby is not my fault. “She must have been pregnant before I started working with the family.”
Charlotte sighed with a shake of her head. “I knew I should have gotten that petition in long ago,” she said. “Is it ready for Fred to sign?”
“I’ll have to rewrite my part now,” I said. “And I guess Ann Laing will have to rewrite hers, too.” I thought about Fred reading what I’d written. The weak, unconvincing way my portion of the petition was currently written, he’d probably refuse to sign it. Now I’d be able to make a much stronger case, whether I wanted to or not.
She nodded, and I thought I saw some of the old sympathy and understanding in her eyes. “We all get a wake-up call at one time or another, Jane,” she said. “Ivy Hart is yours.”
I hugged my briefcase, leaning forward. “I have to tell her, though, Charlotte. I won’t be a party to a lie. Another appendectomy.”
Fred shook his head. “Maybe you should go into the ministry,” he suggested, “where that ‘holier than thou’ attitude might be an asset.”
That stung. Did I sound like that much of a prig?
“Ivy won’t understand,” Charlotte said. “If you’re right about this, she’s been pregnant for months without so much as an inkling. She probably doesn’t even know how she got that way.”
“She knows,” I said. “She was trying not to get pregnant, but—”
“Do you honestly think she’d understand the sterilization procedure?” she interrupted me, and I knew it was a rhetorical question. “It would just make her very anxious, knowing what lay ahead of her. In my opinion, that would be cruel. Her grandmother’s her guardian. We have her permission and I’m sure now that Ivy’s expecting a baby, Winona would sign that paper five times over. That poor woman. This is the last thing she needs.”
“I just … even if she doesn’t completely understand, I can’t be that dishonest.”
Fred got to his feet and headed for the door. He looked down at me. “Your self-righteousness is getting in the way of your duty to your clients, Mrs. Forrester,” he said as he left.
I looked at Charlotte. “He really doesn’t like me,” I said.
“He’s under the gun right now, Jane,” she said. “He hates being back in the field. He has a lot of fires to put out with his clients at the moment, and yes … he wishes you wouldn’t try to change the way this department’s been run for years. Frankly, so do I. We need you to work with us and not against us.”
“I’m trying,” I said weakly.
“I don’t think you are,” she said. “Give me the permission form. The one the patient’s supposed to sign.” She motioned impatiently for me to hand it over.
My hands felt clammy as I opened the briefcase and leafed through the petition papers for the Consent of Patient form. I pulled it out and handed it to her.
She lowered her leg in its cast from the stool and turned her chair toward her desk, slipping the form into her typewriter. I waited while she typed a single sentence.
“Call Ann Laing,” she said, pulling the paper from the typewriter. “Let’s get her out there and make sure your hunch is right. Plus you need to look into finding a foster placement for Mary Ella Hart’s son.”
She handed me the form. I looked down at what she’d typed: “Patient is a minor; not consulted.”
“Charlotte…” I pleaded.
“I need to make some phone calls,” she said. “And so do you.”
28
Ivy
It was the first time I wrote the note to Henry Allen instead of the other way around. “I got to see you tonight. You got to find a way to get out. Midnight.”
We was finishing up the morning break. Me and him didn’t even look at each other on break no more, but somehow I had to get the note to him and it was now or never. Him and Eli was walking toward the field and I stepped away from Mary Ella and took the risk, handing him the tiny little piece of paper as quick as I could.
“Hey!” Mr. Gardiner shouted from the path. I hadn’t seen him there and he was looking right at me. “What’d you give him?”
My eyes must have been big as griddlecakes and my heart skipped two or three beats. Henry Allen looked just as scared, standing there with his hand wrapped tight around the note.
“Nothin’,” I said. “I don’t know what you—”
“Hey, Mr. Gardiner!” Eli walked between me and Henry Allen real fast, heading toward Mr. Gardiner. “I got to show you somethin’ right quick.” He touched Henry Allen’s hand as he passed him, like he was taking something from him, then held his hand out flat when he got close to Mr. Gardiner. “These screws is poppin’ out the side of the Christmas barn,” he said. “I give one to Ivy to show you and I guess she was turnin’ it over to Henry Allen. This is just one of ’em. They’s a bunch comin’ out.” He handed the screw—at least I guessed that’s what it was—to Mr. Gardiner, who seemed
as mixed up as me and Henry Allen. He looked at the screw in his hand, then started walking toward the Christmas barn with Eli at his side. Eli turned his head just long enough to shoot me and Henry Allen a grin.
“Eli knows about us?” I whispered.
“Eli knows every damn thing there is to know about anything,” Henry Allen said. “I swear. Boy’s got eyes in the back of his head.” He wiped the sweat off his forehead. “I thought we was doomed there for a minute.”
“Me, too.”
He walked away from me in case his father turned to look, and I saw him read the note. He looked over at me and nodded. I didn’t know how he’d get out with his parents keeping such a close eye on him these days, but he had to. I needed to tell him.
* * *
I was at the crick by midnight, alone on the moss, worrying he couldn’t get out. Lying there on my back, I wondered how I couldn’t of known I had a baby inside me. My belly was so big. I could almost feel the shape of a little critter beneath my hands. What I thought was my belly acting funny from eating too many biscuits was a little live person in there, moving around.
I spotted the moon, round and silvery, behind the branches of the trees and that little person in my belly suddenly seemed more important than school and being a teacher and everything else I could think of. I remembered the preacher saying we couldn’t always understand the reason God did something, but we could be sure he had a good one. I wished I knew what his reason was for me having a baby.
I reached my arms up to the sky. “Thank you for this little baby,” I whispered. “I’ll take good care of it.”
I didn’t know what Henry Allen would say, though. He thought the pullin’ out would work and he was careful about it because he sure didn’t want no babies. Not yet, anyways. I didn’t think he’d be thanking God for one of them.
I heard him coming through the woods. I got up—not as quick as I used to—and helped him spread the blanket.
“They’re watching me like a hawk,” he said, as he flattened a corner of the blanket. “Sorry I’m late. You got me worried with that note.”
“I’m gonna have a baby,” I said.
I didn’t mean for it to pop out like that. We wasn’t even lying down yet.
He stared across the blanket at me. “That ain’t possible. We was real careful.”
“You’re the only one, Henry Allen. Mrs. Forrester figured it out.”
“You told her?”
I couldn’t see him good but I could hear he was mad. “She told me,” I said. “She figured it out.”
“You sure she’s right?”
“I think so.”
He sat down real heavy on the blanket, facing the crick. “Damn,” he said.
I sat next to him. “Feel it,” I said. We hadn’t been together in so long and I could see his eyes go big when he touched my belly. He pulled his hand away right quick, but I grabbed it and pressed it flat on my big belly again.
“Damn,” he said. “This ain’t good, Ivy. This is about the worst thing I could think of to happen.”
I forgot all about my little thank-you talk to God from a couple of minutes ago. He was right. This was the worst thing. But it was going to happen, terrible or not. No way I could get out of having a baby now. Henry Allen could just say “It ain’t mine” and walk away. He could keep going to school, maybe on to college and then California, like he planned. Me, I didn’t have no choice. I was done with school. I was going to be a mama whether I liked it or not. The way Henry Allen was acting, maybe I was going to be a mama all by myself, same as Mary Ella.
We sat and stared at the moonlight glittering on the crick. I talked to Jesus in my head while we sat, asking him to make Henry Allen act different than he was. Jesus was a baby once, so maybe he’d understand.
After a while, Henry Allen put his arm around me. “We got to get married,” he said. “Give this here baby a name. Not like Baby William. My baby ain’t gonna be no Hart baby. He’s a Gardiner. We’re gonna make him a Gardiner.”
“But how?” I asked. “Your parents will … I don’t know what they’ll do.”
“Me, neither,” he said. “Give me a while to think about it, all right? I got to figure some things out. But you ain’t gonna be alone with this, Ivy Hart. Don’t you fret about that.”
I looked up at the stars again. Thank you, Jesus, I thought to myself. He was working right quick tonight.
29
Jane
I pushed the cart through the aisles of the Piggly Wiggly, checking the list in my hand and mechanically putting peaches and corn and cherries into the basket. Robert had a poker game with his friends from the club and I was frankly relieved to have this evening to myself. I’d spent the afternoon unhappily working on Ivy’s petition and I was still bristling from my conversation with Charlotte and Fred that morning. Maybe I’d call my mother when I got home. I missed having her to talk to every night, even though when we spoke these days, our conversations were superficial. She seemed so fragile to me, still grieving for my father and sister.
“Jane?”
I looked up to see Lois Parker pushing her cart in my direction.
“Lois!” I was taken aback by how gaunt she looked. She’s dying, Robert had said. My problems were small and petty. “It’s good to see you,” I said. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m still up and at ’em,” she said. “And you? Honey, your eyes are red.” She held my shoulder to get a better look at me. “What’s wrong?”
I looked down at my cart, trying to get my emotions under control. “Oh, just … some things at work are piling up and I—” My voice locked up and nothing else would come out.
“Do you have anything frozen in there?” Lois peered into my cart, and I looked at the produce, confused by her question. “No, you don’t,” she said. “Leave your cart. Let’s go over to the Pharmacy and Grill for a cup of coffee and a chat.”
“Oh, I really should get the shopping done.”
“I think you need to talk to a friend more,” she said.
Oh, how right she was! I didn’t feel as though I had any friends at the moment. And I had to go to the pharmacy anyway. I needed some of that special Breck Banish shampoo. For the first time in my life I had dandruff, but I wasn’t about to tell Lois—or anyone—about that. I wondered if too much stress could cause a case of dandruff.
We moved our carts to the side of an aisle and left the store. “I’ll drive,” she said. I loved her take-charge attitude—even though she was clearly losing her battle with cancer. That horrible word.
“Robert must be at the poker game,” she said as she drove the short distance to the Hayes Barton Pharmacy and Grill. “That’s where Gavin is.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m glad. It helps him get rid of his stress.”
“Gavin, too. I’m so glad he has friends to do things with. Golf especially. He’s being both mother and father to our little girl these days, in addition to managing his law practice.”
Oh my God. I’d nearly forgotten about their little girl. How painful it had to be to know you were dying, leaving behind a motherless child you would never get to see grow up.
“You need a hobby, too, I think,” she said. “Something fun. You work just as hard as our men do, and then you’re expected to grocery shop and run a household at the same time.”
I cleared my throat. “Well, I don’t know how I’d fit a hobby into my life right now.”
“That’s how I felt when I was teaching. Working all day, then grading papers all night.”
“Did that bother Gavin?”
She shook her head. “I saved the weekends for him. That’s an important thing to do,” she said. “Also, he knew I loved what I was doing.”
“I don’t think Robert would mind so much if I was a teacher,” I said, although actually, I was pretty sure he would. He didn’t want me to work, period. “He doesn’t like the kind of work I’m doing. Social work.”
“Gavin really enjoyed talking t
o you about it at the ball,” she said. “You impressed him.”
“I did?”
She nodded. “He said, ‘That Jane Forrester’s a sharp cookie.’”
I laughed, hugely flattered. I wished Robert felt that way.
Lois parked in front of the pharmacy and we walked inside and sat at the counter. I ordered coffee, but she ordered a chocolate sundae. She laughed at the look of surprise on my face.
“I eat whatever I want whenever I want it these days,” she said. “What does it matter? I lose weight no matter what I put in my mouth. My doctor’s amazed I still have a good appetite. I guess I’m lucky, at least as far as that goes.”
“Lois … I’m so sorry you’re ill.” I put my hand over hers where it rested on the counter. Although I’d only met her a little over a week before, I felt completely at ease with her and I wasn’t surprised when she seemed pleased by my touch. She took her hand away only because her sundae had arrived, and I liked seeing her eyes light up as she dug in.
“I’ve been sick with this for two years,” she said, between bites. “Ever since my little girl was born. They took everything out.” She rested a hand on her stomach, and I guessed she meant a hysterectomy, though I didn’t want to ask. “They thought they got it all. But I guess there was some little bit of cancer waiting to get another toehold.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again. I wanted to know how she could sit here and tell me what she just did and not be reduced to a puddle of tears.
“I suspected this was how things would go right from the beginning,” she said, “because my mother had the same thing.”
“Oh no.”
“Yes, and I know what it’s like for a child to lose her mother. I don’t remember her, my mother. It makes me sad to think my daughter won’t remember me.”