The Kingdom Land

by Bart Tuma

  So, she’s the hysterical type. I need to get out of here before she loses it even more.

  “You need to know that 95% of all stillbirths are defective and would be grossly handicapped if they came to full term. I hope you can take some comfort in that. Now I’m very sorry for all your suffering, but I have other patients that need me, and there is nothing else I can do. Nancy will give you follow up instructions.”

  There was no comfort in knowing statistics or that the evil, terrible man had left. She would have no comfort, and even years later as she sat in the Datsun in the Glacier Point stall, comfort had not yet reached her heart.

  Even worse news came as Nancy entered the room. She carried a yellow sheet of paper with writing dim from being the last carbon copy.

  “I’m sorry. I only hope one day you will realize that it is for the best. Everything happens for a reason.”

  “You knew when you first did the exam that my baby was in trouble. Why did you run rather than tell me then?”

  “I didn’t know for sure. That is the doctor’s place to give a diagnosis. It’s strictly against policy for me to say anything.”

  “Well, then someone should make a policy against calling my child a fetus, or for that matter not letting my baby die.”

  Nancy put the paper in front of Laura so she could read the almost illegible words. It was obvious to Laura that the once warm nurse would not answer her questions.

  “Dr. Sorenson has prescribed some codeine so you can be more comfortable and hopefully sleep tonight. Sometime in the next three to four days expect a heavy discharge. When you feel it coming, it will be heavy, so be close to a restroom. If you don’t have the discharge within five days, call immediately and we’ll have you come back in. If you have continued bleeding after the discharge, call this number. If you need additional medication for comfort, call this number.”

  Nancy had finished the written instruction and handed the papers for Laura to sign.

  “What about my baby?”

  “As Dr. Sorenson explained to you, your pregnancy has been terminated. Your body will naturally expel the fetus.”

  “Are you telling me that I am supposed to go home with a dead baby in my womb and just wait for my child to be expelled? Expelled is something that happens in high school. It not something that ends my baby’s time on earth.”

  “I wish there was another way, but the safest for you is to just let nature take its course.”

  “Nature has already worked its course and nature took my baby.” Laura couldn’t outright say that God had taken her baby, but that thought went with her and she left that office promising herself she would never come back there regardless of what happened.

  That evening in the truck, Laura relived every thought of her loss and her sin. She had thought of her child almost daily for the past year. She had told the people at the Mint that she had a baby boy so they wouldn’t bother her. She had decided to call the baby a boy because he would be the last male she would allow in her life.

  She thought of the child often, but never in such detail as this evening. Usually it was merely a memory sparked for a second, but tonight it was every detailed relived. When she came to the next detail of her horror she turned on the car to simply have the company of the running motor rather than the silence.

  After leaving the doctor’s officer, the next two days were filled with horror. She couldn’t go to her past friends in the church. They were no longer friends or sisters. She couldn’t guess how they might react. They might tell her, as she already felt, that the death was God’s punishment for her fornication. She wasn’t going to tell Marcus even if she could find him. She didn’t want him to feel off the hook. Let him think for the rest of his life that he might get a knock on the door one day and find his child asking questions.

  She couldn’t feel relieved that the problem was gone. She couldn’t now move on with her live as if nothing had happen. She knew her life would never be the same. As she sat in the empty Point parking lot she could still feel herself sitting in a half empty apartment, afraid to leave and unable to even eat, waiting for nature to take its course. Laura sat alone, but death sat with her.

  Finally, cramps started and the ordeal ended. She had run to the toilet with the pain of the cramps, but after, the child was terminated by definition, but not from her life. She looked at the toilet for only a second and then closed the door from the outside. She couldn’t look at the child. Certainly, she couldn’t flush the toilet to dispose of her baby in some city sewer. She didn’t know what to do.

  Her only answered was to get the apartment manager and tell him the toilet was plugged. It wasn’t the best decision, but she couldn’t think of anything else. The manager looked perplexed at the request, and even troubled as she left him alone in the apartment, going to her car and leaving.

  She would return to the apartment, but only to get her belongings. She owed three weeks rent for not giving notice, but that was a cheap price to leave that place.

  The corrugated tin covering of the Point seemed to be a screen that held the pictures of those events, and she couldn’t take it any longer. Her tears still flowed, but she pulled out of the drive-in stall and headed towards Sweetgrass. The first portion of the trip, Highway 2 to Shelby, would have very light almost nonexistent traffic. By the time she hit the truck traffic heading north to Alaska on Interstate 15 she hoped to regain her composure. She simply couldn’t sit still in the lot anymore. Her thoughts churned her stomach too much to simply sit there.

  The traffic was very light to Shelby and her only company on Interstate 15 was the semi heading north to Calgary or Edmonton. She was unable to completely block out the images of the doctor’s words or the left behind apartment. She was able to restrain her tears. But she could still tell her cheeks were puffy from their effect.

  She pulled into her parking place at the Dew Drop Inn, a converted motel that was now apartments. She noticed the owner’s lights were still on. This wasn’t unusual, as the owner, Gracie, always complained about insomnia. Then Laura saw that not only was her lights on, but Gracie was pacing in front of her units while taking a puff off of one of her ever present cigarettes every third stride. Laura would have loved to avoid a conversation. She knew that would be impossible.

  “Girl, it’s too early to be home if you coming from the Mint, and it’s too late for a nice girl like you to be out on the town,” Gracie said as Laura got out of the truck. “I didn’t know who to expect out here when I saw the headlights appear. Oh, my god, what’s wrong with you?” Gracie pointed a lit flashlight at Laura and saw her tangled hair and swollen eyes.

  “Nothing, Gracie, it’s just been a long night. Let’s leave it at that.”

  It was nothing new for Gracie to see Laura’s tears, but these tears weren’t tears of a good cry but tears of a fight. Gracie just didn’t know Laura was fighting with herself.

  “Did someone beat you? Let me know their names.” Gracie was a big black lady who would bring fear to anyone who crossed her.

  “No one beat me. It’s nothing.”

  “Don’t tell me it isn’t nothing. Let me get you a warm washcloth. Maybe some ice, and you can tell me all about it.”

  “No, Gracie, I’ve done enough talking tonight. I just want to go to bed. I’ve got a job interview at the WinRight grocery in Fairfield in the morning, so I have to get my sleep.”

  “Okay, I’ll let you get your sleep, but I won’t let you get away so easy tomorrow. Before you go to sleep you better put a pretty picture in you mind. There’s no use fretting about what happened now.”

  Not only is Gracie sweet, but she’s smarter than a lot of people who call themselves God fearing, Laura thought. She nodded. “I will. Thanks, Gracie.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The sun slivered through the bottom of the plastic window blinds and left a line on the opposite wall to mark its presence. Laura focused her eyes and saw 8:30 on the face of her watch. She had the habit of sleeping lat
e after the Mint’s night shift. She was irritated at having woke early until she remembered there was no more Mint and late work to be done.

  The WinRight appointment wasn’t until 2:30. That would give her time to get her things together and move out. She hadn’t thrown away the boxes from her last move so the chore would be easy. Her worldly possessions were few and would only fill half the bed of the pickup.

  She also knew Gracie would be waiting for an explanation. Gracie was always there when Laura needed her. Laura had never met anyone like Gracie before and Laura doubted she would have ever made it through the last year without her. She thought about the day before when they had discussed her getting fired from the Mint, but Laura had managed to keep it short and slipped away to Fairfield before Gracie could ask too many questions.

  But this was today and there would no avoiding the inevitable. Laura pulled on the jeans she wore last night and picked up a small toaster oven and a box of worn shoes and headed for the pickup with her first load. It was frivolous to take a box of shoes that she no longer wore and probably would never wear again, but she needed some connection to a time when life was normal and there were no nightmares.

  She took a last look at the Dew Drop Inn to imprint the image in her mind. The Inn was better than living in the pickup, which she had done for a time, but not much better. The Dew Drop Inn had been built in the thirties and for years had been a 12-unit motel. Each unit was a separate, albeit small, building with the units arranged in a straight line to draw attention to the passing travelers heading to Canada and needed a stop. Now the only permanent tenets were the mice from the nearby fields. Only Laura and Gracie’s units were filled. Gracie had become the “owner’ when she was offered a 100 year lease. The landowner would keep the land and Gracie would have the headaches of maintaining the already rundown units.

  Laura turned toward the parking lot and the pickup. She wasn’t surprised to see Gracie leaning on the side of the truck, putting as much weight as possible on the bed of it.

  “Did you take my advice or are you still beating yourself up this morning?” Gracie asked. Laura didn’t say anything but put her shoes and oven in the back of the pickup, and turned to go back for a second load.

  “Why are you acting like a little kid and pretending that if you don’t look at someone they don’t exist? God knows, everybody in the county knows I exist.” Gracie’s head went back as she laughed at the own joke.

  Gracie was one of only a few African-Americans in the area, and her huge overweight frame was accentuated by a cherry red smock that could be seen in a white out snowstorm. Laura had never seen Gracie without the smock, but it was always clean and pressed.

  “Are you going to keep playing this game or are you ready to talk?”

  “I’ll talk. Got some good news. I got an interview to be a checker at the WinRight store in Fairfield, so my luck might be changing. I think I found a place to live, so that problem might be covered. It’s nothing like your fine apartments, but nothing can be like the Dew Drop.” Laura knew better than to think she could get by with that short explanation, but she tried anyway.

  “Don’t be smart with me” Gracie’s black Southern drawl added to her persona.” We both know this place is a dump and if I had a chance to leave it, I would end up just like you. You know that’s not what I’m talking about. What about those tears last night? What’s up?”

  “I told you, it was nothing. Oh, yeah,” Laura tried to act as the event was so insignificant she had nearly forgotten it. “I stopped by a drive in that was empty, and in walked the same guy that started the fight at the Mint the other night—”

  Gracie didn’t wait for Laura to say another word but raised her weight off the pickup and pushed her short sleeves higher.

  “He hit you, didn’t he. I thought you might’ve been hit when I saw you last night.”

  “No, he didn’t hit me. Why on earth would he hit me?”

  “Well, he must have done something. Some people don’t have to do anything. But breathe and trouble follows them. It sounds like this guy is one of those. Keep away from him.”

  “After the way I left him last night I don’t expect he’ll want anything to do with me. But it wasn’t him. It’s me. I’m trouble.’

  “Don’t give me that foolishness. You’re like a broken record, blaming yourself for everything. I know you enough to know you aren’t trouble, but you carry your problems around like they were your only friends. You aren’t fooling me. These cheap walls are as thin as paper so you don’t hide anything. I hear you even when you think I can’t hear you. You’re going to run out of tears if you don’t watch it.”

  A semi passed on the nearby highway with its horn blowing and a cat whistle from the driver as an obvious gesture to Laura’s beauty. Again Gracie stood up from her resting place, shook her fist at the trucker and yelled, although she would never be heard over the loud diesel.

  “You keep that truck moving. There’s nothing for you here. Find some cheap tramp in Canada. This girl has way too much class for you.” She positioned her weight once again, and resumed as if her sentence had not interrupted.

  “I don’t know what you brought with you when you moved here, but it must have been bad and you’re probably packing it up to take it with you. Now, if I carried all my past from North Carolina I would have shot myself years ago. The past is past; you can’t do a thing to change it. You’re getting away from the Mint, now go start a new and fresh start, and I mean fresh. If you carry your problems to your new place, it’s like cleaning your refrigerator to get rid of the smell and putting the rotten food back in again. That fridge is going to smell as long as that food’s there. Don’t keep your rotten past around.”

  “I know that, Gracie, but it’s not that easy, and every time I try to forget, in the end it all came back to me.”

  “What’s this all about? You’ve been here four months, and we’ve talked about everything but what’s really bothering you. What’d you do, steal your fiends lunch money in grade school? You remind me of someone who got a rock in his or her shoe and never takes it out. They can still walk, but every step reminds them of that dang rock and not what’s in front of them. Stop yourself. Deal with it, and get on with your life. It can’t be that serious.”

  “It is that serious.” Laura turned to walk away, but turned back without taking a step.

  Gracie shifted her weight on the pickup. “Well, are you going to tell me about it, or feel sorry for your sore foot?”

  “I got pregnant and I’ve never been married.” Laura interrupted Gracie

  “And?”

  “And I got pregnant,” Laura carefully formed the words, “and I lost the baby”.

  Gracie nodded. She didn’t look shocked, only pensive. “How long ago was this? And how far along was the baby?”

  “I lost the baby two weeks before I moved in here, and the baby was four months old. I could feel the baby move, and that baby was all I had….”

  “From what I hear almost all babies that miscarriage have problems that wouldn’t make them whole. Maybe it’s better.”

  “Don’t tell me it’s better. I don’t care if my child had to be fed and carried the rest of my life. That was my baby and I needed it.”

  “So you needed her more than what the baby might have to live through. Being a mom isn’t for the mom, it’s to protect their children.”

  “Gracie, that’s my point. I didn’t protect my child from the very start. It wouldn’t have happened if… The baby would have lived if I hadn’t abandoned God. There was no love in what I did. It was disgusting and terrible. I walked away from God and God took my baby.”

  “Girl, how did you ever come with that answer? What type of God do you follow?

  “Sure, let’s say you’re bad and all that stuff you Christians feel guilty about. That baby didn’t do anything. You’re saying God killed an innocent baby cause you did something He didn’t like. We’re all in big trouble if that’s God. If a man did t
hat they would put that person in jail for the rest of their life and he’d be considered the worst of the worst. Now you’re telling me God is that disgusting.”

  “I didn’t say God was disgusting and I didn’t say God killed the baby”

  “Sure you did.You said He took the baby, didn’t you?”

  “Yes”

  “Well, that’s using nicer words, but it means the same.”

  “Gracie, it’s not that easy, you aren’t listening.”

  “I’m listening. Now listen to yourself. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, but you aren’t making any sense. I know it must have been the worst thing in your life, but you can’t dwell on something so painful for so long without going crazy. You know you didn’t cause God to ‘take your child’.”

  “But He had every right to take it. It was terrible and I wouldn’t expect you to understand. How could you? I can’t get the image from my mind. I just keep thinking about it over and over.

  “I think about my baby. Gracie, let’s say you’re right and God didn’t take my child, but the baby died because of me one way or another. Maybe God didn’t do it, but if I hadn’t let him rape me this wouldn’t have happened.”

  “Raped. My God!”

  Gracie couldn’t move fast, but fast enough to wrap her arms around Laura before another word could be said.

  The night before Laura tears had felt as though they were ripping her apart. That day the tears mended, and they didn’t stop.