by Amira Rain
“Sounds like you made your own choice.”
The white-hot rage I instantly felt nearly left me breathless. However, just nearly. I found I had just enough breath left to say a few more words, balling my fists so hard my nails were digging into my palms.
“A freaking mob hitman told me I was a good daughter earlier today, and you can’t even muster a thanks? You stupid… ungrateful… pathetic…”
I was pretty sure I’d never outright snarled any words in my life before, spitting each one with clear disgust and slow, deliberate precision, but I just had. Three of them. The last one that had passed my lips had had the effect of almost startling me, though, as if I was hearing someone else say it with my voice, but not me, and this had the effect of stopping me in my tracks.
While I’d been snarling my words, my dad’s expression had changed from a near-scowl to a clearly wounded sort of frown, but now I couldn’t see exactly what his expression was because he was shuffling away from me and out of the living room, mumbling.
“Should have just let them kill me.”
Half-thinking that maybe I really should have, I just let him go.
Later that evening, the boys came home from the hotel. When I told Kevin the real story about why I’d asked them to go there, and what I’d had to agree to do to save our dad’s life, Kevin basically lost it. He’d charged our dad, jumping on his back, yelling that he was going to kill him. Kevin was on the smallish side for eighteen, but muscular, and it took both me and fifteen-year-old Derek to pull him off. Joey, age ten, stood nearby, teary-eyed and red-faced, shouting at everyone to “just stop.”
After that incident, we all stopped speaking to our dad, and he stopped speaking to us.
Monday I called the clinic, they told me to come in for an ovulation test Wednesday. I did, and it was positive for ovulation so I underwent the insemination procedure right then. Two weeks later, I returned to the clinic for a pregnancy test, and it was positive. The following day, one of Ballpoint Pen Man’s associates showed up at the diner where I worked evenings and gave me a note written on a small sheet of notebook paper. Fowler girl—Family debt now at zero balance. It was simply signed Boss.
Life went on. Being that no establishment would let him gamble anymore per mob instructions, my dad quit gambling. I got a new laptop to replace the one he’d sold, and I took it to work every day with me so that he couldn’t gamble online. He’d never done that before, but he’d never had need to, and I didn’t want him to get any ideas.
He didn’t quit drinking, but now he did it in his room instead of wandering all around the house, drunk. Sometimes he didn’t bathe for days at a time. My brothers and I steered clear of him. We still didn’t speak to him, and he didn’t speak to us. It was as if there was a ghost in the house, an unacknowledged specter we’d all sometimes see in the kitchen.
The fertility clinic also offered prenatal care, and for me it was free, billed to the mob, so I began going for checkups every month or so. I tried to just get in and get out, never wanting to have to think about the baby too much. When the doctor had to listen to the baby’s heartbeat to make sure everything was normal, I wore earplugs.
Spring turned into summer, and I became aware that the low-level depression I’d experienced since my mom’s death had turned into depression a bit more profound. When I began to show, requiring bigger pants to accommodate my expanding waistline, I became even further depressed, hardly able to roll out of bed in the morning and go to my day job as a secretary.
In August, when I felt the baby kick for the first time, I had to take a day off from both my jobs because I just couldn’t stop crying. At my first ultrasound a few days later, I wore an eye shade designed for sleeping during the whole thing. After, the doctor said that all with the baby looked perfect and healthy, and he then asked if I wanted to know the gender. I said no.
One positive about the fact that I’d always had to work so many hours was that this hadn’t left me much time to develop and maintain friendships, so now I didn’t have many friends to ask me questions about the pregnancy. In fact, I only had a couple of work friends who even inquired. I told them the bare basics: that I was a surrogate and was going to give the baby up immediately, adding that I really didn’t want to talk about it. None of my friends ever brought it up again.
When the humid days of summer turned into the crisp days of fall, I began dreaming. Specifically, dreaming about the garden I’d someday when I had my degree, and I had a fancy new house with a big backyard all ready for planting.
There would be rosebushes by the dozens, and stone fountains flanked by bright marigolds, and beds of petunias so thick the ground wouldn’t even be visible. I dreamed of further details while I did my secretarial work and served food at the diner, and I even dreamed of my gorgeous future garden while sleeping.
While I drank my morning cup of tea, I pored over gardening magazines, studying pictures of flowers and archways and trellises, adding to my plans and dreams.
I realized that I may have been using my new semi-obsession as a way to avoid thinking about the baby quickly growing inside of me, but I certainly didn’t care. The distraction was working. I wanted to be as distracted as possible.
Back when we’d lived in the suburbs, before my mom had died, she’d planted a large backyard flower garden every spring. As a kid, I’d always played in the garden with my neighborhood friends, having “Barbie beauty pageants” right among the rose and hibiscus bushes. I’d also hosted near-daily tea parties and picnics in the garden for friends and stuffed animals alike.
As a teen, I’d started to spend more of my time in the summer at the local pool, the mall, or at the movies, but every now and again, I’d spend the afternoon helping my mom tend to the garden, wondering why I didn’t do it more.
After her death, I’d resolved to replant all the annuals and tend to her garden every summer as a way to honor her memory. My dad had, of course, ruined this by quickly gambling us into poverty, causing us to lose the house. And since we’d moved into the small three-bedroom apartment, I hadn’t planted so much as a single seed. There was no way I could, since the building had no communal greenspace like some did, and we didn’t even have a balcony to set out any pots.
While my waistline continued expanding throughout the fall, my only comfort was knowing that because of the pregnancy and the second hundred grand I’d receive at the end of it, my fancy house and garden dreams might be possible a lot sooner than they would have been otherwise.
I now planned to use the hundred grand to supplement my income while I worked part-time and went to college full-time-plus, hopefully finishing my degree within two or three years. Then I’d get my house in the country. Then my garden dreams would come true.
On Halloween night, amid torrential rain, Ballpoint Pen Man strolled into the near-empty diner, ordered a slice of apple pie, and while he ate it asked me if I was having any “funny business thoughts” or if I was “good.”
I told him I was perfectly fine. “I’ve been thinking of what’s happening to me as just a medical thing, like something that’s just happening to my body, while not really being a part of me directly. It’s sort of been making things easier than they would be, I think, than if I actually let myself acknowledge that the medical thing that’s happening to me, the thing that’s making my stomach get bigger, is actually my own… my….”
I couldn’t even say the word baby.
Cutting off a forkful of pie, Ballpoint Pen Man nodded. “I get what you mean… and I think you’re wise to be thinking how you are.”
He soon changed the subject by asking if I thought I was going to be able to continue working both my jobs “right up until the end.”
Being completely truthful, I said I just didn’t know. “I think I’ll be fine continuing with my secretarial work right up until the end, but being on my feet all evening after a day that starts at six in the morning…” I paused, shrugging. “It’s just really wiping me out lately
and making my back hurt pretty badly sometimes. My family needs the money, though, so I’m going to try to stay here at the diner as long as I can.”
Ballpoint Pen Man, whose real name I still didn’t even know, didn’t respond and just went back to his pie. I went back to wiping down the countertops, as I’d been doing when he’d come in.
However, once he’d finished his pie, he finally responded to what I said. “Go ahead and put in your notice at this place. My organization will pay your rent and utilities for the next two months until you get your second hundred grand.”
Before I could even say thank you, he abruptly got up, slapped a fifty on the counter for his slice of pie, and headed out the door, pulling a gray knit cap over his blond-and-gray hair.
During a snowstorm in January, I gave birth at the clinic with my heart breaking. During my ten-hour labor, I hadn’t been able to focus on garden thoughts to distract myself from the fact that a baby, my baby, was entering the world.
Sobbing, I covered my face with my hands the moment I felt he or she completely slide free from my body. “Please don’t tell me if it’s a boy or a girl. Please don’t even tell me.”
Looking over at a blank white wall while I’d been pushing, I hadn’t even caught a glimpse of the baby’s head, face, or body.
In response to what I’d said about not wanting to know the sex, the doctor and the nurse didn’t say a word, and the sound of the baby’s lusty crying soon faded, accompanied by the sound of the nurse’s ballet flats clicking out of the room.
I soon cried myself to sleep. I remained in my spacious birthing suite at the clinic that night, the next day, and another night, alternately sleeping and staring at the wall. I assumed that the baby had immediately been taken to the bear chief in Greenwood. I didn’t ask, and the nurse and doctor didn’t say. The only thing I had asked, upon awakening from my post-delivery sleep, was if the baby was healthy. The nurse had simply nodded.
The morning of my third day at the clinic, the doctor told me he thought I’d recovered enough to go home, and he said that someone would soon be coming to pick me up. Although a bit surprised, I didn’t even ask who, having a feeling who it would be. Chauffeured home by a mob boss, I thought. What a fitting ending to this whole crazy saga.
After showering and dressing, I had a seat in a recliner to wait for my ride, soon answering my phone when Kevin called. Once he’d asked how I was doing, he reported that two “weird dudes” had just come to the apartment, delivering a suitcase full of hundred-dollar bills, and he wanted to know what to do with the suitcase. I asked him if our dad had seen it. He said no and I said good. We’d decided to keep my second payment of a hundred grand a secret from our dad for the time being, knowing that he might try to steal some of it to finance his alcohol addiction, or even try to use it to travel somewhere outside of Detroit to gamble.
“Just carefully hide the suitcase for right now, Kev… maybe in that big locking trunk in your room. I’ll be home soon, and then we’ll figure out where to stash all the money permanently. Maybe we’ll keep part of it in the trunk. We’ll get a fireproof safe for some of it, and put it in my room and a good chunk—maybe a third or even a half—we can put in a large safety deposit box in the bank without letting the bank people know the contents.”
Being that the money was coming to me directly in the form of cash from a criminal organization, regardless that it had originated from the chief in Greenwood, it wasn’t like I could just waltz right into the bank and declare a hundred grand in cash as “income.” At least not without raising strong suspicions that I was involved in criminal activity myself, which of course I certainly wasn’t.
I soon ended the call with Kevin, and not three seconds later, Ballpoint Pen Man entered the room, asking if I was ready to go.
With a sigh, I stood up from the recliner and pocketed my phone. “Readier than you’ll ever know.”
I was ready to put the heartbreaking ordeal of giving birth to a baby and giving it up far behind me.
I refused a wheelchair ride out of the clinic because I was feeling good physically, at least plenty good enough to walk on my own. Carrying the suitcase full of clothes and other items I’d brought to the clinic, Ballpoint Pen Man led me out of the building and out to the small adjacent parking garage, where a glossy black sedan with tinted windows was already running, its exhaust sending clouds of vapor into the frigid January air. When we approached, a clinic nurse shut one of the sedan’s back doors, looking like she’d just finished putting something into the backseat.
Clearly tired from working an overnight shift caring for me and two other patients, one of whom had given birth just the evening before, the nurse gave me a quick little smile that didn’t reach all the way up to her eyes. “I just put a box of disposable breast pads in the backseat for you to take home with you. You’ll probably need them very soon when your milk really starts coming in.”
Touched by her thoughtfulness and consideration at the end of her long shift, I thanked her, and she gave me another tired, almost tense-looking little smile before heading out of the parking garage. Ballpoint Pen Man, whose real name I still didn’t know, put my suitcase in the sedan’s trunk and then opened the front passenger side door for me. Grateful to be getting out of the freezing cold, I got into the warm car, seeing that there was a tinted glass partition separating the front seats from the back.
Wondering if this was so that the upper, upper-level mob bosses could have complete privacy to talk while Ballpoint Pen Man drove them around or something, I began buckling my seatbelt, soon deciding that it was none of my concern exactly what the partition was for. My dealings with the mob were soon to be over, and I couldn’t have been happier.
This happiness soon faded, though, becoming replaced by just the slightest vague sense of unease, when Ballpoint Pen Man had been driving for just a short while. Having realized that we were heading north, when we should have been heading south to get to my apartment, I asked him if he’d missed a turn. I knew damn well that he had to have, or else he’d just completely forgotten where I lived, which I thought highly unlikely.
However, in response to my question, he just shook his head, gaze straight ahead on the road. “No… no, I didn’t miss a turn. I hate to tell you this, kid, but we’re not going to your apartment. The baby is in the backseat, and I’m taking the both of you up to the FDS, and then on up to Greenwood. The chief has requested that you spend a year living with him.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Stunned didn’t even fully describe how I felt. I didn’t even know what did. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t seem to fully process what Ballpoint Pen Man had said. I could barely even breathe.
With one hand on the steering wheel, he reached into his jacket with the other, pulled out a white plastic walkie-talkie-looking thing that appeared to be a baby monitor, and handed it to me, completely nonchalant. “Here. So you can hear the baby from the back when she cries.”
Reflexively, I took the baby monitor but then immediately flung it on the floor as if it were hot. “Why would you….”
Now I could talk, although I was having a heck of a time forming coherent, complete thoughts.
Looking just as bored as he had the first day he’d come to my apartment, Ballpoint Pen Man glanced over at me. “I really am sorry to spring all this on you, by the way. I myself just found out about the whole thing a couple of days ago. Couldn’t turn down the offer to transport you and the kid for a cool fifty grand. Apparently, the chief up in Greenwood has got some real deep pockets.
Used to be some kind of a Green Beret military man, I guess, then made a fortune as some kind of a heavyweight champion MMA fighter, from what I’ve heard. You know what those MMA guys are, right? They’re those guys that fight in the ring with all those different styles of martial arts and all that. Don’t know if the chief got out of the game when he became a shifter, or if he’d already retired before that, or what. I guess you’ll have to ask him yourself if you’re intereste
d.”
I felt like I might scream, except I was pretty sure no sound would come out. I was shaking. I was sweating, but my skin had strangely gone cold at the same time. My brain was screaming words at me, words that I could understand even though at the same time, I couldn’t. You’ve been kidnapped.
I wasn’t even aware that I was trying to open the car door until I’d been trying for a few seconds. I could just sense that I’d been trying for a few seconds, like I’d just briefly zoned out or something. What had alerted me to what I was doing was Ballpoint Pen Man telling me not to, sounding just slightly irritated.
“Just sit back and relax, okay? Jesus. A door has to be unlocked for the handle to open it anyway, you know. And these doors on this car don’t unlock unless I want them to. They only unlock if I type in a code on my phone that makes them unlock. It’s a pretty neat thing.”
We’d been stopped at a red light, but it now turned green, and Ballpoint Pen man pressed the gas, giving me a sidelong glance. “Jesus. Take a deep breath or something. You’re white as a ghost.”
Still feeling a profound sense of shock, I actually did as he’d asked, sitting back in my seat and breathing in deeply.
Ballpoint Pen Man gave me another sidelong glance. “That’s it, kid. Now take a few more. Just keep breathing.”
I did, and he continued.
“Now, because of what you just tried to do with the door, I need to tell you something. I’ve been hired to do a job, and I’m going to do it, no matter what. I’m going to deliver you and the baby to Greenwood, and that’s that. I understand that you’re probably a little surprised right now, and maybe even a little mad about the surprise, and I get it, but I strongly suggest you make peace with things. I suggest that because I’m a man who’s not afraid to pull a gun on a woman to get her to do what I want. I wouldn’t like having to do that to you… I really, really wouldn’t like it, but I’m willing to go all the way to Greenwood with a gun directly pointed at your face if I need to in order to do what I need to do.”
