by Jean Stone
The pain was gone. Jess fell asleep.
Sometime during the night she awoke with a jolt. Another cramp gripped her abdomen. Something was definitely wrong. She stumbled from her bed, doubled over with cramps. She unlocked her door and went toward the bathroom. Just as she reached out for the door handle, the hallway swirled around her. She slid down the door, a limp pile of delicate bones, ivory skin, and a softly rounded belly.
It was P.J. who heard the thump as Jess’s body hit the floor. Within seconds everyone in the house was awakened by P.J.’s piercing screams. Jess lost consciousness.
* * *
“Jess, my dear, you’re going to be fine.”
Jess caught the scent of English lavender before she opened her eyes. Miss Taylor stood over her hospital bed.
“The doctor said it was just a scare. He wants to keep you here for a couple of days, then you’ll need some bed rest for a week or so.”
“The baby?”
“The baby is fine too, dear. But you’ll need to rest to make sure everything will be all right.”
Jess closed her eyes again, listening to the unfamiliar hospital sounds. Tears slid down her cheeks. “Mommy,” she cried softly. “Mommy,” she cried, then drifted off into drug-induced sleep.
Ginny
“That’d be my luck. Finally have a chance to get rid of this fucking kid and blow it.” Ginny sat at the breakfast table, sipping a Coke with no ice. She’d had too much whiskey last night; her mouth was cottony inside; her head felt tight. But her stomach—and the baby—were just fine. It figured.
“You shouldn’t drink so much soda, Ginny,” Susan said. “All that carbonation could hurt the baby.”
“No shit?” She laughed. “Think I’ll have another.” Her comments were interrupted by the sound of the phone ringing in the library. A moment later Mrs. Hines appeared in the doorway of the dining room, hands on her broad hips, her eyes staring slits.
“Miss Stevens,” she barked. “Phone call.”
Ginny set down her glass. “Must be Hollywood,” she announced, then went to take the call.
She went into the room and closed the French doors behind her. She knew the call was from her mother before she picked up the receiver: Ginny’s mother was the only one who knew where she was.
“Hi, Mom,” she said into the phone.
“We’ve got trouble, Ginny,” the hoarse voice whispered quickly. “He knows.”
Ginny felt her knees weaken. “What?” She sat down in Miss Taylor’s leather chair. “How? It’s not possible.” Then she shouted. “Did you tell him? Mother, for Chrissake, did you tell him?”
The voice on the other end began to sniffle.
“Mother! I can’t believe you told him!”
The voice faltered. “He … he made me.…”
“Shit. What did he do, beat it out of you?”
There was no response.
Ginny was numb. She played with the jar of paper clips on the desk. She needed a cigarette. She opened the drawer of old bleach head’s desk and ripped open a pack of Pall Malls. She laid one cigarette in the desk and put another in her pocket.
“Was it because of the money? Did he find out you took the money?” she asked.
Her mother sighed. “When you didn’t come home last night, he was mad. He said you must be out whoring. That you’d regret it when you got back.”
Ginny felt a rush of flames rise in her cheeks. She dug through the clutter of pens and notepads and finally came up with a pack of matches. RUBY’S DINER, the matchbook proclaimed. Turkey Dinner with all the fixin’s. $1.25. “What else?”
“He didn’t figure out about the money until this morning.”
Ginny didn’t want to hear the details. The fact that the son of a bitch knew about the money was bad enough. The fact that he took it out on her mother was even worse.
“So you admitted you took the money.”
“Not right away.” Her mother started to cry.
She lit the cigarette and spit out a piece of tobacco. “Mom. Mom, does he know I’m pregnant?”
Her mother sniffled. “Yes.”
Shit. She blew out the smoke in a single rush.
“But, Ginny, there’s nothing he can do. He’s only your stepfather. I don’t care how rich he is, so help me, I’ll leave him.” Ginny heard the sound of clinking ice cubes. “We were better off when it was just you and me living in that one room apartment.…”
“Mom, are you drinking?”
“Just a little one … the pain …”
“Mom.” Ginny knew she had to ask the next question, and she was afraid. “Does he know where I am?”
“No! I swear, I’ll never tell him! I said you ran away, that I needed to give you the money so you could run away and have an abortion.”
She swallowed hard and took another drag. “What did he say?”
“He said …” She stopped.
“Mom, what did he say?”
“He said, ‘That slut never better show her face around here again.’ ”
Ginny put her face in her hands. “Mom, I think you’d better get out of there. I think he’s going to hurt you real bad.”
“He doesn’t care about the money. He’s got plenty.”
“But he’s bad news, Mom. He’s going to hurt you again.”
Her mother didn’t reply. Ginny heard the ice cubes rattle again. She pictured her mother lounging on the gold brocade chaise in the massive bedroom of the Beacon Hill Victorian brownstone, wrapped in a white silk robe to hide the bruises from the maid. Her dyed black hair would be disheveled now, her face white and worn. Ginny’s stepfather never hit her mother in the face: He was too smart to let the marks of his anger be visible to the world.
She looked down at her stomach. As if her mother didn’t have enough problems, now Ginny had made them even worse. She had forced her mother to steal the money from Ginny’s stepfather, and she was too chickenshit to have an abortion. If only she could have gone through with it! But, no, not her. She was too scared of pain, of blood, of needles. Too scared of the nervous attacks coming on, of doctors poking at her, strapping her down, taking control. She was only too aware it would happen anyway, once this baby decided to be born. But no matter how scared she was of having this kid, Ginny was even more scared of dying. And, beyond all her fears, Ginny was, she knew, a survivor.
But, Christ! If only she’d had the guts for the abortion, she could go back to Boston now and rescue her mother. Take her away from that son of a bitch. Take her to L.A. where he’d never bother going after them. Take her to L.A., where Ginny could try and get into acting … shit. Dreams.
“Mom, I think you’d better go now. Try and get some rest. I don’t think it’s such a good idea you calling me here. I’ll call you tomorrow in the morning after I’m sure he’s left for the office. Mom?”
The ice clinked again. “Whatever you say. Love you, sweetie. Bye.” She hung up.
Ginny sat in silence, smoking, the black phone receiver still in her hand. She had to figure out a way to get rid of this baby. Safely, with minimum pain. She couldn’t let her mother stay with that creep another minute, never mind another six months. She didn’t have the guts for the abortion, but there had to be a way to have a miscarriage. It would be quick. She would do it herself. No doctors. No needles.
Miss Taylor opened the doors.
“Is everything all right, Ginny?” she asked.
Ginny snuffed out the cigarette and stood up quickly. “Just peachy keen, Miss T. Think I’ll go for a walk.”
“Remember, dear, you see the doctor today at ten o’clock.”
Ginny brushed by the housemother. “Yeah, right. Can’t wait.”
Behind the house the velvet lawn swept down a long hill, beyond which stood an aging forest of huge, straight cathedral pines, thick and full at the top, barren of needles yet marked with the knobs of growth gone by down the tall, unbending trunks. The morning sun strained to peek through the lush treetops and cast shimmer
ing golden diagonal stripes down to the softly matted ground.
Ginny found a small spot warmed by the sun. She pushed up the sleeves of her sweatshirt, took the now-bent cigarette from the pocket of her miniskirt, and sat down. She lit one of the Ruby’s Diner matches and bent the burned match. With nail-bitten fingers, she carefully split the cardboard stem at the bottom and peeled it apart up to the charred tip.
“Shit,” she said aloud. There had to be a way to get rid of this baby.
Ginny wasn’t about to dwell on the “Why me?” attitude that obviously P.J., and, she suspected, Jess too, felt. Ginny smiled. P.J., however, seemed to be making the most of this. She’d hardly stopped dancing last night with that guy who bought them a drink. People didn’t think Ginny paid attention to things like that. They were wrong. Ginny never missed a trick. Well, almost never. But she hadn’t yet figured out the bitch Susan, the one who was better than the rest of them. Fuck her. Fuck them all. She tossed the match to the ground. The only thing she should think about is herself. What to do. How to solve this once and for all and get back to Boston to rescue her mother.
Why had her mother married him in the first place? It was for the money, no doubt about it. Ginny had never known her real father. Her first real childhood memory was … was that night. Ginny felt her pulse quicken, her throat tighten. A wave of numbness enveloped her body. The trees around her went out of focus, the ground tilted, the sky darkened. She felt that strange, yet familiar, tingling sensation, as though she were no longer in sync with her body, as though she were a picture going slightly out of its frame. She began to sweat. Just as she always did whenever she thought about that night. Why couldn’t she get it out of her mind? Ginny took a deep drag of the cigarette. The smoke stalled in her throat. She closed her eyes and tried to lock out the memory. But still it came.
Ginny and her mother had been living in a fifth-floor walk-up on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge. It was a small one-room apartment that sweltered in summer and froze in winter. Sometimes Mama would bring home a “friend” to spend the night. Ginny figured she must have been almost four years old the night Mama brought home the professor from M.I.T. The night. That night.
Mama and the man had been out somewhere fancy; Ginny remembered the beautiful white dress Mama wore. It had a wide, full skirt with tiny pleats. The top split across her breasts and wrapped around the neck. It was just like the dress Marilyn Monroe had on in that picture where it had flown up and showed her panties. Mama looked beautiful.
Ginny had pretended she was asleep when they came into the apartment. They were laughing and whispering.
“Sssh,” Mama whispered hoarsely. Ginny heard the clatter of Mama’s high-heeled shoes, then a low clunk. Mama must have tossed them off and flung them across the room. “Gotta check my baby. Fix us a drinkie-poo, okay?”
She smelled the strong perfume of bourbon as Mama bent down to kiss her on the forehead. Then she heard the gruffness—his gruffness.
“I don’ wan’ another drink,” he slurred. “You know what I want.” Ginny kept her eyes closed tight. She heard the man slap Mama. Mama fell onto the bed.
“You idiot! You’ll wake my baby!” Mama screamed.
Then Ginny heard fabric tear. The beautiful fabric of Mama’s beautiful dress. She heard the sound of a zipper. Heard her mother’s muffled cries.
“Fine. Then I’ll fuck her too,” the angry man shouted.
The bed rumbled. Ginny sensed Mama was trying to fight him off. Ginny started to cry. Her mother fell against her.
Ginny opened her eyes and saw a vague look of anger on her mother’s face. “You son of a bitch!” her mother screamed as she lunged at the man. One breast had popped from her dress, the white flesh scratched and red, the dark nipple pointed and stiff.
“I’ll kill you!” her mother yelled.
“Mama!” Ginny cried, startling herself at the strength in her voice.
Then she saw it. It was purple and hard and it stuck out straight. The man grabbed it with his hand and jerked it back and forth. With his other hand he reached for Mama’s breast and shoved the nipple in his mouth.
“No!” Mama screamed, and hit him on the head.
He pulled his hand away and grabbed her crotch. “What’sa matter, honey?” he growled. “You know you want it.”
“Get away!” her mother warned.
Ginny had curled up against the wall. “Mama!” she cried again. Suddenly she saw the man’s eyes look away from her mother. He looked at her. He smiled. He pushed Mama to the floor and walked toward Ginny, all the while jerking that thing back and forth. Ginny stared at it. The tip glistened. She shut her eyes and screamed. Then she remembered a sharp pain between her legs. She remembered nothing else.
The pines creaked slowly now, their hypnotic sound deadening Ginny’s memory. She gasped tiny gasps. She was drenched with sweat. Had the man raped her? Ginny didn’t know. In all these years she remembered nothing more of that night. The pounding of her heart eased. She coughed and blinked her eyes, waiting for the world to come back into focus, waiting for the attack to subside. She knew it would; it always did. But somehow, while it was happening, it always felt as if she would be this way forever—off balance, out of touch with reality—that someday her heart would pound so hard, it would burst inside her, shooting shrapnel of flesh and veins helter-skelter in her guts.
A cool breeze whispered through the trees. Ginny shivered. The world returned; the sheet of gauze was lifted from her eyes. She felt the tears begin, then faced them down. No tears. No time for weakness. She stood up and brushed the pine needles from her skirt.
“Bullshit,” Ginny said. She checked her watch. Ten more minutes until she had to see the doctor. Could she take off? To where? This stupid baby would still be in her. Sooner or later it had to come out. She walked back to the house.
What had once been the music room had been converted into a makeshift examining room, complete with a baby grand piano, a high-rise table with metal stirrups, and a crookneck lamp for the doctor to get a better view. Christ, Ginny couldn’t believe it when she’d peeked in last night. It was like something out of the Bride of Frankenstein. She went into the foyer now and noticed the French doors to the music room were closed. He must be seeing one of the other girls, probably P.J.
Suddenly Ginny’s mind sped. What was he doing? Prying apart her legs with a cold steel instrument? Squeezing her tits? Ginny’s pulse quickened. No way. The perverted bastard wasn’t going to touch her.
She glanced around the foyer. She saw her escape. Christ, it had been right in front of her all along. Ginny ran up the staircase.
I can do it. I must.
At the top step she turned around. Images of doctors and needles and tubes reeled before her. The stench of disinfectant rose up from nowhere.
I can do it. I must.
Ginny closed her eyes and held her breath. Then she stepped off the top stair and let herself fall.
Her body thundered down the staircase. The thumping sound was worse than the pain. She tumbled down, down, trying to fight the instinct to break her fall.
Ginny sensed she hadn’t reached the bottom when she felt the cushion of arms around her.
“My God, are you all right?”
Ginny looked up into an unfamiliar face. But she knew the significance of the white coat. It was the cock-sucking doctor.
She stood up shakily. She waited to feel pain in her stomach. Sharp, piercing, end-it-all pain. There was none. The only thing that ached was the right cheek of her ass.
“I slipped on the goddamn top step,” she hissed. Then she brushed a hunk of hair from her face. “Crappy old house.”
“You really must be careful,” the white-haired doctor said, smiling. “We sure wouldn’t want to hurt that baby of yours.”
Ginny wanted to scream.
The first thing he wanted to do was a blood test. Ginny held out her arm and made a fist. Her heart pounded; her knees were weak. Christ. Not another fucking
attack. Not now. Don’t let him know this is happening to me. He strapped the rubber tubing around her arm. It strangled her. Her head went watery again; everything was distant, out of focus. She couldn’t swallow. She couldn’t breathe. Fuck. Shit. Cock-sucking motherfucker. Not now. He raised a needle and pierced her skin. She tried to concentrate on a chair across the room. It was solid. It was real. No need to panic. No need. Her head bobbed back and forth. She wanted to shake her leg. Not now. Don’t let him know. She felt the blood as it was sucked from her vein. Thick. Red. Hers. Her blood. Sucked. Sucked. She was trapped. She had no breath. Her heart thumped at breakneck speed. She fainted.
It stank. It smelled like the hallway in elementary school after the kid had puked and the janitor arrived with his big rag mop and metal rolling pail. It was ammonia, under her nostrils. Ginny opened her eyes.
“My, my, I wouldn’t have expected you’d be a weak one.” The doctor chuckled as he set a vial of smelling salts on the table.
“I forgot to eat today,” Ginny shot back. “And if you tell any of the others about this, I’ll cut off your balls.”
The doctor straightened up. “Young lady, you will not use that kind of language with me. I don’t want to be out here catering to a bunch of spoiled little rich girls any more than you want to be here. But I am a good doctor, and I demand a little respect. Do we understand one another?”
Ginny said nothing. If she had, “prick” probably would have been the word that came out of her mouth.
“I will not, however, tell Miss Taylor. But only because of the patient-doctor privilege.”
He had the bushiest white eyebrows Ginny had ever seen. They bobbed up and down when he spoke, shading his old gray eyes. But Ginny realized he was serious. More than that, he wasn’t laughing at her. She felt a twinge of guilt. “Thank you,” she said quietly.
He squatted in front of her. “Are you afraid of needles, Ginny?” he asked.
