Chapter 36 Adelaide #2
“But it does! Of course it does! Our family . . . everyone . . . I was . . .” My gaze went to the hated padding at the end of sofa.
Expecting. That’s what I’d become in the course of wearing it.
Expecting a baby. Wanting, longing for a baby.
And over the last two weeks, when I’d finally felt happy in my marriage, I’d been wanting, longing for a new beginning with Charlie, as well.
He misread my anguish. “I’ll do all the explaining.
We’ll say the baby was born dead last week.
You’ve been sedated, too upset to talk about it.
The doctor advised waiting until you were over the worst of it before we told family, because you’d had a nervous breakdown.
You’ll take it easy at home for a couple of days, and in a couple of weeks, you’ll carry on as if nothing happened. ”
“But what . . .”
“No more questions!” he thundered. “That’s it.”
But of course, the “no questions” rule didn’t apply to family. Charlie called home later that morning and talked to his mother, who then put my mother on the phone. When we arrived home that evening, both sets of parents were waiting for us at our house, their faces gray and grim and worried.
Charlie carried me out of the car and into the bedroom, tucked me in, and sat on the edge of the bed, a physical barrier between my mother and me. “What happened?” Mother’s eyes were so shadowed and sad that mine welled with tears just looking at her. “When did you know there was a problem?”
“She hadn’t felt the baby move for several days,” Charlie said. “We went to the doctor, and he said there was no heartbeat.”
He hovered beside me, his eyes a dark warning glower.
“Why didn’t you call and tell me?” Mother asked.
“I—I wanted to, but . . .” I stammered.
“She couldn’t,” Charlie cut in. “The doctor kept her knocked out.”
God, how I wish that part was true.
“You should have called,” said Charlie’s mother from the doorway.
His Adam’s apple bobbed. “I decided to wait until she was better. The news was bad enough without worrying you all the more about Addie.”
“He’s always been so sensitive about my feelings,” Charlie’s mother said in a low voice. She put her hand on his back. “You said on the phone it was a boy.”
Charlie nodded.
Mother’s hand trembled as it covered her mouth. “What did you name it?”
“We didn’t.”
“Well, you have to,” Mother insisted. “We need to plan the funeral.”
“The doctor handled it,” Charlie said. “He said it was for the best, that it would help Addie get over it if she didn’t have a place to go and mourn. He said the child was dead before it was born, so it was never actually alive.”
“Oh, Addie!” My mother threw up her hands. “Oh, heavens. Didn’t you want your child to have a Christian burial?”
My mouth felt lined with cotton. I tried to swallow.
“She didn’t have a say in the matter,” Charlie cut in.
“I made the decision while she was still knocked out. Addie never saw the baby.” He put his arm around me.
“The doctor said we need to put all this behind us and get on with our lives. I would appreciate it if you’d spread the word, because it might make her have another nervous breakdown if she has to talk about it to everyone in town. ”
“Yes, yes. Of course,” Charlie’s mother murmured.
“That goes for family, too.” Charlie’s tone was uncharacteristically authoritative. “The doctor said she shouldn’t have to deal with a lot of questions. I’ll tell you everything you need to know, so please don’t pester her about it.”
· · ·
“And your families accepted the story?” Hope asked.
I opened my eyelids. Hope was sitting on the edge of my bed, her face sad, her eyes enormous.
I nodded. “Yes. Back in her day, Charlie’s mother had had several miscarriages, and she’d suffered some serious depression over it.
Melancholia, they used to call it, where she couldn’t get out of bed.
That helped make the story understandable. ”
“But you never found out what happened to the baby?”
“No.” A heaviness weighed on my chest, a heaviness that had been there for decades but I’d tried to ignore. How could I have lived with it all these years? “I don’t know what happened, but I know it was something awful.”
“Maybe not, Gran. Maybe Granddad helped with the birth and he was traumatized because it had gone so wrong.”
“No. Three things convinced me Charlie did something terrible.” I held up the pointer finger on my right hand. “The revolver that he always carried in the glove box was gone. On the trip home I opened the glove box looking for a tissue, and Charlie nearly drove off the road, he was so upset.”
I lifted a second finger. “Charlie wouldn’t let me near the trunk of the car when we were packing up in Mississippi.
He was trying to hide something—I knew him well enough to know that.
So I peeked in when he went back in the house for a bag and sure enough, there was a piece of luggage I’d never seen before.
It was tan with dark brown stripes, and it looked brand-new.
” I looked at Hope. She was watching me, her forehead furrowed.
I lifted my third finger. “After we got home, that very night, Charlie went out and buried it in our backyard.”
“Oh, Gran!” Her hand flew to her mouth.
“I didn’t see where he buried it. That’s what I need your help with.”
Hope’s eyes were round as full moons.
I sank back in my chair and closed my eyes. The events I’d tried so hard to forget for so many years began pressing in. I started talking, and before I knew it, I was reliving the past.
1948
That day we got home, Charlie convinced my mother that he’d take care of me and she should go back to her house for the night.
I was too upset to sleep, and Charlie hadn’t come to bed.
I knew I’d have to stay in bed much of the next day—my parents thought I was just a week out from childbirth, remember, and that’s how things were done back then—and I was restless.
I got up and roamed the house and I looked out the window.
And there was Charlie, with that piece of luggage.
He was holding it in one hand and coming out of the shed with a shovel in the other.
And then Eddie woke up crying—he’d apparently picked up on the sadness and tension of everyone, and it gave him a nightmare—and I went to his room to comfort him.
I spent probably forty-five minutes reading to him and getting him back asleep.
When I went downstairs, Charlie was washing up at the kitchen sink.
“What are you doing?” I asked him.
“Washing my hands.”
Lady MacBeth came to mind. “I see that,” I said. “I meant what were you doing in the backyard with that luggage?”
His face got all mottled and red. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I saw you. You were getting a shovel out of the shed and you had that striped suitcase.”
He turned off the faucet and grabbed a dish towel.
“It’s dark. You can’t be sure of what you saw.
And sometimes, Addie, what happens in the dark should stay there.
” He pressed the towel to his face for a moment.
When he pulled it away, I saw that his hands were shaking.
“Addie—I’m so, so sorry. All I wanted . .
.” He looked at me. Tears rolled down his face, and for a moment, he looked like the little boy who’d been my friend in grade school.
“All I ever wanted was for you to love me just a smidgeon as much as I love you.”
He sank into a chair, put his head in his hands, and sobbed. I’ve never heard anything so sad—it was a heart-wrenching, from-the-soul sob, so loud I feared he’d wake the children. He seemed like a child himself—lost and lonely and heartbroken and scared. And . . . I felt the exact same way.
I thought, What will happen if I learn that he did the horrible thing I fear he did?
And I could come up with no good outcome.
If I knew for sure, wouldn’t I have to do something?
What would that be? What would it do to our children?
To his parents? To my parents? To our grandmothers? The shame would destroy us all.
He was right; I didn’t want to know. So I decided to let the things of the dark stay in the dark.
· · ·
I opened my eyes and looked at Hope. “Whatever Charlie did, he’d done because he loved me, and I’d driven him plumb out of his mind.
It was as much my fault as Charlie’s. I was as guilty as he was.
And I’ve lived with the shame and guilt of that all my life.
But now . . . well, now I’ve got to clear it up before I meet my maker. ”
Hope’s arms wound tight around me as she knelt beside my chair. “Oh, Gran—you had so many people’s lives to think about! You just did what you thought was best.”
“Best isn’t the same as right. I let lie pile upon lie.”
“You tried to protect your children! And anyway, it doesn’t make sense that Granddad would have deliberately killed the baby. Why on earth would he have done that, after you’d gone through the pregnancy ruse and were willing—eager, even—to raise it?”
I drew a deep breath. “I’ve thought and thought about that, all these years. And all these years, I’ve wondered . . .” I stopped.
“What, Gran?”
“Well, a man can never be sure that a child is really his.” I drew a deep breath and voiced my most secret thought. “All these years, I’ve wondered if that baby was black.”