Chapter 7
Chapter 7
But before they could do that, they had to get the babies out, and for all the lectures they received, the main event got covered in a single ten-minute talk from Dr. Vincent.
“You all don’t need to worry yourselves about what’s going to happen when you go to the hospital,” he said. “Because it’s none of your business. You just do what the doctors say and you’ll be fine.”
Tansy raised her hand.
“What is it, young lady?” Dr. Vincent asked.
“My mother screamed so loud when she had my sister that the corners of her mouth tore and they had to stitch them back together again,” Tansy said.
Dr. Vincent chuckled and shook his head, patting the air in her direction with both hands.
“Now that’s certainly some story,” he said. “But modern medicine’s come a long way since the days of your mother. Patients don’t suffer like they used to. Not anymore. Now, y’all listen to the doctor, mind Nurse, don’t have an increase, watch your salt intake, and you’ll be fine.”
Nurse Kent only had one thing to add.
“After you go on two-week warning,” she told them, “when you feel it start, you tell us. Right away.”
Tansy stuck up her hand.
“What is it, Tansy?” Nurse Kent asked.
“How will we know it’s starting?” Tansy asked.
“You’ll know,” Nurse Kent said.
Their due dates loomed over everything. They all wanted to get them over with, but they all dreaded their approach. Everyone told them not to worry about it, but Fern could look at her stomach, look between her legs, and do some simple math.
In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children , Miss Wellwood had said.
Finally, she asked Diane.
“Oh, brother,” Diane said. “That whole ‘Eve’s curse’ chestnut. Look, Fern, I shouldn’t be saying anything because the whole medical part of this isn’t really my bag. But I’ve got a bunch of married girlfriends and they don’t even remember it. They felt some twitches when the baby was coming, they went to the hospital, the doctors knocked them right out with drugs, and they woke up with a baby in their arms.”
That reassured Fern a little, but when Flora talked in the Cong, she still listened. Flora had been in the Home the second longest after Holly. She’d seen a lot of girls go downtown.
“When your two-week warning comes,” Flora told an audience of girls, “Nurse says, ‘Get a bag from Hagar,’ and you put your overnight things in it and your going-home clothes, and you leave it by the door to your room. Then when your time comes, Nurse Kent sends a girl to get your bag and Miss Wellwood drives you to the hospital to have the baby.”
Everyone had questions about what happened next. How long did it take? Were they allowed to be in the same part of the hospital as married people? Did the doctor knock them out with an injection or pills?
“Hey!” Myrtle interrupted, storming into the Cong.
Everyone turned. She stood in the door, face pale, every inch of her body shaking, sweaty hair sticking up, eyes savage.
“Who. Stole. My. DS?” she demanded.
DS meant dietary supplement , their code for the secret food stashes pretty much every girl had tucked away someplace. Everyone took the sanctity of their DS seriously.
“You probably ate them?” Flora suggested.
“I had two DS,” Myrtle said. “And everyone treats my room like a goddamn bus station, so y’all knew where they were. And now they’re gone, and that means one of y’all stole them, and I want my DS back now .”
As the room absorbed the enormity of this crime, Rose spoke up:
“Property is theft.”
“What did you say?” Myrtle growled.
“How can someone steal something that’s already been stolen?” Rose said.
Fern went sweaty with shame because she—and everyone else in the room—took this as a confession.
“I’m going to knock your block off,” Myrtle said, and came for Rose.
Jasmine threw herself between them, hands on Myrtle’s shoulders.
“Don’t get uptight!” she said. “We’re all on the same trip!”
“You better get out of my way before I kill you!” Myrtle roared.
They stood, Myrtle red-faced, sweating, staring past Jasmine at Rose, who sat braced on her cushion, fists balled—three pregnant girls, flushed, furious, and ready to fight over candy bars. Rose let her body go slack and pulled out her bippies.
“I forgive you,” she said, and popped her Zippo.
Myrtle stepped back.
“You’ve got one hour to put my DS back or else!”
She stormed out of the Cong, and every girl’s head swiveled to stare at Rose. To Fern’s horror, Rose stood and walked straight for her. Jasmine’s transistor chattered away on the windowsill, Alan Sands telling them how black students had taken over Florida Memorial College and police were planning to storm the campus tomorrow, as Rose got closer. And closer. She stopped directly in front of Fern. The eyes of every single girl were on them.
“You want to go grok the lamp?” Rose asked.
“I’m cool,” Fern managed.
Everyone watched the two of them. Fern kept her head down, clutching her dad’s wedding ring in one sweaty palm. Finally, Rose said, “Are you?” then turned and walked out of the Cong.
The opening bars of “Bridge over Troubled Water” drifted from the transistor and a chorus of protests erupted, breaking the moment. They had a strict “no heavy trips” rule in the Cong.
“Okay, okay!” Jasmine called out, waddling over. “I’m going!”
“How can you put up with her?” Briony asked Fern as Jasmine switched stations.
“I don’t know,” Fern hedged. “Rose is pretty gone.”
“She’s a phony,” Ginger said.
Ginger was a prim redhead who’d replaced Hazel, and Briony had recruited her to help sew wedding hankies.
“She says she’s on strike,” Briony said to the room. “But I think she’s just lazy.”
“Mrs. Deckle says her parents pay for everything,” Laurel said. “That’s why she doesn’t have to work.”
As soon as they forgot about her, Fern slipped away. She couldn’t go to her room or Rose would talk to her, and she couldn’t wander the halls or someone would put her to work, so she went to the classroom, grabbed her geometry workbook, and wedged herself into one of the desks. She tried to do a chapter but it kept asking about circumferences of circles, and finally she pulled out her dad’s wedding ring.
Fern turned the ring over and over between her fingers. It was the most powerful thing she owned. If she just had one of these on her finger she’d be back in Alabama right that minute and Guy would be bringing her ice cream and lemonade. Women in shops would be asking when she was due. Her mother would be giving her advice. She wouldn’t have to deal with her roommates.
Fern really, really wished she had different roommates.
She ran her finger around the inscription inside the gold band.
8/7/51 Hville, AL, Craven.
Instead of Eternally Yours or Forever , her dad had gotten their wedding date, where they’d gotten married, and their last name engraved inside the rings like dog tags. Useful for identifying a fallen soldier on the battlefield, but not romantic. However, just seeing her real name written down made Fern’s eyes water. She sat like that for a while, thinking about how everything should be different.
After dinner, Fern went back to the Cong. There was nowhere else to go in Wellwood House. Girls stared at a rerun of I Dream of Jeannie while Jasmine discussed pet sun signs.
“You should never move a Virgo cat’s bowl,” she told Flora and Daisy. “They’ll wig out.”
Fern pulled down the A volume of the World Book Encyclopedia .
“It’s the same with a Leo dog,” Jasmine explained. “They are very, very highly strung creatures.”
Fern turned past Akron and Akyab and found Alabama .
A southern state of the American Union , it read, and her entire body yearned to be there. The surface of Alabama is diversified and picturesque. It—
“All right,” Rose shouted, storming into the Cong. “Which one of you two-faced squares stole my bippies?”
Fern froze. Everyone froze. Girls turned and looked at Rose, standing in the door of the Cong, cheeks flushed, stomach heaving.
“I had six packs of Marlboros left in my carton and now there’s five,” she said. “Plus my Zippo. Someone’s stealing my shit and that’s not cool.”
On the TV, Jeannie told Larry Hagman to get back into bed because she’d made every day a Sunday. No one said anything for a long moment. Then Ginger spoke up.
“I don’t know,” she said. “How could someone steal your bippies if private property is theft?”
Rose’s breathing stopped and her eyes zoomed in on Ginger. Then Flora and Daisy burst out laughing.
“Zing!” Daisy said.
“You got zapped!” Flora said.
Briony started laughing and pretty soon everybody in the Cong was laughing at Rose. Fern saw Rose racing through a million responses in her mind.
“It’s not funny!” she finally said.
Then she turned and stalked out of the Cong.
“Why don’t you go on strike about it?” Myrtle called.
As everyone’s attention returned to the TV, Fern got out of there. She didn’t know where to go but she knew she didn’t want to be where Rose could find her, and she didn’t want to be around the other girls. That only left one place. She went downstairs and slipped out the side door.
Crickets shrieked in the trees surrounding the backyard as she padded over the grass to the Smoke Shack and went inside. She lowered herself to the hard wooden bench and sat in the shadows, looking out into the night. Despite the Led Zeppelin volume of the crickets, everything felt very quiet.
They were allowed to smoke out here until ten p.m., but no one liked going outside after dark because of the stories about the hippies living in the woods. Depending on who was doing the telling they were either righteous individuals (Rose) or bloodthirsty Mansonites on LSD (Iris), but Fern figured they were like the ghosts in stories kids told at sleepaway camp: nonexistent.
Fern tried to calm down. She tried not to count the days she had left. She tried not to think about her due date. She tried—
Wood creaked at the other end of the bench, and her blood froze. The bench shifted slightly beneath her butt, and she knew she wasn’t alone. She forced her head to turn and saw a darker shadow at the other end of the bench.
Every single girl had been upstairs in the Cong. This was someone else. Slowly, Fern started to stand. Maybe whoever this was would let her go.
The shadow stood quickly. They were small, the size of a child, and they came at Fern fast, and Fern wanted to run but she couldn’t move quickly enough and then they were touching her, and she smelled chocolate and Holly stood belly to belly with her, looking up, taking a half-eaten Clark bar away from her mouth, chewing.
“Cripes, Holly,” Fern said, trying to get her breath back. Inside, the baby shifted, making her belch. “You scared the hell out of me.”
Holly swallowed but didn’t move. Fern groped for a way to regain control and then something clicked.
“Is that Myrtle’s DS?” she asked.
Holly shrugged and sat back down. Fern heard her take another bite.
With weak knees, Fern lowered herself to the bench.
“You want to give me a piece?” she asked.
The bench shifted again, and then Holly was sliding over beside her, Precious Pup in her lap. Fern heard a wrapper rustle and felt sticky chocolate bump the back of her fingers. She took it from Holly and popped it in her mouth, and her taste buds turned juicy. She’d forgotten that food had flavor.
“You know,” she said in the darkness, the sugar mellowing her, “I just want to help. We’re roommates, right?”
Holly swallowed the last bite of candy bar and began to lick the wrapper. Fern had a thought. She leaned to one side and pulled something out of her underwear. She held it out to Holly.
“You could trade these to Iris and I bet she’d give you her dessert for a week,” she said.
Holly looked at what was in Fern’s hand: Rose’s bippies and her Zippo.
In the dark, Holly’s teeth flashed. Fern smiled back.
She may be some kind of mute weirdo , Fern thought, but we get each other.
Holly took the cigarettes and the lighter and slid them inside Precious Pup through an unraveled seam. Then she pulled out another Clark bar, unwrapped it, and tore it in half. Together the two girls sat in the dark, side by side, eating Myrtle’s DS.
***
Later that night, Fern opened her eyes in their dim bedroom. Something had tugged her awake. Her mouth tasted like stale chocolate and a night breeze flowed through the screen beside her. It was so late even the crickets had stopped. Shadows on the ceiling slowly shifted in the light of the lava lamp. Her bladder throbbed. If she moved it was going to burst, but if she didn’t move she was going to wet the bed. She was so sick of this.
From the other side of the room, Rose’s breathing came deep and regular. From the foot of her bed, Holly sawed logs. Carefully, Fern swung her legs around and stood, a little squirt of pee escaping in the process.
She needed to go so bad she didn’t even grab her housecoat, she just opened the door as quietly as she could and waddled down the plush pink carpet to the bathroom, trying not to jiggle too much, hoping no one else was there.
Fern rubbed her eyes as they adjusted to the bright bathroom light, went around the row of sinks and mirrors in the middle of the room, making for the stalls on the other side, then stopped because she didn’t understand what she saw.
In front of one of the sinks was a bright red puddle of blood.
It gleamed wetly on the white linoleum floor, the size of a dinner plate. Two livid streaks of blood were slapped across the edge of the sink, and big quarter-sized drops of blood led to a stall door that had red smears around its handle.
Now she realized there was panting echoing in the bathroom, low, fast, and desperate, like a hurt animal. Fern went still. Liquid splattered into water, echoing in a toilet bowl, and whoever it was swallowed hard, then whimpered.
The soles of Fern’s bare feet felt tacky, and she looked down. Somehow she’d walked to the stall, tracking through the drops of blood and a sticky pinkish liquid she hadn’t noticed before. She felt like she was still asleep. She saw her hand float up in front of the stall door.
Don’t do it , she thought. Get out of here.
But it was like someone had cast a spell and she couldn’t stop herself. She watched her hand rattle the latch.
“No…” a small, strangled voice said from the other side.
Myrtle.
In slow motion, Fern sank to her knees, then placed both hands on the bloody linoleum and leaned her face down to the floor, smelling wet copper. She looked under the stall and saw everything.
Myrtle stood over the commode, one foot planted on its rim, the other on the floor, her white flowered nightgown bunched up over her belly; her skin was gray, her face carved into a mask of agony. She’d bitten through her bottom lip, leaving it swollen like a wet, red strawberry. Blood caked in the corners of her mouth.
Pain in childbirth is out these days. Modern medicine makes it so you don’t feel a thing.
From her stomach to her ankles Myrtle wore an apron of gore. Chunks of red and purple tissue slowly slid down the inside of her leg standing on the floor, carried by runnels of blood that coiled around her thigh, ran over her knee, and dripped from her calf.
They felt some twitches when the baby was coming.
Fresh blood boiled from between Myrtle’s legs, so dark it was black, and something slick and smooth pushed out from the middle of her. As Fern watched, Myrtle flexed and more blood spattered out.
Just do what the doctors say and you’ll be fine.
Fern looked up Myrtle’s blood-streaked body, past her swollen lip, and met her eyes. They were blind with pain.
“Is…” Myrtle gasped, “…not…real…”
Fern’s stretched bladder cut loose and hot liquid gushed down her legs as she screamed.
***
After Nurse Kent burst into the bathroom, after the ambulance came from the funeral home and they carried out a screaming Myrtle, after Miss Wellwood arrived and sent them all back to bed, Fern lay under her blanket, staring at shadows drifting and merging across the ceiling, her feet still sticky with Myrtle’s blood. Occasionally she fell unconscious for a few blank moments, then she’d see blood spilling out of Myrtle and come awake with a jerk.
Her mattress sank low down by her legs and Fern snapped awake as Holly crawled into bed beside her, Precious Pup in one hand. She settled in behind Fern, who wanted to tell her to go back to her own bed because it was too hot, but the smell of Holly’s unwashed hair reminded her of when she and Midge shared a bed, and eventually she fell into darkness for longer and longer stretches of time.
The next morning she stared at her breakfast plate as girls whispered around her, talking at her, asking her about Myrtle, but she wasn’t really there so she didn’t need to answer, and then they were marched to the stuffy classroom and packed into their desks. Fern’s eyes burned with a dirty, sleepless crust.
Dr. Vincent stood at the back of the room, in whispered consultation with Nurse Kent, Miss Wellwood, and Diane, and finally Miss Wellwood strode to the front. She wore beige again this morning, and Fern wondered if every outfit she owned was the color of dust.
“Girls,” she said. “Gossip is the mark of a low character. What happens to other girls here is none of your concern. Tend to your own gardens. You are here for one reason and that should be enough to occupy your minds. However, I have no choice but to address a certain matter. After this, consider the subject closed.
“Last night, Myrtle went to the hospital,” she continued. “She did not inform Nurse of her impending crisis, as you have all been instructed to do, and she paid a price for this disobedience. Furthermore, due to the fact that she played fast and loose with her diet and did not diligently follow Dr. Vincent’s instructions, she did not experience a normal birth. It is my sad duty to inform you that because of these complications, she will need to remain in the hospital until her parents arrive and she will not be returning to this Home.”
Murmurs went around the room like a bad scene in a play. Iris started to cry, and it looked so fake that Fern almost laughed. Then she saw Myrtle again, blood running down her leg, eyes blind with pain.
“We have told you over and over again that when you feel your crisis coming you are to alert a member of staff,” Miss Wellwood said. “We struggle to give you every medical advantage, but if you do not follow our instructions, then you put yourselves at risk. The blame for what happened last night lies at no one’s feet but Myrtle’s. Remember her in your prayers, do as you’re told by Dr. Vincent, obey our orders, and you will not need to suffer the way she did.”
Fern saw blood running down Myrtle’s leg. She heard Tansy’s mother screaming so loud the corners of her mouth tore. And she knew that they’d been lied to. All the way down the line, everyone had lied—Guy, her parents, Miss Wellwood, Dr. Vincent.
No one was telling them what they needed to know. No one cared what happened to them. All they had was each other. And their babies. And after this was over, they’d never see each other or their babies again.
They were completely and totally alone.