Rosalind (13 page)

Rosalind could tell
the sheriff. When she thought about it, he was the best person to tell, but his visits were less frequent now and he only came over when John was home. She didn't yet trust John. There was something about him. Sure, he had bought her soda, but there was something—

She decided to tell Susan. She would do it tonight.

Susan was in the kitchen making dinner, and John was still at work. Rosalind walked in and leaned against the counter while Susan rinsed out a bowl in the sink. If Rosalind had been more versed in the art of conversation, she would have worked her way into it, but instead she just said, "I ain't got my monthly yet."

"What, honey?"
Susan said, taking a hand towel and rinsing the bowl then putting it in the strainer.

"I think
I got a baby in me," Rosalind said. Susan just looked at her. She moved her hand to cover her mouth but absently hit a glass that was sitting next to the sink, sending it over into the empty, metal basin. It shattered and startled the both of them.

"What?" Susan repeated, this time paying attention.

"I—"

"I heard you," Susan said. Rosalind's father had impregnated her before, but Susan also knew that she had had a miscarriage after speaking with Sheriff Hanes.
A dark thought crossed her mind. There were only two men who'd Rosalind had been around since coming to live with them: her husband and Sheriff Hanes. She felt ill. But she pushed that back and let reason proceed. "Honey, that isn't possible. You know how babies are made, don't you?"

"Yes
ma'am," said Rosalind.

"Then you know that can'
t possibly be the case," Susan took her gently by the arm and led her to the dining room table. She wanted badly to squeeze that arm as hard as she could. The girl's ignorance, while endearing at first, had become like a cheese grater on her brain, but she just sat down next to her and rubbed her shoulder. "Now tell me, why would you say such a thing?"

"Well," Rosalind said. "It's been over a moon since I got my
monthly, and I don't get no cramps no more. But I get sick in the morning. It feels like before."

She counted by the moon? Didn't they teach this girl anything in that home of hers?
Susan thought.

"That could just be a late period, honey.
It does happen. It happens to me, sometimes. Rosalind, have you…fooled around with a boy or something in the last month? You know, sexually?" Rosalind knew what sex was now, and that it could be something pleasurable, but she had never experienced it. She had to tell Susan about the incident at Nancy's. She was afraid that she would get in trouble for not speaking up sooner, but she had to tell her. If she lied, then she would have to go to another home. Isn't that the way it had worked so far?

"
A man came to Nancy's house. He came through the back door," Rosalind whispered.

"
Nancy's? That was a month ago! You never told anyone about that. Why?"

"
He said he'd hurt me. Kill me. I don't wanna die," Rosalind whispered. "Is the sheriff gonna make me go somewhere else now?" Rosalind started to cry, and Susan did nothing to console her. She had to tell the sheriff. And this simpleton act was getting under her skin like the head of a tick.

"Young lady, you are just too naïve. Are you sure you didn't invite a boy over and he
just got you in trouble?" Susan asked.

"
Yes ma'am," Rosalind said through the tears. "I don't know no boys." It was probably true. Rosalind hadn't been in town long enough to really meet anyone, and after what she'd been through, Susan was smart enough to understand that sneaking in some 'playtime' with a local boy just might be the very last thing on Rosalind's mind. But if what Rosalind was saying was true, then something was completely wrong.

"Jesus Christ in Heaven," Susan whispered. "Well, young lady, tomorrow we will just have to take a trip to Hampton and visit a doctor. That's the only way to be sure, but I need to call the sheriff first. If this gets out, and you bet your red hair it will, it will be a scandal. And I won't tolerate you ruining my husband's good name." She thought about that for a minute. If she told the sheriff, then he could mitigate the damage by filing a police report on the break-in. She would have to do that first before taking this
thing
to a hospital and getting the whole affair on record. Yes, she would have the sheriff take care of this. Her husband was an important man in this town, and something like this, the mere hint of it, would destroy him. "We'll talk to the sheriff in the morning. He'll know what to do," she said absently. "Don't you say a word about this to anyone, especially Mr. Byrd." Rosalind nodded. "I think it's best if you grab something to eat and then head to bed.

Rosalind did as she asked and went to her room. She grabbed the picture that had found a permanent home propped up against her lamp and held it to her heart.

The next morning, Susan kissed John goodbye and handed him a lunch consisting of a ham sandwich, a banana, and some vanilla flavored cookies. She went to Rosalind's room to wake her up, but found that Rosalind had already gotten dressed and was sitting on her bed, staring at the page from the catalog. Susan sighed and then motioned for her to get ready to go to town.

They drove to the sheriff's office and went inside. Sheriff Hanes had not yet arrived, so Susan told Rosalind to sit in one of the chairs next to the window and be quiet while Susan filed some paperwork.

The sheriff came in at 9 A.M. sharp, like he always did, and was surprised to see Rosalind.

"Wel
l, what a pleasant surprise. I've been meaning to come visit you. How are things?" he asked.

Susan rose from her seat, glared at the sheriff and motioned for him to follow her into his office. Once inside, she closed the door. Rosalind watched from them behind the glass and saw that the sheriff's face had turned from pleasant to despair. She knew at that moment that she was in trouble.
She hung her head and kicked her feet back and forth across the carpet of the office.

A minute later, the sheriff and Susan emerged. Susan grabbed her purse and the sheriff walked over to Rosalind.

"Rosalind, is what Miss Susan said true?" Rosalind just hung her head. "Honey, you aren't in any trouble. You can be honest. Did someone break into Miss Nancy's house while she was gone?" Without looking up, Rosalind nodded. "Why didn't you say anything?"

"He said he'd kill
me," she said, still looking at the floor.

"Did you see who it was? What made you tell Miss Susan all of a sudden?"

"Because I got a baby in me now. I don't want to lose my baby again, sheriff," Rosalind said. He stood up and rubbed his eyes. His daughter was not much older than Rosalind, but he could not imagine her ever uttering those words. Her cares were about clothes, school, and boys. He figured that Rosalind had never once had those cares. He was beginning to think she never would. It wasn't unheard of for young girls like her to get in trouble like this, but he had never come across anything like it. He knew it was possible, and that there were sick people in this world. He even knew that back-woods folks sometimes operated in this fashion, but again, he had never heard of it in these parts—in his small part of the world. Whispering Pines was looking less and less like the idyllic small town he'd come to love and cherish over the course of his life.

"I'm going to talk to Hank Fletcher about some details. If this happened the way you said it did, then there would have been a mess for him to clean up. I'm surprised that he didn't call in the damage to his kitchen door, but with Nancy's passing, I guess it just wasn't on his mind to do so." He turned to Susan and nodded. "Tell Hampton to keep this quiet. It's part of an investigation. They'll do so or else I'
ll give 'em an earful."

"Yes
, sheriff. Let's take a trip, Rosalind," Susan said. The two left the office and the sheriff went back into his to start a report. He left a few minutes later and headed to Hank Fletcher's to dump on him even more bad news, although he figured leaving out the alleged rape might be for the best.

Susan and Rosalind arrived at the hospital
a half-hour later. Susan walked Rosalind to a set of waiting chairs near the nurse's station, and motioned for her to sit. Rosalind complied and Susan went up to the wiry nurse who sat behind the white counter. The nurse peered over her pointy black glasses at Susan. "Yes ma'am, how can I help you today?" she said.

"I need to schedule…well…I need to get a pregnancy test done," Susan whispered.

"When was your last period?" the nurse asked.

"What, me? No, no, no. It's for someone else."

The nurse leaned to one side and looked at Rosalind sitting in the chair. She straightened back and then glared at Susan. "Ma'am?" the nurse said.

"Look, I was instructed to tell you by the sheriff of Whispering Pines that this would be confidential. It's part of an investigation and we don't need
everyone and their sisters knowing," Susan said.

"Ma'am, she looks like she's ten years old. I'm going to have to report this to child services. That's the rules," the nurse stated.

"She looks young for her age. She's actually sixteen and the sheriff will verify this." Susan grabbed a pen and a piece of paper from her purse and wrote down the sheriff's number. The nurse looked at her in disbelief.

"Sixteen, huh?
Has she been here before? She looks familiar."

"Yes," Susan replied.

"Was it for the same thing? Seems like she needs a little education on the matter of reproduction."

"It wasn't like that at all. Can you please just be a peach and help us out?"

The nurse contemplated the situation and then sighed. "Fine, have her fill this out," she said, handing Susan a clipboard with a form on it.

"She can't read, is it okay if I fill this out for her?"

"Well isn't she just a gift from heaven," she said in a snarky tone. "Fine, just make sure it's all filled out," the nurse said in her monotone voice and then returned to her charts. Susan smiled and took the clipboard back to where Rosalind was sitting.

"
That woman is no peach, let me tell you," Susan said to no one in particular and sat down next to Rosalind. Susan asked her a series of questions and then filled in the blanks of the form. Rosalind didn't know specifics like family history or previous illnesses other than her miscarriage, but she only knew to refer to that as "when my baby died."

Susan completed the form and turned it back in to the nurse. The nurse took it and told her to have a seat.
Forty-five minutes later, another nurse called her name, and led Susan and Rosalind to a small white room with an examining table. Rosalind climbed onto the table and Susan sat in the chair in the corner. A doctor came in a few minutes later, looked Rosalind over and then consulted the chart the nurse created. He set the chart down and walked over to Rosalind.

"
I'm Doctor McClelland. What seems to be the problem?" said the doctor. He took a cigarette out of his pocket, lit it, took a drag and then set it in the ashtray next to the clipboard.

Rosalind was silent. He looked at Susan.

"She's not a talker. But she seems to think she's pregnant. And Sheriff Hanes in Whispering Pines would like it very much if we can keep this between us."

The doctor nodded and turn his attention back to Rosalind. "Young lady, why do you think you're pregnant? What are your symptoms?"

Rosalind lifted her head and looked at Doctor McClelland. He was a middle-aged man with creases forming around his eyes. His face was clean-shaven except for the thick, dark caterpillars above each eye. Rosalind thought it was funny, and decided that someone with bushy eyebrows like that was probably okay to talk to. Although she didn't know what he meant by symptoms, she just repeated what she had told Susan the night before.

"I don't get my period no more. And I get sick in the mornin'. And—"

The doctor nodded, saying, "Go on."

"I'm real tired like the first time it happened."

"First time? How old are you?" he said.

Rosalind started to speak but Susan interrupted, "She's sixteen. This is a sensitive issue, doctor.
She thinks she was r-a-p-e-d."

"I see," he said. "There was a new test developed last year to test the Gonadotropin levels in human pituitary glands, but that's an expensive procedure and one we'd have to send away for. Are you experiencing any tenderness in your breasts?"
              Rosalind understood two words in that sentence, but she knew what breasts were and, come to think of it, they were a little tender. She nodded. "Okay, fine. I'm going to check your uterus, but don't worry, you won't have to disrobe. Just lay back on the table."

Rosalind l
ay back as he asked and shivered at how cold the metal slab was against her bare arms. He pressed his fingers from each hand on her midsection, lifting them and pressing down every inch or so. "Nothing out of the ordinary there." He continued his appraisal and then moved to her breasts. "Now, I'm going check your breasts for sensitivity, let me know when you experience any discomfort." Rosalind winced at the first sign of pressure. "I see," he said.