Necessary Lies (13 page)

“I guess a doctor wouldn’t have time for all that listening.”

“Very true.”

“I’m really enjoying it, Robert,” I said. “I like getting to meet so many different people.”

“I’m glad,” he said. “Really.”

“I’m nervous about when my two weeks with Charlotte are up, though. So much responsibility.” I sipped my coffee. “I have to put together a petition for this program Charlotte told me about. Have you heard of the Eugenics Program?” Ever since meeting the Hart girls, I hadn’t been able to put them out of my mind. From the eerie jolt of recognition when Mary Ella showed up in the doorway to the realization that I now held Ivy’s future in my hands, they consumed my thoughts.

“I don’t think so,” Robert said. “I mean, I know eugenics is about improving the human race. Weeding out negative traits and encouraging the positive. But what does that have to do with your work?”

His definition didn’t feel quite right to me. “Social workers can petition the Eugenics Board to get sterilization surgery for their clients,” I said. “But it’s not like it was in Nazi Germany,” I hastened to add. “It’s not like anyone’s trying to improve a race of people.”

Robert frowned at me. “You sound upset,” he said.

He was right, and I studied my plate, trying to figure out what was making me so uncomfortable. “I think it’s the way you defined eugenics,” I said. “You made it sound … I don’t know. Manipulative and controlling.”

“The way
you
describe this program doesn’t sound like it should be called ‘eugenics,’ then.” He cut his pancake with his fork. “It sounds like it’s just a way to help people limit the size of their families. I think that’s a fine idea.”

That wasn’t quite right, either. “I guess it’s more than that.” I really felt awkward now. “One of the girls Charlotte had sterilized is only seventeen. She has a two-year-old son, and she’s mildly mentally retarded. She has a fifteen-year-old epileptic sister who Charlotte wants to have sterilized, too, and I’m the person who’ll have to arrange it.”

“All of these people are on welfare, right?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Then this sounds like an excellent program, and you’ve changed my opinion of Charlotte.” He drank the last of his orange juice and smiled at me. “Up till now I thought of her as someone who was simply working my wife too hard.”

“Why do you think it’s an excellent program?” I was relieved that he thought so, but I wanted to know why he felt that way.

“Because it prevents more children from living off the government tit, excuse my French.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Robert, that’s really not fair. These kids would starve without—”

“You know my background, Jane,” he said. “You’ve seen the house I grew up in.”

“There’s nothing wrong with the house you grew up in.” His parents still lived in the modest three-bedroom home in Atlanta.

He swallowed a bite of pancake. “I had to work hard for everything I’ve achieved,” he said.

“I know you did.”

“Nobody gave me a handout. I did it all on my own.”

“I know.” I felt as though I’d opened a tap I hadn’t known was there. “But you can’t compare where you came from to where the people I’m working with come from.”

He rubbed the back of his neck, as though the conversation were tiring him. “We don’t do them any favors by giving them money for nothing,” he said, “and the fewer kids they have, the better.”

“Why do you do your charity work every month, then?” I asked. “Why do you treat sick kids for no charge?”

“Because I can’t just look the other way, but I tell you, Jane, most of those kids would have been better off if they’d never been conceived. So I think your Eugenics Program is a great idea.” He looked at his watch. “And now I’ve got to run.” He stood up and folded his napkin on the table. “
Our
children, however, can’t wait to be conceived.” He leaned over to give me a kiss. “Maybe tonight?”

*   *   *

During my first three days in the field with Charlotte, I thought I’d seen enough poverty to last a lifetime, but on the fourth day, my eyes were truly opened. We visited a family with ten people living in one room. Another in which the parents had both died of pneumonia and the seventeen-year-old son was struggling to hold the family together. Those children would have to go to foster homes, Charlotte told me as we drove away. We’d have to work on placements for them right away. “While a little boy like William Hart might benefit from a foster placement,” Charlotte said, “these kids are desperate for it.”

“Could we somehow get them enough money and donations to keep them together?” I asked. I hated tearing a family apart.

Charlotte glanced at me. “There you go, getting soft on me again, Mrs. Forrester,” she said with a smile. “We need you, so I hope you can toughen up, but if this job is going to take too much out of you to do it right, now is the time to reconsider.”

“I’ll be fine,” I assured her … and myself.

Charlotte stopped the car to check her map. We were on a thickly wooded dirt road and hadn’t seen another car for twenty minutes. When we were out in the middle of nowhere like this, I wondered how I would manage alone. Charlotte had been doing this alone for a very long time, I reminded myself. If she could do it, so could I.

She drove a short distance farther and pulled to the side of the road. “This looks like as close as we’re going to get to this house,” she said. “I haven’t been here before. The preacher of the local Baptist church told me about the family and asked me to see them. He said they have no electricity and cook in their fireplace.”

“Oh my,” I said, trying to imagine. “How many children?”

“A handicapped father and his wife and three little ones.” She opened her car door and turned her back to me, slipping on her galoshes. I did the same. I now wore my saddle shoes to work. I’d never expected to have a job where I’d wear saddle shoes, much less galoshes, but they made sense for tromping through the fields and woods of Grace County.

“Let’s see what we can see,” Charlotte said, getting out of the car.

The trail reminded me of the wooded footpath to the Harts’ house, until we came to a ramshackle little bridge above a small ravine.

“Good heavens!” Charlotte said, which was exactly what I was thinking. “They don’t pay us enough for this work.” She laughed. “Perhaps we should cross this one at a time?” she said, taking a tentative step onto the bridge. She gripped the railing which ran on only one side of the bridge and which was constructed of branches in all shapes and sizes.

“You’re sure this is the right way?” I wasn’t afraid of crossing the bridge—even if it collapsed, it wasn’t all that far to the shallow ravine below—but I couldn’t imagine a family using the bridge regularly.

“Yes, I was warned about this bridge, if you can call it that.”

Charlotte was halfway across when one of the boards gave way beneath her foot. I watched in horror as her right leg slipped through the hole while her left leg twisted beneath her with a terrible crack. “Oh my God, oh my God!” she cried. “I can’t move. My leg!”

I rushed forward as quickly as I dared on the uneven boards of the bridge. By the time I reached her, I knew we were in terrible trouble. Her left leg was bent at an unnatural angle, her arms outstretched to keep her from completely falling through the gap in the bridge. She looked like a broken marionette.

“Oh, Charlotte!” I said. “Let me help you out of there.”

“Don’t touch my leg!” she said

“I won’t,” I reassured her. I could barely look at her leg. The pain had to be excruciating.

“I’m going to try to lift you out,” I said, wondering how I would manage. “Try to relax and go limp.”

“No, you won’t be able to. You’ll need to go for help.”

“Let me try.” I stood behind her and reached beneath her arms and pulled upward. I felt the strain in my back and worried the entire bridge would give way and toss both of us into the ravine below, but it held. I was amazed at my own strength, and I was able to get her body high enough that she could pull her right leg from the gap. I lowered her as gently as my back would allow, but she still cried out in pain. “Lie down, Charlotte,” I said.

She had no fight in her at all, and she let me help her lie down.

“I need to get help,” I said. “Do you know how close we are to the house?”

She didn’t answer. Her face had gone absolutely white, her eyes closed, and for a frightening moment I thought I might have killed her by lifting her out of the bridge. I felt her wrist for a pulse. It was slow, but it was there. I had a terrible sense of déjà vu, remembering the accident two years ago, but I shook my head to clear it and got to my feet. I had to keep my wits about me. I forced myself to look at her leg, already swollen above her boots. I didn’t dare move it.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I said, making my way across the other side of the bridge and onto the path. The undergrowth was even thicker here, and I moved as quickly as I could, hoping I’d be able to find the family hidden in these woods.

“Help!” I called. “We need help!”

I had to slow down or risk tripping over vines and tree roots. Suddenly something leaped at me from the woods on my right and I screamed, startled. A dog! Big and yellow and friendly. The family had to be nearby. “Hello!” I shouted. “We need help!” The dog headed down the path ahead of me like a guide.

I broke out of the trees and saw the shack in front of me, but the structure barely registered in my mind. Instead, my eyes landed on the man sitting in the doorway, his shotgun aimed in my direction.

I stopped running, raising my hands over my head. “Don’t shoot me!” I said.

“What you want?” he asked.

“I’m a caseworker from the Department of Public Welfare,” I said. “There are two of us and my friend fell on your bridge. Her leg is broken. I need help getting her to our car so I can drive her to the hospital. Can someone help me?”

“We don’t need no social work,” he said. I wished he’d lower the gun. My hands were still in the air and I pictured the whole scene in an instant. Charlotte would die on the bridge. I would die from a gunshot wound. No one would ever find us. Robert would never know what happened to me.

“Please,” I said. “Right now the important thing is to help my friend. I can’t carry her back to the car alone.”

A woman appeared at the man’s side, and I felt as though I were looking at one of those old Depression-era photos of deep, inescapable poverty. Her dark hair was pulled back in a bun and she wore a faded gray dress covered by a torn apron. She carried a baby in her arms, and two little children held on to her skirt.

“My man cain’t help you,” she said. “Got a broke back hisself.”

“Maybe you, then?” I pleaded.

The man lowered the gun to his lap. “Git the sled,” he said to his wife. “Tie the little ones.”

I lowered my arms and watched as she handed him the baby, then tied a rope around the waist of each of her screaming children and handed him the end of it. I was more amazed than appalled by her inventiveness. She walked around the back of the house and returned a moment later carrying an old sled, the type kids would use, one of its slats missing.

“Where’s she at?” she said, walking toward me with the sled.

“On the little bridge,” I said. “Thank you so much. I’m very worried about her.”

“Ain’t no choice, far as I can see,” she said.

We walked in silence through the woods, and I remembered why Charlotte and I were there. “We can get you some money to help feed your children,” I said. “Get them some clothing. Maybe other things you need.”

“Don’t need no charity.”

I glanced at her. Her thin face was set in a determined scowl.
Think of your children,
I wanted to say, but decided I couldn’t afford to alienate her right now. The first order of business was to get help for Charlotte. We could worry about the family later.

We reached the bridge where Charlotte lay still and pale.

“That leg’s busted bad,” the woman said, and she had the good sense to whisper it. “Never be the same. Like my man’s broke back.”

I knelt next to Charlotte. “Charlotte?” I said. “Can you hear me?”

She groaned, two frown lines between her eyebrows. I was glad to see her respond even if she was in agony. “We’re going to lift you onto a sled and take you back to the car and then I’ll drive you to the hospital. You’re going to be fine,” I added, though I worried I was lying. I feared the woman was right when she said Charlotte’s leg would never be the same.

Together, the woman and I lifted Charlotte onto the sled, the bridge creaking and moaning beneath us as we worked. The sled was much too short, and Charlotte’s legs hung from the end. One of us would have to pull the sled, while the other bent over and held her legs to keep them from dragging on the ground.

“I’ll pull,” the woman said.

It was slow going up the wooded path, and my back ached from trying to keep Charlotte’s legs from falling. I was overjoyed to see her car come into view. Together, the woman and I managed to get Charlotte into the backseat. She’d stopped moaning by then, and when I got a good look at her on the backseat, I realized she was only partially conscious. Was this shock? People died of shock. I knew that.

“Do you know where the nearest hospital is?” I asked the woman, wiping the sweat from my forehead with my hand.

She shook her head. “Never been to no hospital,” she said.

“I can’t thank you enough,” I said. “I don’t know what I would have done without your help.”

She looked in the back window of Charlotte’s car. “She ain’t never gonna be the same,” she said again, and she turned to go back to her family.

12

Ivy

I felt right nervous walking down the lane near midnight. There was enough of a moon that I could put out my lantern, but I still felt like somebody could see me walking past the dark tobacco fields in my nightgown, nothing else on but my shoes. I hurried, trying to shake off the feeling I wasn’t alone.

I didn’t know why some of the barns was called what they was. The south barn—the one that was curing the tobacco right now and where Henry Allen had to check the burners—wasn’t the most southern barn. And the empty green barn where we was going to meet wasn’t green. The Christmas barn was the only one that made sense, since it was built around Christmastime long ago. None of them had any paint on them at all. But everybody knew which barn was which. We grew up knowing.