Chapter 24
I
n my mind, I would tell Tiffany about the double date and she would squeal with delight and clap her hands together. In reality, she looked me straight in the eye and said, “No.”
I stared at her where she sat on the edge of my bed playing with the fringe on my Raggedy Ann, one of the few things I'd salvaged years ago when I sneaked back into my parents' house to get some of my things.
I closed my eyes at the memory of holding on to that doll after I lost Hunter. When I couldn't drift off to sleep, the weight of the doll helped me, but I had to stare into the darkness until the doll warmed from being near my body because Raggedy Ann was cold where Hunter had been warm. She was limp and lifeless where he had been plump and wiggly.
“Gosh, I guess I can go if it means that much to you,” Tiffany said.
“Why wouldn't you want to go?” I asked as I sniffed and hastily wiped away a rogue tear. She didn't have to know I'd been crying for Hunter instead of myself.
Now who's being devious, Beulah?
Tiffany looked down at her belly. I noticed for the first time her shirt was held together with a safety pin. The pants probably were, too. Tiffany had bought nothing maternity other than underwear; everything else she wore had been mine. And it had been secondhand when I wore it.
“He's not going to think I'm pretty while I'm so fat!” Tiffany bellowed before going into a sob-fest that made my lone tear amateurish.
I sat down beside her, started to put my arm around her, but hesitated. When I realized I had paused because I was afraid I would jinx her baby, I forced my arms around her.
“Know what? I think it's time we went to the mall and got you a pretty new outfit, something you could wear on your date and to work at the florist.”
She wanted to quit crying but kept making that hiccuping sound that you do when you can't stop. “Do-do-do you think so?”
“I know so.”
“Oh, the baby!” Before I could stop her, she put my hand on her hard, rounded stomach, and I felt the baby kick. For a moment, I felt that same despair, the feeling that my insides were hollow and rotten, but then, like the Grinch, my heart expanded. The baby kept kicking my hand as if to say, “Lady, you're cramping my style down here.”
Tiffany giggled then sighed. “Isn't it amazing?”
“Yes, yes it is,” I murmured. Hollow and rotten?
Lord, I hope not.
“Do you want to get married again?”
I frowned at the thought that Tiffany might be reading my mind.
“I never married the first time,” I said slowly.
“Why not?”
“I wouldn't have married him even if I could,” I said with a shiver.
“But I thought it was the Vandiver boy. That's what I heard.” Tiffany sat up straight, her hands splayed protectively over her belly.
“That's what Roy Vandiver's daddy wanted everyone to think,” I said softly.
“But? How did you? I don't understand.”
I didn't understand, either. And I didn't want to tell her my sordid story because I hadn't even told Ginger what had happened. She had never once asked. I clamped my mouth shut, but a nagging voice in the back of my mind said,
Tell her.
I shrugged. “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Tiffany cocked her head to one side, obviously not pleased with the explanation.
Tell her.
“But, Beulah, how did you end up with Roy's daddy?” Her brown eyes pleaded. She was no stranger to sex with a much older man. She was no stranger to sex with a man who
was,
at least on paper, a father.
Tell her, Beulah. She'll understand.
I exhaled, knowing I had lost the battle. “Remember those purity pledges at First Baptist?”
Tiffany snorted. “A purity pledge? What's that?”
“They drew up this sheet of paper, said it was a covenant with God that you would save yourself for marriage.” I hesitated. “When we were all thirteen, everyone signed it. Even Amanda Powell, and everyone knew she already wasn't a virgin.”
“And what does this have to do with how you ended up with Roy's daddy?” Tiffany put both hands on her stomach as though she could somehow rearrange it into a more comfortable position.
“Roy Vandiver asked me out on a date a couple of years after I signed the purity pledge,” I said. “Then he decided he didn't want to go for dinner and a movie. Instead he took me to some Civil War cemetery to show me some general's grave.”
“But that's not why he really took you there.” Tiffany's eyes narrowed.
“No, of course not. And I should have known that.” I ran a hand through my hair. It flipped into my face, an ironic reminder of how Luke's hair always flipped back into place. I shook my head to clear it of the image of Luke. He didn't belong in this memory. “But I was young and stupid. I did like that first kiss, at least until Roy's hands really started wandering and tried to relieve me of my pants.”
Tiffany grimaced and nodded her head. She had been in that situation before.
“So, I made him take me home.”
Tiffany's brow furrowed, and her brown eyes widened in confusion. “But I don't understand. How did you . . . ?”
“I did something really stupid at that point.”
And as I told the story, I began to relive it.
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I let Roy drop me off at my house, even flipped him the bird as I climbed the front stoop.
But I stopped shy of the front door.
When I walked into the living room, my mother was going to ask me how my date with the “nice Vandiver boy” went. If I told her what happened, it would immediately become my fault for leading him on or for being stupid enough to go with him somewhere deserted. And then I would have to hear her question me because she wouldn't be able to believe Roy Vandiver had done such a thing. After all, his daddy was in charge of the purity pledge program!
The hypocrisy pushed my blood to boiling.
I was a teenager and thus not the brightest crayon in the box, so I got it into my head to march on over to Mr. Vandiver's house to give him a piece of my mind. I would tell him he would have better luck keeping the girls of Ellery virginal if he had a little chat with his own son about how “no means no.”
I walked the four blocks to the Vandiver house. It was a brick ranch just like ours, only the Vandivers had a porch shaded by overgrown crepe myrtles. I picked my way up the flagstones in the yard and hopped up the steps.
All of the lights were out except for the flashing light of the television, which I could see faintly through the dining room window. I knocked on the door.
Mr. Vandiver came to the door, but he didn't look like the Mr. Vandiver I knew. He hadn't showered, nor had he dressed in anything other than a bathrobe. Stubble covered his cheeks, and his gray-streaked hair stood up in awkward, oily angles. “What do you want?”
The smart answer would have been nothing, but I was almost sixteen. I wouldn't have known “smart” if it had hit me upside the head.
“Sir, I wanted to tell you that your son was trying to get into my pants. And it's a little difficult to keep my pledge to purity that way.”
I stood there with my hands on my hips in righteous indignation.
Roy, Sr., stepped out on the porch and closed the door behind him. “So, did you let him into your pants?”
He towered over me, swayed over me. That's when I realized he'd been drinking. A lot.
“No, no sir,” I stuttered. I knew I needed to run home as fast as my little legs could carry me, but I couldn't seem to move. I instinctively stepped backward, but that only got me deeper behind the shade of the crepe myrtles.
“My wife hasn't let me into her pants in two years,” Roy, Sr., growled as he reached for the belt on his robe. “I guess I haven't been setting the proper example for my son.”
And he threw me down on the porch. He pinned my wrists above my head and jerked at my jeans. I opened my mouth to scream but only a squeak came out. Tangled crepe myrtle branches poked at me through the porch railing and swayed in the wind, mesmerizing me and taking me away for the moment. The branches scratched against the porch posts for what seemed an eternity as Roy, Sr., drove into me, scooting my bare back against the concrete, the same concrete that ripped at my hair and scratched the backs of my hands as his palms ground them into the porch. It took only a matter of minutes for Roy, Sr., to take what he had told me to guard until marriage, but that handful of minutes would haunt me for years.
He finished and slumped down on top of me. My insides burned like he'd used a pine cone, and I whimpered. He sat up, his eyes wide with fear, dilated from who knows what drugs he'd mixed with his alcohol.
Then those eyes narrowed with the realization of what he'd done.
He leaned down, intentionally crushing the breath out of me when he half slurred and half whispered into my ear, “If you tell anyone, I'll kill you.”
He staggered to his feet, and I put myself back togetherâon the outside, at least. I trudged home like a zombie and tiptoed past both Momma and Daddy softly snoring in their chairs. Then, I went upstairs and had the first of many, many good cries.
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And even though all of that had happened over ten years ago, another good cry loomed on the horizon.
“But what happened after that?” Tiffany asked.
“Well, when Momma found out I was pregnant, she kicked me out of the house. She assumed it was Roy, Jr., and I let her. Ginger happened along that day to find out why I'd missed so many piano lessons. She rescued me.”
Why had Ginger come that day? Why had I never thought to question that?
“But what happened to Roy, Sr.? And the baby?”
I took a deep breath. “Roy, Sr., had a nervous breakdown and spent some quality time at the mental institute up at Bowenville. While he was there he came to Jesus. Again. Then he came to me and begged my forgiveness, told me he wasn't right in the head that night and he wasn't ever going to be able to forgive himself for what he'd done. Then he gave me a check for ten thousand dollars for the baby.”
Tiffany gasped.
“He didn't say it was hush money,” I said. “But that's what I took it to mean. And it was hard to hate him quite as much after all of the apologies. Don't get me wrong, it was hard to forgive him, too. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to forgive him, but it did make me feel better about the baby. That's when I finally started to look forward to having Hunter.”
Tiffany smiled at what should have been the bittersweet ending of the story. “And the baby?”
“Hunter . . .” But I couldn't say the word
died
. Instead I crumpled into tears, and it was her turn to hold me as I cried.
“What happened?” she soothed as she stroked my hair. My head rested on her belly, and her baby gave me a kick to the temple for encroaching on his territory.
“SIDS.”
Tiffany drew in another sharp breath, and I pulled myself away and took both of her hands. “I don't want you to worry. It was something weird, and it doesn't happen that often. Everything is going to be okay with your baby, I just know it.”
Because it has to be.
“I know that,” Tiffany said with a huge smile as she rubbed her belly. “I've prayed a lot about this baby, and it's going to be A-OK.”
She stood. “But one thing still confuses me.”
“What's that?” I grabbed a Kleenex and blew my nose. I hated crying. If I never shed another tear it would be fine with me.
“What happened to the money?”
“Remember how Ginger had cancer? The insurance companies don't pay every dime for chemo and radiation treatments,” I said. I bit my tongue before I could add that I was sure money was one of the reasons Ginger had refused treatment this time around.
“That's a shame,” Tiffany said. “You could've started college with that money.”
I never thought of college back then. I wouldn't have finished high school if Ginger hadn't made me. Then I went straight from high school graduation to driving Ginger all the way to Memphis for her treatments. That's where a lot of the money had gone: gas money and living expenses while I watched Ginger instead of playing at The Fountain.
And all this time, she'd had money squirreled away. I hadn't had to spend mine, but she'd been too weak and out of it to ask where the money had come from. Or gone.
“Quid pro quo, Miss Davis,” I said with a sad smile, thinking of my discussion with Luke in the cemetery.
“What?”
“What's your story?” I asked softly.
She turned to face me, her brown eyes flat with knowledge she should have never learned. “My momma doesn't know who my real daddy is. She took up with Carl when I was so young, I didn't even know he wasn't my real dad until I was ten. That's when
he
decided to play house with me. I was too young to know better. I knew something was wrong and I told my momma, but she ignored me because she was always strung-out and too weak to live without a man. He left me alone for a long while after I told her, but then she took off with a truck driver. I avoided Daâ
him
whenever I could. Sometimes I wasn't so lucky. He told me no one would want to have anything to do with me if they ever found out.”