Vada Faith (2 page)

“No way,” I said. “I have to help myself. I’m the unlucky one.”

“Unlucky!” She raised her eyebrows in shock. “You’re the luckiest person I know. You’ve got John Wasper’s old family home place. So it’s not new. Big deal.”

That was my sister’s line. Big deal.

“I’d love to have that old Victorian place,” she rambled on rubbing the cotton ball furiously over her nails. “Look at its history. How many houses in this town can claim Eleanor Roosevelt had tea on the front porch? I’d take it off your hands in a minute.” She sighed deeply. “You have a husband who dotes on you, two beautiful little girls. Unlucky? Lord, girl, grow up.” She got this disgusted look on her face which meant she was thinking up more mean things to say as she finished cleaning off her nail polish.

All through school, I had drifted along on dreams of being rescued by a handsome prince. That he galloped into my life as my playmate John Wasper Waddell, carrying a football and wearing a cougar uniform, was all the more wonderful. I was swept away on the wild horse of his undying affection and for years we had lived in wedded bliss.

Somewhere over the years my life had seemed to stop. It had bogged down in a rut of ordinariness.

I studied my profile in the mirror. I leaned close and examined my teeth to see if the new whitening toothpaste was working. I decided my sister could think whatever she wanted. I ran my tongue over my white teeth. I wasn’t feeling lucky today. It was true. She was always in the right place at the right time. Oh, I was considered the prettier twin - though the mirror told me we looked alike. I might be a little more stylish. My sister didn’t care much about fashion or style. I’d learned a long time ago looks were not everything.

It was my sister who had dated John Wasper first but it was he and I who were true soul mates. One Saturday afternoon he was late coming over to go with Joy Ruth to the library and she left without him. He never did make it. Instead he sat down beside me on the back porch steps and before either of us knew it the fireflies were out and we were holding hands. After that, it was as if the two of them had never dated. There was no keeping us apart. I was paper and he was the flame.

My sister never let on that she cared. I knew she did. She hung around us with this moonstruck look on her face whenever he’d come to see me.

After we married and had the girls her infatuation seemed to fade. I couldn’t help but wonder if deep down she still cared for him and if that wasn’t why she’d never married. She’d had some serious relationships over the years but had broken them all off.

In school she’d hung out with the brainy crowd and I’d hung out with the popular group. Girls the boys gave their hearts to. I was homecoming queen and voted the prettiest girl in our senior class. Joy Ruth had been voted the most likely to succeed.

Most of the school papers posted on our avocado green refrigerator had belonged to my sister, my straight A sister. Daddy had put them right next to a West Virginia University banner. She ignored his hint and joined me at the beauty school in Charleston.

Now, it was time for me to make a change. I stood up and started putting supplies away.

I was about to do something so monumental I almost exploded with the enormity of it, being a surrogate mother for someone. This was beyond anything I’d ever imagined doing and it sent an excitement cursing through my veins unlike anything I’d ever felt and, although I wanted that new house in Crystal Springs in a big way, I wanted to be a surrogate more. Having a new house paled in comparison to helping two people realize their dream of becoming parents.

Carrying a baby for this couple had appealed to me from the start and the more I thought about it the more I wanted to do it. My life was already taking on new meaning and it surpassed anything I’d experienced. I was ready to move forward. Fast.

The shop was quiet now except for the drip of the faucet in the back bathroom. Even the radio was silent. Without Carrie Underwood singing, “Jesus take the Wheel,” or Vince Gill crooning one of his sweet melodies, it was like a tomb. I had hoped our conversation about surrogacy would be easier than it was turning out to be, but that was me. Always thinking everything was going to be easier than it really was. I wished it was Tuesday and Vada Faith’s Beauty Bar was full of customers. I was beginning to hate Mondays and my time alone with my sister.

I went into the reception area and retrieved the caramel truffle coffee I’d brought in earlier. Back at my station, I drank it slowly and tossed the cup into the waste can.

“You don’t know these people, honey,” Joy Ruth said, examining her nails. She turned back to the mirror and smoothed on some lip gloss. “Who are they anyway? Where’d you find them? I mean, they show up here from only the Lord knows where. They buy some land,” she ran her tongue across her teeth, a reflex from the lip gloss, “build a new house and now, wham-o, you’re going to have a baby for them. A baby, Vada Faith. A real live little baby. Like one of your precious twins. A little human being.”

“I’ve thought it all through. You don’t seem to understand that a surrogacy baby would never be mine. It would belong to Roy and Dottie Kilgore. Right from its conception.” I came to stand behind her, staring into the same mirror with her. “Didn’t the Virgin Mary give her son, Jesus, to the world? Well, that is exactly what I would be doing. It’s something I want to do more than anything else. Can’t you try to understand, for me?”

When she frowned, I picked up my tote bag and started loading it with supplies to take home.

“This is not about the Virgin Mary,” she snapped. “Have you forgotten about your husband. What about John Wasper? What does he say about all this?”

“I have not forgotten him. I’ll tell him when the time comes.” I closed my tote bag and went over to the Coke machine. I put in some coins and punched a button. The Coke fell with a bang.

“When the time comes?” She stood up and folded her arms in front of her. “You mean you haven’t even told your husband what you want to do? Well, the time has come, girl. You’re nuts. You said being pregnant was no picnic. You liked giving birth even less. Now help me figure this out.”

“No matter what I do, you’re against me.” I opened the Coke and took a long drink. Like some of her words, it burned going down. “It makes no difference what I do, even if I think of changing my eye shadow you say it’s a mistake.”

“This is not eye shadow we’re talking about here, little sister.”

“Don’t call me little sister. I am your age. Exactly.” I was so mad I could spit nails. I wasn’t stupid. I knew it was time to discuss it with my husband. I just hadn’t figured out how.

“You,” she said, pointing her finger at me, “were born one minute after me, therefore, you are my little sister.”

“So for that I have to pay for the rest of my life. You are not my boss. I hate you sometimes, Joy Ruth. Lately I hate you a lot.”

“The feeling is mutual.”

I grabbed my “Shop ’til I Drop” tote bag and slammed out of the shop. Miss High and Mighty could finish the inventory and close up by herself. I was mad as a hornet. She was being a pain in the butt. I was mad at myself too. For letting her get to me. For knowing she was right about talking it over with John Wasper sooner. Just when I’d thought things in my life were about to get better.

I set off down the street, furious at the world for not being perfect.

I didn’t look back as I hurried away. I knew Joy Ruth was standing in the doorway watching me. It was out of character for me to leave upset. I always wanted to work things out, especially with her. Well, she could just get used to things being different between us.

It was time to cut the cord which had thickened between us when mama walked off and left us. Sure, she left us with our daddy. However, two little girls needed a mama more than they needed anything else.

I headed down Main Street at a fast clip, the tote bag slapping at my legs. The sun beat down on the top of my head. I could feel a trickle of perspiration beginning at my hairline. I wished now I’d driven to work. I wasn’t in any mood to amble through City Park the way I usually did, enjoying the flowers and listening to the birds.

Thoughts of mama leaving us in that run-down trailer with daddy ran through my mind like a bad movie.

“Yoo hoo, Vada Faith!” I turned at the familiar voice.

I shaded my eyes and looked across the street. Midgy Brown stood on the corner pushing her frizzy red hair out of her eyes.

“Hey,” I said. While she was a good friend and steady customer I wasn’t in the mood to talk to her about her latest country heartthrob or about her latest cause. She was always heading up some committee to save something.

Nope, today, I had my own problems to think about and nobody was going to help me. Nobody but me, myself, and I.

My very first lesson in small town dynamics came the summer I met John Wasper Waddell.

It was hot that afternoon, the day he and his big brother Bruiser, and his younger brother Bobby Joe, rode up in front of our trailer on brand new bikes. Bruiser put down his shiny kick stand and yelled from the middle of the yard, “Hey, you twins. You wanna build a fort?”

John Wasper and Bobby Joe had hopped off their bikes and stood beside him staring across the yard at us.

It was almost too good to be true. There were no kids on our road and most days Joy Ruth and I were left to amuse ourselves.

“Yes,” Joy Ruth and I screamed in unison, “we wanna build a fort.”

We jumped from the front porch steps where we’d been fighting over the comics and raced to meet them, tripping over our flip flops as we went. We showed the boys the creek that ran along the back of the property. They promptly jumped in and splashed us until our shorts and shirts clung to our skinny bodies like Saran Wrap and our blond hair hung in strings. We didn’t care.

When their backs were turned we pushed them into the creek and fell in behind them, laughing and splashing.

That was the beginning of our friendship. The boys came nearly every day after that and we spent hours hammering tree houses and forts and building dams in the creek to keep the turtles and frogs from escaping.

If only we’d kept to that simple routine.

However, we got bored and started making the long trek into town to the A & P for a candy bar. I was the only one who bought a different kind of candy bar each time.

The day I bought my first Baby Ruth was when it happened.

I had the candy bar in my hand and was pulling change from the pocket of my red seersucker shorts, anticipating the taste of chocolate and peanuts on my tongue. I got into the check-out line, leaving Joy Ruth and the boys to make their decisions. I was eager to peel off the red and white wrapper and take my first bite of the fat chocolate bar.

“I might just start calling Joy Ruth Baby Ruth,” I thought as I waited. I looked back at her, acting cool, flipping her hair in John Wasper’s cute boy face. She would hate being called baby anything. She thought being born one minute before me made her the oldest sister. The more superior.

Daddy said it didn’t. He said I might have been born first except Joy Ruth was wrapped so tightly around me she caused me to be blue and they had to pull her out first. He said she squealed for an hour after they untangled us. Then when they put us together in the same crib he said we snuggled up like two peas in a pod.

“Hello, Vada Faith,” Miss Wright had said that summer day at the A & P, looking down at me as she rang up my candy bar. I learned from her name badge that her whole name was Miss Emily Wright. I only knew her as Miss Wright. She taught Bible school every summer at the Tabernacle Holiness Church on Park Street which wasn’t close enough for us to walk to but we did anyway.

“Hello, Miss Wright,” I said. She peered down at me with her big milky eyes, magnified by thick glasses framed in tortoise shell.

She turned to Miss Dunkel who ran the register beside her and jerked her permed head toward me. “Bea,” she said, nodding, “this is Vada Faith. One of the Dunn twins.”

I knew Miss Bea Dunkel too. She served cupcakes at Bible school from the kitchen in the church basement and she got mad if you got crumbs on the floor.

“I know Vada Faith,” Miss Dunkel said to Miss Wright, her eyes never leaving her register. She stared over half glasses that hung by a rhinestone chain around her skinny neck.

When Miss Wright held out my change, I could have been a mechanical doll wrapping my fingers around the cold coins for all the heed she paid me. I turned to go.

“Helena and Delbert’s girl,” Miss Wright said, snapping her words off like breaking crackers. “Hel-e-na Car-ter.” She started talking loudly as if Miss Dunkel had ear wax build up.

“Oh, Helena, yes,” Miss Dunkel said. She sounded as if she and my mother were best friends and that she had the inside scoop. Well, my mama was a mystery. Even I knew that.

“Helena always fancied herself higher up the totem pole than us.” Miss Dunkel’s voice sounded again. “Then doesn’t she marry that handsome Delbert Dunn. He didn’t have the best reputation. Just the best body.”

“You mean Doolittle Dunn?” Miss Wright’s fingers hit the register keys with a clang as she checked items for the man who’d stood behind me. She had put special emphasis on Daddy’s nickname. Doo-little.

“Well, Helena ran off and left them,” Bea’s voice rose to a high pitch. “So poor Delbert can’t hold a regular job raising those wild girls. I feel so sorry for him.”

I was nearing the door, fighting back tears. The Wheaties I’d had earlier that morning were threatening to slide back up my throat. How could they say such awful things?

My enthusiasm for the candy bar was gone.

“It’s a cryin’ shame,” Miss Wright said, “a real cryin’ shame.”

I made it outside before the tears came. I swallowed hard and threw the Baby Ruth into the trash barrel on the sidewalk. Through the big plate glass window of the A & P, I could see Miss Wright and Miss Dunkel ringing up other customers.

I ran across the parking lot as fast as I could go, covering my ears to try to stop Miss Wright’s voice going around in my head.