Vada Faith (3 page)

I wanted to shut out the truth in her words. Our mama had left us and our daddy didn’t have a job. I knew all that.

I refused to let anyone see me cry. Not Joy Ruth who thought our life was fine and certainly not John Wasper whose boy face I had already begun to love.

Behind me, John Wasper started calling out, “Hey, Vada Faith. Wait up, you hear. Wait up. Vada Faith?”

Years later, I would wait many times over for Mr. James John “Wasper” Waddell but not that day. I kept on running, my red canvas tennis shoes hitting the hot pavement, driving the heat right up into my feet and through the rest of my body until it came to rest on the top of my head like hot coals.

I ran as if all the demons in Hell were after me.

I looked over my shoulder only once to see John Wasper and Joy Ruth in earnest conversation, their heads bent together, munching on the candy bars they’d bought. Bruiser and Bobby Joe lagged behind licking chocolate from their fingers.

Even though Joy Ruth and John Wasper stared at the candy bars longer than any of us, the two of them always picked a Hershey with Almonds. They said you always knew what you were getting when you got a Hershey with Almonds.

To this day, those two will not try anything new or different and certainly not anything controversial.

On the other hand, I, Vada Faith, was always up for something new. Back then and now. Something different. Even if I ended up hating it, I was always willing to give it a try.

I slammed into the trailer that summer day, past daddy stretched out on the sofa reading the newspaper, and buried myself in the sweet smell of the patchwork quilt covering the small bed I shared with my sister.

We didn’t have much, but daddy kept everything we had clean, especially the bedding. He was home most days and he was always running the old washer out on the built-in porch, hanging clothes on the clothesline strung between two posts out behind the trailer.

I can see him to this day with several clothespins stuck in his mouth hanging a row of our worn pink panties on the line to dry in the sun.

“Hey,” Daddy said, coming to stand in the doorway as I lay sobbing on the bed. “You all right, Vada Faith?”

It was his standard question.

“I’m all right,” I said, sniffling, giving my standard answer.

“Okay.” He stood there a minute more, looking uncomfortable, then he trudged back to his newspaper.

Problem solved.

Well, not entirely.

A seed of longing was forming deep inside me. A longing to be something more than I was. To be someone special. Someone everybody looked up to.

That day I just wiped away my tears and joined the others in the backyard.

At the edge of the woods there was a big competition going on. The prize was the extra Hershey bar John Wasper had bought. The person who could climb to the top of the old Maple tree won the candy bar.

I knew I could win hands down. I was the best climber in the bunch and the most daring.

Besides I was motivated. My Baby Ruth rested at the bottom of the trash can at the A & P. And I was hungry for chocolate.

When I rounded the corner of our street on my way from work that day, I could see the old Victorian home Grandma Belle had left us. The paint was worn on the big wraparound porch where Eleanor Roosevelt reportedly had sat. I could picture the President’s wife daintily perched on the edge of one of the old wicker chairs sipping tea from one of grandma’s bone china cups with the pink roses.

John Wasper had filled the spacious lawn with beautiful flowers and shrubs. The neat bungalows that had sprung up all around the old house made it a decent neighborhood in which to live. However, the old house was an antique that had lost its luster.

I opened the mailbox at the curb and pulled out a handful of envelopes, a bunch of junk mail, and a Land’s End Catalog. I wondered where John Wasper was. His pickup was absent from the driveway at the side of the house. I knew he’d taken the girls to a movie. He was always stopping somewhere else. My husband loved people and people loved him. His habit of being gone was grating on my nerves lately.

Whatever had happened to the days when it was just the two of us? When we’d rushed home to be together? We’d make love and tell each other how wonderful we were together.

I wandered through the quiet house and wished my husband was home. I loved him but he was almost never home. He’d run out in the middle of the night if someone needed a flat tire fixed. He’d take time off work to take a neighbor to the doctor. He never once asked how I felt about his outings. He just took off. He said he tried to live up to his Grandma Belle’s creed. “Bloom where you are planted.”

Well, John Wasper was blooming all right. Shady-Creek-style.

I did the breakfast dishes and assembled a dinner casserole of chicken breasts and packaged corn bread stuffing, topping it off with a can of cream of chicken soup. Usually I called Joy Ruth and we conferred on our dinner menus. Not today. She could cook whatever she wanted in her quiet, orderly apartment and eat it alone for all I cared.

In the bedroom, I opened my jewelry box. There underneath the red satin lining lay my secret. If my sister knew what I had done she’d have a stroke. She’d never know because I’d never tell her. She could go to her grave thinking Roy and Dottie Kilgore had come looking for me, when really, I’d gone looking for them.

I didn’t have to pull back the red satin lining and take the newspaper clipping from its hiding place to read what it said. I had it memorized. The words were seared on my brain forever. They were the words that were going to change my life. They already had.

Even today, when John Wasper called and said he was taking the girls to the movie, I didn’t say, “Why aren’t you working?” Instead I said, “Okay,” and kept right on pushing the broom across the tile floor of the shop. Because I knew if everything worked out my dream was going to come true. I would be somebody.

Somebody besides the high school beauty queen whose mother ran off and left her and her sister. Somebody besides the mother of twins. Somebody besides the wife of a former football hero. I would be someone in my own right. I’d be the first woman to be a surrogate mother in the town of Shady Creek, West Virginia.

One month earlier I had found my answer in the personal ads. Right after Men Seeking Women. I was getting ready to read Deals on Wheels because I wanted to replace my old car. That was when I saw the ad inside the heart. “Wanted: Special woman with big heart to help couple complete their family circle. Surrogate mother must be caring, loving, willing to make sacrifice. Be our missing link. Money reward. Growing experience. Can’t wait to hear from you. We love you already. Roy and Dottie.”

Just below the ad were the horoscopes. I did a double take. Under mine it said, “A new source of income presents itself. Go for it.”

I didn’t need a chair over the head to know this horoscope and the ad from Roy and Dottie Kilgore had my name written all over it. Fate had already tied me to the Kilgores.

I was further convinced when I finished reading my horoscope. “Family members,” it read, “will stand behind you in the end.” So, Joy Ruth would eventually come around if I became a surrogate. Besides she always did. We’d never been separate on any big issue. That horoscope was all the confirmation I needed.

The phone number was busy all that Saturday, so I had plenty of time to think about the issues of surrogacy and whether I could go through with carrying a child and giving it away. By Sunday when I finally talked to Roy Kilgore, I was convinced I could.

I felt as though I’d known Roy Kilgore for years. It was apparent to me then that I was the surrogate for whom they’d been searching. We arranged to meet the following week at the Holiday Inn in Charleston. My fate was already sealed.

“You’re everything I’d hoped for and more,” Roy Kilgore had said, smiling, coming toward me across the parking lot of the hotel. I had dressed in my good white sheath dress to show off my tan. He first took both my hands in his and sort of shook them and then he pulled me into his arms for a bear hug. Dottie was more reserved. She wore a designer suit and carried a matching cream handbag.

Over lunch at a nearby restaurant Roy wanted to know every detail of my life and all about the birth of my twins.

“They’re beautiful babies,” Dottie Kilgore said, warming up some as she looked at dozens of photos of my cute blonde baby girls in the album I’d brought along.

“How old did you say your babies are now, Vada Faith?” she asked, tracing their baby faces with her finger tips.

“They’re five,” I said, proudly. “You’ll have to meet them.”

“Yes,” she said absently, “but you said they are five. Really, it’s babies I love.” Dottie’s attention was on the baby pictures taken when they were newborns. “Honey,” she said, staring at the photos, “my husband is the most loving person you’ll ever meet. He’ll make a fine daddy. All he’s ever wanted is a baby of his own to love.” Her eyes filled with tears. “It’s the one thing we both want and we’ve been denied.” She took a pill bottle from her purse and shook several pink tablets into her hand. She downed them with a drink of water.

“Now, Dottie, honey, don’t do this. We’ve been through all this.” He looked at me. “My wife has a little case of the nerves, Vada Faith.” He turned back to Dottie. “Now, honey, this little girl don’t want to hear all about our sadness.”

“Oh, but I do,” I said. “It’s helping me to think this thing through. I have to make sure I’m doing the right thing.”

“Well,” he cast a serious look my way, “Dottie here has endometriosis. Her tubes are blocked. Permanently. Blocked tight as a drum, those tubes. Nothing any doctor can do. We’ve been to see dozens. No use in even trying anymore.”

Tears started rolling down the woman’s cheeks as she turned the pages of my baby album.

“You know, honey,” she said, looking at me and wiping her eyes with a tissue, “I want a baby so bad, I think about slipping into a hospital and snatching one right from its mother.”

My face must have shown my shock because she hurried on, “Oh, I wouldn’t be so stupid.” She closed the photo album and handed it to me. “That’s how bad I want a baby.”

“Now, my sperm count is great,” Roy said, cheerfully, forking a miniature shrimp from the salad into his mouth, and paying little mind to his tearful wife. “Nothing wrong there,” he boasted. “No reason to think we couldn’t get you pregnant with one or two tries. If you decide in our favor.” He patted his mouth with the linen napkin. “I took the liberty of calling a specialist before we drove up here. I’ve got someone in Charleston who would love to work with us.”

Tears still slid down Dottie Kilgore’s cheeks. Her infertility just broke my heart. It was apparent it had broken hers too.

“When we advertised I wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do,” he said. “However, Dumplin’,” he nodded his approval at me, “I know now it was and if you do this for me, for us, you will never regret it. The rest of your life will be on easy street. I’ll personally see to it. What do you say, honey?”

“I have to talk to my husband,” I said, moving the salad greens around with my fork, uneasy thinking about John Wasper.

“Sugar,” Roy Kilgore stretched back in his chair and raised an eyebrow, “do you think your husband will be a problem?”

“Oh, no, not a problem,” I said quickly wanting to reassure him. “I just don’t know how he’ll feel about me being a surrogate for someone. Even though I want to do it. I really do.”

“Well, honey, we are in a time crunch here,” he looked at his watch now seeming to be in a hurry. “We need to know. We have another little girl real interested in being a surrogate for us. We’ll have to interview her before we head south again.”

“You’re considering someone else?” My heart dropped and disappointment surged through me.

“Now, you are our top choice, Vada Faith, honey, don’t get me wrong. We just can’t wait too long for you to decide. We both want you to be our surrogate. Isn’t that right, Dottie, sweetheart?”

She nodded but seemed a bit off track with the conversation since taking her pills.

“Now,” he continued, “if you need your husband’s permission.” He posed the statement as a question as he rolled a toothpick around in his fingers.

“No,” I said, slowly, thinking back to the last time John Wasper had asked my permission to do anything. “It’s not that exactly. I always talk things over with him. That’s all.”

“Well, sure,” Roy said, “you do that then and in the meantime we will meet with the other candidate. You can always be our backup. I believe the other person is single. No family to speak of. No strings attached.” He started pushing back from the table. “Tell me something, Vada Faith.” His tone took on a fatherly tone. “Does your husband ask your permission for the things he does?”

“No,” I said, thinking about his attitude lately, “he doesn’t ask my permission for anything or even my opinion for that matter.”

“Well, sugar,” Roy smiled broadly, standing up, “that proves my point.” He rubbed his hands together. “I already like that man of yours. That John Wasper. He’s a man who thinks as I do. It’s easier to get forgiveness than it is to get permission. Now, you think about that, honey. Forgiveness is easier than permission.” He chuckled and pulled my chair out for me. Then he turned and helped his wife from her chair. She seemed a bit unsteady on her feet so her husband held onto her arm as we left the restaurant.

“You may be right,” I said smiling up at Roy and Dottie. “I don’t ever recall my husband asking my permission for anything.”

That afternoon before I said good bye to the couple I agreed to be a surrogate mother for them and gave them my word on it.

A few days later when they left to go back to Mississippi, they had started the paperwork to buy the mountain property from the Sherman family and I had the name of the new doctor they had found in town tucked inside my purse. There had been no more mention of another girl.

The next few weeks I spent time alone thinking through every aspect of surrogacy. I didn’t tell a soul what I planned to do. Not John Wasper or Joy Ruth or mama who had waltzed back into town for the birth of my twins and had stayed on to be a part of our family. And, daddy. Well, daddy, had eventually found a decent job and had managed to retire. Now, he was on his way to Alaska in a motor home with his second wife, Bea Dunkel, who now loved crumbs on her floor and kept my girls every chance she got.