By davisr (Rhonda)
Tall cornstalks stirred in the North Texas night air, weaving back and forth like aging sentinels. Beneath them, a young lady knelt on warm sandy loam, spreading a red checkered tablecloth beneath her.
The diminutive teen looked up for a moment at the moonlight, her young face framed by the gentle glow of the yellow orb. She placed a thin hand on her swollen belly and grimaced.
The cornstalks seemed to bend down and caress her face with long green leaves tinged in brown. She looked up at them and stroked an ear of corn bulging with yellow seed. She stroked the silky tendrils spilling out its top, and, for a moment, smiled.
"It's almost harvest time," the girl said. She let the aroma of soil and corn mix together to lend her what comfort it could.
A moment later, her tender face contorted as she was hit with another spasm of pain. She would have to hurry. The pains were growing stronger and more frequent. She spilled the contents of the burlap feeding bag onto her tablecloth.
As they fell tinkling to the ground, she remembered her father's cold harsh voice.
"Who's the father, Mindy?" he had demanded. They were sitting at the dinner table eating chicken fried steak, buttery mashed potatoes, and fried okra from the garden.
"It doesn't matter," Mindy replied. She gazed around the dinner table at the faces of her family. This wasn't where, or when, she had wanted to have this conversation.
"I'll tell you what matters and what doesn't," her dad said. He slapped her so hard across her face her head snapped back. "Now answer the question. Who is the father?"
"I don't know. I was raped."
"Raped?" Her father bellowed, his eyes opened wide with anger.
Mindy nodded and dropped her eyes to her plate.
"That's what they all say," her father said. He looked around the table for confirmation.
Mindy's mother's eyes flickered down to her hands. She wouldn't speak for or against her youngest child.
Mindy's sister, Becky, met their father's gaze and nodded in assent. She dropped a hand to her own bulging belly and stuck out a petulant lip.
Chuck, Becky's husband, tilted a hairy lip in disdain. He not only nodded approval to the father's accusation, but actually glared directly at Mindy.
"Girl, you had better come up with a more believable story," her father said.
"But, it's true." Mindy looked up and now met her father's eyes.
"Really, okay, then where did it happen? At school? At that dance we let you go to last month?"
"No, Sir. It was on my way home from school. You know, over by the creek." That part was true, Mindy thought. It continued to happen almost every day.
"Well, I don't believe you. You're a slut just like your mother."
"What's Mama got to do with it?" Becky asked. Her hand still resting on her belly.
"How do you think you got here? Your mama was about six months pregnant with you when we got hitched. You turned out okay, but this slut sister of yours is just like her."
Mindy's mother flinched at the barb shot her direction, but still didn't look up. She had heard that word used against her many times before.
"So, what's the little bastard's name that got you knocked up?"
"You will not call the baby a curse word, Henry," Mindy's mother said. The warning in her voice expressed more meaning than any words she might have spoken. Unfair insults were one thing, profanity against an unborn child was another.
"Sorry, Susanne, but this is a situation that calls for strong words. Your daughter has gone and gotten herself into trouble, and I mean to find out who did it."
"He's a married man," Mindy said, then leaned back as her father swung at her again. This time the blow landed on her jaw, freezing it with pain.
"Well, we're not keeping it here," Henry stated. Dark brown hair, spiced with white, bounced around a grizzled face. A streak of brown gravy stained the one corner of his mouth. "And we're not keeping you here either, Miss Loose Morals. Susanne, send her to your sister in Arkansas."
"Can't. She's gone to New York to visit family."
"Then send her to one of those homes for unwed mothers."
"We can't afford it."
Henry's face swelled up with indignation, and a large red vessel throbbed in his temple. Mindy began to wonder if his face was going to pop like a balloon with just a little too much air.
For a moment, no one said a word... no one even flinched. Finally, Chuck spoke up. His voice sounded magnanimous, a feeling Mindy was quite sure he didn't really feel.
"If it's a boy, we'll take it to raise with our child. It can't be much younger than the kid Becky and I are having."
"Are you crazy?" Becky said. "I'm not raising my sister's bastard. It's not my job to make up for anyone's mistakes. We've planned this baby for a year now, and I intend on raising it alone." She sat up abruptly. The red kerchief she had tied around dark blonde hair, slipped to one side.
"You'll do what you're told," Chuck said, "and so will your slutty sister. This is a big farm, and we can use the help of a boy around here. Who knows what you're having?"
"I told you it's a boy," Becky said. "I just know it is."
"Good, then we'll have two boys."
Chuck raised a black eyebrow and looked at Mindy's sister with disdain. He was a tall man with broad shoulders and handsome features. He could have had any woman in town, but had settled on a farm girl... or two.
Henry seemed oblivious to his daughter's discomfort. "Mindy, thank Chuck. He's offered to raise your child as his own, which is more than you deserve."
Mindy shook her head. She wouldn't thank her attacker for offering to raise his own son. How she hated even the sight of the man who waited for her daily by the creek on her way home from school. She hated the way he touched her and the way he was always watching.
"What if it's a girl?" Susanne asked. The awkward silence was making her even more angry.
"If it's a girl, we take it to the Sisters at Saint Agnes," Henry said. He looked around the table as though defying anyone to disagree. No one but Mindy spoke up.
"If it's a girl, I keep it." She stared down her father as he raised his hand to strike her again. "I'll work twice as hard around here to support her."
"And let people know you have an illegitimate child," Susanne said. "Everyone in town will know what kind of girl you are."
"They already do," Henry said. "How do you think I found out?"
"I don't know," Mindy said.
"Well you don't know much at all, do you, except how to spread those legs? I'll tell you what. I'll let you keep your baby. Maybe it'll teach you a lesson, and you'd better get really good at picking cotton and corn for me, because no man will ever want you now. You're nothing but stained fabric."
"That's fine, because I don't need a husband," Mindy said. "It's 1968, and women are free to be their own person."
Mindy gasped as she realized she had gone too far.
"Oh, are you one of those liberated women?" Henry roared. "Liberate this."
Another swing from an arm hardened by years of working soil, knocked Mindy backwards from her chair. Her plate clattered over her head and spilled to the floor.
Mindy's mind wandered back to her task at hand. She laid out a soft cloth her mother had given her to wrap the baby. Beside it, went strips of an old sheet to tie the umbilical cord and a pair of garden shears to cut it.
Everything she had was clean. She had boiled them herself in water several times. She had even washed her hands after digging a hole in the woods to bury the afterbirth. She was as ready as any fourteen-year old could get.
| Author Notes |
Special thanks for the artwork, "The sun and the skirt" by tacanoviano
Mindy: Young lady whose pregnancy causes a stir in her conservative small Texas farm. Susanne: Mindy's mother Henry: Mindy's angry father Becky: Mindy's pregnant sister who is resentful of her sister's sudden revelation that she is also pregnant. Chuck: Mindy's brother-in-law who molested her and fathered her unborn child. |
By davisr (Rhonda)
At least she was alone. The thought had scared her at first, but now that she was away from the watchful eyes of her disapproving family, Mindy felt free. It was just her and the baby.
Mindy looked up at the moon. Its comforting light enfolded her face and bare belly as ever a mother cradled her child. She was ready. Mindy removed the last of her clothes and laid them aside.
"That baby's not going to be born in this house," her father had said. "The little slut wants to act like a heifer, she can have her baby out in the pasture with the other beasts."
"I'll not have my grandchild born in a cow patty," Susanne said. She had stood up for her daughter very few times since the ordeal began, but she did so now... sort of.
"Then out in the cornfield."
"No midwife will want to sit out in a cornfield," Mindy said.
"Who says you're getting a midwife?"
"I can't deliver it myself."
"You should have thought about that when you let that married man climb inside of you."
"I didn't let him," Mindy said. "I told you, he forced me."
She could still hear the echo of Chuck's laughter. He mocked and scorned her at every turn. But, still, Becky had produced a girl child, and Chuck wanted a boy. He generously offered up his wife's midwife to deliver the baby only he and Mindy knew was his own.
"No, let her do it herself," Henry said. "She said she can raise it alone, let her bring it into the world the same way."
"Henry, that's not even safe," Susanne protested.
"When I was growing up, women didn't make such a big deal about birthing babies. Many a baby was born in a corn or cotton field."
"You weren't."
"That's because my parents had enough money to pay for a midwife."
"So do we."
"Mindy doesn't."
"Henry, I said I'll pay for Mindy to use Becky's midwife," Chuck said. Mindy could see real concern in his eyes... not that she cared one way or the other. Chuck's concern rested on a selfish desire to have a son, not out of love for her. Love had never been a part of what he had done to her.
"I said she'll deliver it herself, and I don't want to hear another word on it," Henry said. "It'll make her think twice about sleeping around again."
Mindy lay back on her homemade birthing bed and thought about the near panic she had seen in her mother's face. She may have been ashamed of her youngest daughter, but Mindy knew she loved her. Still, Susanne had let her walk out of the house carrying her birthing bag alone.
Mindy closed out all other thoughts as she readied herself to meet her child. She listened to the gentle babble of the creek at the end of the corn row and took courage. Its song invigorated her, even as she felt rhythmic pains seize her body.
Shutting her eyes, Mindy felt the warm night breeze caress her young body. She relaxed to the songs of the crickets, the hooting of owls, and the whistling of wind. She focused on anything that could take her mind off her unfortunate situation.
Minutes, hours, ticked by as she labored on in the violent game of life and death women and their infants have played since the beginning of time. With pains she tensed, and between, she rested. Finally a sharp spasm wracked her body, squeezing the air out of her lungs. Another came, then another, until she felt the urge to push her mother had assured her was a signal of impending birth. A grimace, a smile, a teardrop... she bore down.
"Let it be a girl," she said as she finally let out a muted scream.
| Author Notes |
Thank you so much for the artwork, "Moonlight Mist" by bd shutterspeed
The first few chapters are a bit intense as the harsh treatment of a pregnant girl in rural Texas in the late 1960's is presented. The rest of the chapters are more upbeat. Please be indulgent of a situation that was far more prevalent than many might think. Mindy: Young lady whose pregnancy causes a stir in her conservative small Texas farm. Susanne: Mindy's mother Henry: Mindy's angry father Becky: Mindy's pregnant sister who is resentful of her sister's sudden revelation that she is also pregnant. Chuck: Mindy's brother-in-law who molested her and fathered her unborn child. |
By davisr (Rhonda)
Lina stood at the end of the cornfield, looking wistfully at the woods beyond. Her soft dark curls bounced, unrestrained, behind her back. Tall and slender, she had a healthy strength about her that betrayed her years on a farm.
"Are those ears ready to harvest?"
Lina took a tentative step toward the beckoning woods. She had never visited her woody neighbor - she was forbidden to go into the wilds of the forest, but she dreamt of it.
"Lina, are the ears ready to harvest? Are you listening to me?"
Lina turned reluctantly and looked at her mother. She smiled at the woman, just fourteen years older than she. Life had been hard on her, and it made Lina sad. She knew she must have been beautiful at one time, but years in the sun and hard labor had made her age beyond her 28 years.
"I hear you, Mama," Lina said. "The ears are ready for plucking, but must we do it tomorrow? It's my birthday. Come on, July 1st shouldn't be for picking."
"It's up to your grandfather."
"It's always up to him. Why does he get to make the decisions?"
"Because he's the man," Mindy started, and then grinned.
"This is 1982, Mama."
"I know, Sweetheart. Some things have changed over the years, but others have not. Your grandpa is still in charge, and we are lucky he lets us stay here free of rent."
"We pay rent with our labor," Lina said.
"We're a family. We do what's our due."
Mindy walked to the edge of the woods and stood beside her daughter. They held hands and listened to the roaring creek.
"Tell me about my birth again," Lina said, changing the topic. She sat on a log, just inside the forbidden woods. There was nothing to gain in arguing a point her mother would never understand.
"You know the story," Mindy said, sitting beside her daughter. "I was fourteen, just like you will be tomorrow. You were born right close to the creek, just past midnight. You had your first bath there."
"Was that sanitary?"
Mindy chuckled and brushed the hair back off Lina's shoulder.
"No, it wasn't sanitary. Not much about that night was, but you survived and so did I."
"Who is my father?"
Lina leaned back against a tree trunk as though settling in for a long story.
"I don't know..."
In the silence that followed, Mindy resting her head against the tree and Lina leaning forward to wait, a complete memory flashed through Mindy's mind... one she didn't plan to share with the girl she had raised as her daughter.
Mindy could hardly believe the small child she held in her hands was hers. He was the most perfect and beautiful thing she had ever seen. He had curly dark hair, so perfectly formed, it looked unearthly.
He had a small round nose that looked like her own. She touched it lovingly, and then her own.
"We're the same, Honey, you and I." Mindy stroked his hair and ran her hand across his tender cheek.
She had done everything she was supposed to do. She tied off the cord and cut it where she had been instructed to. She had wiped his little face, took the rubber bulb her sister gave her and sucked the gunk out of his nose. She'd even turned him up and smacked his bottom when he didn't cry.
The baby wriggled a little at first, pumping tiny arms and fists like he was fighting for life, but he slowly grew weaker, and then stopped. He had never opened his tiny eyes... never taken a life-giving breath.
He was too small. Even Mindy knew that. Her sister's baby had been pudgy and red, and was born wide-eyed and screaming. This child... her child, was no larger than an eggplant.
Mindy had no idea when her baby had been due. She hadn't even started her monthly cycle before finding out she was pregnant. There were no days to count, no months to add up, but the fact her small son was premature was obvious. She held his tiny body to her chest and cried. As a boy, she knew he would have gone to her sister to raise, but she would have been able to see him. She had been through so much since her brother-in-law had begun to molest her, but this was the ultimate tragedy.
How could she explain this to her family? Her father would probably be happy, but he would blame her, saying she was incapable of doing anything right.
Her sister would be relieved. Mindy thought Becky probably suspected who the father was. Chuck hadn't touched her since the day her pregnancy had been revealed at the table.
Strangely, Mindy thought, Chuck would be the most disappointed. This child was the boy he had wanted.
"I'll call you, Chance," Mindy said into the child's unhearing ear. "I gave you a chance at life, and chance took you away."
She lay her son on the blanket beside her and sat up. She had a mess to clean, and she wasn't sure what to do with the baby. She guessed she would have to carry him inside and show the others.
A sound a few rows over drew Mindy's attention, drawing her painfully to her feet.
"Who's there?" she asked. Carefully, she brushed aside a few corn stalks.
She heard a low moaning she couldn't tell whether human or animal. Instinctively, she picked up her son and walked toward the sound. There, kneeling on the ground was a young woman, not much older than her.
The girl had long black curly hair that was matted with dirt. Her clothes were torn and bloody. She looked up with eyes as green as a daffodil leaf, her skin a near translucent white.
Tucked in the woman's arms was a wriggling newborn. She held it up for Mindy to see. Her cord was tied with vine, and her plump body unwashed.
"Can I help?" Mindy asked. She didn't know what else to say.
The woman pointed to the stillborn infant in Mindy's arms. "Your child's not moving. Is it alive?"
"No, he was born too small."
The woman paused a moment as though in deep thought.
"Trade yours for mine, then," she said. Her voice was desperate, her face contorted with fear. "Hurry."
The sound of footsteps in the forest behind the creek were audible and commanding.
"Why?" Mindy asked. "Your baby is alive."
"Yes, but she's a forbidden child. If the beasts reach us, they'll kill her."
The woman reached out for Mindy's baby, but Mindy drew him back.
"I... I... can't."
"Please," the woman said. "Let's don't both lose a child tonight. Take my living one and go. Give her a chance."
"Chance, that's my son's name. What's your baby's name?"
"Lina."
"That's pretty."
"Yes, and I want her to keep it. Will you do as I ask?"
"I don't know."
The sound of the footsteps in the woods drew nearer.
The woman grabbed Chance and wrapped him in the shreds of her dress. She handed her daughter to Mindy.
For a moment, neither woman spoke. They looked into each other's suffering eyes. And then the stranger rose to her feet, and stumbled toward the forest without looking back.
Mindy stared at the child in her arms. She was clearly full term, and had a head shrouded in curly black hair, like Chance's. She possessed what might have been a smile on her chubby face.
"Lina," Mindy repeated.
She stood transfixed by the sight of the precious child that had just replaced her own. For a moment, she felt a flutter of regret and sadness at the loss of Chance, but then set the thoughts aside and hugged the living baby to her breast.
An unspoken pact between herself and the mysterious woman from the woods etched into Mindy's young heart. She took the baby to the stream, washed her off, and folded her into the soft cloth her mother had given her.
"A girl!"
Mindy chuckled at the irony. She now had a baby to raise, one that was not the child of her rapist, and one she could keep.
"Good-bye, Chance," she said, and turned back to the cornfield to clean her moonlit mess.
"Mama?"
"I'm sorry Lina. Where were we?"
"My father? You said you don't know who he is. Grandma says she thinks Uncle Chuck is my father."
"Grandma needs to keep her opinions to herself."
"Is he my father?"
"No, Darling, but I suppose he thinks he is."
| Author Notes |
The first few chapters are a bit intense as the harsh treatment of a pregnant girl in rural Texas in the late 1960's is presented. The rest of the chapters are more upbeat. Please be indulgent of a situation that was far more prevalent than many might think.
Mindy: Young lady whose pregnancy causes a stir in her conservative small Texas farm. Susanne: Mindy's mother Henry: Mindy's angry father Becky: Mindy's pregnant sister who is resentful of her sister's sudden revelation that she is also pregnant. Chuck: Mindy's brother-in-law who molested her and fathered her unborn child. |
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