House Arrest (2 page)

“Supposedly. I haven’t put it to the test, yet.” Pippa’s smile was peculiar, as if she meant something else entirely.

I picked up the blood pressure equipment, and moved next to her on the sofa. Fastening the velcro cuff, I positioned the stethoscope ear tips and diaphragm, inflated the bulb. Together we watched the jerk of the dial. “That’s good, 112 over 62.” I held out a plastic cup. “Could you manage a urine sample?”

Twenty minutes later I had recorded the urine test results and Pippa’s weight, and reviewed the pamphlets on pregnancy health. Then I asked about her diet.

“We don’t eat anything that ever had a face.”

Lofty sentiments from a woman who let her baby freeze to death. I handed Pippa the diet recommendations for vegetarians and the list of foods and herbs to avoid during her pregnancy. “I think we’ve covered everything for today. Remember to let someone else clean the litter box. Any questions?”

“Nope. I’ve been through this before.” Pippa spoke towards her lap, where her hands were still.

“Abigail.”

“Abby. She was fourteen months old.”

I looked down at my own lap. “I’m so sorry.”

“The judge believes I’m responsible for Abby’s death. He thinks I’m not a fit mother and Tian’s not a fit father and this isn’t a good home.” Pippa scowled. “They sent you to check up on me. If you say the wrong thing, I go to jail.”

I wanted to tell Pippa that I didn’t trust judges either. But I never talked about that, and certainly not to a patient. I couldn’t trust my voice. I just shook my head and started packing. The pamphlets and packets seemed huge, engorged. My fingers fumbled with the supplies, but they refused to fit in the backpack.

Pippa bent down to retrieve a packet of gloves that had slipped off the coffee table to the floor. “Do you have kids of your own?”

I jammed the stethoscope into my jacket pocket and forced the backpack zipper closed. That was none of her business, but for some reason I answered. “No. But I live with my cousin and her daughter Zoe. She’s five.”

“That’s not the same. If you don’t have children, how do you expect to empathize, or whatever it is that nurses are supposed to do?”

“Zoe’s like a daughter. She has spina bifida and I take care of her a lot.” I shook my head. “But this isn’t about her, or me. I’m here to help you have a healthy baby.”

“I felt her move yesterday.” Pippa’s hands cupped the small bulge of her belly. “What I really need is help getting out of this mess.”

I leaned forward. “Out of the cult?”

Pippa’s response was halfway between a snort and a sob. “Hell’s bells, no. They’re my family. I could leave any time, if I wanted to. Out of this.” Pippa pointed to the box strapped to her ankle.

“I don’t know anything about that.” I stood up and started towards the front door. “I’ll be here Friday morning to take you to your obstetrician appointment.”

•

Like I said, I tried to get out of the assignment.

I just found out about Pippa that morning. I had been listening to my voice mail at my desk in the far corner of the staff nurse room. With the phone scrunched between my shoulder and ear, I was constructing a house of cards on my desktop with leftover supplies from the day before. Two-inch gauze packages formed the walls. A pair of upended bandage scissors outlined the doorway. It was a delicate moment—balancing two sterile dressing packets, one in each hand, along the slope of the scissors for the peaked roof—when my boss appeared. Marge, the owner-manager of the Hampden County Home Care Agency. She slapped a Form 44a, a new patient assignment sheet, on my desk. My hands jerked and the fragile shelter collapsed.

“New intake this morning, Emily. A prisoner. Prenatal visits.” She swiveled on her alligator heels and headed towards her private office.

I thought I must have heard wrong. I hung up, swept the dressings into a neat pile, and called to Marge’s back. “A prisoner?”

“Not exactly.” At her office door, Marge stopped to examine her reflection in the window glass. “She’s under house arrest until her trial. Wears some kind of ankle monitor.”

“She’s pregnant?” A stupid question, since she said “prenatal,” but my brain froze at “prisoner.” The panic in my voice must have snagged her attention, because she turned around.

“Early second trimester. Her name is Pippa Glenning. Priority intake this morning.” Marge licked her finger, pressed it against a stubby eyebrow hair that stood straight up, trying to flee her face. Marge’s eyebrows often appeared to operate independently of each other. But this morning they moved in perfect agreement, except for that one escaping hair.

I forced my attention back to her words.

“You’ll report every week to her probation officer,” Marge was saying, “to let them know she’s cooperating with the medical program.”

“Why the house arrest?” I tried to strike the right balance of curiosity and respect. You had to be careful with Marge.

“Her first baby died under suspicious circumstances. Cult ritual in the park. Her fetus is under protective custody.” Marge’s mouth puckered like the words tasted nasty.

That’s when I remembered the Frozen Babies case. It had been in all the papers two, three months ago. “That woman?” I stared at Marge. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

Marge’s eyebrows arched and leapt as she turned away and entered her office. This time I followed her to the doorway. No one entered Marge’s private space without an invitation. I counted under my breath, to compose myself before speaking. One nonviolence, two nonviolence, three nonviolence, like my father taught me when I was seven years old and furious at the neighborhood boys for teasing fat Marta next door.

“Can’t you assign her to someone else?” I grasped both sides of the doorframe, hoping I didn’t sound as desperate as I felt. “I’m not comfortable with this kind of situation, with courts and cops.”

“Miss Glenning is your assignment.” Marge thumbed through the pink message slips on her desk. “If you have a problem with it, perhaps you’d prefer to find another job.” She looked at me and smirked.

Marge would have loved any excuse to sack me. And while there were plenty of nursing positions available, not many would allow me to start at the crack of dawn and be home by mid-afternoon when the Special Ed van delivered Zoe home from kindergarten. That way, Anna could finish work knowing that her daughter was safe, snacking on milk and fig newtons at the kitchen table and getting a head start on her afternoon therapy.

Marge had a lot of rules and regulations. Some don’t make much sense, like the paper towels. But breaking the rules was what got my father into so much trouble. I didn’t know Pippa well, but I already suspected she wasn’t much on toeing the line either.

Me? I follow the rules.

2 ~ Pippa

Pippa hurried into the living room to pick up on the second ring, hoping it was Tian. Hoping the sympathetic guard was on duty down at the jail, the bald guy who Tian said looked like a pro wrestler. The guard had told Tian the first night that most folks thought his church was pretty weird too, but that didn’t bother him none. He let Tian call home whenever no one else was around. Of course her telephone itself was a bother, all hooked up to the cuff around her ankle, a high-tech snoop. It didn’t feel private, but nothing she could do about that.

“Hello?”

“You okay, Babe?”

Even from jail, even over the spooky phone, Tian’s voice was so deep and fluid that Pippa dove into it and didn’t need to come up for air. “I’m good, don’t you worry. The nurse just left. She took my blood pressure and tested my pee and said I’m doing just fine.”

“Baby too?”

“Baby too.” Pippa sank into the cushions of the easy chair, still warm from Emily. “Have you seen Murphy?”

“Nah. They keep us separated, men to the north and women to the south. But my guard buddy brought a message from her this morning and she’s hanging in there. Her lawyer says they’ll try for bail again at the hearing.”

The hearing was set for the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, less than two weeks away. New bail motions and something about trying them separately or together. The lawyers predicted that Tian would go to prison. “What about you?” she whispered into the tainted phone. “Will they let you out on bail?”

“Fat chance. They need a scapegoat and I’m it, the big bad leader of a bizarre cult that kills babies. Then there’s my juvy record, the one that was supposed to be sealed.”

“I miss you.” She paused to let her throat settle, but she had to tell him. “I have an appointment with the doctor on Friday.”

“Aw, Pippa.” Tian’s voice splintered. “I hate to think of you having to put up with all that crap.”

Pippa pictured him at the other end of the phone line, cradling the receiver against his midnight skin, his cheekbones asserting long dynasties, his lips full of secrets. Tian was bigger than life. He was worth everything she went through, even her father, even the nasty weeks on Lyman Street.

Except Abby. Was Tian worth losing Abby? Maybe it was wrong thinking, but she couldn’t help wondering.

She took a shallow breath, trying to get air past the tight regret in her throat. “Don’t you fuss about the doctor, Tian, because the nurse promised to come with me.” Pippa wasn’t sure how much comfort Emily could offer, with her skinny neck that might be graceful if she didn’t hold it so stiff. Still, it was better than going alone. “She’ll make sure nothing bad happens. I’ll just open my legs and close my eyes. I’ll chant to Isis and pretend I’m not there.”

“When I sleep-chant, Babe, I add something new at the end.” He spoke so softly Pippa had to listen hard. “I chant your name and it becomes a mantra.” Tian began to croon, “Pippa Pippa Pippa Pippa,” and it sang out like a prayer.

How astonishing that Tian would make a hymn out of her name, which Pippa had hated since kindergarten. That was the first time she was around other children, except for her brother Stanley, and Charley and Martha from the next farm. Now those were regular names, sturdy and normal, not foolish like Pippa. At recess the kids in the schoolyard teased and chanted different rhymes. Pippa peepee, Pippa poopy.

Sally Ann moved to town in second grade and her desk was next to Pippa in the front row because they both had weak eyes. Sally Ann came from Pippa Passes, Kentucky, and she said it was the most beautiful place on earth. Pippa once asked Ma if she was named for that pretty town in the Kentucky mountains, but Ma said no, she read the name in a book when she was a girl. Pippa was so grateful that Sally Ann liked her name that they became best friends, her first friend really, because a brother didn’t count. But in fourth grade Sally Ann grew boobs and Ma said she had turned into a slut and Pippa couldn’t play with her anymore.

Tian’s singsong chanting of the Pippa hymn ended abruptly, cutting off her daydreaming. “Lunch call, Babe,” he said. “Got to go.” Before the click severed the connection, Pippa could hear him complain. “Back off, man. I’m coming. I don’t eat most of the crap they serve here anyway.”

Pippa stroked the receiver, as if her touch could sizzle along the phone lines to Tian. She wished she could be like him, confident and tough even in jail, instead of worrying about everything, like the dumb phone shuttling secrets from her ankle to the computer downtown. There had to be a way to get around that flimsy little circle of rubber and microchip.

She could be strong until Tian returned, Pippa promised herself as she walked into the kitchen. Then, everything would be okay. She held the refrigerator door open with her foot while she piled fixings for lunch on the counter: leftover soup, lettuce and cukes, bean sprouts, pears and apples.

She stirred the soup, then counted out seven forks, seven spoons. Before Abby and Terrence died, before Tian and Murphy were taken away, they all ate lunch together in the dining room and Tian led them in chanting before the meal. Now, it was just the seven of them at noontime—Marshall and the twins, Francie if she woke up in time, Liz or Adele if they weren’t scheduled at the Tea Room. And Pippa. Now they ate in the kitchen and skipped the chants.

Pippa had tried to be a good mother. Everyone said that she had done a wonderful job. She used to nurse Abby on the sofa under the gaze of Isis feeding baby Horus, whispering stories all mixed up from Tian’s teaching fables and vague memories of south Georgia. She thought about her bloodline mingled with Tian’s, mixed together like those stories, and there was nothing her father could do about it. In the eleven months since it happened, she ached for Abby every day. But Nan Malloy, the probation officer, had fastened the house arrest monitor around her ankle and warned her that the judge could take this new baby away too.

“Your fetus is under protective custody,” Nan had said.

“But I would never hurt this baby.”

“Follow the rules. Ours and the doctor’s. That’s your best chance to keep your baby.”

Pippa covered the soup and turned down the flame. She had a few minutes to herself before it was time to wake Francie for lunch.

Her bedroom was tiny, nestled under the sloped roof, with one window round and thick like a ship’s porthole. She pulled the Indian bedspread curtain across the doorway, although her housemates rarely climbed the creaking stairs to the attic. She sat on her mattress and pulled Abby’s favorite picture book from under her pillow. The glossy cover illustration of the sunshine-haired princess in her father’s castle transformed to last December’s snowstorm.

They had all worn white. Silent and almost invisible in the blowing snow, they slipped under the massive bronze arch into the park. They walked single file, even the twins, following the narrow path through skeleton trees. They didn’t need flashlights. All day, fat flakes had melted on the city streets, covered branches and decaying leaves and pine needles. Although the solstice moon was shrouded, the snow crystals absorbed and mirrored its weak light. Pippa’s head barely reached Tian’s shoulder, but she stretched into his footprints, rocking Abby who slept cradled in a blanket heavy across her breasts.

At the granite boulder whose profile resembled a stern face, they turned right, deeper into the forest. The trail led between diseased hemlocks, up a frozen hill, then dead-ended at the rhododendron hedge. It looked impenetrable, but they slipped one by one through the hidden passageway. On the other side the trail widened and Pippa skipped forward next to Tian. He shifted the mound of extra blankets and quilts to his other arm, then pulled her close.

When they got to the circle, Tian and the twins lit the fire. That afternoon, they had arranged the logs and chanted the blessings. In honor of the occasion, Marshall wore his white bandana. Pippa wondered again why he always covered his neck, but then he lit the solstice candles and the outer circle glowed and she forgot to ask. The ritual manual said to use torches, but they substituted hand-dipped candles with a likeness of the goddess. The feathered shield of her wings dried perfectly in the soft wax. It didn’t feel second-best. In the ring between the blaze of the bonfire and the gleaming of the candles, their robes shimmered.

In a small clearing at the edge of the circle, Pippa and Murphy got the little ones ready. They spread the tarp over the snow, covered it with sleeping bags to make a nest under the thick canopy of trees. Sitting thigh to thigh with blankets tented over their shoulders, they nursed Abby and Terrence. Pippa checked Abby’s diaper, opening the zipper just enough to slide her hand under two layers of pajama sleeper.

From the clearing Pippa watched the final preparations. Liz and Francie mixed the libation in heavy clay jugs, stirring diluted honey into the red wine to balance the bitterness of the peyote buttons. Judging by their eyes, they had done some heavy tasting. Liz stopped to wipe the snow from her wire-rimmed glasses with the edge of her robe. Adele stood alone on the fertility stone, massaged her belly, and prepared to dance.

Someday I will be pregnant for this ceremony, Pippa thought. I will perform the mother-dance. She stroked Abby’s face, the only skin exposed, slightly chapped and rosy in the cold night air, wishing her daughter was old enough to appreciate this moment.

Murphy settled the sleeping Terrence under the blankets, then stood. “Come dance.”

But at fourteen months, Abby still nursed greedily, with total dedication. Pippa felt so full, even as her breasts were emptied. Proud too, to give her daughter a family who loved her and kept her safe, connected her to the earth and the ages.

Abby was finally sated, sleeping. A milk pearl balanced on her lower lip, glistening in the flickering light from the bonfire. Pippa laid her down next to Terrence and tucked the quilts snug around both babies. She paused to watch Abby’s mouth making empty sucking motions. Then she stepped through two inches of new snow to the fire-lit circle and joined the celebration. It snowed harder.

They should be cold, but were on fire. White and hot and holy, they danced. Separate and together. Arms extended and robes billowing. Moths drawn to each other in the swirling moonlit snow. The twins had been practicing on the clay Darbouka drum and took turns playing the heartbeat rhythm. Murphy slipped the slim wooden recorder from her pocket and played soprano harmony, the notes light enough to hover between the snowflakes.

Just before midnight, Pippa checked on the sleeping babies in the clearing, then spun back to the group. She was ignited by the drumbeat, the fire pumping through her veins, the rapture of the dancing, and by Tian.

At midnight, Tian stepped into the center of the circle and they stopped. He was the tallest of the dancers, his bare chest dark against the eddying whiteness of snow and muslin. Watching him, Pippa hugged herself. He made her feel small and protected on the outside, big and hopeful on the inside. When he summoned the Goddess, she would listen.

“Isis,” Tian thundered, lifting his arms to the sky. Snow crowned his thick hair. “Your family is gathered. In these days of deepest dark, of profound evil in the world, we worship your light. Give us spring and new life.”

Adele joined him in the center of the circle and stepped onto the fertility stone. Tian parted her robe, lifting both panels and folding them back over her shoulders. He knelt and laid both hands on her belly.

“We do our part and bring new life into your world.”

Then it was Adele’s turn. Pippa studied every perfect move of her mother-dance, each stylized movement executed precisely as choreographed. The manual described the steps and the women taught one another to transform the moves into prayer. Adele’s body swayed and twisted on the flat dancing stone, her bare feet the same color as the granite. She rippled with the simulated waves of childbirth. Her long arms undulated in the firelight, weaving together the centuries-old stories and their hopes for the future.

When she finished, Adele smiled and opened her arms wide to invite the others into the inner circle. Alive and electric, they danced as one entity with eighteen swirling arms, eighteen stomping feet. Their shadows spiraled with the flames and their lusty songs and the whirling snow, and the fiery drink, and rose with the smoke into the sky.

Finally exhausted, Pippa led Tian to the small clearing and pulled him close. After their lovemaking, wrapped in each other and their blankets, they curled around Abby and Terrence, cupping their small shapes, and fell into sleep.

Pippa woke at first light, her breasts tight with milk. She and Tian were half buried in snowdrift. She reached for Abby. Her hand patted the blanket. Grabbed at the sleeping bags. Pawed the quilts. There was only nylon and wool and snow.

•

Tears flooded Pippa’s cheeks and pooled in the corner of her mouth. She dried her face on the crimson fleece sleeper, then slipped it back under her pillow with Abby’s book. She paused outside Francie’s bedroom to let her breathing calm, then knocked on the doorframe. No secrets in the family, that’s what Tian taught, so they took all the doors off their hinges and lined them up like defeated soldiers in the basement, each leaning on the one ahead.

“Wake up, Francie.” Pippa pushed aside the tie-dyed curtain hung across the doorway. “Lunchtime.”

The quilt-covered form on the mattress shifted. “Five minutes.”

Bast jumped off the bed and followed Pippa downstairs, rubbing her ears against the edge of the ankle monitor. Marshall and the twins would be home any minute and they’d be hungry. Wednesday was field trip morning, to the museums and library downtown, the highlight of their home school week. She would have to hurry to get everyone fed and the kitchen cleaned before work. The ankle device allowed her five hours out of the house, not a minute more, Nan had warned. When Pippa got to the Tea Room, Adele could head home to the drying porch, so they didn’t run out of organic spearmint tea. Along with Francie’s trust fund, spearmint paid the rent.