Necessary Lies (31 page)

“They’re still treating him,” Mrs. Forrester said, “but the doctor says he’s going to be all right. He was very, very lucky. This could have been much worse.”

“The doctor said he could of died,” Mary Ella said.

“I thought I put them pills on the shelf,” Nonnie said. She looked old and sad and fat to me. I was so mad at her, but I didn’t like seeing that scared face on her.

“He could have died, that’s right,” Mrs. Forrester said. “And given the fact that this happened because he was unsupervised on top of the time he was missing for nearly half a day and the time the wrong lotion was put on his rash, the department feels he should be in a foster home, at least temporarily.”

“What’s that mean?” Mary Ella whispered to me.

“Please,” I said, “don’t take him away from us. That’s so wrong. We’re his kin.”

“I know this is very difficult.” She was doing that hand-rubbing again like she did sometimes. “We need to be absolutely sure he’s safe while we decide the next step. I’m going to work on allowing y’all to visit him, but I can’t promise that.”

“It’s my fault,” Nonnie said. Tears was coming down her cheeks. “It’s all my fault, so don’t blame these girls. Don’t blame Baby William.”

“We’re not blaming anyone,” Mrs. Forrester said. “We just need to keep him safe and healthy, and putting him in a foster home is the best way to do that.”

A nurse stuck her head in the door and looked at Mrs. Forrester. “He’s ready,” she said.

Mrs. Forrester took in a big breath like she was getting ready to dive underwater. “It’s best if the three of you stay here in this room,” she said. “I’ll ask the doctor to come in and tell you about his injuries. And then I’ll be in touch. I’ll come over next week and we can talk more about this.”

“I want to see my baby!” Mary Ella said. I could tell she didn’t understand what was happening. Nonnie sure did, though, and her legs couldn’t hold her another minute. She sat down in the chair against the wall, her face in her hands.

I put my arms around Mary Ella. “Mrs. Forrester needs to take him to another family for a little while,” I said. I stared at Mrs. Forrester while I talked, deciding I hated her after all. She wasn’t on our side. She was our enemy.

“What other family?” Mary Ella asked. “He needs to come home with us!”

The policeman touched Mrs. Forrester’s elbow. “Let’s go,” he said.

She looked like she wasn’t sure if she should stay with us or go with him. “I’ll come over next week,” she said again, and then left with the policeman.

When the door closed behind them, Mary Ella all of a sudden seemed to understand what was happening. She ran to the door and tried to open it, but someone must of been holding it shut from the other side. “Baby William!” she hollered, pounding on the door.

I went to her, meaning to put my arms around her and hold her real tight, but instead I started pounding on the door myself, hitting it with the sides of my fists, pounding as hard as I could. It felt like the only thing I could do. It felt like I was pounding on God.

36

Jane

I drove into work Monday morning with a sense of dread and a weariness I couldn’t shake. I’d barely slept all weekend. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the trusting, hopeful faces of the Hart family disintegrate into masks of hurt. I knew I’d done the right thing in removing William Hart from his home. He was now in an attentive foster home and receiving medical treatment for the blisters in his mouth and on his lips, and I felt good knowing that he was safe. He was probably scared and miserable and would suffer psychological scars that might haunt him forever, but he would live. Sometimes, though, you could do the right thing and still feel sick with doubt.

I’d just sat down to dinner with Robert on Friday evening when the call came from the hospital. Robert and I had finally gotten past the misery of the lice infestation. For two weeks, we’d shampooed with the smelliest medicinal shampoo imaginable and washed so many loads of laundry that I’d started dreaming about suds filling all the rooms of our house. When I answered the phone Friday evening and told him I had to go back to Grace County for an emergency, he simply waved good-bye to me without looking up from his pork chop.

Charlotte was already in our office this morning. Her cast was off now, but she still rested her bruised and swollen leg on the stool, and a cane had taken the place of the crutches. She looked up when I walked in.

“You finally got that child out of there,” she said in greeting.

I set my briefcase on my desk and sat down. “It was terrible,” I said.

She nodded. “I’ll never forget my first time,” she said. “The only thing more painful would be doing nothing and then hearing later about the disastrous result. You had a close call with this one, and I blame both of us. I should have gotten him out of there before turning the case over to you. You weren’t ready to face what had to be done.”

I bristled, but tried not to show it. The last thing I wanted today was an argument with Charlotte. She was still furious with me for telling Mary Ella the truth about her surgery—which I admitted to her before Ann Laing had a chance to tell her—and she was never going to let me forget about the beach trip, either. “I’m going to go over to the Harts’ house this week to see how they’re doing,” I said.

“You have other cases to attend to,” she said.

“I know, but—”

“This arrived for you this morning.” She reached for a large envelope on her desk and handed it to me. “The board approved your petition.”

Oh no.
This was terrible timing. I took the envelope from her reluctantly.

“Even if they hadn’t approved it on this first round, they would now that a child’s been removed from the home.”

She watched me as I opened the envelope and read the form giving the board’s permission.

I looked up. “I can’t lie to her,” I said.

“Then say nothing.”

“She’s not going to believe she had an appendectomy.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“I’ll lose all credibility with her.”

“Better with her than with me, don’t you think?”

I looked down at the form again, my cheeks hot.

“Your actions are bordering on insubordination, Jane.” Charlotte leaned forward as if trying to get me to look at her. “You’ve overattached yourself to a family. You’ve broken rules. You dragged your feet when a child’s welfare was at stake. And you
specifically
went against my orders not to tell Mary Ella Hart about her sterilization. You, yourself, realized that was a mistake. I hope you won’t make the same mistake with her sister.”

I couldn’t think of a thing to say that wouldn’t get me in more trouble.

“We’ll have to seriously discuss removing Ivy’s baby when it’s born, as well,” she said. “We can’t put another child into a home that’s known for neglect.”

I shook my head and looked at her. “You have to give her a chance to be a good mother to her baby,” I said.

“She was right there when William got into those pills. Even if she proves herself to be mother of the year, she can’t control what her grandmother and Mary Ella do. It’s more than her ability. It’s the environment.”

“One thing at a time,” I said, turning away from her. I picked up my briefcase and feigned searching through it for something. “I have some work I need to get done right now,” I said.

“So do I,” Charlotte said, carefully moving her leg from the stool to the floor so she could face her desk. “We can talk more about this later.”

“All right,” I said, but I knew I would tell Ivy.

Even if it meant losing my job.

37

Ivy

For the first time, I wasn’t happy to see Mrs. Forrester coming out of the woods into our yard. I was hanging the wash, feeling empty as could be since there wasn’t any of Baby William’s diapers in the basket. I wished I could take back all the times I complained about having to wash all them diapers. I was home alone. Nonnie was visiting the one old church friend she still had and Mary Ella was … well, who knew where she was. She’d spent the whole past week in our bed, staring at the ceiling. Not even crying, though she sure cried a lot the first day or two. I couldn’t get her to eat nothing or talk to me.

The house felt real empty without Baby William in it. Felt like a house hardly worth living in. Even Nonnie was real quiet and I knew she felt bad about leaving them pills where Baby William could get them.

“Ivy,” Mrs. Forrester said as she walked toward the clothesline.

I didn’t look up from what I was doing. I had nothing to say to her.

“I know you all must be very upset with me,” she said when she got close. “I checked with the foster home this morning and Baby William is fine. His mouth is healing very well.”

I pulled another clothespin from my apron and stuck it on one of the towels, acting like I didn’t see her standing next to me.

“Is Mary Ella here?” she asked. “I wanted to see how she’s doing.”

“How do you think?” I asked, sticking another clothespin on the line. I was mad at her even though I knew she wasn’t the only one to blame. I blamed the doctor in the emergency room, too, and Mr. Gardiner, since I knew he talked to somebody at the hospital about us. I turned to face her.

“Ever since they took Baby William, Mary Ella’s just stayed in bed. She don’t talk and she don’t eat. Today she’s gone out who knows where.”

“This must be terrible for her,” she said. “For all of you. I’d really like to talk to her.”

“Well, if you can find her, you can try, but good luck.”

“Is Nonnie inside?”

“She’s gone visiting.”

“Well, maybe it’s best I have you alone,” she said. “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“Talking to you always goes bad,” I said. “All you bring us is bad news.”

“I guess it must seem that way lately.”

I hung another towel on the line. “You got more of it, don’t you,” I said.

“Can we go inside?” she asked.

Might as well get this over with,
I thought. I had a handful of clothespins and I dropped them back in my apron pocket. They must of tickled my baby, because it started moving around inside me. I kept my hand in my pocket a minute, feeling the somersaults. Nobody was taking my baby away from me.

I walked ahead of Mrs. Forrester into the house. I didn’t say “you want some tea” or nothing. Just walked through the kitchen and sat on the sofa and said what was weighing heavy on my mind. “You ain’t taking my baby away.”

She sat down in Mary Ella’s rocker like she owned it, and that made me even madder at her. I looked at her blond hair—how it always curled under just perfect. She must of spent lots of money at the beauty parlor to get it to do that. I looked at her perfect white blouse and her perfect, probably brand-new, stockings. She was nothing but a phony double-crosser, how she pretended to care about us.

“As long as he or she is cared for,” she said, “I don’t think that will happen.”

“Baby William was cared for!” I felt my eyes fill up. “We love him!”

“I know,” she said. “I know you do.”

“He was doing just fine,” I said. “Everybody makes a mistake like with them pills. People don’t take their babies away.”

“Everybody doesn’t make a mistake that serious,” she said in a calm voice I didn’t like. She didn’t sound much like herself today.

“Can we get him back?” I asked.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “Not right away, anyhow.”

“Then why’d you bother coming? Why’d you want to see me alone?”

She moved to the edge of the seat like she could get closer to me that way. “Before I became the caseworker for your family, Mrs. Werkman had started the process to have you … to get you the same operation Mary Ella had.”

“What are you talking about?” I didn’t know what she meant about the “process.” I sure did know what the operation was, though, and I hoped I wasn’t understanding her right.

“After you have your baby, the doctor is going to make it so that you’ll never have to worry about getting pregnant again,” she said.

“Oh no.” I shook my head. “No he won’t. I ain’t letting that happen to me, too. I won’t go to the hospital. I’ll have the baby right here with Nurse Ann.”

“Nurse Ann knows about it,” Mrs. Forrester said. “She’ll make sure you go to the hospital.”

I stood up. “You can’t do this!” I shouted. “People can’t cut up other people when they don’t want it.”

“You’re only fifteen, Ivy, and your grandmother signed the permission form for you to have the surgery.”

“She said she didn’t. She wouldn’t. She said because I’m getting married.”

“You are?” Mrs. Forrester looked surprised. She looked
hopeful.
“To the baby’s father? When?”

I flopped down on the sofa again, not knowing how to answer because it was a dream, wasn’t it? Marrying Henry Allen? He hadn’t sent me no more notes, and I only seen him once—getting off the school bus with the other kids. He didn’t see me because I was hiding in the trees, wishing I could still be on that bus. I missed school something awful, but I missed Henry Allen worse. It seemed like he’d forgot all about me and the baby now.