Sunlight on My Shadow (12 page)

After he got over the shock, Dad handled my pregnancy with resolve and a methodical approach. He called school again to say I was sick and took me over to Old Orchard Mall to visit a clothing shop called Motherhood.

Dad sat on a wire bench outside the store and waited for me while I went inside. I knew I looked like I was only fourteen even though I was sixteen, but that was still too young. Maybe the clerk thought I was shopping for my older sister or an aunt or something. I didn’t try anything on, just selected some pants, shirts, underpants, and a dress. I was glad everyone I knew was in school today, so I wouldn’t run into a familiar face. I went out to tell Dad I was ready to check out. He reached into his khakis and peeled a few twenties from his silver money clip. I went back inside the store, paid the lady, and walked out with a pink plastic sack labeled Motherhood. I turned it around so the bag’s logo was next to my body. I gave Dad the change.

In the 1960s you never wore clothes tight enough to show your round belly. It stayed hidden under loose, hanging folds of material. When I got home, I tried on my new duds, looked at myself in the mirror, and was shocked by the size of my middle—but oh, how I could breathe. As I took air in, my lungs expanded down to my belly button and out to the moon. Such sweet relief.

The new clothes fit my funny-shaped body perfectly. No more cinching along the waistline—and with the stretch panel my belly was enveloped with smooth support. They were as comfortable as my jammies. I’d dump the rubber-band backups out of my purse. I felt fantastically free, yet alarmingly conspicuous.

Dressed in my new pregnant pants and lacy blouse, I bit my lip and went downstairs to get a glass of milk from the kitchen. Dad looked up from reading his paper, raised his eyebrows, and said, “Oh my God, you’re showing.”

“Mm-hmmm. I told you I was five months along.”

No longer camouflaged by the girdle and uniform blazer, it must have seemed to Dad like I had jiffy-popped overnight.

If the nuns at Regina High School knew the real reason I was leaving school, they would have expelled me right then and there, but we collaborated in a lie that got me off the hook. “Judy will have to leave school,” Dad said, “for an extended time because of a serious illness.”

Dr. Keller helped Dad come up with a reasonable diagnosis: glomerulonephritis. Most common in children and young adults, this disease is caused by a bacterial infection that affects the kidneys. In some cases it can be contagious; since Mom’s condition was so fragile, this was another good reason for me to have to go away. It also has a long and protracted recovery.

Dad held an emergency meeting with the immediate family and told them the news in a hush. My brothers and sister were instructed to keep a tight lip. “Don’t even talk about it to your spouses,” Dad said. If anyone asked about my whereabouts, they should say that Judy had to go away to convalesce from a serious kidney disease; the fewer people who knew, the better the chance of being able to keep the secret.

I wonder, now, who really believed this cockamamie story? It appeared reasonable to me, and if anyone suspected the truth, I was kept unaware. At the time, it seemed like a perfect answer to reverse my horrible trouble.

Then Dad told the nuns that I would be leaving school for at least a few months to be cared for by my Aunt Helen up in Wisconsin. The nuns agreed to send my assignments by mail each week to Dad, and he would forward them to me. I would send the package back with my completed lessons for grading. Dad had arranged all this so that I could finish my junior year and graduate the following year with my class.

We were all packed up and ready to go. It was late March, with no sign of spring. A cold wind came from the north, and freezing rain was coming in at a forty-five-degree angle. Just two weeks ago, no one knew about my horrible secret, and now my mom and dad not only knew but they had it all figured out for me. It felt so good to let out the secret—and especially good to let out my belly. I could breathe again.

Today, I was leaving my friends, my home, and my school. When I came back at the end of June, all this would be over. I would have turned seventeen and it would be summer, with green grass and hazy hot days—and I would be free. Dad drove; Mom was in the front seat, her wheelchair in the trunk, along with enough of my belongings for my extended stay.

I reviewed the items I’d packed, hoping I hadn’t forgotten anything. Besides the new maternity clothes in my brown leather suitcase, I had a green cloth zipper bag with my schoolbooks, Trig and Algebra II, U.S. History, Civics, and French III; a ream of notebook paper; and a pink-vinyl-covered pencil case with a metal protractor. I had a slide rule, the mechanical precursor to the electronic calculator, and a new box of number two pencils. I had also packed my treasures in a purple velvet case: the oil paints and brushes I got from Aunt Stell last Christmas (she always gave good presents), my white leather Sunday missal, and a few books to read.

The ride through lower Wisconsin was boring. I put down the book I was still reading,
Catcher in the Rye
, and stared out the window. I was hungry by now and had car fever—I felt all cooped up. The view from the back-seat window offered nothing but a string of cow pastures and harvested fields, obscured by the sheets of rain.

I had plenty of time to think, since no one was talking. I was relieved the hiding from my parents was over, and that the plan for what would become of me was in place. As far as I was concerned, this couldn’t have worked out any better. No one would know the real reason for my absence. I could enter school right after summer vacation, when, I hoped, the kids would have forgotten that I was missing at the end of the year. It was good I lived in disguise for five months. This meant I only missed those last two months of my junior year. I was comforted that my best friends, Annie, Jane, and Carol, had sworn my dilemma to secrecy, and I hoped no one would be asking them any questions. After the night I told them about the pregnancy, I called them to let them know about my kidney disease, and then I didn’t speak to them again. My friends never knew where I went or how to contact me. It was all part of the plan to preserve the secret.

During the six-hour ride, Mom and Dad were silent, except when we’d pass a field of fresh cow pies. It shouldn’t have surprised me—but it always did—when Mom got all weepy and delighted by the thick aroma that wafted through the front window vent. With a faraway look in her eye, she sighed, “Ah, that reminds me of the farm in Indiana! Oh, I love that smell.” It smelled like cow poop to me, and I certainly wouldn’t call it pleasing.

Mom had a difficult childhood: her mom was divorced and sent Mom and her brother to Indiana to be raised by the grandparents. As kids, they worked in the fields, walked miles to school in bad weather, and got whipped with a willow switch for eating peanut butter from the pantry. Still, Mom elicited fond feelings from the smell of farm crap. Funny, how the mind handles memories.

Mom remembered the farm and I remembered my condition. My breath shortened as I thought about my stay with Helen and Ed. I wondered what I would do each day, living in a farm town with none of my friends nearby. Would the townspeople stare at me in disgust if I wanted to go shopping? Would everyone know the real reason I was “visiting”? What would it be like living with two old fogies? These were solemn thoughts. I hardly even knew Helen and Ed; I vaguely remembered them from Dad’s fishing trips to Winneconne and a long-ago bridge party when they lived in Chicago. I didn’t think I ever said more than two words to them. Helen wasn’t really my aunt, just a friend of my parents who happened to live far away and in a remote Wisconsin town called Waupaca. It seemed to be a million miles from home. It would be strange living there, just the three of us, for several weeks until I could transfer to the Home for Unwed Mothers near Milwaukee. There were a few pregnant girl’s prisons like this closer to home, but the object was to relocate me so I wouldn’t be able to “run into” anyone I knew.

Before we arrived in Waupaca, Dad turned around in the front seat and said to me, “Judy, don’t you worry about what people will think of you. For all they know, your husband is in Vietnam and you’re just here to spend the time until he gets back.”

That sounded reasonable to me and slightly eased my anxiety. I guess now that I was away from Regina I needed a different story. I hoped no one asked me why I was there. I always thought people could see right through me if I was making stuff up.

We arrived in Waupaca in the late afternoon. Main Street was lined with white-globed street lamps. Some of the stores on my side of the street were Ben Franklin’s Five and Dime, Sew ‘n Knit, and Walgreens Drug. A few teens in rain gear were huddled around a lamppost, smoking cigarettes. I envied their freedom and breezy demeanor. We continued past a line of bare-boned oaks, their spring leaves still dormant. Wooden barrels stood on each street corner waiting to be planted with spring flowers, I imagined.

Dad pulled into a gas station and called Helen from a phone booth to get the final directions. As we walked up the gravel pathway lined with a knee-high white picket fence, the front door swung open before we knocked.

“Hello, all. Welcome.”

Helen held the door ajar, stepping off to the side so we could pass. She was a hefty woman with short brown wavy hair; she seemed countrified in her blue striped seersucker dress and brown oxfords. In a low voice I heard her say to my father, “You know, John, it’s the good girls who get in trouble. The bad ones know how to avoid it.” Now I was glad I hadn’t told Mom and Dad the rubber broke—that would have tossed me into the “bad ones” category. I think Helen’s greeting was her way of saying that I was welcome despite my carnal condition.

Ed seemed to take the back seat to Helen as he stood inside the foyer to greet us. Ed was much thinner than Helen; he was lanky, with a birdlike mouth and a pointy nose that completed his crane-like appearance. He welcomed us with a willowy handshake and invited us to sit down. There was a homey feeling from the smell of freshly fried chicken. I was ready to light into it, being queasy from an empty stomach. But then again, I was always hungry those days.

I sat down on the plaid couch, and Dad wheeled Mom near the fireplace and then settled on the other end of the couch. A draft that smelled of charred wood emitted from the white-brick fireplace. There were a pair of his and hers recliners, green and blue plaid, facing the TV; the walls were knotty pine. The room was dim. “Why didn’t they have the curtains opened?” I thought. It could have brightened things up, even if it was a stormy, rainy day. I had a heartsick feeling and struggled with the mixture of hunger, the dark room, and the thought of staying here with virtual strangers in unfamiliar territory. We sat and talked about the storm that had a hold on the countryside clear from Chicago on up to Waupaca. Finally Helen said, “Are you hungry? Let’s go eat.”

Dad pushed Mom in her wheelchair and I followed behind as Helen led us into the kitchen. The smells made my mouth water and the bright kitchen brought a sense of hope; there was a sliding glass door by the kitchen table that looked out onto a wooden deck, which was littered with pine needles and cones. A chipmunk stopped munching on an acorn and scattered. It reminded me of our cabin at Bond Lake. I liked the pine-tree woods—alive with critters. It could be peaceful here, and a good place for me to hide. But, oh, I was so far from my friends. I wondered what they were doing now. They were probably finished with history class and Sister Mary Joseph. I didn’t miss that, and I was glad my trips to the privy looking for the good red were in the past. The kitchen table was set for five with white, orange-edged CorningWare plates, orange tumblers, and red-and-pink floral paper napkins. A centerpiece of fake daisies punctuated the maple dinner table.

“Well, let’s all sit down,” Helen invited.

Helen, Ed, Mom, and Dad talked about President Lyndon Johnson’s decision to escalate the Vietnam War and how the young people were getting killed at a horrifying rate. Mom said she was so thankful that Jim had already served in the military and that Jeff had a physical deferment. She called his accident a blessing in disguise because it probably saved his life by keeping him out of the war.

A few summers earlier, Jeff was operating a punch press at my father’s factory. He had an accident that sliced off both his thumbs under the stamp of the press. Mom seemed to blame my dad for this, saying he should have had better safety precautions in place. We were all sick about it, realizing Jeff would be permanently impacted without his manual dexterity. About two months after the accident, Dr. Stromberg performed what he called an experimental procedure that surgically moved Jeff’s index finger over to the thumb’s location. This allowed Jeff to have an opposing digit so that he could pick things up and use his hands in a normal fashion. The other thumb was still half there, so a year after Jeff’s accident he resumed normal function of his hands in spite of the deformity. It was a horrible time in our lives, full of regret and worry for Jeff. But Jeff accepted his injury as his cross to bear and didn’t look back. He was like Mom that way, good at accepting what is and finding the positives in adversity.

It seemed to me that there was an elephant in the room, but everyone was just chattering on about politics and current affairs. The real topic was my condition and my stay here and what I would be doing. I was but a fly on the wall, chomping on the fried chicken and mashed potatoes. I was done before anyone else had finished their salads.

Finally, Ed turned to me and said, “And Judy, what grade are you in now? Or were you in, or I guess you still are.” His face turned red.

“I’m a junior,” I said.

“Will you be goin’ to college?” he asked.

“Oh, yes. I want to go to college, but I’m not sure where yet.”

“Well, you have plenty of time to decide on that,” said Ed.

Now there was an uncomfortable pause in the conversation. I thought I was supposed to be saying something, but when I searched for verbiage, all I found was garbage: whipping thoughts about how dumb I was for being mute.

Dad finally eased the uncomfortable silence. “Say, I had a good fishing trip in Winneconne last spring. The fish were biting like they hadn’t eaten all winter.”

As long as they talked fishing and politics, the spotlight was off of me. I liked that I didn’t have to think of anything to say for now. The conversation meandered like a lazy stream. I thought that was unusual. My dad was usually the life of the party, full of stories and good at keeping the company spellbound. Tonight his words were quiet and calculated. It was because of me. I thought he was probably embarrassed by me.