Big Lies in a Small Town - Diane Chamberlain Page 0,131

corners and is tucked smoothly beneath her pillow. She does have a bookshelf lined with what I assume are books about midwifery, and even the tops of the books look free from dust. I don’t clean in this room—there is nothing to clean—so I know she keeps it that way on her own.

When she saw the frantic look on my face and that I was still dripping water from my bath, she took my arm and led me to the stool in front of her vanity dresser. Then she sat down on the corner of her bed. Her room is so small, so compact, that our knees were practically touching.

She asked me if I was in pain, and I told about feeling the baby move.

She smiled. Sat back. “I figured that would be comin’ soon,” she said. “Good. You have a healthy little one in there.”

I began to sob, pressing my hands to my belly through the thin robe, saying over and over again that I don’t want this baby. I looked at her imploringly. “What am I going to do?” I asked her.

She said nothing for a moment, just let me cry. Finally, she touched my knee and said she thought I’d change my mind in time.

I know I won’t. This poor child would always remind me of Martin. Of that night. Of what he did. I swallowed hard, suddenly afraid I was going to be sick. I cannot stand remembering that night! The baby would always remind me of what I did, too. “This baby was conceived in a night of rape and murder,” I said. I stared hard at Aunt Jewel to make my point, but lowered my voice to a hoarse whisper. “I … don’t … want … it,” I said. If I ever do have a child, I added, I want it to be conceived in love.

Aunt Jewel nodded in silence, her gaze steady on me. She nodded for so long that I began to squirm under her scrutiny. Finally she told me that there is a white family who lives not far from the farm. They aren’t wealthy, she said, but they have a lot of love. It’s a man and wife and the husband’s parents, and they all live together. Aunt Jewel was the wife’s midwife for two pregnancies, both of which ended in stillbirths.

When the woman got pregnant a third time, Aunt Jewel insisted they go to a doctor. So the woman had that baby with an obstetrician in the hospital, and that baby died, too.

I can only imagine that woman’s pain. “What was wrong?” I asked Aunt Jewel.

“They don’t rightly know,” she said, “but the doctor told them not to try any more. The news just about killed that woman.”

I was beginning to follow her. I asked her if that family might be willing to take my baby.

Aunt Jewel thought they would. “I believe they’d be thrilled to the moon and back to have your baby,” she said. But she told me I still needed to wait to decide. She is convinced I’ll love the baby “more than you love your own life,” she said.

I shook my head slowly. She was wrong. I know I won’t. I asked her to please talk to that family for me, but she refused to talk to them yet.

I looked toward the window, thinking about handing my baby over to another woman. A woman who would never attach horror to a little innocent child, the way I always would. I looked back at Aunt Jewel and asked her if she’d tell them how the baby was conceived.

“No, Sugar,” she said. “I sure won’t.” She said my “little one” deserves a fresh start. That nobody should hear about the sins of the father.

“Or the mother,” I added wryly.

Aunt Jewel leaned forward, resting her hand on mine, and she told me that I did what anyone would have done to save her life.

“But … maybe he wasn’t really going to kill me,” I said.

“He kilt somethin’ in you,” she said to me. “The way I see it, that’s just as bad.”

Tuesday, October 29, 1940

I’m shocked to see how long it’s been since I wrote in this journal. It used to be my everyday friend, but now it feels like a reminder of all the wrong turns I’ve made in my life.

I’m so big now, I feel like a hippopotamus moving around this house. I can’t believe I still have about two months left to go, according to