to see that day. My brother, Luther, got his wife pregnant before they married, and Mama and Daddy adore her.”
“I bet they told everyone that the baby was premature.” Greta put air quotes around the last word. “That’s what happens when the baby comes before nine months after a couple gets married. Boys don’t get sent away to homes, because they can’t get pregnant. The sin is always on us girls. Folks don’t worry about them, because what boys do isn’t obvious to the world like a swollen belly is. Short story is that boys will be boys, and they can’t ruin the family reputation.” She laid a hand on her stomach. “I hate these smocks they make us wear.”
She’s right, the pesky voice in Janie’s head said. Boys live by different rules than girls, and you know it, but someday things are going to change. Wait and see.
“My folks are telling people that I’m on a mission trip with Aunt Ruthie for this semester.” She tucked a strand of dark-brown hair back up into her ponytail.
“I’m away on a tour of Europe.” Greta shrugged. “That’s what my folks told everyone anyway. A private tutor went with me and my grandmother, who really is away on a long tour, and I’ll be joining her as soon as the baby is born. The tutor will really be teaching me while we’re traveling, so that when I go back for my senior year, no one will ask questions.”
Since the day the doctor had told Janie that she was pregnant, no one in her family had spoken about it. She and her mother had sat on the front pew at church just like always, and her father had aimed his sermon right at her for the next four Sundays. It seemed that just by doing the very thing that her mother and father had done to bring her into the world, she’d turned herself into a modern-day Jezebel, someone who was totally unfit for polite society.
The lady in the office on the first floor had suggested that things would be better if she didn’t make close friends here in the maternity home, and she’d signed a paper saying that she wouldn’t try to contact her roommates after they had given birth and left, or anytime in the future. She was to finish out her time until the baby was born, and then she was supposed to never think about the experience again. That would make her whole and fit when it was over, and ready to find a good husband.
Janie felt a weight lift from her heart and soul at just being able to talk with Greta about her situation. Maybe they would be friends. Maybe not, but having someone to talk to eased the pain in her heart of being given away like a puppy.
She opened the curtains and looked down at the parking lot below. Snow flurries flew around, and her father held his hat down with one hand as he hurried over to his shiny black car. He had a folder under his arm—probably all the papers she’d signed.
He got into his car and didn’t even look up to see if maybe she was in the window. Cold and indifferent, she thought, like the day he had taken her into his study and told her that he and her mother had arranged for her to go away to a maternity home in Dallas. They would leave on Christmas morning, and the folks in his congregation would think that they were simply going to spend the day with Aunt Ruthie in Birthright, like they always did. According to her mother, the Good Book said that the elder of a church should take care of the elderly, and since Aunt Ruthie was old, they shouldn’t leave her alone on the holiday. Everything had been carefully planned so that no one would ever know about the disgrace Sarah Jane had brought on the Jackson family.
Her mother had come into the study while Janie was still reeling from that news of her banishment and had reminded her wayward daughter that her ancestors had helped in the founding of Whitesboro. Now that daughter had put a huge blot on the family name. Janie had heard about the family’s involvement in the history of Whitesboro so often that she could have recited it back to her mother, but she had kept her mouth shut. Ethel Adams Jackson had a mean right hand, and she didn’t spare