Sarah Jane Jackson, Janie to her friends, looked around at the stark room and set her suitcase on the floor. This was it—home for the next few months. Her father, the Reverend Arnold Jackson, stood off to one side twisting his fedora in his hands as if he didn’t know what to say. If it had been her mother standing by the door, she would have been preaching a sermon.
A smile tickled the corners of Janie’s mouth at the thought of her mother standing behind the lectern at the church. Her father was the preacher at a church in Whitesboro, Texas, and her mother was supposedly the dutiful wife who submitted to his every whim. Yeah, right! When they got home from church, it was her mother, Ethel, who ran the show, and nobody crossed Mama. Janie was pretty close to convinced that the devil himself was afraid of Mama.
If Mama said that Janie had disgraced the family, then by damn, she expected the girl to bow her head in total shame and hide under the bed for the rest of her life. Too bad Janie didn’t feel the same way about that, or about thinking a cussword. There was no changing the fact, though, that if Mama said Janie was going to a maternity home until the baby was born and then giving up her bastard child, then Daddy would bring her without an argument.
A door at the end of the room opened, and a girl with long red hair, blue eyes, and a belly swollen out even more than Janie’s said, “Guess you’re my new roommate. I’m Greta. What’s your name?”
“Janie.” She tugged her shirt down over her pleated skirt, which would no longer button.
“Okay, then.” Janie’s father settled his hat on his head and glanced at the door as if he couldn’t wait to get out of the room. “You get this over with, and we’ll discuss where you’ll go after it’s done. Your mother thinks you might do well at Aunt Ruthie’s place.”
Her mother had harped on what would happen to her if the family’s good name was ruined and that they needed to get this over with and never mention it again. This always brought a sneer to her face, and never once did she call it a baby. The world would come to a complete end for sure if anyone should learn that the preacher’s daughter was “with child.” Not even her mama said the word pregnant except in whispers, and heaven forbid that any God-fearing Christian would tell a girl that there were ways and means to have sex and keep from having a baby.
There’d been so much tension in the house that Janie had considered running away. If she just disappeared, then Ethel could claim that someone had kidnapped her daughter, and everyone in town would bring over tuna casseroles and homemade desserts and commiserate with her. Janie was so deep in her own thoughts that she forgot about her father and the new girl, and suddenly everything seemed very awkward.
“Why Aunt Ruthie’s place?” Janie asked. “Why not just sell me into slavery in some faraway country?”
“Don’t get sassy with me, girl. Your rebellion is what got you in this mess.” He glared at her. “There’s worse places than Birthright, Texas.”
Janie inhaled deeply and let it out slowly, counted to ten, and bit her tongue. So her father thought that was a bad place, did he? Well, she wasn’t about to tell him that she’d rather live with Aunt Ruthie than her mother.
“You’ll be taken care of.” Arnold Jackson seemed to be trying to fill the heavy silence in the room more than comfort her. “And the child will have good Christian parents to give it a good home.”
Janie heard the emphasis he put on the word Christian, as if she were nothing more than a heathen for getting herself in trouble.
He took a deep breath and went on. “It won’t ever be branded a bastard that way.”
Those were the exact words her mother had used as they were leaving the house two hours ago. No hugs. No tears. Just those words. Her baby might grow up thinking it had married parents, but the truth would come out someday. It always did.
She ignored her father and scanned the room. There were two twin beds covered with pink chenille spreads, two small desks with wooden chairs pushed up under them, and one window covered with plain white curtains.