CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Jill
Monday
It took Jill, two nurses, an IV drip, and a solid hour of soothing and supplication to settle Ruby, who was confused and agitated and unable to remember recent events. Ruby’s addled state and the way she shrank from the nurses with a wild-eyed terror, yelling “Don’t touch me” and “I’ll tell Aunt Mabel,” gutted Jill, releasing a spill of memories and emotions, some her own and some so tragically Ruby’s.
Jill threw the paint roller and watched as a spray of yellow flecked the unassembled crib. She fell to her knees. There was something cold and dark that lingered in the spot where Keith last stood. She muffled a sob into the crook of her elbow, followed by another, and another. She knew there would be some sort of confrontation once the baby’s existence became public knowledge, but she’d always been able to tuck it away as some unknowable future. She now realized, with dread, its reality was worse than the fear of it.
“Honey, are you all right?” Ruby padded in, looking fat and grotesque. Could even her nose have widened?
“No. I’m not all right.” There was anger and accusation in her voice.
“What did he say?”
“He never wants to see me again.”
A protective film glossed over Ruby. A look Jill recognized, all too well, these last few months.
“I’m not surprised,” Ruby said. “They do their nasty and then blame you. You’ll be on your own once you deliver the baby.”
“Once I deliver the baby?”
Ruby, the real Ruby, went somewhere distant and inaccessible. “Did you try and fight him off, honey? Lord knows I did.” She pulled a hand to her huge belly. “I told him not to touch me. He was just such a beast, though. At me night and day. He’d have me right on the floor of that dirty old garage. And then make me go out and pump gas for the next car that pulled in, while he tuned in a ball game and stuck his filthy neck under the hood of some old junker. My dresses had oil spots and my elbows were scabbed, but do you think Aunt Mabel would believe me? Not her precious husband.”
Ruby’s face was drawn and her lips pulled into a white gash. “And he’d be at me again, telling me how pretty I looked. Telling me I smelled like honey and felt like velvet.” She spat. “Well, he made me vomit.” Ruby’s head shook wildly from side to side. “Oh, he was a clever one. Told me I was the only thing worth living for. Told me I was like the sun after a lifetime of darkness.” Ruby’s eyes rolled back. “He even said I should thank him. That he’d taken me from a wild mustang to a docile mare.” Her body went still and then her head hung forward. “He told me it was perfectly natural, but I couldn’t tell anyone,’cause I’d break poor Aunt Mabel’s heart. And Mabel was already crazy jealous because I was the prettiest thing, whereas she was uglier than a coon dog. And I owed Mabel that much, her having taken me in and all.”
Jill should have stopped her mother a long time ago, but the shock of the tirade rendered her mute.
“When I finally got so big she couldn’t help but admit something happened, she blamed me. Said I was a whore and trash, just like my mama. Said I asked for it, probably forced myself on him with my big tits and plump butt. Said bad things happen to bad people. And then she threw me out like yesterday’s slops.”
Speech still eluded Jill. Her mother had always claimed Janine’s father was a childhood sweetheart named Josh, who’d been a good baseball player and wanted to raise horses. His tragic death in a car accident had left her alone to deal with the pregnancy. She’d found the McCloud Home for Wayward Girls through her church, secured her own bus ticket, and arrived on the doorstep unannounced.
Jill rubbed a hand up and down her mom’s soft, white forearm. “It’s okay. And I’m so proud of you.”
“Nobody ever made it easy for me. Not till your father, anyhow. But I always took care of what’s mine.”
And she had. There had been birthdays when Jill and Jocelyn were pronounced Queen for a Day, complete with crown, scepter, and lady-in-waiting. Closet monsters and keyhole-peeping ghosts had been foiled by an all-night, bed-sharing guardian. And the howling pain of scrapes, and cuts, and black-and-blues had been kissed away with mommy magic. Jill continued to stroke her arm. “And now you’ve taught me to do the same. Haven’t you?”
“And to be strong like me.”
“Strong like you.” Jill squeezed her mom’s arm and let go. She realized that the horrible violation resulting in that first pregnancy couldn’t help but taint every other sexual relationship. And her only living relation, her aunt Mabel, had blamed her. “Bad things happen to bad people.” It was practically a curse. No wonder Ruby had crumbled following the stillborn death of Janine and a later miscarriage. Whatever the circumstances resulting in her mother’s infidelity, Jill knew she was doing the right thing.
“It’s never easy to see a loved one like this,” the nurse—Barb, according to her name tag—said, snatching a plumed tissue from the bedside table and handing it to Jill.
“There were episodes before,” Jill said, following the nurse out into the hallway. “She was abused as a teen. I know we were trying to keep her from hurting herself, but we triggered some sort of relapse.”
“Darlin’, she’s on medication. Not to mention the tumor creeping into corners of her mind she hasn’t visited in a while. The important thing is that she’s safe and getting help.”
“We didn’t even warn her about today’s procedure,” Jill said, propping her elbows on the counter while Barb took a seat at the U-shaped nurses’ station.
“That may be for the best,” Barb said. “She’s frightened enough.”
Jill looked to her right, into the wing’s empty waiting room.
“Your visitor left a while ago,” Barb said.
“I expected as much,” Jill said, too tired to mask the disappointment in her voice. “And it’s okay, because that’s exactly what he is: a visitor.”