Finally, they veered off the highway onto a narrow road cutting through pines. As the houses got fewer and farther between, her heart shriveled. They passed a trailer with too many children in the front yard wearing nothing but diapers, and then the pines got closer together, and the road got darker, and her dad slowed at a mailbox labeled 462, put on his turn signal, and eased into a gloomy tunnel of trees.
They crunched along slowly, tires popping pine cones, until they emerged and came face-to-face with the thing she’d read about, the thing she’d had nightmares about, the thing Margaret Roach had warned her about, the thing she’d heard her mother’s friends whisper about: the Home for Unwed Mothers.
It needed paint.
Three stories of long dismal planks, with four big Gone with the Wind columns spaced across its dismal front porch, holding up its dismal roof. Once upon a time it might have been on a local tour of historic homes, but now it looked like Bette Davis’s face in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? She couldn’t imagine having to live in this peeling wreck for the next three months.
Her dad got out of the car, slamming the door. Her fingers dug into the vinyl. If she refused to get out, eventually her dad would have to give up and take her home. He couldn’t leave her in this place all alone, surrounded by hillbillies who couldn’t outrun their cousins, and hippies who probably couldn’t even remember the name of their baby’s father. They’d all have VD and blow grass and laugh at her for being square.
The rear gate of the station wagon crashed open and her dad grabbed her suitcase.
“Get out of the car,” he said. “Now.”
She didn’t want to get yelled at again, so she pushed open the heavy door and hauled herself out into a storm of screaming cicadas. Humid air flooded her lungs and sucked the strength from her body. Her sinuses melted into a waterfall and she wiped her nose with the back of her hand. Her kidneys hurt, her hips ached, and her legs felt too weak to propel her all the way to the front porch.
The rear gate slammed and a second later her dad trudged by, her red plaid suitcase in one hand, bra strap sticking out the side and bouncing with every step like it was real jazzed to be here. He stomped up the brick steps onto the porch and she followed, stumbling over tree roots and anthills, because she didn’t know what else to do.
The double front doors stood wide open behind a pair of closed screen doors. Behind their dirty mesh she saw a long, dark hall disappearing deep into the house. Her dad searched for a doorbell, then gave up and banged on the wooden frame. The sound got lost inside the enormous old house. He tried again.
“The butler got drafted,” a voice over their heads said.
They both looked up and saw a waterfall of hair so blond it was almost white hanging over the wrought-iron railing of a little Juliet balcony directly above them.
“Pardon?” her dad called.
“The butler,” the girl called down. “He’s busy getting his ass shot off in Vietnam, so you’ll have to let yourselves in.”
Her dad didn’t approve of women cursing, and his jaw clenched for a moment, then he licked his lips and forged ahead.
“We’re here to see Miss Wellwood,” he said.
“Never heard of her,” the blonde said.
“Look—” her dad started, but the blonde pulled her head back over the railing and they heard the slap of a screen door from upstairs and she was gone.
A surge of hope ran through Neva. They’d come to the wrong place! They had the wrong address! Now they’d have to go home.
Her dad picked up her suitcase, pulled open the screen door, and ushered her inside. She went because she knew they’d be back out in a minute.
The house felt distant and quiet, like a library. The muffled sound of a woman talking came through the closed double doors on their left. Through the open door on their right lay a dark room, its heavy drapes pulled against the sun, old-fashioned furniture crouching in its shadows. Halfway down the hall a gargantuan brass chandelier hung in midair like a spider, and beneath it a big industrial floor fan turned its head from side to side, pushing warm air around.
The hall terminated at a faraway frosted glass door bearing a hand-lettered card reading Office. Attracted to any sign of authority, her dad headed down the faded red runner, making the floorboards creak. She followed because she wanted to see how he’d react when they told him there wasn’t any such Home here, and no sir, they’d never heard of one like that around these parts.
The hall was lined with pictures in complicated gold frames: hunting scenes full of ducks and dogs, portraits of important men no one remembered, a faded print of a river. They were all so clean. Every twisty curlicue in every gold frame, every inch of carpet, everything had been scrubbed until it was spotless.
They reached the office door and her dad knocked. He’d barely finished when someone behind them said, “Got a smoke?”
They turned and Neva recognized the girl from the balcony and she couldn’t help herself—she stared. This was the first pregnant girl her own age she’d seen outside a mirror. She was a couple of years older, but not out of high school, wearing a white peasant blouse and a harvest-gold, floor-length skirt, and her thick blond hair hung straight to her waist.
Being pregnant had made Neva a swollen, lumpy potato with a runny nose and pimples, but this girl held her stomach high and tight in front of her. Her arms looked long and strong, her shoulders were wide, and she had heavy eyebrows, a delicate chin, and clear skin. She looked powerful. Her left hand was held out for a cigarette. She didn’t wear a ring.
“No?” She swiveled her hand. “What about you, sister? Any smokes?”
Before they could answer, the office door swung open to reveal a mature woman dressed entirely in lavender. Her thick blue hair was piled in a high bouffant, and she looked exactly like President Nixon if he’d ever dressed as a woman. Delicious cold air spilled out of the door around her.
“May I help you?” Mrs. Richard Nixon asked.
“I don’t think they speak English,” the blond goddess said.
“Go to class, Rose,” Mrs. Nixon said.
“I’m reading your fascinating notices, Ethel,” Rose replied, pretending to study a typewritten sheet pinned to a bulletin board.
“I called Friday?” her dad apologized. “To say we were coming? From Alabama? With my daughter?”
That made Mrs. Nixon’s face go sour.
“We were expecting you earlier.”
“I’m afraid we didn’t make very good time,” her dad said. “There were a lot of stops along the way.”
Mrs. Nixon turned her hard stare on Neva. She saw everything: the endless bathroom stops, her pimples, her body growing out of control, her baby getting bigger every day. She saw Guy on top of her in the back seat of his father’s car, his hands unzipping her corduroy skirt, his sweat dripping on her face, fumbling at the hook of her brassiere. She saw how stupid she was, how she’d ignored all the signs that Guy only wanted her for one thing, how desperate she’d been for someone to like her.
Mrs. Richard Nixon turned back to her father and pulled her lips away from her teeth in a smile, revealing lavender lipstick caked around an incisor.
“Yes,” she said. “They can be quite inconvenient. Come in.”
She retreated into her office and her dad followed and just like that, all the hope drained from Neva’s body. They had come to the right place, after all. This was the Home for Unwed Mothers and they had a bed waiting for her.
Inside the office a gray metal desk loaded with gray metal office equipment stood on a shocking scarlet carpet. A window-unit air conditioner rumbled away, making the air crisp.
“Miss Wellwood?” Mrs. Richard Nixon called through an open door. “The new girl has arrived.”
A tall gray lady emerged from the inner office, manila folder clutched in her left hand, her right hand already extended.
“Thank you, Mrs. Deckle,” she said, shaking Neva’s father’s hand, efficiently and professionally, like a machine designed for handshaking. “I’m Miss Wellwood. So pleased to meet you. You must be tired after your drive. May I offer you coffee?”
She looked like a piece of office equipment, from her short gray hair to her hard gray eyes. Her polyester skirt suit was beige, she wore a single pearl in each ear, and around her throat she wore a brown-and-yellow kerchief.
“No, thank you,” her dad said.
Miss Wellwood dispensed a smile to Neva and even her teeth were gray.
“Welcome to my Home,” she said. “One of the girls will show you around while I speak with your father.”
Her father was the only familiar thing she had left. Even if he hated her, the thought of being separated from him made her chest tighten.
“I’d like to stay,” she said. “Please.”
Miss Wellwood called through the office door.
“Rose,” she said to the blond goddess who was still pretending to read the bulletin board. “Please show our new arrival around.”
“I’m on strike,” Rose said.
“It is not a request.” Miss Wellwood smiled, and then in a swirl of choreography she pulled Neva’s dad deeper into the office and propelled Neva out into the hall.
“Dad,” she called, louder than she meant. She sounded like a baby but she didn’t care. He froze in the inner doorway and turned his head the bare minimum. “You’ll say goodbye? Before you go?”
He nodded as Miss Wellwood stepped between them.
“Don’t be a goose,” she said. “You’ll both have plenty of time to say goodbye.”
The office door closed in her face, leaving Neva in the hall. She felt the blond goddess sizing her up, and she had to say something so she didn’t seem like an idiot. What did people talk about in a place like this? Names. Her mother always told her that people liked to talk about themselves.
“Is Rose short for Rosemary?” she asked.
“How the hell would I know?” Rose said. “No one uses their real name in here. Got any smokes?”
“I don’t smoke,” she apologized.
“You better get some cigarette money from your old man before he splits,” Rose said. “Everyone in here smokes.”
Something crashed into the hall behind them, and Neva flinched and pressed herself against the wall, sending the bulletin board swinging, as a tiny girl with an enormous haystack of blond hair came barreling through, leading with her huge stomach. She blew past both of them, headed for the front door, then swerved into a door halfway down the hall, slamming it behind her. The lock snapped shut just as a tall nurse in a white skirt came speed-walking after her from the same direction.
“What’s eating Daisy?” Rose asked the nurse as she passed.
The nurse ignored Rose and knocked on the closed door.
“Daisy, you need to open this door right now.”
“She bought a big bag of potato chips in town yesterday,” a voice behind them said.
A pregnant brunette leaned against the wall. She wore round tortoiseshell glasses that made her look like a bookworm. Her stomach tented her brown maternity dress way out in front of her.
“She’s supposed to be off salt,” the bookworm explained. “But she ate the whole bag and now she’s toxic.”
Neva knew it was rude but she couldn’t stop staring at this girl’s stomach. It looked like it was going to explode.
“I’m due tomorrow,” the bookworm said. “Finally. Pregnancy’s for the birds.”
Down the hall, the nurse rapped on the door again. She had something in her hand.
“Daisy,” she called. “You need to have a water shot before you get sicker than you already are.”
“I’m not sick!” Daisy shouted through the door.
The thing in the nurse’s hand was a hypodermic needle.
“That’s not your decision,” the nurse said, then noticed her audience. “Don’t you girls have something better to do?”
“Nope,” Rose said.
“Not me,” the bookworm replied.
“Daisy,” the nurse sighed, turning back to the door. “Don’t make me count to three.”
“Hey,” the bookworm said to Rose. “Is this a new girl?”
“How the hell should I know?” Rose said. “I’m on strike.”
Neva stuck out her hand.
“Pleased to meet you,” she said. “My name’s—”
Immediately, the bookworm’s eyes went wide behind her glasses and she mashed her fingers over Neva’s lips.
“Don’t!” she said.
Her fingers tasted salty.
“Are you deaf?” Rose said. “I told you no one uses their real name in here.”
Neva felt like an idiot.
“Daisy,” the nurse called through the door. “I’m counting to three.” Then she turned to the girls. “Make yourselves useful and tell Myrtle to stop hiding upstairs and get to the clinic.”
“If she hasn’t starved herself to death,” the bookworm said.
The nurse turned back to the door.
“Daisy? One.”
The bookworm took her hand away and pushed her glasses back up her nose.
“Don’t ever use your real name in here,” she said. “That way no one’ll know you came. I’m Hazel.”
“I’m…” Neva said, and she didn’t know what to say. “I’m nobody, I guess.”
“She’ll name you soon enough,” Hazel said. “Come on, let’s find the Turtle.”
Hazel started down the hall, and Neva followed because at least Hazel didn’t seem to hate her as much as Rose did.
“What’s your sign?” Hazel asked.
“Daisy,” the nurse said to the door as they passed. “Now I’m on two…”
“I’m a Virgo.”
“Oh, great,” Rose said from behind them, keeping her distance in order to make it clear that she was still on strike and merely happened to be headed in the same direction. “Another Virgo.”
“Who’s making all that racket?”
Halfway up the stairs, a prim-looking girl with pin-straight black hair in a dark blue shortie dress stood with one hand on the banister. Her dress had a pristine white collar and perfect white cuffs and she looked totally air-conditioned.
“Daisy went toxic,” Hazel said as she started hauling herself up the stairs. “Now she’s hiding in the bathroom because she doesn’t want her shot.”
“Well, she doesn’t have to make such a fuss about it,” the girl said, descending. “Some of us were trying to nap.”
She looked like a fairy-tale princess, except for the prim little basketball tucked beneath her dress.
“Two and a half…” the nurse said behind them.
“The new girl’s a Virgo like you,” Rose said as they passed the princess, flashing a grin. “Too bad for everyone else, right?”
“Three!” the nurse said.
The princess sighed as she brushed by.
“Just because you’re having a child, it doesn’t mean you have to act like one,” she told Rose.
“Briony,” the nurse called to the princess. “Watch this door. I’m getting the screwdriver.”
The stairs were carpeted in pink and the three girls slogged their way up, not talking because they were too busy breathing. At the top, Rose and Hazel started in about how Virgos couldn’t overcome their egos, but that’s no problem for Leos, or Libras, and probably not Geminis, either. Neva stood behind them, discreetly wiping her nose on the back of her hand and wondering if she could ask for a tissue.
“Come on,” Hazel said. “The Turtle’s in the Cong.”
She didn’t know what those words meant, but she obediently followed them down the hall. The upstairs walls were painted to match the Pepto-Bismol carpet—a peachy-pink color that was supposed to look feminine and sweet but made her feel like she was walking through the inside of someone’s ear. Another industrial fan guarded a corner, pushing warm air down the long pink tunnel lined with endless rows of shiny pink doors.
Her thighs chafed and she was soaking wet inside her girdle. She wanted to lie down. She wanted to take a bath. She wanted to blow her nose. She wanted to go home.
“Here we are,” Hazel said, standing in the doorway of a vast room that took up almost the entire front of the house.
In olden times it had probably been the ballroom, but now fluorescent fixtures bolted to the ceiling made it vibrate with queasy industrial light. Closed mustard-yellow curtains covered the windows, and the gray linoleum floor gleamed. Rickety bookshelves lining the walls contained Reader’s Digest condensed classics, worn-out board games, and stacks of old magazines with curling covers.
An avocado-green sofa dominated the middle of the room, its back to the door, facing an old console TV the size of a Cadillac. A pair of bare feet attached to a couple of tree-trunk ankles dangled over one arm.
“This is the Congregation Room where we congregate,” Rose said. “Your basic boob tube, record player if you like Perry Como, jigsaw puzzles. You like jigsaw puzzles? Because you could jig and saw your life away in here.”
A doughy white face, perfectly round beneath its black bangs, struggled up over the back of the sofa.
“Hiya!” the face said, spotting the new girl. “What’s your sign?”
This girl’s pregnancy filled every inch of her body. Her burnt-umber maternity dress bulged at the seams. She pushed herself up onto her knees, facing them over the back of the couch, swaying slightly.
“Myrtle,” she said. She meant to tap herself on the bosom but her finger hit her shoulder instead. “I’m a Gemini. That means I’m very intellectual. Bob Hope is a Gemini.”
“Dr. Vincent wants you in the Barn,” Hazel told her. “Can you make it without fainting?”
Myrtle gave her a shaky A-OK sign and pushed herself to her feet. She tottered toward them, swerving all the way.
“I got sent here by mistake,” she said to Neva as she passed. “I’m not even pregnant.”
Then she was gone, weaving from one side of the pink hall to the other. Rose had drifted over to the screen door leading out onto the little Juliet balcony, leaving her alone with Hazel, who studied her for a minute.
“You’ll be okay,” Hazel finally said.
For the first time all day Neva felt like someone was actually talking to her instead of yelling at her.
“It doesn’t feel like anything’ll ever be okay again,” she said.
“What were you?” Hazel asked. “Yearbook? School paper?”
Neva shook her head.
“Dramatics,” she said.
“Well, you’ll find plenty of drama here,” Hazel said. “Don’t make any yourself. Follow the rules and you’ll be home before you know it. This place is like everywhere else: you get used to it.”
Neva wanted to hug her. She wanted Hazel to tuck her into bed. She wanted to follow her around for the rest of her life.
“Hey,” Rose called from the screen door. “Does your old man drive a station wagon?”
She was staring down at something in the front yard.
“Yeah?” Neva said.
“Looks like he’s splitting,” Rose said.
It took her a moment to translate Rose’s words, then she was running across the room, but in her current state it was more like a frantic waddle. She shouldered Rose aside and pressed herself to the screen door. Down in the front yard, her dad’s station wagon was rolling away from the Home, nosing into the tunnel of trees, headed for the highway.
He’d promised. He’d promised not to go without saying goodbye. He’d promised not to leave her behind. He’d promised not to abandon her.
She tried to open the screen door but couldn’t find the handle, and she didn’t know if you pushed it or pulled, and then she gave up and banged her hands against it, screaming, “Daddy!”
For six months, she’d been holding on by her fingernails, but at least she’d been around people who knew she could tell a joke, and made straight As in English, and loved Patty Duke. Now she was surrounded by strangers who only knew one thing about her: she’d been stupid enough to get pregnant.
Her fingernails slipped and she felt herself fall and she didn’t have any dignity left, and she didn’t care. She screamed “Daddy” and “please” over and over again, snot pouring over her upper lip, begging her father to please, please, please don’t leave her here with all these strangers.
Then his taillights disappeared and the strength drained out of her legs and she couldn’t sit down with her stomach so big and her two girdles so tight, so she leaned against the wall and howled, sliding slowly down until she was kneeling on the floor crying, like Alabama trash.