Fern wanted to be invisible. She didn’t want to see pregnant girls. She didn’t want to answer questions. She wanted to be left alone until she could go home.
But the taxi driver might as well have leaned on his horn when he pulled up outside Wellwood House. At the sound of his engine, curtains twitched and faces pressed against glass. She got out of the cab and Diane hadn’t even finished giving the driver her voucher before Nurse Kent came out the front door with Jasmine. Her stomach looked even bigger than the last time Fern had seen it.
Jasmine shuffled to the edge of the porch, pressing both hands into the small of her back.
“Our auras are both orange,” she called to Fern, which Fern guessed was a good thing because Jasmine was grinning like an idiot and flashing her a peace sign.
As Nurse Kent helped Jasmine take the porch steps one at a time, Fern flashed one back, unenthusiastically.
Diane walked Fern to the Barn. At the front door she stopped.
“It’s okay to be mad at me,” she said. “I’d rather you hate me now than ruin the rest of your life.”
Fern didn’t really care what Diane thought anymore.
Her room in the Barn was air-conditioned, and when Nurse Kent got back she acted like her best friend.
“I can bring in the portable television if you want,” she said. “Or the radio. Hagar’s making you a special lunch. All those dietary restrictions don’t apply out here. The important thing is for you to rest up and heal.”
Fern sat on the edge of her bed. Outside, the sun came down hard and made the backyard painfully bright. Fern watched Iris and a new girl hang maternity dresses on the clothesline. One of them was her old brown plaid one and then she realized all of them were her clothes, the ones she’d taken from the donation closet, already washed, already drying, already waiting for the next girl to come to Wellwood House.
Fern knew she should find Hagar. She knew she should tell Holly and Zinnia what had happened. But she was so tired. She just wanted to be left alone. She just wanted to go home.
She hobbled down the hall and asked Nurse Kent for the radio. She put it on her bedside table and tried to think about nothing. The Big Ape played some new song by Bread and someone knocked on her open door. Fern looked up and saw a girl she didn’t know.
“I’m going home tomorrow,” the girl said.
She recognized the rasp in her voice: Clem. She looked so different not pregnant. She came into Fern’s room and lowered herself into the chair in the corner, wincing a little as she did.
“What’d you have?” Fern asked. “I had a girl. She’s a Leo. Like Rose.”
Clem pulled out a pack of Vantages and lit up.
“Are we allowed to burn bippies in here?”
Clem shrugged. “What’re they going to do? Send me home?”
Fern held out a hand and Clem passed her one. They put their faces close to light them.
“A boy,” Clem said, letting out a stream of smoke. “They let me hold him. I wanted to feed him, but they said no.”
Her eyes were suddenly wet and she studied the ceiling.
“Clem?” Fern asked. “What’s your real name?”
Clem shook her head quickly, smiling, looking out the window.
“Did you know they’re hiring more than twenty thousand licensed cosmetologists a year?” she asked. “I’m taking my exam as soon as I get out.”
Nurse Kent came in the door, sniffing.
“No smoking, girls,” she said. “You’ll start a fire.”
“Cut us a break,” Clem said.
“House of the Rising Sun” came on the Big Ape. Nurse Kent looked down the hall, then back at the two girls.
“Just one,” she said, and closed the door.
Clem and Fern smoked, listening to the song.
“This is about a whorehouse,” Clem said. “And how it ruined some guy’s life.”
“Yeah?” Fern asked.
“I always hated this song,” Clem said.
They listened to another verse.
“Ginger’s in the next room,” Clem said. “She had a girl.”
Fern nodded.
“Laurel finally went downtown,” Clem said. “She’s still not back yet.”
They listened to the next verse.
The door opened.
“Lunchtime,” Nurse Kent said, coming in with a tray. “Yours is in your room, Clementine. You girls can eat together if you want.”
She dropped the tray on the table by the bed and left. When the song ended, Clem stood.
“I should go pack,” she said.
“Are your parents coming?” Fern asked.
“Nah,” Clem said. “My dad’s no good and my ma’s twice as bad. I’m taking the bus.”
They butted their bippies and Clem held out her hand. They shook, and Clem held on to Fern’s hand for a minute. Then she gave a final squeeze and smiled.
When she got to the door Fern said, “I’ll see you around sometime?”
“No,” Clem said. “You won’t.”
They looked at each other for a minute, and Clem’s freckled face looked serious. Fern could imagine her getting married; she could imagine her raising kids.
“If you want to talk later,” Fern said, “come by.”
Clem nodded and walked out the door.
Lunch was fried chicken, green beans, and mashed potatoes with a pat of butter melting on top. Everything had plenty of salt. Fern didn’t want to eat but she couldn’t help it. There was ice cream for dessert and cold lemonade with plenty of sugar, and all of it felt like a reward she didn’t deserve.
Afterward, Nurse Kent gave her a shot.
“It’s just something to dry up your milk,” she said. “Otherwise you’re going to hurt.”
Fern accepted it. She didn’t want to fight anymore.
Nurse Kent brought Fern pork chops for dinner. Fern wondered if Charlie Brown was hungry right that minute. How could she eat when she didn’t know if her baby was hungry? But she ate.
The next morning, she woke up to another attack of the cramps, but they didn’t feel as bad. She had an ache between her legs like a bruise, her stomach felt swollen, and the base of her spine was sore. How could she forget Charlie Brown when her whole body remembered her?
The door burst open.
“I couldn’t keep them away,” Nurse Kent said, holding her breakfast tray.
Holly and Zinnia swarmed into the room and Fern saw their pregnant stomachs and immediately wanted them to go away. She didn’t want to be around any babies.
“Are you okay?” Zinnia asked. “You were gone for so long!”
Holly hopped up on Fern’s bed and Nurse Kent set her tray on the table and Fern didn’t want to eat the golden scrambled eggs, the brown toast dripping in butter, the creamy grits, the cold glass of orange juice.
“Don’t tire her out,” Nurse Kent said, walking out the door.
Holly took a piece of Fern’s toast and tore into it. It was the first butter she’d had in months.
“Did it hurt?” Zinnia asked.
Fern didn’t know what to say. Clem was right. She needed to start putting this behind her.
“They put you to sleep,” she said. “You don’t feel a thing.”
Zinnia reached into her dress and pulled out a red pouch on a string.
“Hagar made you another,” she said. “She bet they threw yours away.” Zinnia dropped her voice to a whisper. “We haven’t heard or seen them. Have you?”
Fern pulled her grubby pouch, stiff with dried sweat, out of her collar.
“She came,” she said.
Zinnia’s eyebrows shot up. Holly stopped chewing her toast.
“What happened?” Zinnia asked.
“I told her I wouldn’t do it,” Fern said. “She said I could give her the baby and she’d do it to her.”
Holly gave her toast one chew.
“I said no,” Fern continued. “I couldn’t do that to my daughter.”
At the word, her face clenched and her eyes tried to push out dry tears. Nobody moved for a moment.
“What’d she do?” Zinnia finally asked, barely breathing.
“She told me they’d force me,” Fern said, getting herself under control. “But they didn’t want to do it in the hospital.”
Zinnia tapped the pouch around Fern’s neck.
“You’ve got that,” she said, and nodded at the saltshaker on Fern’s tray. “And that. You can sprinkle it in front of your door at night. And you told us she has cancer.”
“She said she was out of time,” Fern said.
“Wear the pouch, sprinkle the salt,” Zinnia said. “You can outlast her.”
Holly talked with her mouth full.
“I have my baby next Monday,” she said, munching away. “Zinnia has a plan.”
Holly’s problems. Fern felt exhausted. Why had she thought they could solve Holly’s problems when she couldn’t even solve her own? But Zinnia was scooching closer, lowering her voice.
“We’ve got it all figured out,” she said. “Miss Wellwood’s still too sick to drive girls to the hospital. So when Holly starts to have the baby we make sure we ride in the taxi instead of Nurse Kent, and we tell the taxi driver we have to pick up Hagar to go with us because we need an adult. When we get to Hagar’s, Holly has her baby there. Hagar knows all about having babies. I’ve heard her talk. She and Miriam deliver babies all the time. Then Holly hides for a few days while everyone looks for her, and she gets healthy enough to travel. That’s the hardest part, but I think Hagar will let her stay. We’ve been selling bippies to the new girls, and my mom sent me ten dollars for things in town, so we’ve got money. Enough for a bus ticket.”
“And go where?” Fern asked. “She’s fourteen. She’s got nowhere to go.”
Zinnia shook her head, eager to explain the details, proud she’d thought this through.
“I talked to Rose,” she said. “We found her real name and called her collect.”
“How?” Fern asked.
Zinnia looked sly.
“Diane got called to the telephone while I was in her office,” she said. “It was a long call. I felt like I was on Mission: Impossible. And get this: Rose’s parents are taking her to California for two weeks the week Holly’s due. Augusta is only six hours away on the bus. Rose told us where they hide the key. Holly can rest there for two weeks. Rose is leaving a letter in her bedroom with the address of the commune where she lived and some money and Holly will just…disappear.”
Fern watched Zinnia talk. How had she ever thought Zinnia knew so much? She sounded like a little kid bragging about how her lemonade stand was going to make a million zillion dollars in one summer and Prince Charming was going to ride up and take her away. Did she have any idea what it felt like to have a baby? Did she seriously think Holly was going to pop out her baby in Hagar’s bathtub, then hop on a bus to Augusta?
“Why don’t we hijack a plane?” Fern said. “That way Holly doesn’t have to take the bus. She could fly to Augusta. I had to be in the hospital for three days, Zinnia. I’m all sewed together down there. You think Hagar knows how to do that?”
Zinnia’s eyes got hard.
“Do you have a better idea?” she asked.
Fern turned to Holly, looking her full in the face.
“Have the baby,” she said. “That’s the better idea. Have the baby and forget it ever happened.”
Holly’s face crumbled in slow motion. Fern made herself keep looking. She forced herself not to look away.
“She can’t go back to Reverend Jerry,” Zinnia snapped. “We promised. You promised.”
“I know it sounds bad,” Fern said. She had disappointed everyone, and now she would disappoint them. “But this is the world we live in. It’s not perfect, but it’s the only world we’ve got. And in this world, there aren’t any other options. In this world, Holly will die if she doesn’t have her baby in a hospital. Even if she’s okay, she’ll still be busted up. And if she runs away to a commune they’ll send the fuzz after her like they did to Rose and she’ll be no better off.”
“You sound like them!” Zinnia said. “You’re supposed to care about Holly.”
“I do!” Fern said. “That’s why I’m not living in a fantasy, I’m living in the real world. I had my baby, I know what it’s like. Now I want to go back to my old life and that’s it. That’s all we can do.”
“Holly’s old life will kill her!” Zinnia said.
It wasn’t coming out the way Fern wanted. She needed them to understand.
“Okay, you’re right,” she said. “We’ll go to Diane. Let’s go to Diane and tell her what’s happening with Holly.”
Zinnia stared at her like she was a stranger.
“Diane’s not all bad,” Fern explained. “She’s a social worker. If we tell her what’s happening there’s no way she can let Holly go home. It’s against her license or something. She’ll have to help.”
She looked from Holly to Zinnia, willing them to believe her. This was the most they could do. It was the smart move, not Zinnia’s cracked idea about having a baby at Hagar’s and running away on the bus.
Zinnia slid off the bed and took Holly’s hand.
“Let’s go,” she said.
How could they think she was the one who was wrong? They were relying on Rose to save them?
“Rose never even sent that money,” Fern reminded them, trying to make them understand. “The key probably won’t be there, either!”
At the door, Holly turned.
“The first person I told was Diane,” she said.
Then she followed Zinnia out.
Fern didn’t believe her. She was making things up. Holly was crazy. She was lying. She hadn’t told Diane. Diane would have done something. She wanted to shout after them, I don’t owe you anything. I can’t give you anything. I just want to go home.
The cramps hit hard after they left, and Fern lay in bed until they passed, clutching her pouch. She felt strange afterward, like she was hollow inside, and everything was just slightly farther away, locked up behind glass. As an experiment, Fern took the pouch off, and the room seemed to sharpen a little and come closer. She put it back on, and everything receded an inch.
The pouch would protect her, then. She hadn’t noticed it before, maybe because she’d been pregnant, but now certainty filled her: it would keep her safe from witchcraft.
Her dad was coming to pick her up next Monday. Only seven days. Miss Parcae had smelled sick. She’d looked exhausted. Would she even last six days? Fern was safe. And in six days she’d pack her suitcase and walk out the front door while the other girls yelled, “Fingers and legs! Fingers and legs!” and get in the car, and whatever she and her dad talked about it wouldn’t be the baby. It wouldn’t be anything that had happened to her over the past three months.
She’d get home, and Mom would make a fuss, and she’d see Deb and Hilda, and in two weeks school would start again and she’d be in eleventh grade, and when people asked what she did that summer she’d make up stories about drama camp, and the more stories she made up, the easier it’d be to believe them.
When she’d come to the Home she’d cared so much about Edith Clegg taking her part in The Miracle Worker. She’d been worried about Deb and Hilda finding out she was pregnant or Guy telling someone. She’d cared about the Friday night game and the Saturday night drive-in, and who was parking with who, and who was going steady, and her C– in biology, and her B+ in Latin.
Now she’d seen Myrtle have her baby in the bathroom, and learned about Reverend Jerry, and seen what they did to Rose, and she had failed her daughter, and learned the truth about witches, and how could she ever care about high school again?
Jasmine moved into Clem’s room. She was jazzed up and full of pep. Relatively speaking.
“My baby girl weighed ten pounds,” she said. “They told me it was the biggest baby they’d ever seen.”
She said they’d had to cut it out of her. When she talked about that, some of the starch went out of her voice.
“I still haven’t looked,” she said. “What’s a guy going to think when he sees my stomach?”
“You can tell him you were in a car accident,” Ginger said. “Tell him you had to have surgery to save your life. Then he’ll feel sorry for you, instead.”
The girls slept a lot, and at night they watched TV in Ginger’s room. If their stitches hurt, Nurse Kent brought them a bowl of warm water to sit in that turned out to be the sitz bath. Fern kept her eyes closed when she undressed. She had opened them once and hated the way she looked now. She figured she’d never be able to look at herself in the mirror again.
Friday, Jasmine asked for permission to have breakfast in the house. Fern couldn’t understand. The last thing she wanted was to see the other girls. The last people she wanted to see were Zinnia and Holly. She’d tried to help. It wasn’t her fault if they didn’t listen.
The girls had clinic that morning and Fern ate breakfast quickly because she didn’t want to see any of them when they came to the Barn. She took her breakfast tray back to reception before any of them showed up. Nurse Kent was taking files out of a drawer and said, “Take it on up to the kitchen.”
Fern couldn’t go in the house. She didn’t want to go in the house ever again.
“I’m not feeling real well,” she said.
Nurse Kent didn’t look up.
“The exercise will do you good.”
She kept filing and Fern didn’t have a choice. She left the Barn and immediately felt the morning sun baking the top of her head. She went up the path, feeling eyes on her from the Smoke Shack, until she got closer and realized it was empty.
Hagar stood at the kitchen sink and didn’t even seem to notice her.
“Put it on the table,” she said.
She didn’t ask about Miss Parcae or the pouch or anything. Fern put the tray down just as Zinnia walked in the kitchen door. She looked relieved to see Fern. Her hands were full of dirty dishes from breakfast, but she put them in the sink and before Fern could go, she jerked her head toward the hall. Fern didn’t want to hear what she had to say, but it seemed like a bigger deal not to follow her.
They stood in the hall outside the kitchen door and Zinnia whispered, “Something’s wrong with Holly.”
“I go home in three days,” Fern said.
Zinnia ignored her.
“She got called into Miss Wellwood’s office yesterday and when she came out she wouldn’t talk to me anymore.”
“That seems pretty normal for Holly,” Fern said, relieved this wasn’t about what she’d said.
Then she saw Holly coming down the stairs and Fern realized Zinnia was right. Holly had scrubbed her face and brushed her hair and put it in pigtails. She wore a spotless white-and-navy maternity dress. Her face looked as blank as a bowl of milk with a splash of strawberry jam on one side. She looked like a doll.
“Go talk to her,” Zinnia said.
“She looks all right to me,” Fern lied.
“Go talk to her!” Zinnia said. “She won’t talk to me.”
Fern made herself go to Holly. This wasn’t such a big deal. She’d ask what was wrong, and then she could go back to the Barn and sit in her room and listen to the Big Ape and not think about anything.
“Hey, Holly,” she said. “You look pretty.”
Holly looked at her and Fern felt her insides go cold. Holly wasn’t looking at her at all.
“Fern,” Miss Wellwood called, stepping out of the front parlor. “Have Hagar give you a tray of iced tea for our guest. Holly, come along.”
Holly walked up the hall toward Miss Wellwood, and Zinnia stared at Fern, and Fern regretted ever coming into the house. She didn’t know what she was getting pulled into, but she was getting pulled into something. She brushed past Zinnia and went to the kitchen.
“Hagar,” she said, and Hagar looked like she wanted to hit her. “Miss Wellwood wants me to take iced tea to her guest.”
Hagar muttered to herself but she banged around and made an iced tea tray and dropped it on the kitchen table. Fern carefully picked it up and carried it to the front parlor.
The curtains were open and the one broken pane of glass was covered with a piece of cardboard. Holly stood before it, facing a tall, handsome man with blond sideburns and a mustache. He had an open face and smiled like everything in the world made him laugh. He had broad shoulders like a football player and one hand pressed to Holly’s belly. Holly looked blank.
“Thank you for humoring a nervous father-to-be,” the man was saying to Miss Wellwood. “My wife and I are so excited to be starting this new adventure.”
Then he saw Fern, standing in the door holding the tray of iced tea, and his smile got wider.
“You didn’t have to go through the trouble,” he said. “Thank you.”
He practically ran at Fern and took the tray from her, and for a second they were standing so close she could smell his Old Spice and his knuckles brushed hers and she yanked her hands away.
Fern knew exactly who he was.
Reverend Jerry set the tray on the table and Miss Wellwood said, “Thank you, Fern. That will be all.”
Fern didn’t want to turn her back on this man. She didn’t want to leave Holly in a room with him. But she had no choice. She couldn’t get involved anymore. She turned and walked away.
Behind her, she heard the Reverend say, “Motherhood truly does raise a bloom. If any of the girls would like pastoral care, I’d be more than happy to pray with them while I’m here.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Miss Wellwood said. “Our girls receive daily spiritual instruction.”
Fern passed Zinnia in the hall.
“Who was it?” she asked.
“No one,” Fern said. “It’s none of our business.”
It’s not my problem anymore, Fern told herself. In three days I go home. In three days I go back to my old life. In three days none of their problems are mine anymore.