Martha raised her hand and brought it down in another burning sting across my face. I didn’t flinch. She yanked my hair in a tight wad and dragged me out of the bed. The book flew in one direction and Martha dragged me in another. “Why would you do this to me?!”
Martha had a way of making me feel like I was the source of all our problems. Now I had given her a reason to justify every ugly thing she always told me I was. Her words finally made sense.
Willie Jay hustled into the bedroom and grabbed Martha before she swung again. “Martha, leave the girl alone.” His concern caught me off guard. For the way he normally treated me and Sam, his effort to rescue me from Martha’s venom was my second shock of the day.
“You ruined everything! You ruined everything,” she screamed, as Willie Jay dragged her down the hall to the room they shared. I fell onto the edge of the bed and quietly stared at the chipped polish on my toenails. I heard the door slam, their voices muffled on the other side.
Martha was right. Everything would be ruined. All my hard work, the scholarship to Coventry Academy, my lifeline to escape Chillicothe, all of it slipping away from me. I wanted that scholarship so bad that I daydreamed about it all day long. It was the first thing I thought about when I woke up and the last thing on my mind before I drifted off to sleep. And I’d done everything I could to keep anyone from turning down my application once they looked at it. Stellar grades. Check. Impressive recommendations. Check. Financial need. Check. Check. Check.
My teacher, Mrs. Cook, sent the application materials home along with a note inviting Martha to come up to the school to discuss it all. I purposely waited for a day when Martha’s “demons” were chasing her to talk about the scholarship. She even passed out while I was talking. So I took matters into my own hands. I filled out all the paperwork myself. I even drafted a note on some of Miss Vera’s fancy paper she’d given me, apologizing for not being able to come to the school to discuss the scholarship and signing Martha’s name. I wasn’t sure whether my handwriting fooled Mrs. Cook. If it didn’t, she never let on. Mrs. Cook probably knew what Martha was. Everybody in Chillicothe did.
I sat on the bed and tried to tuck my hair back into the ponytail where Martha had ripped it out. I thought about going to Miss Vera’s house. The only saving grace about living at Willie Jay’s was the fact that it was close enough to her house that Sam and I could go there as often as we liked. If Martha wasn’t in a mood, she would let us spend the night there. Miss Vera’s cousin Birdie would bring me Bonne Bell lip gloss or some musk oil. Miss Vera would make Sam’s favorite meal, macaroni and cheese and fried pork chops, and let me paint my nails in her bedroom. But if I went to her house now, she would ask me why I was so upset and I was too scared to tell her or anyone else.
I waited for a few minutes, then I ran through the kitchen and out the back door. The heat outside was stifling. The thick, humid air clung to my clothes, my skin, my lungs. This small miserable town was suffocating me, pulling its blanket of poverty over me, leaving me to wallow in its dust and heat. Being fourteen and pregnant was like a death sentence for a poor Black girl in a town like Chillicothe. I ran to the rugged edge of the riverbank that backed up against the house and fell to my knees in tears. What would I do now?
The day sat on the edge of dusk, just before the choir of crickets and night owls began. I listened to the soft tumble of water against the edge of the river, its murky, green-gray surface like a soft velvet coating. If you sat real still on a calm evening like this, you might spot the thick horny scales of an alligator head slowly floating through the river. I stared into the water until an alligator gently skimmed the surface. I watched it bob and slink across the river, peacefully passing me as if every good thing in my life floated away with it.
What would I do with a baby?
Chapter 11
Monday morning. In one week, everything in my professional life had been turned on its head. My God sense about this promotion settled in the back of my brain, niggling away at every thought I had about working in the executive suite. Everything about this promotion seemed unnerving. Too convenient. Too rushed, like the way you hustle inside of a building at the first claps of thunder just before a downpour. All running without thinking.
I sat in a custom Eames chair in Michael’s old office—now my office—gazing at spindles of winter-bare trees in Piedmont Park. This office was at least ten times the size of my old one. Building Services completed the renovations in record time. Hardwood floors replaced the blood-soaked carpet from a week ago. Fifteen thousand dollars for a handwoven oriental rug. Ten-thousand-dollar Bernhardt white linen chairs—two of them! Only now, sitting in this office, as its full-fledged occupant, did I fully appreciate the vast divide that charted the us-versus-them landscape of the company. For all Houghton’s talk about family, it was obvious that some members of the clan enjoyed far better perks than others.