Chapter Four Excerpt–Gabriella joins the group
Here is the story leading up to chapter four:
In chapter one, you go through Melinda’s miscarriage and Tina’s premature birth.
In chapter two you met Stella, the group leader, and go to the first meeting of the miscarriage group, where Melinda and Tina realize they lost their babies the same night.
In chapter three you follow home group member Dot, who lives with her five children in a trailer park. Her philandering truck driver husband has been gone for two years, and she has fallen in love with another man, accidentally gotten pregnant and lost the baby. Now her husband calls saying he’s coming back.
We then turn to Janet’s story. She’s the director of a school for the gifted and about to hurriedly marry her boyfriend to avoid a scandal of her single pregnancy when she loses her baby. Marcus asks her to marry him anyway, but she can’t decide what to do.
Stella’s husband visits her shop and she surprises him with news of a huge sale. They “celebrate” in the back, but as so often happens in their moments of joy, her big bear of a husband breaks down, upset at his role in their never being able to have a family.
Chapter Four opens to Tina looking through her high school yearbook. She’s decided she needs a new boy to father a new child so she can go back to her alternative high school. Her old school is torture, the students are horrible to her. She finally realizes only an older man can help her, so she decides to search for one on the internet.
After this we find Melinda preparing to go to the next meeting of the group, disturbed by her hallucinations where she still sees the trail of blood leading from the toilet.
Here is the second meeting of the group and the introduction of Gabriella.
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Stella and Janet had already arrived, dragging chairs into place.
“Hello Melinda,” Stella said. She was breathing hard just from the effort of moving the furniture. Melinda could see she had once been a real beauty–still was, but the fineness of her features were softened with the extra weight. “You been doing all right?”
“Yes!” Melinda recognized the falseness of her automatic reply, and added, “Well, at least everyone thinks so. I can manage to put on a good front.”
“Fronts are good,” Stella said. “Just don’t fool yourself into thinking the front goes all the way to the bone.”
Melinda nodded. Janet paused for a moment, chair in hand, then shook her head and set it down.
“Are you okay?” Melinda asked. She couldn’t remember the woman’s name.
“Yeah. Oh. No.”
“Sit down, girl,” Stella said, settling heavily into her own chair. “Spill it.”
“Marcus–my boyfriend–asked me to marry him.”
“That’s great!” Melinda said.
Janet stared at her hands.
“Or not.” Stella said. “You said no?”
“I didn’t answer. I didn’t say anything.”
“You have misgivings,” Stella said.
“I don’t know what I have.”
“Is he good to you?” Stella smoothed her glittery blue skirt over her knees. “He’s got to be good to you.”
“He is. He is. He’s just so…emotional.”
Melinda glanced at Stella. She seemed to always have wise words, but no one spoke.
Stella sighed. “Babies are emotional things. Men sometimes can be. The good ones are.” She reached over and patted Janet’s wrist. “Give it some time. Your recovery has dragged out, and this is going to affect your thinking. The hormones can do more jacking with your brain than anyone gives them credit for.”
Janet applied a false smile. “Yes, I am sure. And the bleeding goes on.”
“Okay. Now you’ve called your doctor again, right?”
“No.” Janet clasped her fingers together. “Perhaps it is time I found a new one.”
“He’s not listening?”
“They just tell me the same thing over and over.”
The door flew open and Tina sailed into the room. “I’m late, sorry!”
“You’re okay, child. Sit.” Stella motioned to the circle. “We’re just gabbing.”
“What about?” Tina sprawled in the chair, striped legs in every direction. Melinda smiled inwardly. She seemed totally changed from two weeks ago.
“Doctors, mainly. And men.”
“I’m trying to find one of those myself,” Tina said.
“A doctor or a man?” Stella also seemed bemused by the teen’s turnaround.
“A man.”
“Oh?” Everyone turned to look at her now. Melinda felt a niggle of alarm.
“Yeah. I figure my life got thrashed when I lost the baby. The good school. My parents want me to move back in. Arnie ditched me. I want all that back. Well, other than Arnie. He’s a putz. I’m looking for an older man. One who can help me with the baby.”
The heater kicked on, a light roar that blasted a dry wave of hot air over their heads. Stella shifted in her chair. Melinda toyed with her pants leg, finger pressing the crease.
Stella held Tina’s gaze firm and sure. “I think that if this is what you want, you should move forward, with great care and serious thought. Do it wisely, and consider every possibility, but certainly follow your heart on it.”
Melinda’s face burned. How could she encourage her? She wanted to speak up and contradict her.
Stella’s eyes moved around the circle, resting on each of them. She misses nothing, Melinda thought. She knows we don’t approve.
“I know you other ladies may not agree. But there is only one path we can follow and that is the one we ourselves choose. It doesn’t matter if we’re young or if others think we don’t know what we’re doing. To do what anyone else thinks we should do is the big mistake. And in this group, well, sometimes we’re the only ones who know where we’ve been and where we need to go. I will try to never disapprove. This is the one place where you’re safe to speak your mind, no matter what’s in it.”
Melinda shifted back in her chair, trying to release the tension in her back and neck. She did feel better. At least she did have a husband, a family, security.
The door opened again and Dot hurried in. “Sorry, late again,” she said.
She no more sat than another woman tentatively peeked through the entrance. “Is this the pregnancy loss group?”
Stella stood. “Yes, come on in! We’ve just been chatting.” She seemed flushed, as if unsure of what she’d done and said, but ready to defend it. Melinda watched her greet the new woman, comparing her stance and gestures to the ones she’d first seen upon her own arrival.
The woman tugged her brown sweater over her waist and sat down. Her thick hair cascaded in waves around her broad face, high cheeks, and heavy eyebrows. Pretty. Uncertain. Jittery, even. She tapped a high heeled brown boot anxiously on the linoleum.
“We’ve mainly been talking about our situations. I’m Stella, and we have Janet, Tina, and Melinda with us today.”
“I’m Gabriella.”
“Welcome. Traditionally we explain a little bit about ourselves. Just as much as you’re comfortable sharing.”
Gabriella looked at the other women in the circle, pinching her lips with her hand, then suddenly gasped and started sobbing. “I threw my baby in the trash!”
Melinda sat forward, much like the others, stunned silent.
“It’s okay,” Stella said. “Just tell us what happened.”
Melinda admired her calm. Her own panic whistled in her ears and she could scarcely bear to hear what the woman might say.
“I had been bleeding a little. I went over to my friend’s house and she said we should get away for the weekend. My husband packed some things and met us there. We were all ready to drive down to the coast. I went to the bathroom…” She bent over, arms crossed over her stomach.
“Hang in there, Gabriella,” Stella said. “Take your time.”
Melinda glanced at Janet, then Dot, trying to judge if this sort of story was commonplace for the group.
Janet sat immobile and stiff, her head perfectly aligned over her navy pantsuit, ankles crossed. Dot sat hunched much like she had before, face down, hair covering her cheeks and forehead.
“The baby came out right then! I didn’t know what to do! I just put the baby in a plastic bag, then put it in a grocery sac and left it in the trash behind her house!”
Her voice had reached a terrible pitch, almost a shriek. Melinda tried to maintain her composure, but her own breathing was coming fast.
“I don’t know what to do! All I think about, all day long, all night, where is the baby? Is he still in her trash? In a dumpster? Will he get crushed in a garbage truck?”
She sobbed for a moment and the other women looked at each other. Stella walked over and knelt clumsily beside her chair. “It’s all right. It’s okay to worry about this. It’s okay to think about it day and night.”
Gabriella accepted the hand Stella offered and gripped it so tight Melinda felt sure it must hurt, but Stella did not visibly flinch.
Dot sat up and cleared her throat. “I keep my baby’s placenta in the freezer.”
Everyone turned to her.
“I do.” She pushed her hair back. “I often take it out and hold it. I keep it buried underneath a bag of peas.”
Gabriella reached out with her free hand. Dot hesitated, but extended her own.
“See, none of us are crazy,” Stella said. “We’re just surviving. Survivors don’t have the luxury of acting like regular people. We do what we have to do to get by.”
Empty
Cradle, Broken Heart
