Godsent Page 6

“Easy, now,” said Jackie.

  Kate was gripping Jackie’s latex-gloved hand so tightly that she was surprised the woman’s fingers weren’t snapping like matchsticks. Dr. Lambert was back at work between her legs, and there was no depth she could sink to, no distance she could retreat to, to get away from the physical sensation of violation. All at once it came to her with piercing clarity that she had made a terrible mistake. God hadn’t wanted her to do this. It was so plain, so brutally obvious, that she couldn’t understand how she could have convinced herself otherwise.

  “Almost done now,” Dr. Lambert said without looking up.

  She shook her head, tried to say no, but at that moment the vacuum machine was switched on, and its powerful whine and roar drowned out every other sound in the room except an obscene gurgling noise, the kind of sound she supposed someone might hear in the depths of Hell, of bubbling sulfur and brimstone. Except it was coming from her.

  Then, abruptly, silence.

  The machine was switched off.

  She heard herself weeping. Her face was wet with tears.

  “There, there,” Jackie said. “Poor lamb.”

  Dr. Lambert, meanwhile, was using what looked like a big spoon to scrape away at the inside of her uterus. Then he switched on the vacuum machine again, briefly.

  So it was over. Done. Her child, God’s child, was dead.

  Aborted.

  And not, she realized now, by God’s will.

  There could be no forgiveness for this sin, she realized.

  It had been the devil who had answered her prayer, not God. She saw that now, too late. The priest had tried to tell her. “God wants to lead us away from sin,” he’d said. But she hadn’t listened. Hadn’t understood.

  Jackie was gone. Kate hadn’t even seen her leave. Dr. Lambert was at the sink, washing his hands, his back to her. She could feel the blood seeping from between her legs. She lay on her back, staring up into the fluorescent lights, and wept as she had never wept before in her life.

  Wept as if she would never stop weeping.

  “Oh, honey . . .”

  It was Glory. Jackie had brought her.

  Her mother came to her and took her into her arms.

  “Oh, Mom . . .” Kate couldn’t say any more. She just clung to her mother as Jackie cleaned up between her legs.

  Then, as if she had become in fact the robot she had pretended to be, Kate let herself be led through the rest of the Procedure. With the help of Glory and Jackie, she sat up, stood, took her first tottering steps. Dressed herself, wondering dimly if the sanitary napkin would be enough for all the blood that was leaking out of her, worse than her worst-ever period. At least, it felt that way.

  In the recovery room, she sat in a reclining chair, sipping tasteless hot tea and shivering beneath a thick wool blanket to the soft strains of lite jazz as Glory sat beside her and held her hand, silent for once. Kate barely registered her mother’s presence. The awareness of her sin was big inside her, occupying the place where her baby had been. It was as if she had exchanged one for the other and would carry it now for the rest of her life, her own private hell, a hell that she was already occupying even as it occupied her.

  Because for this sin, there could be no forgiveness. She knew that.

  She was damned.

  CHAPTER 4

  The next day, Kate and Glory flew back to Charleston.

  Kate’s mood hadn’t lightened; if anything, it had grown even darker as a day of bed rest afforded her ample opportunity to appreciate the magnitude of her sin and to see with painful clarity how the doubts and fears she’d felt upon learning that she was pregnant had snowballed out of control, sweeping her along. Instead of rejoicing at the tangible evidence of God’s presence, and humbly accepting the role that He had selected for her, above all other women, to play, she’d felt resentful about having been chosen for something she hadn’t been consulted on, much less agreed to. And instead of feeling excitement about what lay ahead, she’d assumed the worst, that some terrible sacrifice would be required of her child, and she’d rebelled. Prayed to God to find someone else to shoulder the burden. But now she realized that it hadn’t been a burden at all, but a gift. A miracle.

  She’d been blind. Foolish. Just when she’d needed it most, her faith had proved lacking, and not only herself but her child, God’s child, had suffered for it. It was ironic—in seeking to spare herself and the child some potential future suffering, she’d only caused them both to suffer now, in the present. And in her case, she felt sure, she’d go on suffering for the rest of her life.

  And beyond.

  How could she have been so stupid? With the evidence of God’s existence taking shape in her own body, how could she have forgotten that the devil existed too? And would do anything to keep God’s child from coming into the world. Acting through Herod, hadn’t the devil tried to kill Jesus? Back then, he’d waited until the child was born. But obviously he wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

  And this time, thanks to her, he’d succeeded.

  The words from the Gospel of Mark rang in her head: “Woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed. Good were it for that man if he had never been born!”

  Lying in the hotel bed, sore and feverish, Kate wondered if other women had been in her position before, blessed by God as she had been, only to be led astray. Perhaps God had been trying for years now to have His child born, and this was just the latest in a long line of setbacks, her personal tragedy and shame only a small blip in the great ongoing battle between God and His adversary. But that didn’t lessen her sin or her shame. In fact, it made her feel worse than ever.

  God had asked something of her, and she had failed Him. What was it the priest had said? “God doesn’t ask the easy things of us, but He doesn’t ask what is beyond our ability to give, either.”

  Yes, that was the worst of it. The knowledge that she could have done the right thing. She could have fought against doubt, resisted fear, placed her faith in God, and become His willing instrument, just like in the hymn: “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace . . .” It would have been hard, harder than anything she had ever attempted, but she could have done it. Instead, she’d taken the easy way out. The coward’s way. Or so she told herself.

  She prayed, but not for forgiveness. What she had done was beyond forgiving.

  She prayed to be allowed to spend the rest of her life atoning in some small way for what she had done.

  What she had failed to do.

  Back in Charleston, Kate spent the last few days before school resumed sequestered in her room. There was still bleeding, and she was too depressed, too mournful and self-accusing, to want to be with her friends, or even her family. Glory told Kate’s father, who had returned from his trip, that Kate had come down with the flu, and he had no reason to doubt the story.

  He ducked his head into her room the night he got back, wary of coming in any farther; like his wife, Bill Skylar was a hypochondriac. In fact, Kate often joked to her friends that it was this shared interest that kept her parents together. “Your mom says you’re feeling a bit under the weather.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “I’d give you a kiss, but . . .” He shrugged helplessly.

  “That’s okay.”

  “I’ve got an important speech to give tomorrow.”

  “I know.” The district’s congressman had announced his retirement, and Papa Jim had decided that her dad should run for the open seat. As far as Kate could tell, Bill wasn’t too thrilled at the idea, but what Papa Jim wanted, Papa Jim got. So for the last six months, her father had been traveling all across the state, lining up the support of business, religious, and Republican Party leaders. Now that the groundwork had been laid, he would announce his candidacy at a press conference tomorrow. “Good luck.”

  He flashed a grin and gave her a thumbs-up; he certainly looked like a politician, she thought. “Thanks, kiddo. I love you.”

  “I love you too.”
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  And he was gone.

  Then the break was over, and Kate was swept back into the daily routine of school, homework, and after-school activities. But the dark cloud that had enveloped her did not lift, and she felt as if she were just going through the motions, walled off from life by the knowledge of what she had done. God seemed to have withdrawn from her, or she from God. At any rate, something was missing. There was an aching emptiness at the heart of things, a yearning. At church on Sundays, and in the weekly meetings of the youth group, she felt like a hypocrite, as though she didn’t really belong. When she went to Communion, she didn’t swallow the host, but surreptitiously spat it into a Kleenex before it could dissolve in her mouth. When she went to confession, she just made stuff up. It didn’t seem to matter.

  And though Dr. Lambert had assured her that her body would soon be back to normal, that didn’t happen. The bleeding stopped, but her bouts of nausea didn’t go away. And her stomach didn’t return to its former flatness; if anything, it continued to swell, though she was able to hide the extent of it by wearing baggy clothes and prevailing on Glory to get a note from Dr. Rickert excusing her from PE. Following their trip to New York, Glory had become almost ridiculously solicitous, as if trying to work off her own share of guilt. She refused Kate nothing.

  As for Bill, he was in full campaign mode, running on a platform of law, order, and morality; the primary election was only nine months away, and even with Papa Jim bankrolling him, he had a lot of ground to make up against opponents with more established political records. There were rallies, press conferences, debates; it seemed that the only time Kate saw her dad these days was when his campaign manager insisted that she and Glory appear with him on stage or at a photo op . . . which wasn’t often, as her distracted demeanor did not escape notice, even if the reasons for it did.

  Kate was convinced that something had gone wrong with the Procedure and that she was suffering one of the horrible complications that Jackie had mentioned. But she said nothing to anyone, believing it was no more than she deserved.

  Then, one day toward the middle of February, she realized that although the bleeding from the Procedure had stopped within days of her return to Charleston, she still hadn’t experienced the normal resumption of her period, as Dr. Lambert had told her to expect.

  At first she dismissed it as another sign that something had gone badly wrong, just one more symptom of God’s displeasure.

  But then, as another week passed, another possibility occurred to her. She hardly dared to voice it even silently, in the privacy of her soul. The hope that it gave her was almost physically painful. Yet she couldn’t help it.

  What if she were still pregnant?

  She’d already experienced one miracle. . . Why not another?

  Kneeling at her bedside one night, she prayed as if preparing to receive the sacrament of the Eucharist. “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.”

  As soon as the words passed her lips, she felt a small kick in her womb.

  She gasped, clutching her stomach, though there was no pain. Only joy now.

  She was healed. Whole again. She knew it.

  Though she was bursting to share the news, Kate realized that it was too soon. She had to hold off a while longer, until the pregnancy was too advanced for an abortion. She didn’t think her parents would force her to have one against her will, but she wasn’t sure enough to take the risk; after all, once her pregnancy became general knowledge, it would likely mean the end of her father’s political career. It was hard to run on a platform of a return to traditional moral values with a pregnant, unmarried, underage daughter. Especially one who refused to name the father of her child.

  But Kate wasn’t able to hide her newfound joy; it shone in her like the glow of a small sun, radiating not heat or light but love.

  “Oh, honey, I’m glad to see that you’re finally bouncing back,” said Glory.

  “I’m much better now, Mom,” Kate said.

  And she was.

  “Kate, if I could put that smile on a campaign button, I’d win for sure,” said Bill.

  “Oh, Daddy!”

  But in the end, it was her belly that betrayed her. The baggy clothes and doctor’s notes could only work for so long.

  One morning, as she was getting dressed for school, Glory walked in on her without knocking. Taken by surprise, standing there in nothing but panties and a bra, Kate didn’t even have time to try and cover herself.

  Glory’s eyes widened as she registered what she was seeing. She opened her mouth and screamed.

  Then she fainted.

  Kate rushed to her side. “Mom, are you okay?”

  Glory’s eyes fluttered open. She looked at Kate and screamed again.

  That was when Bill came barging in, his face bearded with shaving cream. “What’s the . . . Oh my God, Kate, you’re pregnant!”

  It would almost have been funny if she hadn’t been in the middle of it. Her father raging like a rabid dog; her mother sobbing uncontrollably. But unfortunately, she was in the middle of it. At the same time, she regretted nothing. It was actually a relief to finally have things out in the open.

  “How did this happen?” Bill sputtered, practically frothing at the mouth. “I mean, who did this? Answer me, young lady!” But before she could say a word, he turned to Glory, who was sitting on the carpet and sobbing. “Did you know about this? Well?”

  Glory shook her head.

  “What do you have to say for yourself?” Bill demanded, turning back to Kate.

  She felt armored in a calm certainty. God was with her. Nothing else mattered. “Can I get dressed?”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to be late for school.”

  “You’re not going to school!” Bill thundered. “You’re not going anywhere until you tell me who knocked you up!”

  “Bill!” Glory, who had climbed to her feet, rallied to her daughter’s defense. “Let her get dressed. I’ll stay with her. You wait for us downstairs.”

  “This is a disaster,” groaned Bill. “I’m toast. History.”

  “We’ll talk about it downstairs,” Glory said firmly.

  Bill looked like he might argue, but then he snapped his mouth shut, turned on his heel, and stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

  “Thanks, Mom,” said Kate.

  Glory just stared at her belly. “I’m going to sue that quack,” she said. “All that trouble, and he bungles a simple operation!”

  “It’s not Dr. Lambert’s fault.”

  “No? Whose fault is it, then? Because I’d like to know. I really would!”

  “It’s nobody’s fault. It’s a miracle.”

  “A miracle,” Glory repeated.

  “God wants this child to be born,” Kate stated.

  “God wants every child to be born,” Glory replied. “But we don’t always get what we want.”

  At these words, a chill rushed through Kate. “What do you mean?”

  “Get dressed,” Glory told her.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. But no matter what happens, I don’t want you to mention the, uh, Procedure to anyone. Do you understand? Not one word. If the press gets hold of that, it’s all over.”

  Kate nodded. She’d never seen her mother possessed by this kind of grim and icy resolve. It was alarming and more than a little intimidating.

  Glory sat down on the edge of Kate’s bed but didn’t say anything more as Kate got dressed. She seemed deep in thought. Kate realized that beneath her mother’s somewhat superficial exterior, she was hard as nails. But that shouldn’t have come as a surprise. After all, she was the only child of Papa Jim Osbourne. It was she, rather than Bill, who really should have been running for Congress. But Papa Jim believed a woman’s place was in the home, not the House of Representatives. And he had raised Glory to believe the same thing.

  As soon as Kate finished dressing, Glory got
to her feet. “Come on,” she said.

  “Mom, I—”

  “Not another word,” Glory interrupted her. “Downstairs. Now.”

  Bill was waiting for them in the kitchen. He’d shaved hurriedly, and his cheeks were dotted with flecks of toilet paper where he’d nicked himself. The makeup people were going to have to work overtime to make him camera-ready today. “Everything’s going to be okay,” he said as soon as they entered the room. “I called Papa Jim, and—”

  “You did what?” Glory practically shouted at him.

  “I called your father, and he’s coming right over. He’ll take care of everything.”

  “Right, Bill,” Glory said with withering sarcasm. “Pass it off to Papa Jim. Why should you get involved? After all, she’s only your daughter.”

  Kate gaped in shock; she’d never heard her mother address her father in this tone before. Come to think of it, she’d never heard Glory address anyone in this tone before.

  Bill seemed equally shocked. “But . . . but . . . I thought . . .”

  “No, Bill, you didn’t think. That’s the problem. You did what you always do, which is let Papa Jim do your thinking for you.”

  Her father stiffened. “I don’t see why you’re so upset, Glory. It’s not like I called some stranger and told him our private business. Papa Jim is family, for God’s sake. He loves Kate. And he has resources we don’t have. Connections. We need his help.”

  “Papa Jim doesn’t help anyone but Papa Jim. You should know that by now as well as I do.”

  “How can you say that about your own father, after all he’s done for us?”

  “I love him dearly, but he is what he is.”

  “If you feel that way, why haven’t you said anything before now?”

  “I have.” She gave an exasperated sigh. “You just haven’t listened.”

  They stared at each other, the tension between them thick enough to cut with a knife.

  “Hello,” Kate broke in. “Remember me? The pregnant one?”

  That got their attention.

  “I know this is a big shock and everything,” she said, “and I’m sorry for that, really. But I need you both to know that I’m having this baby.”