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That’s Amore:
From the confidential notebooks of Dr. Christopher Jacques
Rachel, arms around Josh Biggerstaff’s neck, was breathing hard when Josh said, “Oh, Ummh! RACHEL…”
“Oh, Jeez, Josh!”
She pushed him. He half fell to the floor, catching on one knee and hand, then stood quickly, looking down rather shamefaced. He began rearranging and zipping. Rachel sat on the side of the sofa and pulled up the red thong that hung from one slender ankle during their dalliance, an act of frottage that resulted in Josh’s sudden and exultant loss of control.
“Oh, criminy! You got it all over Mom’s new Henredon. And me, too!” Rachel said, sighing, looking at the stain on the backrest of the sofa, then standing to look at the moist circle on the seat.
Josh, an earnest, skinny kid, a bit geeky with his wire-rimmed glasses and a scattering of zits across his forehead, stood by hopelessly. Then said, “I’m sorry I really didn’t mean to, Rachel. I mean, I just lost it.”
Rachel sighed again, wriggling her corduroy skirt and blue blouse into some semblance of order, then stepping into the half bath adjacent to the family room.
Rachel and Josh had been friends since being in cradle roll together at the church, First Church, as it was generally called, that stood on a prominent location smack in the center of Austerity’s main street.
Even if still a bit angular and awkward, Rachel was aware of the glances she now got from boys—and grown men also. She also knew that her beauty evoked some jealousy on the part of her girlfriends, all of whom were part of the What Would Jesus Do—WWJD—teen’s group at church.
She was soon back, crumpled toilet tissue in hand, wiping first beneath her skirt. She then dabbed at the mess on the back of her Mom’s new couch.
“Here,” Josh said, taking the wad of tissue. “Let me do that.” He rubbed the spot vigorously, succeeding in shredding the paper into fusiform bits of debris.
“Cripes!” Rachel said, commandeering the tissue again, returning to the half bath.
The commode flushed and gurgled. Rachel returned with the entire roll of paper in one hand and an aerosol can of Citrus Mist air freshener in the other.
“Here,” she said, handing the yellow cylinder to Josh.
“Air freshener?” he said.
“Josh, it smells. Like, you know, S-E-X. And Mom will be back soon. She was just going down to the grocery store.”
The aerosol ssssssd like a copperhead snake. Josh reached down to pick up the textbook and two loose leaf binders from the floor. The textbook was dingy, a bit threadbare and gray, captioned in red block letters “Adventures in Biology: A Life Science Curriculum.”
A car pulled into the drive outside.
“Oh, golly. Mom’s here. Josh, here. Sit on it!”
Mouth half open, he obediently centered himself over the wet spot and sat, knees together. He looked straight ahead, a study in terror. Rachel snatched the air freshener from him and pressed the button. It ssssssd again. She rushed it back into the bathroom. She returned, adjusting the waistband of her skirt upward and sat beside Joshua, knees together, back erect. They heard Rachel’s Mom entering the front hall.
Rachel sniffed her fingertips and wiped them on her skirt.
Josh took a deep breath and flipped the book open. Rachel opened the two green loose leaf binders, opening them and placing one on each lap. Josh continued to sit immobile, a ‘possum frozen by fear.
Rachel elbowed him. “Read!”
He began, “Charles Darwin's theory is not a fact. It has inexplicable gaps that are best explained by….” His voice broke on “by,” squeaking it out as the door to the family room opened and Rachel’s Mother entered, smiling in their direction. Pearl was a slender woman with just a few strands of gray in her mouse brown hair.
“Hi, guys,” she said cheerily. “How’s the homework?”
Josh swallowed hard, and said, “Well, Mrs. Raney…” then found himself at a loss for words.
Soon there was the sound of another car entering the drive. Rachel’s Dad was coming home early from the Jed Raney Agency, the place where he sold life, property and automotive insurance and, for his most prudent and affluent clients, long term annuities. He usually worked late. Insurance, as he said, is one heckuva tough game. But today was special.
Soon they were driving toward That’s Amore: Pizza, Subs and More. Rachel’s Dad drove. He was a chunky man, decidedly heavier than during his heyday as a star halfback on Austerity’s high school football team. Pearl rode at his side, boxed birthday cake on her lap. Rachel and Josh, on opposite sides of the back seat, rode silently. A block off Main Street, Rachel’s dad braked to a stop in front of the one story stucco building. The sign on the façade above the door announced the name boldly in red, green and white. That’s Amore’s was a family restaurant, no alcohol, a favorite for church teens’ get-togethers.
Inside, Rachel and her entourage went directly to the room marked “PDR #1.” On opening the door, she was greeted raucously by the flock of teens within; “Hey, Rachel!” The birthday girl’s here!” “O-o-oh Rachel, you look so-o-o mature.”
Mom arranged the slab cake on the table, one with a snowfield of white icing fringed with pink Arabesque along the sides. She punched the 14 candles in. Rachel smiled broadly and stood primly with her hands folded in front of her.
Mom said, “Oh, my, I don’t have a match.”
Rachel’s dad, frowning slightly, turned and said authoritatively, “Josh, Son, get matches!”
Josh replied quickly, “Yessir, Mr. Raney,” and departed. He soon returned with a book of matches emblazoned That’s Amore. The 14 candles soon added a dramatic accentuation of light and shadow to Rachel’s face. Mom looked at her, smiling. Rev. Gregory Sams, Greg, the kids called him, was the youth minister at First Church. He was a slender and youthful looking thirty-something. He held a battered 12 string guitar. He led the prayer, and after the “Amen,” launched into a spirited guitar version of “Happy Birthday.”
It was an entirely lovely party. It was a special day. It was a day that Rachel would remember for the rest of her life. .
Some weeks later, Mom was attending to the details of breakfast while Rachel sat at the table. At precisely 7:14 A.M. by the clock with the crowing rooster on its face on the wall, Rachel realized how gross the Cheerios, soggy with reduced fat milk in the bowl before her, looked and smelled. She arose and fled. The sound of her retching in the half bath in the hall caused her mother’s brow to furrow.
A moment later Mom, still in her pink terry cloth bathrobe, was kneeling beside Rachel. Rachel was embracing the commode like along-lost friend. A line of spittle was suspended from the southern corner of her down-turned mouth. Mom moistened a hand towel and wiped Rachel’s chin, rinsed the towel, gently dabbed at Rachel’s face and said, “Honey, you must’ve had something that disagreed with you.”
“Yeah,” Rachel said, breathing hard. “I’m afraid I have, big time.”
“Why don’t you just go back to bed? Rest, Hon!” Mom said.
On the third morning in a row that Rachel’s stomach rebelled against her simple breakfast, Mom insisted that they go see their family doctor, Christopher Jacques.
Before Rachel was seen by seeing Doctor Jacques, office nurse Anna Jolley, a plump woman of middle years with a reassuring manner, spoke with Rachel. She scribbled Rachel’s story in brisk and efficient medicalese on the chart:
CC, Hx of Persistent N/V in AM X 3d in an otherwise unremarkable 14 yo ♀.
BP 110/65, pulse 68, temp. 98.5 F, urine analysis WNL
FDLMP ~ 2 mos ago.
HCG, +
Dr. Jacques wore athletic soled shoes built for comfort instead of style, khaki trousers and a blue shirt and tie under his white clinic coat. He was tall, his light brown hair receding at the temples. He took Rachel’s chart from the clear plastic rack beside the door to exam room 1, went in and emerged 17 minutes later. Rachel was sobbing audibly as the nurse attempted to console her. Rachel’s mother was pale.
Jacques paused scribbled on the chart: Dx: Uterine pregnancy ~ 6 weeks. Presumptive dad, also 14 y.o. Options reviewed with pt. & mom.
Rx, Natal Prime vits.
B6 1 daily for N&V. Review further lab with pt. in 3 d.
Rachel sat, hands balled into fists in her lap staring straight ahead as her mother drove toward home. Mom dialed Rachel’s father on her cell phone as they rode.
“Mom, don’t!” Rachel pleaded.
“He’s got to know. Hon, you know your daddy loves you,” Mom replied evenly, then spoke into the phone. “Jed, we need you at home…I know you’re at work…No, it can’t wait!”
They sat at the kitchen table. Dad’s face became increasingly suffused as Mom spoke until finally he appeared to be on the verge of apoplexy. Taking a deep breath, he said to Mom, “You mean you let that clueless imbecile Josh get my daughter pregnant?”
Mom said wearily, “Please, Jed…”
He turned to Rachel, looking for a moment as if he’d strike her, then said, “You did it with…” here he referred to Josh in a manner that questioned not only his intelligence but his legitimacy.
Rachel, the picture of contrition and grief said tearfully, “No!” She’d never heard her father, a man of Godly probity and a deacon at First Church, use profanity before.
“No, what?” Dad said, hoping against hope. “Are telling me you’re not pregnant?”
Rachel swallowed hard, and attempting to retain some fragment of dignity said, “No! I’m just saying that I never did it, not with Josh or anybody. Never.”
Dad spat out another epithet, an Anglo-Saxonism for dung.
“Jed, please!” Mom said, hand on her bosom of her blue gingham dress.
Rachel, sobbing again now, said, “Daddy, no. We never did…it.”
Dad said sarcastically, “Sure you didn’t. The second virgin birth in history.” He turned to his wife. “Pearl, didn’t you teach her anything?”
Mom leaned over. Cupping her hand against her husband’s ear, she explained how a girl could become pregnant hymen intactus and without the benefit of divine intervention.
Rachel, staring at the floor, said in a small voice, “We were just fooling around and he…he lost it. I didn’t know anybody could get pregnant that way.”
“Oh, Jeez!” was all Dad could manage. After a pause, he began to weep. Rachel looked on in abject horror. Though it was terrible to hear her father swear, it was even more dreadful to see him cry.
Finally Dad took a deep breath and looked at them both. “It’s happened before; a good girl ruined. We’ll just have to deal with it. We can go to Wal-Mart and get a crib and a chest for the layette and put them in Rachel’s room.” He explained how they could further convert that room with its Raggedy Ann doll collection on the dresser and the One-Eyed Teddy on the white wrought iron Kaitlyn bed to include a nursery.
On the nest visit, Nurse Jolley and Mom were again in the exam room with Rachel and Dr. Jacques. “So,” Dr. Jacques said gently, “Where are you in deciding how to deal with this situation, Rachel?”
Rachel lowered her head. “Daddy said at first he was going to hurt Josh real bad, with a chainsaw. Then Mama got him calmed down but now he says he’s going to bring a lawsuit against Josh and his parents for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He also says I have to talk to the preacher about all this.” She looked at Mom. “I don’t want to talk to Preacher MacLeash.”
Jacques looked at Rachel’s Mom. “How do you feel about all this?”
Mom, who had been silent to this point, looking at some spot on the carpet before her, said, “I don’t know. Jed says we need to get through this with a lot of prayer. You and I went to high school together, Christopher. I believe what you’re saying, but then again Preacher MacLeash always says, ‘Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.’”
Rachel spoke up. “Mom, Dr. Jacques, please, I don’t wanna have a baby…”
Mom hesitated, bit her lower lip, then said, “Honey, we don’t believe in abortion. It’s murder.” She turned to Dr. Jacques. “Rachel’s Dad and I even went over to the clinic in Arborville with other church folks and picketed the abortuary.”
Dr. Jacques sighed. “Picketed the abortuary. I see.”
“Right. There’s no way we can go over there and have other church folks see us going in.”
Dr. Jacques said, “If you choose to terminate the pregnancy, you could always go up to North Carolina. No one you know’s likely to see you in Queenston.”
Rachel looked at her Mom and dabbing at her eyes with a tissue said, “Yeah. That’s close to where Mamaw and Gramps live.
Dr. Jacques addressed Rachel and her mom, “Rachel is a so full of promise. But now she’s headed toward being a Mom herself before her 15th birthday. I’ll respect your decision as to how to handle this, of course, but you do need to make one. It gets decided for you by the passage of time if you don’t.”
Mom worry lines across her forehead now said, “Nobody gets an abortion here, Christopher. It’s against scripture.”
Dr. Jacques said, “I understand where you’re coming from, but in fact about 4 out of 10 women, including those right here in Austerity, get an abortion at some point their lives. I can’t name names for you for reasons of confidentiality, but you might even recognize some of those who picketed the abortion clinic with you. And scripture? Scripture doesn’t even mention it. Not once!”
Mom bit her lip and then said, “Her Daddy says no. I just don’t know…”
Once home that day, Rachel took to her bed, exhausted in more ways than one. She laid back on the Sophia Matelassé bedspread, the one Mom had bought for her by mail order when she turned 13. She recalled how she and Josh and all her friends in WWJD teens stood together and took the pledge:
Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, my friends, my future mate, and my future children to a lifetime of purity including sexual abstinence from this day until the day I enter a biblical marriage relationship.
But I did wait, at least for the real thing I did. Though she tried to think it all through, she felt like all her circuits were overloaded, like the robot in a Saturday morning YV cartoon that expired in a series of buzzes and sparks. She took the silver, “True Love Waits” ring from her finger and flung it toward her dresser. It pinged on the drawer handle and fell to the floor.
She arose suddenly, the floral pattern of the counterpane a red blaze on her cheek. She sat on the side of the bed, picked up the white Princess Phone that sat on her bedside table, dialed, then talked for 23 minutes. She replaced the phone, lay back again and hugged One-Eyed Teddy to her chest. She drifted off to sleep, the dreamless and healing sleep of the very young.
It was nearly three hours later when her eyes blinked open. She arose and joined her Mom in the kitchen. She said resolutely, “Mom, please, I want to finish high school, go to college, someplace like Anderson Baptist University. I want to be something good -- a nurse or a teacher or maybe a doctor like Dr. Jacques.”
Dad, who had entered unseen and unheard behind her, spoke suddenly and a bit too loudly, making Rachel startle. “You should have thought of that before you and Josh Biggerstaff started playing house, Miss Lady.”
Rachel began weeping quietly as she sank into one of the kitchen chairs.
Mom was wringing her hands, “Jed, please.”
“Shut up,” Jed cried out. “Just shut up!” The veins in his neck were bulging. He lifted his hand as if to slap Pearl.
Mom covered her face with her hands and cried out, “Oh, God! Please help me, Jesus! Jed, are you crazy? Oh, sweet Saviour….”
At that moment of chaos, there was an insistent knock on the door from the carport. Before anyone could get to it, it opened. It was not the sweet Savior, not exactly.
Rachel’s Dad said to his parents, “Mamaw? Gramps?”
Mamaw spoke first, “Rachel, Honey, I’m so glad you called.” She hugged Rachel and continued. “Gramps and I got here as quickly as we could.”
Rachel’s Dad said, rather too loudly, “Mom, I don’t think you understand. Rachel is p.g., Mom! P.G! I‘m gonna neuter the rascal that got her in this condition!”
Mamaw said, “Jedidiah, I’m not deaf! Please, Son.”
Rachel’s Mom said, “Jed, please!”
Jed spoke again, “HEY! I’m not gonna. … “
Gramps, frowning, said, “Everybody! Please HUSH!” Everybody hushed. Mamaw continued to hold Rachel close.
Mamaw spoke. “Jed, son, I can see how you’d be upset. But please think about your daughter. Rachel, dear, you and your Mom get your things together. We’re going to the doctor to get this problem taken care of before it gets any worse. We called Dr. Jacques on the way. He’s already made the appointment for us.”
Mom asked, “Did she have any thing else to say about all this?”
Mamaw said, “Yes, he did. He said, ‘I’m so glad you’re here, Ms. Ramsey. Sometimes it’s only because reason is paramount that love prevails.’”
There was silence again. Finally Rachel’s Mom smiled slightly and said quietly, “Thank you, Mamaw. Thank you ever so much.”
Rachel’s Dad puffed up, intending to exude Godly authority, resolute in the knowledge that the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church. He stood. “Mamaw, you and Rachel get away from that door! You can’t take her to that place.” He turned to his wife. “You know somebody from the church is always over there picketing.” He turned to Rachel again. “You! Sit!”
But nobody sat. Mom turned slowly toward Dad. She paused. Maybe she was recalling all of her dreams that turned to dust, her opportunities that were swept away by the winds of time and the pregnancy that caused her to drop out of college after half a semester. Maybe she was recalling how her sister, Rachel’s much-loved Aunt Charlotte, now a church organist at one of Atlanta’s largest churches, opted for an abortion after a graduation-from-high-school fling at Myrtle Beach. She looked Dad full in the eye, her jaw set, and said, “Jed, shut up!”
“What?”
Mamaw spoke, “Son, slow down for a minute. Just think about Rachel. If it’s any consolation, we’re going to the one across the state line up in Queenston, where nobody knows you.”
Gramps nodded, “They’re right, Son. We need to get started.”
Everyone was silent then as Dad stood for a moment in gape-jawed amazement at the mutiny that was taking place in his own kitchen. He leaned on the back of a kitchen chair, staring at the floor and breathing hard for a moment. Finally his expression softened.
He said quietly, “Well, this is a special case. Rachel really didn’t do anything. And she’s certainly different from all those little tramps strutting into the abortuary in Arborville to murder their unborn children. Rachel’s in Bible study every week!”
Gramps stepped over and put his arm around Dad’s shoulder. “You’re right, son. Rachel’s always been a good girl! And she still is.”
Mamaw added, “And so smart and pretty.”
Mom said, “Yeah. And she’s going to college to be a teacher or nurse or doctor or something else good. There’ll be time for all this other stuff later. Rachel, honey, come on. We’d better get going.”
--End--
With appreciation to first publisher, Timber Creek Review Literary Magazine.
The Chickasaw Plum - Volume V - Number 9 - September 2008
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