SNEAK PREVIEW
FALLING
ROSES: THE YEARS BETWEEN
WEARING
A HOSPITAL NIGHTGOWN, Kathryn
Morris stared at herself in the full-length mirror.
She was a woman, not yet twenty-one. Short black hair; blue eyes. With her lips pursed, she wouldn’t form a smile or a frown. Creasing the ends of the nightgown to her sides, she gazed down at her nakedness.
Basketball-size,
she thought, while looking at her belly. She placed her hands firmly around it,
while gently rubbing her stretching abdomen.
She
was nine months pregnant. That’s what they had told her. Soon, she wouldn’t
be pregnant nor would she be holding a baby in her arms. She felt her unborn
child’s kick and watched the child’s elbow snail it’s way underneath her
skin. Perhaps, at the moment, he or she wanted to suck its thumb.
Kathryn
tied the front of her nightgown and sat on the bed behind her.
She
waited.
She
had kept her body in shape, watched her diet, and stayed healthy. There was
something about this baby, a connection perhaps. A correlation to her past. A
link to her future.
She
could dress and run from this house. But it was too late. The induction of labor
had begun. If she ran now, she’d be able to keep her baby forever. She could
run to a hospital. No, they’d find her.
She
had nothing that she knew of. No possessions, no money, nothing. How could she
run? In what direction would she go? She knew no one. She had no other family.
Nor did she have any friends. The ones who called themselves her parents seemed
to be. Yet, there were days when she wished they weren’t.
Her
father appeared to be a good man. Her mother was loving and kind. They traveled
a lot. He spoke at conferences. Kathryn had attended one of his lectures once,
before her pregnancy was revealed.
Her
pregnancy had caused them embarrassment. But it was her life as a prostitute
that caused them shame.
She
couldn’t remember her life. Let alone being a prostitute. Why did she do that?
Still, she wondered. Didn’t she have some other skills? They had helped her
with her past as best as they could. But somehow, she was suffering from a
memory lapse. Some traumatic event had caused her to forget--everything.
It
was almost as if she was born only seven months earlier. She awakened in a dark
motel room with two police officers standing over her. However, their
flashlights shined into her face. After opening her eyes to the bright light,
she noticed the cocaine smeared on a small-size mirror on the nightstand beside
her.
She
remembered wearing a hot pink leather skirt no longer than mid-thigh. Her
pierced belly button was revealed below a spaghetti strap pink cami. At least
she was dressed, she mused.
An
officer cuffed her. While she stood next to the bed, she noticed the roaches on
the dirty, torn square-tiled floor, scurrying from the light of the flashlight.
Why
was she there? How did she get here? Who was she? What was her name?
Later,
the person who called himself Rev. Richard K. Morris had come to bail her out of
jail. He claimed that he was her father. Her name was Kathryn Lyn. He had called
her Katie. She swore she had never seen this man before. But, she left with him.
He had taken her to this house.
Kathryn
knew what she had to do. What the reverend and his wife had told her to do. She
had to trust them. They were her parents. They knew what was best for her.
Mainly, what was best for their family. And, they seemed to know her, even
though she didn’t know herself.
Still,
she didn’t know if the baby was a boy or girl. Her parents thought it would be
best for her, for them, not to know. No matter what was growing inside of her,
Kathryn didn’t want to let go. She didn’t want to give her baby up for
adoption, even though she had already signed all the papers. She wanted to keep
her baby even if her past cocaine use may have retarded the fetus. She wanted to
care for her baby. She’d work through any behavioral problem or excessive
crying. Kathryn was strong willed. For the reverend and his wife, she remained
cooped up in this house for seven months. She made it this far, inside these
four walls.
Who
was her child’s father? Probably a crackhead or heroin addict. She couldn’t
remember the man she had slept with. Or, if she had slept with many men. She
assumed she had, since she had been working the streets. Yet, she didn’t
remember any of the men that called for her. In the past seven months, no one
had telephoned her. Not a girlfriend, not a boyfriend, nor a relative. Only her
parents called from wherever they were to make sure she was all right. She was
eating, taking care of herself. Taking her pre-natal vitamins, as well as the
pills the doctor prescribed so that her memory would one-day return.
Hours
later, three people were with her in her bedroom, but she couldn’t see them
clearly through the blur of tears and the mind and heart twisting pain of labor.
A mid-wife she met previously, a doctor, and another man wearing a suit and a
black hat that overlapped his forehead and covered his dark eyes stood in the
shadows of her bedroom. Kathryn’s heart raced--the
sweat trickled down her spine. Her sweaty black hair screened the terror in her
watery-blue eyes.
Her
parents hadn’t arrived yet, but she knew they wanted to be here for her.
“Don’t
take my baby!” she yelled. “Please, don’t take my baby!” she wailed, while reaching out.
The pain of giving birth was nothing
to the break in her heart that she was feeling now knowing her baby would be
ripped away from her before the contractions ended.
“It’s
a girl,” the mid-wife said softly.
Kathryn
sobbed loudly. “Please don’t take her! Please!” she wailed.
The
nurse swaddled the crying baby, covered with Kathryn’s blood, in a white
flannel blanket and handed her to the dark-eyed man within the shadows.
That same painful evening, Kathryn
received word that Reverend Richard K. Morris, and his wife Hailey would not be
returning home at all. The engine on their plane had failed. The pilot lost
control. They were all dead. Gone.
Falling
Roses: The Years Between copyright ©2007 Rosemarie Piemonte, All Rights
Reserved.