The Cotton Queen Page 9

  I couldn’t.

  Acee was very patient, very gentle. I told myself over and over that he was my husband and that he was not attacking me, he had a right to touch me. But my mental arguments made no difference. It felt like I was being violated. And unlike my experience with Burl, I fought back.

  Acee was shocked. He stopped immediately.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Am I hurting you?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t want to do this?”

  “Yes, yes, of course I do,” I insisted. “I’m just...I guess I’m nervous.”

  “Then we’ll take it real slow,” he assured me.

  That only helped to a point. As long as he was holding me, kissing me, whispering in my ear how much he loved me, then I was fine. As soon as things got more direct, I panicked.

  He was gentle. He was considerate. But I just couldn’t bear to be touched.

  Finally we chalked it up to “nerves” and decided to try again the next night. That didn’t work, either, nor the night after that. I began to dread the approach of evening, knowing that we were going to have to try again.

  Mostly I held myself in rigid coldness. He attempted to tenderly, patiently arouse me. I didn’t want that. Somehow arousal was much worse. When I felt desire, it was a loss of control that was even more upsetting.

  “I am so sorry,” I told him over and over. “It’s not you, it’s me.”

  He kissed my shoulder reassuringly. “I know you loved Tom,” he said. “I know the memories of him are strong always, especially at a time like this. But he’d want us to be happy. And I know that we will.”

  I shouldn’t have let him believe it was Tom. I shouldn’t have allowed him to think that it was only modesty and reluctance, but once a lie gets rolling, the force of it just bowls over everything that I should have done.

  A month later with only two moderately successful encounters, I had no choice but to tell him that I was pregnant.

  “That’s impossible,” he said. “You can’t be sure so early.”

  “I’ve been through this before,” I told him. “I know all the signs.”

  I tried to be upbeat, happy, cheerful. I thought it would make my deceit less obvious. Acee saw right through my ploy.

  He looked down into my smiling face, glancing at my lying lips, and then he stepped backward. He folded his arms across his chest, perhaps angrily or stubbornly, or maybe just to protect his heart from breaking.

  “It’s not so early, is it,” he said.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

  “I mean, that you were pregnant before we married,” he said. “You’ve been pregnant all this time.”

  “No, no, of course not.”

  “I wondered why you married me,” he said. “I thought, well, it’s the money and she has that child to support. ‘Fair enough,’ I told myself. You want her and she wants security. Lots of good marriages have been based on less. But it was more than that, wasn’t it? You were in trouble and any husband was better than none.”

  “Acee, I...”

  “Who’s the baby’s father? Why didn’t he marry you?”

  “You’re the baby’s father,” I insisted.

  “I’m not, I know I’m not,” he said. “Surely you know the man. Or were there so many, you couldn’t be sure.”

  I raised my hand to slap him. A man should be slapped for such an insult. But I didn’t follow through. The lying was too hard. I was just too tired of it.

  “The baby’s father was married,” I said. “But I wouldn’t have him anyway. He forced me. That’s the truth. I don’t care if you believe me or not.”

  I did, of course, care if he believed me. If he thought me a slut, he could put me out on the street, drag the truth through a divorce court and everybody in Collin County would know. I’d lose my daughter and everything I’d done would be undone. I’d be ruined. I’d be alone. No decent person would speak to me again. Even members of my own family, Aunt Maxine and Uncle Warren, would have to risk their reputations to stand by me. McKinney was like most small towns, close-knit and caring. But the inhabitants could be brutal to those who strayed from the straight and narrow. Especially so to women, for whom the straight and narrow was very tightly defined.

  “I suppose, since you know this man was married that you weren’t attacked on the street or assaulted by some masked stranger in an alley?”

  I shook my head. “No, he...he was a man I knew.”

  “You led him on?”

  “He thought I did,” I admitted. “But I didn’t, Acee, I swear I didn’t. Please believe me. And...forgive me.”

  He didn’t answer. He turned and walked away. We didn’t speak, except in passing, for two days. Then he called me into his study just after I’d put Laney to bed.

  “Is she asleep?”

  “Yes.”

  “No one else is in the house?”

  “No.”

  “Shut the door and come sit down,” he said.

  I did as he told me, taking a seat on the chair by the window.

  I wondered if I should be afraid of him. I learned how violent men could be. And that a cruel man could disguise himself as kind. We were all alone. He could beat me or even kill me and probably get away with it. Worse than beating or killing, he could expose the truth about me, ruin my life and cause my daughter to be taken away.

  But it was Acee across the desk from me. Somewhere deep inside I understood that he would never hurt me. I trusted that the day I’d tricked him into marrying me. And I trusted it now.

  “We do need to talk,” I admitted.

  “You have already talked,” he said. “Now you’re going to listen.”

  I swallowed nervously.

  “I am angry,” he said. “I admit to that. And I have a perfect right to be. I was lied to and I was betrayed. There is nothing that can be said or done to undo that.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He didn’t acknowledge my words.

  “I believe your story about being forced,” he said. “I can’t, even in the deepest hurt of my heartache, think that you would be untruthful about such a thing.”

  “Thank you for that,” I said.

  “Actually it explains a lot about your distaste for sex. I was beginning to worry that you simply found me personally repulsive.”

  “Oh, no, Acee, no,” I assured him.

  “I assume you had a more normal intimacy with Tom.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Acee nodded. “Good. Then there is still a chance that we can pick up the pieces of this catastrophe and fashion some sort of marriage out of it.”

  “That’s...that is what I want, too, Acee.”

  “I’ve decided what we’ll do,” he said. “I’ll go ahead and pretend that this child is mine. I won’t have him, or her, inheriting any of the Clifton business interests, but I will feed, clothe, house and educate him. Just as I plan to do for Laney. They are your children, but I have chosen, as their stepfather, to be responsible for them. As far as the ultimate disposition of my property upon my death, we will sort all that out at a later date. You will agree to whatever I decide about that.”

  His words were very firm, his expression was hard as stone and the formality in his voice distant.

  I nodded meekly.

  “I can only imagine that your decision to choose me as your husband was based on the mistaken assumption that I would be easily manipulated. That merely by batting your eyes and flashing me that little dimpled smile, I would do your bidding. Let me assure you, Barbara, that I am not that man.”

  He certainly didn’t seem so at that moment.

  “Can you ever forgive me, Acee?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “My first thought was to have the marriage annulled.”

  The bottom dropped out of my stomach.

  “I’d do it, except the truth is I still care for you, I always have. I’m hoping that event
ually we can put all this behind us and have the kind of life that I’ve imagined for us.”

  “I will try,” I assured him. “I will make this up to you. I’ll be a very good wife. I can be, you know. I can make your life very comfortable.”

  Acee nodded.

  “After the baby is born and things begin to settle down,” he continued. “You will see some sort of doctor. Someone in Dallas. Somewhere unknown to us. You’ll take whatever medicine or therapy that’s required to make you capable of fulfilling your obligations to me in the bedroom as well as the rest of the house.”

  I swallowed hard, but nodded agreement.

  Acee retrieved some papers from his desk.

  “I’ve put this agreement in writing,” he said. “I can’t say exactly why. Maybe just because I’m a lawyer. Or maybe it’s that your lies have made me distrustful, but I want your signature on this paper. I’ll keep it here in the office safe. No one will ever see it but you and me.”

  I didn’t even question that. I took the pen he offered and signed my name.

  “We will never speak about this again,” he said. “I don’t want the slightest chance that we might ever be overheard.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “We won’t talk about it ever.”

  That sounded wonderful to me. Never to talk about it again, never to think about it again. But, of course, it couldn’t be exactly that way. I was still pregnant and Acee and I had to pretend that we were both delighted about it.

  “I know it’s very early to give this news,” he said, making the announcement at a special party with both our families gathered. “But we want you to be as excited and happy as we are.”

  His mother gasped. I observed his aunts and cousins gossiping together behind their hands. We had been married for only eight weeks. Still everyone was very kind and wished us well.

  As the news spread I made a point of saying that the baby was due in September, though I knew I’d be lucky to get past June. I did what I could to undermine McKinney’s wagging tongues. I wore a girdle for six months. I followed a strict diet of vitamin pills, hard-boiled eggs and water. It worked pretty well. I gained only twelve pounds for the whole pregnancy. My arms and legs got reed thin. The bones in my face etched my features so sharply, it was as if I’d aged ten years.

  Still, nothing could stop the rapid production of life in my womb. I knew that when the baby arrived in midsummer, there would be talk. The world was not a place of tolerance. It’s hard to explain what it was like to those who haven’t lived it. There were rules that had to be obeyed. And those who broke the rules of society were made to suffer, even those who had been forced. It was how order was maintained. How people were kept in line.

  When the baby was born small and sickly, it was like a miracle, an answer to prayers I’d been afraid to ask. Marley was late enough, weak enough, frail enough that no one would dare to question his arrival. I was secretly celebrating my good luck.

  Unfortunately that buoyancy did not last past the moment I held him in my arms. It was as if the baby had not been real to me until that moment. He had been only a pregnancy, an unwanted pregnancy, the terrible result of a horrid, sickening experience. If I could have given him away, I would have. But he was here now and he was mine. I had no choice but to take care of him. And he needed a lot of care.

  We named him Marley. It was Acee’s mother’s maiden name. It gave him an instant sense of family and I hoped would get his grandmother permanently on his side.

  He needed all the cheerleaders and well-wishers he could get. Marley was tiny, just five pounds, with thick tufts of light-colored hair. He was pale and puny. He hardly cried. It was more a mewing sound, like a frightened kitty.

  His weakness, his sickness, could be laid directly at my door. I was the one who failed to take care of myself, I’d not eaten right, I’d worn those girdles. I was the one who had not wanted him.

  I tried to want him now. He was so tiny, so precious. His little eyes unable to focus, his tiny fingers and toes, hesitant to grasp. I touched him and kissed him and whispered sweet words of love to him.

  I also watched him, scrutinized him, looked for the mark of evil on him.

  Could I hate the man who had given him life and still love the life he’d given?

  I didn’t know. But I wanted to try. I wanted to be his mother. I wanted to feel for him all those wonderful things I’d felt for Laney. I tried.

  For the first few days the doctors were closemouthed and kept Marley away from us most of the time. Finally on the fifth day of his life, as I dressed and readied myself to go home, Dr. Bridges, a longtime and highly respected McKinney physician, came into my hospital room to talk with us.

  “You know that we can’t let you take him with you,” the doctor said.

  We both nodded.

  “He’s getting better, though,” Acee insisted.

  The doctor was noncommittal.

  “We finally have a diagnosis,” he said. “I believe little Marley has an anomaly known as Krikor’s syndrome.”

  Acee and I glanced quickly at each other.

  “Krikor’s syndrome,” Acee repeated. “I’ve never heard of it.”

  “You wouldn’t have,” Dr. Bridges said. “It’s rare, actually very rare. And it seems to be what’s responsible for the hole in your baby’s heart.”

  “I thought you said that the problem wasn’t that unusual.”

  Dr. Bridges nodded. “What I thought at first was that it was atrial septal defect,” he said. “It’s a relatively common newborn heart problem. It’s dangerous, but it frequently corrects itself. Krikor’s is a far more serious congenital abnormality of the heart. It’s rare enough that we had trouble diagnosing it. I’ve personally never seen it before. And I’ve been practicing medicine for twenty-seven years.”

  He sat down at the foot of the bed and from his pocket he retrieved a plastic model of the heart. He opened the front to reveal the interior.

  “There are four separate chambers in the heart,” he said. “Each of these has a specific task that it must perform. Sending blood out to the body, receiving the blood back. Sending it to the lungs for oxygen. Pulling the oxygenated blood back into the heart so it can be sent out to the body again.”

  Acee and I nodded. We’d both been through Mr. Stubben’s high school biology class.

  “Sometimes,” Dr. Bridges continued, “a child is born with an opening between these valves. The blood seeps across the chambers and cuts down on the efficiency of the pumping. As I said, that usually corrects itself and when it doesn’t, we’re now trying open heart surgery to correct it.”

  “So Marley may have to have surgery?” I asked.

  Dr. Bridges shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he answered.

  Somehow the words didn’t sound as hopeful as they should.

  “In Krikor’s syndrome, the walls between the valves are very thin and porous. There are numerous holes, some large enough to see, some very small. And the tissue is so thin in places that there is always a danger of new tears. The heart works hard, but it’s so inefficient that it just doesn’t do the job.”

  That didn’t sound good. It didn’t sound good at all.

  “Is there some kind of medicine he should take? Some kind of vitamins to make the tissue stronger.”

  “I...I’m not sure,” Dr. Bridges said.

  “Is he going to be all right?”

  “I hope so,” he answered. “I truly hope so. I’ve contacted a specialist at the Southwestern Medical School in Dallas. I’m transferring the baby into his care. He’s a specialist in pediatric cardiology. He’s up on all the latest therapies and treatments. And he’s much more familiar with this syndrome. He tells me he just had another baby born with it last year.”

  So Marley was moved to Parkland Hospital. I went with him. His tiny little body strapped down to the ambulance gurney. He was hurting and so helpless. He was so dependent on me. Me, his mother, who hadn’t wanted him, who’d tried to hide him. It was a
ll my fault. All of it. Somehow I’d lured Burl into forcing himself on me. Then I’d run away from my sins, deceived Acee into marrying me. And now this poor child was sick, probably as much from the way I’d lived during pregnancy as for this terrible disease that he’d inherited.

  “I’ll make it up to you,” I whispered to the tiny open eyes that seemed to see nothing. “I’ll make it up to you. And I’ll make it up to Acee.”

  A large brown hand patted my own. I glanced up. Across the width of the ambulance, the paramedic was smiling at me sympathetically.

  “A mother’s prayers always work wonders,” he said.

  He’d thought I was appealing to God. After all I’d done, I felt like I couldn’t even show my face to heaven.

  The hospital in Dallas was huge. It was all polished tile corridors and closed doors. I always spoke in a whisper there. The slightest noise seemed far too loud.

  Dr. Richardson, the pediatric cardiologist seemed young compared to Dr. Bridges and he was brusque and businesslike.

  “Your son is my concern, not you,” he told me. “I’ll need to take care of my patient. As long as you don’t make a nuisance of yourself or get in my way, you can stay. But I have to tell you, my experience with mothers is that their presence is annoying and they are forever blubbering and whining. If I see any of that, you’ll be banned from the bedside. For the child’s own good, of course.”

  With that warning ringing in my ears, I did my best to remain calm.

  “I know Dr. Richardson seems harsh,” the R.N. told me. “He’s blunt and has terrible bedside manners. I guess that’s why he takes care of newborns. But he really does know what he’s doing. If anyone can save your baby, he can.”

  I was determined to take comfort in that.

  When Dr. Richardson examined the baby, I tried to make myself scarce. Acee decided that he would sit with Marley in the early mornings when Dr. Richardson made his rounds. That worked very well. I would stay late at the hospital, then meet Acee at our little room in the nearby Best Western Motel. He always waited up for me. I would go to sleep with his arms around me. I admit, I didn’t love him. But I loved his strength and I needed his stability. I felt so safe in his arms.