Someone's Child

Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....

Someone's Child

The bedroom stuffy, oppressive. Not even a stray breeze wandering through the bedroom windows. Was it that, the heat, that woke her? Outside, something outside. A voice mumbling something. Then what, sobbing?

Her hearing seemed to sharpen, determined in some manner as though independent of her wishes, to pick up the sounds. The voice below her window walking along the street outside the house, the sidewalk running below and fifty-feet before the window. Just a voice? a disembodied voice? A girl's voice, a young girl.

Why was she so awake? And if she was so wide-awake, why didn't she get up, walk over to the window and look out? Was it a dream, only a dream?

She thought of the newspaper story, surely she'd read it earlier in the week? Of a bus driver stopping his bus at four a.m. because he saw a young girl crying in a bus shelter. He'd urged her to get on the bus, gave her some of his thermos coffee. She told him her father had thrown her out of the house. Just like that, thrown her out! Only fifteen years old and nowhere to go. Ah, but there must have been some reason, mustn't there? For throwing her out? A father wouldn't ... would he? Pregnant? Is that a reason, is it?

She'd gone to the end of the line with the driver, talking and weeping. He gave her a few dollars; she had no money. Perhaps he didn't know what else to do. Take her home, say to his wife "Hi dear, here's a lovely girl I've just picked up". At any rate, the girl had thanked him, got off the bus and said she had to work things out for herself. Then she disappeared. He didn't know where, he said, reporting the incident.

The voice outside the window became clearer, or closer, that was it, closer - and she stiffened in horror; could it be the same girl, wandering forever down city streets only to be seen and heard in the small hours of the night, trying to understand, to come to terms with her life? A young girl; vulnerable and unhappy. Nowhere for her to go. If your parents won't have you, who will? At fifteen.

Oh God, she breathed, let it not be so: Let it be several people walking down the street, talking. It happens, happens often enough that I wake up hearing their voices, snatches of conversation floating on the night air, through the window. Annoyed that they've awakened me, but soon falling back to sleep.

But not this time. The voice went on, moaning, keening in the black night air. Black - she hadn't even opened her eyes, just lay there, listening, waiting, wanting to hear another voice, to know that someone was there with the girl who could comfort her, the forlorn creature.

The words - muffled, indistinguishable. Could she be saying: "And what's to become of me? Where will I go? I'm frightened: Help me, someone help, please!" Then that sobbing again, and the voice growing stronger as it comes abreast of the window - and she listening, helpless, aghast at her own inaction, her pitying inaction - went on and slowly receded. The voice echoing in her head, drowning itself in the darkness, going on down the street.

She was awake. Fully awake, but hadn't opened her eyes. Wouldn't.

She turned on her side, her face feeling weighted. It had been her imagination hadn't it? No, it hadn't been. A scream in the night, a cry for help and she hadn't responded. Beside her, Robbie, his back to her; asleep, naked. She drew herself to him, hugged her nightclad body, clammy, to his, hot and dry. No response, he slept on, hadn't heard the night noises. Perhaps only a woman could.

She passed her hand over his chest, then further down; he lay relaxed. She removed her hand. But he turned to face her and brought his face close to hers, lips covering hers. The odour of the shallots he'd eaten with dinner enveloped her. But it was his breath, and comforting. She clung to him.

No word, not a word passed between them. She marvelled at the heat of his body; hot but not sweaty. She felt lathered with sweat. He ran his hands over her, cupped her buttocks, prepared her. She had a need and here he was, completing it, responding. How could he know, how know she needed this? This ... reassurance.

Finally, she clutched at him as he rose above her, pressed him feverishly close, closer, moving her legs traplike, up over his back, capturing him, forcing him to slow. He stopped, gently reached behind to push her legs down and began again. Her hands busy over his shoulders, his back, his skin smooth, fine-textured and silky like a woman's yet with a kind of hard plasticity her own lacked.

Later he lay on her, the dimples in the small of his back clammy. He was asleep, sleeping on her; his breathing shallow, regular. Had he ever been awake? or just answered her need.

She moved, then again, insistently, and he lifted himself, lay once again on his side, back to her. Was she forgotten now? But then, had she been thought of at all? She moved close to him, fastened her body to his outline.

But sleep would not claim her mind. Instead that lonely, hopeless weeping echoed in her head. Get up, she told herself, get up and look out the window. Lean over the sill and look at the sidewalk. You'll see there's no one there; never had been. The street lamps, she knew, would illuminate a shallow patch of sidewalk, then the walk would recede into the night. The only night sounds she'd hear would be the endless gnawing of tent caterpillars on the leaves of the maples.

From another bedroom, a mumbled question. One of the children talking in her sleep, she knew.

************************************************************

Robert sat there at a round table in the McDonald's feeling foolish as the place began to hum with the noon-hour crowd from the high school. He fumbled in his pocket for his cigarette pack, lit one, then nervously butted it out on his coffee saucer, noting there was no ashtray, belatedly recalling the 'no-smoking' sign posted over the entrance. Wondered where the hell she was, and just as the thought crossed his mind again, she stepped through the door, looked around tentatively, waved at a table of her peers, then spotted him and pushed her way through the throng. He watched her approach with an unaffected appraisal he usually reserved for strange women. But this honey-haired girl with the high cheek bones and sensuous mouth was his daughter. He shifted uneasily - what was the matter with him?

She plunked herself unceremoniously into the seat opposite his, shrugged her bag from her shoulder and sat there, appraising him, it seemed, as coldly as he had done her. "Well?" she prodded.

"Can I get something for you?" he offered.
"No", she waved his offer aside.
"Colleen ..." He cleared his throat ... "How are you?"
"Fine", she said, flipping the ends of her hair. "Have a look, don't I look fine?"
"Yes", he agreed. "You look fine. But you know what I mean. I guess I really want to know about your mother. How is she, your mother?"
"My mother?" she mimicked. "Oh, you mean your wife, how's your deserted wife? Gee Dad, she's fine too, just fine. Can't keep track of all the guys trying to hustle her. The other day she got a movie offer she just can't refuse. And a distant relative popped off, leaving her a fortune."

Robert dropped his eyes from his daughter's derision-flecked green eyes, those same eyes that had fascinated him in Irene, when they were younger and he'd thought that her looks and submission might be enough.... And then, even he couldn't lay the ghost of her father tossing her out, her desperation. He'd been trapped. "Try to understand", he pleaded softly, knowing how useless it probably was, but hoping anyway.

"Understand? Sure Dad, don't give it another thought. The power of the pussy, isn't it? She's a tender young thing, isn't she? At least I've been told."

"It's not like that at all!" he hissed, looking surreptitiously around, hoping no one had heard, embarrassed by her crudeness. "Look, I love the girl ... woman", he hastily corrected himself, flushing. "You don't know what a hell it was, living with your mother all those years. When you kids were young, it was always for the kids that we had to sacrifice - me anyway - when I said I wanted to leave. Well, now you're old enough to be understanding. I've got my own life..." God, that whining inflection in his voice, and it doesn't cut any ice with her, she's still sneering.

"Well, live it!" she snapped, throwing back her head. Then, lowering her voice: "You selfish bastard. You took everything from her, left her an empty shell. You know what it's like to live with her, see her drag herself around? She woke us up last night, moaning and crying in her sleep, mumbling something about someone's child, about how she loves you. And you come creeping around like this, saying "how's your Mom?"

A hot compassion flooded him for her, for her mother. The other kids would be okay. She was most like her mother, most attached to her. No use trying to explain how Irene's cloying possessiveness, her deadly suspicions drove him crazy, all those years. The irony was that she had driven him to someone else, him looking for some relief from her, finally finding it with another woman. Hell, it was just one of those things. Marion was young, it could've been an older woman just as easily.

"Okay, I'm not going to try to convince you that I'm concerned about her, but I am. You're too young to understand what it's like to feel genuine affection for a woman, but loving another one. And I want what I've got now too badly to let you manipulate me by feelings of guilt. I miss you all, but I made my choice and I'm prepared to live with it."

"Jeeze, fine. What the hell do you want from me then?" she snapped.
"Colleen, I owe something to her too. She's pregnant now." He recoiled from the disgust he saw on her face, flushed again. "I'm not too old to start another family", he defended himself.

"Hell no!" she agreed. "You did such a great job with the last one, why not try again? You might even want to make a lifetime career of it, with your special serial talents."

"Colleen!" he said sharply, "you're an adult, behave like one. I'm trying to reason with you, trying to have a civil conversation. This is important to me."

"Sorry Dad", she said, a look of mock contrition pushing the implacable sneer off her face.

"Look" he leaned forward. "Would she be amenable to divorce? After all, it's been over a year. There's no chance I'd leave Marion. I want to marry her." He sat there, muscles taut, hoping beyond hope she'd relent, her voice lose its bite. She'd try to understand, put herself in his place, in Marion's place; realize that her mother was sick in hanging onto a dead issue like their marriage.

"You want me to help you?" she laughed incredulously. Then she rose, grabbed her bag and snarled "rot in hell, dear Dad, rot in hell."

He watched her angry exit, sighed and gathered up his briefcase, cigarettes. No mistaking whose child she was.

How would he tell Marion?

c. 1979 Rita Rosenfeld