Maybe he’d do it for her, Alice thought as she huddled on the cot. When he found out she was pregnant, he’d just beat her to death. And it would be over.
She thought of her mother, her sister, her grandparents, her uncles and aunts and cousins. She thought of the ranch, how it would look like a postcard in the January snow.
They wouldn’t look for her, she reminded herself. She’d locked that door herself, burned that bridge, cut that line.
And they’d never find her in this rat hole.
She wished she could tell them she was sorry she’d lit out the way she had. So angry, so full of herself that she hadn’t cared about how they’d feel. Hadn’t believed they’d care.
She wished she could tell them she’d been coming home.
When she heard the door open, heard the boot steps, she shuddered. Not in fear as much as resignation.
“Get your lazy ass out of that bed and eat.”
“I’m sick.”
“You’ll be more’n sick you don’t do as I say.”
“I need a doctor.”
He grabbed her by the hair, yanked her up. Screaming, she covered her face. “Please, please. I’m pregnant. I’m pregnant.”
The grip on her hair tightened as he jerked her face up. “Don’t you try any of your whore tricks on me.”
“I’m pregnant.” She said it calmly now, sure she was facing death. Struggling to be ready for it. “I’ve been sick every morning for six straight days. I haven’t had my period since right after you brought me here. I missed in December, now I’m coming up on when I’m due for January. I lost track of the time until you said it was Christmas. I’m pregnant.”
When he released her hair, she sank back down on the bed.
“Then I’m right pleased.”
“You—what?”
“Something wrong with your hearing, Esther? I’m pleased.”
She stared at him, then just shut her eyes. “You wanted to get me pregnant.”
“We are to go forth and multiply. It’s your purpose on this earth to bear children.”
She lay still, pushed resignation aside, let a splinter of hope through. “I have to see a doctor, Sir.”
“Your body is made for this purpose. Doctors just buffalo people to get rich.”
He wants the baby, she reminded herself. “We want the baby to be healthy. I need prenatal vitamins and good care. If I get sick, the baby inside me gets sick.”
That heat, that mad heat flashed into his eyes. “You think some cheating doctor knows better than me?”
“No. No. I just want what’s best for the baby.”
“I’ll tell you what’s best. You get up and eat what I brought you. We’ll dispense with relations till we’re sure it’s well planted in you.”
*
He brought her a little portable heater and an easy chair. He added a small cooler to the room, where he stocked milk, raw fruits, and vegetables. He fed her more meat than before, and made her take a daily vitamin.
When he felt she was healthy enough, the rapes continued, but with less frequency. When he hit her, he kept it to open-hand smacks on her face.
As her belly grew, he brought her big, billowy dresses she hated, and a pair of slippers she shed grateful tears over. He tacked a calendar to the wall, marking off the days himself so she watched the days of her life crawl by.
Surely he’d let her upstairs once the baby came. He wanted the baby, so he’d let her and the baby come upstairs.
And then …
She’d need to take time, Alice calculated as she sat in the easy chair near the stingy heater while the baby kicked and stirred inside her.
She’d need to make him think she’d stay, she’d be obedient, that she was broken. And when she got a good lay of the land, when she could plan the best way to get out, she’d run. Kill him if she got the chance, but run.
She lived on it, the baby coming, the baby opening the door to escape. A means to an end—and nothing else to her, this thing he’d forced inside her.
When she was upstairs, when she had regained her strength, when she knew where she was, when Sir’s defenses were down enough, she’d get away.
This Christmas she’d be home, safe, and the bastard would be dead or in prison. The baby … she couldn’t think of that.
Wouldn’t.
*
At the end of September, in her eleventh month of captivity, her labor started as a nagging ache in her back. She paced to try to ease it, sat in the easy chair, curled up on the bed, but it didn’t ease. It spread, rounding to her belly, coming harder.
When her water broke, she began to scream. She screamed as she hadn’t since the first weeks in the cellar. And, like those weeks, no one came.
Terrified, she crawled onto the cot while the pains came harder, closer together. Her throat cried for water, driving her up between contractions to draw some from the sink into one of the Dixie Cups he’d stocked for her.
Ten hours after the first pain struck, the door up the stairs opened.
“Help me. Please, please, help me.”
He came down fast, stood frowning before he shoved his hat back on his head.
“Please, it hurts. It hurts so much. I need a doctor. Oh my God, I need help.”
“A woman brings forth children in blood and pain. You ain’t no different. It’s a good day. A fine day. My son’s coming into this world.”
“Don’t go!” She sobbed it out as he started up the steps. “Oh God, don’t leave me.” Then the pain robbed her of anything but a wailing shriek.
He came back again with a stack of old towels more suited for a rag heap, a galvanized bucket of water, and a knife in a sheath on his belt.
“Please call a doctor. I think something’s wrong.”
“Ain’t nothing wrong. It’s Eve’s punishment, is all.” He tossed her dress up, stuck his fingers into her so fresh pain erupted.
“Looks like you’re about ready. You go ahead and scream all you want. Nobody’s going to hear you. I’m going to deliver my son into the world. Deliver him with my own hands, on my own land. I know what I’m doing here. Helped birth plenty of calves in my time, and it’s about the same.”
It would rip her in two, this monster he put in her. Mad with pain, she struck out at him, tried to roll away. Then simply wept, exhausted, when he left her again.
She fought again, screaming herself hoarse when he came back with a rope, tied her down to the cot.
“For your own good,” he told her. “Now, you start pushing my son out. You push, you hear? Or I’ll cut him out of you.”
Drenched in sweat, buried in exhaustion, Alice pushed. She could never have resisted the urgent need to even with the pain tearing at her.
“Got his head, look at that fine head. Already got some hair, too. You push!”
She gathered all she had left, screamed through the last, unspeakable pain. When she went limp with exhaustion, she heard a mewling cry.
“Is it out? Is it out?”
“You birthed a female.”
She felt drugged, out of her own body, saw through the glaze of tears and sweat he held a wriggling baby, a baby slick with blood and goo. “A girl.”
His eyes when they met Alice’s were flat and cold, and struck her with fresh fear.