Poppies

Married life still did not sit right on Chad’s shoulders, but what was he about to do? He knew he desired Mara-Joy, but he was not sure that was enough to last him through a lifetime.

  When his friends went out to parties and picked up girls, he longed to be with them instead of enduring the responsibilities of marriage and the baby that would eventually be born.

  Mara-Joy had not lied about being pregnant. No one could tell when they saw the slim girl always dressed in the latest fashions, but when she was naked, he could see that a tiny bulge had taken over her flat stomach.

  As much as Chad wanted to get excited about the baby, he couldn’t. The more Mara-Joy looked pregnant, the more trapped he felt.

  It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining forth new life, which springtime always seemed to bring. Chad was at his father’s grocery store where he now worked full time. With time, he would run the store for his father alongside his older brother, Neil junior. This made Neil senior, very happy. He had always dreamed of his two sons running the store, the family business, together since the boys were little. And his dreams were nearly crushed when the boys showed no interest in the grocery business he had worked so hard to make a success.

  Neil had wanted to become a soldier until he was denied enlistment because of his bad eyesight. And Chad, well, Chad was an entirely different story. Who knew what Chad wanted to do with his life? What Neil Senior did know was that with Chad marrying Mara-Joy, the boy was forced to support a family; and since Chad had no skills to speak of, he had no choice but to work at the family grocery store.

  It was a good living, an honest living.

  Chad hated every moment of it.

  He watched his old friends drive by as he stacked canned goods and longed to be with them, carefree. They came into Willis’ Grocers once in a while to visit their old friend, but the visits were becoming less frequent.

  Chad was a married man. They were still single, wanting to do things like partying and courting girls. Chad just wasn’t fun anymore. His friends’ abandonment hurt him, but how could he blame them? If one of them were in his situation, he’d probably do the same thing. Everything was different now and it always would be.

  “Oh Mama, I am so happy,” Mara-Joy beamed, sipping her tea with pure delight. She was sitting at the kitchen table of her mother’s house, surrounded by her female family, which consisted of Jobeth, Shawna, Constance, Pauline and Joanna.

  Jobeth couldn’t help smiling at Mara-Joy. Since the wedding she had bloomed and continued to glow with happiness. What reservations she’d felt over Mara-Joy marrying Chad were beginning to fade. Anything that made

  Mara-Joy this happy couldn’t be all bad.

  “I am so glad for you, darling.”

  She is a woman now, Jobeth thought to herself. How time flies. It seems that only yesterday Alan and I were blessed with our little bundle of Joy. What would have happened if we had not been given Mara-Joy? We might never have married and been so deeply happy all these years.

  She smiled to herself thinking of that morning, of Alan’s sweet caresses and felt a blush rise up her neck.

  We still act like newlyweds. Imagine! We’ve been married for fourteen years and he still makes me feel as if we wed yesterday. She smiled inwardly and her heart warmed as she looked at Mara-Joy. If her daughter could be half as happy with her husband as Jobeth was with Alan, then Mara-Joy’s life would be full.

  “Thank you, Mother, I am feeling quite glad myself, if I do say so,” Mara-Joy conveyed, smoothing down her conservative light blue dress over her rounding belly. It was a pale blue that made the color of her eyes stand out against her creamy white skin.

  “Look at us three old married women. What more could we want than this?” Mara-Joy sighed to her mother and Shawna as she relaxed deeper into her chair.

  Joanna rolled her eyes at Constance, who stifled back a laugh behind her hand.

  Mara-Joy noticed her sisters laughing at her expense but brushed it off. She was a married woman and soon she was going to be the mother of Chad’s child. They were just impudent little girls compared to her. What did it matter what these two fools thought of her? Their trivial lives were pathetic compared to the life she had planned for herself and Chad.

  She lifted her cup of tea to her lips, suddenly feeling a little queasy. She’d felt little pains in her abdomen earlier that morning and made a mental note to talk to the doctor the following day. She sipped the warm liquid, letting it slide down her throat, hoping it would ease the increasing discomfort that seemed to suddenly come over her.

  Jobeth noticed that Mara-Joy suddenly became very pale.

  Those girls, she thought, are going to hear it from me. She glared at Joanna and Constance, relaying her feelings clearly.

  Feeling guilty that their mother had caught them, Joanna and Constance sulked in their chairs, ashamed.

  Mara-Joy watched the scene play out in front of her but couldn’t enjoy it. She was feeling increasingly ill. The night before she had felt the same churning in her stomach. If she had thought about it, she would have realized that it was a feeling which had been going on for a week, getting stronger and stronger every day.

  A sharp pain pierced through her lower abdomen.

  “Aaah!” Mara-Joy squealed in agony as she grasped the small orb of her stomach protectively. Everyone in the little kitchen twirled toward the ghostly white girl.

  “Mara-Joy!” Jobeth jumped up and knocked over her chair. She rushed over to Mara-Joy who was beginning to tremble with pain.

  “Mama. My God, something is wrong!” Mara-Joy squeezed out, knocking her steaming tea to the floor. She stared numbly at the fluid quickly running down through the planks in the hardwood floor and seized her stomach as another sharp pain slashed through her. She looked up into her mother’s frightened face and clutched her hand tightly. Everything began to go black and then there was nothing. Just the faint sounds of Jobeth calling out her name.

  “Doctor, what is wrong with my daughter?” Jobeth asked as she waited impatiently in the doorway of Mara-Joy’s old bedroom. She had been standing there waiting since the small, bald man arrived shortly after Mara-Joy fainted.

  Shawna tried to comfort her, but Jobeth wasn’t going to be well until the doctor told her that Mara-Joy was going to be all right.

  “She is going to be fine, Mrs. Benson,” the plump doctor said, rubbing his creased forehead. He bolted all the way there after the second oldest daughter had arrived to summon him. He felt beat after what he had just faced. He wiped his forehead with a hanky and turned back to the frantic woman beside him.

  “I am sorry, but she lost the baby,” he said. The younger woman with the pale blonde hair stood and swiftly put her arm around the astonished Mrs. Benson. He hadn’t even seen the pale woman sitting in a chair close by. By the way she held onto the shocked mother, it was plain to see the two women were very close to each other.

  “Baby?” Jobeth spit out. A lump started to form in her throat. She clutched Shawna’s hand tightly. “We didn’t know she was with child.” Jobeth seemed stunned. She was speaking more to Shawna than to the doctor. He stood uncomfortably before the two women. Shawna looked at the doctor for answers.

  “Doctor?” she asked in a soft, confused voice.

  He shook his head.

  “I am sorry. It sometimes happens,” he replied to the pale woman.

  Shawna nodded and held tightly to Jobeth.

  “Can I see her?” Jobeth stood up straight and pulled herself together. She had to be strong for Mara-Joy. If anyone knew what Mara-Joy would be feeling right now, it was Jobeth. Although it had been a long time since she had lost her little son, the pain was still there, like a dull ache. It had taken a long time to fill the emptiness in her heart from losing that child. With each child she had, the pain lessened, starting when she had been given the opportunity to raise Mara-Joy as her own. She finally had a son to replace the one who had been born too soon when Alan-Michael was born.
r />   “Yes, but don’t upset her. She needs comfort now,” he said. “She has lost a lot of blood and she needs to build up her strength.”

  Jobeth nodded and wiped away the fresh tears. Shawna went back to the chair in the hall to sit and wait as Jobeth entered the bedroom.

  “Doctor?” Joanna stopped the short, heavy man as he was opening the front door to leave. She had been waiting patiently for the doctor ever since he had told her mother about Mara-Joy’s miscarriage. Something was forming in her mind and the doctor’s answer would give her the truth she already believed.

  Constance, who had been waiting with her sister, came to stand beside Joanna.

  He turned to the two girls standing before him. Now these two looked like sisters, he thought to himself. Not like the goddess in the room upstairs. He flushed when he thought of the poor creature he had just left. My God! He thought. The poor girl had just delivered a dead fetus and nearly died in the process. He recalled the enormous anguish the young woman expressed as he broke the horrible news that her pregnancy had ended.

  “Yes, yes.” He shuddered, feeling sorrow for the devastated creature upstairs.

  The older girl’s eyes quizzed him. He could feel her reading his thoughts and he wanted desperately to leave this house.

  “How far along was my sister?” Joanna asked, her hands resting on her hips.

  There was no point in beating around the bush, the doctor was obviously uncomfortable and would flee without giving her the information she needed if she pussyfooted around.

  He looked at the girl who could be only twelve or thirteen and shuddered again. He must be becoming a pervert or something. The youngster before him was no raving beauty like her sister upstairs, but there was something about her too. He looked at the girl about two years younger standing behind the other.

  He sighed relieved. She was a child still. He felt nothing.

  “Doctor?” Joanna started to become annoyed. What was it with men that they had a hard time looking at her face? Was she that dull that they couldn’t give her the decency of answering her questions.

  “Three months, possibly four.” He placed his hat on his head. “Funny she didn’t say anything.” He looked again at the older girl and felt his loins pull. “Well, good-bye girls.” He flushed and ran out of the house as fast as he could, hoping he would never lay eyes on either sister again.

  “Why that…” Constance whispered. “No wonder they got married so suddenly.” She turned to Joanna, who was deep in thought with a smile spreading over her face. Constance smiled too. “Shall we tell Mama?” She beamed, her hands clutched together.

  “Of course not, silly.” Joanna simpered at her younger sister. “Mama would be blind if she didn’t figure it out for herself by now. Besides, she will forgive her darling Mara-Joy in an instant. No, we have to be patient, but we will get her. We have to get her. This is just more fuel for the fire. We have to be smart about this, Constance. Mara-Joy has always been one step ahead of us. We have to think like her. Be one step ahead of her.”

  Constance looked at Joanna as she squeezed Constance’s hand tightly, a smile spreading across her face.

  “Let’s go out to the shed. I have some ideas to toss around to you and I don’t want anyone interrupting us.”

  Constance nodded eagerly and followed Joanna outside into the bright sunshine.

  “We have to get all the information we can against her first. Then we damage her with something that is really significant to her and her alone,”

  Joanna remarked, sitting on a stack of wood. They were in the shed just out back from their residence. Constance was fiddling with some hay she sat on, looking anxiously at Joanna. She seemed to be thinking again, rolling Joanna’s words around in her head.

  The shed was small and damp and although the girls were sitting across the room from each other, their knees were nearly touching.

  “What would really hurt her?” Joanna tapped her cheek with her index finger.

  “I know,” Constance squealed, jumping to her feet and tripping on a piece of wood. She stumbled right onto Joanna’s legs.

  “Oh, this is brilliant. This is too brilliant!”

  She quickly jumped up and brushed the straw off her shorts.

  Joanna sat looking at Constance, egging her on with a huge smile, ignoring the pain in her legs caused by her clumsy sister.

  “But you will have to do it because you are the oldest,” Constance said more to herself than to Joanna. Plans were already formulating in her mind and she no longer took notice of Joanna waiting impatiently for her to reply.

  “Well, what?” Joanna squealed, jumping up and shaking Constance out of her thoughts.

  She looked at Joanna with a wicked smile creeping swiftly across her face.

  Joanna felt like hitting Constance for not telling her. The suspense was killing her. If Constance had an idea, then it would work. She was the smartest in the family. But what did Joanna’s age have to do with her sister’s schemes?

  “What’s Mara-Joy the most proud of? Or, should I say, who is she the most proud of?” Constance asked coyly, resting her hands on Joanna’s legs. She leaned forward egging Joanna on, pressing all her weight down on her legs.

  Joanna stood wide-eyed, unable to answer.

  “Chad, of course,” Constance said matter-of-factly, standing and taking straw out of her blonde curls. Joanna stared opened-mouth, confused.

  “Chad? What could I do to take Chad away from Mara-Joy?” Joanna thought back to the young man. He had seemed lost on his wedding night. Oblivious to the whole affair.

  “Become Chad’s lover.” Constance avoided Joanna’s astounded face and continued. “You see how she brags about her marriage. We have just found out that her marriage is a sham. They obviously got married because she was pregnant. What better way to ruin Mara-Joy than to expose her marriage for the joke that it is? Steal Chad away from her. Become his mistress.”

  Joanna looked wide-eyed at Constance, unable to believe what she heard. Her mouth suddenly felt dry and pasty.

  “His lover? Me?”

  “You can do it, Joanna. With time.” Constance paused.

  “You’re too young right now. You will have to be at least fifteen or sixteen. Then you will have developed pretty much into the woman you will be. You will have to get to know him. Be friendly to him. That will be hard since your first meeting was a disaster.”

  Joanna blushed, remembering her outburst.

  Constance continued, “But it could work. There is no baby anymore, and if that was the reason they were married,” she shrugged, “then getting married was a waste.”

  “I don’t know if I could do it, Constance. It’s so…extreme.” Joanna twisted her fingers painfully. “To be his lover? I don’t even care for him that much.”

  “Well, that is the only thing that would hurt Mara-Joy, Joanna. Think about it. There is nothing else you could do to hurt her.”

  Joanna lowered her eyes. How badly did she want to get back at Mara-joy?

  Constance reached out and touched her arm.

  “Listen, Joanna. You don’t have to make up your mind right now. There is time. You never know, maybe Chad is a decent person. Just because he married Mara-Joy doesn’t mean he is totally ruined. He is cute.”

  Joanna smiled. He was kind of cute.

  “All right, I will do it.”

  Constance clapped her hands and hugged Joanna tightly.

  Joanna stood silently taking in her sister’s plan, as Constance droned on. She felt weird, unreal, like she had just made a pact with the devil and there was no turning back.

  “Mama, Mama,” Mara-Joy sobbed sincerely from her little bed. The cheery bedroom decorated in pink and blue seemed too buoyant for the events that had taken place within its walls.

  Jobeth stood at the doorway, wanting to seize her daughter and sweep her away to some time in the future. The tears she had hoped not to shed in front of Mara-Joy were again welling up.


  “My baby is dead.” Mara-Joy looked to her mother. “Dead, Mama, dead,” she cried, reaching out for Jobeth. Jobeth, the mother hen that she was, ran to the aid of her daughter and fell at the foot of Mara-Joy’s childhood bed.

  “Why didn’t you tell me, dear?” Jobeth sobbed while she looked at Mara-Joy’s stricken face. Mara-Joy sat up and new tears slid down her already streaked face.

  “I didn’t know, Mama.” Mara-Joy lied reaching for her mother’s hand. “I didn’t know that Chad’s child was growing in my womb.” She started to wail, her heart truly breaking.

  “Now, now,” Jobeth said, cuddling the weeping girl. She placed her arms around Mara-Joy’s shivering shoulders and held her damp head to her breasts. “There will be others babies,” she cooed, rocking back and forth.

  Mara-Joy sat straight up and looked at her mother, holding back real tears of sorrow.

  “No, Mama, there will be no babies,” she cried. “The doctor said if I do--” she stopped, seeing the look of horror on her mother’s face.

  “Go on, dear,” Jobeth whispered her eyes downcast, not wanting to hear that her baby would never be holding her own in her arms.

  “If I did,” Mara-Joy sobbed, “it could kill me next time.” She looked into her mother’s eyes and with all her heart asked, “Oh Mama, what am I going to tell Chad?” Mara-Joy looked at the blue ceiling, the images of the child she was to have bursting like frail bubbles before her eyes. “He so wanted children of his own. He was hoping I would get pregnant right away. Now he’ll never have a son, and I’ll never have a daughter.”

  “Mara-Joy,” Jobeth said, seizing Mara-Joy by the shoulders and hugging her tightly. “I don’t know what to say, my darling, this is just so unfair.”

  “Mama, my heart is breaking. How do I make it stop? I can’t handle the pain, Mama. Please make it stop,” Mara-Joy implored, pounding her weak fist against her thighs.

  “I can’t, Mara-Joy. I can’t,” Jobeth sobbed, hugging her tightly. And she couldn’t. For once in Mara-Joy’s life, Jobeth couldn’t fix what was ailing her. And for the first time in Mara-Joy’s life, she couldn’t get what she wanted, and the one thing she secretly wanted most was a baby.

  Chapter 30 —