The Atonement Child

  “Hungry?” Hannah said, smiling and opening cabinets. She needed to be busy, her hands full, doing something, anything.

  “Is he going to be mad, Mom? Is that why you didn’t tell him?”

  “Not at you.” She set waffle ingredients on the kitchen counter and reached for one of the nesting bowls. Opening a drawer, she took out a whisk. “It’s going to be a shock, that’s all.” That wasn’t the half of it, but what could she say?

  Dynah watched her mother work. She wished she would sit down and look at her. She wished she would be still and listen. Even when the waffles were finished and served, her mother had trouble sitting and eating. She had to get up again, pour more coffee, offer orange juice. Dynah supposed she and her mother dealt with catastrophe in different ways. Her mother moved, a bundle of energy, while she sat immobilized.

  Finally, when the dishes were rinsed and put in the dishwasher, her mother had no choice but to sit. Folding her hands, she looked at her daughter. Dynah saw the lines of exhaustion around her mother’s eyes and felt guilty. Maybe coming home was a bad idea.

  “Have you thought very much about what you want to do?”

  Dynah lowered her eyes. “Yes. No. I don’t know. I’m so confused, Mom.”

  Hannah took a deep breath, exhaling it slowly before she spoke. “You have options.”

  Dynah raised her head and stared at her mother. She blinked.

  “Dynah, there isn’t a soul who’d speak against you if you decided to have an abortion. Under these circumstances, who would dare?” She saw the shock on her daughter’s face and added quickly, “I’m not saying you should have an abortion. I’m not saying that at all.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “No. I’m not.” The words sounded feeble.

  “You’ve always said how wrong it is.”

  “When it’s used for convenience or birth control or a way of getting out of responsibility, yes, it’s wrong. None of those reasons apply in this situation, Dynah. You didn’t bring this upon yourself. You didn’t make a choice.”

  “God’s in control, isn’t He? Haven’t you and Daddy always said that?”

  With a shudder, Hannah looked down into her coffee mug.

  “This is where Ethan and I ran into trouble, Mom. He said God couldn’t want this for us and I should have an abortion. When I couldn’t, everything unraveled.”

  “Things might have changed, given time.”

  Dynah shook her head. “I don’t think so. I had a lot of time to think on the drive back. Even if I’d gone through with an abortion, it wouldn’t have made a difference.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Ethan didn’t love me anymore.” She raised tear-washed eyes to her mother. “In his eyes, I’m defiled.”

  “That’s not fair!”

  “It doesn’t have to be fair. It just is.”

  “It isn’t your fault, Dynah.”

  “I know that, Mom. If I’ve come to accept anything over the past months, it’s that. But circumstances don’t bear much weight with human emotions. I don’t want you to be angry with Ethan. He couldn’t help himself.”

  Bitter anger filled Hannah as she thought of another time, another man. “How can you make excuses for him? He could’ve helped you. Instead, he tossed you to the wolves. I can’t forgive him for that, and neither should you.”

  It was the first time Dynah had heard her mother speak this way. Seventy times seven, she had always said before—and now everything was different? Her words rang with rancor.

  “It doesn’t matter anymore,” Dynah said quietly. “Ethan’s no longer involved. My decision can’t be based on him.”

  Hannah forced herself to calm down. She had a hundred names for Ethan and what he had done or failed to do, but Dynah was right. They were on their own. Wasn’t that the way it always was? “What do you want to do, honey?”

  Dynah smiled bleakly, eyes shadowed. “I want to have someone else decide for me. I want the whole situation taken out of my hands. I want it over.” She shook her head. “Sometimes I think it’s all a bad dream and I’ll wake up and it will be over.”

  Hannah understood. Hadn’t she felt the same way? And even when she’d thought it was finally over, it wasn’t. It never would be.

  God never forgets. He just lulls you into believing He has, and then the blow comes from where you least expect it.

  Dynah.

  Oh, God, why Dynah?

  “I don’t know what to tell you, honey. I don’t know what to say except I’m sorry, so sorry this happened to you.” Why didn’t You just take me when she was born, Lord? Then the score would be even, wouldn’t it? Why didn’t You? Is it because You like to make people suffer? Does it please You to torment us?

  “Don’t cry, Mom,” Dynah said, reaching across the table to take her hand. “Please don’t cry.”

  Hannah grasped her daughter’s hands and struggled for control. “I love you, honey. You can’t possibly know how much I love you or how precious you are to me.” But You know, don’t You, Lord? And that’s why You’ve used my daughter. What better way to punish me? “I know abortion is a horrible thing, Dynah. I know. And I know how I’ve spoken against it. Only what other way is there for you to get your life back?”

  Dynah removed her hands slowly. “I can’t do it, Mom.”

  “Even if I go with you? I’ll stand by you. I promise. I’ll be right there in the room with you every minute.” Even if it kills me.

  “I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because God hasn’t released me.”

  Hannah felt the punch against her heart and put her hand there, pressing. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve laid it all before Him, and He hasn’t given me an answer. I keep praying, but He won’t talk to me. So I have to wait. I have to wait on Him.”

  “Every day you wait will make it more difficult.”

  “I know, but I can’t help it, Mom.”

  Hannah stared at her daughter helplessly. Oh, God, what are You doing to us? What are You doing?

  Douglas called later in the day. He had barely two words for Hannah before informing her he had made reservations at Alioto’s Restaurant. For him and Dynah. Though she felt rejected, Hannah said she thought it was a nice idea. Dynah had always loved going there from the time she was a child. She’d always delighted in watching the small fishing boats come in and out of the dock. Douglas said they would walk Pier 39 and shop and then take in a movie, something PG and lighthearted to lift his daughter’s flagging spirits.

  He didn’t need to say the rest. She understood. Her feelings didn’t matter. She could sit home by herself and be miserable. She didn’t have to drag him down into that pit with her. Not again. He didn’t ask what was bothering her. He didn’t want to know. Or maybe he thought he did. He always thought he could read her mind, but he didn’t know the half of it.

  Hannah made Dynah promise not to say anything to her father about the pregnancy. “Make this a special evening. Put this whole thing out of your mind for a few days. Let me talk to him about it first.”

  Confidence chipped away, Dynah gave in, afraid. Her mother wouldn’t argue so strongly if she wasn’t convinced something horrible was going to happen when she told her father the truth. So Dynah remained silent. She would pretend to have a wonderful time. She would make small talk and act as though a nice Crab Louie and a Harrison Ford movie were all she needed to cheer her up and make her forget.

  “Just like old times, isn’t it, princess?”

  Douglas watched his daughter’s wan face closely as she smiled at him and nodded. He wanted to believe her, wanted to be convinced, but he knew his daughter almost as well as he knew himself. She was flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood. And something was wrong, terribly wrong. He could feel it. Something was bothering her. No, bothering wasn’t strong enough. She was plagued. He saw it in her eyes, felt it in his gut, and no amount of avoidance on her part, or his, made it any better. It was there, like a gr
owing cancer eating away at their relationship, making them strangers to one another.

  Hannah knew what was wrong, he was sure of it. She’d probably known two minutes after being with Dynah. She’d known the night he called from Los Angeles. She’d known last night. And this morning. And she was keeping it secret.

  Why couldn’t she tell him? Did she think anything could destroy his love for Dynah? But there it was again. Hannah’s distrust. And now its seed was planted and growing in his daughter.

  Douglas held in his anger until Dynah was in bed. Asleep, he thought.

  “When are you going to tell me what’s going on around here?” he said, proud of the calm he managed as he spoke quietly through his teeth.

  Hannah’s gaze rested on his face, and he could swear she looked nearly panicked. “Promise me you’ll stay calm.”

  “I am calm.” On the surface. Like a thin layer of blackened stone covering molten lava.

  Hannah sat down on the far end of the couch, her hands clasped nervously. He wondered how long it would take her to get it out. It didn’t take long at all.

  “Dynah’s pregnant.”

  A fissure opened. “Ethan?”

  “No. Not Ethan.” She let out her breath slowly and looked at him, shattered. “She was raped.”

  “Raped?” He couldn’t take it in. He thought of Dynah, pretty, blue-eyed Dynah, his little angel. Who would want to hurt a girl like her? “When?”

  “January.”

  “How did it happen?”

  She told him every detail Dynah had related to her. The car in the garage undergoing repairs. The cold night. The bus ride and walk up Henderson Avenue. The man in the white car with Massachusetts license plates. The park.

  “Jesus,” Douglas said brokenly. “Jesus. God!” Leaning forward, he covered his face.

  “She doesn’t want an abortion, Douglas.”

  His head came up. “Well, she’s going to have to have one whether she likes it or not.”

  Hannah stared at him, and he saw the disbelief in her eyes. “What are you saying? She has no choice?”

  “You tell me what choice she has!” he said, angry, wanting to lash out. If the man who’d done this to his daughter were to suddenly appear in the room, he’d kill him. With pleasure. Slowly. As painfully as possible. Ways flashed in his head, a dozen of them, each more horrific and satisfying than the next.

  “It’ll be difficult,” Hannah said slowly, as though trying to sort through all the ramifications at once.

  “Not as difficult as if she doesn’t do it. Think about it,” he said.

  “It’s all I’ve been thinking about!”

  “Who’s going to want a girl who had a baby by some . . . some unknown assailant?”

  “It’s not her fault!”

  “I didn’t say it was!” Getting up, he paced, too agitated to sit. He wanted to break something, smash it beyond recognition.

  “But she has to suffer for it?”

  “Should I?”

  “What’s this got to do with you?”

  “Who do you think will have to take responsibility if she does decide to have it? Me! How’s she going to finish school or get a job with a baby? You’re going to be babysitting. You like that idea? You want to give up all your community work? I’m going to be paying the bills. Well, no thanks. I’m retiring in a few years. I’m not going to spend the rest of my life taking responsibility for a child forced on my daughter by rape. And neither is she!” He glared at her. “It might be different if it had been someone she loved.”

  The barb struck deep. “You’re angry at me, aren’t you?” Hannah said, and he saw her tremble. “It always comes back to that.”

  “Because you make it that way.”

  “She doesn’t want an abortion!”

  “So what’s she going to do?”

  “She doesn’t know what she wants to do, Doug.”

  “Then help her figure it out! You know more about handling these situations than I do.”

  She flinched as though from a blow.

  Douglas ignored her reaction, riding on his wrath. “Do you think she really wants this child? You’re out of your mind if you do. You just told me she never even saw the man’s face. What if he was black? What if he had AIDS? What sort of human being is it going to be? Who in their right mind would want it?”

  “Lower your voice. She’s upstairs.”

  He came closer, leaning down, jaw jutting. “If she refuses to have an abortion, people might even start wondering if it was rape. Have you thought of that? They might start thinking she and Ethan Turner went a little further than they intended.”

  He saw the jab hit home, watched it sink deep, twisting. Old wounds were ripped open, and she was bleeding again.

  “No, they won’t. Not about Dynah.”

  “Yeah, right. Haven’t you listened to the hens in our own church? They’d think it. They’d delight in thinking it. Especially about Dynah. She can kiss her reputation good-bye.”

  Hannah watched him pace. “Are you worried about Dynah’s reputation or your own?”

  He stopped and turned his head, glaring at her. “What’re you talking about?”

  Her eyes were cold. “Try this on for size. People would look at you as the father of an unwed mother.”

  He clenched his fist. “Is that what you think worries me? Don’t you dare compare me to your father. I’m nothing like him. You didn’t even trust him enough to tell him, not up to the day he died.”

  “From where I sit, you look the same. I should never have told you. All I did was give you a weapon! Why do you think I’m the one telling you instead of Dynah?”

  “Because you got in the way!”

  “Yes! I did! Because I knew what would happen! Because I can take it better than she can! I’ve had practice! Plenty of it!” He saw the tears come to her eyes—accompanied by rage. “I know what you think. I know how you feel. Don’t you think I know? I’ve lived with it for twenty-seven years!”

  Douglas glared at her, cold with wrath. “Oh, no, you don’t, Hannah. You’re not dumping that horse manure on my doorstep again. You were living with it long before I ever came on the scene. You want to blame somebody? Fine. But don’t blame me.”

  She let out her breath slowly. “This isn’t doing any good,” she said quietly, but it was clear how shaken she was. It always shook her to get this close to it. She wanted to retreat—he was sure of it—but she couldn’t. Because this time she was fighting for Dynah. Her daughter.

  His teeth clenched. Their daughter.

  “We have to help Dynah,” she said brokenly. “I don’t want to watch it happen all over again. I can’t—” Hunching over, she covered her face.

  Douglas stared down at his wife and felt bereft. Why did he always come out feeling in the wrong, as though he were to blame? He’d had nothing to do with what had happened to her or what she’d done. Still, it made no difference. He remembered Hannah’s asking him once if he would have taken her out a second time if she’d had an illegitimate child in tow. He had said, “Probably.” It hadn’t been the answer she needed, and amendments had never been enough to alter the damage done. She couldn’t forget. Or she chose not to.

  “I can’t deal with it, Hannah. I’m not going to—”

  “Daddy . . .”

  Douglas turned, his face going hot when he saw his daughter standing in the archway, a quilt wrapped around her. Her eyes were puffed and red from weeping. She looked at him beseechingly and then at her mother sitting hunched over on the couch.

  “I’ll go,” she said in a choked voice. “I promise I’ll talk to someone at one of those clinics. I—” She shook her head, her eyes spilling over with tears, her mouth trembling. She clutched the quilt more tightly. “Only please, don’t yell at Mom anymore. It’s not her fault. It’s not yours, either. I never meant to be a burden. . . .” Turning, she fled up the stairs.

  Feeling sick with shame, Douglas stood silent in his family room.

&nbs
p; Hannah stood up and walked slowly across the room without looking at him. He wanted to say he was sorry, but for what? For hating the man who had raped his daughter? For not wanting to see this pregnancy ruin her life? Granted, his emotions had gotten out of hand, and the past had reared its ugly head again, but was that entirely his fault? Maybe if Hannah had led into the news about Dynah instead of hitting him square in the heart. . . . He felt set up for the fall. A convenient scapegoat for all her problems.

  Douglas put his hand on her arm before she could pass. “Tell her I love her.”

  “Take your hand off me.”

  The coldness of her words struck him full in the gut. He gripped her harder, wanting to hold on to her, wishing just once she’d understand how he felt about all of it. “I love her as much as you do.”

  Raising her head, Hannah glared at him. Jerking free, she walked away from him and went up the stairs.

  Douglas didn’t leave early for work the next morning. Even after a long, hot shower, he felt like he was suffering from a hangover. Dressed for work, he sat at the breakfast nook table overlooking the small backyard flower garden, while Hannah, with the air of a martyr, stood at the stove scrambling his eggs. He hadn’t expected her to come downstairs and fix breakfast for him. He almost wished she hadn’t. He would have felt better if she’d stayed in bed with the covers pulled up over her head, the way they’d been when he went into the shower. Instead, he had to look at her rigid back and feel the glacial air in the room.

  “What time did you finally come to bed?” he said, sipping his coffee, the Wall Street Journal still sitting unopened beside his place mat. He had no stomach for news this morning.

  “Two.” She scraped the eggs onto a plate, put the frying pan into the sink, and delivered his meal to him without so much as a glance. His toast popped up. Returning to the counter, she buttered both slices, put them on a small plate, and delivered them along with a metal carrier containing three small porcelain pots of strawberry, grape, and plum jam. He could have his choice.