Breath of Scandal

“It’s no joke, I assure you. Harvey cleared my things out of the apartment in Savannah and brought them with him. Whatever is left, you can have. Come on, Harvey. We’ve waited long enough.”

Harvey, who hadn’t said a word, picked up the suitcase and turned toward the door. Velta followed.

“Mama, wait!” Jade put Graham back in his crib and ran after her mother, catching up with her at the side of a gray sedan.

“Are you out of your mind?” Jade asked. “You can’t just run off like this.”

“I’m an adult. I can do whatever I want to.”

Jade fell back a step. Velta was throwing up to her words she herself had recently spoken, and on more than one occasion, particularly when she had informed Velta that she had every intention of keeping the baby.

“Don’t do this,” Jade whispered urgently. “I know you’re only doing it to spite me, Mama. I need you. Please don’t go.”

“You need me all right. But that’s just too bad, Jade. You brought all your troubles on yourself. I’m not going to babysit while you trot off to college every day.”

Jade took another tack. “Forget that I need you to help me with Graham. I’ll make other arrangements,” she added quickly. “But, Mama, please think about what this means to you.”

“Is it hard for you to accept that a man finds me attractive?”

“Of course not. But maybe you want it so badly that you’re seeing something that’s not really there. Have you thought of that? At least give yourself time to get to know him better.”

“No more time, Jade. It’s long past time I did something for myself. I’m tired of paying for your mistakes. Because of you, I had to quit my job, sell my house, and completely relocate.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” Jade protested in a hoarse, agonized voice.

“You got yourself raped, then insisted on keeping the baby when the best thing for everybody would have been to get rid of it.”

“It wouldn’t have been best for me, Mama. I wanted Graham. I love him.”

“Well, Harvey loves me,” Velta insisted. “After all I’ve been through, he wants to show me a good time.”

Jade felt a responsibility toward her mother. It was her duty as a daughter to interfere in order to prevent a disaster, even if it meant offending her. Better her mother’s feelings were hurt than her life ruined.

“He’s unworthy of you, Mama,” Jade said. She gave Harvey’s oily hair and shiny suit a contemptuous glance. “He preys upon people’s emotions for profit. He barters in human life. Is that the kind of man you want to marry? Daddy was awarded the Medal of Honor. He was a hero. How can you even think of—”

“Your hero father killed himself, Jade.”

“That’s not true!”

Velta’s eyes narrowed maliciously. “We were fine until you came along. Then, Ron couldn’t stand living with us, so he blew his brains to smithereens. So you’ve got two suicides marked up to you, Jade. In fact, you’ve given me nothing but trouble since the day you were conceived. I’m not going to live the rest of my life in your wake of destruction.” Pushing Jade aside, she opened the passenger door and got in.

Harvey closed it soundly behind her, then went around to the driver’s side and slid behind the steering wheel. Velta kept her head averted as they backed up and pulled away.

“Mama, no!” Jade charged after the car, but it sped off. “Mama!” she screamed. She watched until they were out of sight, then stood staring after them until Graham’s cries penetrated her stunned disbelief.

Mindlessly, she trudged back into the tacky cabin. Graham was waving his chubby arms in a fit of pique. His mouth was wide open, showing his only two teeth. Jade cooed to him as she changed his diaper. Apparently, in her haste to pack and leave with Harvey, Velta hadn’t bothered to change him the whole time Jade had been out.

She sat with her baby on the bed and rocked him while waiting for his bottle to warm. When it reached the desired temperature, she poked the nipple into his mouth. He attacked it eagerly. Because of his voracious appetite, she had weaned him from breast milk long before she was emotionally ready to stop nursing.

He clutched at her blouse, his stubby fingers digging into the material. As he sucked at the rubber nipple, she held him close so that she would get a sense of feeding him from her body.

It would forever remain a mystery to her how something so beautiful and sweet as he could have been spawned by something so ugly as the rape. She rarely associated Graham’s conception with the incident, because to do so would force her to speculate on whose seed had taken root in her body. She never wanted to kn

ow.

Divorcing Graham’s origin from the rape had occurred that afternoon at Georgie’s house. She had told Jade that she prided herself not only on her precision with medical instruments but on her instincts about people. On that afternoon, her instincts had prompted her to ask the young, frightened Jade if having her baby aborted was what she really wanted.

“You just don’t seem the type o’ girl what usually comes to me, Miss Sperry. That trashy Patrice Watley even said so. Are you sure you want to go through with this?”