Wild Abandon

The cramping was gone.

Surely what she had experienced had been caused by the excitement of the day, of bringing home a daughter, and seeing the other children being taken into homes where they would find the love they had never known before.

Now feeling totally all right again, Lauralee flipped her hair over her shoulders and walked over to Brian Brave Walker’s bed. “I’m fine,” she told Dancing Cloud over her shoulder. “Go on up to the loft with Hope. I have something else to do before coming to bed, myself.”

Dancing Cloud gazed at her for a moment longer.

He then held Hope in the crook of his left arm while pulling himself up the ladder with his right hand.

Lauralee knelt on her knees beside Brian Brave Walker’s bed. When she reached a hand to his brow and he flinched, she drew her hand slowly away.

She gazed into his large, dark eyes. “I do love you, Brian Brave Walker,” she murmured. “And because I do, I wish to teach you a bedtime prayer that my mother taught me so many years ago.”

“Is a prayer like a story?” Brian asked, leaning up on an elbow.

“Something like that,” Lauralee said, laughing softly.

“I like stories,” Brian Brave Walker said, scooting closer to Lauralee. “My mother told me stories at bedtime . . . stories of her people, who are also mine. Will you be telling me a prayer of your people?”

“I will be teaching you a prayer that belongs to all people, whether their skin is white, copper, red or black,” Lauralee said, smoothing the blanket up to his chin as he stretched out on his back.

The prayer had brought back memories of that day, when she had recited it over and over to help get her through the horrible ordeal of her mother’s rape. Now, however, Lauralee felt that maybe something as innocent as this prayer might bring her and Brian Brave Walker closer.

As she began saying the prayer, she watched his expression softening. “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep . . .” she began, smiling to herself when his eyes drifted closed. “If I should die before I wake, I pray the lord my soul to take.”

She placed a gentle hand on his brow, which he now allowed because he was asleep, then lightly kissed his lips. “Sleep well, my son,” she whispered. “Have sweet dreams of angels.”

As she rose from the bed she grabbed at her abdomen and gasped when pains shot through it, so severe, she became dizzy.

Then the ugly, pressing down cramping began in earnest. Soon it fully encompassed her abdomen. She teetered as she gazed up at the loft. She tried to cry out Dancing Cloud’s name.

But her voice came out as no louder than a harsh whisper, the intense pain having robbed her of her ability to talk normally.

Slowly, perspiration rolling from her brow, Lauralee inched her way to the ladder. She panted and sucked in a wild breath of air as she locked her hands on the sides of the ladder.

Gazing upward, wishing that Dancing Cloud would decide to look down to see if she was coming, she began slowly climbing the ladder. She pulled herself up one rung after another. She closed her eyes and panted hard, trying to bear the pain, a pain that was now an intense pressure, as though everything within her might fall out of her at any moment.

This isn’t any ordinary menstrual period, she thought desperately to herself.

“Lord, surely I am miscarrying,” she whispered. Despair filled her at the thought of losing hers and Dancing Cloud’s child before having even told him that she thought she might be pregnant.

When she finally reached the top of the ladder, Lauralee could just barely see beyond the small, dimly lit space. Then she realized why Dancing Cloud had not been aware of her efforts to climb the ladder, nor had he heard any of her muffled pleas for help. He was totally engrossed in the child. The baby was on the bed beside him, her blanket thrown aside, her fists and arms kicking as Dancing Cloud talked and played with her.

When Dancing Cloud sensed Lauralee’s presence, he turned to her. “She is awake but I do not believe she is hungry yet,” he said.

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His words drifted off and he lunged from the bed when he saw the fear in Lauralee’s eyes, the sweat pouring from her brow as she tried to climb the rest of the way into the loft.

“O-ge-ye!” Dancing Cloud cried, rushing from the bed. He bent low over Lauralee and placed gentle hands to her waist and helped her on up the ladder. “What is happening? You look as though you are in such pain. Why, my o-ge-ye? What is the matter?”

Tears pooled in Lauralee’s eyes as she stretched out on the floor of the loft on her back. She groaned as the pain worsened. She turned to her side and hugged her knees to her chest. The bearing down pain was so bad she felt she might truly faint at any moment.

Grabbing Dancing Cloud’s arm, she looked wildly up at him. “Warm some water over the fire,” she managed to breathe out between pains. “Bring me many towels. Many will be needed to soak up the blood.”

Dancing Cloud paled. His shoulders swayed from dismay. “Blood?” he said throatily. “What blood?”

Lauralee placed a hand to his cheek. “My darling Cherokee chief,” she managed in a drawn-out whisper. “I believe I am going to miscarry our first child. No . . . no . .. monthly flow has ever caused me such pain. It has to be more. I have seen it before. Miscarriages. This is the way a woman’s body reacts before aborting a child.”