“I was seventeen. Kenny was the father. You know, my ex who’s shacking up with my aunt now? I told you about him. You remember?”
“Yes,” Geren responded, reaching over to rub her back. He was elated that she didn’t flinch. “I remember you telling me about the dumb bastard.”
Tempest giggled slightly. Kenny was a dumb bastard. “I found out I was pregnant less than two weeks after I found out they were sleeping with each other. I was devastated.”
Geren began to cry silent tears. He didn’t want Tempest to know he was weeping. “You’ve been through too much, baby. Too damn much!”
“Not only had I lost the only person I’d ever cared about and the only lover I ever had, but I lost him to my own flesh and blood. I never thought she would ever hurt me like that. When I was little, Aunt Geraldine would spoil me and take me places my parents refused to go. Then she turned around and stabbed me in my back.”
“I’m so sorry, baby.” Geren lay down on the bed beside Tempest, draping his left arm over her waist and burying his nose in her hair. It smelled sweet, as usual. “What happened once you found out? Did you tell him?”
“Hell, no. I panicked. The only person who knew was Janessa, but she couldn’t help me. It was like the blind leading the blind. I was too embarrassed and ashamed to even tell my parents about it.”
Geren brushed her hair with the fingertips of his other hand. “So what happened to the baby you were carrying?”
Tempest sucked in a deep breath. Geren could feel her heart racing through her back, which was pressed against his chest.
“Geren, looking back on it now, I realize I made so many crucial mistakes, but I was just a child myself. I’ve been dealing with the emotional and sometimes physical scars ever since.”
“Take your time, sweetheart.”
“I didn’t have enough money for an abortion clinic, and having the baby was out of the question. I would’ve died from shame if everyone found out, especially since the whole world, at least my whole world, knew about Kenny and Aunt Geraldine. Kenny made me feel like the dirt on the bottom of his shoes, and so—”
“So?” Geren didn’t want to press Tempest, but he knew from experience that getting things out in the open always helped to alleviate stress.
“Janessa found out about this place in Southeast where they did abortions dirt-cheap: just fifty dollars. I knew it sounded shady from the start, but that’s about all I had to my name after scraping together loose change from my mother’s dresser drawers and the little bit I had in mine.”
“So you had an illegal abortion?”
Tempest startled Geren when she flipped over suddenly. She was equally as startled to discover his face was just as tear-drenched as hers.
“Geren, you should’ve seen the place. It was absolutely horrid. We got to the building, and it looked like it should have been condemned. There were these huge rats everywhere, and the carpet smelled like urine. People were shooting up in the hallways, and girls, babies really, were sucking men’s dicks on the stairs for drug money.”
Tempest started trembling in fear. “You don’t have to finish,” Geren said, rubbing his hand up and down her arm and kissing her on the bridge of her nose. “This is making you too uncomfortable. I understand where this is going.”
“No, I need to tell you,” Tempest pleaded.
Geren sighed. “Okay, if you must.”
“We got into this apartment on the third floor, and it was the filthiest, most disgusting place I’d ever seen. This older, nasty-looking man with a mouthful of rotten teeth demanded the fifty dollars and then told me to lie on this table in the middle of the living room floor. The table was already covered with bloodstains.” Tempest wiped her face on the edge of the pillowcase before continuing. “I did it, and the entire time he was torturing me, Janessa held my hands. I kept my eyes shut. I didn’t want to see. It hurt like hell. Later, Janessa told me he used this rusty coat hanger and a pair of pliers.”
Tempest started weeping loudly, and Geren drew her tightly to him, kissing her lightly all over her face.
“I could barely walk straight when we left there. He didn’t even let me rest five minutes before he kicked Janessa and me out. I saw another girl coming up the stairs who looked even younger and more frightened than me. She was all alone. I wanted to tell her not to do it because I knew something was terribly wrong the second I got up off the table. My insides felt like they were about to fall out, and there was blood trickling down both of my legs.”
“Oh, baby!” Geren exclaimed, unable to keep his emotions under control. “If I ever find that butcher, I’ll kill him!”
“Somehow, Janessa managed to get me home. My parents were still at work. I passed out in pain. Janessa stayed with me and tried to keep my mother from coming into my room that evening, but she demanded to be let in. I guess it was her sixth sense or something. My mother’s screams woke me up. My entire mattress was soaked in blood. I remember my father barreling into the room and bursting out in tears. That was the first and only time I ever saw him cry. They called 911, and an ambulance took me to the hospital.
“They stitched me up and gave me all types of painkillers. The entire time, all I could worry about was the shame I felt. Now everyone knew, or they would know, and I just wanted to shrivel up and die.”
“I wish I could have been there for you, sweetheart. That must’ve been so devastating.”
“It was, but not half as devastating as when the doctor told me that my reproductive organs were damaged beyond repair, and that I would never be able to conceive another child.” Tempest reached down and rubbed her flat stomach. “I killed my baby that day and all the babies I might have had, all in the space of one afternoon.” Tempest gazed at Geren and felt like only half of a woman. How could he possibly still want to be with her? “So there you have it. That’s why I flinch in pain sometimes while we’re making love, and that’s why I’m so adamant about taking care of Janessa and Kensington and the rest of them.”
“And that’s why you work at the center?”
“Yes, I never want another young woman to feel like she has no one to talk to. I never want to see someone else go through what I did. But they do. Tens of thousands of them every year. I can’t stop it, but I can try.”