Day 25

I can barely remember any of this because I ended up in ICU after the medical team had a hard time stopping my bleeding. For some reason my uterus refused to contract as rapidly as it was supposed to and I came very close to bleeding out. I remember feeling lightheaded and a nurse checking me out only to discover I’d bled too much. After that things got every fuzzier and when I came to in ICU only to see Jude crying over me. He’d been shaken to the core by my turn for the worse.
When I came to he told me how many pints of whole blood I’d been given and that after different treatments and so much blood replacement my body had finally responded. But he’d been told if the bleeding didn’t stop they’d have to do an emergency hysterectomy.

Poor Jude had starting thinking he might lose me and he’d broken down. But he’d finally seen the babies and was happy to tell me that all three were healthy and as developed as could be expected. Looked Rachel might be developing jaundice but all three babies were stable.

My week in the hospital passed quickly between visits from friends and coworkers plus Momma and Jude stopping by several times a day. But on the day Cynthia Rose came to see me I was glad neither Momma or Jude were there, I could see as soon as she stepped into the room that while she was happy for me there was a great underlining sadness in her very posture. She was dressed more like her old self again, high heels, short hip hugging skirt and her hair was in a wild blonde mane suitable for a rock and roll music video.

When Cynthia Rose sat down in the chair next to my bed and pulled off her sunglasses I had to suppress a gasp. She sported a black eye poorly disguised by eye makeup. “Don’t” she said with a sigh, “Don’t ask me any about this.”

“Honey,” I said, on the verge of tears again, “How can I ignore that something monstrous is going on with you. Did Brad do this to you?”

She blinked back tears and said, “I can’t talk about it but I am dealing with this. Please trust me Emily. I’ll be alright. Please don’t tell Momma.”

We sat there and tried to pretend this was a regular normal visit, but the unspoken specter of what mysterious bad thing Cynthia Rose was dealing with made normality impossible. She gushed about the cuteness of her new nephews and niece and reacted in a shuddery grimace once I described what I’d been through physically in the last few days. Cynthia kept one eye on her watch, slipping out of well before Momma’s next visit.

I prayed silently for her as she left, wondering why the sudden change from ladylike demeanor and clothing back to the look of a stripper again. I had to believe that Brad had thrown her out and she went back to the only life as an adult she’d known, that involving exotic dancing in the casinos and the club circuit.

Who gave her that nasty black eye I didn’t know unless it was sustained in a battle with Brad. Perhaps things got out of control. I tried not to worry too much because I believed if the circumstances that Cynthia Rose found herself caught in were too bad she’d come to me for help.

Besides, even if it turned out that Cynthia Rose had left Brad and gone back to stripping at least I didn’t have to worry about her with Brad. I still had feelings of uneasiness without any real evidence over her relationship with Brad. And I knew she’d tell me what happened eventually. Cynthia Rose never could keep a secret or hold back her emotions very well.

Finally I was allowed to go home but I went without my babies. The hospital wouldn’t release any of them until they’d put on a bit more weight. So my days and nights revolved around either going into the hospital to breast feed them in the preemie nursery or pumping breast milk to give to the nursery to feed the babies when I wasn’t there.

But a month later the babies came home and we settled into life as a family. Thankfully Momma was there at first, I knew this was a hardship on her and daddy because they’d now been officially apart for the better part of over three months. Every week when Daddy called he begged Momma to tell him how much longer she would be away and she’d tell him she didn’t know how much longer it would be.

Her help was invaluable in the early days I was home with the babies. It seemed a strangely fitting thing that while I’d cared for many of my younger brothers and sisters from the time they were very small, she was caring for my three babies and I.

And I was so tired in those early days. I needed all the help I could get in order to try and recover enough to return to my job.

Towards the end of the first six weeks after we’d all come home from the hospital I started looking for an au pair, some girl going to night school who needed a chance to make money with free room and board, someone studying early childhood education or a related field. I’d interviewed a few people but hadn’t chosen anyone and I’d insisted that Momma sit in on the interview process because her input was important to me.

But instead of the two o’clock meeting with a new girl when the doorbell rang it was my father standing on the front steps.

“Daddy? What are you doing here?” I asked, feeling anxious, so far it had never been a good thing when he showed up at my home. I suspected he was there to take my mother home.

“Well, aren’t you going to invite your own father in and show me those grand babies?” he said with a smile.

I invited him in, stepping aside to allow him into my home but I felt very uneasy about Daddy’s sudden reappearance, remembering visits past.

And I had good reason to fear this visit because after he’d seen his first grandchildren and admired our beachfront home my father told us the real reason he’d flown to Bay St Louis, Mississippi. He’d come, just as I suspected, to bring my mother home. I was dismayed to listen to him pour on the guilt, see my mother’s face change from the joy and freedom she’d tasted here to a mask of duty, marital obedience and submission. Seemed some things just never changed.

While Daddy had accepted me back into the family fold and welcomed Jude in because we were now married and going to a Bible based church he made it clear he didn’t wish to see Cynthia Rose or Jake. To him they were both still dead. He was upset to find that Momma had seen both and been reconciled to both. Momma kept begging him not to judge Cynthia because she’d come out of her wild times and was now living a stable sedate life with her fiance, she would be respectable again soon.

I kept my mouth shut during all of this. Momma still hadn’t seen that Cynthia Rose had gone back to her old life. She hadn’t seen the revealing clothes, the tons of makeup, the high heels. On the days Cynthia had visited here after the babies came home she took care to dress conservatively again but I could see by the wildness in her eyes that something more was going on. She finally confided in me what is was.

She’d discovered that not only did Brad own an import business, he owned three local strip clubs, hard core clubs where the dancers stripped down completely nude. I recognized the name of the clubs, they had a bad reputation for drugs and some in Biloxi alleged that they were mere fronts for prostitution and drug trade. When the biggest club had been short handed recently Brad had insisted that Cynthia Rose return to her dancing roots and pull a nightly shift at the club until they hired more dancers. She’d resisted, they’d had a furious row and he’d hit her.

I wasn’t about to let either of my parents know that Cynthia Rose had gone back to stripping and that her fiance had started to abuse her if she didn’t go along with his plans.

The day I found out I’d done everything in my power to beg her to leave him, even offering to allow her to move in with us until she figured out her next move. She turned it all down, saying that Brad was under a lot of pressure from his various businesses and he was a sweetheart most of the time. He had been so sweet to her after hitting her just that once and he’d promised he’d never raise a hand to her ever again.

It was so hard for me not to put on my psychologist’s hat and tell her that truthfully once they start with the physical abuse it never stops. I simply offered my support, a sympathetic ear and somewhere to stay if things got worse.

But as Momma resisted going home quite so soon, Daddy let her know that he feared her being in the grasp of our worldly influence so much. “Martha,” he said, “I can see you’ve changed more than I would have liked during this trip and it makes me question just how good an influence our own daughter is.”

I’d remained silent until that point and I could well see a vein angrily throbbing in Jude’s now somber face. He was restraining himself as much as I had been.