Cloud Nine Read Free Page A

did it one more time, and then at last it was daylight and she took me home. And on the way, she said I shouldn’t tell Mother, ‘as it’s all for your own good, and had to come sooner or later.’ I didn’t tell, but not for that reason. She’s always suspicious of me so I was afraid to. So I said nothing about it. And Burl visited two or three times, wanting to take me out, but I wouldn’t go. Then, though, I missed my period, and had a horrible idea why. So I waited and hoped and prayed, but then when no period came I had to go to the doctor and let him give me the test. So when it came back positive he said he had to call Mother. And then holy hell broke loose!
    “That was last week, and in all this time I haven’t had one kind word or one peaceful moment. She’s bad enough, the way she carried on, but he’s worse, the goofy ideas he has. They’re willing to have the abortion done, but to have an abortion in Maryland, on the basis that I was raped, I have to charge the guy, bring him into court. Because they won’t do an abortion just on the girl’s say-so to the doctor that unfortunately she was raped, or else they all would say that. But Mr. Kirby, I’d rather die— you know the stink it would kick up, but they don’t as I haven’t even told them yet how those other two helped Burl. They insist I have to charge him, and they’ve given him until sundown to say what he’s going to do—you’d think this was a Western.
    “And another thing: It’s in my father’s family to shoot in a case like this. His grandfather killed a guy once, for playing around with his grandmother. It blackened her name, but my father thinks it was wonderful. So now he feels he must carry on, except instead of shooting Burl he means to put him in jail.”
    “Or make him marry you?”
    “Oh no. Father knows I wouldn’t.”
    “Then, at sundown, what’s he supposed to do?”
    “That keeps digging at me. I can’t get it out of my head, he’s supposed to come up with dough. That’s what my father’s pushing him for.”
    “He doesn’t have any money.”
    She studied me, then asked, “Are you sure?”
    “...His mother has money, of course—she’s not rich, but she’s comfortably well-off. However, I can’t quite see her kicking in for this.”
    “And you have dough, Mr. Kirby?”
    “Not as much as you might think—I have a business, I make a living. But Burl is twenty-one, and I’m not liable for what he does. So—“
    “Mr. Kirby, will you kindly wake up? Come out of that dream you seem to be in? Maybe you’re not liable, but you can’t turn your back on Burl, and neither can your mother. He’s your brother, he’s her son, as this whole community knows, and you’ll have to stand by him, you and your mother both, whether you want to or not. And then what? You have a business, you say, but will you have one next week, when this stink really gets going? Who wants to do business with a guy who’s brother is sitting in jail, for raping a girl in her teens, with the help of two kind friends who are sitting in jail too? I tell you, my father means business, on my behalf, he says, but no matter whose behalf, you are under the boom!”
    “I’ve got it, I see it!”
    Not that I liked it much, but at least she’d made it clear, where I was at and why, so I could try and figure out what I might do about it. But little by little, as a few minutes went by, I felt things clearing for me—I wouldn’t get out of it cheap, but to get out at all was the main thing. She must have sensed I had thought of something, as she leaned forward and waited. “First,” I said, “You haven’t mentioned yet what you think should be done.”
    “Well I didn’t think I had to. If I don’t charge him and I’m not ’titled to the abortion, then I must have the child, which I’m willing to do—I hate it, but I’ve resigned myself, Mr. Kirby. I’ll go to the Crittenton Home, have it, and give it in for adoption—God knows,