Helen had just finished the dishes and was wiping her hands on her faded apron when she heard the whine of an unfamiliar car making its way up her mountain. Right on time, she thought. It had been in her tea leaves earlier that day: a stranger in trouble. She cocked her head to listen as she moved toward the door, stepping over Pete to pull on her galoshes. Pete's tail thumped once against the pine wood floor.
"Good dog," she said absently. It wasn't a local car; she knew the rattle and skip of every engine down in Ramsdell. This car ran quiet, humming rather than growling. "Must be one of those new-fangled electric cars."
The rented Prius glided out of the trees, bumping slowly across the exposed stones and dirt of the mountain road. Its smooth angles were somehow alien to the heavy pine boughs and Queen Anne's lace that closed around it, brushing the pearly green metallic finish. A skinny girl gripped the wheel, focused on inching forward. She looked vaguely familiar.
She had been crying. Helen could see the silvery residue of tears on her face, where the girl had just smudged them away. Helen thought--now who was she? Memories unfolded--a girl from Helen's class, pregnant, moving away from the shame, never coming back...
"She's Ida Jean's daughter," Helen murmured to herself. "Looks just like her daddy."
The Prius stopped, and the girl emerged unsteadily. She wore a pink and beige suit, her tan pumps completely inappropriate for the soft loam of Helen's front yard. She opened the screen door and waited, arms folded. Closer, it was clear that the girl was a grown woman. Still skinny, though. The fragrance of expensive perfume, sparingly applied, wafted from her silk scarf.
The young woman blinked at her. "Miz...Highwater?"
"I believe you need some tea."
She smiled unsteadily. "That would be welcome, yes."
Helen nodded. "You just get your son out of the car there and come inside."
The woman's smile crumpled, and the tears welled up again. "I'm...alone."
Helen looked more closely at the car. "I see. Well, you best come in then."
*
The boy followed her in anyway. He had a thick shock of black hair and an impish grin, and he kept walking around the house poking at Helen's knick-knacks. She shook her head and took the teapot off the stove. No respect from these young'uns any more. Pete whined and pawed at the door, and Helen let him out.
"I'm sorry to trouble you all the way up here, but Mama insisted you might be able to help me. I've seen so many therapists, doctors. I went to a medium. We even tried an exorcism."
"No, ma'am, none of that would help you." The boy poked one of Helen's pictures on the upright piano; it fell over. The young woman jumped at the noise. Helen set the picture back up and turned to her. "You take sugar? Honey?"
"Plain is fine, thanks."
"A little bit of sweet ain't going to hurt you." Helen poured the tea into her mother's bone china cups--paper-thin they were. The man on Antiques Roadshow said they were worth a fortune. He was right. Helen wouldn't give them up for anything. "You got a name?"
"Bethany. Bethany Moore." She dabbed daintily at the corners of her eyes with Helen's hand-embroidered napkin. "I'm sorry, I should have introduced myself right off."
"That's okay. I'm not like most folks, as I'm sure your mama told you." Helen motioned toward the boy, who was sitting on the piano stool, swinging his feet. "Is he your'n?"
Bethany looked away from the piano. "I'm afraid so."
Helen raised an eyebrow. "I expect you want to put him to rest."
"I - I don't know. I just want him to go away. He's everywhere. I see him at the grocery, the bank. He sits near my desk at work - I really can't get much done when he shows up. It's affecting my job." She sniffed. "I've tried everything. It's quite relieving to me that you can see him. I've been so fearful I was losing my mind."
"Naw, he's there all right. Does he have a name?"
She gnawed at her lip. "No. I never gave him one."
That was tragic. "He died too young, then, I reckon. Poor little guy. Well, that's a first step, then. He needs to be christened with a name. They all want an identity. His daddy in your life?"
"Um. No."
Helen nodded and lowered herself into the chair across from Bethany. "You ain't telling me everything, miss."
"He--he grows. When I first saw him, I thought he was an abandoned infant. I tried to pick him up. My hands went right through." She raised the cup to her lips, hand shaking. "Then I saw the hair, just like Mama's. I knew then."
Helen nodded. It wasn't the whole truth, but it was something. "A lock of that hair would help a lot, if you have one."
"Um." She put the cup down and clasped her hands in her lap, rubbing them together absently. "I don't."
Helen nodded. "Shame. Well, something he wore. A didey would be best, since it's the most intimate thing a baby wears. But everyone's using them disposable diapers today. Maybe a blanket or a pacifier?"
"No."
"Well, what did they have on him in the hospital? How about his medical bracelet."
Bethany shoved away from the table, jerking to her feet. She paced to the door and back, her face reddening.
"No. Nothing. I have nothing."
Helen waited.
"I aborted him, okay? He was never born. There was never nothing. He has no right to be!"
Over in the corner, the boy grinned impishly, then skipped outside.
*
Helen put Bethany in her guest room for the night, sprinkling crushed goat's beard in a circle round the bed. She made her a goat's beard tea as well, to keep away the dreams. Then she sat in her kitchen knitting as she listened to the crickets and peeper frogs outside. There was a bumper crop this year. At her feet, Pete slept.
By and by, the little boy slipped in through the open screen door. He looked at Helen. "Is she gone?" he whispered. His voice was sweet and high, and might have carried a tune to the rapture on high had he lived.
Helen nodded.
"Good. She wants me to be dead."
Helen nodded again.
"I didn't want to die, though. I wanted to live. And the only way I can is if I stay close to her." He looked at Helen cockeyed. "Maybe you could be my mother? You can see me."
"I wish I could, sweetheart."
He nodded, eyebrows dropping low over his eyes as he looked down. His feet scuffed at the kitchen floor. "Can't nobody help me?"
"I can help you rest. Maybe. If I get the right tools, and if you cooperate."
"I don't want to rest!" Across the room, Helen's cat clock fell off the wall, stilling the pendulum tail. "I wanna live!"
Helen just sat still, knitting.
"You blocked me from her."
"She needed rest."
"I was going to whisper in her ear tonight. I think maybe if she has another baby, I can live in that baby."
"That wouldn't hardly be fair to the new baby, though, would it?"
"It's not fair to me!"
Helen nodded. "Life ain't fair." She sighed; neither was death, she figured. "If you had lived, little one, I would have took you in, and been glad of it. You're a fine young'un, smart and handsome and full of vinegar. You would have made me proud."
"Yeah." He pointed. "What kind of dog is that?"
"Pete? They're called Weimaraners. Good dogs, smart. Track and hunt real good."
"I never had a dog."
Helen nodded again. The little boy paced around the kitchen; she'd never seen a spirit with so much nervous energy. He touched everything, the pots, pictures, flour bags, her aprons hanging up on the wall.
"I would have liked to have one," he burst out. "I would have fed him and cared for him and loved him and snuck him into my bed."
Helen smiled. "I figure you would."
The boy sighed. "If I--you know, go on--can I ever come back? Can I have a life?"
"That's between you and the good Lord, son. But I like to think, him being a loving God, he'll send you back. You deserve your chance."
Helen stayed up all that night. After his initial trepidation, Pete played willingly with the boy both indoors and out, and his hoots and Pete's barks kept her company while she went through her mother's old books, each handwritten and hand-illustrated with care. She dumped out Bethany's tea leaves and examined them. By the time the sun rose, she did not have a perfect answer, but she had an idea.
Over in the corner on her old settee, the boy and Pete had fallen asleep together.
*
It was probably the smell of bacon and eggs that drew Bethany from her bed the next morning; Helen looked up just in time to see her peeping around the corner. The woman didn't look like more than a child herself, her stylish close-cropped hair jutting out from her head. Helen waved her in.
Bethany glanced around, then placed herself far from the corner where Pete slumbered, his big paws sprawled at every angle. "I thank you for taking me on, Miz Highwater. Whether you're able to--get rid of him or not, I'll gladly pay you."
Helen put down the spatula, fighting back an unfamiliar emotion. Anger. That was what it was. This woman had gotten rid of her child before he'd even had a chance to take a breath, and now she was looking to Helen to abort even his memory. It only took a few seconds to get herself under control; one did not work with the spirits for fifty years unless one could maintain a certain calm. She turned around.
"Miz Bethany. I do not want your money; I do not lay spirits to rest for money, but for the sake of their souls, and mine. I was given a gift, and I use it as well as I can. If I do this, I am doing it for the boy's sake, not yours."
Bethany's face tightened. "I see."
Helen gazed at her. "You wanna talk about it?" She picked up the skillet and carried it to the table, placing a generous portion of eggs on both plates. Bethany pushed the eggs slightly away, but picked up a corner of toast and nibbled at it. She smiled gratefully at Helen when she poured some hot coffee into both mugs.
"What do you want to know?"
"Well, we could start with why you did it. You know. The baby." Helen could not bring herself to say aborted, not with the boy right there, and she was too polite to say killed.
"It was difficult." Bethany sipped her coffee. "Mama, you know, had me after that boy ruined her, or, well, that's what they called it back then. She says she lost her mind over him, and then he laughed in her face when she told him. They didn't have abortions back then, at least they didn't have a clinic anywhere around us. She waited until it was too late anyway, and then her mama found out and sent her to Lexington to stay with her sister, my aunt. Mama raised me, but it was hard--so hard. She told me, all my childhood, that she never wanted me to go through that, that I should wait for marriage and ignore the boys.
"So what did I do when I got to college but lose my mind? He was cute, blue eyes and black--hair..." she glanced toward the settee despite herself. "He was the president of his fraternity, in law school, used to play football, and here he was noticing me. He took me out a couple times, you know, and then it turned into hook-ups."
Helen frowned. "What's a hook-up? Never mind. I can guess. Why on earth would you do something like that?"
"Like what?"
"Make yourself so--available."
Bethany giggled nervously. "Why, Miz Highwater, women have needs too."
Helen nodded, not out of approval but acknowledgment. "Go on."
"Well, I took precautions, you know. But still--well, the doctor said it was probably the antibiotics I had taken a bit back for--well, I had an infection. And they make birth control pills not work so well. It took me a couple months to admit that I was pregnant. But Tim loved me, you know? Or that's what I thought, until I stopped by his frat house one day and his fiance from back home was there." Bethany laughed bitterly. "He did help me pay for it, though. I would have really been in trouble if he hadn't given me the money. He was rich; he didn't miss it."
"So he wasn't interested in a baby either."
"Oh, God, no." Bethany took another sip. "Such good coffee."
"Out of a percolator, not one of them drip things. Little chicory in it, too."
"Well, it's a good thing I did it, because I would never have finished college. Went to law school, got my degree, started working in financial law. I make good money. I'm a CPA too. So you see, if you let me pay you, I won't even notice."
"You want to use money to--smooth this out--do me a favor. Give it to Catholic Charities or someone like that."
"Fine." Bethany had finally picked up on the tension. She fiddled with her toast, put it back on the plate. "What do I need to do?"
Helen took a bite of her eggs and chewed while she thought. "Not on your period right now, are you?"
Bethany frowned. "Well, that's a weird question. But no. I usually don't have one. It's the kind of birth control I'm on now."
"Shame. Then I'll need some of your blood. However you can get it to me. I need to make a homunculus." She was quiet a moment. "Don't suppose you could get some from the boy's father, could you?"
"Um. No. I think he lives in California now, or something."
"He married that fiance." It wasn't a question.
Bethany laughed. "No, actually. She dumped him. He wound up with some other girl after all. He came back to me for, you know, more, but I was already seeing--him." She nodded toward the settee. "I haven't been able to be with a man since that started."
Helen felt ashamed all of a sudden. This woman was in her own private hell. She might not realize how cruel she was being toward the dead child, but then, most of the living did not realize how their actions and thoughts affected the dead. It was Helen's place to teach them.
"I'm sorry, Miss Bethany. I was rude. You might be able to help me a bit. Do you remember how to make a biscuit?"
*
Bethany's grandmother had been the finest maker of soda biscuits in the county, and it had taken years for Helen to coax out her recipe. Bethany, it turned out, had her grandmother's touch, and they had a wonderful time making up biscuit dough.
It was a bit less wonderful when Helen cut a tiny slit in Bethany's finger and held it over the dough, then had Bethany knead it in. She showed Bethany how to shape the dough into the figure of a little boy, and they put the whole batch in Helen's ancient oven to bake.
When it came out, the biscuit boy was darker than the other breads. Bethany cradled it in her hands tenderly, as if it were a baby. "Now what?"
"You have to name it."
"It's bread."
"It's bread right now. You need a name for him, and you need to breathe on him, give him back the life you took."
Bethany's mouth turned down. "I never took a life. He wasn't alive."
"Then why is it that both you and I can see him?"
"Oh. Oh." Her eyes filled with tears, and one dripped on the homunculus. Helen breathed a silent prayer. That would help. "Oh, God, what did I do?"
Helen knelt at her feet. "You calm down right now. What's done is done--you can't un-cook this biscuit, and you can't undo what you did seven years ago. Our Lord told the sinners to go forth and sin no more, and that's all you can do. You need to give this baby a name. Now."
"I--I had a name for him. When I thought I was going to be with Tim."
"What was it?"
"Alexander." Her voice broke at the end in a sob. "Alexander, I am so sorry!"
Helen held Bethany's hands up close to her face. "Breathe on it. As our Lord breathed life into Adam, so shall you breathe it into this child of your'n." Bethany didn't resist. Gently, she blew on the biscuit, the way a child breathes fog on a window.
Helen glanced up. The boy in the corner had awakened and sat up, disturbing Pete, and was watching them intently. "Do it again. Name him again, louder."
The boy took a hesitant step toward them.
Bethany said, in a stronger voice, "Alexander!"
"Mama?"
She looked at the boy. "I am so sorry. I am so sorry, Alexander. I should have been stronger."
"Mama, let me touch it." Alexander reached toward the biscuit. And he was gone.
The biscuit-boy breathed, hesitantly at first, then more rapidly, like an infant. He was no larger than Bethany's palm.
Helen nodded. "That'll do."
Pete whined mournfully.
*
For the rest of that day, Bethany was a mother. She cradled the biscuit-boy, cared for him like a baby. She talked and sang to him, told him stories about his family and her own life, her dreams for him, all the things she had not been able to express before.
While she did that, Helen found a perfect spot outside. It was near the tree little Alexander had played around all night with Pete. She used a spade to mark out a small square, then dug a hole about two feet deep.
Back in the house, she found a cigar box and lined it with silk and linen and a little of her grandmother's lace. She went to the attic and found some old baby toys: a rattle, booties with googly eyes, a brightly colored palm-sized teddy bear. She placed those in the box. Every baby deserved something pretty to play with.
As the sun went down, she went looking for Bethany. She found her sitting on a log next to the little creek, chatting to the biscuit-boy as the water burbled cheerfully down the mountain.
"Miss Bethany, it's time."
Bethany looked up with surprise, then shock. "I can't keep him?"
Helen sighed and sat down. "You made your decision seven years ago. It may not have been a good decision, but it was a decision. You can't un-make it, I done told you that. I can help you lay your child to rest, but I can't fix what's broke beyond repair."
"Oh." She glanced down, saw the cigar box and winced. "Is that a coffin?"
"It is."
She got up and walked downstream, cradling the biscuit. "I don't want him buried."
"You gotta bury him. It's the right thing to do." Helen paused. "It's the loving thing to do. You need to let him go. He may have another chance, another life, if our Lord is as kind as I think he is."
Bethany stopped and sniffled. "You think if I have a baby, it'll be him?"
"No." Helen shook her head. "I don't think God will trust you with him again."
Bethany whirled to her. "That was a mean thing to say!"
"I thought you wanted the truth. It wasn't intended to be mean, it's what I think. You may have the blessing of carrying another soul beneath your heart, but you need to say goodbye to this one."
"I don't want him to go. I'll miss him too much. I won't get to see him grow up, or change, or anything anymore."
"You should have appreciated that when you could, Miss Bethany."
"Yes. I guess I should." She sat down, putting the biscuit carefully in her lap, and buried her face in her hands.
"Oh, God, what did I do? Why did I do that?"
"It was what you thought was right at the time."
"But you're right. What's done is--well, it can't be changed." Her voice was muffled, coming from behind her hands. "I guess--well, what happens now? What do we do?"
"We wait. God will take him at His own time."
Helen sat and watched with Bethany, sang songs to the biscuit-boy, as the sun dropped below the horizon. When the last beam faded between the trees, the biscuit-boy stopped breathing. A few bits crumbled off.
Bethany's voice caught. "Was that--it?"
Helen put her arm around the woman. "I think so. Here." She opened the cigar box. Bethany held the biscuit to her face one last time, then gently placed it in the box, moving the toys aside so it would fit.
"Thank you. I mean, for the box. And for helping me know--my son."
"My pleasure. And my duty."
"You must be so lonely."
"No. I'm never alone."
Bethany looked puzzled for a moment, then her eyes widened. "You mean--"
"I'm always surrounded by the dead. Yes."
"Well." Bethany looked around nervously. "Well, I guess we--need to bury him."
And they did. Bethany wept over the coffin, over the earth, over the little stone marker Helen had scratched "Alexander" onto. She swore she'd be back, with flowers. And then she walked out to the little Prius, tottering slightly on the tan heels.
Helen watched, frowning, as she paused a moment, jerking back from the car in shock. "But, Miz Highwater!"
The galoshes clapped against Helen's shins as she walked over to Bethany. The woman was staring into the back seat of her car, a smile growing on her face. "Miz Highwater! He's right here, and he's smiling back at me!"
Helen looked into the empty back seat.
"He has such a beautiful smile! My son!"
*
Jamie is the owner of conservativefiction.com and a Navy wife and mother of five. She has always been a writer.
Review by AudieCockings
Oct 7 2014
2 of 2 liked this
Things you can't undo...
This is a perfect short telling the often ignored fact of immense regret. There are things in this life that can't be undone. The subject of this story is paramount among those things. If only the aftermath was shared with women before they throw away the love of their lives. I really enjoyed how the author illustrated that hasty decisions such as these leave a lifetime of scars. But she well presents the morbid subject with a tenderness only a mother could offer...I enjoyed reading it very much.
Review by theloniousmonk
Apr 3 2014
Like This?
Beautiful
Thanks for the blessing. The law of unintended consequences illustrated so well.
Review by jnampion
Apr 3 2014
Like This?
Awesome
Not a lot more to say....
Review by ffleming
Mar 8 2014
1 of 1 liked this
Consequence of Choices
A very devastating look at the consequence of the choices we make. I was riveted from beginning to end.
Review by ErichForschler
Mar 3 2014
1 of 1 liked this
Haunting.
Definitely an interesting and provocative piece. It planted questions in my mind about "what happens when...?" Humans are arrogant enough to think we know the answers. It's a little sad, but necessarily so. Overall, the calm cadence of the prose makes it seem that much creepier. Very good story.