These Things Hidden. Heather Gudenkauf

touch my face. “Alli,” she cried. I pulled away from her fingers. I felt so sick, like I would combust if anyone touched me. I know that pulling away from Brynn hurt her feelings. She was always so sensitive. In an odd way, I could understand why she did what she did. This was way more than a fifteen-year-old girl, especially one like Brynn, should have had to shoulder. I prayed that for her sake she didn’t tell anyone she had helped me through the delivery. There was no reason why we should both get in trouble for what really was my own fault. As I carefully slid into the back of the police car, I could hear Brynn’s awful cries.

      I haven’t spoken to or seen Brynn since.

      I ended up fainting in the police car, so our first stop was the hospital, where I got thirty stitches and spent the next three days hooked up to an IV full of antibiotics. The way the nurses and the doctors looked at me while I was in the hospital was new. Everyone took adequate care of me; they were all too professional to do anything else. But there were no gentle touches, no cool hands laid against my hot forehead, no plumping up of pillows. Just anger and disgust. Fear. My parents’ original shock at me being led away by the police was replaced with outrage. “Ridiculous,” my mother hissed when the detective who came to the hospital to interview me asked if I was the one who threw the baby in the river. I didn’t say anything.

      “Allison,” my mother said, “tell them it’s all a big mistake.” Still I didn’t say anything. The officer asked me why there was a black bag full of bloody sheets stuffed into the garbage can in our garage. I didn’t answer. She asked me how I came to be nearly ripped in half, my breasts swollen and leaking milk.

      “Allison. Tell them you didn’t do this,” my father ordered.

      Finally, I spoke. “I think I need a lawyer.”

      The detective shrugged her shoulders. “That’s probably a good idea. We found the placenta.” I swallowed hard and looked down at my hands. They were puffy and swollen; they didn’t look like they belonged to me. “Inside a pillow case at the bottom of a trash bag.” She turned to look at my father. “In your trash can. Call your lawyer.” As she was leaving my hospital room, she turned back to me and said softly, “Did she cry, Allison? Did your baby cry when you threw her in the water?”

      “Get out!” my mother screeched, so unlike her usual composed, proper self. “Get out of here, you have no right. You have no right to come in here and accuse and upset us like this!”

      “Huh,” the detective said, nodding in my direction as she moved toward the door. “She doesn’t look so upset.”

      Charm

      Gus is fading quickly. “Where’s the baby?” he asks Charm when she comes home from the hospital.

      “He’s safe,” she reassures him. “Remember, he’s with that nice family now? They are taking good care of him.”

      Charm hears a rap at the front door. She lifts the pot of mashed potatoes from the stove top and goes to the door. Jane stands on the front steps, her black hair pulled back in a ponytail, carrying her bag of tricks, as she calls it.

      “Hey, how’re you doing?” she asks as she steps into the house. “Fall is in the air.” She shivers slightly and Charm takes her coat from her.

      “I know, and it’s only the end of August. We’re doing fine,” Charm responds. “Gus is in the other room watching television.”

      “Ah, food for the mind.” She smiles.

      Charm shrugs. “It helps pass the time.”

      “How’s he doing?” Jane asks, her tone turning serious.

      “He’s okay. Some days are better than others.”

      “How about you? How’s school going? Are you juggling everything okay? It’s a lot of responsibility for a twenty-one-year-old to be going to school and taking care of an old man.”

      “Hey, don’t call Gus old, it will hurt his feelings. We’re doing just fine,” Charm says, stiffening a little. She knows where Jane is heading with this. Jane brings up the subject of a hospital or skilled care facility nearly every time she comes to the house. “I call him three times a day and check up on him at lunch.”