Unwelcome Child
by Terese Pampellone
"The most chilling study of motherhood since Rosemary's Baby" by Scott Nicholson,
"Sharp, smart, impossible to put down, THE UNWELCOME CHILD is a genuine chiller of a ghost story" by Tamara Thorne
Sneak Peak & Excerpts from the Unwelcome Child
Martha’s Vineyard, Winter of 1919
Sarah stood at the window that looked out over the ocean. The midwinter sun had set, and the grayish sky was slowly turning black. Her palms and forehead were resting against the icy glass, and the cold made her head throb and her hands ache. But no matter the discomfort, she willed herself to stay pressed against the pane. “Don’t take my baby.”
Sarah rolled her forehead, so she could see the pleading girl lying in the cot, and the tall grim figure of her mother towering over her. The girl’s dark hair was plastered against her white skin, and her eyes shined like wet stones as she clutched a fistful of Mrs. Clayton’s black dress.
“Caryn let go,” her mother said in her deep, quiet voice. “This is doing you no good.” As she pulled Caryn’s hand from her dress and pressed it back against the girl’s chest, she turned to Missy.
“I need her quiet.”
“But ah giv’er what ah shood mum,” Missy answered in her thick Scots brogue.
Mrs. Clayton looked back down at Caryn, whose hands were now balled up under her chin, her eyes shimmering with fear. Mrs. Clayton reached out and caressed the girl’s damp forehead.
“Just do as I say Missy. Another tablespoon should do.”
Caryn shuddered at her touch, just as she had on her arrival when Mrs. Clayton had taken her hand to help her down from the carriage. In just that momentary press of flesh, Caryn felt something deep inside recoil, as if the life growing in her belly had divined the purpose of those hands. She wasn’t the only one to feel this way. She’d noticed whenever the tall, austere woman would enter a room, conversation would cease, eyes would drop, and even the most boisterous girl would become as mute as a nun who’d taken a vow of silence. In spite of her feeling of loathing, she forced herself to take hold of Mrs. Clayton’s rough hand in both of hers.
“Mrs. Clayton, I can work for my keep.”
Mrs. Clayton pulled her hand away and placed it on Caryn’s belly, already a small hill at four months, and looked into Caryn’s eyes.
“There’s a lot more at stake here than a matter of money Caryn. A woman’s corruption taints not only her own soul, but that of her child’s as well.”
Missy came over with a spoonful of medicine and held it to Caryn’s mouth, but the girl knocked it away. The spoon went clattering across the wood floor as did the bottle, leaving a trail of dark liquid. Missy’s forehead puckered in fury.
“Now look what ya dun!”
Caryn tried to get out of bed, but Mrs.Clayton pulled her easily back.
“Never mind, Missy. Hold her down on your side. Sarah,” she called over her shoulder. “fetch us the ties.”
Sarah hesitated. Caryn was struggling now, and hollering, but Sarah knew it was no good. She knew her mother’s grip, and the girl’s thigh flesh squeezed out between her mother’s thick fingers like soft white dough.
“Sarah, now!”
Sarah grabbed the leather ties down from a hook on the wall and brought them over. She stood, as if unsure of what to do, as if she’d never done this before, as the girl screamed a piercing “NO!”
“Ah fer the luv of . . . ya got to be quiet Miss Caryn! Yu’ll wake not oonly the babes in the nursery but the dead too!”
“Feet first, then the hands,” Sarah’s mother instructed before turning her face to the hysterical girl. “Caryn, if you don’t take the medicine quietly, we’ll give you an injection.”
“It’s not right! You have no right,” the girl shouted back and then raised her head to see Sarah tying her feet to the bed railings.
“And your parents have the right to not have a whore for a daughter,” Mrs. Clayton said, her tone calm and resolute.
Caryn stopped struggling, and her mouth slackened as she looked up at Mrs. Clayton’s implacable face.
“But . . . I’m not a whore Mrs. Clayton. We were going to be married. Don’t you see?” Mrs. Clayton moved out of the way so Sarah could tie her hand to the iron railing above her head. Caryn looked at Missy. “We were going to be married.”
Missy’s dull, heavy-lidded eyes showed her no compassion, either. With a baleful expression, she addressed Mrs. Clayton on the other side of the cot. “You want me ta prepare tha other, mum?”
Mrs. Clayton nodded, and as Sarah tied the last tie, Caryn grasped her wrist.
“Sarah?”
Sarah’s fingers fumbled, and she had to retie the knot. She could feel the girl’s hot breath on her neck, but she resisted looking at her face. When she was done, she stepped away with her gaze trained down onto the floor. Missy came over with the hypodermic, and Caryn began to whimper. She struggled once again with the ties, but Sarah had tied them well, as her mother had taught her. Missy handed Mrs. Clayton the hypodermic.
“When it’s all over and done with, you’ll understand it was for the best,” Mrs. Clayton said, as she pierced a pale blue vein in the crook of the girl’s arm.
Caryn inhaled sharply, but a moment later her lids began to droop, her muscles relaxed and her head fell slowly to the side. Her half-opened eyes seemed to rest accusingly on Sarah, who stepped farther back into the shadows. A gusty wind shook the window panes. She shivered and looked out, where the wind was whipping the black ocean up into large swells. She felt something brush against her skirts. It was their Tabby, Patty. Sarah picked the cat up and felt the comforting vibration of Patty’s purring against her chest. “There you are, Miss Caryn,” Missy said bandaging her arm. “It’ll all be doon foor, and ya kin go back to yer people holdin’ yer head high.”
Sarah turned away and hid her face in the cat’s soft fur. Her mother had warned her about keeping company with the guests; they were girl’s of “bad character.” But Sarah had liked Caryn. She told Sarah she had pretty hair, and enjoyed talking with Sarah about babies. Her first day here she wanted to see the nursery, only it was against the rules. No one was allowed to go near the babies except for Missy, Sarah, and her mother --- not even the real mother’s, once they’d had them. But last night Caryn had been so sad that Sarah relented and took her up after the others had retired. She thought maybe letting Caryn rock the Barnes boy to sleep would make her happy, but it didn’t. She only cried harder than she had any other night before. Sarah’s mother left the bedside to scrub her hands at a deep sink in the corner of the room. She glanced over at her daughter, huddling with the cat and shivering like a big ungainly bird.
“Why did I have to tell you twice to bring the ties, Daughter?”
Sarah swallowed hard as she watched her mother scrub with ferocious energy, as if she were trying to flay the very skin off her bones.
“I’m sorry Mother.”
Mrs. Clayton stood erect as she dried her hands. “You’re nearly thirteen now. You’d better start paying attention.”
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yes Mother.”
“Please look at me when you address me.”
Sarah raised her eyes to meet her mother’s, which seemed like two dark tunnels that no light could ever penetrate. Every time she looked into them, she saw her dreary future. She’d never be as comely as the girls who came here, or as long-necked and straight-backed as Missy. Already Sarah had her mother’s high hunched shoulders, which gave all the Clayton women an almost vulturish physique.
“What we do here may be unpleasant, but the souls of the unborn are more important than your discomfort. If you’re ever to carry on our work, you’ll need to be strong.”
“Yes Mother.”
Caryn called out a boy’s name, weakly. Missy had rolled the cart with the hurricane lamp and instruments over to the bed. The yellowish light made the long needles and sharp-edged things, and something that made Sarah think of the scraper they used to gut pumpkins with, gleam like gold. A bucket rested at the foot of the bed. For now, that was all Sarah had to tend to. It was her duty to take it away once it was filled. Missy checked the girl’s eyes.
“She’s out Mrs. Clayton. Yoo’ll have na problem with har now.”
Her mother pulled a chair up to the end of the cot, and Missy pulled back Caryn’s nightgown, exposing her. Sarah turned away as her mother asked Missy for more light. It was pitch black outside now, and the candles and hurricane light reflected her own face back at her from the window. She could hear the clicking of metal instruments against each other, and her mother’s stern, efficient commands to Missy. When she heard something plop into the bucket, she squeezed Patty hard, who cried loudly in protest. The cat jumped from her arms and raced out of the room as her mother’s chair scraped against the floor.
“Sarah. The bucket.”
Sarah went over to the bed. She looked at the blood stained sheets, and her mother’s blood-covered hands. Then she looked at the girl’s closed eyes, and willed them open. She wanted her to know she would take care of her baby. But the girl only groaned and her eyes remained closed. Missy sighed, and wiped a frizzy red curl away from her forehead with the inside of her forearm.
“You can go now, Sarah,” she said pushing her aside. “Yar in tha way here. Go now.”
Sarah carried the bucket to the dumbwaiter, where a candle on a shelf was burning. It lit up the bucket’s contents, and one perfectly round, black eye, still covered in milky membrane, stared up at her. Sarah cradled the bucket to her chest as if she could cradle the babe born of sin in her arms. A baby wailed.
“That’ll be the Barnes boy, I’ll stake ma life,” Missy said as she undid the ties. Mrs. Clayton brought over a wheelchair, and then they both lifted Caryn out of the bed and into it. Her limbs were limp and her head hung heavy. She seemed as lifeless as Bettina, Sarah’s favorite doll.
“Daughter,” her mother said wheeling Caryn out, “after you send it down, strip the cot and clean up.”
Then they both left. Sarah placed the bucket in the dumbwaiter, and set it going. She listened to the cables creak and knock together as the baby descended down through the three flights of the house to the basement, where her mother expected her to empty it into the sewer that led out to the ocean. But Sarah couldn’t imagine the baby drifting out in that cold black water all by itself without ever having been held at least once.
When the dumbwaiter stopped, she shut its door, and then went over and stuck her head out into the hallway. The Barnes baby was still crying, and she could hear Missy and her mother’s murmuring voices from the floor down below. She shut the door quietly, and then hurried over to the cot where she took a long strip of gauze and pressed it into the wettest part of the sheet. Slowly the blood soaked through, and when the white bandage was fully red, she rolled it up and carefully placed it inside her apron pocket. She’d make sure Caryn’s baby was laid to rest in a shroud, stained with the still warm blood of its mother, just as she’d done with all the others.