Showers in Season (13 page)

The baby girl’s black hair had a slight curl to it, and Sylvia brushed it gently, then pulled it back from her face with a little bow glued to a bobby pin. She had washed the clothes the baby had been found in, but hadn’t been able to come up with anything new for her to wear, for the stores were still closed due to damage from the storm. Many of the families in the shelter had nothing to wear but the clothes on their backs, so she had little hope of finding the child anything in the near future.

She checked the digital camera and made sure it was hooked up to her laptop. The fact that she had gotten this was evidence of yet another provision from God. Several engineers from the Army Corps of Engineers had flown down to do geological surveys and give advice to the government on where the next mud slides might occur, and one of them, a Christian, had sought them out. When he saw all the children that were homeless and orphaned, he gave them both his digital camera and the small color printer he had brought with him for printing out the
reports he needed. He told them he would buy new ones with his own money when he returned to the States.

It would take days for her to photograph the children one by one and post them to the web site that Jeb had managed to set up for them. But at the moment it was their best hope of reuniting parents with their children. Government officials had agreed to make computers available to people looking for lost loved ones. They even planned to print the pictures out and take them into the hospitals.

Carly—the name she had given to the baby she had been keeping in her own home—was the first of the children to be photographed. The rest of the children were lined up on the floor in the hallway of what had become the orphanage, and Julie went from one to the next, brushing hair and washing faces so that nothing would impede recognition by family members.

“I wish we could dress them all up in Easter clothes,” Julie said as she worked. “Back home, kids wear those dresses one time, then toss them in the back of their closets. If we could just get some of those forgotten clothes.”

“I know where we can get some,” Sylvia said, trying to make Carly stop sucking her thumb long enough to take the picture. “We’ll tell my neighbors in Breezewood. They’ll help us. They’re great at getting the word out. You should have seen how we raised money for my little neighbor’s heart transplant.” She clicked the picture, then picked Carly up. “There, I got her. Perfect.” Still holding the baby, she went down the line and took pictures of each child in turn.

“Do you think you could get word to them soon?” Julie asked.

“Now that the phone lines are working again, I think I can. I think my laptop’s battery still has a little charge.”

“They said they’d have the electricity back up soon,” Harry said.

Sylvia turned to her husband. “Really?”

“Yeah. They said they were giving special priority to our part of town because we’re sheltering so many people. The Corps of
Engineers had a little to do with that, too. They told them about our work, and got the government interested.” He grinned at the sight of her holding Carly. “You know, you’d get that done a lot faster if you weren’t holding the baby.”

She smiled and bounced the little girl she’d grown so attached to. “I’m doing just fine. I hardly even know she’s here.”

“Right,” he said. He walked up behind her and stroked the child’s hair. “I don’t think you’ve put her down in four days.” He waited while she took the next child’s picture. “So how soon can we get their pictures up?”

“God willing, I plan to get them up today,” Sylvia said. “If I have to stay up all night, I will. Plus, Julie and I decided that I need to e-mail the States—everybody I know there, starting with Brenda, Tory, and Cathy—and ask them to start a clothing drive for the people.”

“Well, it sure is needed,” he said. “Most of the people I’ve seen today have been wearing the same thing since the hurricane.”

“The girls will come through for us,” Sylvia said. “I just know they will. Won’t they, Carly?” She smiled down at the little girl.

Harry had been opposed to naming her at first. It would confuse her, he said, but since they didn’t know her real name and weren’t any closer to finding out, Sylvia had insisted on calling her something.

He reached his hands out for the child, and she came willingly. Sylvia hated to let her go, but she used the opportunity to take some more pictures. When she’d finished the dozen or so children in the hall, she asked Jeb to send in another group. As Julie lined them up on the floor, Sylvia looked at little Carly in Harry’s arms. She had her thumb in her mouth and was sucking hard. She’d been restless off and on, no doubt grieving for her mother. Occasionally, she would cry, and not even Sylvia could calm her. Constantly, she looked toward the doors and windows, as if anticipating her mother walking in to get her.

Harry tickled her ribs, and she giggled. “Is Mrs. Sylvia taking good care of you?”

The baby just put her thumb back in her mouth. Harry pressed a kiss on the dark, chubby little cheek. “We’re getting too attached, aren’t we?”

“Yes, we are,” Sylvia said. “But I can’t help it. I had a long talk with the Lord this morning, Harry, and I asked him to find her family. But I can’t help being selfishly happy that God brought her to us. So my heart gets broken when her family’s located. I guess I’m willing to risk it.”

“And if we never find her family?”

Sylvia’s eyes misted over, and her face tightened. She couldn’t utter the thoughts going through her mind. They were crazy, and might frighten Harry to death. Still, she couldn’t help thinking that, if that happened, she would want to keep her. “I don’t know, Harry,” she said.

“Let’s keep praying about it.” He threw Carly up in the air. She giggled with delight.

Sylvia laughed with them. “All I know is that I’ve missed having a baby,” Sylvia said. “And I’m grateful for however long I have her.”

He laughed at the child, and threw her up again as Sylvia turned back to the children waiting to be photographed.

Late that night, Sylvia came home with Carly in her arms, and found that the electricity had been turned back on. She laid Carly in the little bed they had made for her out of a big basket. She had finally finished photographing the children, and had managed to get them all loaded into the computer before the battery had run out. It had taken hours, and she had done most of it with Carly in her lap.

When Harry came in, he looked more exhausted than she had ever seen him. She made him some tea and tried to help him get comfortable in his favorite chair. “We had record numbers professing Christ today,” he said, laying his head back on the chair and holding the hot mug in his big hands. “They’re so hopeless. An afterlife is all some of them can even think of looking forward to.”

“You’re doing good work, Harry. I know God is pleased with you.”

“He’s pleased with you, too. Getting those kids processed was a major undertaking. But it was so needed. And as people claim their children, we can tell them about Jesus, and how he loves each of them so much that he provided ways for them to reunite. Even the ones who never will…He will provide for them, too.”

She went to the basket and sat down on the floor, stroking Carly’s back. “I can’t help thinking that Carly might be part of the work God has for me here.”

Harry’s eyebrows came up. “Sylvia, you’re not thinking…”

“No,” she said quickly. “Of course I want to find her mother. I just mean, it feels so right to hold her. Like it’s a natural fit. I love feeling like a mother again.”

“You
are
a mother. We have two children, Sylvia. They still need you.”

“I know. But they’re so far away, and have their own lives. There’s nothing like holding a tiny little body against yours.”

“Just be careful. Getting attached like that doesn’t seem very healthy.”

She gave him a smile that said he was worrying needlessly. “I’m the healthiest person you know. I can handle this, Harry. When God gives you somebody to take care of, you don’t think about how it’s gonna affect you when they leave. You just do what you’ve got to do. And you have to agree that I can’t leave her at the children’s shelter. She’s too young. She needs more attention.”

“I know,” he said with a sigh. He finished off his tea and got up. “I have to go to bed.”

“Go ahead,” she said. “I’m just going to stay up and e-mail Tory, Brenda, and Cathy, now that we have electricity. Then I’ll come.”

She kissed Harry good night, then checked her e-mail. Her notes from home were piling up, but she hadn’t been able to read them in days, for she had been conserving her battery. Even tonight she didn’t have time to read them—not yet. Instead, she wanted to tell them of the work she was doing here,
of the devastation and the homelessness, of the injuries and the deaths. Of the need for clothing and food.

But mostly she wanted to tell them about the little girl who had come into her life to brighten it up, even in these dark post-hurricane days in Nicaragua.

The silence between Tory and Barry was deafening. Tory didn’t know how much longer she would be able to endure it, but she had nothing to say to him. She could tell by the way he sat at the kitchen table, after the kids were in bed, watching her wipe counters and put things away, that he was waiting for her to stop so they could talk. When the phone rang, she pounced on it as if it was her rescue.

It was Brenda, telling her that she had the night off, and she and Cathy were going to be sitting on the front porch, reading the e-mails they’d gotten from Sylvia. She had quickly agreed to meet them there.

“I’m going over to Brenda’s,” she said as she hung up the phone.

Barry looked wounded. “Tory, I thought we could talk.”

“I don’t want to talk to you,” she said. “There’s nothing to talk about, anyway.”

“Tory, there’s a
lot
to talk about. This is my baby, too.”

“Then I don’t know how in the world you can sleep at night,” she said, scrubbing harder than she needed to. “You seem to be sleeping just fine down there in the basement.”

“That’s because you don’t want me in the bedroom,” he said. “If I weren’t sleeping down there,
you
probably would be.”

“Got that right,” Tory threw back.

He swallowed and got to his feet. “Tory, this isn’t getting us anywhere. It’s not helping the baby, and it’s not—”

“Helping the baby?” she cut in, swinging to face him. “How dare you?”

He got quiet and slid his hands into his pockets, looked down at his feet.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve acting like you care about our baby,” she said.

“Tory, you’ve got to consider the options.”

“There
aren’t
any options! The only option I know of is that we’re going to have a baby and there’s something wrong with her.
I’m
going to take care of her. I don’t know about you.”

“You don’t even know what you’re talking about,” he said. “You don’t know what it’s going to be like having a baby for the rest of your life, who grows and gets bigger than you, whose diaper you still have to change, who has medical problems and never leaves the house unless he’s with you. Do you want that, Tory? Because I don’t think you’re ready for it. You like order. Perfection. Look at this house, for Pete’s sake. It won’t be like this if the baby comes.”

“I’ll do what I have to do,” she said. “I’ll
become
what I have to become. God wouldn’t have given me this baby if he couldn’t make me into what I need to be.”

“What about Nathan?” he asked through his teeth. “Are you willing to devote yourself to caring for two mentally retarded people, when you’ve hardly even gone near Nathan since I’ve known you? Do you want Spencer and Brittany to be embarrassed at every school function, and finally just drop out of everything because they don’t want to have to suffer the humiliation of having their sister disrupting things?”

“Those are hard things, Barry!” she cried. “But they don’t change the fact that we’re talking about human beings. It doesn’t change the fact that I’m carrying her right now and I don’t have a choice in the matter.”

“You
do
have a choice,” he said.

She shook her head, unable to stand the thought that he was using the word
choice
as if it was benign and safe. As if it wasn’t lethal. “I’m going,” she said. “I’ll be at Brenda’s.”

He followed her out into the garage, stopping her at the outer door before she could leave. “Tory, don’t think I don’t care about this baby. Don’t think I don’t care about my brother.”

“That’s exactly what I think.”

“Then you’d be wrong.” His eyes filled with tears and he hammered his fist on the wall. “I haven’t been able to think about anything else for the last couple of days. I haven’t been able to accomplish anything at work. I’ve just been thinking and thinking what it would be like. Considering all the options in my head.” He stopped and swallowed, tried to control his voice. “It’s hard for me, too,” he said more softly, his voice sounding hollow in the garage. “I can’t stand the thought of what I’m asking you to do. It makes me sick. I didn’t think I’d ever want it for a child of mine. But I went to see Nathan a couple of days ago, and I sat there looking at him, wondering if he’d really want to be born if he had it to do over. If someone had told him, ‘Nathan, you’re not going to live a normal life; you’re not going to grow up. You’re going to be bound by your mental age, your physical problems. You’ll never understand what it’s like to be a father, or to accomplish anything, or to contribute something.’ If he’d had the choice and someone had asked him, would he have decided to go for it anyway? To sit in his wheelchair all his life, drooling, eating mushed bananas and eggs, whistling his life away? What purpose does he have? That’s what I don’t understand.”

“God put this baby in our family, Barry. You know all those commandments in the Bible and all those suggestions for behavior? They’re not just there for the good times, they’re there for the hard times, when it doesn’t make any sense. They’re there
for when you don’t have any place else to turn. You have to have a source, Barry. You have to have a plumb line.
You’re
the one who taught me that.”

“I still believe it,” he said. “But these are extraordinary circumstances, Tory.”

“You’re telling me.”

Tears came to his eyes, and she saw the muscles under his lips twitching, saw him looking at his feet and struggling for the right words. “See…I know that it’s harder for you. You’re the one throwing up all the time, watching your body change, feeling all those hormones pumping through you. Your body is screaming out ‘motherhood,’ and your heart is breaking over this baby.”

The words melted her to tears, and she turned away, unwilling to share her emotions with him.

He came up behind her and set his hands on her shoulders, dropped his forehead into her hair. “Honey, I want to be there for you. I want to protect you, too. I want to protect Brittany and Spencer. Even the baby…”

She closed her eyes as tears rolled down her face. “This baby is going to need protecting all her life,” she whispered. “From all kinds of people. From kids who make fun of her, from doctors who give up on her, from strangers who stare at her. I don’t want to have to protect her from her dad.”

“You think I want that? I love my children, Tory. All of them.”

“Then don’t suggest abortion for one of them.”

“Maybe I love her enough to do that.”

She jerked away from him. “You’re
so
wrong! It’s not love to kill a baby, no matter how noble you can convince yourself you are!” Her lips twisted. “Or are you buying into the belief that this isn’t a baby? That it’s just a blob of tissue?”

“I don’t know, Tory. All I know is that she’ll never reach her potential. She’ll never be able to offer anything back to the world. She won’t have a purpose.”

“How do you know?” she screamed. “You don’t know what God’s purpose is for
you
, much less a baby who hasn’t even been born! And whose potential are we talking about?”

“Look at Nathan, Tory!”

“
You
look at Nathan! Nobody but God knows what his potential is. It’s not up to you to decide that.”

“But if Nathan could be in heaven with God…if he had the choice of walking streets of gold or sitting out decades and decades in a wheelchair, whistling and staring at nothing…If we really believe in heaven, wouldn’t we choose for him to be there?”

“We don’t get to choose that, Barry,” she cried. “That’s God’s job.”

“But think about our baby!” he shouted. “About whether you want our baby being shunned by society, or in heaven in a perfect body, waiting for us.”

“You could say that about any baby who was ever aborted,” she said. “From the most perfect, healthy, unwanted one, to one like ours. You could say abortion is good because it sends little souls to heaven instead of bringing them into this evil world.”

“It’s true. God does gather up those little souls. He has them all.”

“But what about the blessings they might have been on their families? What about the potential they might have had on earth? They might have cured AIDS or cancer. They might have evangelized the world. And what about the sin that eats away at the mother and father who choose to take that way out, chipping away at their lives and their hearts and souls, because even if no one else ever knows what they did,
they
know. What about the women whose lives are ruined because they have to act enlightened and liberated, like masters of their own bodies, when really they’re in deeper bondage to the abortion they had than they ever would have been to the baby? Abortion is just as bad for the mother as it is for the baby, Barry. Don’t you care about that? Don’t you care what it would do to
me?
”

“Of course, I do,” he said. “Of course.” He turned away from her, wiped his face, and wilted over the hood of their car. “I don’t know what to do.” She watched his back rise and fall
with his anguished breath. “Have you thought about this with anything other than your emotions and hormones, Tory?”

“Of course, I have,” she admitted, knowing it would cost her. “I’ve thought how…disappointed I am. I wanted people to stop in aisles and tell me how precious she is. But they’ll be looking away, pretending they don’t see.” He looked up at her, and their eyes met. “We have beautiful children, Barry.”

He straightened, and whispered, “They have a beautiful mother.”

She shook her head. “All the work on my looks. My hair, my makeup, my weight…I put so much into it. Perfection, it’s my stock—and trade.” Her voice broke off, and she looked at her reflection in the car’s window. She didn’t like what she saw. “Do you think this is how God’s punishing me? Giving me a child who isn’t perfect, so I’ll learn?”

“Learn what?” Barry asked.

“Learn that it isn’t what’s on the outside that’s important. It’s what’s on the inside. Maybe perfection really has to do with the heart. Maybe this baby will be the most perfect one of all our children. Inside, where we all need to learn to look.”

“It’s more likely that she’ll be the most miserable.”

The vulnerability she had begun to share fled as that rage erupted in her again. She slammed her hand on the fender. “I
don’t
know that. But if I did, I’m not sure it could change anything. You shouldn’t be able to choose whether to abort a baby or not based on whether you think she’ll have a good life. If we did that, we’d think we’d have to go around to all the povertystricken families and abort all of theirs. We’d kill anyone who isn’t born in America, or in an upper-middle-class family, or in a family with high IQ’s and beauty awards.”

He didn’t seem to know what to say to that.

Weary, she leaned back against the garage wall. “I miss my mom.”

“I do, too,” he said. “I miss her for you.” Her mother had died of breast cancer just a few months after their wedding. She had never seen her daughter pregnant with even her first child,
had never been able to teach her how to change a diaper or bathe an infant. She had never been there to talk her through marital problems or adult crises. Tory needed her now.

Sylvia had done a lot to take her mother’s place. She had been there, the older, more experienced woman who had already walked the ground that Tory was walking. She had been so full of wisdom and patience, had always had such good advice. Tory wished she could pick up the phone and call Sylvia in León, and have her drop everything and listen to Tory for a while. “I miss Sylvia, too,” she said.

He drew in a deep breath, let it out in a rugged sigh. “Go on over there,” he whispered finally. “Listen to her letters. Maybe it’ll make you feel better.”

She hesitated, wondering how their marriage would ever recover. “What about you?” she asked quietly. “What’s going to make you feel better?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll pray for a while.”

“Good,” she whispered. “That’s good.”

He crossed the garage floor, took her hands, and bent down to kiss her wet cheek. “Making everything all right is my job in this family,” he whispered. “I’m trying to do that.”

“If you keep trying to talk me into ending our baby’s life, Barry, nothing is ever going to be all right again.”

“And if I just let things go, leave it all to chance, nothing will, anyway.”

“God is bigger than chance,” she said through her teeth. “I thought you trusted him more than that.”

“I trust him to lead me in making the right decision.”

“Wait a minute.” She jerked her hands away. “Did you say ‘me’? Are you telling me that this is
your
decision? One of those ‘spiritual leader of the family’ decisions?”

“That’s not what I meant,” he said.

“You said, “lead
me
into making the right decision.’ Like it’s your decision. Period. Think again, Barry! You can make all the decisions you want, but this is my baby, too. And if God doesn’t want it born, he’s going to have to decide that on his own.”

With that, she slammed her hand on the button that would open the garage and darted out under it before it had the chance to rise all the way. She heard it closing behind her as she took off across the lot between hers and Brenda’s homes.