AllFreeNovel
Share Us
One of the women--very expectant, her belly huge under a taut sheet--asked him, "Do you mean, if someone wanted to adopt you, you wouldn't go?"
"I wouldn't go," said Homer Wells. "Right."
"You wouldn't even consider it?" the woman asked. He almost couldn't look at her--she seemed so ready to explode.
"Well, I guess I'd think about it," Homer Wells said. "But I'd probably decide to stay, as long as I can help out around here--you know, be of use."
The pregnant woman began to cry. "Be of use," she said, as if she'd learned to repeat the pigtails of sentences from listening to Homer Wells. She pulled down the sheet, she pulled up her hospital gown; Nurse Edna had already shaved her. She put her hands on her great belly. "Look at that," she whispered. "You want to be of use?"
"Right," said Homer Wells, who held his breath.
"No one but me ever put a hand on me, to feel that baby. No one wanted to put his ear against it and listen," the woman said. "You shouldn't have a baby if there's no one who wants to feel it kick, or listen to it move."
"I don't know," said Homer Wells.
"Don't you want to touch it or put your ear down to it?" the woman asked him.
"Okay," said Homer Wells, putting his hand on the woman's hot, hard belly.
"Put your ear down against it, too," the woman advised him.
"Right," Homer said. He touched his ear very lightly to her stomach but she strongly pressed his face against her; she was like a drum--all pings! and pongs! She was a warm engine--shut off, but still tapping with heat. If Homer had been to the ocean, he would have recognized that she was like the tide, like surf--surging in and out and back and forth.
"No one should have a baby if there's no one who wants to sleep with his head right there," the woman whispered, patting the place where she roughly held Homer's face. Right where? Homer wondered, because there was no comfortable place to put his head, no place between her breasts and her belly that wasn't round. Her breasts, at least, looked comfortable, but he knew that wasn't where she wanted his head. He found it hard to imagine, from all the noise and motion inside her, that the woman was carrying only one baby. Homer Wells thought that the woman was going to give birth to a tribe.
"You want to be of use?" the woman asked him, crying gently now.
"Yes. Be of use," he said.
"Sleep right here," the woman told him. He pretended to sleep with his face against the noisy boulder, where she held him snug. He knew when her water had broken before she knew it--she had fallen that soundly asleep. He went and found Nurse Edna without waking the woman, who before dawn delivered a seven-pound baby girl. Since neither Nurse Edna nor Nurse Angela was in charge of naming the girl orphans, after a few days someone there gave her a name--probably Mrs. Grogan, who favored Irish names, or if Mrs. Grogan had momentarily exhausted her supply, the secretary who typed badly and was responsible for "Melony" instead of "Melody"; she also enjoyed naming the little girls.
Homer Wells never knew which one she was, but he kept looking for her, as if his nighttime vigil with his face upon the mother's jumping belly might have given him the senses necessary to recognize her child.
He never would recognize her, of course. All he had to go on was the fluid sound of her, and how she'd moved under his ear, in the dark. But he kept looking; he watched the girls in the girls' division as if he expected her to do something that would give her away.
He even admitted his private game to Melony once, but Melony was, typically, derisive. "Just what do you think the kid's going to do so you'll know which one she is?" Melony asked. "Is she going to gurgle, is she going to fart--or kick you in the ear?"
But Homer Wells knew he was just playing a game by himself, with himself; orphans are notorious for interior games. For example, one of the oldest games that orphans play is imagining that their parents want them back--that their parents are looking for them. But Homer had spent an evening with the mystery baby's mother; he'd heard all about the mystery baby's father--and his lack of interest in the matter. Homer knew that the mystery baby's parents weren't looking for her; that may have been why he decided he'd look for her. If that baby girl was growing up, and if she was playing the old orphans' game, wouldn't it be better if there was at least someone who was looking for her--even if it was just another orphan?
Dr. Larch tried to talk to Homer about Melony's anger.
"Anger is a funny thing," Dr. Larch began, believing that anger was an unfunny thing.
"I mean, I agree, the passage about the 'gleams of sunshine'--okay, it's sappy," Homer said. "It's one of those things--it makes you wince when you read it, but it's just what Jane would say, it's just like her, so what can you do?" Homer asked. "But Melony was violent about it."
Dr. Larch knew that Melony was one of the few orphans still at St. Cloud's who was not born at St. Cloud's. She'd been left at the hospital entrance one early morning when she'd been four or five; she was always so big for her age, it had been hard to tell how old she was. She hadn't talked until she was eight or nine. At first, Larch thought she might be retarded, but that wasn't the problem.
"Melony was always angry," Dr. Larch tried to explain. "We don't know about her origins, or her early years, and she may not know herself what all the sources of her anger are." Larch was deliberating--whether or not he should tell Homer Wells that Melony had been adopted and had been returned more times than Homer. "Melony had several unfortunate experiences in foster homes," Dr. Larch said cautiously. "If you have the opportunity to ask her about her experiences--and if she wants to talk about them--it might provide her with a welcome release for some of her anger."
"Ask her about her experiences," said Homer Wells, shaking his head. "I don't know," he said. "I never tried to talk to her."
Dr. Larch already regretted his suggestion. Perhaps Melony would remember her first foster family and tell Homer about them; they had sent her back because she allegedly bit the family dog in an altercation concerning a ball. It wasn't just the one fracas that upset the family; they claimed that Melony repeatedly bit the dog. For weeks after the incident, she would creep up on the animal and surprise it when it was eating, or when it was asleep. The family accused Melony of driving the dog crazy.
Melony had run away from the second and third families, alleging that the men in the families, either fathers or brothers, had taken a sexual interest in her. The fourth family claimed that Melony had taken a sexual interest in a younger, female child. In the case of number five: the husband and wife eventually separated because of Melony's relationship with the husband--the wife claimed that her husband had seduced Melony, the husband claimed that Melony had seduced (he said "attacked") him. Melony was not ambiguous about the matter. "No one seduces me!" she told Mrs. Grogan proudly. In the case of number six: the husband had died of a h
eart attack shortly after Melony's arrival, and the wife had sent the girl back to St. Cloud's because she felt unequipped for the task of raising Melony alone. (Melony's only remark to Mrs. Grogan had been: "You bet she's unequipped!")
All this, suddenly, Dr. Larch imagined Homer hearing firsthand from Melony; the vision disturbed him. He feared that he had made Homer Wells his apprentice--an attendant to the gritty operation of St. Cloud's--while at the same time he could not resist screening the boy from some of the harder truths.
