Great With Child
A Story of the Thirteenth Colony
by
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"Abby, you look terrible!" There were red weals on her face and neck and her dress was ripped, revealing a developing bruise on the right breast. Streaks of blood stained the back of one hand and there was a smell of vomit about her. Clasping a blood soaked kerchief, she could stammer only incoherent words which Yassy finally interpreted as "the l – last Trump!" "Just tell me when you’re ready, Abby, love." Yassy said it softly, chafing her daughter’s hands, putting her feet on a footstool, covering her with a blanket. The girl’s eyes opened wide and she stared unseeingly at her mother. "I need to be washed – washed all over – I need to go to the pool in the brook –" What was this babbling? Was she possessed! ‘Washed in the blood of the lamb’ was the phrase that popped up in Yassy’s mind. It was that Anabaptist church; a malign manifestation of guilt, prompted by that man’s mad ravings. Or something to do with their bizarre baptismal rites. "Soon," Yassy stroked her hair, "Soon, my dearest child, we will go to the brook if that is what you want. But tell me how your dress became torn and how you came to this pass – did you fall?" "Fallen woman," the girl murmured sadly. "Did you fall and hurt yourself, Abby?" Yassy spoke more sharply. "He did it," she said, and quite distinctly this time. "He did what, Abby? Who is he?" Awestruck realization had come to her. It was Preacher Trump she was talking about. He had violated their daughter. A sudden guess was confirmed by all the symtoms, and as the fury mounted within Yassy’s breast, she became more and more convinced of what had happened. But still she could scarce believe it. This was her own daughter, the girl who had done everything for her in her sad state. The girl she would trust to the ends of the earth! "Please Abby – tell me what happened. However bad it is, you must tell me. This outrage is too big for you to bear alone!" Yassy, kneeling beside the chair, signaled her love with her eyes and her encircling arms, imploring her daughter to share her misery, to lighten the load. The girl put her arms round her mother’s neck like a little child and crying into her soft dark hair, managed to describe in broken sentences the heinous offense committed on her body. "I felt faint again – he said things about women – women like you – who had mishaps in – in childbed – how – how – they were wicked women – that they were invaded by vampires – had unnatural babes –" Yassy waited silently while the girl’s racking sobs interrupted her speech. She was too appalled to say anything and she knew instinctively there was worse to come. " – and Tempy’s mother took me to their home and –" "Was Tempy there?" "No. Tempy is – is baptized – she has certain duties – washing little glasses of cranberry juice – not wine – they don’t drink wine – but it has – it has to be red – like blood –" Yassy knew this. On occasion Eric had made sport of it, "What! No fruit of the vine?" And only this morning, Abby had laughed. "So Valerie took you home?" Yassy prompted. "To rest – on that same bed – and I fell asleep – and then – oh!" She gave a great cry and clung to her mother, crushing herself to her mother’s breasts, hurting her. "Now come on, Abby – you’re doing well – get it out – tell it all!" "I think I’m going to be sick again!" she said in a small voice. "No you’re not. Be brave, child – I know you can." Yassy’s sensitive nose had noted the sour smell and in due course she would wash her child and give her clean clothes – throw out these bedraggled garments that had become offensive – but first she had to give Abby the strength to overcome her physical revulsion. Yassy knew now what had happened, she could see it all and her heart hardened as it never had before. She was about to say as much to Abby, when her daughter said simply, tonelessly, "He stole my maidenhead, Mam. I woke and he was on top of me. I fought, but he overcame me –" "Oh my beloved child!" she cried, distracted. "But where was Valerie? Why didn’t she come to your aid?" "I don’t know." "Then how did you get away? How did it finish? Was he sorry – guilt ridden?" And she said in a hard cold voice, "That man will pay for this."
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About the Book
The friendship of two young girls in a tiny town in historic Rhode Island is the thread running through this story. Abby and Tempy are seventeenth century girls who have been raised in fundamentally different ways. While Abby’s father is a mild mannered skeptic, Tempy’s father, known as The Preacher, is a prosy, puritanical autocrat. Both mothers have secrets. Tempy is only dimly aware that her mother is hiding something important, whereas Abby is thoroughly embroiled in her mother’s shaming tragedy. Abby seeks redemption through The Preacher’s ‘House of God’, only to have disaster overtake her. Her enigmatic relationship with an Indian, once so satisfying, threatens to outlaw her until Abby feels that she is only fit for the "stews of Newport or the stocks of any Massachusetts town". In the resolution of this story, the bonds between the two girls with stand social, religious and emotional challenges, symbolizing the vitality of the colony destined to become a model for the USA constitution.
About the Author
During an extended visit to Rhode Island, the author became fascinated with how the ‘experiment’ in religious tolerance in this thirteenth colony actually worked in a climate of intolerance. Research revealed a tense situation of exile from the hardline Puritan colonies to the north and west, dispossessed Indians on the warpath and the beginnings of the iniquitous slave trade. Helen uses many sources of life experience in this vignette of early settlement. She is a physiotherapist with a post-retirement degree in anthropology and philosophy. She plays the viola in an amateur symphony orchestra and has published three novels, one text on physiotherapy and numerous journal articles.