Mercy Train by Rae Meadows Read Free Book Online

had been enough for Iris: her son, Theo. Ten years later—she’d been forty, for God’s sake—she’d discovered she was pregnant again. She’d sat in the front seat of the car outside the doctor’s office, as the snowflakes swirled and melted on her windshield, and wept. She cried more than she had at the news of her father’s death the year before. She felt betrayed by her body. Reentrenched in motherhood just as Theo needed her less and less. But abortion was illicit then, seamy, even dangerous. People she knew didn’t even use the word—“I heard Mary Jo Surrey had something taken care of by a doctor on the South Side”—and she wouldn’t have known how to go about it anyway. So Iris feigned excitement for Glenn, whose eyes turned dewy with the news, and as the weeks passed she waited for a miscarriage that never happened. Samantha was a calm baby who slept well, as if sensing she needed to be good to please her mother, to make herself easier to love.
    As a toddler, Samantha grew increasingly shy, clinging to Iris, hiding her face. She would only go on the slide or the swings if the playground was empty, and only with Iris by her side. Even with Glenn, if Iris left the room, Samantha would collapse in a heap of tears. Iris wasn’t that concerned. She’d been a shy child after all, and part of her liked being so desperately needed.
    â€œIt’s not normal,” Glenn said.
    â€œShe’ll grow out of it,” she said. “It’s a phase.”
    â€œTheo wasn’t like this.”
    â€œBoys are different.”
    â€œTake her to the doctor. Just to make sure.”
    The pediatrician, old and stern Dr. Kimble, told Iris she coddled Samantha and that was the problem. “Give her less attention. Let her cry. She’ll get over it.”
    So Iris signed her up for a music class held in a Sunday school room of the Presbyterian church. Carpet squares were spaced out on the linoleum floor. A picture of a kindly Jesus holding his hand out to the Samaritan was on one wall, a constellation of God’s eye crosses on the other. Mothers kissed their kids, told them to behave, and left. Samantha tightened her grip on her mother’s hand, pressing her body into her leg. Iris knew it was not going to go well. She knew Samantha would not settle down after she left. She knew it, yet surely the doctor knew better?
    â€œNo Mommy go out,” Samantha said.
    â€œI’ll be right outside the door, honey. It’s going to be fun!”
    â€œNo Mommy go out. Sama and Mommy go home.”
    â€œAre you going to bang on the drum? Look at that. That’s a tambourine. Why don’t you go get it.” Iris pried her fingers loose and pushed Samantha forward. “Be a big kid like Theo, right?”
    The teacher, with a helmet of tight white curls, came over and tried to usher Samantha to the circle as Iris walked quickly away. The sobs began before she got the door closed. Iris counted the seconds on her watch for two minutes before she marched back inside to the pitying eye of the teacher and swept up Samantha, who buried her burning, wet face in Iris’s neck. Dr. Kimble—even Glenn, for that matter—could go to hell. What did men know of mothering? She’d decided to ignore everyone and let Samantha come out of her shell on her own terms.
    Iris rolled slowly over onto her side to relieve her sore hip. Hogwash, she thought. The truth was a lot less flattering. She had always feared that somewhere in Samantha’s cells, or in her limbic brain, perhaps, she knew she had been unwanted, that Iris had wished her away. And Iris wouldn’t force a separation because of her own guilt. Within a year, Samantha had become an independent little creature who never seemed to need her much at all. Or maybe that was a myth Iris had spun to make herself feel she’d been a better mother than she actually had been. Did it matter