Page 10 of Jeremiah

Some of the words she did understand, but they were all muddled up too. Looking at MB, she told her what had happened to her. Or the things that she had remembered. For some reason, she was able to ignore the voices and talk to the girl. It seemed imperative that she told her why her head was hurting. Not only that, but she wanted MB to forgive her. For what? Bethy had no idea, but it was as important as telling her the story.

“I was twelve when it happened to me. They were forever telling me that I was stupid, and they had to pay someone to keep me smart. I never got a bad grade, nor did I ever…they hated me, I guess. I didn’t know what was happening, and they told me to shut my mouth when I tried to tell them what he’d done to me. What he was making me do at the afterschool meetings.” Closing her eyes, she thought of the birthday party that she’d had then. “Twelve years old and upset with my parents. They got me all kinds of baby stuff for my birthday. Diapers and sleepers. I had a car seat thingy, too. Nothing for me but all for the baby. Did you know that I had a baby, MB?”

Someone told MB to play along. She didn’t know what that meant and turned again to look at the man. He kept telling her that he was going to get her help but not to kill their daughter. Please. MB put her fingers on her face and turned her back to look at her. With a watery-looking smile, she spoke to her, ignoring the man behind her.

“No, I didn’t know you had a baby when you were my age. Is that what you meant? That you had a baby when you were just a little girl?” Bethy nodded. “I’m so sorry that happened to you. Can you please move the gun? I won’t run. Please, Mom. But it’s scaring me. If you were to just move it a little, I promise you that I won’t run. I’ll stay right here with you.”

She didn’t want to remove the gun. It was security for her. Bethy didn’t want to do anything but sit here and talk about how cruel her mom and dad had been to her when she’d had a baby. She needed this. It was her turn to be…it was all so unfair. It hadn’t been her fault.

“He kept me after school all the time. Telling me that I needed to study harder if I was going to get into college. My dad said that it was all right and I did want to go to college. But I never got to go. I didn’t get to do anything because I had a baby. She was so delicate. Not at all like the dollies that I had. They took those away from me, too. I wasn’t allowed to have any toys anymore because I had become a terrible person.” She tried to ignore the voice in her head as it told her to kill the girl. “I was studying hard. Doing all the extra homework and staying in while the other children went to play when I was home. They never allowed me to play with any of the children in the neighborhood. Not that any of them wanted to play with me, but it was so unfair, MB. You do believe me, don’t you?”

“I do. With all my heart, I believe you. I’m so sorry. I ache for you. What was the baby’s name? Can you tell me that?” Looking at the girl, she tried to think why she should know her too. Why needing to know her name was making her sick with worry. “Did you have a little girl or boy?”

She opened her mouth and wanted to spew out the words that had been beaten into her from the very beginning, even before she’d been made to study harder after school. Before, her teacher had talked to her about telling on him. Words that were as untrue as they were uncomfortable to say even today. You tell, you will suffer more.

“Girl. She was…I was confused and heartbroken when she was born. I didn’t…I didn’t know anything about babies and nothing at all about that one.” She didn’t move away from the girl but felt like if she didn’t move soon, they’d both be hurt. “They made me keep her, but I hated her. I hated everything about her. My parents too.”

“I’m sorry.” Bethy looked hard at the girl and asked her what her name was. “Mary Beth Pritchard. I’m named after my mom. She’s a wonderful person. And has always…she’s always been there for me and my siblings. Would you tell me more about your baby, Beth? And maybe your parents? I never met them, I don’t think. I don’t believe I would have liked them anyway.”

“My parents hated me. They called me names all the time. Said I was a whore. A prostitute. I didn’t know what that meant, but it still hurt me. My mom said that my child was a sin that’s why she was so handicapped. I know that now. She wasn’t a sin but handicapped. She said that no good would come of her and I was going to go to hell because I had made Mr. Frazier have sex with me.” Bethy started crying. “I didn’t want him to touch me with that thing. But he made me. He made me do all kinds of things with him that made me sick. Why did he do that to me? I was just a little girl.”

When the girl wrapped her arms around her, she sobbed harder on her shoulder. Bethy knew that she was telling secrets that were supposed to be kept forever, but she was hurting, and it wasn’t her fault. When she’d cried about as much as she ever had, she looked at the girl.

“You’re Mary Beth.” The little girl nodded and told her that she was her daughter. “Yes. I remember you now. You’re my daughter. I have…I’m so glad that you turned out to be perfect, Mary Beth.” Playing with her hair, she thought of the other daughter, the one she’d been forced to raise.

Standing up, Bethy said that she needed to freshen up and made her way to the bathroom. She needed a moment too. Just enough time that she could freshen up her heated face and to think about what had happened to her first child.

~*~

“The child was born to Beth when she was thirteen years old. After figuring out her true name, the one that she gave Mary Beth, it was easy to track down the information that was needed.” Mark nodded but didn’t look as if he was really paying attention. “With the help of Hanna and the other women in my family, we were able to track down not only what had happened to her parents but the child as well. Are you sure you want to hear this? It’s a lot to take in.”

“I don’t know what I want right now.” Mary Beth spoke up and said that she wanted to hear it all. “Honey, are you sure you’re going to be all right? To have…are you sure?”

“No one noticed that she was hurting, did they? Not any of us. I used to call it flipping. She would flip out of herself and become this other person. I didn’t know that it was really her. And today…Mom told me things that she’d never told me before.” Mark told his daughter that it was his fault that it had gotten so bad. “No, Dad, you were there for her, but she’d been…I learned in my psychology class that when someone has been hiding or lying all their lives, they get good enough at it that even those closest to them can’t see it. Mom was hurting long before you two married, I’m thinking.”

Mark looked at him, and Jeremiah smiled. “My brilliant daughter. Did I tell you that she’s in her second year of med school right now?” He had, but Jeremiah let him go on about it again. He didn’t know how he’d feel if something like this were to have happened to him. “Go on, Jeremiah. Tell us the rest of the story. I might need a refresher later but I’m sure that Mary Beth can help me.”

“All right. When she gave birth to the little girl, there were complications for both mother and child. For the child, she was born with a lot of bruises on her body due to Beth’s parents trying to beat the child out of their daughter. Nurses made note of it in her records or we might well have never known that. As you can well imagine, it had sever effects on both of them. In addition to her being too young to have a child, she was constantly being stressed out by her parents. My heart hurts for what Beth had to endure.”

“Mom would slip away at times. Mostly when she was stressed out. I’d sit with her, and we’d talk like we were just a couple of kids who liked to hang out. That’s why I rarely said anything to you, Dad when she would act out.” Mark hugged his child. “But today, as soon as I saw her with her head in the refrigerator, I knew that she was having a bad time. So I played along, just like I do every time that she’s out of it. To be honest, I thought it was just her and that Dad knew about it. But this last thing. I knew that she was in trouble. I just didn’t know that she was thinking of killing me.”

“She killed her parents and her child.” Mark sobbed and told him that he’d not known about the other child. He only knew that she’d been a child when her parents had died. “She spent twelve years in an asylum for the criminally insane. The doctors there, at that time, only did what they were told to do by some wealthy family. It had been in their will that Beth was a danger to all mankind and that she was a harlot. I think that she was justified in killing them, but that’s just me. Beth was sedated all the time, it seems. And until she escaped, they thought that she was doing well. Turns out that she was not taking her medication.”

“She got out how?” Jeremiah told Mary Beth that he was still looking into that. “So she escaped and made a new life for herself.”

“Exactly.” Jeremiah watched as Mark got up to pace. He watched him carefully. The doctor had given him something to relax, but it didn’t seem to be working yet. Mary Beth, for only being fifteen years old, seemed to have a better grip on things than her father did.

For the rest of the evening, Jeremiah sat with the Turner family. The two youngest, five years old, had gone home with Caitlynn and Joel. He knew that they were in good hands. Lexy was with the faeries cleaning up the bedroom and bathroom that Beth had died in.

He couldn’t believe that she had fooled them all. Before going into the bathroom, Beth had seemed fine. She spoke to Mark and hugged both him and Mary Beth. She even mentioned that she’d have a lot more to explain when she came out, and no one seemed inclined to see if she was armed still. As soon as the lock clicked on the door, the gunshot was immediate. Beth hadn’t wasted any time in ending her miserable life keeping her secrets as best she could.

“How did she kill them?” Jeremiah didn’t need to refer to his notes but looked down to give himself a moment. It was a gruesome death for the adults, but the child, a child with severe disabilities who was in the care of the mother-child herself, might well have felt at peace for the first time in her young life.

“Her father was killed when his brake lines were cut on his car. He had survived the accident that happened, but he didn’t survive his daughter. Beth went to the wreckage, and while her father was still alive, she set fire to the car. He was found several days later. Her mother…Beth killed her mother by chaining her to the rafters in the basement and burnt her with anything that she could find to heat up. Cigarette burns were the most wounds that were found. And, this isn’t from me, but the coroner said that it looked like she might well have gotten bored with her mother or she had died and cut her throat. She was found in the basement of the home when the fire department had been called in for the house being on fire.” Mark asked about the child. “She had a single gunshot wound in her chest. It was an instant death as the heart was hit. As I was told, it was more than likely the first time that the child was at peace.”

“What do you mean? How handicapped was this child?” Only hitting the highlights, Jeremiah told the other man the things that had been listed without going into too much detail. “My god, Jeremiah. No wonder she snapped. And they didn’t have a nurse on duty to help her?”

“From what I was able to find out, it looks like even her parents wouldn’t help her. They never once touched the child. Never bought it anything after it was born. Her entire life, for the eighteen months that the child lived, was spent with oxygen tubes, feeding tubes, as well as having to have her colostomy bag changed every few hours to keep her from dying of an infection. Harlot, what she was named by her grandparents was also born blind and deaf. Part of her brain hadn’t developed, so she would have never spoken or done any of the things that a child would have been able to do. Had she lived, she would have needed constant care and a nurse on duty to cope with the things wrong with her for the rest of her life. Instead, a thirteen-year-old little girl was made to do it all on her own.”