ALMA'S STORY

                                                            by Troy Lynn Pritt

("Alma's Story" is an excerpt from the novel CRAZYQUILT CHURCH published by Mtnpride Books)

It was the second night in our new home. I had just gone off to sleep when I was awakened by noise from the basement. Mary, my wife, said in a frightened voice,

“Tom, what is that noise in the basement?”

I opened the door to the basement and turned on the basement lights. I went down the steps and as I reached the bottom,

“Please, mister, don’t shoot. I didn’t know anyone was in the house.”

A frightened young woman was clutching a baby in her arms. Both she and the baby were filthy. Her clothes were torn and dirty. She was wearing an Army field jacket. Her feet were in old tennis shoes that were ragged. She had no socks.

“Let me sit down to rest a minute and get warm. Then I’ll leave.”

“You sit right there while I go upstairs and get you something to eat. What about the baby? Can it drink from a cup yet?”

“No, sir. I nurse it when I can.”

I poured a big glass of milk, warmed up the spaghetti left over from supper, and buttered a piece of bread. I found a couple cookies our daughter Barbara brought home from her school lunch. I carried these down to the young woman. Tears came to her eyes.

“Our name is Binton. My name is Tom, my wife is Mary. She is coming down here so she can see what you need and maybe help you with the baby.”

Mary had already gathered up one of her nightgowns, a robe, a pair of socks, some dish towels (to use as diapers), safety pins, and a blanket. I pushed her in her wheelchair out the front door and around to the basement door.

The young woman was greedily eating the food. Maybe it was the first food she had that day. The baby looked numb. Mary immediately took charge.

“As soon as you finish eating, I want you to take off all those dirty clothes and get into the shower. There is soap, shampoo, and towels in there. Here is a dressing gown and socks. While you’re in the shower, I’ll clean your baby, change its diaper, and wrap it in this clean blanket. By the time you finish your shower, you should be ready to nurse it. Tomorrow morning, after breakfast, I’ll wash your clothes. We can talk then and see what we can do to make your situation a little brighter. Right now, getting cleaned up and a good night’s sleep are at the top of the list. After her shower, the young woman came out wearing Mary’s nightgown and carrying her dirty clothes.

“By the way, my name is Mary Binton, what is yours?”

“My name is Almedine Ferguson, but you can call me Alma. My little boy is named Harold, after his father.”

Alma held the baby for a few minutes and looked confused.

“I can’t nurse the baby. The baby isn’t mine.”

After that bombshell, I didn’t know what to do. Mary took charge,

“Call a taxi and get this baby to a hospital. I only hope it isn’t too late.”

I called the taxi company and asked them to send a cab as soon as possible. I only had $30 in my wallet. I hoped that that would be enough. I asked Alma if she had any identification.

“In my field jacket I have my old Army identification card.”

“Get your field jacket and your shoes. You can wear that nightgown instead of putting the dirty clothes back on you.”

When the taxi arrived, I told the driver,

“Take us to the nearest hospital.”

Arriving at the hospital, I gave the driver the $30 that I had. The fare had been $26.50.

Entering the Emergency Room I went straight to the Reception Desk.

“We have a very sick baby here. Please have someone look at it right away.”

“Everybody thinks they or their baby or child or husband or wife needs urgent care. You’ll be seen as soon as it’s your turn.”

I saw a nurse in the doorway.

“Nurse, there is a very sick baby here. I don’t think it can wait its turn. Would you please, at least, look at it?”

The nurse came over and looked at the baby in Alma’s arms. She swore. Then she grabbed the baby and rushed it back into the treatment area.

We were sitting on one of the benches across from the reception desk. We expected a nurse or doctor would come out and tell us about the baby. Instead, a policeman came in from outside, walked up to the reception counter, and the woman pointed to us. The policeman came over.

“Are you the man and woman who brought a sick baby in here about half hour ago?”

“Yes.”

“I want you both to come to the police station with me. The car is outside.”

I knew there was no point in protesting. We went out to the police car and sat on the hard plastic rear seat. At least we were not handcuffed. At the station we were introduced to SGT Lance Hendrick. He was about fifty years old, neat and thin with some grey in his hair. His eyes were penetrating.

“Now, I want to know all that you know about this baby. At a minimum I think you both are facing charges of child abuse. I’ll start with you, Mr. Binton. What is your relationship to Almedine Ferguson?”

“Before tonight I had no relationship to her. She came to our door sometime after we went to bed at 10 o’clock. She was homeless, hungry, and dirty. She said that the baby was hers and that its name was Harold. We gave her some food and a glass of milk. My wife gave her a nightgown, a robe, and socks and told her to shower and shampoo. My wife changed the baby’s diaper and cleaned it up. After Alma showered my wife handed the baby to her so she could nurse him. It was then she told us that the baby was not her baby. My wife said to call a taxi and take the baby to a hospital; she thought it needed immediate help

“I called a cab, took Alma and the baby to the hospital. That is all I know.”

“All right, Miss Ferguson, let’s hear your story.”

“Earlier that day I was dumpster diving behind the Mars Store on Wise Avenue. I was looking for something to eat. There was another girl there, younger than me. She had been diving in the dumpster before I arrived. She had this baby lying on the ground. It just had on a diaper. It was turning red and blue from being cold I guess. I said to her,

“‘Aren’t you going to put something on that baby to keep it warm?’

“‘I’m going to put it in this dumpster when I am finished here. There is plenty in there to keep it warm.’

“‘Give it to me if you are going to throw it away.’

“‘Take it.’

“So I took it and put it inside my field jacket and tried to get it warm with my body. I didn’t know what to do, where to go. When I came to the Binton’s house, his wife just took charge and seemed to know how to help me and how to help the baby.”

“Let me talk to the Lieutenant. It doesn’t sound to me like there is any reason to charge either of you with child abuse.”

I was wondering how we were going to get home since I had given the taxi driver all the money I had. Just then the detective said,

“I’ll take you both back to West Inverness. I’ll tell the Lieutenant that I had to examine the home and the area behind the Mars Store. He won’t mind. After all, you may have saved that baby’s life.”

We arrived home about three-thirty in the morning. If there were any neighbors looking out their window, they saw me and a young woman in a nightgown and a field jacket getting out of a police car in the wee hours of the morning.

Mary was relieved to see us return home.

“Where is the baby?”

“At the hospital, I guess.”

“How is it?”

“They never told us. They may never tell us since the baby is neither ours nor Alma’s.”

“God knows how he is. I am going to pray that he survives and is given to a nice family.”

We gave Alma a blanket and a pillow and told her that she could sleep on the futon in the basement.

Several days later Alma told Mary her story and later Mary told it to me.

“I didn’t come from a happy family like yours. My father drank a lot and then he would come home and fight with my mom. He didn’t like me for some reason. If I would bring friends to the house, he would make it uncomfortable for us. He never hit me but he was always belittling me and making fun of what I’d say or things I’d do.

“As soon as I graduated from high school I joined the Army to get away from home. I did well and I liked military life. You make friends easily in the Army. Someone is always moving and someone new comes to take their place. That is an environment that lets you start making friends as soon as you arrive at a new base.

“I had always wanted to be a policewoman. I was able to get into the MPs. I made high marks in the Military Police Academy and was assigned to Fort Meade, Maryland. There I met a sergeant. He really made me feel like a million dollars. Every time that he saw me, he had something nice to say about me. But when we went on dates, he was always furtive about it. He said that since he was a non-commissioned officer he could get into trouble for fraternizing with a lower ranking enlisted person.

“We dated once or sometimes twice a week, always someplace that other soldiers wouldn’t see us. Our relationship became intimate. I had been a virgin but I gave that up to him. After we had been dating about six months, I discovered that I was pregnant. He immediately turned against me. He started finding things wrong with my job performance. When he couldn’t find anything, he would make things up. I found out that he was married and had two children.

“The Army will let you stay in the service when you are pregnant. They let you keep working as long as the doctor says it is all right. Then you go on medical leave, but you still have a place to live and your meals.

“I made arrangements to put the baby up for adoption. They wanted to know the father’s name. I told a lie,

“‘I don’t know his name. He was just a man I met in a bar. I was drunk and had sex with him in the alley behind the bar.’

“I knew that if I gave the sergeant’s name, he would be in lots of trouble. Not only would he suffer, but his wife and children would suffer.

“Meanwhile, he continued his campaign of discrediting me. After the baby was born, and I gave him up for adoption, I was discharged with a General Discharge ‘not suitable for military service’.

“I couldn’t go back home. I tried and tried to get a job. My savings soon ran out and I was homeless. I have been on the streets for nearly a year. I look for a vacant house, pick the lock, and make it my temporary home. My food has been from garbage cans and dumpsters. When I saw that baby lying on the ground by the dumpster, I thought of the baby I had given up for adoption. It seemed like a second chance for me. But I was no more able to care for it, than I was able to care for my own. It’s like my father always said - I’m a loser.”

Mary hugged her and they cried together. After a while Mary jutted her chin out and with fire in her eyes she said,

“You are going to stay with us until the winner in you, the winner that excelled at MP school and in your Army duties, shows its smiling face to the world once more!”