“Just where you think you two are goin’?” Ma asked from the kitchen as both her daughters grabbed their jackets near the door. She was spreading peanut butter on a piece of toast for herself.
“Kelsey’s going with me to Bible study,” Karly Lynn answered. Despite being the younger, Ma considered Karly Lynn the more trustworthy of the two offspring. She was more attentive in school, didn’t ask as many critical questions of her folks, helped clean the house more, and just plain knew “her place” better than her older sister. If Karly Lynn said she was going to Bible Study, their mother wouldn’t question it. If Kelsey Lou had said it though, they’d both be grounded, and they knew it.
“Well! The Lord does work miracles after all,” Ma bellowed, clutching her chest to express surprise that Kelsey Lou was takin’ after her baby sister and had chosen a path of righteousness for once — not as though Ma herself ever bothered to attend church, but she still got credit from the folks at the church for raisin’ her girls right if the kids were seen in attendance.
“You comin’ straight home?” Ma asked.
“We were talking about going down to the creek. We haven’t been down there since last year, and it’ll be too cold soon. I wanna visit the tadpoles and the fish, Ma,” Karly Lynn answered. Although her normal Ozarks Hillbilly drawl was somewhat inevitable, she knew to make a real effort at sounding more academic and enunciating properly when speaking to her mother, who always commended Karly Lynn’s “intelligent-sounding” television-ready speech, even though kids at school taunted her for it.
Kelsey Lou shrugged apathetically and nodded, as though she were being dragged along to the creek by her annoying baby sister.
“Alright, well don’t get yourselves too messy. I want you home by dinnertime,” Ma said, unconvincingly grateful to have the house to herself most of this foggy Sunday. She was already imagining the hours she could spend listening to Alison Krauss and Brooks & Dunn with nobody at home to hassle her about the volume while the kids were out and Pa was handling the harvest.
“Love you, Ma,” the kids said on their way out the door. This wasn’t the kind of love you’d walk across the kitchen to show with a hug or a kiss; just the kind of love you say to someone who feels like words are more important than actions, who expects those words to be said to her – or else.
“Love you, too,” Ma mumbled with a mouth full of toast, her tongue stuck to her roof with peanut butter. She fought for most of a minute against the food she’d chosen to eat, then washed it down with a swig of water before scooping up another spoonful.
“Man, George Washington Carver could’ve done a lot better when he invented this,” she groaned to herself between spoonfuls.
The sisters walked in silence for twice the length of the driveway. As much as needed to be said, and could safely be said, had already been said. Meaningful questions had to wait for a safe place to speak freely.
Is there even a safe place for the conversation waiting to happen, though? Kelsey Lou wondered where such a place might be. A place they could speak, sure, there were plenty. But can a place be considered safe to discuss pregnancy when there are no legal options for a victim to discuss and remedy the effects of a crime that’s already been committed?
“Where we headed?” Karly Lynn finally asked.
“You trusted me this morning with a very big secret,” Kelsey Lou said. “Am I safe trusting you with one of mine?”
Her little sister looked stunned. Last thing she really wanted right now was another secret to carry. Her sister must have a good reason though, she thought. They are on the same team, after all. Karly Lynn nodded.
“We’re going to Mr. Hogg’s impound,” Kelsey Lou answered.
Karly Lynn gasped. “You still goin’ out there after Ma told you not to?!”
“Baby girl, I love you. Don’t you be talkin’ at me right now ’bout doin’ things Ma don’t know about. She still don’t need to know, and I’m trusting you —,” Kelsey Lou looked sternly at her sister, “— not to tell her, or no one. I’m doin’ you a favor, Karly Lynn.”
Karly Lynn took a deep breath to shake off a layer of shame that kept trying to creep over her like a cloak. She’d worked so hard to be Ma’s favorite, and now Ma was gonna be so mad findin’ out her favorite preteen child’s pregnant, she’d soon treat her worse than Kelsey Lou. What if Karly Lynn had to sleep with the baby out in the barn now? That’s what Ma would make her do, Karly’d bet.
At least she can’t make me marry him, Karly Lynn thought to herself along the silent walk. Whichever one of ’em it is, he’s already married.
Kelsey Lou feared most everything about sex. Now this fear expanded to engulf her baby sister’s existence. When Kelsey Lou was only six years old, Ma had taught her how God made mommies and daddies able to make a baby together when a man and a woman love each other very much.
After the two-hour discussion, Kelsey Lou had asked how two daddies make a baby together when they love each other very much. Her mother looked immediately furious. Kelsey Lou backtracked quickly, suddenly realizing it might seem silly that she thought she would grow up to be a daddy someday. She then asked how two mommies make a baby together instead.
That’s when her mother pulled out the Bible alongside the encyclopedias and taught Kelsey Lou about a “special disease” God had made to punish men who try to become daddies with other men. For reasons Kelsey Lou didn’t have words for, she just immediately knew this warning was also meant for her, and feared that if she were ever to have sex with anyone, God would punish her for it.
It baffled her that Karly Lynn didn’t have that same instinct to avoid sex altogether, but she also understood her little sister’s desperate need to be validated. She just wanted to feel loved, and in the absence of affection from her folks, she took the affirmations wherever they came from. Good grades, teacher’s pet, “little helper” — Karly Lynn never said “no” to no one. Sure enough, folks liked her a lot more than her grumpy older sister. Karly Lynn was agreeable all the time.
“So how’d you find out?” Kelsey Lou asked.
“Brittney’s mom had some pregnancy tests under their counter in the bathroom. I stole one,” Karly Lynn admitted.
“Who’s the father?” Kelsey Lou asked.
“I’m not sure,” Karly Lynn said through a sudden waterfall of tears. “Papa started on me a year ago but promised he had a vasectomy. He wouldn’t really take no for an answer, and then it just kinda kept happening. Whenever he tells Ma he needs help with the dishes, she makes me go ‘help’ him. Won’t listen when I tell her I don’t feel like goin’.”
“Papa” was a neighbor who taught 6th grade at Karly Lynn’s middle school and was also a part-time police officer. Wasn’t no good could come from naming him to nobody unless the DNA made his actions an undeniable fact. With a vasectomy, that wasn’t gonna happen. Kelsey Lou’s heart sank into a well of rage as they walked past a house flying a Thin Blue Line flag, announcing the inhabitants’ allegiance to the very same police who kept themselves quiet for the Blue Code of Silence, knowing full well at least one of their own had been screwing a 12 year old for the past year with near-impenetrable immunity.
“Then Luke is this student teacher at the elementary school where I was helpin’ out with the summer program. He was, uh, a little more forceful about it than Papa. In the gym, after all the kids had gone home. I fought, but —”
The sisters just stopped and looked at one another, both in disbelief that two human beings so full of love, so full of potential, so intelligent and beautiful and worthy of everything good life can offer, could be born into a world dominated by these awful men and their sympathizers like Ma, who saw girl-children as nothing more than incubators.
The Ozarks produced some of the finest, most inspiring folks theyd’ve ever met, just as it had also beaten and stripped them of their life’s potential in the same swift stroke of God’s paintbrush, the very moment God seen fit to place them in the U.S. South on the divine canvas of possibilities. Kelsey Lou stood paralyzed, helplessly awed that her baby sister’s future was over before it had begun, and yet no one was even going to recognize the death of who she should’ve become.
Abortions were illegal; and anyway, if Ma had her way about it, Kelsey Lou knew full-well their mother would sooner have any of her children die so she could claim to be the victim of the loss, rather than the cause of it.
“I’m sorry,” Karly Lynn sobbed. “I didn’t mean to let it happen.”
Kelsey Lou hugged her tightly, shaking her head and repeating, “No. No, no, no, no, no, no. This is not your fault, ma’am.”
They continued their discussion for the rest of the five miles out to ol’ Mr. Hogg’s impound, learning things about one another and blossoming into a new age of friendship as sisters.
By the time they arrived, Karly Lynn had been deeply schooled in what it means to care for yourself when no one else will. She wouldn’t get good fruits by relying on anyone else — least of all a man — to fill the void their wretched ol’ Ma left in her soul as a child. She needed to learn to fill the void within herself. Learning to say no, and to mean it, even if someone stops liking her for it, had to be part of that. She had to learn to like herself more than she cared whether anyone else did.
“Miss Kelsey Lou!” Mr. Hogg cheered from the rocker chair on his front porch. “I see you’ve brought comp’ny this mornin’. Whaddo I owe the pleasure?”
“Well Mr. Hogg, you see, I’ve come for my usual work,” Kelsey Lou answered. “Nobody but my sister here knows nothin’ ’bout this. But if I could, sir, I’d like to train her to do my job. And if you’ve got any extra we could do, her or me – but she can only come when I come with her – well, we’d sure be grateful.”
Mr. Hogg waited pensively before he spoke. “Fallen on hard times, have y’uns?”
The sisters looked at one another sheepishly as Kelsey Lou searched for a good story to cover the truth, but it was hard to find a decent lie big enough to stretch that far.
“Oh,” he said before either sister said a word. He knew. This wasn’t the first pregnant 12 year old he’d known, and if Arkansas kept havin’ its way, she surely wouldn’t be the last.
“Come inside,” he said. “Myrtle’s gonna fix y’all a cup of tea.”
“Thank you, Mr. Hogg,” Karly Lynn said, “but I don’t really drink tea myself.”
“You do today, young’n,” Mr. Hogg answered in an authoritative tone no fool would question. “You’ll drink as much of her homegrown Pennyroyal magic as the missus pours ya, and we’ll discuss the work and wages while you drink it all up.”
“Yes sir,” the younger sister answered. This didn’t seem like the right time to start practicing her “no” just yet.
Kelsey Lou was shocked to hear Mr. Hogg speak toward her sister so intensely, but her instincts said to let it be. She heard mercy in his voice, and she had never known him to be a forceful man. He must have a good reason, she thought. It was just tea.
On her fourth cup of fresh but rather unpleasant drink made from some terribly bitter plant in Mrs. Hogg’s special herb garden, Karly Lynn listened with almost-relief as Mr. Hogg and Kelsey Lou worked out the final details of her younger sister taking over the car sales role, while Mr. Hogg would start Kelsey Lou under his wing next week as a welding apprentice.
Kelsey Lou was about to learn a skilled trade that might could take her out of this death trap for girls and would give her a real shot at life as a whole human adult. She wanted to feel elated, but the weight of knowing it was already too late for her sister kept this precipitous offer from seeming so great now.
Kelsey Lou watched Karly Lynn wrap up the last signatures on two of the six cars she taught her how to sell after the tea was finished.
“Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Hogg,” Kelsey Lou said, paying Mr. Hogg his share of the day’s cash. “You’ve been so much more than gracious. I don’t know why it just made sense to come here today, but I guess your home feels like a safe place to me. Ain’t many o’ those ’round here no more. Thanks for helpin’ me and my sister find our feet.”
“The South is a lot of things, especially for young girls,” Mrs. Hogg said gently, letting the wrinkles around her eyes punctuate the statement. “But most of all, the South is what we make of it. As for me and my house, we will serve love and mercy. We make Old Homestead County what we need it to be, if it ain’t already. Come have a cup of tea any time y’uns need it. Next time, I’ll make you one that tastes good.”
Mr. Hogg stepped forward to add, “And whatever it is that’s troublin’ y’uns, if you can take advice from an old man who ain’t as dumb as he looks, why don’t y’uns just get a good nap, put it out of your minds, and don’t go tellin’ your Ma nothin’ she don’t need to know.”
The sisters nodded nervously. Then Karly Lynn asked, “How will I know when she needs to know or not?”
Mrs. Hogg replied, “If she don’t ask you herself, she don’t need to know. Don’t offer an answer to a question ain’t been asked,” she said with her finger pointed at her brain, indicating Karly Lynn may wanna think a little harder about how much she tries to be liked by giving up too much unsolicited information to folks without her best interests at heart.
“Now, go be gentle with yourselves, y’hear?”
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The Front Porch 