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CHAPTER TEN: SMOTHER
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AS IT SO HAPPENED, no amount of time was enough for Helen. For the first few weeks, she tried her best to go about her days as if nothing had changed. The panic slowly yet surely began to ease into a blunt twinge that she carried in her heart wherever she went, but it wasn't so consuming as it had been when the grenade first struck and imploded.
Polly was right, it seemed. Helen had options. In the early days, the Shelby matriach accompanied her to see a woman who could've... taken care of things, as Polly had put it, but Helen found she couldn't go ahead with it. So she then considered adoption, but the thought of growing a life, no matter how terrifying, only to get attached and have no choice but to say goodbye was as painful as a kick in the guts... over and over, until that door of opportunity closed too. She thought about finding Patrick, and lingered on the idea, but nothing was set in stone.
Christmas would soon come before Helen could make up her mind. Which, don't get her wrong, was not a bad thing, but secrets could only be hidden for so long. She had her dresses taken out, hoping against hope when the local seamstress gave her the oddest look that she hadn't put the pieces together (Ms Scott was Birmingham's biggest gossip and everyone took her word as gospel.)
Then, under Polly's advice, Helen forced herself to drink stout instead of whiskey and stopped indulging in her seemingly never-ending supply of cigarettes (much to Helen's dismay.) Piece-by-piece, brick-by-brick, she created this beautiful but damning web of lies, excuses she would struggle to unspin when God came searching for her to repent.
That time would come far sooner than she planned. God was most definitely not on her side.
Helen wasn't present in Small Heath when Billy Kimber met his bloody end at the end of Tommy's gun. Polly had found her a doctor just outside of Birmingham, a decent enough fellow she referred to as Doctor Vincent Abrams, who promised to keep his mouth shut even if the devil himself was to knock on his door. Helen wasn't so sure if she believed him, but she continued to attend her appointments as her stomach began to expand and three months quickly became four, almost five.
On the day that Billy Kimber died, she returned to the streets of Small Heath with an oblivious smile on her face. Old wives tales be damned, Doctor Abrams had examined her stomach and declared Helen to be carrying a healthy baby boy. The bump is lower, he had explained. In my experience, boys sit lower and girls sit higher.
A boy. A son. The thought made her heart swell to bursting point.
