An Overprotective Mother

Would You Stay if I Promised You Heaven?

Tania listened to the women around her, all babbling without thinking, or wondering, if a young woman alone and swiftly becoming terrified was listening, absorbing the words they spoke.

"Nadine's baby died. God's will the doctor called it, didn't even give her a real explanation. He just took it off without her even seeing it, didn't try to do nothing, just took it off and left her crying. That's the tenth one this year and we're barely even into February. There's something going on up at the hospital, I tell you." The wasp-faced woman, in her late 40s and obviously not caring that a very pregnant woman sat right beside of her, continued speaking to the woman with her.

Tania felt her pulse race as she waited at the company store, her mother's order not ready yet. Another baby lost? She felt panic clawing up her throat, her hands going protectively, once again, around the swell of her stomach. She wanted to hide her babies, to protect them, from the evils of the world. Her breaths started to come as gasps and pain shot through her back, the tenseness of her entire body beginning to make her ache.

"What is going on up there?" The other woman was finally given enough time to interject a word before her friend began to speak again.

"Well, it could be anything but I suppose babies do sometimes die. Especially in these coal camps. It don't matter how much you clean, the place is just always dirty. I sure do wish Jack would take me back to Florida. It was so clean there, and the air was just so fresh compared to here. I tell you, I'm sick to death of everything being black or gray!" The woman got up as the wasp-woman's name was called.

Tania wondered who they were. She knew everyone in the village, these two were unfamiliar. Perhaps they were visitors. She wasn't sure.

Sometimes people came and went in the camps, though there were always the constants, the ones whose families had been in the area long before there were coal companies or even a state called West Virginia. Tania's family was one of those, their arrival in the area dating back to the late 17th century when a family of German origins found their way into the valley and set up shop.

These women had unsettled Tania, though she did not know them. Their loose talk only served to confirm something she already suspected; something was terribly wrong.

Her name was called and Tania left. She walked down the sidewalk, over a stone bridge crossing the twisting river, through the town, and paused just before getting to the doctor's house. There was no longer a doctor there but the man that had built it 50 years ago had obviously had some money.

A white palace in a town full of dark, dusty houses, the three story home stood well above the squat row of houses neatly arranged in a square in the village. That house told all a person needed to know about coal camps. Opulent, garishly decorated, screaming of wealth, the house was odd in a place where people still did not have televisions, or even running water in their houses.

Tania walked down to her parents' house, a duplex they had bought and turned into a single family home. Her mother was in the kitchen, smoking a cigarette as she stared out of the window at the table, a cup of coffee going cold as a voice come over the radio. Her mother was listening to her favorite radio program and would not want to be disturbed.

Tania went into the kitchen and put the groceries away. Her mother never spoke a word to her as Tania put the groceries away but she did raise her hand, an envelope held between her first two fingers.

"This came for you."

Tania snatched the letter away, and ran to her room, shutting the door and locking it behind her. She tore at the paper, pulling out the pages with excited fingers.

Her husband's first words made the pages fall from her now numb fingers...

"I may not be allowed to come home. Some boys in our group caused some trouble if you remember and all leave has been cancelled."

He had to come home, he just had to! She needed him!

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