Night Must Wait by Robin Winter

Author:Robin Winter [Unknown]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
ISBN: 9781926997926
Publisher: Imajin Books
Published: 2012-11-05T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 53: Sandy

October 1968

Lagos, Western Region, Nigeria

Sandy sat alone and poured another inch of Scotch, but didn't pick up the glass. Tonight was a night for getting drunk, but she hated hangovers. Too many over the years.

"Sarah, I need to talk to you."

Sandy heard the words as if it were now, not that day in her white-and-blue bedroom back home in Indiana. Twenty-four years ago.

Her mother had looked nervous, folding a bit of her pleated gray wool skirt between her fingers. Sensible fingers with only a glaze of nail polish. Sarah had thought she would find something much more fashionable with a cheerful modern color when her parents finally let her choose her own nail color. Mother sat down on the bed and it startled Sarah. Mother had always said that beds weren't for sitting. Chairs were for sitting.

"You've been seeing Tommy Blackton at school, haven't you?"

"Yes." There was no point in lying in such a close town. "But he gets good grades and he's very polite and you like his mother."

Her mother smiled as though it hurt and Sarah began to pay attention. She didn't know why, but she felt tension between them that was none of her doing. Did her mother know she'd given Tommy a kiss on the cheek for a caramel?

"Mom, what's wrong? Have I done something?"

"No, dear. You haven't done anything. Oh, I wish your father had been willing to talk to you too. I need to make it clear," her mother said. "You know we love you very much, your father and I. He says I should have said something long ago. But how could I?"

Sarah couldn't speak. Maybe her father was an escaped convict. Maybe her parents weren't properly married. Maybe they were getting a divorce. Maybe she had a sister in an insane asylum.

"When you were born, Sarah. The doctor came and told us that you weren't right. Your parts," she said. "They weren't natural."

"Parts? What are you talking about?"

"They did everything they could," her mother said. "They moved things with surgery to make it all right. You had some male parts. It doesn't show now. It doesn't make a difference for some woman things. But you see, Sarah, you'll never be able to have children. Your girl parts don't connect through to your womb. That's what's important. You need to know that, because having children is what marriage is for. It's why God made us the way he did, why he created us different from men. For procreation."

Sarah couldn't hear Mother over the noise in her own head, though her mother kept talking. Her breathing had become ragged. Some of the words had begun to come through.

"You're twelve years old and you've probably heard something from the other girls about having their times of the month. But you won't. You aren't normal down there. In every other way you're fine. Only not that way. You're so smart, too. I was always relieved you don't really like babies, unlike some of your

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