Breadcrumb #690

Jess Sobanko

Helen sat on a park bench, her hands on the little swell on her belly, which had still been entirely flat just a week earlier.

She’d never pictured herself as a mother.

But when it happened, she knew it was just what she wanted.

She thought it meant the three of them would always be together, that they’d be a family. The good sort of family, like she saw in picture shows.

You see, sometimes, Helen believed the lie.

She’d spent so long telling people she was older than she was, that she was from a different city, that she was Helen Dawson. So sometimes it felt real. Helen Dawson felt like a real person. Not someone she had created out of thin air.

She knew that things were going to change. When he came back into town next week, she’d tell him about their baby.

The truth is, Helen never meant to fall in love with some Yankee truck driver who stopped in Memphis once every two months.

When she came to town, she’d come for one reason. She wanted to be a singer. Well, she wanted to be a star really. She wanted the glamour, the applause, but most of all, to be someone important. Someone people would remember long after she was gone from the world.

She grew up listening to the blues. Late at night, when she couldn’t sleep, she would sneak into the living room and turn on her father’s radio. She’d just close her eyes, while she listened to singers like Mae Glover. And she wanted to sing her own blues away.

Even as a little girl she’d had plenty. Everyone did back then, but she was certain hers were the worst in the world.

Maybe she was right, maybe she wasn’t.

But she didn’t like to spend much time thinking about life before she was Helen.

And Helen wasn’t much of a singer. She couldn’t carry a tune or match a pitch. Sam Phillips himself had told her that when she auditioned for him.

She did have one thing that helped her get by though. Her beauty. And she quickly learned to use it.

Men were always doing little things for her, offer a bit of extra attention, in the hopes she might return it. But she never did. Even the most handsome, most kind men never got a second look from Helen.

Yet, they continued to admire her all the same.

And it wasn’t just the men who were kind to her.

Everyone in town liked Helen so much, they never even called her out on it if she slipped up on one of her lies.

Then came that damn Yankee.

She hardly gave him any attention at all the first time he approached her, as she was leaving work one afternoon.

He was too old for her. 29 or 30. He was too tall. 6’3 or 6’4. And he talked very, very funny.

“I ain’t the slightest bit interested in what you’re selling,” she’d told him.

But six weeks later when he came back into town, her favorite song was playing on his truck’s radio and he was singing right on along—not all too well—and she decided that maybe she’d give him a chance.

They ate breakfast together. It was at the same place Helen ate breakfast every morning. She even ordered her usual eggs and toast, and they just talked.

“I never been on a date with someone rich before,” she said, after a while.

“You think I’m rich?”

“You ordered enough for two breakfasts,” she said. She looked down at his plate full of eggs, bacon, breakfast sausage, and toast. “Besides, ain’t all Northerners rich?”

“No,” he said, laughing. “Where are you from anyway? I know it’s not here.”

“Edgerton, Missouri”

She hadn’t meant to tell him the truth.

“Never heard of it.”

She was relieved.

“Why’d you come to Memphis?”

“To be a singer.”

“You any good?”

“Not really.”

They laughed. He always seemed to get the truth out of her.

And she didn’t know it then, but she was falling in love with him.

But he knew, the experienced man that he was, so the night he left, he kissed her, and he told her, “I love you.”

She believed him too, of course she did.

When he came back into town two months later, he asked her out again.

That time they ate lunch together in the park and fed bread to the little ducks in the pond.

“Did you miss me while you were gone?”

She didn’t ask if there had been anyone else, though she wanted to know.

People in town had warned her about him. They said she wasn’t the first girl who’d struck his fancy. They said she should find a nice boy her own age.

But Helen wanted to be special, and so she believed him when he said,

“Of course, I did. I thought of nothing but you while I was away.”

“And so, they ended up in the back of his truck, where he let her sample the Georgia fruit he was delivering, sweeter than anything she’d ever had before.”

She never expected to make love in the back of a truck. Or anywhere, ever.

But she had, and when Helen started crying after—she wasn’t really sure why and even if she was, it wasn’t anything she felt like talking about—but he just told her everything was alright and that he loved her.

The next night, she snuck him into the apartment. And that time she didn’t cry. She never cried again, in fact.

Instead, she would just lay her head on his chest afterward and listen to the sound of his beating heart.

It became a routine of theirs and eventually, two days every other month just wasn’t enough for her anymore.

Helen wasn’t much for prayer. She used to pray constantly, long before she was Helen, but God never seemed to be listening back then.

And so, she never planned on asking Him for another damn thing, if only to save herself the disappointment of another unanswered prayer.

But Helen loved him so very much, that she had to try.

“Dear Lord,” she said. “Make him stay with me.”

Helen didn’t believe it worked. Not at first.

But a few weeks later, she was late.

So, she went to the town doctor and he confirmed what she already knew.

Helen was happier than she’d ever been.

A baby was as good a reason to stay as any, and Helen believed he would.

She told him early in the morning, after a night together in her bed.

“Are you serious?”

She nodded. “I went to Doctor Hart and everything.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment. She’d never seen him so quiet before.

“I gotta go,” he said.

“Go?”

“I can’t have any part in this, Helen.”

“You already do,” she said. “I thought you’d marry me,” she added.

There were tears in her eyes, as she looked up at him. For the first time, she realized she didn’t know him at all. Just the sound of his lying heart and the gentle pleasure of his sinful touch.

“I’m already married, Helen. I have two kids back in New York.”

Helen wanted to believe that was a lie.

But it wasn’t and so, she never saw him again. It would be just her and the baby.

And once again, Helen couldn’t picture herself as mother.

But she became one. She became a lot of things.

“All men are the same, Vera,” she’d say to their daughter one night, years later, too drunk to remember her words come the morning. “They’ll say anything to get you to spend a night in their bed. And they never mean the things they say.”

“So why do you do it?” Vera would ask.

And the girl would be too young to be talking about what they were.

“Because the only thing worse than being touched by a man who doesn’t love you is being all alone at the end of the night. And sometimes, lying there in their arms, it feels just like it did with him, and then it’s worth it.”

And for a moment, Helen would almost believe that was true.

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