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The Rainstorm

A story from New Domangue

By Lucas Díaz-MedinaPublished 2 years ago 14 min read
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The Rainstorm
Photo by Hidariniart on Unsplash

Just south of New Domangue proper, where the people living in hamlets along the skeleton-patterned, shell-covered riverside road known as Maple Street waited for the asphalt that had been promised more than twenty years ago, Nadine Bouchenaix dreamed of one day running upriver toward New Orleans. If she could just reach the big city lights where she believed her mother waited for her, she would be able to fill the emptiness she’d known her entire life. Now, barely fifteen years old, Nadine worried about a different sort of emptiness, one that she wished was inside her instead of the growing womb that pushed against her jeans.

As she ran away from school, a torrential downpour blanketing her every step, Nadine thought of this, knowing that she could never let Dora, her grandmother, know. She believed the only thing to do was to run for the big city. Her mother would know what to do.

The day in which Nadine fell to the same fate that had marked her mother long ago was little more than a horrible and distant nightmare to Nadine initially. By simply not thinking about that brief moment, she was able to keep a window of hope open, a window of assurance that everything would work out. And from this window she was able to draw enough strength to be able to continue to live under her grandmother’s watchful eye, which, with the help of Nadine’s senile great-grandmother, was used to exact control over Nadine’s every step outside of the house.

Despite her grandmother’s vigilance, Nadine’s secret remained a secret, and she carried on as if nothing had happened. But when the nausea started and was followed by strange sensations in her abdomen, Nadine began to worry. She wondered about—and hoped for—the sex-education classes that were to begin toward the end of the school year. She wanted to know for sure if it was true before her grandmother could suspect anything. Four months into it now, with her abdomen pressing more and more against her clothes—though she did everything possible to hide it—she no longer needed an educational video to tell her what her body knew.

And on the afternoon when a rainstorm suddenly caught everyone off-guard, drenching her and her classmates and causing everyone’s clothes to stick to their developing bodies, the child growing inside Nadine became so plain to the eye that, in no time at all, a number of fingers were pointing toward her when they thought she wasn’t looking. Half-guarded whispers and barely concealed glances expressed both awe and disapproval, neither of which escaped Nadine’s notice. Nadine had only to look down to know that she showed. She rushed to the bathroom when the bell rang and waited in a stall until the sounds of feet moving down the halls gave way to silence.

Nadine wondered how she would make it home without Dora noticing, knowing that Dora made certain that Nadine’s trips to and from school were watched. It was a wonder to Nadine that Trevor had never been mentioned at all. But it happened that her time with him, right up to the last day she saw him, had never been noticed, even though Dora had often taken time off from work to make certain that Nadine was taking a direct path home. When Dora couldn’t spy on Nadine, she checked with the old woman, with the school, and sometimes with the neighbors. Still, there were times when Nadine was able to escape the house, particularly when the old woman fell asleep in the afternoon hours after school. During this time, Nadine often escaped through the backyard and ran south of her grandmother’s house to a private space beneath a cypress tree on the Mississippi side of the levee.

Sometimes the gulf breeze carried the faint odors of tupelo trees and honey-mangrove bushes from the marshes nearby, and the sweet smell helped stir visions of Nadine’s mother. During these moments, her desire to go upriver felt as palpable as a noonday shower, and Nadine would often sit on the levee and stare at the rushing waters as if she expected to receive from them some message from the North.

At some point the previous fall, she had begun to share these dreams with Trevor, a boy she had met on one of her secret outings to the other side of the levee. When she slipped out of the house, it was never for more than half an hour, and she always took the dirt path that ran near the foot of the levee and the backyards of the elevated homes on Maple Street. She always made sure to keep out of sight of the eyes that peered out from behind kitchen windows. It didn’t take her long to think of Trevor as a boyfriend, though the two had never done more than hold hands during their brief visits after school. He was older, nearly finished with high school, and seemed as nice a boy as Nadine could hope to meet. When he first asked if he could kiss her, Nadine became afraid of being discovered by her grandmother and ran home. But, in time, Trevor persuaded her that they would not run into trouble, and Nadine began to venture out of the house more often. Trevor was always careful to appear well after they could both be sure that no one was around, and he never came near Nadine’s grandmother’s home.

One late winter weekday afternoon, as a northern gust shook the bare branches of the pecan trees not far from Nadine’s home, Trevor induced her to follow him into a secluded recess away from her usual spot on the other side of the levee. He told her that he had plans to get to New Orleans and that he wanted a few minutes to speak to her secretly. Beneath a thinning weeping willow, surrounded on all sides by thick shrubs, she soon discovered what type of plans he truly had in mind. When she began to question him about what he was trying to do, he forced her onto the ground. Nadine was still immobile with shock when Trevor lifted himself from her body, zipped up his pants, and disappeared into the shrubs. As she lay there, afraid to move, too astonished to be concerned about the torn underwear loosely wrapped around one ankle, she noticed that beyond the willow, a tall and fruitless persimmon tree rocked silently back and forth in the wind. In her silence during the months after that afternoon, the rocking tree above her head would be the only image she dared recall.

This morning, as she rushed through the downpour, Nadine came to the same persimmon tree, which now showed signs of the first buds of spring. On any other day, she would have enjoyed being beneath the tree, catching raindrops on her face. But today she simply looked up at it quickly and saw that it was burdened with leaves. She punched the tree once, then kicked it, and then began to land blow after blow upon it until she tired and fell down crying. Trevor had said he was going to help her get to New Orleans. He had said he had a plan. What could she have done? If only her mother were around.

After a few minutes, Nadine got up again, the rain still falling hard upon the earth. She had to continue running. She had to get her things out of the house, pack up, and keep moving toward New Orleans. She could make it and be as far away as possible before Dora came home.

She began to run again, running as hard as she could while she cursed the growing belly that slowed her down. As she ran, she fell often, hitting the ground with such force that her mouth repeatedly took in chunks of wet earth. Spitting out the earth in anger and desperation each time she rose, Nadine cursed God and continued on.

Nadine’s feet guided her toward her grandmother’s house almost automatically. It wouldn’t be easy. Nadine knew that she could not let her grandmother or the old woman see her. She ran as fast as she could, hoping to reach the house with enough time to grab a change of clothes and continue north, along the levee. As she thought about how she might find her mother, how she might get out of her situation, she stumbled over a large rock and struck her forehead on the ground with such force that her skin burst open. Blood oozed out and flowed down her face in streams that were diluted by the falling rain. Feeling weak and unable to stand, she began to cry as she rose gingerly to her knees. Hoping to force out the living being inside her, she cried out as she grabbed the rock she had stumbled on and struck herself several times until she doubled over into the mud.

A few feet ahead, the rain-heavy berries of a blackberry bush fell to the ground. Some burst open, while others bounced away, bouncing as if in a dance. A lone berry bounced onto the crown of her head. She looked up, not noticing the blackberry bush, and saw that she was lying only several yards from her grandmother’s house, the string of elevated dwellings veiled by a thick blanket of rain. Her grandmother, she knew, would not be in yet, but the old woman, senile as she might be, would be there, and she would see Nadine and know. Nadine decided that regardless of what might happen, she had to enter the house now. The loud thump-thump of blood that banged in her ear disappeared behind a wave of cramping that hit her as she stood and began to walk.

The tin-roofed, two-bedroom home seemed to rise slowly on its wooden pylons as Nadine moved toward it, the pain in her womb making every step difficult. She climbed the flight of wooden planks with care, opened the door as quietly as possible, and entered into an unnaturally dark kitchen. The pain ached deeper and deeper, and as Nadine made her way down the narrow hallway, she felt unable to keep herself upright. Hoping to avoid the senile old woman, Nadine grasped the wall and made her way as quietly as she could toward the bathroom.

Nadine would have made it had it not have been for the sharp, knife-like pain that suddenly shot through her body. She screamed and knew it was too late.

“What you doing home, girl?” asked the old woman, who was suddenly face-to-face with Nadine.

Nadine remained motionless, her chest tightly pressed against the wall, while the old woman tapped on her shoulders.

“Nadine!” she yelled. “I said what you doing home, girl? Ain’t you supposed to be in school?”

Nadine didn’t move. She pressed her abdomen close to the wall.

“Why you up against that wall like that? Come on, now. You acting strange.”

The old woman grabbed Nadine by one of her arms and with an unlikely strength spun Nadine around until she faced the old woman directly. “Let’s get you changed out those wet clothes,” she said as she turned Nadine toward her. “Why, child, you full of blood. Look at you,” the old woman said as she grabbed Nadine’s head.

Nadine tried to move her face away, but the old woman had a firm grasp. She straightened Nadine’s head, tilting it toward her, and stared owl-eyed first at the gash in her forehead and then at the blood stains that led to Nadine’s abdomen.

“Your nannan going to get your hide for this,” the old woman said.

“It wasn’t my fault!” Nadine cried. “It wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t, I swear.” Nadine threw her face into the old woman’s chest and sobbed uncontrollably into the folds of loose, wrinkled skin. “He forced me, Mamaw, a boy forced me when I didn’t want to, I swear.”

“There, there,” the old woman said. “You gotta stop that crying. It don’t matter who fault no more.”

“You not going to tell Nannan, are you?” Nadine whimpered.

“Your Mamaw think of something before Dora come,” the old woman said. “Now come on, let’s go to the bathroom. I got to clean that cut on your head.”

Nadine dropped onto the toilet, doubled over with pain.

“What wrong with you now?” the old woman asked.

“I fell, Nannan. I hurt myself on a rock.”

“Maybe it’s best that happened to you. You wait here one minute,” the old woman said and left Nadine. Within a few minutes, she returned with a bottle of whiskey.

“Here, drink this fast. It’s going to burn your throat, but then it be all right.”

Nadine drank the amber-colored fluid and coughed hard for a while until her throat settled. Almost immediately she began to feel light-headed.

“You got a nice gash there. Here. That hurt? I’m sorry about it. It’s going to hurt while I doctor it up. Meantime, I’m going to tell you about how some women used to get rid of their unwanted babies around here.”

As the old woman dressed Nadine’s wound, Nadine listened to her stories about married women who had found themselves pregnant by their lovers. The women waited until they had grown enough to be scraped out, and when the time came they would pay an old midwife to perform the operation with hot copper rods. When the rods could not be found, they would do the procedure with unwound metal coat hangers. After some initial pain, the women were able to return to their lives without anyone knowing anything about what had happened.

After the old woman finished her story, she left Nadine alone in the bathroom. Nadine sat on the toilet as if mesmerized by the cacophony of beating rain. She ignored the rhythm of splats and drops on the roof while she thought for a moment about what the old woman had just told her. If it had been done before, Nadine believed, she would be able to do it, too.

After thinking about this for a while, Nadine found enough strength to make it to her room, even though her legs felt as if they were made of rubber. She grabbed a metal coat hanger and hurried back into the bathroom, locking the door behind her.

Nadine removed her clothing and stood naked while she waited for the bathtub to fill with hot water. She heard Dora coming in through the front door as she turned off the faucet and thanked the heavens for having made it into the bathroom before she could be seen.

“Where’s that girl, Nona? I know she home!” Nadine heard Dora yell just outside the doorway.

“Ain’t you hear none, Nona? You crazy old coot, where’s Nadine?”

“I don’t know, woman!” Nadine heard the old woman respond. “She here somewhere. Go on back and check the rooms.”

“You trying to cover up for her, Nona? Neighbor down the street called me and told me she seen Nadine running like a mad wench through the back trail. I’m going to use a switch on her good for cutting school.”

“Oh hush up, Dora! Girl in the bathroom, I think. Least, that’s where I last saw her.”

“Nadine! Nadine!” her grandmother called as she beat on the bathroom door. “Nadine! Open this door! What you doing home from school, girl? You open this door right now, before you make me use the switch on you.”

“Girl’s pregnant,” Nadine heard her great-grandmother say.

“What?”

“Just like her mama,” the old woman said. “Come in here wet and her belly showed through and through. Told her about the midwife and the women who used to get rid of their unwanted babies.”

“What?” She heard her grandmother respond further, but after that Nadine no longer paid attention. Nadine ignored the two women arguing outside the bathroom door as her hands slowly manipulated the metal ends of the unwound coat hanger. From the other side of the door, Nadine heard their voices rise and fall, just like the din of rainfall, in an indistinct, almost singsong manner. It was as if they were at the end of a great hall and all she could catch of their conversation were the faint echoes of what they said. Everything became distant and dreamy, and the sharp pain that Nadine had anticipated disappeared almost instantly, as did the rain, which seemed to end abruptly. The voices of the two women outside the bathroom also disappeared as Nadine considered how nice it would be to go out after the deluge and walk barefoot while picking up the blackberries that were sure to be found all over the ground. She could save a few so that one day she might offer some of their sweet, rain-swelled insides to her mother.

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About the Creator

Lucas Díaz-Medina

I'm a Dominican immigrant living in the New Orleans area since the 70s. A father of two, I've been a service worker, war medic, ER tech, pro fundraiser, nonprofit leader, city bureaucrat, and now a PhD'd person, but always a writer.

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