It shocked Ricki too. But warmed her heart at the same time. “Nobody’s ever treated me like you treat me,” she found herself confessing.
At first Vince chuckled, thinking it was a joke, because they certainly had their share of battles already. But he saw that sincerity in her eyes. “What way am I treating you?” he asked her.
She stared at him. “Mostly good.”
That was news to him. He thought he’d been rather harsh to her on every turn. But everything in its context. “How have others treated you?” he asked her.
Ricki didn’t hesitate. “Mostly bad,” she said to him.
Vince continued looking into her big browns with sadness in his own eyes. She was such a wonderful soul. Such a hard-charging, caring young lady. How could anybody mistreat this person?
But apparently just about everybody did. Including him with his harshness. But if all she knew was horrific, his harshness was more than it should have been to her. “Why do you hate this town?” he asked as he continued to stare at her.
Ricki was scared to go there, but she knew he had a right to know. He was bankrolling her entire visit in a way that allowed her to take her birthday money and pay her bills back home, at least for a month, and to be there for her sister. He had every right to know.
She turned onto her back while Vince remained on his side watching her. “When Erica was twelve years old,” she said, “she thought she was pregnant.”
“Pregnant attwelve?”
Ricki nodded. “It was awful.”
“Did she say who the father was?”
“She told me he was some eighteen-year-old, but she claim he was passing through Milton and she didn’t know his name.”
“Damn. What about your parents? They allowed her to have boyfriends at twelve?”
“Allowed it? Absolutely not! She was sneaking out and running away and doing whatever she was big enough to do. They couldn’t control her so they stopped trying. I left town when I was eighteen, so by the time she got pregnant I’d been away from home for like four years. I was living in Brooklyn by then. I couldn’t wait to get away from Milton.”
“Or away from your parents?”
“Them too,” said Ricki.
“Why?”
“Daddy was a military man and he treated us like his subjects rather than his children. And Mommy did whatever hesaid. Me and Erica had mouths on us. We just couldn’t go along with all that drill sergeant shit.”
Ricki started to correct herself, but decided against it. He never corrected himself when he used profanity. “Erica would call and confide in me about what she wanted me to know, so I made her take a pregnancy test. It was negative, but she was certain she was pregnant. Since she heard that sometimes those tests are wrong, she wanted me to come to town and take her to Dr. Proctor’s office.”
“Dr. Proctor? The man she’s accused of killing now? She went to see him when she was twelve?”
Ricki nodded. “He was the most prominent African-American doctor in town, and everybody trusted him. So I came to town and took her to see him so that it could be confirmed as yea or nay by an OB/GYN.”
“Was she pregnant?”
“No,” Ricki said. “She wasn’t pregnant. Dr. Proctor’s nurse showed me the test results since I was twenty-two and was her big sister, and she was only twelve. But I noticed she was in his examining room for a long time. I even asked his nurse about it. But she said Dr. Proctor was counseling her on her bad behavior. As if a twelve-year-old was the problem. What about that grown-ass man that slept with a twelve-year-old?”
“I agree,” Vince said.
“So we eventually left the doctor’s office and I took her home. Erica was acting funny then, like something wasn’t right, but she always acted funny. But a couple months later, I come home to our grandmamma’s funeral and I catch Erica throwing up in the bathroom. So I’m mad. She let that boy mess with her again? But before we could say anything more, our parents overheard the conversation and made her take a pregnancy test. This time it was positive. They were blaming me, as if I hadsomething to do with it, and they were treating Erica like she was a dog. It was awful.”
“What did they do?”
“They made her get an abortion.”
“Against her will?”
“She wanted one,” said Ricki. “She wanted that baby out of her now was how she put it. But of course our parents made me take her to the clinic in Hartford to get the abortion. They were too high and mighty for that. So I took her. I didn’t want to, but you just didn’t go against our parents. But after she had the abortion, she told me the truth.”
