The Girl with Bare Feet - L. Avery Brown (fiction book recommendations TXT) 📗

to bed and worked on finding other ways to destress. Over time, the nightmares lessened though they did not cease. But she was able to sleep more soundly. Then, shortly after Liza’s birth Janelle started taking stronger meds and the nightmare became nothing more than a disturbing dream she had once in a while.

 

Four years later, Janelle became pregnant with her son, Peter, and had to go off her meds. It wasn’t long after that when the hellish dream returned and plagued her. Only with her second pregnancy, for some reason, the anxiety medicine didn't do much to curb the nightmare so she had to endure it for the whole of the pregnancy. And it was always the same dream… nothing ever changed.

 

The little girl was sitting the ground asking Janelle to help her find her shoes and then Janelle would turn to look at something behind her, she'd look back and instead of seeing an adorable young girl, she saw the haunting face of a child with dead eyes, a sunken, sallow face, and a body that was nothing more than skin and bones. The stress of her second pregnancy even got to Wade.

 

He’d been asked to visit other churches with the possibility of him becoming the lead pastor. When Janelle was pregnant with Liza he would have never even considered going away. But twice when she was pregnant with Peter, Wade went away for three days at a time. Janelle knew it was because he needed a legitimate excuse to get away from Janelle and her sleep deprived, mother of a four-year-old/mommy-to-be anxiety. Towards the end of the pregnancy, Janelle begged Dr. Wingate to induce her labor two weeks before her scheduled due date. “Please I can’t sleep. My mom has had to keep Liza for me because I just can’t handle her right now. And Wade… God, Wade he’s trying but I can see it’s wearing on him, too. Please, Dr. Wingate, just induce me so I can get this thing out of me.”

 

But Wingate refused telling her it would be unhealthy for her soon-to-be born son. Janelle dreaded the idea of having to wait two more weeks or possibly even more. Then after her visit with Dr. Wingate, when Janelle was eating her dinner, her water broke and she went into labor. It was excruciating; not at all like when she had Liza.

 

With Liza she had a scheduled C-section. During the procedure Janelle wasn't quite aware of what was happening during her delivery. But when she went into labor with Peter it was a whole different matter. It was horrendous. Her labor pains were agonizing and she swore she was being ripped open but no matter how hard she pushed, Peter refused to be born. And Wade was there holding her hand talking her through the whole experience.

 

Then something happened in the middle of a contraction. Janelle passed out and when she woke up she saw that everyone in the room was rushing about. Wade had been led to the door and was being told to leave. "No, no. I want him to stay with her, please." Janelle was in such pain.

 

A nurse pushed something through her IV that made Janelle groggy. She fought sleep and forced her eyes to open. Only when she did get them open, she saw the girl with the angelic face standing at the foot of her bed right beside the doctor. Then, in the blink of an eye, the sweet faced girl was standing right next to Janelle, smiling.

 

"Can you help me find my shoes?"

 

Janelle started screaming and fought against the people trying to help her. "Go away! Go away!"

 

"Mrs. Thomlin, Janelle, you need to calm down. We're going to have to do an emergency C-section to get your baby out."

 

Janelle was terrified. She didn't understand what was happening. She could hear people telling her to be calm while the girl from her dreams kept asking over and over, "Can you help me find my shoes?"

 

Wade yelled, "Something's wrong. Help her. Help her."

 

Janelle turned her head just in time to see Wade being forcibly pushed out of the room by a nurse. But by now she was so tired all she wanted to do was sleep. Then she heard something fall to the floor and Janelle turned her head to see what had happened. That was when she saw the dead girl was there; the one with cold, hollow eyes. She was standing just inches away from her face.

 

Janelle could see into the pits where her sad eyes had once been. The girl reached out to touch her and screamed at Janelle, "Can you help me find my shoes?"

 

That's when Janelle's blood pressure dropped and she blacked out. The next thing she knew, she was waking up in a post-natal ICU room. She'd nearly died delivering Peter.

 

When they asked Janelle if she was ready to see her son, Janelle wasn't sure she wanted to; afraid the girl would be there waiting for her. But when Wade walked in with their son in his arms, all her worries faded away. Peter was perfect. It had just been a horrible delivery; unexpected in its unfolding. She didn't see the girl anywhere; but not for lack of looking. When she was sure the dead girl was nowhere around, Janelle was able to bask in the joy of her new child.

 

Wade went home to be with Liza and Janelle was able to sleep. It felt good. Then Dr. Wingate showed up at her room to wish her congratulations and to talk about what had happened. She mentioned to Janelle that she had been in the delivery room and witnessed what professionals would call a brief, high stress induced psychotic break. During which they had to put her completely out to deliver Peter for both their sakes.

 

Janelle remembered it. She knew she must have looked and sounded utterly mad but she also knew what she saw. She looked up at Dr. Wingate. "I don't want any more children. Do whatever you have to do. I can't do this anymore. I never had any issues like this before I had children. I didn't have problems between Liza and Peter. So fix it. Tie my tubes. Hell, remove my damn ovaries or something but I never want to have another child. And I want it done before I leave here. Do you understand?"

 

Dr. Wingate asked Janelle to reconsider; perhaps talk with Wade about it first. But Janelle was firm in her resolve. "No. He'll try to talk me out of it. This is my body, goddamn it and I will do with it what I want. I have two children. That's enough. I don't care what the hell you have to say to Peter but I want this done."

 

And though Dr. Wingate wasn't pleased with her patient's obvious desperate 'in the moment' decision, she agreed. She told Wade that they needed to keep Janelle an extra day or two because they needed to do a fairly quick procedure to check and make sure Janelle's uterus was alright after the C-section. The next day, Janelle was wheeled into an operating room and her tubes were tied; tubal ligation that was the proper term. And she was so relieved when it was done. Wade never knew what happened during the brief surgical procedure. Janelle never told him because that’s how she wanted it.

 

After taking six months off to recuperate from the whole ordeal, Janelle resumed to her work. Her first 'return' book was to illustrate a Christmas book even though it was mid-April. Everything was perfect… finally. Wade was busy with his work during the week and Janelle was busy with her work, too. But on Sundays after church the family spent every minute together from the last handshake at the steps of the church up until the lights were turned off in the kids' rooms. And then Janelle and Wade would have their 'them' time which was far more enjoyable now that Janelle didn't have to worry about getting pregnant.

 

That was nearly two years ago. Liza was now an overly inquisitive six years old and Peter was every bit a two year old and into everything. Janelle found it difficult to keep up with the pair of them especially with Wade so busy at his new job. A job that kept him away from them a lot more than when they lived in the Low Country area of South Carolina.

 

Truth be told, Janelle wasn't exactly sure if she was happy with the move her family had recently made to a small town called Pease Point near Black Mountain, North Carolina. It was Wade's hometown. What's more, it was the place where he came to decide he wanted to become a minister because his father, Lucas, had been the lead minister at Pease Point Baptist for many years. In fact, his great-great-grandfather had started the church when there was barely a handful of people living in the densely forested, mountainous area.

 

Being part of the ministry was sort of in the blood of the Thomlin men. Although, according to Wade, for a long time he didn't want any part of the ministry. When he was a teenager, he would have rather let his father pass along the reins to his Uncle Scott. But then when Wade was eighteen his sister, Allison, drowned. She was only ten. And that horrible incident is what prompted him to change the direction of his life; a life that was up until without much direction.

 

Wade told Janelle he made the life changing decision because of Allison's death. She was so young, ten, when she died and when she was no longer part of his life, Wade realized how precious life was; especially the lives of children. That's why he started his journey of spiritual discovery focused on ministering to at-risk youths. And though Allison’s dead had affected him in such a profound way, he rarely talked about it or her.

 

But Janelle wanted to know more about not only Allison’s drowning but also about Allison in general. Only whenever she brought it up Wade would say, ‘Please not now.’ And mentioning the child who had died at family gatherings in Pease Point never ended well. The family would stare at her like she’d invoked the name of Satan or something. Allison was a no-no subject because Lucas, Wade’s father, still had not gotten over it.

 

She did once find a photo of Wade when he was younger, perhaps seventeen, and his family at the Pease Point Baptist Church Homecoming. The whole group was laughing, making silly faces, and Allison was standing between Wade and some cousin of theirs. She had on a blue dress and was sticking out her tongue. Other than that, there weren’t constant reminders of Allison anywhere in the Thomlin home that Janelle could see.

 

And Janelle knew it was because of Lucas. Unlike Wade and his mother, Doris, who had picked themselves up and brushed themselves off, Lucas still mourned his lost child. For weeks after her death, he shut down completely. He spoke to no one. Instead he would go out to the family’s retreat, a cabin on a lake about six miles as the crow flies but more like fifteen miles by road from where the Thomlin’s actual home was.

 

Janelle recalled how she’d once asked Wade why he didn’t have any photos of Allison and he just sighed. Then he said, “The way I see her in my head, that laughing kid. That’s how I want to remember her. Some old school picture doesn’t capture Alli the way my memory does.” It was an honest response and Janelle couldn’t fault him or his family for wanting to only remember that funny little girl. Maybe it’s why they had that one photo of her being so silly out where people could see it because that’s how they all thought of her.

 

Adjusting to life in Pease Point was not easy for Janelle. Her entire