Part 2
The grueling rhythm of the late summer harvest offered Jenna a strange kind of sanctuary. From before dawn until long after dusk, she worked alongside her family in the fields, pulling, lifting, and carrying until her muscles burned and her mind went mercifully blank. Exhaustion was the only thing that kept the memories at bay.
By late October, the fields were stripped bare, and the frost began to harden the earth. With the harvest finished, the rural community shifted its focus to the autumn wedding season. The neighbor’s oldest daughter was set to marry the son of a family who owned half the commercial acreage in the county. It was a major event, and every household for miles was expected to contribute to the reception.
For three days straight, the farmhouse kitchen was a suffocating wall of heat. Martha had the woodstove running from morning to night. The air grew thick and heavy with the smell of rendering fat, frying chicken, and bubbling gravies. Ordinarily, Jenna would have been right beside her mother, chopping vegetables and tending the heavy cast-iron skillets.
But as she stood at the counter, trying to dredge raw cuts of meat in flour, a wave of profound nausea hit her. The heavy, greasy scent of the hot oil coated the back of her throat. The room seemed to tilt.
Jenna dropped the meat, clamped a hand over her mouth, and bolted. She shoved through the screen door, stumbled off the porch, and barely made it to the edge of the dried-out corn patch before her stomach violently emptied itself.
She stood there shivering in the crisp autumn air, gripping a dead cornstalk for balance. Behind her, the screen door whined on its hinges.
“What’s the matter with you?” Martha asked, wiping her flour-dusted hands on her apron. She frowned at Jenna’s pale, sweat-slicked face. “You’re shaking like a leaf. What happened to your iron stomach?”
Jenna wiped her mouth with the back of her trembling hand, refusing to meet her mother’s eyes. “I think I’m coming down with something. I drank some milk this morning from the tin pitcher… I think it was turning sour.”
Martha clicked her tongue, unsympathetic. “Well, don’t let your father see you slacking. We need every hand working if we’re going to finish this food by tomorrow. Go splash some water on your face and get back to the stove. And check the hogs on your way in.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Jenna whispered.
That night, lying awake in the freezing dark of her bedroom, Jenna stared up at the ceiling. The sickness had not passed. It had been lingering for weeks, a persistent, low-level dread that she had tried to ignore. Now, the silence of the house pressing down on her, she forced herself to count the weeks.
It had been exactly two months since that afternoon in the woods. She had missed two cycles.
A cold sweat broke out across her skin. The panic was so absolute it felt like she was suffocating. She curled into a tight ball beneath her thin quilt, pressing her hands hard against her flat stomach as if she could physically push the reality away.
She knew exactly what her father would do. Bill did not need a reason to use his fists or the heavy leather belt. He used them when the tractor engine flooded, or when the price of grain dropped, or when dinner was served lukewarm. If he discovered that his unmarried daughter was pregnant—bringing a massive, undeniable scandal to his doorstep—he wouldn’t just throw her out into the cold. He would beat her until she couldn’t stand up. He had done terrible things to her mother for far less.
Winter settled over the valley, burying the farm in deep, isolating snowdrifts. As the months dragged on, Jenna’s body began to betray her.
Every morning before dawn, while the house was still pitch black, she stood freezing in front of the small, clouded mirror in her room. Her hips were widening. Her breasts were heavy and tender, and a hard, undeniable swell had begun to push outward from her lower abdomen.
Desperation made her resourceful. She found a pair of worn-out cotton bedsheets in the linen closet and tore them into long, wide strips. Every morning, she wrapped the fabric tightly around her torso, pulling the bindings as hard as her arms would allow, flattening her stomach until it was difficult to take a full breath. Over the bindings, she wore her father’s old, oversized flannel shirts and thick wool sweaters, hiding her changing shape under layers of winter bulk.
It was agonizing. Bending over to muck out the stalls or carry buckets of feed sent sharp, shooting pains through her back. The tight fabric dug into her ribs, leaving angry red welts that never had time to heal.
Worse than the pain was the movement. By mid-winter, the child began to kick.
Every flutter, every shift inside her brought a fresh wave of revulsion. There was no maternal warmth, no sense of connection. To Jenna, the life growing inside her was an invader, a violent reminder of the man who had pinned her to the forest floor. When the baby kicked against the tight cotton bindings, Jenna would press her hand back against her stomach, pressing hard, tears of angry frustration pricking her eyes. She hated the child with a fierce, quiet intensity. She just wanted it gone.
By late March, the snow began to melt into thick, sucking mud. The heavy winter layers were becoming suspicious.
One evening at the dinner table, Bill set down his fork and stared at Jenna. The silence in the kitchen immediately thickened. Jenna froze, her heart hammering against her ribs, her eyes fixed on her plate.
“You’re putting on weight,” Bill said, his voice a low, gravelly rumble.
Jenna stopped breathing. Under the table, her hands clenched into fists. She waited for the explosion, for the table to be flipped, for his heavy hand to grab the back of her neck.
Instead, Bill let out a short, cynical grunt. He looked over at Martha. “Girl’s finally filling out. About time. Soon as the planting is done, start looking around town. We’ll find a husband for her. Get another mouth out of this house.”
Jenna let out a slow, shaky breath, her vision blurring with tears of sheer relief. He didn’t know. He just thought she was getting fat.
But the relief was short-lived. She was entering her seventh month. The physical strain of the bindings, combined with the brutal daily labor of the farm, was pushing her body to its absolute breaking point. Every time she lifted a bucket of water from the well, a dull, heavy ache radiated through her pelvis.
She was running out of time, and she had nowhere to go.