One morning, terrified as Kat was by her stepfather’s threats, she decided she had to tell her mother what was happening. Her mother would put a stop to it, would protect her.
“Mama, your husband comes to my bed at night when you’re away, and forces himself on me.”
Her mother stared at her a moment, then slapped Kat hard across the face.
“Don’t you dare make up lies like that, you little slut!”
Kat never discussed it again. The only reason she stayed at home was because of Mike. He’d be lost without me, Kat thought. But the day she learned she was pregnant, she ran away to live with an aunt in Minneapolis.
The day Kat ran away from home, her life completely changed.
“You don’t have to tell me what happened,” her Aunt Sophie had said. “But from now on, you’re going to stop running away. You know that song they sing on Sesame Street? ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green’? Well, honey, it’s not easy being black, either. You have two choices. You can keep running and hiding and blaming the world for your problems, or you can stand up for yourself and decide to be somebody important.”
“How do I do that?”
“By knowing that you’re important. First, you get an image in your mind of who you want to be, child, and what you want to be. And then you go to work, becoming that person.”
I’m not going to have his baby, Kat decided. I want an abortion.
It was arranged quietly, during a weekend, and it was performed by a midwife who was a friend of Kat’s aunt. When it was over, Kat thought fiercely, I’m never going to let a man touch me again. Never!
Minneapolis was a fairyland for Kat. Within a few blocks of almost every home were lakes and streams and rivers. And there were over eight thousand acres of landscaped parks. She went sailing on the city lakes and took boat rides on the Mississippi.
She visited the Great Zoo with Aunt Sophie and spent Sundays at the Valleyfair Amusement Park. She went on the hay rides at Cedar Creek Farm, and watched knights in armor jousting at the Shakopee Renaissance Festival.
Aunt Sophie watched Kat and thought, The girl has never had a childhood.
Kat was learning to enjoy herself, but Aunt Sophie sensed that deep inside her niece was a place that no one could reach, a barrier she had set up to keep her from being hurt again.
She made friends at school. But never with boys. Her girlfriends were all dating, but Kat was a loner, and too proud to tell anyone why. She looked up to her aunt, whom she loved very much.
Kat had taken little interest in school, or in reading books, but Aunt Sophie changed all that. Her home was filled with books, and Sophie’s excitement about them was contagious.
“There are wonderful worlds in there,” she told the young girl. “Read, and you’ll learn where you came from and where you’re going. I’ve got a feeling that you’re going to be famous one day, baby. But you have to get an education first. This is America. You can become anybody you want to be. You may be black and poor, but so were some of our congresswomen, and movie stars, and scientists, and sports legends. One day we’re going to have a black president. You can be anything you want to be. It’s up to you.”
It was the beginning.
Kat became the top student in her class. She was an avid reader. In the school library one day, she happened to pick up a copy of Sinclair Lewis’s Arrowsmith, and she was fascinated by the story of the dedicated young doctor. She read Agnes Cooper’s Promises to Keep, and Woman Surgeon by Dr. Else Roe, and it opened up a whole new world for Kat. She discovered that there were people on this earth who devoted themselves to helping others, to saving lives. When Kat came home from school one day, she said to Aunt Sophie, “I’m going to be a doctor. A famous one.”
Chapter Four
On Monday morning, three of Paige’s patients’ charts were missing, and Paige was blamed.