68 - Where's Jenny?

"Leroy didn't press further," Latoya said, as she held her candle. "But I did. I saw what happened next. I call this story...

WHERE'S JENNY?

Who cares for the caretaker? I admit, I didn't care much at first. Not until Leroy told me what he had seen. That got my attention. When the house across the street from the Haversham house came up for rent, I took it. Installed a webcam in the window, so I could look in. Monitor it from wherever I was on my laptop or smartphone.

The one question I wanted to answer was "Where's Jenny?" I didn't have enough information to go to the police. Miss Jenny didn't have anyone to care for her. So I watched. Watched the two women move through the house, in whatever snippets I could see through the open windows, whose blinds were seldom drawn.

I saw Jenny—I assume it was her—moving through the house, cleaning, dusting. Her breasts were huge, barely contained in the dress she wore. Mrs. Haversham, or at least the woman I assumed was Mrs. Haversham, moved through the house too. Often, she was carrying a book, sometimes a tray or glass of milk. Neither of them ever seemed to leave the house, and deliveries and mail came and went, with only the suspiciously young-looking Mrs. Haversham answering the door.

There was no sign of duress. No chains, no threats, no ****. Sometimes, at sunset, I would see Miss Jenny at the window, looking out on the street. Then she would turn her head, as if called; dark circles would dampen her dress at the nipples, and she would go. I could follow the lights in the house as she turned them out, one by one.

The curtains in the bedroom were often closed. But it was an old house, no air conditioning. On summer nights, they left that window open. I waited, to see what I could see...and one night I saw Miss Jenny sitting in bed. She was reading from some book whose cover was indistinct. The old woman, Mrs. Haversham, had her head in Jenny's lap, and was sucking on a teat. The breasts were enormous. I hadn't realized how big until I went back and reviewed the recordings from the webcam. Over a period of weeks they had gone from watermelons to beach balls. Jenny stooped as she walked, top-heavy, front-heavy.

I saw something else too. The photograph on the wall, which Leroy had mentioned. It was different. I don't mean that it was different in recordings, but in my memory. Every time I went back to what the camera had captured, it was exactly the same. Yet there was something wrong about it, something different than how I had remembered. For one thing, the breasts were the same size as Jenny's were now. For another there was an indication—it is hard to express this—it looked like she was pregnant. Just the beginning of pregnancy. The slightest hint of a bump in that old daguerrotype. Had that always been there? I couldn't tell, but I didn't remember it, and Leroy hadn't mentioned it either. That made me worry, somehow.

What was that old woman doing, aside from sucking on that big brown tit? I wasn't sure. Mrs. Haversham didn't seem to be getting younger, but I wasn't sure now how much of my memory I could trust.

Night after hot night, I stayed up to watch, until the light went out. Jenny still went to her own room to sleep. She took a bath beforehand. The window open. I could see her then, as she struggled, unfamiliar with her body. I could see how the skin stretched under her arms, the huge breasts pulling at her body. Her stomach was still flat as she knelt in front of the old-fashioned tub and lay her tits in to soak. Breasts so big now that she could hardly reach all the way around to wash them.

That was when it happened. About midnight of the summer solstice. The shortest night of the year. Miss Jenny was bent over with her breasts in the tub—and then I saw a shadow fall upon her back. Caught the reflection of a pale, withered body in the mirror above the sink. Then Miss Jenny grabbed the side of that old tub in a white-knuckled grip.

I saw her muscles tense. I saw her mouth open in a silent scream. Her thighs tremble.

I saw her abdomen begin to distend. As if something was pushing itself into her. It took an hour...half before and half after midnight...and by that time the dome of her big brown belly brushed the tile of the bathroom floor, and I saw Jenny's shoulders sag and her whole body shudder with sobs.

The next morning, I rang the doorbell. It took several moments, but eventually the door opened. A woman was there, her enormous breasts and gravid stomach barely covered in a dress that wasn't made to cover such. One brown hand rested on her bump, and she stared at me with strange, dark eyes.

"Yes?" she said.

"Where's Jenny?" I asked. Though I thought I knew the answer. I had looked at the photo on the wall this morning. The baby was gone. The Black woman in the photo was enormously pregnant, her breasts almost spilling out of her dress.

"Jenny," the woman said, and her accent was strange to my ears. Educated. "I think I will name my daughter Jenny. Jenny Haversham."

She smiled and rubbed both hands on her stomach...and for a moment I felt the pull, the strange and terrible gravity that seemed to tug at me from that overfull womb. It took an effort of will for me to step back, and continue stepping. I left her there, standing in the doorway of her house, an oddly content smile on her face. I wasn't sure then, and I am not sure now, what happened exactly in that house.

"Did you follow up?" Roberta asked. "What happened when she gave birth?"

Latoya stared at Roberta with haunted eyes.

"I don't know that she did. As far as I know, she's still pregnant. But then...Miss Jenny did care for Mrs. Haversham for a long time. Much longer than nine months."

That didn't seem like much of an answer. Yet it was the only one Latoya had.

With a sigh, she blew out the candle.