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"Momma, please!" I exclaimed. Her eyelids fluttered and she spun around.

"What is it, Leigh? Can't you see I'm getting ready for my guests? I don't have time for any nonsense," she barked.

"This isn't nonsense, Momma," I said, my voice heavy, cold. She saw how serious I was and put down her brush.

"Very well, what is it now?" She batted her eyelashes and looked at the ceiling, barely tolerating me. "Whenever I'm in the middle of something important, you have some sort of emotional crisis. I don't know what's wrong with teenage girls today. aybe you're eating too much sugar," she concluded.

"MOMMA, WILL YOU LISTEN TO ME?" I felt like running over to her and taking hold of the strands of her precious hair, forcing her to see me, to hear me.

"Stop shouting. You have my attention. Only please be considerate enough to make it fast."

I swallowed back the lumps in my throat and took a deep breath.

"When I first told you what Tony had done, you didn't believe me. You wouldn't believe me!" I said. I couldn't help the way ray voice rose and my eyes widened. The more I talked, the angrier I became myself. Momma's expression of annoyance and impatience fanned the hot coals of my anger, turning theminto small flames. "I kept trying to explain, to get you to understand that it wasn't any teenage fantasy, but you wouldn't listen."

"And I still don't want to listen to this. I told you,. . .

"MOMMA!" I screamed. "I'M PREGNANT!"

When the words came out of my mouth, they surprised me, but there they were. We were both silent, startled by the truth. There would be a baby. Tony's evil act would have consequences and now God would make us all pay for one madman's lust.

Momma simply stared at me a moment and then a tight, small smile appeared on her face. How I wanted to wipe it off. She sat back in her chair, folding her hands on her lap.

"What did you say?"

The tears were streaking down my cheeks and this time I was helpless, could not swallow them back.

"My period is long overdue and for the past few days, I've been having morning sickness. He made me pregnant." She didn't speak; she looked at me as if I had just spoken in some foreign language and she was waiting for me to translate. "Don't you understand what I'm saying, Momma? Everything I had told you was true, and now I'm going to have a baby, Tony's baby!" I cried, driving the reality home as firmly as I could.

"Are you sure? Absolutely positive about the dates?"

"Yes. You know I always keep good track of that," I replied firmly. There was no point in pretending what was happening was not. I would not do as my mother did: I would not live in a world of illusions just to keep myself happy.

She shook her head, her eyes turning small and hateful. "It's your own fault, you little fool," she hissed vehemently.

"What?" I couldn't believe my ears.

She sat back nodding, confirming her own thoughts.

"You flaunted yourself about, tempting him, tormenting him with your young, blossoming body. And now, you have the result, the horrible,

embarrassing, terrible result."

"I didn't flaunt myself about, Momma. You know . . ."

"Yes, I know. Don't you think Tony came to me continually, complaining about how you batted your eyelashes at him. And then, while I was away, you invited him into your suite. What did you expect him to do with you lying there naked, tempting, inviting, demanding he make love to you or you would . . . would make up stories about him?"

"What? Did he tell you such a lie? How can you believe that story?" I demanded.

"And now look what you have done," she said not listening to me. She resembled an actress who had been rehearsing and rehearsing these lines and refused to do anything but recite them. "What if this gets out? Just think what it will do to me, what my friends will think. Why, we'll never be invited to a single dinner. We'll be ostracized from society . . . and all because my daughter is a promiscuous, sex-driven, selfish, inconsiderate . . . jealous. Yes, that's what you are," she said, obviously very satisfied with her

explanation, "and that's what you've been. You're jealous of me, of my looks and the fact that I married such a young and handsome man, instead of remaining chained to your father, an old man who didn't deserve me."

"That's not true!"

"Of course, it's true. He told me how you behaved in the cottage, how you tried to seduce him during the modeling sessions."

"Lies, these are all lies!" I cried. Why was she doing this? What had happened to our motherdaughter relationship? "I didn't want to be the model. Don't you remember? You made me do it. And afterward, when I came to you . ."