“I just guess you had,” Penny said. “And fast! Before I forget I used to be a lady!”
Studs pulled on his clothes hurriedly. “Good-bye then,” he said, starting for the door. He paused for just a moment to look at Penny with a sympathy that summed up their relationship to a T. “When you talk about this-—and you will,” he said in a voice that was both wise and resigned, “be kind.”
He was gone then and Penny was once again alone. Looking pitifully forlorn, the forlorn girl sighed to herself forlornly. She had given her all, and for what?
Sadder and wiser, she reflected sadly and wisely on how sadly and unwisely she’d acted. Still, she had after all, done what she’d set out to do. Despite her night of travail, despite her rejection by Studs, despite having sacrificed her chastity to a man whose attitude could at best be described as cavalier, Penny had gained the experience she’d been seeking.
She was no longer a virgin. As editor of Lovelights, as a byal Pussycat girl, she would now be able to bring to her task a certain authenticity. She had acquired the knowledge of sex, the knowledge of how it feels to give up one’s virtue, the knowledge of how a girl goes bad and how it feels to be discarded by a man once he's gotten what he wanted from a girl. These things would surely stand her in good stead career-wise. Thus, there was a certain amount of satisfaction to Penny in the face of her heartaches.
This satisfaction, however, was dispelled by a sudden thought taking possession of the darling girl’s mind. Tired as she was, it made her open her wise eyes wider and sit bolt upright in bed. Indeed, the thought all but overwhelmed her with its implications.
For Penny had remembered that in all the excitement of the long night, in the anticipation of sex and the fulfillment of it which marked the morning, she had forgotten something of vital importance. The darling girl had forgotten to take her birth-control pill!
For three years, Penny had taken the all-important pill religiously every morning. For three years she had taken the pill with her first cup of coffee and hoped for something to happen which would justify the talking of it. For three years, she had hoped in vain. For three years she had never done anything to get her money’s worth from the tablets.
And now, the first time that the pills would have served their purpose, Penny had neglected to take one!
The rueful girl remembered all the romance stories she’d edited. They all said the same thing. They all told her that a woman could tell when sex resulted in the beginnings of life inside her. Rabbit tests and such were mere formalities. A woman’s intuition was the telling factor. When a woman became pregnant, she just knew. Immediately, she just knew! Wed or unwed, it didn’t matter, she just knew! And now, Penny knew!
There was no doubt about it. She was carrying Studs’ child. She was pregnant! Her hand on her little tum-tum, Penny fancied she could even feel life stirring. Of course, she knew that was foolish. It was much too early for that. But it didn’t matter. She was pregnant. There was no doubt about that at all. Penny was pregnant!
Ahh, she would have no trouble in the future when it came to stories about the shameful plight of the unwed mother. Penny would be able to empathize from real-life experience. She would know what suffering was, just as she had learned what sex was.
Penny held her head high and looked toward the future bravely. She was prepared to bear her shame valiantly. She had sinned, and now she would pay the price. Like all the heroines in Lovelights, she would both repent and learn from her experience.
Penny would bring her child into the world, into the cruel, cruel world. She would lavish love and affection on it. She would hope it wouldn’t grow up to be ashamed of its mother, but if such were the case, Penny would understand and bear her cross stoically.
If the child was a boy, she would raise him to always respect women and their virtue. If it was a girl, she would see to it that she never made the same mistake her mother had. If it was a girl, Penny decided, she’d name it Candy. Yes, Candy Candie, sweet and loving and innocent. Penny could hardly wait for her to grow up so that she could write her story!
A girl. A boy. It didn’t really matter. Whatever it was, Penny would learn to love the little bastard!
Notes
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Hattie McDaniel (June 10, 1893 or 1895 – October 26, 1952) was an American stage actress, professional singer-songwriter, and comedian. She is best known for her role as "Mammy" in Gone with the Wind (1939), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, the first Academy Award won by an African American entertainer. Bill "Bojangles" Robinson (May 25, 1877 – November 25, 1949) was an American tap dancer and actor, the best known and most highly paid African-American entertainer in the first half of the twentieth century. His long career mirrored changes in American entertainment tastes and technology. He started in the age of minstrel shows and moved to vaudeville, Broadway, the recording industry, Hollywood, radio, and television. Edmund Lincoln Anderson (September 18, 1905 – February 28, 1977) was an American comedian and actor. To a generation of early radio and television comedy he was known as "Rochester." Anderson got his start in show business as a teenager on the vaudeville circuit. In the early 1930s, he transitioned into films and radio. In 1937, he began his most famous role of Rochester van Jones, usually known simply as "Rochester", the valet of Jack Benny, on his NBC radio show The Jack Benny Program. Anderson became the first Black American to have a regular role on a nationwide radio program. Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry (May 30, 1902 – November 19, 1985), better known by the stage name Stepin Fetchit, was an American vaudevillian, comedian and film actor, of Jamaican descent, considered to be the first black actor to have a successful film career. His greatest fame was throughout the 1930s. In films and on stage, the persona of Stepin Fetchit was billed as "the Laziest Man in the World". Perry parlayed the Fetchit persona into a successful film career, becoming the first black actor to earn a million dollars. He was also the first black actor to receive featured screen credit in a film.
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