The Intimate Stranger

By Rishy Powell

Twenty-one year old unmarried Rhona Martin must find a way to tell her mother she is pregnant without breaking her heart. She lives in fear of her father finding out and throwing her into the street. It tells of the sexual abuse by a neighbour she trusted. The relationship with her younger sister Paula and how her father disowned her when she married out of her religion. How her best friend Tina talks her into going to the corner beer pub where she meets a tall blonde well built male and falls in love. It is the story of their relationship and what ensues when she finds out she is pregnant. With Tina’s help Rhona has an abortion but finds out later when it didn’t work that it was a scam. She then decides to keep the baby. When her mother finds out that her daughter is pregnant She tells her she must give the baby up for adoption. She is forced to hide in her bedroom for the last three months of her pregnancy so that her father wont find out.Her trip alone to the hospital alone and in labour, The unforgivable way she was treated by the nurses when they found out she was unmarried caused her much pain and depression. Two months after giving birth Rhona was thrown into a tailspin when her mother told her she was pregnant. Through a flood of tears and heart felt emotions they were both able to release the pain they were caring for each other.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rishy Powell
• Release date: Oct 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311191427

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The Intimate Stranger

By Rishy Powell

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2014 Rishy Powell

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The Intimate Stranger

Prologue

1953

There were many nights when sleep came for only a few hours and many more when I could not sleep at all. I would toss and turn for what seemed like hours. Eventually I would roll onto my back to stare at the cracks in the ceiling. My thoughts and my emotional pain were far deeper than I could ever have imagined. How could I have been so stupid? Why didn’t I see the writing on the wall? I rolled over and turned on the lamp. I squinted at the round-faced alarm clock sitting on the orange crate beside my bed.

It read 3:26 am.

I wanted to be up at 6:30 to meet with my best friend Tina before we left for work to discuss how and when I was going to tell my mother about the predicament I was in. I thrust my head into my pillows once more as I desperately strived to get some sleep.

No sooner had I closed my eyes, when I heard my father’s voice resounding loud and clear in my head: Get out of that bed you tramp!

These were the words I feared the most. As hard as I tried to shut the words out by covering my ears, the feelings of guilt rose to the surface reminding me once again how I had betrayed my mother's trust. How am I going to tell her without breaking her heart? I threw back the covers and sat on the edge of the bed. He said he loved me. He said he wanted to marry me. He sounded so sincere. I believed him. It was now 4:26 am. Stop thinking so much. Turn off your brain! Go to sleep!

He said he loved me. He said he wanted to marry me.

Exhausted, I laid back listening to the familiar sounds of the night filter through the open window; streetcars as they rumbled along the tracks, the inevitable wail of a siren somewhere off in the distance, the bawdy singing of late night drinkers after leaving the pub down the street. I pulled the blanket snugly under my chin desperately wanting to sleep. My only thought was that nobody found out that I was pregnant.

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It was the worst year of my life. I wanted to disappear off the face of the earth. I was pregnant, unmarried and the father of my unborn baby was not Jewish.

1954 was of a different era. When my sister Paula married out of her religion my father disowned her. He cut off all communication. When he finally did speak to her, her husband became his number one sports buddy. The interesting part about all of this was that my father never acknowledged his own faith. He was more of an atheist than anything else. My mother on the other hand was not a religious person either but she would attend synagogue on high holidays and light candles on the Sabbath.

In my religious culture at that time, being pregnant and unmarried would have been a sin second to murder - especially if the father of the child wasn’t Jewish.

My sister and I were raised to believe in God religious or not. That was whom we prayed to in our time of need. Jewish traditions were always important and these traditions and beliefs are what our parents hopefully passed on to their children. Life was easier for all involved when you married into your own religion. We were not observant Jews but we had tradition.

CHAPTER ONE

1953

My name is Rhona Martin. I was raised in a Jewish neighbourhood on the north side of College Street for seventeen years. Our apartment was located in a three story attached block building that consisted of storefronts with apartments on the second and third floors. I lived on the top floor with my parents Annie and Joe Martin. The main entrance to the apartment opened off of College Street into a vestibule on the ground floor. The first and second flight of stairs had a small landing with an entry on the right.

To the left of our front door was a long hallway leading to the bathroom and my bedroom that I once shared with my sister Paula who was now married and living in New Jersey. At the end of the hallway was a large living room with a fireplace that my parents used for their bedroom. Adjacent to this room was a small second bedroom that was used to store my mother’s sewing machine. To the right of the entry was our dining room and kitchenette that led to the sunroom where we kept the wringer washing machine and stored all the other paraphernalia that was not in constant use. The stairs off the sunroom led to a pebbled rooftop where we sunbathed during the summer months.

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On the floor below lived Honey and Harry Sherman with their four-year-old son, Danny. Harry was a six-foot tall well-built muscular man. He had been a soldier in the Canadian army in World War II. When the war ended in 1945, Harry’s father made him a partner in his hardware store two doors west of the apartment building.

As a naive teenager, I believed the Shermans to be the perfect couple. He was an ex-soldier and Honey was his teenage beautiful bride. Their son, Danny, was an astute precocious little guy that I adored. They were a young and happy couple with another baby on the way. At fifteen I became their built-in baby sitter. Many nights when I laid in bed I could hear the Sherman’s laughter coming from the floor below. I was extremely curious as to what they were always laughing about. One evening my curiosity got the better of me so I placed an open-ended glass to the floorboards. The other end I placed to my ear. How disappointed I was when all I heard was more laughter.

When I started dating, there were many nights when my date and I would stand in the vestibule at the bottom of the stairs, saying our goodnights. It wasn’t my father who opened his apartment door to check on his daughter. It was Harry.

Don’t you think it’s late enough? he would ask as he flicked the light switch off and on in the hall. I felt good when Harry did that. It made me feel safe knowing that someone was looking out for me. He was always telling me how sexy looking I was. Be very careful when you’re dating, he would say. You could give a guy the wrong impression with your unassuming sensual aura and that could become dangerous. Most of the time I never knew what he was talking about.I was naive to many of life’s challenges and gullible to a point. When he told me I was good looking I never believed him. In my eyes I was not good looking at all.

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Gert and Abe Perlman lived in the storefront below the Shermans. They were a middle-aged childless couple that met in a concentration camp during the Second World War. When the war ended they emigrated to Canada where they settled in Toronto. With the help of their families they were able to open Perlman’s Dress Shop on College Street.

The Perlmans always took an interest in my well being. I endeared myself to Mrs. Perlman when I came home right after school to do the chores for my working mother. With much pride she told them how I scrubbed the wooden floors