Small Damages by Beth Kephart

"You aren't happy," Estela says.
"I can't be happy," I say.
"Look at me, Kenzie."
"I'm looking at you, Estela."
"Do you know your own heart?"
"I don't know anything."
"Go," she says, "and think. And don't come back until you know."

Small Damages tells the story of a young woman who finds herself unexpectedly pregnant and is sent away to have her baby.  The story is set outside of Seville, Spain in 1995 but begins in Philadelphia.

When her father dies suddenly in September of her senior year as a result of a heart attack, this leaves Kenzie and her mother to pick up the pieces of their life in Philadelphia. Kenzie was very close to her father who was a photographer. She admired him because he chose to be a photographer in spite of the disapproval of others, including Kenzie's mother. After her father's death, Kenzie's mother does not cope well and Kenzie feels like a "half orphan". Then one day, her mother announces she is starting her own business, Carlina's Catering. She packs Kenzie's father's photographs, cameras and albums into boxes, which are stored in the basement. His clothes are taken to Goodwill and his favourite chair is moved to the guest room. She joins Match.com. This leaves Kenzie angry and disoriented.

Further turmoil ensues when Kenzie finds herself unexpectedly pregnant during her senior year. Neither her boyfriend, Kevin Sullivan nor her mother are supportive. Her mother, realizing that something is wrong, asks Kenzie, "What have you done?"  and when she learns of the pregnancy tells her "I'm calling Dr. Sam. We're going to fix this." But Kenzie refuses, telling her mother that she cannot force her to have an abortion.  When Kenzie decides to continue the pregnancy, her mother considers her irresponsible. Determined that they "...can't let anybody see what she's done" , she makes arrangements to send Kenzie to Spain. Kenzie says that "...she wouldn't help me, and in the end, she said, it was Seville or nothing, and I chose Seville."  Her mother chooses Spain because she has a  friend, Mari who married a Spaniard and who knows of a couple wanting a baby. So Kenzie is shipped off to Seville for five months to have her baby and then to return to college.

As for her boyfriend Kevin, a baby was never part of his future. In a flashback, Kenzie remembers the day she confirmed she was pregnant. Late for her period and trying to ignore this fact, she does a pregnancy test at the pharmacy. When it is positive, she is overwhelmed, and scared, and calls Kevin. However, Kevin ends the call before Kenzie can tell him, promising to call her back. When she needs him most, he's not there. Later he comes over and Kenzie tells him. Instead of comforting her and accepting some responsibility, Kevin points out that she has planned to attend Newhouse School of Public Communications and that he has Yale "and everything he had to be on account of everyone else." He asks her "what are your choices?" leaving her feeling like the pregnancy is her problem. He tells her the baby is only a half inch and that she doesn't have to continue with the pregnancy, but Kenzie tells him the there's a part of her dad in her baby. The day before she leaves for Spain, she asks Kevin to come with her to Spain. He refuses, telling her that she doesn't have to go through with the pregnancy.

So, feeling abandoned by both her mother and Kevin, Kenzie arrives Seville and is met by Miguel who drives Kenzie to his ranch in a cranky old car he calls Gloria. The ranch, Los Nietos is where Miguel raises bulls for bull fighting. Also living at the ranch are a cook, Estela, and Esteban, a young man around Kenzie's age. Estela tells Kenzie she will teach her how to cook. Esteban doesn't live in the house and seems at first to be somewhat reclusive. Kenzie is distraught at having left her old life behind because pregnancy changes everything. "...it's yours, and no matter what you do, you've done a big thing that stays with you a lifetime."

Estela sets out to cook a huge meal for a man, Luis, who is expected to arrive shortly. Kenzie learns that this man is Miguel's uncle and also Estela's friend. However, Luis does not arrive alone but with a group of people whom Estela calls the Gypsies of Benalua. They include Angelita, Joselita, Bruno, Rafael and Arcadio. Furious at the arrival of the gypsies, Estela retreats to her room. Kenzie asks Esteban why Estela hates the gypsies but he only tells her she has her reasons.

Estela brings Kenzie a letter from Kevin but once again Kevin disappoints her.  Although it's written by Kevin, it reads like a group letter from her friends, telling her how they all miss her. When Estela advises her to write her boy back, Kenzie tells Estela that she has no plans to respond and that she knows nothing about what it is like for her. Estela advises her to "Know your own heart first. Be careful." Distraught over the letter, Kenzie has had it. "That's it today; I can't stand it. I can't stand being here, on my own, invisible but also growing larger...Twenty-one words, and a bunch of we's, like I'm on some holiday. Like all I need out here in the desert of Spain is a lame group hug from the shore." She walks away from the ranch.

She is found by Miguel who tells her everyone has been looking for her and that he promised her mother he would look after her. Miguel takes her to Puerto de Sevilla and shows her the Necropolis in the hopes of calming her. Later, Esteban brings Kenzie dinner and tells her about his past and how he came to live with Estela and that they are taking her tomorrow to meet her baby's adoptive parents, Javier and Adair. Slowly Kenzie and Esteban begin to form a friendship. He is kind to her and takes her riding on his horse, Tierra. As she learns about Esteban's life and what happened to Estela when she was young and in love, Kenzie begins to rethink her choices. But it is Estela's story that finally crystallizes Kenzie's feelings for her baby, leading her to begin to make her own decisions about her life.

Discussion

Small Damages was in some ways a difficult read because initially Kenzie's voice is awkward and stilted. Her story is told in pieces, sometimes in the present, sometimes in flashback, giving the reader only a partial picture of what has happened in the past and what her current situation is. Eventually Kephart weaves together all the threads of this poignant tale. At its heart is a young woman confronting a life-changing event - an unexpected pregnancy, and offered little support when she makes the choice to continue the pregnancy. Instead, those who claim to love her, focus on keeping her pregnancy a secret and not respecting her choice to give birth to her child. Kenzie has lost her father and now experiences emotional abandonment by her boyfriend and her mother. In fact Kenzie's mother is so deeply in denial, that when Kenzie asks who is adopting her child, her mother tells her not to call "it" her child.

Thankfully, Estela steps into the void, to mentor and mother Kenzie, because as it turns out, she was in a similar situation years ago. Estela who is an accomplished cook, is determined to teach Kenzie. She is a woman with a huge heart, having taken in Esteban when he was orphaned. It is Estela's loving care that brings about growth in Kenzie. Estela reveals her life of regret at giving up her own child under very difficult circumstances. This helps Kenzie discover what her heart has known all along - that this baby matters to her.

Kephart gives hints of Kenzie's attachment to her unborn child from the very beginning of the novel because Kenzie identifies almost immediately with her baby. She's taken a health class in Grade eight and remembers what she's learned. Throughout her narrative, she refers again and again to her unborn child. "I choose a pastry from the tray -- raisins, white frosting, a rising yellow marmalade, and then I'm back out on the streets, thinking of you, tiny as a finger curled, and fed."

When Miguel refers to the adopting parents Javier and Adair as the parents of her child, Kenzie internally balks at this. She tells her baby, "Your dad plays lacrosse; he plays forward. He has dark hair, green eyes, a crowded Irish smile. He's always going somewhere..."  Thinking of her morning sickness which has now passed, Kenzie remembers "But everywhere is the flail of you, your necklace of bones, your hardly skin, your fingernails, you already have them."

When she remembers the day she took the pregnancy test, Kenzie states, "Eight grade health. The baby like a pea, a lima bean, like a see-through ocean of living. Six weeks, I thought. Maybe seven. And the baby and the cord still growing...Elbows at six weeks. Digits. Eyes on the sides of the head." While Kevin is attempting to convince Kenzie that their baby is insignificant because it is only a half inch, Kenzie knows the truth - that this baby is already forming and developing. And she matters.

Forced to chose between having an abortion and be allowed to stay at home, or going to Spain and having the baby, Kenzie tells her baby she chose to go to Seville because she could already imagine a future with this child, even if others could not. "I chose Seville, because in my head I could see you; you were already a film that was playing...Call me an idiot. Call me selfish. A nothing half inch. But you weren't that to me."

When she's with Adair, she tells her that she's having a girl. "It's not that I actually know, I guess. It's just something I feel. Something inside." As Adair shows her the nursery they have prepared for the baby, Kenzie realizes this is her child's future and she's not a part of it and it hurts. "Suddenly it's all here; it's the future. It's you in Adair's arms, at the window, looking down on the streets of Santa Cruz, bouncing up and down beneath the dangle of clowns, looking part like Kevin, and part like my dad, and all like who you are, against her skin. The future is here in the room, and I catch my breath, and it hurts to breathe, and I can't."

Small Damages is another wonderful novel by Beth Kephart. She tackles a difficult subject with much sensitivity and honesty. While it might not seem very realistic that an eighteen year old girl can be forced to travel to Spain to have her baby, Small Damages reminds us that pregnant women were often sent away to have their babies and in some cases, still are. Young pregnant women are often bullied, abused and forced into making choices they don't want. An eighteen-year-old girl is financially vulnerable and one who's pregnant is especially vulnerable emotionally and physically. Kenzie, after allowing her mother to make some of her choices, takes control of her life by the end of the novel, recognizing that no matter what choice she makes, someone will be hurt. But she has to take that chance for herself and for her baby otherwise she may face a lifetime of regret like Estela.

Small Damages is well written, with interesting characters and an exotic setting. Readers will be pleasantly surprised by the twist at the end of the novel, one that completes Kenzie's transformation from a girl who found herself unexpectedly pregnant to a young woman in control of her destiny.

Book Details:

Small Damages by Beth Kephart
New York: Philomel Books        2012
293 pp.

Heartbeat by Elizabeth Scott

Scott tackles an unusual ethical dilemma in her latest novel, Heartbeat. Seventeen year old Emma's mom, Lisa has "died" and is being kept alive on life support by her mom's new husband, Dan, so that their unborn baby son can continue to develop in-utero long enough to be delivered. Emma is horrified by Dan's apparent unilateral decision, believing that this is not what her mother would have wanted. "I mean, I know it's a baby and it's partly Mom, but I wish Dan had just once thought about what Mom would have wanted." 

Shortly after her mother and Dan married, Emma's mom began taking fertility treatments. She spent two years in fertility treatments before she finally succeeded in becoming pregnant. However as Emma's mother had previously had a blood clot in her leg, her pregnancy was not without some risk. Then one day, at twelve weeks into her pregnancy, Emma's mother was reaching for a piece of toast and collapsed.  She had a massive embolism in her brain.

Dan was given the option to turn off the ventilator or keep Emma's mom on it and save their unborn baby. He chose to try to keep his wife alive to save their unborn baby believing that this is what she would have wanted. But Emma is distraught because she feels Dan has chosen the baby over her mom, who has now been on the ventilator for almost four weeks.

Emma's anger over her mother's situation is so overwhelming that it threatens to destroy her entire life. She isn't on speaking terms with her stepfather, Dan, and spends most of her time at her friend, Olivia's home. Emma was an excellent student working towards gaining admission to one of the top ten schools with the goal of obtaining her PhD in history. Now she doesn't care about school, her assignments are late or not completed at all. And most of all she doesn't care about her ex-boyfriend, Anthony, the self-absorbed boy who made out with her and then dumped her.

But then Emma meets bad boy Caleb Harrison. Emma has already formed an opinion about Caleb who has a reputation at school for being a "total druggie" and who steals cars. He drove his father's limited-edition Porsche into the lake and watched it sink. When Emma goes to the hospital to see her mom, she runs into Caleb doing volunteer work. 

When Emma really looks at Caleb she realizes that he is sad, although she doesn't know why. Emma continues to encounter Caleb at the hospital and when they talk she realizes that he understands how she feels. As their relationship develops amid a shared loss, Emma discovers that Caleb's empathy and understanding give her the strength to confront her stepfather about what she's feeling and about what happened to their family.

Discussion  

Heartbeat considers a very specific medical situation, one which has been in the media recently, involving keeping a pregnant woman who has been diagnosed as "brain dead" on life support so that her unborn baby might have a chance to survive to viability. The concept of brain death is something Scott never directly addresses in her novel but it is central to the story and important to understand.

A person is declared brain dead when a specific set of criteria have been met. These criteria were  developed in 1968 by the Harvard Medical School specifically so that organs could be retrieved from living donors for transplantation. What many people do not know is that organs "harvested" from a dead person without a beating heart are unsuitable for transplantation because they deteriorate within minutes of death. For organs to be suitable for transplantation, the donor must have a beating heart and continue to breathe and must do so until the last organ, usually the heart, is removed.

While most doctors have accepted the brain death criteria, some doctors are now questioning both the neurological criteria for declaring brain death and its use. One of the main criteria used in declaring brain death is the apnea test where the patient is removed from a ventilator to see if they can breathe on their own. This inability to breathe is not necessarily a sign of death. A ventilator might be needed to aid in the patient's recovery and in some cases removal either causes more damage or results in the patient's death. Complicating the brain death issue is the fact that patients who have been given a diagnosis of brain death continue to behave as a living person; hair and nails grow, food is digested and expelled, unborn babies continue to grow. Are these patients truly dead?

Further complicating this issue are the countless situations related in the media over the past thirty years, of people declared brain dead, who regain consciousness sometimes immediately prior to a a planned procedure to have their organs removed. It appears that the current brain death criteria suggest doctors do not fully understand injuries to the brain and how the brain heals from these injuries.

Recently there have been several situations which have re-ignited the discussion around brain death - namely pregnant women who have been kept alive so that their unborn babies might grow to 24 weeks and be delivered. There is no doubt that these situations are terribly traumatic and complicated for the families involved. Each case must be taken on an individual basis as each pregnancy is different.

While this short novel doesn't go into all this detail, Scott does a good job of demonstrating how traumatic this situation is to Emma and her stepdad. It rips apart their relationship as both make assumptions about how the other felt about the wife and mother they loved and lost and what she was experiencing during the pregnancy and what she would have wanted for their family. It underscores the importance of having a power of attorney for personal care. This would have been especially important in Emma's mother's situation as she had prior health issues.

As Emma's life disintegrates, it is her relationship with Caleb that ultimately helps her get back on track, confront Dan about what happened when her mother collapsed, and what their relationship will be in the future. Although Emma's situation is difficult, Caleb's is tragic as his parents seem unable to cope in any way with the death of their daughter, Minnie. Their personal tragedies allow Caleb and Emma to forge a bond and develop a relationship that is both affirming and supplies mutual support. With Caleb, Emma can begin to grieve and this helps move her forward to the next steps of acceptance and hope.

Fans of Elizabeth Scott will enjoy the emotional drama in this novel, as will those readers who read Lurlene McDaniel's novels which focus on characters struggling with a chronic illness.

Book Details:
Heartbeat by Elizabeth Scott
Don Mills: Ontario  HarlequinTeen    2014
244 pp.

Holding on to Zoe by George Ella Lyon

This bizarre little book tells the strange story of sixteen year old Juliet McCauley, who becomes pregnant by her boyfriend Damon. It is one year after the Challenger accident - 1987 - and Jules lives with her mother in an apartment. Jules father left when she was five years old, abandoning her mother and moving out of state to remarry. Her mother, who works full time as a social worker, has little time for Jules, and they rarely have much to say to one another. Jules' mother is not happy, burdened with the care of a daughter, and trying to make ends meet. She constantly puts down Jules father, whom Jules remembers as the happy parent. But her mother is also distant and unemotional, considering expressing sorrow a sign of weakness.

When Jules becomes pregnant she typically has trouble telling her mother. So first she goes to see her school counselor who advises her to tell her mom but when Jules does tell her mother she refuses to believe her. So Jules, knowing that she is pregnant, decides to go see their family doctor, Dr. Brennan, who does a pregnancy test and orders an ultrasound when he suspects the Jules has an ectopic pregnancy. An ultrasound confirms this but Jules refuses to accept the loss of her baby. She tells the ultrasound specialist, Dr. Demato, that her baby is just waiting to make sure she is wanted.

'She had to be sure I was ready and she was welcome, that's all. She couldn't settle in because Mom didn't believe I was pregnant.'

It is at this point in the novel that the reader realizes what he/she suspected is in fact true; Jules is not mentally well.  When Demato explains how an ectopic pregnancy develops, Jules becomes violent and tries to run away. After having the pregnancy removed she is sent to Meadowview, a mental hospital. However Jules believes that she is working at a Toyota plant and that she has had her baby, who is now with her and staying in the company nursery. However, when their insurance runs out, Jules is removed from Meadowview and taken home by her mother who believes her to be "dramatic" and only interested in causing trouble.

An altercation with her mother leads Jule to be taken to the emergency room at a nearby hospital, where she wants her "baby" to be checked out. There recognize Jules problem and schedule her to meet with a specialist, Dr. Emma Douglas. In her talks, Jules discovers that she has kept Zoe in order to protect her, to keep her safe. But Jules doesn't feel safe because bad people are not allowed to feel safe. Zoe makes Jules feel safe. Jules has also been told that she can never cry, because tears are a sign of weakness.


Only as Emma leads Jules to uncover a secret past trauma,can Jules begin moving forward and heal. Jules situation is very tragic because she did the right thing when she was a child - she told an adult - her mother. But her mother refused to believe her just as later on, she refused to believe that Jules was pregnant.

This novel doesn't quite work. There is very little character development, something a story of this nature requires and Lyon has some interesting characters that she could have fleshed out more if she chose too. Reba was a wonderful friend who was supportive and caring, as was her mother. Even Dr. Douglas was someone the reader wanted to know more about. And Lyon's could have used Douglas to explain more about the problem Jules had and how it developed.

The resolution of Jules problem seems to come quite quickly in the last few chapters and the ending leaves us wondering how she will work through her problems. It seemed to me that her mother needs counseling as much as Jules does.

There are plenty of other well written books dealing with sexual abuse and its psychological effects on children. Holding on to Zoe is not one of them.

Book Details:
Holding On To Zoe by George Ella Lyon
New York: Margaret Ferguson Books      2012
166 pp.