Stranger Son

by Jim Nelson

  "Maybe that's not for her," Azami said. "Maybe that's for the Hanna she carried. Your mother."

  "That's what I think too," Ruby said.

  Azami took in a sudden breath of air. She cupped one hand over her mouth, eyebrows raised.

  "It's the senbazuru," Azami said wide-eyed. "A thousand cranes."

  "Thousand cranes?"

  "I taught Hanna how to fold origami cranes," Azami said. "And I think I told her the story about them. It's a Japanese tradition—if you fold a thousand cranes in one year, your wish will come true." Nodding to herself as the memories emerged, Azami spoke excitedly. "Her last year, she went crazy folding them. I thought it was the boundless energy of bridge daughters. Bridges have such wonderful energy and so few avenues to pursue. Hanna would give the origami away as fast as she could fold them. You know, as little gifts and such. She was such a generous little girl—I wonder if she wrote down everyone she gave a crane to." Azami peered down at the photostat with new frustration. "But why cross out the names?"

  Ruby finished eating the sandwich. She did not ask to take the next one, turkey and Swiss. "There's another reason I came to see you," Ruby said delicately.

  "Of course," Azami said.

  "When did you leave Rick?"

  "Oh, that would have been…1984? 1985? It was the year after Hanna died. His drinking got worse after she gave birth. I told him to get some help, but he wouldn't." She withdrew a touch. "There was nothing I could do for him. He mourned Hanna's death. It's not healthy. You can't mourn the death of every bridge daughter. You just can't." She realized with a small start how that would sound to a Hagar. "I only mean—"

  "It's not healthy to mourn bridges," Ruby said coldly. "I know."

  "I miss Hanna as I would any special little girl," Azami said. "But from her came your mother, which is worth celebrating. Rick could not let go of the bridge Hanna, though."

  "You knew my mother?"

  "No," Azami said. "After I left Rick, I never saw any of your family again. I'm sorry."

  Ruby didn't think Azami had anything to apologize for.

  "And then, how many years later, I saw the trial on the TV news," Azami said. "I forget the details. Your mother arranged for you and your sister to have the procedure? So you wouldn't give birth and die?"

  "I was the only one who got fixed," Ruby said.

  "That's very courageous of you," Azami said.

  There's that word again. "No it's not," Ruby said. "It was the easy way out." Ruby stuffed the last of the second sandwich in her mouth and chewed just enough to swallow it down. "And my mother didn't make the decision. I made it on my own."

  "That's not what I remember from the news—"

  "Police and judges don't listen to bridge daughters," Ruby said. "They saw what they wanted to see, and they threw the book at my mom. She didn't put up a fight in order to protect me." She added, "And my baby brother."

  "Well, I believe you," Azami said softly. "And for a thirteen-year-old, what you did sounds courageous to me."

  "Let me tell you who was brave," Ruby said. "My sister Cynthia. She had the exact same decision to make. She could have gotten herself fixed too. She didn't, though. She decided to stay true to my mother. She went through with her obligation. I was in the delivery room when she gave birth. I watched my poor pregnant sister as they lifted her on the table. She delivered my mother's child without a word of complaint. I—I hugged her before she died. I held her hand. She didn't even cry." Ruby was tearing up herself. "And then, when my brother was born, the nurse pushed Cynthia into a dark room for her to die like a dog." She wiped her wet face with a cupped hand. "I've seen courage up-close. Cynthia was the brave one."

  "You were both brave." Azami handed a box of tissues across the coffee table.

  "Cynthia made the tough choice." Ruby was practically talking to herself. "Cynthia was always the strong one. We were twins, but she was my older brother. She always seemed to know more than me. She always took care of me. She stuck up for me."

  Azami asked as though afraid to hear the answer: "Are you sure your mother didn't force you?"

  "No, she didn't force me," Ruby said in a griping tone. She'd heard this countless times, said to her face, repeated in the news, circulated on the Internet. The trial had garnered a lot of sensational headlines: Single Mother Wants Bridges More Than Babies. "My mother lied to the police. That gave them a foothold to prosecute her." Ruby pushed her hands in frustration, as though pushing back the bad memories leaping on her like a leopard. "The whole thing was a circus. The Hanna's Moment protests were in the news and then came my mother's trial. The state wanted to make an example of her. She was the 'dark side' of Hanna's Moment." Ruby shook her head. "They threw her in prison and I've not seen her since."

  Azami gasped. "Is she still in prison?"

  "Oh, yeah," Ruby said. "And she's not seen her son since the trial."

  "The one your sister gave birth to?"

  "Barry," Ruby said. "They took Barry away from her and put him up for adoption."

  Azami closed her eyes in grief.

  "You would think there would be some way for me to find him." She spoke wet and thick, as before, but now full of bitterness. "But I'm a Hagar, and Hagars can't just walk into a government office and ask where their little brother lives now. That takes identification. That takes photo ID. Maybe a lawyer."

  "But things changed," Azami said. "The Hanna Laws."

  It was the press' nickname for a clutch of legal changes made over the past five years in California. So-called liberalization at the state level, they only amounted to law enforcement not prioritizing the capture, arrest, and prosecution of Hagars.

  "I'm still an illegal person," she said. "I have no standing."

  "I could find out about your brother," Azami said carefully, as though unsure she should even make such an offer.

  "They'll only release that kind of information to family," Ruby said. "All I know is that Barry was taken in by one of our relatives. That much was revealed to me. I've tried and tried to locate anyone who might have adopted Barry, but I can't find a clue. I swear, I think they lied to us when they said it was a relative. I think they gave Barry to a complete stranger." Her face, swollen and red, looked about to pop.

  "Have you asked your mother?" Azami said. "Certainly they told her."

  "My mother is like my grandmother," Ruby said bitterly. "She doesn't talk about it."

  "When's the last time you talked with her?" Azami said. "Certainly she might be willing to tell you—"

  "She's in Folsom," Ruby said.

  Azami withdrew. The name had a double meaning now.

  "They won't let me talk to her," Ruby said, red-faced.

  "I'm sorry," Azami said. "That's…horrible to hear."

  "My sister died for no good reason," Ruby said. "I can't live knowing that. I want to see my little brother. I want to know he's healthy and happy. I want him to know he has a real mother, and that she sacrificed so much for him."

  "Wait—" Azami straightened up in her cushioned chair. "Have you asked the Abneys?"

  Ruby made a quizzical, twisted face. "Who the hell are the Abneys?"

  "Your great-grandmother!" Azami said. "I forget her name—"

  "Ma Cynthia." Ruby's twin sister was named after her.

  "Ma Cynthia." Azami said the name appreciatively. Ruby was certain Azami could not have met the woman. Ma Cynthia died ages ago.

  Azami fumbled through a purse sitting on the couch beside her. She found a digital pocket tablet. Eager, she crossed and plopped down on the sofa beside Ruby. She typed on the tablet's screen until she found what she sought. She turned the screen around for Ruby to see.

  It was a sepia-tone photograph. Azami had located it on the Internet. It was an outdoor portrait of a stodgy middle-aged man with a pipe and a thick, rugged beard. He wore an old-fashioned three-piece pinstriped suit with a pocket fob hanging half-moon across his left chest and a carnation on his lapel. A wide-brimmed hat atop his
head protected him from the sun. Although in a formal suit, he wore hard leather work boots that rose to his knees. They were covered in mud and grit. He posed with nineteenth century brio, one hand on his hip and the other atop a brass-tipped walking stick. Behind him, a dirt plain spread out to the mountains in the distance. Hunchbacked oil pumps numbered the plain like grazing mechanical bison.

  "This is Ma Cynthia's father," Azami said, growing excited. "Mack Gabriel Abney. He made his fortune who knows how long ago. He practically built half of Los Angeles."

  "We're not related to any oil money," Ruby said, half-skeptical, half-mocking. "I think I would know if I was."

  "Rick told me about it. We'd just started dating, and I thought he was trying to—" She demurred. "You know. Impress me. But he mentioned it one time in front of your grandmother. She told him to be quiet. She snapped it, as though it was one of those family secrets no one talks about."

  "Ma Cynthia lived on a run-down farm in Marin County," Ruby said. "She painted watercolors and wrote poetry. She didn't have two nickels to rub together."

  "How do you think she paid for that farm?"

  Ruby searched for an answer, finally shrugging. "It was the Great Depression or something, right?"

  Azami took back the digital tablet. She grinned a victorious grin.

  "Mack Abney disinherited your great-grandmother," she said. "She was quite the feminist in her day, as I understand it. The farm was him buying her a place to live away from the rest of the family."

  "What does this have to do with anything?"

  Azami took Ruby's hand in hers. "If the government arranged for a family to adopt your baby brother, it could have been one of the Abneys. It would have been trivial to search the birth records and discover his relationship to the Abney family."

  Ruby considered it for a moment. "No," she said, uncertain. "The state would have found someone closer to take in Barry."

  "Who?"

  It was a mental game Ruby had played out umpteen times in her head. Ruby's grandparents had been ruled out in the custody hearing due to their advanced age. Ruby lived with her grandfather for two years until a coronary took his life and she was remanded to a state-run halfway home in Antioch.

  That left Ruby's estranged father—Barry's biological father. He was a coke head and a lout who'd run away to leech off rich women. Ruby had discovered online he was busted years earlier for selling rock cocaine, and neither the news reports nor court paperwork indicated he had a child dependent. He had a brother in Arizona, but Ruby confirmed he'd not adopted Barry either. That left—no one. She'd been searching for Barry for as long as she could remember, an endeavor of dead-ends and runarounds.

  "I was wrong," Ruby said.

  "What's that?"

  "When you said Hanna was courageous," she told Azami. "She was courageous. My sister too. Cynthia was brave. So very, very, brave." The words trailed off. She stared off, glassy-eyed. "And my mother. She was brave. She's faced a mother's nightmare." Ruby rubbed her belly involuntarily. Inside her was the child she was born bearing, now medically comatose, its nervous system frozen by the quack doctor who'd fixed her. "My mother lost her real daughter and the state took away her only son. A nightmare."

  "A family of strong-willed women," Azami said. "All of you."

  "No," Ruby said. "I shamed my sister. I did my mother wrong." This was another of the fissures Ruby was jammed within.

  Three

  At the bus depot Ruby clamored aboard the county line. She claimed a seat on the rear bench and set her backpack on the seat beside her to keep optimistic men away. Thirty minutes later, the bus was travelling north on Interstate 101, assiduously using the commuter lane to avoid Southern California's ever-present traffic clogs. She settled against the wall of the bus and set her cheek against the cold window glass. The people in the cars below were running their daily errands. They held expressions of impatience, or perhaps anxiety. She was not in a rush to pick up the kids from school, or hurrying to meet friends at a trendy downtown restaurant, or late for hot-room yoga—the kinds of problems she imagined for normal people.

  Ruby unzipped her backpack's side pocket and dug out her cellular phone. She'd topped up its minutes the night before with twelve of her dollars, money she could have stretched into two or even three days worth of meals if she'd tried. She used many of those precious minutes phoning Azami and getting directions to the apartment building. She'd eaten into her allocated megabytes figuring out the county bus system and deducing which transfers she would have to take to reach Torrance. She could have saved time and money simply talking to Azami over the phone, but she thought the best chance of getting answers from the elderly woman was talking face-to-face. Considering all she'd learned over lunch, she felt vindicated.

  Past Burbank, traffic dropped off and the crush of urban Los Angeles softened. Nondescript suburbs were strung along the interstate like dingy pearls, each town separated from the next by brief stretches of brown hills and undeveloped land. From the highway, there was little to individuate the towns. Their off-ramps offered near-identical combinations of fast food and gas stations and retail outlets. The towns' founders had all managed to take a Spanish word—vista, centro, camino—and make it vaguely Anglo-Saxon: Vista Heights, El Centro Valley, Camino Gardens.

  It was late afternoon and barely a quarter of the bus seats were occupied. She had the entire rear bench to herself. Being alone for a long period of time was truly a luxury for Ruby. She'd spent the prior night sleeping on a cot in a basketball court of cots. Each held a runaway bridge daughter—frightened, pregnant girls who cried softly in the dark—or a Hagar like her, an illegal woman guilty of nothing more than not wanting to die at age thirteen.

  The map on her phone indicated the Abney Heritage Museum of Contemporary Art lay three miles ahead on the left. She scooted down the bench to the other side of the bus. Through the window, Ruby could not make out any such museum, or even buildings at all. The bare chocolate-brown mountains on the left rose from the shoulder of the winding freeway. To the right lay no evidence of culture at all, only boundless square miles of jack-knifed oil rigs across the flat tan earth among tufts of scrub brush and prehistoric rocks. The pumps were decrepit and lifeless. Double-checking the on-screen map, she ducked her head to peer upwards through the bus window. Near the summit of one mountain was a row of plaster-white buildings with Spanish red-tile roofs and Ionic columns. This, she realized, was the museum, Abney money and Abney name and Abney history housed sky-high over dry oil fields, like a full water cistern erected imperiously over a desert village.

  In Sunland-Tujunga, she stepped off the bus and waited forty-five minutes for a local line to take her midtown. There she transferred to a line that took her to the other edge of town in the lackadaisical manner only a suburban bus can manage. A dry golden dusk was settling across the town. She carried her backpack four long blocks to an old YWCA. The pool beside the main building was dry. Dead leaves and algae congregated around the drain in the deep end. The letter board beside the street door said to use the side entrance, and the letter board at the side entrance simply read BEERSHEBA HOUSE with entrance hours and a warning against men unaccompanied by women. Painted in orange beneath the board was a Hagar's Urn, the familiar silhouette of a water jug with an hourglass body and handles like elephant ears.

  The front desk was manned by a bookish-looking man wearing round glasses and a UCLA sweatshirt. A calculus textbook and a notebook of graph paper lay on the desk. Ruby showed him the three-day pass she'd purchased the day before. She did not ask if any mail or messages had arrived. She was expecting none, as she'd told no one she was staying there, not even Azami.

  A Bic pen was attached to the front desk with a bit of string and masking tape. The registration book lay open. Across the top of the pages was written in black felt-tip pen:

  !! REAL NAMES !! – DO NOT JUST WRITE "HANNA"

  Down both pages, residents had signed in as Hanna, Friend of Hanna, Hanna's Fri
end, Hanna McFanna, Hanna's Sister, and so on. As she'd done the night before, Ruby entered Cynthia using quick strokes of the pen and moved on.

  In the restroom, she stood before the mirror, unloaded the backpack, and removed her shirt and bra. Her skin was sagging and cracking, especially around her belly. The neurologically-frozen embryo remained within her, stunted, undeveloped, never to leave her body. Wisps of gray lined the licks of her dark bangs like an artist's brush gently touched to a drop of silver paint.

  She worked quickly, using a hand towel from her backpack. She moistened it in the sink and misted it with an athletic body spray she'd shoplifted in Bakersfield. She wiped the perspiration off her cheek, face, and neck. She wiped her underarms and did her best to sponge the sweat off her back. Other Hagars came and went as she cleaned herself. A bridge daughter entered with great trepidation, as though using a public lavatory for the first time in her life, or at least one this grimy. She locked herself in the far stall and made not a sound.

  A tall Hagar entered, gaunt and spindly with arms like spider legs. She carried a zip-up traveler's overnight case. Without a word, she prepared her toothbrush and began vigorously brushing. Eyes forward, Ruby scrubbed at her elbows and the backs of her arms. To her right, she heard the tall Hagar spit toothpaste into the sink. The spitting turned into a hack, and the hack became a deep, hoarse cough.

  The woman was hunched over the sink. A thick string of blood hung from her lips to the sink. Pink threads ran web-like through the toothpaste foam about the drain.

  "I'm fine," the woman said. She held the toothbrush between her and Ruby like a guard rail. "Just…I'm fine."

  Ruby gave the woman her space. She continued her dry shower. The other woman eventually finished and left. The bridge daughter in the stall was sobbing. Ruby could do nothing for any of them. She packed up, pulled on a clean bra and shirt, and went out.

  In the basketball court, Ruby claimed a cot for the night. She had the good fortune of finding one with a footlocker. She stored her backpack in it, keeping only her cell phone and charger and the three half-sandwiches Azami had wrapped for her in Torrance. She secured the locker with a combination lock she carried in her pack. Years of Beers Houses and church cots had led to her accumulating a collection of all the little things one needs to navigate such living quarters.