by Mary Kubica
My legs burned by the time I arrived at Canyon Drive. My fingers were numb, my nose oozing snot from its nares. My arm was nearly asleep from the weight of the suitcase, my leg likely lacerated from where it rubbed back and forth, back and forth, all along the way.
The house was smaller than I remembered, the white siding more like oatmeal than snow. What once felt like an entire stairwell to the front door were instead only four small crooked steps, the aluminum handrail missing half its winding, taupe spindles. There was a basketball net, which there never used to be, a Honda hatchback in the drive. Red. Not the Bluebird I was used to seeing.
I stood, on the opposite side of Canyon Drive, staring at that house that used to be mine. Gathering the courage to turn the knob on the front door, hoping and praying I’d find Momma on the other side, though of course, deep down, somewhere far inside, I knew she was dead, but I tried hard to ignore that notion, to imagine the what-if instead. There was a split-second thought: if I didn’t try, I’d never know, and that was a good thing, ’cause not knowing was better than proof that Momma and Daddy were dead. I’d been eight years old, a stupid kid after all. Maybe all those things they told me had been a lie, just one of all the other lies Joseph told me. I made believe Momma had been searching for me all this time, that my face had been like one of those other missing kids they plaster on the back of milk cartons, the black-and-white images with an age progressed photo beside it, what some smarty-pants thought I might look like when I was sixteen. If you think you have seen Claire, please call 1-800-I-am-lost. I imagined the wording: Claire was last seen at her home on Canyon Drive, in Ogallala, Nebraska. Her hair is the color of snot, her eyes a bizarre blue. She has a small scar under her chin, a space between her two front teeth. She was last seen wearing...
What was I wearing, that night Amber Adler came to tell me my parents were dead? That periwinkle T-shirt I used to own, the one with the bright red tube of lipstick and the frisky inscription: SWAK, kiss marks flecking its edges. Or maybe a party dress or a polka dot tank top or maybe...
This is what I’m thinking about when the door to that prefab home jolts open, the sound of kids arguing annihilating the silence. The sound of a mother’s voice—not my mother, but a mother: stern and tired—telling them to Shut. Their. Mouths. Please.
There they were, three of them—no four, I saw then, the mother carrying an infant in a seat in her arms—pouncing down those four crooked steps like a litter of playful kittens. The two freestanding children elbowed one another all the way down the stairs, calling each other names: fart-face and booger-brain. It was two boys, each in jeans and tennis shoes, thick winter coats and fur bomber hats. The mother had a blanket—pink—draped over that baby. A girl. Maybe the girl she always wanted, I thought, as the mother propelled the boys forward with a gentle shove and told them to hurry. Get in the car. They were going to be late. One of the boys spun then suddenly crying huge crocodile tears. “You hit me,” he screamed at his mother.
“Daniel,” she said, her tone flat. “Get in the car.” But he continued his outburst right there, at the bottom of the steps, as the older boy climbed into the hatchback as he was told, and the mother secured the baby carrier into the car. The boy, Daniel, maybe five or six years old, crossed his arms across himself and pouted, that bottom lip of his almost covering the top one. I stared in awe, thinking how I never, ever would’ve talked to Momma that way, never would’ve called Lily a fart-face or booger-brain. I decided then and there that I didn’t like this little boy, not one bit at all. I didn’t like the way his wayward brown hair crept from the edges of his bomber hat, or the way his too-big coat hung farther down on the left side than the right, the sleeve on the left completely covering a gloved hand. I didn’t like his navy blue boots or the nasty frown on his long face.
But what really bothered me was that he thought whatever errand they were about to run was the worst thing in the world that could happen. Clearly he’d never met a man like Joseph.
What I wouldn’t give for a trip to the Safeway right then and there. I thought about helping Momma push the shopping cart around, and tickling Lily’s little piggies so she wouldn’t fuss. I remembered the heavenly scent of fresh baked doughnuts in the bakery’s display case, the way Momma would tell me to pick one for each of us for the next day’s breakfast.
There I was, picturing cake doughnuts oozing with rainbow-covered sprinkles, long johns coated with chocolate icing, when that lady started toward me, and instinctively my feet began a retreat. “Can I help you?” she asked, coming down the driveway to where I stood on the opposite side of the street, staring at her family. Her eyes, brown and runny, lined with bags, were tired, her hair slick, as though she hadn’t found the time for a shower that day. “Are you lost, honey?”
And things came at me quickly, things I hadn’t seen before: the green shamrocks taped to the windows of the home, shamrocks we never used to own. The black lettering on the mailbox: Brigman. A dog barking from the front window, big, like a German shepherd, its head poking through lacy curtains that were never there. A wooden rocking chair on the tiny front porch, a gnome holding a welcome sign. That boy with the ugly pout on his face or the older one, who now reemerged from the car to see who the heck his mother was talking to, who walked down the drive to meet his mother, who asked again, “Is there something I can help you with?” as I turned around and began to run.
This was not my home.
The realization stole the breath right from my lungs and I found myself gasping for air as I tore down Canyon Drive, past parked cars and fenced-in yards, mailboxes and splotchy lawns, kicking the gravel up from the street as I ran. The world spun in hurried circles. I cut through a lawn, in case that woman in her red hatchback, Mrs. Brigman, tried to follow. I tripped over a boulder and landed splat on the ground in the back of some stranger’s yard. The knees of my pants were soaking wet, muddy from the melting snow. The suitcase fell open and emptied itself onto the soggy lawn, the books and dollar bills peppering the snow. I grabbed quickly, stuffing my belongings back into place before slamming the suitcase closed.
I didn’t see it right away. In fact, I almost didn’t see it at all. I was standing up, hoping and praying someone wasn’t at the back window of that home watching me, when something—bright in the otherwise white snow—caught my eye, and I reached down and picked it up, and there, in my hand, was a photo of Momma, the very same one Joseph had years ago forced me to tear to shreds. That photo Joseph made me march down the steps of the Omaha home and throw into the trash. I remember that day, Matthew and Isaac sitting at the table watching me, watching as I dropped the hundreds of pieces of Momma into the garbage can before I walked upstairs, like Joseph had told me to do, to pray. Pray for God’s forgiveness.
Matthew had pulled those pieces from the garbage can and, like a jigsaw puzzle, taped them back together. A million pieces of Scotch tape lined the back of that picture, making it thick and sturdy, white, ragged creases lining Momma’s beautiful face, her long black hair, her sapphire eyes. I held Momma in my hands, there, in her peridot-colored dress—a frock as Momma used to call it, the bateau neckline and cap sleeves seamed by Joseph’s poisonous hand.
Where had Matthew kept it all those years since he pulled it from the trash?
Why had he kept it from me for so long?
But of course, I knew why. He was worried Joseph would see.
But he didn’t have to worry anymore.
It had been years since I’d seen Momma. In my mind, the black hair had dissolved, the blue eyes had become diluted, like a watered-down can of pop. Her smile had shrunk to half its size, and only sometimes did I remember she wore bright red lipstick on the days when Daddy was home. But there she was: the pitch-black hair and sapphire eyes, berry bliss lipstick smoothed on her lips. And she was laughing. I could hear it, the laughter, from that photograph, and I could see Momma, just seconds after I’d snapped that crooked photo, snatch the camera from my hand and take a shot of m
e, and after we’d developed the roll at the Safeway, we each held on to the photo of the other, so we’d always be together even when we weren’t together. I love you like x’s love o’s, she’d said, planting a big red kiss on my cheek, and I’d stared at that kiss in the rearview mirror of the old Datsun Bluebird, refusing to wipe my cheek clean.
I pressed that photo of Momma to my heart and knew then, bawling my eyes out in the backyard of some stranger’s home, on my knees in the vanishing March snow, that Momma was there even if she wasn’t there.
Momma would never, ever, ever in a million years leave me.
HEIDI
I press my baby into me and sink into the rocking chair, vowing never, ever, ever to leave her again. She’s begun to cry now, her cry angry and infuriated as she seizes strands of my hair in the palm of her hand and pulls, hard, howling without cease, the kind of cry that forces the breath from her lungs, and she finds herself gasping, suddenly, for air. I rise from the chair and begin to tread throughout the room, aware of the murmur of Nina Simone that seeps through the wall from Graham’s home: I Put a Spell on You, playing louder now than ever before.
Or is that simply my imagination?
Is he trying to drown out the sound of my baby’s indignant cry? Or send me a message? I envision Graham, at that moment, still unclad, wondering why it was I had to leave when I’d only just arrived.
And then, I think, what would he do, there in his home, with his undershirt discarded, his jeans unzipped; would he phone a lady friend to fill the space where I’d just been? I try not to think about it, to think about some beautiful blonde woman taking my place on the edge of the unmade bed, and Graham, blind to the change, aware only of some woman’s hands on him. I will the image out of my mind: me on Graham’s bed, his body hovering above mine. I think what I would have done, how far I would have gone had it not been for the baby.
But no, I remind myself. The baby was asleep. Or was she? I wonder, finding myself suddenly oh-so confused, mindful of the cry—desperate and helpless, completely forlorn—that I heard from Graham’s room. That cry plays over and over again in my mind, a soundtrack to accompany the scene: Graham slipping an undershirt up over his head, the oblique and abdominal muscles, the faint, fair hair, the brass button of his jeans.
And then: that cry.
The baby did cry, I tell myself. She was not asleep.
I move the baby back and forth, up and down in a gentle seesaw motion, anything to calm her down. She’s angry with me for leaving. I say it over and over again, “I’m so sorry. Mommy will never, ever leave you again,” and I smother her with kisses in a weak attempt at an apology.
I am not a good mother, I tell myself. A good mother wouldn’t have left her alone and walked out of the room. A moment of weakness, I think, remembering all too well the condom abandoned in the pocket of Chris’s trousers, and the thought of it, the thought of that shiny blue wrapper, sends me into a rapid descent: heartbeat unsettled, hands that feel like sludge.
In the kitchen, I prepare a bottle, knowing, as I always do, as the baby nuzzles her nose into the black crepe dress, that she is hungry. I set the formula into the bottle, add water and shake: a counterfeit reproduction of the sustenance her mother is meant to provide. I try to remember why it was that I decided to bottle feed my baby, why I did not breast feed. Or did I breast feed? And I find that, standing there, in the kitchen, I cannot remember. Cancer, I tell myself, but then: cancer?
Or was that—the cancer—simply a figment of my imagination, and I wonder about that line on my abdomen, the very one Graham traced with a fingertip—the one he almost asked about until I pressed my fingers to my lips and whispered shhh—and wonder where it came from, that scar, whether or not it’s a scar at all.
And then a word settles in my mind, ugly and vile and I shake my head posthaste to get it out.
Abortion.
But no. I press the baby into me, knowing that can’t be true.
That doctor with the balding head said that she, my Juliet, had been discarded as medical waste. He said that medical waste is incinerated after leaving the hospital, and I was left with a vision that kept me awake for years on end, that filled my dreams with dread: baby Juliet in a two-thousand-degree kiln, being tossed around like cement in a cement mixer so that all sides of her were exposed to the heat, her tiny soul escaping as gas into the earth’s atmosphere.
I shake my head again, vehemently, and say out loud, “No.”
I peer down at the baby in my arms and think: Juliet is here. She is safe.
Perhaps it’s a birthmark, I think then, that scar on my abdomen, like the one on my baby’s leg. Do such things—birthmarks—pass from generation to generation? I think back to the day before, chatting with patrons on the “L” train en route to lunch with Chris in the Chicago Loop as they complimented my adorable baby, and said how much alike we looked, my baby and me, those words every mother in the world longs to hear. She has your eyes, one said, and another, She has your smile, and as they did, I traced a finger over the curve of the baby’s upper lip, that prominent V in the middle that is somehow said to resemble the bow of Cupid.
Just like Zoe’s. Just like mine.
“It runs in the family,” I’d said, of that resplendent smile my baby revealed at the appropriate time, as if she’d known all along that she was the topic of conversation, the one who everyone was staring at, ogling.
But she’s mine, I thought, pressing her close to me, refusing to think about Willow, pushing the name Ruby far from my mind. All mine.
And then there’s the buzz of the intercom, pulling me from my thoughts; it’s loud and incredibly rude as I set that fraudulent breast milk into my baby’s mouth, and whether it’s the milk itself or the blare of the intercom, I honestly can’t say, but the baby thrusts the bottle out with a tongue and again begins to scream.
I walk to the window and peer out, onto the street below, to see Jennifer, my best friend, Jennifer, standing by the plate-glass door with a cup of Starbucks coffee in each hand. Dressed in hospital scrubs and a jean jacket, her hair blowing in the incessant Chicago wind. I duck frantically down before she can see me, before she can see me standing by the bay window eyeing her, and hoping that she will leave. I cannot see Jennifer now. She will stare at my dress, the buttons mismatched, the dark makeup, laden with a decided desperation, now running its course down my cheek. The pink panties and nylons in a ball, the black heels once again pulled from their cardboard box in vain.
And she will want to know what happened. She will ask about Graham. She will ask about my baby.
And what will I say? How will I explain?
The intercom buzzes again and I rise to my knees, clutching a screaming baby in my arms, peering out of the bay window to see Jennifer, blocking the sun from her eyes with the back of a hand, peer upward to the window that she knows is mine, and I plunge again to the ground, uncertain as to whether or not she saw me there in the window, eyeing her from up above. I all but drop the baby on the ground, as the two of us hover, together, in the mere twenty-four inches of space beneath the windowsill. “Shh,” I beg the baby with a despair in my voice that mimics her own. “Hush. Please,” I say, as my knees begin to ache.
My phone is ringing, and I know without having to look at the display screen, that it is Jennifer, wondering where I am. She’s been told I’m sick, for sure, if and when she called the office to see if I was there. Dana, receptionist extraordinaire, told her of my unrelenting flu, and my best friend has come to deliver coffee—or perhaps an Earl Grey tea—to make me feel well. And here I am hiding from her, on my knees on the hardwood floor, begging the child to be still, to be quiet.
And then the phone settles and the intercom settles and, with the exception of the baby, all is quiet. I rise cautiously from my knees to see that Jennifer is gone, out of sight, here one minute, gone the next. I search down the block for the faded denim of a jean jacket, but spy only my neighbor, an older lady from down the hall toting
an empty granny cart en route to the grocery store.
I exhale deeply—certain I’m off the hook—and plead with my baby to drink the bottle, as I set it warily on her tongue and will her to drink. “Please, honey,” I say, or attempt to say, before a knock at the door makes me jump right on out of my skin. The knock is light, and yet knowing and determined. Jennifer, I’m certain, who slipped through the plate-glass door with her Starbucks cups when old Mrs. Green left for the grocery store. Sneaky, sneaky, I think as I hear her calling me through the door.
“Heidi,” she says and then there’s that knock again—that damn tap, tap, tap—which speaks louder than any words possibly can. She knows I am here.
“Heidi,” she says again, as I begin to run through the home, with the baby in my arms, as far away from the door as I can possibly go. I imagine we’re being trailed by carbon monoxide and must find a place where we can breathe. Jennifer’s voice is diluted by the distance as I hover in the corner of Chris’s and my bedroom, tilting the blinds upward so those who come and go on the city street down below will not see—and yet I’m certain I hear her utter I saw you and I know you’re there from where she stands in the hall, tap, tap, tapping on the wooden pane of the door for my attention.
They will take my baby. They will take my baby from me. I beg, “Please, Juliet, please be quiet,” panic-stricken that she won’t take the bottle, that she won’t stop crying. That word—Juliet—it slips from my tongue, utterly wrong and yet so undeniably right. But the crying...the crying won’t stop. I’m with baby Zoe all over again, in the midst of an episode of colic, and she’s screaming, writhing in pain, but with Zoe, I don’t remember the need to hide, to crouch on my bedroom floor and hide.
How long we wait, I cannot say. One minute, one hour, I don’t know, but I jostle my baby silently and beg her to stop. The frequency of Jennifer’s tap, tap, tapping gets less and less until it altogether ceases; my phone rings and then stops, rings and then stops, the house phone, the cell phone.
