by Jim Nelson
Hanna was preparing to pedal back to the farmhouse when she noticed a flapping of yellow in the trees along the property line. She set the bicycle on its side and walked toward the loose strip. She wore shorts, tennis shoes, and no socks. The wild grass tickled and nipped at her ankles and shins as she cut a path through the growth.
“Hello?” she called out. She’d warned off trespassers before. She’d been doing it since she was twelve years old. She knew it was better to warn of her approach than surprise them. She’d had a pistol flashed at her once, when she was sixteen, and although the backpacker cleared out without argument, it shook her.
The yellow flap was a long strip of plastic fabric tied to a branch. It was the color of picnic mustard. It could’ve been there for years. On closer inspection, it appeared too clean. Someone had recently marked the area. Could it be the state agriculture people? They often crossed into people’s property without permission during fruit fly season. She looked for traps hanging in the branches and found none.
She pushed aside a low branch, flexible as a switch, and stepped into a clearing. Someone had built a small fire inside a ring of rocks. The blackened patch of charred wood and scorched rock was still warm. The smoldering remains smelled like burnt toast. Hanna swore under her breath. Even with the fog rolling through each night, fires must be controlled. No beer cans, no cigarettes butts—no trash of any sort, really. The tidiness was unusual compared to the other vagrants she’d encountered, but the blackened smoldering campfire irked her all the same.
“Anyone here?” A biker, a backpacker, a hitchhiker, a vagrant, a Deadhead on his way to a Grateful Dead show: they were all the same to Hanna at that moment. He had discovered a bit of a space ringed by trees that sheltered him from the main road as well as the farmhouse. The limbs overhead provided him protection from the elements. Good for him, but he was not wanted here. Ma Cynthia had accepted the vagabonds, even encouraged them, as that was her way. Hanna did not cotton to them, especially with her mother now living alone in the farmhouse and advancing in age. The trespassers left their garbage and untended fire pits, and when they left without trouble, they would tell others of safe haven at a farm near Mill Valley. Hanna wanted to put an end to it.
“Anyone here?” she called out again.
Beyond the cooling campfire, leaning against a tree on the other side of the clearing, she noticed a camouflage-patterned mountaineering backpack. She’d seen one exactly like it two days before.
At first, she couldn’t believe it. Certainly she was being paranoid. With each step closer, her suspicions hardened.
She returned to the bicycle, picked it up from the dirt, and dusted off the seat. What would Piper be doing here? How did she find the farm? Hanna was certain she never mentioned the farm during the car ride. The backpack must belong to someone else. Perhaps this style of backpack was the norm for hitchhikers these days, the way teenagers bought pre-distressed denim jackets and Doc Marten boots at upscale department stores.
Hanna’s mind churned as she pedaled to the bridge. She scratched at her legs with her fingernails while riding. They were itchy from the sharp wild grass and its pollen. She scratched until she noticed blood on her fingers. Her nails had broken the skin. She pedaled harder and steadier. She needed to get to the farmhouse. Hanna’s mother would be in a deep sleep now. The girls were unattended.
The image of Ruby and Piper connecting at the fruit stand replayed in her mind. The sound of Ruby’s voice, warm and excited, when she recognized Piper during the car ride. The way they touched hands. Piper talking to them while Hanna pumped gas and washed the windows.
Once across the bridge, she stood on the pedals and pumped her legs as hard as she could. It was all she could manage to keep the front tire in the dead center of the jut she followed back to the farmhouse.
—
She dropped the bicycle in the yard and hurried inside. She called out Ruby’s name twice, waited, then called it out again. The house seemed empty.
Behind her, a door creaked open. Ruby poked her head out from the bedroom. “In here!” Ruby hissed. “Grandmother’s sleeping!”
Hanna’s racing mind settled. She joined Ruby in the master bedroom. The only illumination was the muted afternoon light filtering through the shut rose-colored drapes. Hanna’s mother lay in bed, blankets tucked up under her chin, dead asleep and jaw limp. Perspiration dotted her forehead. Ruby kept a bowl of ice water on the nightstand. She soaked a washcloth in it, wrung it out, and dabbed it over Dian’s face and mouth. Ruby peered up at Hanna with grim eyes.
“Fever,” she whispered. “One hundred and one.”
Dian was hot to the touch. “Sleep’s what she needs right now,” Hanna said to Ruby. The fever wasn’t high enough to warrant a trip to the emergency room. “When she wakes up, we’ll make sure she drinks plenty of water. And she has to stay in bed.”
“She won’t listen to us,” Ruby said.
Hanna smiled. It was a relief to smile after the strain of the bike ride. She was still breathing hard from working the pedals. She realized she was a bit whiffy too.
“Your grandmother has a mind of her own,” Hanna said. “But she’ll listen to reason.”
Ruby took Hanna by the hand. She led her to the bathroom to wash off the bad germs. Ruby wore a silk bandana of lime and cream stripes about her forehead. Hanna finally asked her about it.
“Where did you get that?” Hanna said with a wistful smile. She leaned forward and tugged at one of the ends of the striped bandana.
“It was in the back of a drawer,” Ruby said.
“That must be one of my grandmother’s,” Hanna said. She’d seen many black-and-white photos of Ma Cynthia wearing bandanas and hair bands, always in loose blouses and trousers or dungarees, rarely dresses. And pearls. Ma Cynthia was never without her pearls.
“Maybe it’s one of her bridge daughter’s,” Ruby said, meaning the lime-and-cream bandana.
It could be true. In the 1940s, bridge daughter dresses were more brightly colored than they’d become later. They flared at the hips and bore thick stripes or bold floral prints. They were still made of the coarse, pragmatic material that defined bridge dresses, but they made more of a statement. Wearing one of those old-fashioned dresses with the striped bandana holding back her curly mop, Ruby would’ve been the spitting image of Betty the Bridge, the iconic World War II poster girl.
Ruby led Hanna to the kitchen. A small pot of soup simmered on the stove. Ruby had fortified her chicken soup with diced carrots, celery, and Italian meatballs she’d discovered in the rear of the refrigerator’s meat drawer.
“Is it okay to use meatballs in chicken soup?” she asked her mother.
“‘Sicilian penicillin,’” Hanna said with a smile. “It’ll remind your grandmother of growing up on the farm.”
“Are we Italian?” Ruby looked across the kitchen at the genealogy book and diagrams, now laid out on the kitchen table among other books and papers.
Hanna knew this: One of Ma Cynthia’s partners was an Italian-American who cooked up a storm whenever he visited. Thanksgivings at the farmhouse smelled like an Italian bistro, never the savory allspice aromas of a standard American Thanksgiving meal. Hanna, a sharp consumer of her mother’s stories, pieced together that Thanksgivings on the farm included Ma Cynthia, her children and bridge daughters, and two or three men performing their annual visit of their offspring. Hanna had come to deduce the Italian-American sired Uncle Rick, although Rick maintained a rather Scottish-looking beard to his death, the Abney in him making its presence known.
This was another reason Hanna had abandoned genealogy. Too many blank squares, too many questions she was prohibited from asking.
“We’re Italian in the sense we like good food,” Hanna said.
She pulled a chair into the kitchen so she could sit while Ruby cooked. Ruby had been cleaning, it was obvious, as the kitchen was immaculate. Her mother kept a tidy house, but it could not compare to a house kept by an e
nthusiastic bridge daughter.
“Are you going to be mad at me?” Ruby asked, looking sidelong at her mother.
“What are you talking about?” Hanna said with a smile. “You’ve been doing a wonderful job here. The kitchen’s spotless, you’re taking such good care of your grandmother—”
“I found something.” Ruby wiped her hands off on her apron, stepped down from the footstool, and went to the kitchen table covered in papers and books. Ruby returned with a photo album. She turned its stiff acetate-covered pages to an eight-by-ten headshot of Hanna as a little girl.
The photo was grainy, as though blown up way beyond its intended exposure size. Decades of age had muted the colors. The girl bore a reluctant smile and doubtful eyes. Made sense, Hanna thought—she’d hated being photographed since she was a child. The camera lens made her feel like she was being stared at. In the photo, her hair was flat and unmanaged, the licks of her bangs adhering to her forehead. She figured she’d been doing chores that morning and not bothered to put up her hair.
She leaned close to the photo. In the background stood several wood cabins painted brown and, beyond them, redwoods as mighty as mythological giants.
“I don’t remember this,” Hanna said. “Is this the farm?”
She extracted the photo from under the staticky acetate. Stamped on the back was SUSANNA GLEN and a Bible verse from Matthew.
“Where was that?” Hanna said to herself. She turned over the photo as though a clue might be found among the trees, then returned to the stamp on its back. “I never went to summer camp.” Why would she, living in the woods year round?
“It’s your bridge mother,” Ruby said flatly. “The first Hanna.”
Realization dropped like an elevator in free-fall. Hanna studied the face in the photo again, looking for any differences. Of course there would be none. She was genetically identical to her bridge mother, just as the children Cynthia and Ruby bore would be indistinguishable from them, save for Cynthia’s, who would be a male version of her.
“Where did you get this?” Hanna demanded.
“Don’t be mad,” Ruby said. She was not being apologetic. “It was in Grandmother’s room.”
“Ruby,” Hanna said. “This is personal.” Photos of bridge daughters were not keepsakes families placed on mantels and side tables. Bridge daughters were photographed incidentally. Certainly no one paid a photographer to take a portrait of their bridge daughter, unless they were wealthy and wanted to demonstrate their opulence. Why was this photo taken?
Ruby went to the table and returned with a loose stack of wrinkled paper, some yellowed, others frayed at their dog-eared corners. She presented Hanna a sheet of ruled paper. A single handwritten paragraph of harried black ink filled the top half of the page.
“This is from Uncle Rick,” Ruby said. “It’s about your bridge mother. She tried to live. She tried to get an operation.” Ruby spoke earnestly. “Uncle Rick wasn’t happy with Grandmother. He thought Grandmother made a bad decision.”
Cross, Hanna set aside the letter. “You never met Uncle Rick,” she said. “Don’t speak about him as though you know him.”
Ruby instinctively knew the soup was about to boil over. She went to the stove, lowered the gas, and gave it a quick stir. She hopped down again and went to the table. She brought to Hanna a pocket-sized notebook bound in leatherette. “This belonged to Hanna,” Ruby said, presenting it as a trial lawyer would introduce evidence. “You need to know how important your bridge mother was. She was loved by a lot of people.”
Hanna reluctantly accepted the notebook assuming it was a diary of some sort. This was a transgression of her mother’s privacy, but unlike Uncle Rick’s letter, this regarded Hanna’s bridge mother. She felt entitled in some sense, and a bit cross her mother had not shared even the existence of it with her.
She thumbed the pages of the notebook, first riffling through them in a single pass, then turning them one-by-one. She knew her bridge mother could read and write. She’d never asked herself what such a girl would write about.
And little Hanna had written so much. Her bridge mother had written hundreds of names in the notebook, each numbered sequentially. Then, in different ink, she’d lined them all out, like crossing off chores from a to-do list.
“What is this?” Hanna asked.
“Grandmother and Grandpa are in there.” Ruby took the notebook and showed Hanna the pages where MOM and DAD were listed, each with a thick line through them. “And Uncle Rick too.” Rick was listed on a separate page with someone named AUNT AZAMI below him, both lined out as well. Hundreds of names in the book, some repeated, doctors and misters and missuses, most everyone unknown to Hanna save for the recognizable family names.
Hanna wondered if Ma Cynthia would be listed, but in her cursory search did not find her name. Ma Cynthia died when her bridge mother was four or five. This notebook was the work of an older girl, a bridge daughter Ruby’s age. Was she listing the name of every person she knew? Why would she cross them out?
“You’re in it too,” Ruby said.
“What?” Hanna said. “Where?”
Ruby stood beside Hanna and turned to the last written page. “Here.” She pointed.
The final line, numbered 1000, listed LITTLE HANNA. Unlike the previous nine hundred and ninety-nine entries, no line was drawn through her name.
What could drive a thirteen-year-old girl to line out every person she knew in this world? Hanna peered at the eight-by-ten photograph again. It was Hanna’s own face, her dubious frown and mousy brown hair, but an absolute stranger was peering back. This other Hanna’s doubtful eyes told a story, she was sure of it. The neckline of a gray dress ran along the bottom of the photo. A bridge daughter’s dress, Hanna recognized, one of the bland earth-tone smocks bridges wore in the 1970s and 1980s.
Hanna knew her bridge mother was not raised this way. This was a little girl who’d grown up a bit of a tomboy, making mud pies and jumping feet-first into rain puddles, not a bridge daughter confined to an unfinished dank room when she wasn’t cooking meals or cleaning the house. Something had changed, though, and here she was dressed like every other bridge daughter, probably forced to perform the same daily chores and speak only when spoken to.
“Susanna Glen,” Hanna murmured, checking the stamp on the back once more. “I bet that’s one of those places people send bridges for their finality.” Her parents probably sent Hanna there after she’d run away to get a bi-graft. This picture was taken days before her finality, Hanna thought.
“It’s a hospital?” Ruby asked.
“More like a hospice,” Hanna said. Realizing Ruby wasn’t familiar with the word, and happy to see that, she added, “A comfortable place.”
Ruby climbed the footstool. She stirred the soup and tested it, slurping from the end of the wooden spoon. From a jar, she tapped two dried basil leaves into her palm, crushed them in her fist, and added the ground bits to the soup. She’d prepared cold cheese sandwiches on a cutting board beside the stove. She started the gas under a cast-iron skillet and added a pat of butter. In a minute, she was grilling the sandwiches, one for her, the other for Hanna.
“I want you to put all this back where you found it,” Hanna said. “If you do that now, I won’t say anything about it again. And I won’t mention it to your grandmother.”
Ruby stepped down from the footstool and collected the papers at the table with brisk efficiency. Hugging the stack in her arms, she scurried to the back of the house. Hanna prodded the grilled cheese sandwiches, making sure they didn’t stick to the pan. When Ruby returned to the kitchen, she cradled Ruby Jo in one arm.
“I want to talk about what happened earlier,” Hanna said. “Before I went out.”
Ruby, wenschkind in arm, turned on the footstool to face her. “I still mean what I said. I want to raise Ruby Jo. The real one.”
Hanna sighed. “You know that’s impossible.”
“I can help you,” Ruby said. “You be the mother and
I’m the assistant mother. That way, when you’re at work, I’m home taking care of Ruby Jo.”
“I need for you to listen to me,” Hanna said, rising from the chair. “In about five weeks, you’re going to have your finality. Little Ruby will be born, and you will pass away.”
“We can talk with Dr. Bellingham,” Ruby said quietly. “He can make things okay.”
“There’s nothing any doctor can do to change nature,” Hanna said, her patience growing brittle. “You won’t even be able to see little Ruby. You’ll have passed by then.”
It was technically untrue. There was the gloaming, the minutes between the severing of the funiculus and the bridge daughter’s death, when Ruby and her gemmelius both lived. Like most mothers, Hanna rejected any suggestion of the bridge holding the child in her arms, those precious first moments when the real Ruby needed to be in her arms.
“Hanna wanted to raise a baby too,” Ruby said. “That’s what Uncle Rick said to Grandmother.”
The letter Ruby had asked Hanna to read remained on the kitchen counter. Ruby had overlooked it when she returned the material to her grandmother’s room.
“Uncle Rick believed in little Hanna,” Ruby said. “You should read what he said.”
Hanna reasoned it would placate Ruby to read the letter. Hanna knew Ruby had misread it. Whatever the other Hanna had or had not done, no one had mentioned her wanting to raise the child inside her. Hanna unfolded the page and skimmed over it to get its gist.
Stunned, she returned to the top and reread it word for word.
Uncle Rick had addressed the letter to Dee, his nickname for Hanna’s mother. The looping, sloppy handwriting was not easily deciphered. Hanna had to slow down and traverse the words with care to understand Rick’s intentions. The letter rambled, and Hanna wondered if he was drunk when he wrote it.
Hanna told Azami she wanted to be in the flower biz like me, Uncle Rick wrote. But she would have been so much more than a florist or a biologist or a prof and you know it. She was the best little girl any parent could ask for and you let her go so you could have a daughter you dont know anything about. She told Azami she wanted to have her own bridge daughters and a husband and a family & she loved you and you pushed her off a cliff. You are stubborn just like Ma Cynthia and you have no regard for life just like she didnt. Why didnt you give her a chance she proved herself 100 fold for you and Barry. She could have lived if you loved her. Ask Barry he is with me on this.
