Beauty from Ashes

by Alana Terry

  Jake’s quiet, and I’m quiet, and it sort of reminds me of the night before Natalie’s G-tube surgery. It had been a pretty hectic day. When I told Sandy about the procedure, she dropped everything and flew from Boston to Seattle. I don’t even want to guess what she paid for a last-minute ticket like that. I don’t know how she managed it on her husband’s pastor’s salary, but she came by that afternoon and rented a car. I hadn’t said anything to her about it, but she must have known that after three weeks staying at the Ronald McDonald house with no way to get around I could use a shopping spree. I don’t even remember what I got that day. Pads and underwear, I’m sure, and some cereal and things we could keep in our room for easy snacks. But I wasn’t used to that kind of running around, plus I was worried about Natalie’s surgery in the morning. Sandy was staying with a couple she and her husband met all the way back in their seminary days, so Jake and I had the evening to ourselves. I was so tired I don’t think I even made shift change that night.

  “You worried?” he asked me, and his breath was hot on my shoulder while we spooned.

  “A little.” I hated the thought of Natalie having that procedure. Hated the thought of her getting knocked out by some anesthesiologist. I already regretted signing those papers. Maybe it wasn’t just the surgery itself, either. Maybe it was because putting in the G-tube was a permanent solution, and I was still stupidly hoping for a quick and easy cure. A drowning sailor will hold onto anything he can get his hands on, right?

  “I worry about her, too.” It sounds like the regular sort of stuff two people would say when their child’s about to have a major operation, but it really struck me that night because Jake didn’t talk much those days. I mean, he doesn’t talk much now, but it was worse back then, which is why I sometimes tried to drag him into an argument. I figured if I gave him a good fight to get all that extra stress out, he’d be a lot happier in the long run. Maybe his brain’s just wired differently because it never worked.

  But that’s why the conversation we had that night stands out to me. He opened up a little. Shared some of his fears. Not about Natalie dying. Neither of us were ready to talk about heavy stuff like that yet. But about what had happened. And how guilty he felt.

  “Do you ever think this is God’s way of punishing you?” he asked me while we cuddled.

  I was pretty surprised. Jake had never mentioned God before. His mom raised him without any religion, boasting that when he got older he’d have the freedom to choose any path of faith he wanted, but of course it just meant he didn’t choose any path. As far as I knew until that night, he didn’t even believe in God at all.

  “I don’t think it works that way,” I lied. I didn’t want to tell him about my own guilt and shame. About the David and Bathsheba reference I’d read from Elder Tom. About those chastity pledges I took back in high school, years after I’d lost my virginity. That’s the problem with those things. Your youth leaders tell you not to sleep around until you get married, make it out like that’s the most sure-fire way to book your one-way ticket to hell, but they don’t tell you how to do it. How to handle the boyfriend who keeps reminding you that if you don’t put out he’ll find someone who will. Seriously, I mean these people are so pro-life and all — and so am I — but if I’d gotten pregnant in high school, I probably would have had an abortion in secret just to keep proving to everyone at that church I was still on God’s side. How backwards is that?

  I guess you don’t have to grow up in a real churchy foster home to pick up on that whole guilt thing. Jake was feeling it too, maybe even more than I was. “Sometimes I think God’s mad at me.” And he buried his head between my shoulder blades and I swear he started to cry. It was quiet so I couldn’t hear him, and I acted like I didn’t notice at first, but there were definitely tears. After a few minutes, it was stupid for me to keep pretending when both of us knew what was going on, so I rolled over and tried to cheer him up.

  “Come on,” I said. “You’re like the most solid guy I know. You couldn’t do anything to make God mad. You’re too good a person for that.”

  He buried his face in his hands then, and that’s when I started to get that worry pit growing deep in my gut. And I knew what he was going to say before he said it because it sort of felt like I was floating up above our heads when he yanked the blanket over his face so he wouldn’t have to look at me when he admitted, “I cheated on you.”

  I don’t know if you’ve ever had someone come up to you and just throw their fist into your gut when you’re not expecting it, but that’s how it felt. I yanked the blankets off him. If he’d done something that horrible to me, he was sure as anything going to look at me when he confessed. “You did what?”

  “I cheated on you.” And he was sobbing, and the whole story came out, and it’s not even that juicy. It was when I was on bedrest, he was stressed out because he was worried about the baby, and there was a girl from work, Charlene, who by the sound of it took advantage of him in that situation. She came over one night, brought some beers, blah, blah, blah. It’s not that I wanted to hear the whole story, but after a statement like that, I was going to make him tell me every stinking detail.

  But really, that’s all there was. He said afterward he felt so bad that he sent her a text. Said some horrible things to her to make sure she’d never come around again. In a way it was a relief. It was the first time I’d seen him act like a jerk to anyone. It made me feel like I was dating a regular, normal guy, not some saint I didn’t deserve and certainly could never hope to keep. Even the fact that he cheated on me wasn’t as upsetting as you might think. Maybe if Natalie hadn’t been about to undergo a major operation because the doctors were convinced she was so brain-damaged she’d never learn to swallow on her own, I might have been more upset.

  Everything’s relative, right? Besides, I’m no Mother Theresa. Let him without sin cast the first stone, or however that Bible quote goes.

  “What about you?” Jake asked.

  “What about me?”

  “Have you ever ... Did you ever want to ...”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “No.” And the conversation ended there.

  Thank God.

  CHAPTER 17

  Jake’s sound asleep. He’s just like his mom, Sunday naps and all. He’s snoring loudly enough that there’s no way I could drift off even if I wanted to. I’ve always hated naps though. What’s the point when they make you feel so groggy and disoriented when you wake up?

  It’s two hours before Natalie needs another feeding, and my trailer is clean enough that the Queen of stinking England could stop by to use the toilet and I wouldn’t feel embarrassed. I don’t know what Patricia’s got planned for dinner, but I can guarantee it’s going to have a golden top, it’s going to be served along with plain brown rice, and she isn’t going to need or want my help.

  Who would have thought being a new mom could be so dull?

  I bundle Natalie up. It’s not too cold out, mid-forties. The snow’s falling pretty hard. It’s probably stupid of me to have her out in weather like this, but I can’t just stay cooped up in this trailer forever. Something about that church service today has given me cabin fever. I’ve got to get out. Patricia will pitch a royal fit if she sees me with Natalie tramping about in the middle of winter, but I checked the clock before she lay down for her nap. I have exactly thirty-seven minutes. Plenty of time to stretch my legs and get Natalie and myself both some fresh air.

  I can’t believe I’m walking around the trailer park in a snowstorm just for the fun of it. Do you remember when power walking used to be all the rage? I never understood it before, but it’s starting to make sense now. The walking around outside part, not the whole ball your fists and bend your arms at a ninety-degree angle junk. Natalie’s got this cheap stroller one of my co-workers at Winter Grove passed down to me. Her kids are all teenagers now, so that will tell you how old of a model it is. Nothing fancy like those ones you can strap a car seat into o
r anything, but it works. I wish it weren’t so cold. I swear I’ve felt Natalie’s forehead and cheeks at least five times since I left.

  I’d love a more visually appealing neighborhood to walk around in, but it’s over half a mile just to get out of the trailer park, and I only have thirty-two minutes left to get home, stash the stroller somewhere, and get Natalie out of her winter things. I feel like Cinderella keeping her eye on the clock before she has to rush back to her wicked step-mother’s.

  I suppose if I was like Jake and grew up with Patricia, I wouldn’t see all her faults. I wouldn’t care so much. I mean, I know he’s not the sharpest crayon in the box, but I’m pretty convinced Jake thinks his mom is nice. Nice as in he’s lucky to have someone like her. And the way she berates him, never directly, never right to his face, but man. I wouldn’t put up with it for ten minutes if I were him. If it were my trailer and she were my mom, I would have thrown her out on her middle-aged Buns of Steel butt before the end of that first week.

  Fish and company both stink after three days. I forget which one of my foster parents said that, and seeing as how I was a foster brat and therefore more like company instead of family, I wonder why she told me in the first place. I’ve got my cell phone in my pocket, and part of me thinks about checking in with Sandy. She’s called me a few times lately, but that trailer’s so small and the walls are so thin I never feel comfortable talking to her when Patricia’s around. I should call her, but I know I won’t. She’s busy. She’s got that little boy she adopted to take care of. I guess that makes him my foster brother. Not that those labels mean anything.

  I check Natalie’s cheeks one more time to make sure she’s not getting too cold, and I think about those three days Sandy spent with me at the hospital when Natalie was having her G-tube surgery. It was like we’d only been apart for a week or two, when it was more like three years and I’d gone from a foster kid in Sandy’s modest home in her perfect little suburban paradise to an unemployed welfare mom in a trailer park.

  How’s that for moving up in the world?

  It’s funny because by the time I was a senior in high school, I was so sick of Sandy babying me. It was always tell me about your day and you look tired, are you sleeping all right, and I hated that attention and smothering. Fast-forward three years, and all of a sudden I can’t get enough of her mothering. I fell asleep on her shoulder once in Seattle. Can you believe that? It was the morning Natalie went in for her surgery, and the nurse told me I could wait at the Ronald McDonald house and they’d call me when it was over, but I didn’t want to be that far away, so Sandy and I sat in the surgery area for four stinking hours. At one point, she said I looked tired and wrapped her arm around me, and the next thing I knew I had drool on my cheek and the nurse was there to say Natalie was in recovery and the surgery had been a success.

  Man, I miss Sandy. I’d probably go postal if I tried to live with her again, but it would be nice to at least be in the same town or somewhere nearby. I just hate picking up the phone and calling someone. It feels so arrogant, like I expect her to drop everything and talk to me about all my stress and worries just because I made a little device of hers ring a couple times. And I know if I call she’d want to know about Natalie, and what is there to say? She’s not dead yet. But there’s been no measurable progress. She’s not even gaining weight. The poor little thing weighs eight ounces more than she did at birth and that’s all.

  No change.

  I wonder if that’s going to be the story of Natalie’s life, as long or as short as it is. She’ll be eighteen years old, but instead of ordering her cap and gown or worrying about college tuition, I’ll be pouring predigested formula down her G-tube. Measuring out her anti-seizure meds that knock her out for twenty-three hours of the day. Suctioning out her throat whenever she starts to choke on her own drool.

  Thinking about the suction machine reminds me that I left it at home. And by the time I’ve turned around, Natalie’s grunting in her sleep because her airway’s getting clogged. If I had that Yankauer with me, she’d be comfortable in two seconds flat. As it is, I’ve got to rush all the way home in the snow, and now I’m the one who looks like a stupid power walking maniac.

  At least I’m getting my exercise for the day.

  Count every blessing, right?

  CHAPTER 18

  I arrive home before Natalie’s breathing gets too wet, and I throw on the suction machine. It’s so loud I’ll probably go deaf before her first birthday. After I clear out her airway, I take a quick picture of her because she looks like a little Eskimo in her downy winter wrap-up. Once she’s unbundled, I put her on her little buckle-in chair in the living room and plop down on the couch to post the photo online.

  I’m trying to think of a grabby caption when my phone beeps. It’s a message from Sandy. How’s my sweet girl today? I’m not sure if she’s asking about me or Natalie, so I tell her we’re both fine and send her an attachment with the photo I just took.

  What a tiny thing. Is she gaining weight? Sandy asks, and I have to love her for not lying through her teeth like most of my friends will when they see the photo. She’s getting so big! She looks so healthy! You’re doing a great job!

  I give Sandy a brief reply because I really don’t feel like having a long, drawn-out conversation over messenger. It’s just such a pain waiting for someone’s response, not knowing if they’re in the middle of typing something or maybe they’ve gone out partying for the rest of the afternoon and won’t get back to you until tomorrow night. Not that Sandy’s the partying type. In fact, she’s the most straight and stable person I know. I met her when I was fourteen, and I lived with her until I was eighteen, and that whole time I only saw her and her husband fight once. I mean, they bickered quite a bit, but most of that was good natured and just the way they interact with each other. But this was a real fight. I’m sure if Jake had been there he would have crawled into the corner and peed his pants.

  I’m trying now to remember what it was. Something about one of their adopted daughters. Blessing, I think her name was. She was already out of the house by the time I moved in, but she still gave Carl and Sandy a ton of grief. Always either strung out on drugs or in recovery, and I probably shouldn’t judge her because when that anonymous savior rescued me from the trash bin and I started my journey as a foster brat, I figure most people wouldn’t have expected me to grow up and become anything more than a crack queen or heroin addict myself.

  Well, Blessing had checked herself out of whatever recovery center she’d been in, and Carl and Sandy didn’t know where she was. They’d already tried tracking her down in the usual spots, her no-good friends who were more than willing to shoot her up again or that uncle who pimped her out for drug money from the time she was in a training bra. But they couldn’t find her anywhere. Carl’s the nicest guy you can ever hope to meet. He’s a pastor, so I guess he has to be kind and loving, but he was a professional football player for a couple years before that. Nice as he is, he’s no pushover. I don’t know too much about his upbringing, but he survived being a black kid in the South way back when, so you know he’s got to have some street cred.

  He was telling Sandy that Blessing was an adult now and responsible for her own actions, and if the two of them rescued her every single time she went off the deep end she’d never learn to take care of herself. Sandy wouldn’t hear it. I’m sure in her mind, Blessing was still the scared little pre-teen who came into their lives so many years earlier with her trash bag full of hand-me-down clothes over one shoulder and a lifetime of emotional trauma sitting on top of the other. And Sandy was freaking out. I mean, that woman can yell when she sets her mind to it. But Carl’s not the kind to stand hen-pecking either. And man, the two of them went at each other’s throats. When they finished, Sandy knocked on my door. It was past bedtime, but I think she figured I was still awake. She came in and found me crying and asked, “What’s the matter, sugar? Were we being too loud?”

  I didn’t know how to
express how terrified I felt right then, because Carl and Sandy’s home had felt like heaven to me. And Sandy sat down on my bed and started rubbing my back and said, “Talk to me, pumpkin,” and I’m sure it took ten minutes for me to get out one coherent sentence, but I finally managed to tell her what I was scared of.

  “You’re going to get a divorce, and then I’ll have to find a new home.”

  Sandy kept rubbing my back and explaining how she and Carl made a promise before God to always love each other and always stay together, no matter how much they disagreed. And one day God would bring a Christian man into my life, and we’d make that same promise, and I had to remember that even when things got hard not to give up on our relationship. She made it sound simple. I’m surprised I wasn’t so jaded by life at that point that I didn’t laugh in her face. But I wanted to make Sandy happy, and I wanted to believe that it was true, that two people who fought could make up afterward and still have a pleasant marriage that didn’t result in cracked ribs or ER visits or their foster kids getting whisked out of the home in the middle of the night. I wanted to believe Sandy when she said one day I’d meet a wonderful man, and even if we disagreed from time to time, we’d love each other just as much as she and her husband did.

  See, I told you I was naïve.

  CHAPTER 19

  I sometimes wonder how Sandy did it. Took in so many of us foster kids, I mean. You’ve already heard what kind of person she is, how she’s just so good and strong and loving. I don’t think she yelled at me once the whole time I lived with her. Sure, there were the regular things, like I had to clean up my room or I couldn’t go out paintballing with the youth group, and I got grounded a couple times for talking back, but if those things got her angry at me, it never showed.