But, all the same, I brought Jodi through the front door and sat beside her on the couch, holding her hand, looking deep into her watery eyes, my mind going to the first, natural place it would go. “Oh, Jodi, you’re not drinking again, are you?”
She shook her head like that simple movement was taking all the strength in her bony body. I looked her over, her mousy hair stringy and greasy, hanging in her face, a tomato-sauce stained sweatshirt over a pair of faded jeans with holes that hadn’t been put there ironically. My mind jumped to a vision of poor, sweet Jodi, down on her knees, wearing away at that fabric, praying every minute that God would give her a different life.
“I am happy to lend you money,” I began slowly. “And I’m not trying to treat you like a child. But I can’t give you cash without knowing what it’s for.” I thought back to the last time I had helped Jodi out, to the lecture from Graham I was certain would never end. He was usually fairly amused by my antics, my husband, and I craved that way he looked at me like I was the only thing on earth that mattered. He scolded me only when it was serious. And he was serious that I never, ever give money to an alcoholic.
One fat tear fell down Jodi’s face, but she wiped it away quickly and said, “I gotta get an abortion. I ain’t got the money to do that and make the trailer payment.”
I leaned back on the couch and took a deep breath. My first thought was, Why her and not me? But I pulled myself together. I knew exactly where she was because I had been there a few years earlier, right after my first husband Alex had died. Of course, I wasn’t contemplating an abortion for the same reasons as Jodi. I was just afraid. Afraid of being a widowed mother. Afraid of being alone. Afraid of dying and leaving an orphan. It was the kind of afraid that wakes you up at night and won’t let you settle back down, the last wound-up, sugar-crazed girl at the slumber party. Part of me wanted to tell Jodi I was sorry, give her the money, and go on about my day. Part of me knew that, at nineteen and a recovering alcoholic with a minimum-wage job, the future was bleaker for her and that baby than a hospice patient.
But the other part of me knew how having my Alex had erased the gray rain cloud hovering above the black-and-white sketch of my life and replaced it with a full-color blue sky. The other part of me knew that one day, the little girl in front of me shaking like a guitar string in a blues solo might wish she had known all the information before she had made her decision. And so, I found myself wrapping my arm around her and saying, “Honey, I’ve got to tell you about when I found out I was pregnant with Alex.”
I told her about the abortion clinic that rainy day in New York and Jane, the counselor who had helped me realize that I should at least think about my other options. I told her about how I saw Alex jumping inside me for the first time on that ultrasound screen, and I realized that I wasn’t just a widow and I wasn’t all alone; I was a mother. I told this teenager, whom I didn’t know much better than the teller at the bank, my deepest, darkest secret, the horrifying truth that I had shared only with Graham and my best friends Stacey and Charlie.
I poured my soul out onto the living room rug like a can of Carpet Fresh. And I knew from her vacant, listless stare that she was so buried in the ash from the eruption of her life that she couldn’t hear me.
So I said, “Jodi, I have to tell you: I was in the worst, deepest, darkest well of my life and that baby was the rescue crew that came to fish me out. I don’t know how I would have made it without having him to live for.”
Her face shifted. “Ricky left me.”
I nodded solemnly, but I was thinking that was probably the best thing that could ever happen to her. But I didn’t say that, of course. Instead, I asked quietly, “Did he know about the baby?”
She nodded like she was about to be unhooked from life support and take her final breath. I knew how she felt. I remembered that weariness that seeps through your organs and hides out in your bones, that sadness that takes over your mind and grips you in a way that you don’t think you’ll ever get back to a place where a smile can dance on your lips or a laugh tickle the back of your throat.
“He seemed like he was all right with the whole thing. But he didn’t show up for my doctor appointment yesterday mornin’. And he didn’t come home last night. And he ain’t been here all day today.”
I wanted to say, Good riddance. But you can’t make someone see how terrible their partner is when they’re blinded by love, no matter how ill-advised that love is. “Doesn’t he disappear like this from time to time?” I asked.
She finally leaned back on the silk faille-covered sofa, pausing for a second, staring down at her feet. Then she said, her voice cracking, “He’s gone for good this time.”
I wanted to tell her that gone for good meant dead like my husband Alex. Gone for good didn’t mean cruising around in the truck that your pregnant girlfriend was paying off with her hard-earned money. It didn’t mean chugging beer with one hand on the wheel, throwing empty bottles out the window into the bed—and, if you were really, really lucky, a girl drunk enough that she didn’t realize what a no-good bastard you were. But I remembered being nineteen. I remembered that shiny half dollar of love story hope that made you think the beast was going to turn into a prince if you just waited a little longer. Sure, he was an ass, but he was going to change for you.
I had bitten my tongue long enough and so, in a way that I hoped seemed encouraging, I said, “Sweetie, I think you’re better off raising this baby by yourself than you would have been with him.”
She shook her head. “I cain’t be trusted with a baby.”
I cocked my head and adjusted the books on the mirrored coffee table, catching a glint of my diamond in the reflection.
“I think you’ll be an incredible mother. Why couldn’t you be trusted with your own baby?” She shook her head again. I added, “I know you’re young, but you’re smart and ambitious.” I leaned back, smiled, and rubbed her arm supportively. “For heaven’s sake, you can change a tire faster than a highway patrolman.”
I thought that would elicit a smile, but instead, I saw a shiver inch up her spine. “What if I get to drinking again?” she whispered like she was afraid the cloisonné lamps would hear her and tell.
And that was when I realized it: I could try to equate our two situations all I wanted to, but they’d never really be the same. Because addiction is a force that I can read about or listen about or think about, but that, praise Jesus, I’ll never truly understand.
Jodi
NOBODY FROM NOWHERE
Asparagus is one back-flipping tricky vegetable. Some people can it, store it, pull it out and eat it like their last meal in the joint before they meet their maker. But I wouldn’t give you two grubby cents from the car cup holder for canned asparagus. Now, when I was coming up, I wouldn’t touch fresh asparagus with one of them clubs we played trailer park golf with. I didn’t like that light green crunch I’m so crazy ’bout now. I’d down that slimy goop straight from the can. But, like them sparkle high-tops the ladies down at the Salvation Army brung to the house one Christmas, I grew outta canned asparagus.
I reckon Ricky and that asparagus was kin; I grew outta him too. In any sorta crisis, any time you needed your man to stand up, take charge, Ricky, he shriveled up on you like that poor, limp canned asparagus.
When I told your birth daddy that we was having a baby, he looked me up and down, sighed, and said, “I thought you had that shit taken care of.” Then he turned and said real low like, though he knew I was in earshot, “Should’ve known she was too stupid not to get pregnant.”
I hope you’re wonderin’ why I would let a man treat me like a maggot-filled garbage bag. But that’s how my momma done my daddy. And I was all wrecked from drinking and not even thinking I deserved Ricky, that flea-bitten dog.
Right straight from rehab and clean raw like an asphalt scrape, I walked outside, sat down in front of all them rich-looking red flow
ers that Khaki and me planted like we was gonna be happy, and cried. I kicked myself like Mr. Simms done them poor dogs down at the trailer park before the animal control people come in and took ’em away. I sat up real straight and said out loud, “Jodi, you get to leaving that sorry-ass man. Trailer’s in your name anyhow on account a’ his sorry credit.”
But here’s the thing about worthless men: They know how to behave right well enough that every time you’re right on the verge of scraping ’em off your shoe, they do something that makes you ignore how awful they been.
About that time, that truck I cosigned for come up the road, dirt flying out from bald tires. Ricky scrambled out, holdin’ one a’ them gas station roses with the baby’s breath. He jumped outta the truck and kissed me good and hard. “I’m so sorry I said that, baby. I think I might like to have a youngen.”
And damn if I weren’t right there again, thinking the devil was a saint. Why I let him pull me in and reel me back out over and over again like a fly rod on a riverbank, I cain’t say. I can say it was on account of my age, but I think it was something more like fear. I was nobody from nowhere and didn’t have nobody. What decent guy was ever gonna want me?
So I think it was a blessing from heaven when Ricky didn’t show up at that ultrasound appointment. I had to stand in line with that Medicaid card, face burning with shame. I had to lay down on that rough, white paper sheet with no one holdin’ my hand. I had to see my baby all alone.
Khaki, she had some life-changing moment when she saw Alex for the first time, one of them visions from heaven that gets people to thinkin’ they can make it through dern near anything.
But me, I saw a jelly bean, reckoned it didn’t look like a person, and decided to take care of it once and for all. Khaki, she tried to talk me out of it, but my mind was made up.
I had carried my friend Marlene to have two abortions already, so I got to figuring she’d be the best person to call. But before I could even pick up the phone, I heard a knock at the door and, lo and behold, wouldn’t you know it? There she was.
I know she cain’t help it, and, heaven knows, she’s my best friend. But some people are just born looking cheap and stay that way ’til the worms get done with ’em. A sorry excuse for a dye job from Antonio’s salon right there in the trailer park and makeup done up tall like so much cake frosting weren’t good no matter how you looked at ’em. But that weren’t it. Khaki could take Marlene on up to New York City and get her plucked and brushed and trimmed and scrubbed and clothed by the fanciest people in the world. But one look right hard and you’d know she’d grown up on the rough side of the trailer park.
“Girl,” she said when I opened the door. “You gotta do something to yourself.”
I knew my hair was greasier than them fast-food fries my momma was always trying to pass off as home cooked. And wouldn’t no amount of makeup cover up them dark circles. But, for Pete’s sake, I was fixing to make the biggest decision since rehab. Marlene squinted brown up at me from under blue shadow, and I could smell the Aqua Net holding her curling-ironed ringlets in place.
She cocked her hip and pointed at me, them dark eyes gettin’ even squintier. “You been drinking again, Jodi Ann? ’Cause if you been drinkin’, you cain’t hide it from me of all people.”
Watermelon breath flew clear across the trailer, and I could see that wad of gum hiding in the corner of her mouth. I’d been knowing Marlene for sixteen years, since her momma left her daddy and moved into the trailer right beside ours. And I couldn’t think up one time I ain’t seen gum in her mouth. I asked her ’bout it one time and she said, real cocky like, “It’s my diet plan. If I got gum in my mouth I ain’t puttin’ a brownie in it.”
“Ain’t being poor our diet plan?” I had said.
That day, I peered back at her. “I ain’t drinking again, Marlene.”
“Oh good,” she said, shimmying past me through the door and plopping down on my couch. “’Cause I started selling Shaklee, and I think it’s gonna go real good. You gotta do it too.”
I sighed. Marlene was always climbing up on one moneymaking pyramid or another. She’d get all happy and carryin’ on for a week or two, realize she couldn’t sell water to a man on fire, and go back to waitressing while figuring how she could get the government to give her more money for community college. She handed me the brochure all official like and said, “See, it’s environmentally friendly cleaning products.”
I looked at the brochure, and I near about dropped my teeth when I saw that a “starter pack” was getting at $100.
“Who in their right mind’s gonna pay more than a day’s wages for some Windex?” I asked.
Marlene smacked her gum, twirled a piece of hair around her finger, and rolled her eyes. “Jodi,” she said, like I were denser than poor old Mikey that swept the floors at the market. “You don’t understand. They’re concentrated.”
“I don’t care if they clean the dag dern house. We don’t know nobody who can spend a hundred dollars on some cleaning mess.”
Marlene wasn’t listening, same as usual when I tried to talk her out of these harebrained schemes. First it had been Tupperware. Then Mary Kay. Then prepaid legal. Now this.
“Jodi, I just don’t know why you gotta be so negative all the time. All we gotta do is sell to rich people who don’t want chemicals in their house.”
I leaned back on the couch. “We don’t know any rich people.”
Marlene shook her head. “You know Graham and Khaki. They can send us on over to all their rich friends, and we can get them hooked on supplements and weight loss products and cleaning supplies.” She snapped her fingers. “Before you know it we’ll be living in big houses like theirs thinking expensive, fancy cleaning supplies ain’t nothing.”
My head was hurting good now. “Look,” I said, setting the Shaklee pamphlet down beside me, thinking that it sure did look fancy. I sighed. “I’m pregnant.”
Marlene squealed. “Yay! A baby!”
Before I could even get to tellin’ her that I weren’t having the baby, she was going on down the line about streamers we could get from the party supply store and who she was gonna invite to the shower she was throwing and how much fun it was gonna be to have a baby.
“Marlene,” I finally broke in. “If you’re so in love with babies, why the heck didn’t you have the two you got pregnant with?”
Marlene looked at me like I just told her I ain’t been washed in the blood after all. “Because, obviously, Jodi, I got a career to think about.”
Like Marlene was some Erin Brockovich saving the world and I was sitting up here on my ass watching soaps all day. “Well, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but I ain’t exactly shining my diamonds over here.” I took a sip from the glass of water beside me. “I ain’t some pampered housewife. I gotta work too.”
“But you got a man to take care of you,” Marlene protested. “Nobody’s ever took care of me.”
My chin got to quivering, and Marlene was across the room faster than a twin-diesel pickup at a green light. “Oh, sweetie. Where is Ricky?”
I leaned my head onto Marlene’s shoulder and sobbed good. “He’s gone. He left when he found out about the baby.”
Marlene jumped up again and said, “That no-good bastard! How could he leave you all alone like this?”
I shook my head. “That’s why I have to have an abortion,” I whispered. “There ain’t nothing else to do.”
Marlene stomped her foot. “No. No, no, no. I’ll help you. You always been the smart one. I ain’t lettin’ you ruin your life over some asshole cain’t even make his own damn truck payment.”
I hadn’t let Marlene talk me into one dern thing before. Not Mary Kay or prepaid legal or any a’ that mess. But I got all weepy and girly when Marlene started going on and on about tiny socks and hair bows and having someone to love you no matter what. Having someone to love me
no matter what.
Now, Marlene cain’t sell a tube of lip gloss to her own momma. But she got me all stirred up and believin’ that having you was gonna be some great adventure. Having you was gonna be the thing that turned my life around. Sometimes, when we want to believe something bad enough, even a second-rate salesman can close the deal.
Khaki
HAPPY CLAMS
Here’s something I know: Homes with small children should forgo white sofas, regardless of how much Scotchgard they have. Here’s something else I know: Men don’t like fertility clinics. Cups and small rooms and other things that you’re too young to hear about are involved. Graham might have been “sure” that that Sunday morning baby-making session had taken, but, a week and another negative test later, I thought I might disintegrate into a puddle of tears on the Stark area rug–covered ground. I reminded myself about a million times a day how lucky I was to have one healthy, beautiful child. But I felt like another baby was the missing piece in our family puzzle.
I had waited as long as I could to broach the subject. As the edge came off the cool and the whole world felt like it was going to burst into bloom on the first warm day, I knew my time had come. I wasn’t going to be the only one who hadn’t blossomed. So I said, “Honey, I’m making us a doctor’s appointment, you know, to make sure everything is okay.”
He gave me an Elvis lip and replied, “We’re young and healthy, babydoll. We’ve just got to keep trying.”
I crossed my arms, looking down on him where he was lounging shirtless on the couch, watching SportsCenter. His tight, toned abdomen and upper body, sculpted by nothing more than good genes and sweaty, manual labor, almost distracted me enough that I let him win. Almost. I got my wits about me and sighed loudly, and, when he saw my serious expression, he said, “Fine. Make the appointment, and I’ll go.”
Dear Carolina Page 3
