I’ve never been one of those designers who descends on a room with her tape measure and graph paper, charting out every perfect dimension. I go to the room, get a feel for it, and when I see the perfect pieces, I just know. I can feel that they are the right proportion and scale for the space without a yardstick.
When Alex was born, he was kind of like me with those pieces of furniture. He knew I was his mommy. From the moment he lay on my chest and breathed that first sigh of relief, we began the type of love affair that a woman doesn’t know she’ll ever have until it happens to her.
And I think that’s how, even those first nights in New York, I knew that I was meant to be your mother. I might not have given birth to you, but I was the one who could calm you down, get you to sleep, make you relax. And I felt that same surge of love like a spiking fever whenever you came to me for solace.
It has never, not for one single second felt anything but right between you and me. You are my baby. You are Graham’s baby. You are Alex’s sister. And that’s that.
Loving you like I do has made me realize that giving birth has very little to do with motherhood. And that, even in the absence of a hormone surge, new motherhood turns me into an emotional mess. When Alex was born I cried so much that your aunt Charlie was afraid I was in the throes of a severe bout of postpartum depression. But then I was devastated over the loss of Alex’s daddy, so sad that here I was, so magnificently in love on my own.
With you, I think the tears were a mixture of sorrow so deep it’s a hole to China and gratitude so soaring that it’s the peaks of the Andes. I had pined for another baby for years, and here you were. But I knew what it was to feel that pure connection with a child, and so I knew what Jodi must have been going through. And I wept every time she crossed my mind, which was often.
It was okay, because, angel that you were, you cried some serious tears yourself. Alex never cried, and so I kept taking you to the doctor and sobbing, “She’s crying because she knows I’m not her real mother.”
Every time, he would pat me on the shoulder and say, “You are her real mother. She has colic.”
That would appease me for a day or two and then I’d be back.
I finally realized that no co-pay in the world was going to fix this, so I took you over to see Mother and Pauline, who had no idea what had transpired. When I walked through the door, Mother was in the library, and, peeking her head around, called, “Frances, honestly, are you going to babysit that child for the rest of your life?”
I smiled, nodded, and said, “I am going to, as a matter of fact.”
Mother scrunched her nose and shot me an annoyed “What?”
“Graham and I are adopting Carolina.”
Pauline came running in from the kitchen, as best as you could run at eighty-five, in support hose with a stocky build. “I been praying for years you get another baby. I tole you!”
Mother gave me a look like I had just told her I was taking a leave of absence from my life to become a groupie for an indie punk group. She rolled her eyes, sighed, and gestured for me to hand Carolina to her. She wrapped her up and said, “You better spend a lot of time with your grandmother so you’ll grow up with some damn sense.”
You opened your little eyes, and we all laughed. Mother looked up at me. “Khaki, I swear. You can’t just take someone’s baby.”
I crossed my arms. “You see,” I said, “that’s what’s wrong with you and Graham. You’re too narrow-minded. I knew this little girl was meant for me, and so did Jodi. Families aren’t always born, Mother. They’re made.”
Pauline nodded and said, “Uh-huh. Girl’s smart, Miz Mason.”
I smiled at Pauline. It was abundantly clear who had raised me.
Mother smiled a little. “I guess that’s true. After all this time, Pauline is sort of like my sister.”
Pauline looked at me skeptically.
“It’s true, Pauline,” I said. “Mother would’ve bossed her sister even worse than she bosses you.”
I paused for a moment, wondering if I had overstepped my bounds. Mother and I rarely talked about her parents and sister dying, that childhood tragedy that had defined so much of her life and, looking back, must have been responsible for many of those moments that I felt she kept me at arm’s length. But Mother laughed, and you looked up at her and cooed.
“All right.” Mother relented. “I’m happy if you’re happy.” Then she said something that I hadn’t even thought of, something that made me feel like the house was on fire and I couldn’t get to you and Alex. “But you know she has a year to change her mind.”
I shook my head frantically. “No, Mother. She only has seven days.”
Mother cocked her head and put her fingers up to the pearls around her neck. “Honey, you and I both know what happened with the Taylors.”
I bit my lip and looked over at you, feeling the tightening like a noose around my neck. I had convinced myself that I was safe, that the seven days had passed and you were ours. But the harsh reality that a family I knew well had been forced to give their child back in a brutal court case was a pill I couldn’t swallow. And all because of a tiny, tiny mistake on some paperwork.
Pauline could read my face. “Chile, you ain’t got no business worrying yourself over something like that. You just go on being a momma.” Then she smiled. “See,” she said, winking. “I tole you all it’d take was a little bacon grease.”
I smiled, trying to push away the thought, remembering the devastation of that mistake being found eleven months into the Taylors’ adoption.
“I’m just saying, is all,” Momma said. “The Taylors told me the statute of limitations on those things is usually considered a year.”
But I knew a lot of things would have to fall into place for that to happen. Jodi or Ricky would have to want you back, we’d have to get a judge that didn’t owe Daddy for something or another . . . I swallowed my fear, walking over to adjust a stack of books on a gorgeous campaign chest I had bought for Mother’s redesigned library. It was a competition between us. I’d turn them straight, and then, when I was gone, she’d turn them back at an angle.
“I’ve gained like five pounds, thanks to you,” I said to Pauline, feeling my breath return to normal.
“Khaki,” my mother said warningly. “Weight gain is a slippery slope.”
You made a little gurgling sound, and Mother cooed down at you, “Not for you, darling. You’re supposed to gain weight.” As if she had assuaged your fears, you closed your eyes again and drifted back off to sleep.
I sat down and sighed. “So, I’m trying to decide if I’m going to keep my surgery date two weeks from now or if I’m going to reschedule.”
Mother sat up straighter and peered at me. “Why on earth would you have the surgery now? You have a baby.”
“Yeah . . .” I said in a long, drawn-out way. “But it’s probably not the best thing in the world to have a bunch of junk clogging up your insides. I feel like I need to get it out.”
“I come over and hep you take care of the chil’ren,” Pauline said.
“Maybe you should wait until they’re a little older,” Mother said.
But I knew from experience that toddlers were much more taxing on a body than babies—especially babies that you didn’t birth.
I took you back home, put you in your bassinet, and curled up on the couch to order more diapers, bottles, and another bouncy seat from Amazon. When I logged on, a message reminded me that it was time for my auto-ship tampons to be delivered. That can’t be right, I thought. I had seen a brand-new box in my cabinet when I put my makeup away that morning.
About that time, Graham slammed the back door, and, as he was walking to my office, called, “I’m going to pick Alex up from school. There’s a sale on fishing rods at the Neuse Sports Shop, and I want to take him to pick a couple out. And Momma’s going to come watch the kids so we can go hea
r the Embers play at Pearson Park tonight.” He breezed through the doorway and stopped dead in his tracks when he saw me, which was my first clue that my face was whiter than an Irish virgin.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Kristin, Scott, and Bunny’s prediction raced through my mind. “Oh my gosh,” I said, under my breath. I looked up at my husband. With that particular mix of joy and terror that only one subject-adjective combination can create, I said, “I’m pregnant.”
Jodi
DON’T FEED THE BEARS
I know good as my own face in the mirror that my grandma never left the United States. So how she started loving Italian caponata, I ain’t got no idea. But when I’d wake up at her house, them weekends we’d have “Camp Grandma,” she’d be just a-whistlin’, stir-frying eggplant. I’d climb up on the stool, right beside her, and help her chop herbs and onions and celery and garlic.
After all that choppin’ and that weird, Italian breakfast, Daddy’d pick me up and we’d head on to the zoo. He’d always say, real serious like, “See how it says ‘Don’t feed the bears,’ Jodi?” I would nod my little brunette head, hair matted with sleep, a momma who didn’t love me enough to brush it and a daddy who didn’t notice things like hair.
“If we feed the bears we take away their instinct to hunt on their own. The zoo give ’em prey to hunt, just like they would in the wild. If they quit having to find their own food, they get fat and lazy and don’t do nothin’.”
You don’t gotta be real smart to figure out he was tellin’ my little youngen self all about his politics. But, now, don’t go getting the wrong idea. My daddy, he believed just like me that we all get down our luck sometimes, and, when that happens, you gotta help out your neighbor. Says so right there in the Bible.
And I’d be the first one to tell you that, right about then, I needed a little help from my friends. I was so ashamed ’bout what I done, so embarrassed that everybody was gonna know I had a baby and I give her up.
That night before, Marlene had been over to cheer me up. “Don’t nobody our age want to raise a baby their own self. Ain’t nobody blaming you, girl.”
More than making me feel better, Marlene was whining her pants off. “I mean, how in the hell did Karla think this was ‘blond’?”
Marlene put her fingers up at her ears, making air quotes. I thought Marlene’s hair looked great. It was toned down and blended. She looked something right near classy. Well, I mean, classier.
“She got done and I just told her right then, ‘Girl, this hair ain’t trailer park enough for me. If you’re gonna be practicing for cosmetology school, you gotta give the customer what they want.’”
I rolled my eyes. “Marlene, you look better than I ever seen you, so shut up.”
She smacked her gum and smiled just a little.
I said, “I gotta find a job or I’m gonna get to starving to death by next week.”
Marlene put her finger up to her lips like she was thinking real hard. “Well, you should go back to school. You was always the smart one in the group.”
I wouldn’t a’ said it out loud or nothing, but I’d always wanted to go to college right bad. I wanted to see them professors in the bow ties and sit under one of them old oak trees them college brochures always got. Maybe even play some a’ that Frisbee.
Marlene got me outta my dreamin’ saying, “You know, you should go to Lenoir Community. They got this program in nursing that’d be perfect for ya.” Marlene was smacking her gum so loud now I wanted to smack her.
I flared my nostrils. “I ain’t sure I want to be a nurse, cleaning up all them bodily fluids and whatnot.”
She shook that bouffant so hard stray pieces was falling out on the floor like leaves in the fall. “Well, my friend Amber’s friend Tiffany went, and she started sleeping with one of the doctors there, and he put her up in her own place, and he’s leaving his wife for her.”
“I ain’t got no interest in stealing some poor woman’s husband.”
Marlene waved her hand at me, still smacking away. “You cain’t think about it that way when you figure you’re findin’ your husband.”
“Marlene,” I said, like she were a youngen. “You tell your friend Amber’s friend Tiffany that that doctor ain’t never gonna leave the pearl-wearing, benefit-attending mother of his three beautiful children for some bleached-blond tramp trying to screw him for a free apartment.”
Marlene plopped down on the sofa, looking offended, and crossed her arms. “Why you gotta be so damn negative all the time?”
I sorta stacked the magazines Khaki had brought by on the coffee table, their spines in perfect, straight rows like them elementary school classes lining up to say the Pledge of Allegiance.
“I ain’t negative, Marlene. I’m practical. Kinston ain’t Hollywood, and this ain’t Pretty Woman.” I sat down too. “Plus, I can guarantee that your friend Amber’s friend Tiffany don’t look like Julia Roberts.”
Buddy got to pokin’ his head in the door right about then. “Hey, Jodi. Got a question for ya.”
I hadn’t seen Buddy since I give you up, since he got me through like he did. I sobbed so long on that beach I think them crops back home was rotated. I ain’t never met a man like Buddy, one that would let you cry, not tell you to stop, one who would listen but not tell you how to fix it. I didn’t know there was a man like that.
Marlene got up, straightened her skirt, and said, “What a good-lookin’ visitor.”
She were giving Buddy what she calls her “bedroom eyes.” If you ask me, looks more like she’s having a stroke or something.
“Hey, Buddy. I got an answer,” I said, and waved to Marlene as she brushed past Buddy. She put both her hands on his chest on her way out the door.
“How ’bout canning some of them vegetables and making some jam and pickles and coming to the farmer’s market with me when it opens up?”
I looked around my teeny kitchen, and, like Buddy were right there in my head, he said, “I already asked Graham, and he said for you to come set up shop at their house.” He paused. “I mean, if you’re ready to be over there, that is.”
I got to feeling kinda nervous and sick and excited all at the same time, like I was waiting for a boy to call or somethin’. Khaki and Graham and me, we’d agreed I would wait a month before seeing you. I couldn’t near think about it ’fore then anyhow. But then, our social worker that was helping us through all this mess, she said it weren’t uncommon for babies to see their birth mommas right often. Lots of ’em were even living under the same roof. I weren’t real sure how it’d be, being your aunt Jodi, not your momma. But all I said to Buddy was, “So, you want me to sell my stuff?”
Buddy nodded. “Everybody’s got vegetables, but I thought if we could offer something more it would make us stand out from the competition.”
“You know I’ll help you out any way I can. I owe everything to you and especially to Graham and Khaki.”
Buddy put his finger on his mouth. “Funny because, not two minutes ago, I was up there and they was talking about how they owe everything to you.”
I smiled. And, you know, I didn’t get in bed with a single married man and found me a job anyhow.
Khaki and Graham, they hired me to go with Buddy to the Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday farmer’s markets right there on the spot like they’d been talking about it all along. As soon as spring hit, I’d start. And I could sell my stuff too, and I didn’t even have to pay for my own stand. Things was starting to go my way. The best part of all was that Graham and Khaki, they said when you worked for them you got your own health insurance. Now I know good and well what health insurance costs, and I cain’t believe they was telling me the truth. But I ain’t never been so proud as when I went back to the doctor for my checkup and I had my very own health insurance that I had earned my own self.
I showed up at Khaki and Graham
’s that day to get a feel for their kitchen, see if I could get all my mess in there and start cannin’ as soon as stuff started coming off the vine. Like she were scared to see me full on, Khaki peeked her head around the corner.
“How you feeling, sweetie?” she asked.
You didn’t have to be real smart to reckon that Khaki, she was scareder I was gonna take you back than I was that Ricky was gonna get me again. But my word, it was better than any piece a’ legal paper—and I signed a damn lotta them things too. I nodded. “I think I’m doing as good as I can. I think I might be all right.”
She were still looking all nervous like, but there weren’t nothin’ else I could say.
“Can we sit down for a second?” Khaki asked, pointin’ at them stools under the island.
I nodded, getting that antsy feelin’ like a potty-training toddler who has to go. If you’d been standing in that room, you woulda felt it too. It were like the air got to blowing a different direction or something. And I felt that sick coming up in the back a’ my throat like I been drinkin’ again. You could tell it right off: She and Graham changed their minds ’bout me being in your life.
“I don’t want you to think that this changes anything,” Khaki said. “But I’m pregnant.”
My brain got all freezed up like I been eating too much ice cream or something. And instead of panicking about not getting to see you, I panicked that they was gonna give you back.
She laughed, but I weren’t sure if I was happy or not. “We’re so excited!” she said.
I reckon I would be right excited if I were her too. She and Graham, they been wanting a baby all their own so bad. But my heart got to hurtin’ for you, like you was so little you didn’t even know it yet but you was already getting tossed around like the garbage. “So then I guess you’re giving Carolina back to me?”
Her eyes got all wide like a rabbit in the woods who just seen a fox. “Of course we aren’t,” she whispered real strange like her voice wouldn’t come out regular. “She’s our little girl.”
Dear Carolina Page 14
