Getting Somewhere

by Beth Neff

  “It wasn’t, well, it wasn’t really as hard as you think. I guess people, women, have been doing it for thousands or millions of years. I read through the complications part once and decided not to even look at that section anymore. I didn’t want any of that to be in my mind, just planned to concentrate on everything going well, being normal, and then it was.”

  Cassie stops talking abruptly and the only sound is the slight rustle of leaves, the tractor running in the distance, birdsong.

  “Do you want to tell the rest?” Ellie asks.

  Cassie is anxious, almost desperate, to continue.

  “Yes. I had her all that night, never slept, or hardly ever, just watching her and holding her. I’d already told myself what I was going to do, but I had to talk it all out with myself again. My plan was to do it that very next day, but it was so cold out and I felt pretty weak and I guess all that was just an excuse to have her with me one more day.

  “I called Gordon that morning, which he told me never to do unless it was an emergency, and said Gram wasn’t feeling well, would just be sleeping if he came by so he should wait until the next day. That was the part I was most nervous about, that he would want to come whether Gram was feeling good or not, or maybe because of it. He did seem a little unsure, mostly surprised that I was calling, which I don’t think I had ever done before, or not for years, but maybe he guessed or something, I don’t know. Anyway, he agreed and so I knew I had that day and most of the next to figure everything out.

  “See, I didn’t want Gordon to see her or to know about her, even though, of course, he actually did. I didn’t know what he would do, but I didn’t want him making the decision, whatever it was. I was terrified he would do something, well, awful, with her. I know I was really stupid about it. I have heard now that you can take babies to the hospital, and they’ll take them, won’t even ask any questions, and they’ll be safe, but I didn’t know that then, didn’t even know where the hospital was. I just knew I didn’t want Gordon having anything to do with it, and I had this picture in my mind of a shopping center on the edge of town we’d been to a long time ago, the closest thing to us that I could walk to. I wasn’t completely sure what I was going to do when I got there, but just figured I could maybe give her to someone or find a safe place to leave her so she’d be found.”

  Cassie feels an urgency now, almost trips over her own words to get the next ones out.

  “I wanted more than anything to keep her. Maybe that’s hard to believe now that you know what I did, but I really wanted to. I just didn’t know what else to do. I had Gram to take care of and didn’t think I could be a mother for a baby because of my own mother and with Gordon and everything . . . I would do anything if I could take it back, do it differently.”

  Cassie’s eyes are almost wild, and she is sitting up on her legs, kneeling, her hands clasped firmly in her lap, the book having slipped off to the side onto the blanket. She is shaking her head back and forth as if trying to escape the sound of her own words and yet is determined, almost hell-bent, to go on. Her voice sounds detached, a near monotone even to herself when she begins to speak again, but that is the only way she can keep it steady.

  “Anyway, I kept her in the bedroom and went to her every time I heard the slightest sound. Gram heard her cries a couple of times, got this curious look on her face, but couldn’t make any kind of connection with it, I guess. I was afraid at first that the sound of a baby crying would alarm her, but she seemed to get used to it quickly, pretty much ignored it. She loved music anyway so I moved the radio to right beside her chair and left it on all day, just kept running back into the bedroom to check on the baby, sometimes nursed her when I saw that she was awake even before she cried. I was so hungry that almost all I could think about was food. Gram and I had lunch twice that day, a huge dinner, and then a snack afterward.” Cassie laughs bitterly. “Gram was in her glory. Eating was her favorite thing.

  “But I knew that was the only day I was going to have like that, and I was so sad I could hardly bear it. I tried to sleep that night and I felt so tired, but I just wanted to spend every moment I could with her and that kept me pretty much awake. I know it sounds completely crazy that I could love her like that and do what I did, but that’s why I thought I had to do it. Maybe I am crazy. I know they thought at the Center that I was retarded because I wouldn’t talk or anything. Didn’t they?”

  She is looking at Ellie and sees that Ellie is rather astounded that Cassie knows this. Ellie nods her head.

  “We know now it’s not true though,” she adds. Cassie just shrugs.

  “Anyway, the next day, I put Gram down for her nap right after lunch and just prayed she wouldn’t wake up while I was gone. It is hard to believe but I hadn’t been anywhere but the backyard and the creek behind the house and in the truck and”—Cassie hesitates but the words seem to have a mind of their own—“and to the place Gordon always took me at the lake, since Gram got really sick, maybe like five or six years, maybe longer. I figured I’d have to walk about six miles but it ended up being a lot less, like four miles, because they’d built a Walmart at the edge of Tacoma that I didn’t know about.

  “The walking was horrible because snow was pushed up against the edge of the road so I could either walk in the road or way back from the edge to get out of the deep crusty snow from the plow. There wasn’t a lot of traffic until I got to the main road, and then I had to walk farther from the edge or get splattered by all the slush and mud. I’d wrapped the baby against me under my coat so she was warm and dry and, thankfully, she stayed asleep the whole time. When I got to the parking lot there, I walked up and down the aisles for quite a while, I don’t know how long, trying to decide what to do. Then I saw a big black car, kind of like a truck, and the motor was running, I guess to keep it warm while they went inside. I couldn’t believe it but the passenger door was unlocked so I laid the baby on the front seat and quickly walked away before I could change my mind. I could hardly see where I was going I was crying so hard, but I just kept walking, thought maybe the heated car and door being unlocked and everything was a sign that I was doing the right thing.”

  Cassie pauses again, seems a little breathless. “Do you want me to finish?”

  “If you want to,” Ellie responds.

  “Yes, I want to tell the whole thing. Well, I had barely made it to the turnoff onto our road when the police car pulled up behind me. Someone must have seen me and called them right away. Only about forty-five minutes had passed before they found me, and the police officer asked me a bunch of questions, but I didn’t know how to answer them so I just kept quiet. I did want him to take me home, though, so I pointed out Gram’s house, her trailer, and he came in with me and they called the social services lady and that was pretty much it. I did tell her Gram couldn’t be by herself and she said they would make arrangements. I never said a thing about Gordon and I don’t know if they looked him up or found him or anything. They told me at the Center that Gram was in a nursing home and that she was fine, but I got the feeling they didn’t really know, that they were just telling me that.

  “The worst part was how badly my breasts hurt. They were so full of milk and dripping like crazy. I felt like I had two footballs under my shirt and they were so tender to the touch, I couldn’t even begin to wear my bra. Well, it wouldn’t have fit anyway. I didn’t tell anyone though, and after several days, it got a lot better but made me unbelievably sad. I was in detention the first two days, and then a whole group of us was taken to the Center, I guess to wait for the hearing since there was nowhere else for us to go. We were there for, I don’t know, maybe, like, a couple of weeks, maybe more, and then, after the second hearing and the sentencing, I was put back in detention until I came here. I asked them there about the baby, and they always said they would try to find something out but no one ever did or at least they didn’t tell me. I could tell they thought I was stupid or
maybe crazy, I don’t know, didn’t feel like they had to pay attention to me. I guess they were right.”

  Cassie’s shoulders droop, and she moves her head in a circle like her neck has become stiff. It is obvious to everyone that she isn’t done, is framing the words she wants to say next.

  And even Cassie has not recognized until this moment that the rock-hard tangled-up place in her gut, the stiffness at the base of her neck, the horrible sense that she doesn’t know what happened to her baby, may never find out, will never know her are all grief. Before she can even find a way to express the feelings, she knows what she was about to say—that she just wants some information, to know she’s okay—is not really true. She thought she would settle for knowing the baby is okay, but that’s not what she truly wants. The thoughts are formed and the words are out before she has even been alerted to their existence.

  “The thing is I know it’s probably ridiculous, but I want to find out if . . . if there would be any possible way that I could get her back. I want to know where she is and be sure she’s okay, but then I want to see if I can have her, be her mother and everything. Do you think there’s any way you can help me do that? Do you think it’s too late?”

  Cassie can see across the circle that Ellie’s eyes are wet, her head down. Cassie’s heart is beating so hard in her chest she can hear it in her ears. She forcefully prevents herself from looking at the other girls, from worrying about the time she has taken, the reaction they might be having, what they are thinking of her now. She keeps her gaze focused on Ellie and, with each passing second, feels the knot on her spine tighten and grow and threaten to overcome her.

  Ellie finally lifts her eyes to Cassie though, for once, she doesn’t smile.

  “I don’t know, Cassie. I don’t . . . well, I just don’t know what to say. You’ve kind of taken me by surprise. I have no idea if what you’re asking is possible. We need to talk about it a lot more before we make any decisions. I know you feel terrible about losing your baby, but it hasn’t really been that long. So much has changed for you, and I’m not sure you’ve really had a chance to think through how you’ll feel when, well, when that grief isn’t quite so . . . sharp.”

  “No.” Cassie’s voice is loud and steady. “No. I know how I’m going to feel. I’m going to feel like I made the worst mistake of my life—and I don’t mean the legal one—and that I need to do everything I can to fix it. I know that, before, when I made the decision, I thought that someone who didn’t have a mother, or who hadn’t had one in a long time, couldn’t be one. I wanted her to have the best life, and I was sure I couldn’t give it to her. But now I know that it might be something you can learn, that even if you make a mistake, a terrible one like this, it doesn’t make you a bad person. I’d only be a bad person if I didn’t try to do something about it.”

  “Yeah, I mean, isn’t that what we’re supposed to be learning here? Don’t you think Cassie can do it?” Sarah’s gaze is focused on Ellie, but she has moved closer to Cassie, edged her hand up against Cassie’s own.

  Ellie looks startled.

  “I don’t think that’s really the issue. Yes, I’m sure she can do it. It’s just that it’s such a life-changing decision. Cassie, she’d be completely dependent on you for a long, long time, and you’re a teenager yourself with no other family to help you. It just seems like you’d want to imagine yourself free of that burden, give yourself a chance to grow up a little before you have to take care of someone else. Again.”

  Everyone turns to the sound of Jenna clearing her throat. “So, she’s just supposed to forget about it? Like, pretend it never happened?”

  “No, I’m not saying that. I’m just saying—”

  “Because that makes it seem like you think that, because she’s a teenager, the feelings aren’t real, that she can’t understand them because she’s too young herself.”

  “No, Jenna. Of course that’s not what I’m saying.”

  “Because I think it wouldn’t do any harm to find out. I mean, if it’s impossible, then okay, Cassie has to give up on it. But, if it’s possible, if nobody has taken her yet, then who would be a better mother than the person who loves her most, the person who really wants her? Cassie, better than anybody, knows how hard it’s going to be. It doesn’t seem fair for you to say that she doesn’t have the right to do it anyway, that she’s not able to know what she wants.”

  “I didn’t mean to imply—”

  “And besides, I don’t really see that it’s your decision. If you don’t want to help, that’s fine. We can do it. Cassie and . . . us. What’s all this crap about empowerment if it doesn’t mean you can work hard for something you believe in?”

  Cassie has never been so astounded. She is staring at Jenna with her mouth open, trying to digest what she has just heard. She can’t believe that Jenna doesn’t hate her now that she knows what Cassie has done. In fact, if Cassie understands correctly, Jenna is actually standing up for her, saying more words in a group session than Cassie thinks she has ever heard her speak. And what she is saying is that she thinks Cassie could be a good mother, that she’d even be willing to help Cassie get her baby back. Could Lauren have been wrong about Jenna?

  Ellie is staring at Jenna, too, but when she shifts her focus back to Cassie, she appears defeated.

  “Is that really what you want Cassie, to find out, to see if it’s possible?”

  Cassie doesn’t trust her voice. She nods, making firm eye contact with Ellie, returning her gaze.

  Ellie shrugs, nods her own head slowly, though she still isn’t smiling. Her voice is restrained. “Okay, then. I guess there’s your answer. I’ll see what I can do.”

  MONDAY, JULY 16

  “SO, IT’S LIKE A TRADITION IN YOUR FAMILY? SOMETHING your grandparents did and everything?”

  Sarah is clutching the top leaves of a large celery plant, gathering them in both of her hands while Grace takes the double sheet of newspaper Lauren is holding out to her and wraps it snugly around the tall stalks, tying at top and bottom with strips of baler twine. It’s been unbearably hot almost all summer but the last two days have felt like some satanic monster is at the weather controls, cranking up the temperature a few more degrees with every sign of human distress.

  “I guess you could say that. It was actually my great-great-grandfather Henry who first settled this land though, back in the 1880s.”

  Sarah can really only see the top of Grace’s head, though she knows her face is red with heat and effort, marvels at how the woman never seems to slow down. Possessed, that’s what she is, maybe controlled by that same meteorological monster. Tend the crops until you drop. Sarah reaches with her tongue for a drop of perspiration making a run down the crease beside her mouth toward her chin but misses.

  “So you mean, like, your family has been here ever since then?” Sarah tries to figure out how many of her lifetimes fit into the last hundred and twenty-five plus years but quickly gives up.

  “Well, more or less. People kind of came and went. Nobody in my family has exactly been the settled type.”

  This whole conversation started with the stupid celery. They are halfway down one side of the wide bed, blanching the plants in the two staggered rows they can reach and will return down the other side for the last two rows. At first, Sarah thought it was cool that Grace grows celery every year just like her family always has, even though she has admitted that there’s no great market for it. Now, Sarah feels like she is squirming under the heavy weight of that connection, her ears full of the names and stories of these hardworking ancestors. She is picturing Grace seated confidently on the limb of a broadly spreading family tree, reaching her arms down to bring the girls up to a perch beside her. Sarah thinks that, along with water, she is afraid of heights.

  Yet, she wants to know, needs to feel these pinpricks of reproof, understand exactly what she may have had a hand in
contaminating.

  “So, Henry was a celery farmer?”

  “He was at first but when he bought this place he also grew a lot of flowers.”

  “Flowers?”

  “That’s how the story goes. I guess his son Cornelius wasn’t all that interested in flowers because he left the farm for quite a few years. When he finally came back, he got married, sometime in his forties—his dad had married late in life, too. Anyway, Cornelius and his wife had one son, named Jacob, and he was my grandfather.”

  “Why did they wait until they were so old to have kids?”

  “I don’t know. Just circumstances, I guess. But that pattern didn’t hold. Jacob and my grandma Marie had my mom when they were only twenty, and my mom was just eighteen when she had me.”

  Grace clears her throat, and Sarah feels like she can see her swallowing a mouthful of words that have surged forward uninvited. Lauren is clearly becoming impatient with the story, hasn’t noticed that the narrative has taken a tense turn, and begins to hum. Sarah flashes her a dangerous frown, and Lauren looks at first scandalized, then flippant. Sarah’s hands are getting tired, but she doesn’t want to complain. Lauren, of course, has the easy job, just separating the sheets of newspaper and spreading them flat as she hands them to Grace, pulling the pieces of twine from her pocket as Grace needs them.