Chasing Windmills

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

  Oh. One more P.S.: I'm going to be rude and borrow something without asking. But I will either give it back or buy you a new one. I'm taking this VHS tape you have of The Wizard of Oz. It just seems really important that Natalie have at least one thing that feels familiar to her. If you weren't family, that would just be too rude. But you are.

  Love,

  Maria

  But I guess I said that part already.

  I spent about ten minutes—time I didn't really have to spare— searching for that tape among what seemed like about a thousand others. How Stella navigated through that mass of videos was beyond me. But I couldn't give up, because it just felt too important.

  By the time I found it I was late and pretty much stressed out.

  I thought it would wake Stella up when I went to pull Natalie out of their bed. She even fussed a little in her sleep when I took the feather boa away from her. But I guess if Stella can sleep through Victor's snoring, she can sleep through anything at all.

  I HAD TO SORT OF DRAG the duffel bag down the stairs. Bumping down one step at a time. I had Natalie half-sleeping on one shoulder, and that was painful enough. Just the way it pulled my rib cage down on one side. Of course, I made sure it was not the bad side. But it hurt just the same.

  Trouble is, when I got to the lobby and had to pick up the bag, I had to use my bad side.

  “Ow,” I said, and set it back down again. I can be really good at understatements at a time like this.

  “Hmmmm?” Natalie said. Or at least one syllable that added up to that type of question.

  “Nothing, honey. Go back to sleep.”

  I went back to dragging the bag by the corner. All the way across the linoleum floor of the lobby to Stella's outside door. Thinking that if I dragged it down to the subway, all down the rough concrete, it would have no bottom and no clothes by the time I got there.

  And I was getting short on time, too.

  I remembered telling Tony I could haul the bag down there. “I will because I have to,” I said, or some bullshit like that. Something that sounded good at the time. Something that reminded me how I tend to bite off all kinds of stuff I can't really manage. Like I think I'm really powerful or something. Like I think my own will can work magic.

  When I got through the doorway and out onto the landing, I saw Delores and another bag lady I didn't know, sleeping all huddled over each other on the curb.

  Now, in my neighborhood, I say hi to the homeless people. But I never ask them their names and I never tell them mine. Because if one ever called me by my name in front of Carl, ho boy. It would really hit the fan.

  But in Stella's neighborhood I feel a little freer. So in Stella's neighborhood, I know just about every street guy and lady personally. Except this one lady who was all curled up with Delores, who I think must have been new.

  “Delores,” I called in a sort of sharp, loud whisper.

  Her head came up. “Yo, Maria,” she said. “What you doin' out so late?”

  “I need your help, Delores.”

  “Well, sure, honey. Anything for you.”

  Sometimes I give quarters to Delores and Sam and Mickey and Lois and some of the others, and even though a quarter wouldn't impress them a bit from some people, they know I don't have much. So it's the thought. You know. They know the good thought behind it. People don't forget things like that. The more people ignore them, the more they remember the ones who don't.

  She came down the street to me, smoothing down her ripped skirt with the big yellow flowers on it.

  “Bring your shopping cart,” I said. “If I could just get you to put this big duffel bag on your cart. And then we can wheel it down to the subway.”

  She was surprisingly strong, Delores. Picked it up with one hand and threw it so it balanced across both sides of the cart. Then she lifted Natalie out of my hands, so gentle, like she was a newborn baby or something, and set her down in the seat. The seat they build into the cart for kids to ride in it.

  And off we went. I was looking at her hair, and how it was formed into permanent mats in the back. Like extra-free-form dreadlocks. Like one of those psychiatric inkblot tests, only with hair.

  I was also memorizing the look and feel of a city street in the dark. In case I never walked down one again.

  “I don't think I have anything more than just change on me,” I said.

  “Don't matter to me,” she said. “Not if it's you. Where you going?”

  “I'm running away.”

  “From what?”

  “My boyfriend.”

  “Sounds like a good move. Except how you gonna run away with nothing but change in your pocket?”

  “Well, I got a friend,” I said. “And we just have to do the best we can.”

  When we got to the subway stairs, she asked me if I wanted her to haul the bag and the girl downstairs for me. But I knew she didn't want to leave her shopping cart with its precious contents unattended. I mean, that was her life savings. So I told her I'd pull the bag down the stairs and it would be okay.

  “Enjoy your new life,” she said when she handed back Natalie.

  “Thank you,” I said, and tried to give her my miserable little pocketful of change.

  She balled my hand back up into a fist and pushed it right back at me.

  “Tonight you need this more than I do,” she said.

  I paced the subway station for about forty-five minutes. Chewing on my lip. Biting my nails, which I almost never did.

  Not that she was late. She wasn't. It's that I got there forty-five minutes early. Just in case she was early. I couldn't sit at Delilah's. I was too wound up.

  So I just paced. And bit.

  Then, finally, what seemed like hours later, I turned to pace back from the far end of the platform and there she was. Standing near our bench by the stairs. She had a big olive-green duffel bag lying on the platform by her feet. And in her arms was a kid. A girl. Bigger than a baby. Smaller than a child who would walk beside you all on her own.

  I took two or three fast steps in her direction, then broke into a run.

  The closer I got to her, the clearer I could see her face, and the more I saw her face, the more I saw something pleading. Something scared.

  Meanwhile my brain was stupid and slow, and not catching up to all this. I was actually thinking, Why is she holding that kid? Whose kid? Where's the person who owns that kid and is about to take her back? There was no one else anywhere near them.

  Then I remembered what she'd said. There's one more thing. That I haven't told you yet.

  Then I knew.

  I saw her face change the moment I got it. To even more scared. So she must have seen a lot of something bad in my eyes. Shock. What else can I call it? I thought it would just be the two of us. I had no idea how wrong I could be.

  By now I was close enough to say something to her. But I didn't. Because I didn't know what to say. I slowed down to a fast walk again. Stopped a couple of steps in front of her.

  I looked at Maria. Maria looked at me.

  I looked at the kid. She looked back.

  She was wearing a little dress. A purple dress. And bare feet. Her little bare legs were the tiniest, skinniest things. I couldn't imagine that even the bones of her legs all by themselves could be so skinny. She had dark hair, like her mother, but very thin. Just little wisps of soft-looking dark hair. And the biggest eyes I've ever seen on any face. I mean, the eyes just stole the whole show. They were huge. Dark, liquid brown.

  She looked like a porcelain doll. Something desperately easy to break.

  She was sucking her thumb.

  I heard Maria say, “Tony, this is Natalie.”

  Natalie looked away again. Buried her face in the junction between Maria's neck and shoulder. Thumb and all.

  “It's not you,” Maria said. “She's shy. She's like this with everybody.”

  Then, with Natalie's face hidden, it was just the two of us again. Me and Maria. The pleading look on her face go
t stronger. Sadder.

  I still had not managed to say so much as a word.

  “If you want to change your mind,” she said, “I'll understand. No hard feelings. Really. Either way.”

  I just stood mute. No words came. Not even thoughts, really. It was just a blank moment. Well, no it wasn't, really. It was a huge and very busy moment. But within that moment, I was just a blank.

  “Please don't change your mind,” she said. Her lower lip trembled when she said it. I could see it was all she could do to keep from crying.

  It shook me out of my reverie. “I haven't changed my mind. Come on. Let's go.”

  I picked up her duffel bag. And we got on the train and headed for Delilah's.

  DELILAH SWUNG THE DOOR WIDE, her face full of welcome. I expected that look to fall all the way to the carpet and hit hard when she saw the unexpected addition. But it didn't. If anything, she lit up even brighter.

  “Well, now, who have we got here?” she said, clearly in a voice intended for a child's ears. “A very lovely little lady, I would say.” Natalie buried her head, thumb and all. “You must be Maria,” Delilah said. “Come in, come in. Are you hungry?”

  We stepped inside, and life just seemed to go on from there. If Delilah was shocked, or even particularly surprised, she never let on.

  “I had dinner,” Maria said. “But thank you for asking.”

  She sat on the couch. Perched on the edge, a little nervous. She set Natalie next to her, and Natalie sucked her thumb and stared with wide eyes. Looked around the room for a minute. Then glued her eyes to Delilah.

  I said nothing.

  “What about that little girl? She eaten?”

  “No, she won't eat when anything is different. She hates change. It's really hard to get her to eat even at home. She won't talk around anybody new, either. New people make her nervous. So don't take it personally if she's afraid of you.”

  “I'm going to make something I betcha she'll eat.” And Delilah set to bustling about the kitchen. Opening cupboards and setting food on counters. Setting pans on the stove. Into and out of the refrigerator, fetching things.

  “Just promise me you won't be insulted if she won't eat it,” Maria said.

  Delilah hobbled back into the living room and stood in front of the couch, looking down at Natalie and speaking directly to her. Amazingly, Natalie did not bury her face or look away.

  “Now, how about if I make something that's just so out-of-this-world delicious that even the pickiest eater in the world couldn't hardly resist it?” She gave Natalie a wink. Natalie just stared. “Babies tend to like me,” Delilah said. “I get along good with babies.”

  Natalie took her thumb out of her mouth for the first time since I'd made her acquaintance. “I'm not a baby,” she said. Looking right up into Delilah's big smiling face.

  “Wow,” Maria said. “That's a first.”

  Delilah scooped Natalie up into her arms. I expected her to scream and cry and reach for her mother, but none of that happened. She just rode Delilah's hip into the kitchen. Sucking her thumb. “You know, I think I was mistaken. You're right. You're not a baby at all. You're a pretty darn big girl. I guess you must be, what, maybe three years old?”

  She shook her head, thumb and all.

  “She'll be three in October,” Maria said.

  “Well, that is pretty big. That's a big girl. That's sure as heck no baby. Can you forgive me for calling you a baby? Can you let that big giant mistake go by?” I think Natalie might have nodded, but I could barely see her head over Delilah's shoulder. They were in the kitchen now, back to their cooking. “Now, you get a look at what I'm making here. And you'll see you're hungrier than you think you are. Just wait till you see.”

  I sat on the edge of Delilah's big chair. I looked at Maria, sitting on the couch. And she looked at me. She smiled a weak little smile, and I smiled back. It was the first real moment we'd had since I'd lost her for all that time. The first chance we had to just be together, and say hello with our eyes. It made my stomach feel warm. Not hot, just warm. It was different, this smile. It was about a whole something else.

  “Oh, child,” I heard Delilah call from the kitchen, and I knew she meant me. “There's a phone message on my desk from your Grandma Annie. Has everything about where you need to go and what you need to do to pick up that money.”

  So that was the end of that moment.

  I retrieved the message, and read it over. “I better go do this now,” I said. “Then we can leave in the morning.”

  In my head I was thinking, Do two-year-olds ride the bus for free? Or is that a whole other bus fare? And will that whole other bus fare even fit into that leftover hundred-and-some dollars? And even if it does, what are we supposed to do for food for three or four days on the road? But I didn't ask any of that out loud. I just walked down to the Western Union office to pick up the money.

  MARIA TOOK NATALIE into the bathroom to give her a bath before bed.

  It was the first moment Delilah and I had alone together to talk.

  “Sweet girl,” Delilah said.

  “Which one?”

  “Well, I meant Maria. But both, I guess. Look, I didn't want to say this in front of her. But I called the bus company. While you was gone. It's gonna be an extra hundred and nine for the baby. It still all fits into five hundred. But it only leaves you twenty-five or thirty for food. That's not much for three people.”

  “We'll have to make do,” I said.

  “Why don't you let me give you fifty?”

  “No. No way. Thanks, but you've done so much already.”

  “I can spare it.”

  “No, I couldn't take your money, Delilah. I wouldn't feel right.”

  “How about a loan?”

  “No, please. I'd feel really guilty.”

  “Okay, how about this, then? How about I pack you some sandwiches for the first day, and then some stuff that doesn't need to stay cool? Some nuts and dried fruit and candy bars and crackers? How would that be?”

  “Well …” I still hated to take from her. When she'd given so much already. “That would be … nice.”

  “Done and done,” she said, and got up to putter in the kitchen.

  I got up and wandered in after her. Leaned on the counter and watched her work.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “It ain't hardly nothing.”

  “This is not exactly the way I pictured things.”

  “Life rarely is, honey. Like the old saying: If you want to hear God laugh, tell Her your plans. But she's here. And you're going. Isn't that the main thing?”

  “Yeah. It is. I just feel like … it's so many people to be responsible for.”

  “Honey, she been raising that child for years. She knows what to do. And she knows how to take care of herself, too. They each got their own Higher Power, and you are not It. You just put one foot in front of the other and don't worry so much.”

  “I just wish that kid wasn't so terrified of me.”

  “I would not take that personally if I was you.”

  Silence for a moment. I watched her spread peanut butter on six slices of whole wheat bread. Perfectly, and right to the edge, in about three smooth movements of the knife.

  “She's not afraid of you,” I said.

  “That's because I'm not afraid of her. Think about that.”

  Then Maria came back out and asked permission to use one of Delilah's towels on the bed, on top of a rubber sheet she'd brought, because sometimes Natalie wets the bed.

  So that was the end of my one and only fatherhood lesson. From that moment forth I was completely on my own.

  I was in Tony's friend's bathroom, giving Natalie a bath, when the question first came up.

  She doesn't talk a whole lot, Natalie. I mean, she's starting to. But she still chooses her moments carefully. When she said that thing to Tony's friend about not being a baby, I just about fell off the couch. That's about a month's worth of comments from her.

 
So I was not expecting her to ask any questions.

  I was washing her hair, with real baby shampoo. Tony's friend had real baby shampoo. Which I thought was interesting. At home I had to wash her hair extra carefully with regular shampoo, because Carl thinks it's stupid to buy two kinds. Too expensive. I just had to be really careful not to get any in her eyes. But here I was in a house with no baby, and there was real baby shampoo. I felt like I'd landed in a place where everything I needed would appear before my eyes. I wondered if it would be that way from now on. Now that I had gotten brave enough to run away.

  I was looking at Natalie's little ribs. How skinny she is. I think it's more than just normal skinny. Not that she's sick or anything. I know she's not. I took her to a doctor.

  He said there was nothing wrong with her and I said, Well, then why is she so skinny? He said she had something called “failure to thrive.” I asked him a lot about what that meant, but the most I could get was that there was no real physical cause. Like a fancy medical term for “it just is that way.” Medicine is funny. Science, too. They have to think of names for things they can't explain, otherwise they'll never get any sleep at night.

  Sometimes I feel like she's trying to disappear. Like she wants to subtract herself right out from under the world.

  Maybe she'll eat more when we get there. Maybe we both will.

  So I started telling her what it was going to be like, in this new place we were going to. Which was hard, because I didn't know much myself. So I just stuck with things I know. Like there wouldn't be any yelling and we could do what we wanted when we wanted.

  I didn't mention hitting, even to tell her it was over, because that might just upset her more. Even bringing it up like that in conversation.

  That's when she opened her mouth and asked that question I didn't expect.

  “Where's C.J.?”

  I was so surprised. It took me a minute to answer.

  “Well, he's home. With Daddy. He's going to be with Daddy. And we're going to go someplace new.”