Was her doctor’s appointment this morning? No, Tuesday. This was Monday. She checked the newspaper rack outside to be sure. The front page story was all about the mayor’s new clothes. She read as much as she could above the fold and thought: This baby’s got more than one family.
She took the bus downtown, watching people on the sidewalk, their faces pinched shut, bodies hunched against the cold. It was warm inside the bus. She should just keep riding. But she made herself get off at City Hall.
It was even bigger than the welfare building. There were security guards and lots of people with briefcases. She took the elevator up to the seventh floor and found the City Attorney’s office.
The receptionist said, “May I help you?”
“I want to see Douglas Peterson.”
The woman looked surprised. “He’s expecting you?”
“No.”
“I’m sorry, he has to be in court this morning.”
“That’s okay. This won’t take long.”
“May I ask what this is concerning?”
“His son.”
The woman frowned and went into another office. In a moment a man in a suit came out. His eyes were very blue, and his hair was gray. That’s how Sonny would’ve looked someday, she thought. When he saw her his eyebrows narrowed into an arrow. He waved her through the door into his office.
“Sit down.”
He sat behind his desk. She looked around. The room was bigger than her mother’s apartment.
“What about my son? He’s dead, you know.”
“Yes.” The words she’d planned to say stuck to her tongue. “I just thought you’d like to know—Sonny was my boyfriend.”
The way he looked at her, then. At her stomach, her clothes. As if she’d told the most disgusting joke.
“And I suppose you’re going to tell me that’s his baby.”
“Yeah.”
He picked up a pen, tapped his desk, put it down. “Do you know what I do for a living?”
“Sorta. Sonny said—”
“I’m a lawyer. An attorney. Ring a bell? You think you can walk in here and give me some story—”
“It’s true,” she said. “You can do a test. Check the baby’s blood or something. You can tell.”
“Then what? Maybe you could come and live in my home. Or maybe I’ll give you some money for your drugs. Is that what you were thinking?”
“No.” She didn’t know what she’d expected, didn’t know why she’d come. “It’s your grandchild. Sonny’s baby. Don’t you care?”
“Do you have any idea—no, of course you don’t. How old are you, anyway?”
“Twenty.”
He swiveled his chair around and stared out the window at the city spread below. He said, “My son was dead to me a long time ago. Long before you ever met him.”
There were pictures on his desk, of a beautiful woman, and of Sonny’s sisters, in graduation gowns and dresses. There were no pictures of Sonny.
He turned to her again, his voice as flat as his expression.
“I don’t ever want to hear from you again,” he said. “No letters, no phone calls, no visits to the office. And don’t try to call my wife or come by the house. She’s suffered enough. Do I make myself clear?”
She didn’t move. Couldn’t. She just sat in the chair.
“What did you expect?” He sounded so helpless. His empty hands were spread.
“Nothing. I don’t know.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t help you.”
He was standing, waiting. At the door she said, “You didn’t even ask me my name.”
“Does it matter?”
A security guard stood outside in the hall.
“Don’t worry,” she told him, “I can find my own way.”
The shelters were full, but the last one took her in when the man at the door saw her belly. He gave her a cot and a towel and a toothbrush. The room with the beds was big and empty; the people had to leave during the day.
“So they can look for jobs,” the guy explained. “The bathroom’s over there. Don’t touch nobody’s stuff.”
She stretched out and tried to sleep, but her eyes wouldn’t close. There was nothing to read so she stared at the ceiling, trying not to think, to disappear; like when she was a kid and her mother had whipped her and she’d lain on her bed, melting into the mattress, dissolving into darkness, her arms and legs gone, absorbed into the bed, becoming the blackness, her mind shattered, somewhere else. I’m not here.
At seven o’clock they let the people back in, the men in one room, women and kids in the other. The girl in the next bed had a baby in a stroller and a boy about four with curly brown hair. He reminded her of Bobby. The baby was asleep; the girl put her in a crib and tucked the boy into bed. He kept asking questions: “Who’s dat, Mommy? Where’s she going?” She said, “Close your eyes, honey,” and rubbed his back until he slept.
Beside the girl’s bed were two framed pictures, of herself and the kids, and of her parents, Raina guessed. The girl rummaged through the plastic sacks beneath her bed. Then she began to brush her long blond hair.
“Hi.” She smiled at Raina. “You’re new here.”
“Yeah.”
“When’s your baby due?”
“Anytime. I’m Raina.”
“Jennifer.” The girl wrinkled her nose. “Call me Jenny. Too bad people can’t choose their own names. Like when you get older, you could be who you want. What would you choose?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’d choose Ashley. That’s my baby’s name. My little boy’s Troy.”
“He’s darling,” Raina said.
“He’s a doll baby.” The girl’s hair gleamed golden. Everyone else in the room looked gray. “How’d you end up here?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Tell me about it.” Jenny rolled her eyes. She told Raina how she’d planned to move back to Indiana and had saved up the money but her friend had ripped her off. “My friend, can you believe it?” Then the landlord kicked her out and didn’t even give her notice. Which was totally illegal. And it wasn’t her fault; she’d let some friends stay with her, and they got rowdy and the neighbors told the landlord they were selling dope. Which was totally untrue. But he kicked her out anyway and kept her deposit. As soon as she could afford a lawyer, she’d sue. Then she’d met this guy, Joey, and moved in with him. He was real sweet at first and he loved her kids. But he started getting drunk and beating her up. So she got another place and fixed it up real cute; painted it and always paid her rent on time. But for no reason at all, she hadn’t done nothing wrong, the landlord threw her out.…
Raina could tell when people were lying; she stopped looking in their eyes because she felt embarrassed, like she was watching them do something sad and private that they didn’t even know about themselves.
She’s a speedfreak, she realized, wondering how she could’ve missed it. But the girl was fooling herself too.
Jenny said what she wanted more than anything in the world was to make a nice home for her family. Nothing big, nothing fancy: a little house with a yard so the kids could have their own room and play outside. Then she’d get a job and get off welfare, and when the kids went to school she’d join the PTA and maybe lead a Campfire troop. She’d been a Campfire Girl when she was little. In fact, her mom was still a leader back home.
“Here’s my mom and dad.” She showed Raina the picture.
“They look real nice.”
The girl smiled. “They are. Do you got any family?”
“No.”
“What’re you gonna do when the baby comes? You can’t stay here more than two weeks.”
“Who’d want to?”
“It’s not that bad. I was in one place where they let in all these winos. They howled all night, kept the babies awake.”
Raina told her she was going to get an apartment, as soon as her AFDC came through. “Can’t you get one too?”
“Yeah, I know.”
All around them, people were getting ready for bed, herding kids back and forth from the showers and the bathroom.
“Boy,” Jenny said. “I could use a smoke. Too bad you can’t smoke here. It’s just as well. Whenever I do, Troy says, ‘Mommy, don’t.’ It’s cute how he says it, kind of wagging his finger.”
“What time do the lights go off?”
“They don’t.” Jenny shrugged. “That’s the way it is.”
Raina knew what the girl was going to say next, before she even knew it herself.
“Maybe we could get a place together,” Jenny said. “I get food stamps. That helps. You’ll get food stamps too. You could watch the kids, and I could get a job. I used to be a waitress. Made real good tips; one night I made sixty bucks! We could help each other out, take good care of our kids. They could kinda be like cousins or something.”
“Maybe,” Raina said. It wasn’t a bad idea. You couldn’t live on welfare, just starve. Jenny didn’t seem lazy or crazy or mean. She loved her kids. Their clothes and faces were clean. Maybe she would love Raina’s baby too. They could have Christmases together, with Santa Claus and stockings, and presents for the kids piled under the tree. And Thanksgiving dinners, around a big crowded table, with plenty to be thankful for, and eat; their kids grown up and happily married, with children of their own playing at her feet. She and Jenny would smile across the table and say, “And to think it all started in a homeless shelter!”
Was it so much to ask? Was it such a big dream?
“All right,” she finally said.
“Well, all right! That’s great!” Jenny laughed and they shook hands. “One thing for sure, though: I don’t want no druggies around. The last place we lived, I had to keep Troy inside. There were needles all over; in the halls, in the park. I don’t want my babies around that stuff.”
“Me neither.”
“You’ll see.” Jenny smiled. “It’ll work out good.”
At ten o’clock, the lights dimmed. Jenny turned on her side. Raina thought she was asleep, but then she said, “We got to find a place near good schools.”
“Right.”
“Troy’s supposed to start kindergarten next fall. But I’m not gonna send him unless he’s ready. Some people put their kids in school too soon. That’s not good.”
“No. Then they have to struggle to keep up.”
“Exactly.”
Jenny’s breathing got soft and slow.
It felt odd to lie among so many strangers. What if someone went nuts and tried to hurt her? But even nuts need rest. The baby stood on its head. She rubbed her belly and whispered, “Go to sleep, little acrobat baby.”
Night settled upon the rows of beds. A man coughed on the other side of the wall behind her head. A few women cried, but the kids were pretty quiet. Soon she was alone in a room full of dreams.
Chapter Twenty-One
When she got up one morning something warm ran down her legs and a wave of pain washed from her head to her feet.
Jenny said, “Your water’s broke! The baby’s coming.”
The puddle was pink. Jenny said, “There’s blood.”
Was that supposed to happen? She couldn’t speak. Pain had always been outside, trying to break through her skin, but this was twisting deep inside her belly, her brain.
Jenny disappeared down the row of beds, then crouched beside her, rubbing her neck.
“Don’t worry, honey. An ambulance is coming.”
People crowded around, but she didn’t care. She was alone in a place where there was only pain like she had never known.
“Try to relax. Take long, deep breaths.”
Jenny sounded far away. A baby cried somewhere. Raina curled into a ball around a jagged stone of tearing, pounding, drowning fear.
Her brother’s girlfriend had said it was like cramps, kind of achy and slow, then the baby popped out. I’m made to have babies, she’d added proudly. Yeah, like a cow, Raina’s mother had said.
Jenny smoothed back Raina’s hair. “Don’t be scared, honey. The baby’s in a hurry, that’s all that’s happening.” A kid’s voice said, “What’s wrong with the lady?” Jenny turned away and shouted, “Where’s the ambulance?”
Two men came with a gurney. They strapped her on it and wheeled her down the aisle, Jenny’s face beside her. “Don’t worry,” she was saying. “Everything’ll be fine. We’ll get a place together soon as you get out.”
Wheels clattered on the sidewalk. She was rolled inside a van, a man in a white suit busy beside her. A siren blared, or maybe she was screaming. The man attached something to her belly, her arms.
Then long white halls, doors exploding open, dark tunnels with lights flashing overhead, an elevator ride, then a small bright room, masked faces peering at her, fingers peeling off her clothes.
She had never felt so cold. She could not stop trembling. She clamped her teeth together, but the words squeezed out. “I can’t do this! I gotta get out of here!”
“You should’ve thought of that sooner,” a man’s voice said.
They lifted up her legs, plunged something deep inside her. She fought them. The man said, “You’ve got to lie still!”
“Can’t we give her something, Bill?”
“It’s too late.”
Was she dying? A woman’s voice in her ear: “Can you pant, sweetie? Pant.”
She’d forgotten what that word meant. Something gripped her arms.
“Prolonged deceleration.”
“Get her over on her side.”
“You’ve got to turn over, sweetie.”
“I can’t! It hurts!” Pain clawed at every secret place. Hands lifted her. She screamed. She faced a TV set. A green line stitched across the dark screen, bleeping.
“Down to eighty … seventy.”
Something covered her nose. Bobby held out his arms to her, he looked so sleepy. He was closing his eyes.
“Wake up, Bobby! No!”
“It’s oxygen, Raina.” The nurse’s voice. “We’re trying to help you, but you’ve got to help too.”
“Get her arm, will you—damn it!”
She’d knocked off the doctor’s glasses. She tried to say, I didn’t mean to.
“Nurse, do you mind? Are we on the same team here?”
“Sorry, doctor.” The woman’s urgent whisper in her ear again. “I know it’s hard, Raina, but try to focus on your breathing.”
She’d forgotten how to breathe.
“Will you hold her still?”
“I’ll take over here, Bill.” Another man’s voice.
“Where the hell have you been?”
“In the john, do you mind?”
The doctors were talking, voices rising and falling like waves of roaring white-tipped pain that smashed her on an airless shore, then dragged her back to crash again.
The new doctor bent down and looked in her face. His mouth and nose were masked, but his eyes were kind. “I’m Dr. Green, Raina.”
“Where’s Dr. Ramirez?”
“In surgery this morning. I’m taking her calls.”
“She’s all yours.” The angry doctor left the room.
Dr. Green snapped on some gloves. “Raina, you’ll have to forgive Dr. Miller. He hasn’t been the same since his leeches died. He doesn’t think little girls should have babies. Which is rather beside the point at this time.”
The nurse laughed and said, “You’re awful.”
The doctor ducked behind the tent draped over her legs.
“I’m going to examin
e you, Raina. Try to relax.”
“I can’t! It hurts!”
“I’m not surprised. I can see the baby’s suitcase.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m just joking, trying to put you at ease. Is it working?”
“No.” But she was glad that he was there.
“I studied to be a comedian, but my grades weren’t too good, so I transferred to medical school. Relax your knees, please. You’re breaking my wrist. How long have you been a professional wrestler?”
“All my life,” she moaned.
“You’re doing good. Try to breathe through your nose. You’re hyperventilating.”
“What’s that?”
“Freaking out.” Then his hand was inside her, turning the whole world around.
“I’m gonna be sick!”
“You’re doing just fine.”
“It hurts so bad. Can’t you give me something?”
“The baby’s coming too soon. We don’t want to dope it up.”
“How soon?”
“An hour. Maybe less.”
“You call that soon?”
The way she said it made them laugh. Her legs had stopped shaking, and there were breaks in the pain when she could catch her breath, then the pain would roll in again and overwhelm her. The nurse patted her arm and said, “You’re doing great.”
“I can’t, I can’t—”
It was a song she was singing. The others were speaking a foreign language: presentation, dilation, scalpel, appease—
“I’m going to do an episiotomy, Raina.”
“What’s that?” she gasped.
“Widen the opening so the baby can come out.”
“You mean cut me?”
“There’s so much pressure there, you won’t even feel it.”
“I can’t, I can’t—” She was on the ceiling, looking down at the girl lying on the bed, thinking: What’s she gonna do? She can’t escape. Then the pain pulled her down, wrapped its red arms around her, sinking its teeth into her bones, her brain.
She was blind, she was dying. Her mind tried to hide, to find someplace safe where there was no more pain. But it got there first, opening every door for her. She could only go where the pain was taking her.
The White Horse Page 9
