Raising Rain

by Debbie Fuller Thomas

  “No, I got back around five, but Bobby came by and picked me up. Did you know he was down here?”

  Bebe felt her mouth go dry. “I just found out today. What did you do?”

  “We went to McDonalds. It was the only place open. He bought me a Coke and we just caught up.”

  Bebe was slightly relieved that Bobby hadn’t contacted Scott until the end of his day, which meant he probably did have business in San Diego and the purpose of his visit wasn’t to see Scott.

  “How is he doing?” she asked.

  “He’s good. He came down yesterday to apply for a job at the airport and he stayed over. I think he might have a girlfriend down here.”

  “A girlfriend?”

  “Don’t mention it to Grandma. He didn’t really say she was his girlfriend.”

  For Bobby to mention having any friends at all was a major step, and Bebe felt encouraged. But it didn’t allay all her fears about the time he’d spent alone with Scott.

  “So, did you have a nice visit?”

  “Yeah, it was good to see some family. He asked me about my SOI training. You know, he was army, so his was different.”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  There was a blip of silence, and then Scott said, “Things were pretty crazy back then.”

  Bebe didn’t know what to say. She didn’t want to have this conversation over the phone on Thanksgiving Day.

  “Things happened pretty fast.” She motioned for Neil and said to Scott, “Here, say hi to your dad.”

  She handed the phone to Neil, who turned the conversation in the direction of the Dallas game. “Don’t hang up,” she mouthed silently to him. Then, she stuck her head into Dylan’s room and told him that his brother was on the phone.

  It was good to hear Scott’s voice and to know that he’d weathered the first major holiday away from his family. He would be home for Christmas this year, and who knew what lay ahead for the next. She had to find some way to communicate her absolute support for his choice, in spite of whatever doubts her brother had planted in his head and no matter how much she worried for his future.

  Rain logged on to the sperm donor site and plugged her choices into the search window: brown hair, hazel eyes, English ethnicity. Seven donors matched the description. Donor YEJ29L was still listed. She scrolled down and clicked on his donor profile. Wavy brown hair, hazel eyes, Caucasian, born in Santa Barbara to English/German parents, medium body frame, 165 pounds, height—six feet, complexion medium. Blood type A+. He described himself as extroverted, kind, athletic, musically inclined, and he enjoyed comedies. A normal male, age thirty-two, with no medical issues in his family history. And he was listed as Open ID. That was worth more than a Stanford grad.

  Yes, he could be the one. Rain paid $40 with her Paypal to get his baby picture and a more complete profile from the website. For another $100, she could obtain his personality profile, an audio recording, and a current photo, after she signed privacy agreements and releases. They also offered genetic consultations and photo matching.

  The basic cost for the service started at $500. Then there were tank rental fees, late tank return fees, and restocking fees, just as if she were renting a movie from Blockbuster. Handling charges, vial fees, and courier services rounded out the charges.

  She wasn’t disappointed with the baby picture. It was plain to see that he’d been an adorable baby. She printed the photo along with a copy of his profile. When the time came and she had the money, she hoped YEJ29L would still be available to become a daddy.

  She wondered how many babies he had already fathered. There was a ten family maximum allowed, but there would be no babies that would match their exact biological combination. Somewhere in the world, her baby would have half-siblings and deserved to know the truth one day. Since the donor had agreed to be listed under Open ID, he was giving permission for the child to contact him when he or she turned eighteen. If he or she chose to. In the meantime, she knew of a donor sibling registry where a child could connect with other half-siblings, even if they never knew who the donor was. If she was open to it.

  Her thoughts went to Seekergirl, and Rain logged on to her blog. Seekergirl had posted the day before and there were two comments from mothers who were defending their choices to use donors. They described their children as happy and well-adjusted, living in one-parent or same-sex parent families, where the sperm donor was referred to as “Birth Other” or “Donor” but never as “Dad.“ “Dad” set the child up for disappointment and abandonment issues. Rain could agree with the reasoning in that. One mother insisted that her child accepted and embraced their family as whole without a father. A father was expendable.

  Rain knew what that was like, and she knew it was possible to do, but it had taken her whole childhood and adolescence to accept. She wasn’t at all convinced that she could—or should—be enough parent for any child, just herself, by her own making.

  Rain rubbed her thigh on the spot where she’d given herself a shot the night before. Every morning she woke to bluish bruises over her greenish bruises. A veritable Van Gogh of gonadotropin. Her side effects had been mild, as her womb cramped to produce a nugget of viable life.

  Wasn’t she proving she was committed, trying to make up for past mistakes? Wasn’t she already trying her hardest to be a good mom?

  It was more than her own mother had done.

  Neil pulled the boxes of Christmas decorations down from the rafters in the garage and Bebe helped him carry them into the kitchen. This Christmas, decorating would be an act of love, more than any other. Both of her boys would be home in a few weeks, and Bebe wanted pleasant memories to assault them the moment they stepped through the front door.

  By lunchtime, the Christmas tree was assembled. The tub that held the tree decorations was like opening a treasure box, with the special ornaments of the boys’ childhood and from Bebe’s and Neil’s early years tucked inside tissue paper flecked with sparkles. She sat back on the couch to enjoy the vision of the perfect Christmas tree while she ate her sandwich. By evening, the entire house would be ready.

  On impulse, she called to check on Jude. William answered, saying that she was resting and growing weaker by the day. She spent days in her bathrobe, never leaving their house. He sounded tired. Bebe remembered that he was working from home now, and offered to give him a break. He said it wasn’t worth the aftermath of Jude’s suspicion. She was getting a bit irrational, and accused him of being unfaithful if he even left to take the trash out to the curb. Besides, Rain was coming on Saturday and that would distract Jude for a while so he could run errands in peace. Or Rain could chaperone him at the store, if Jude felt it necessary.

  She saw the mail truck go past and walked down to the mailbox. She was happy to find a letter from Scotty among their bills and magazines. He had taken to calling them rather than writing, now that he had liberty every weekend. She plucked the letter from the mail when she got back to the house and dropped the rest onto the counter. She ran a knife through the fold in the envelope and slid the letter out—a one-page sheet of white paper with blue lines. When she opened it, a faded, yellowed news clipping fell onto the counter.

  Bebe stared at the clipping, not touching it. She knew what it was. The letter was addressed to her alone and was composed of two sentences. “Hi Mom, Bobby gave me this when he was here. He said a lot of stuff, but I’d rather hear about it from you.” He simply signed it Scott.

  Bebe unfolded the clipping as if it held the power of a black hole, able to suck her into its bottomless depth of confusion and passion and regrets. She smoothed it carefully out on the counter. There she was in her peasant shirt and her hair down past her shoulder blades, her frayed bell-bottoms dragging the ground. The sign she held read “PEACE NOW” but her countenance was anything but peaceful. The camera had caught her midstep, three feet away from a policeman in full riot gear, with wild hate twisting her young features into the mask of a shrew.

  April 24, 1971

&nb
sp; Bebe returned from the Women’s Resource Center and grabbed her sign before heading over to the administration building with the gathering throng of students. She reflected on how much had changed in the past three months since she first suspected that Jude had had something to do with the bombing of the ROTC building.

  Bobby’s letters had all but stopped. He’d never said much in them anyway, but at least she’d known he was alive as she pored over them to glean some hidden message. Now, she wasn’t so sure.

  In his last letter, he said that word had reached his unit about the reception committees awaiting returning soldiers in Oakland. The hateful jeers and taunts. Murderers. Babykillers. Being spit on. He sounded bitter, but still proud of what he was doing. She knew him well enough to know there was more he wanted to say, but couldn’t. He told her to take care of their mom, because he knew she worried. That stirred a hot spark in Bebe that fanned into flame when she visited her parents and saw how haggard and preoccupied her mother had become. Bebe had pointed out that it wasn’t healthy to watch news reports on the war, but she was shushed angrily, as though she were a stranger coming between a mother bear and her cub.

  Bebe worried about Bobby and what would happen to her parents if he didn’t come back. She grew angry and disillusioned with the promises and lies told by the government, and could no longer sit by. On this very day, thousands of people, including veterans, would be demonstrating in front of the nation’s capitol, and here she was, marching with a modern day Continental army standing up against the injustices inflicted on them without their consent.

  The crowd grew in number and pulsed with a chant as they neared the Commons in front of the administration building. The words raced through their collective veins, a great artery pumping the pure lifeblood of nascent change. A powerful cocktail of adrenaline and fear caused Bebe’s heart to race. She knew that what she was doing that day was more important than anything she had done in her life so far. This day was significant. It would stand out in her personal history as the day she took a stand for her brother and for what was right.

  The crowd surged, raising their signs and shouting a mixture of angry words and obscenities toward the faculty who looked down from the windows. She noticed Jude standing off to the side of the crowd with her fist punching toward the sky and her other arm supporting the baby sling that held Rain across her chest. Bebe hoped she would have the sense to remain alert and stay clear of the pulsing crowd.

  Soon the police arrived, along with news vans filled with reporters. Bebe raised her sign and shouted its slogan: “Peace Now! Peace Now!” The crowd edged closer, and Bebe was pushed from behind to the front of the police line. She screwed up her courage and raised her sign high, finding her words and nailing them down with the weight of her convictions. The expression of the policeman before her was hidden in a gas mask, making him look inhuman and menacing. She hesitated, and reminded herself that she was doing this for Bobby, and her parents, and herself, because no one should be pushed to these limits by their government.

  The shouting drummed in her ears, but its cadence was suddenly shattered by screams and a rush of people backing away from the building as a cloud of tear gas wafted through the crowd. Bebe had no choice but to push away from the cloud as the police line advanced toward them. The crowd evolved into an animal fearing for its life, as the students pushed and shoved each other, knocking some to the ground. The students who fell were yanked up by angry police and dragged away. Those who struggled were beaten with riot batons. When the crowd thinned enough for her to find an exit, Bebe threw down her sign and ran until she got to the corner of her quiet street with the campus out of view. She coughed until she vomited by the curb, shaking with the trauma of all she had experienced and seen.

  She walked the rest of the way to the Victorian and pushed open the door. She headed straight into the shower and stripped off her clothes into a pile where she stood under the hot water, rinsing away the smell of tear gas and trying to get her breathing to return to normal. When the water ran cold, she crawled into bed with her hair wet and smelling of strawberries, and slept the afternoon away into morning.

  The phone woke her at 5:00 a.m., and she went out to answer it in the kitchen before it woke Rain. It was her brother Rudy, and her heart stopped as she feared the worst.

  Instead, he asked, “Have you seen the Guardian today?” His words made no sense, couched in anger and disgust.

  She rubbed her eyes to clear her head. They were still crusty from tear gas residue. “Rudy? No—no. What’s wrong?”

  “Just pick one up. They’re teaching you some great stuff at that school.” He hung up.

  Bebe shook her head in confusion, but she went into her room and pulled on some jeans and a sweatshirt. She pocketed Toni’s change from the dresser and walked down to Julio’s Market. She approached the bank of newspaper machines on the sidewalk and her heart began to fail her as she saw the front page of the Guardian through the scratched plexiglass. She put the change into the slot. Slowly she opened the display and lifted out a paper. The door slammed shut and she jumped at the noise of metal on metal.

  There, on the front page, was a clear picture of Bebe with her sign held high, screaming into the face of riot police, looking for all the world like a photo she’d seen of protestors meeting the trains of returning servicemen at the Oakland Army Terminal.

  She never received another letter from Bobby for the duration of his tour in Vietnam.

  Neil found her crying on the couch in front of the Christmas tree with Scotty’s letter in her lap and the news clipping balled in her fist. He understood as soon as he saw the yellowed newsprint and wrapped his arms around her. Then he took the short letter and the clipping from her to assess the damage.

  “Not your best side, but I always thought that shirt showed off your best assets.”

  She frowned at him and he grew serious. “Scotty’s not stupid, Bebe. He recognizes that Bobby’s got some personal problems, so he wants you to be the one to explain it. It’s your chance to set the story straight, and defuse anything Bobby might have gotten wrong.” He lifted her hand to his mouth and planted a kiss on the back of it. “Just tell him the truth.”

  Bebe started a first draft of her letter to Scott that evening. She knew that it would be difficult to explain her reasoning for her actions and about the times in general. She wasn’t even sure she completely understood the times herself, even though she’d lived through them.

  She struggled with it for a long time, and put it aside. She went into her bedroom and dug in her jewelry box for the small amethyst ring. She slipped it onto her pinky as far as it would go, but it wedged above her knuckle. She held it to the light but the stone failed to sparkle, and was instead the color of deep cabernet. She removed the ring and briefly curled her fist around it. Then she put it back amid the bracelets and earrings and closed the lid.

  The next time she sat down with her notepad, the words finally came.

  Dear Scotty,

  First of all, I want you to know how very proud I am of you and your decision to serve your country in these uncertain times. You have my full and complete support, and that will never change.

  I’m not exactly sure what your uncle Bobby has told you, but when you’re home, we can sit down face-to-face and talk about it. Bobby was wounded in many ways by Vietnam, and I unintentionally inflicted one of those wounds on him myself.

  The newspaper photo is not what it seems. I always loved Bobby, and it was the war and the government I was protesting, never him or the other soldiers or their service to our country. Most of all, I protested because I loved him so much and I was afraid for him. The government lied to us, and we realized it could no longer be trusted, and things were spiraling out of control over there. There were photos of massacres in the news and stories about POWs and soldiers fragging their officers. Things were so crazy. I was always proud of him, and it hurt when he thought he no longer had my support. Someone in the family must have t
old him about the photo, or sent it to him, because when he came back, he wouldn’t even speak to me. He never gave me a chance to explain.

  He was pretty messed up when he came back, and I became the focal point of all that was wrong with America. To him, I represented all the hippies who spit on the wounded soldiers at the Oakland train depot, and the druggies who tuned out to their responsibilities, and the feminists who destroyed the American family. Maybe I even got blamed for his post-traumatic stress syndrome. Unfortunately, some of that rubbed off on your grandparents, and for a while I avoided going home at all. I don’t blame them. I understand now that they had to show their complete and utter support for Bobby in the only way they knew how. That’s what he needed at the time, and things have gotten better with your grandparents since then.

  So, I say all of this to assure you that what I did was solely because I loved him so much and I felt like I was fighting for him, not against him. He just never gave me a chance to put it that way. Maybe one day he will.

  As a mom, I have to admit that I sometimes have the same fears for you, but I’m hoping it will be different because you chose this yourself, whereas Bobby was drafted. His only other choice was to run. He was never cut out to be a soldier, so it was very brave of him to stay.

  I think times are different now. The world is changing, and hopefully we’re not quite so easily lied to. People are more aware and as a result, I believe, are forcing the government to be more accountable. At any rate, history will not repeat itself with me. Even if I disagree with the turn of events, I will always support you and your desire to serve your country.

  Love, Mom

  Bebe sealed and addressed the envelope before she had a chance to rewrite it. This was how she truly felt—like the lancing of a wound. She wiped away a few tears as she walked to the mailbox in the dark and lifted the flag for the mail carrier to see that she had a letter for her son who was a United States Marine.