Pretty Baby

by Mary Kubica

  Joseph always had a new dress for me as opposed to the small, musty duds he dropped off in my room in a large white garbage bag, like he’d picked it up at the end of someone’s drive on garbage day. Once he even brought me a pair of shoes, patent leather which were far too big, but he told me to put them on nonetheless so Ms. Adler could see.

  The caseworker brought letters from Paul and Lily Zeeger. She said she could give the Zeegers my new address, but after Joseph tore the photos of Momma into shreds, I said no thanks, that was all right, she could just bring the letters along when she came. Lily Zeeger wrote beautiful letters about my baby sister, Rose (Lily) with the name Lily always in parenthesis just in case I didn’t know who it was she was talking about. She said that Rose (Lily) was growing bigger and bigger every day, and that from the photos she’s seen, Rose (Lily) was looking more and more like our Momma, who was a stunning, sensational, dazzling woman (as if the many compliments might negate the fact that she’s dead). She said that Rose (Lily) was learning her ABCs, and how to count to ten, and that she could sing as well as the Yellow Warbler which, according to Big Lily, surrounded their Colorado home, and there were photos attached, of a charming little A-frame home snuggled right in the middle of the woods, with mountains in the background and a tiny dog, like a cocker spaniel or something, running around the legs of my Lily. And there she is, Little Lily, with the ringlets of black hair, black like Momma’s, that had grown longer and were clipped back in ladybug barrettes, and she was wearing a bright yellow sundress with ruffles and a bow as big as her head. And she was smiling. Paul Zeeger stood on a balcony in a shirt and striped tie, looking down at Little Lily, and I imagined Big Lily took the picture ’cause she was nowhere to be seen. Even the dog looked happy. The letter said how Rose (Lily) was taking a ballet class and loved to practice her pirouettes and relevés for Paul and Lily, and how she absolutely adored her cerise leotard and tutu, and that in the fall Rose (Lily) would begin preschool at the Montessori school in town.

  “What’s a Montessori school?” I asked Ms. Amber Adler and she looked at me and smiled and said, “It’s a good thing,” while patting my hand.

  I asked her why Paul and Lily Zeeger didn’t have any kids of their own. Why’d they need my Lily? And she said sometimes things just worked out that way. One or the other of them couldn’t have kids. It just wasn’t meant to be. And I thought of Joseph saying that if God wanted Miriam to be well, he’d make her well, and I thought that if God wanted Paul and Lily to have kids, he would have given them kids. Kids of their own. Not my Lily. Lily was mine.

  I thought a lot about that A-frame house where Lily now lived. I thought about the tall, tall trees and the mountains and the dog. I thought how I’d like to go there, to that house in the woods, and see my Lily again. I wondered if I ever could.

  Big Lily said that I could write a letter back to Rose (Lily) if I wanted to and she’d read it to her. So I did. I told her about the tulips outside our home (of which there were none) and what I was learning in school (there was no school). The only reading that went on in our home was from the Bible; the only writing was when Joseph made me copy word for word from Deuteronomy or Leviticus. The school reports that Joseph handed over to the caseworker—those which showed my poor grades in school—were forged, photocopies of Matthew’s or Isaac’s report cards that had been altered with my name, with failing grades in math and science, with teacher comments that detailed my disregard for authority figures, my misbehavior.

  “Don’t you like school?” the caseworker would ask.

  “I like it just fine,” I’d say.

  “What’s your favorite subject?” she wanted to know. I didn’t know much about subjects. So I said math. “But, Claire, it says here that you are failing your math class,” and I would shrug and say that it was hard and she’d remind me, as she often did, how lucky I was to have Joseph and Miriam in my life. How other foster families would not be so flexible and understanding. “You need to try harder,” she would say to me, and to Joseph and Miriam, she’d suggest a tutor.

  In my letters, I told Little Lily about living in the big city—Omaha—and I described the buildings; though I’d never once seen the buildings, I had an inkling they were there. This Omaha place was much different than Ogallala. I could tell that from the smells, the sounds, the kids on the other side of the window. Momma used to talk about Omaha when we were kids. About the people and buildings, museums and zoos. In my letters I told Lily about my brothers (who I barely knew). I told her about the friends I’d made in school (there were no friends) and how my teachers were an absolute delight (there were no teachers).

  In Big Lily’s responses, she told me of Rose’s (Lily’s) fourth birthday present: a new bike, mint green and pink, with training wheels and tassels, a white wicker basket and a banana seat. There were pictures. Little Lily in a helmet on the bike with Paul Zeeger pushing from behind. The little cocker spaniel running after them. She told me of an upcoming vacation to California to see the beach. She said that this would be Rose’s (Lily’s) first time ever seeing the ocean and wondered: had I seen the ocean before? They’d picked out a new swimsuit and cover-up for the occasion. The next time the caseworker arrived, there were drawings from Lily herself, of the ocean and fish and blobs in the sand that may or may not have been seashells. And a bright yellow sun with rays that swept off the page. On the back Big Lily had written in her perfect penmanship: Rose (Lily), 4 years old.

  They weren’t bad people.

  In time I understood that.

  But knowing it in my mind and in my heart were two very different things.

  HEIDI

  In the morning, Zoe—reluctantly—offers up another outfit for Willow to wear. This time black leggings that are far too short for Zoe’s own legs—and much shorter on Willow’s—and a sweatshirt with paint splatters on the front, an art smock from the previous school year.

  “Zoe, please,” I say, “this one is a mess.”

  “Fine,” she gripes, yanking an extra school cardigan from its hanger and thrusting it into Willow’s hands, “here.”

  The girls eat breakfast—heaping bowls of Frosted Flakes—and then Zoe disappears to bathe and dress. Ruby, on my lap, is sound asleep, finally, having been up and agitated since before 5:00 a.m., awoken in the early hours of dawn by a fever. Because unhappy babies need to be rocked when they’re upset—and we, of course, had no rocking chair—I pressed her to my chest and moved back and forth, back and forth in a seesaw motion until she finally began to settle, until the muscles in my back began to burn. But I didn’t mind. There was something gratifying about it, something so satisfying when Ruby finally began to grow tired and slowly closed her eyes.

  It was then that I lowered my body onto the leather armchair, completely immersed in the way Ruby’s eyelids fluttered when asleep, the way her tiny fingers folded over my thumb, refusing to let go. Completely immersed in the tiny toes of her left foot where she’d wiggled the lacy sock right off and onto the hardwood floor. Completely immersed in the filaments of hair that emerged from her head, in the softness of her scalp, the blanch skin.

  So immersed, in fact, that I lost track of time completely, forgot about the need to walk Zoe to school, the need to go to work.

  Before I know it, Zoe stands, hovering before the front door, her backpack thrown over a shoulder. She has her coat on, partway zipped, and an umbrella dangling by its cord from her wrist. “You ready to go?” she asks and I peer down at my own attire: at the robe and a pair of sheepskin slippers still warming my feet.

  “Mom,” Zoe snaps this time, having just discovered that I’m still in my pajamas. I make no effort to move, fearful of waking Ruby from her nap. I feel my mouth open, a shh emerging so that Zoe’s voice will not rouse the baby from sleep.

  Zoe, in a huff, frowns, her eyes bouncing between a clock on the wall and me, her body antsy. Her posture sags, her shoulders slump forward, the small of her back arched. Her backpack falls from her shoulder and
into the crook of an elbow before she thrusts it back up and sighs.

  I whisper, “I’m not going to work,” just like that. “You’ll have to walk yourself to school,” I say, expecting her to leap up and down with joy, for this is the one thing she’s been begging for years to do. To walk herself to school, alone, as her best friend Taylor is allowed to do.

  But instead of joy, her mouth drops open and she says to me with disdain, “What do you mean you’re not going to work? You always go to work,” a fact altogether true, for the times that I’ve called in sick for work—even when a young Zoe was home sick with the flu—were few and far between. Often times it was Chris I begged to stay home from work, or when he was unable, his parents beckoned from their west suburban home, or, in moments of desperation, Graham.

  But the weight of Ruby, sound asleep on my lap, reminds me that I cannot leave.

  My finger, nestled in the flabby clutches of her hand, assures me I cannot go.

  “I have plenty of vacation time accrued,” I say in a hushed tone, and then remind Zoe about the paper lunch sack awaiting her on the kitchen counter with ants on a log inside, a recent fad now that she’s watching her weight. I wonder if I watched my weight when I was twelve, doubtful, imagining that that, too, came later, sixteen or seventeen perhaps. She gropes for the bag, the paper crinkling loudly in the palm of her hand. Ruby stirs on my lap and opens her eyes ever so slightly, before stretching her arms high above her head and falling back to sleep.

  “Have a good day,” I whisper to Zoe before she leaves, and she responds with a noncommittal, “Whatever,” before disappearing into the hall, leaving the door wide-open so that I have to ask Willow to close it please.

  I’m hopeful that Zoe will remember to keep Willow a secret, that she will remember that she’s not to mention our guest to her classmates at school, to her teachers. Harboring a runaway for more than 48 hours is deemed a crime, a Class A misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in prison, years of probation, a hefty fine.

  But knowing this and believing this are two different things. I find it hard to believe that I could ever be caught, or that the police would enforce such a penalty when what I am doing is helping this girl. I wonder where the police were when someone thwacked Willow so hard that the ochre bruise formed on her head, or when some lecherous man laid himself atop her body. Was she alone when Ruby was born, tucked down some dark alley at night, beneath rusting fire escapes and dripping air conditioner units, beside rat infested Dumpsters, leaned up against some brick wall covered with graffiti, the sounds of the city invalidating the sounds of her screams.

  There’s an image I carry in my mind, that image of Willow, down a darkened alley, giving birth to a baby. As I sit on the leather armchair with Ruby sound asleep in my lap—Willow perched by the window in silence, watching pedestrians come and go—I count back four months in my head: March, February, January, December. Ruby would have been born sometime in December. Add to my image: dirty, slushy snow; the biting cold, freezing the blood as it oozed from the birthing canal.

  In my image, Willow is replaced by Zoe: a daughter, someone’s daughter.

  Where is her mother?

  Why wasn’t her mother there to protect her from this ghastly fate?

  I find myself staring at Willow, at the hair that hangs in her face, covering eyes that are slowly catching up on sleep, skin that is beginning to soften from the cold, spring air. She isn’t a tall girl, per se, about six inches shorter than me, so that I can see the top of her head, the place where tawny roots grow in from her scalp, uninterrupted by the imitation red.

  I reach out and, without thinking, lay my fingers briefly on her infected earring holes, the skin red and crusty, the lobe beginning to bulge. She withdraws quickly from my touch, blanching as if I’d slapped her with the back of a hand.

  “I’m so sorry,” I gasp, withdrawing my hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t...” My voice wanders off. I gather myself, and try again with, “We should take a look at that. A little Neosporin might do the trick,” knowing that between Ruby’s ever-present fever and this, we may need to see a doctor before long.

  After some time Willow asks, apprehensively, to borrow my copy of Anne of Green Gables, and I, of course, say yes, watching as she retires to Chris’s office to read. I watch as she carries the worn copy pressed close to her heart, and I wonder what significance the novel holds for her, its narrative committed to her memory like biblical text. I could ask her, I could ask Willow about the book, but I imagine her curling into a ball like an armadillo—or a woodlouse—at my interrogation, and hiding inside her armor shell.

  I slip from the leather armchair and settle down at the kitchen table with my laptop and a mug of coffee, Ruby swaddled in a blanket and set on my lap. I pull up a search engine and type into the box: child abuse.

  I come to learn that over a thousand children die each year in our country due to abuse or neglect on the part of their caregivers. Over three million child abuse reports are made each year, by teachers, local authorities, friends of the family, neighbors or the ubiquitous anonymous calls that child services receives. Child abuse can result in physical injuries: bruises and bone fractures, the need for sutures, damage to the spinal cord, the brain, the neck, second-and third-degree burns, and so on and so forth. Emotionally, the abuse is damaging, as well, leading to depression in even the youngest of victims, withdrawal, antisocial behavior, eating disorders, attempts at suicide, illicit sexual activities. And—as my eyes drift over the words, my mind forms an image of Willow, pregnant with a fetal Ruby growing inside her womb—teenage pregnancy. Victims of abuse are more likely to use alcohol and drugs, to participate in criminal activity, to fare poorer in school than the comparable child who has not been abused.

  Who is the father of that child? I wonder as I get a second cup of coffee, dribbling creamer along the countertop as I do.

  A lover? A boyfriend? A sadistic school teacher, one who took advantage of his position of power to seduce a student or maybe tempt her with an easygoing smile and an approachable manner? Or perhaps her own father? A neighbor? A sibling?

  And then I remember: Matthew. Her brother Matthew. Who reads Anne of Green Gables.

  Is Matthew the father of that child?

  The sound of Willow’s feet pitches me across the room, and I slam the laptop shut so she doesn’t see the words scattered at random across the screen: assault and molest and sexual abuse. I stand, breathing hard, with hands on hips in an overdone impression of relaxation, as she asks permission to turn on the TV and I say, yes, of course, so long as she keeps the volume low. I watch as she settles on the leather chair and turns the TV to Sesame Street, the kind of kids’ show Zoe hasn’t watched since she was four or five. I find it odd, odd indeed; I’m not quite sure what to make of it.

  But then, somehow or other, my concern for Willow starts to wane and I find my attention focusing on Ruby instead, the online child-abuse investigation morphing into a shopping expedition for rocking chairs, thinking less about that ochre bruise atop Willow’s head and more about a baby’s need to rock, about nestling before the big bay window with Ruby in my arms and watching for hours as raindrops fall from the sky.

  CHRIS

  One night turns into two.

  Then two nights turn into three.

  I’m not quite sure how it happens. I come home from work, ready and motivated to tell Heidi it is time for her to leave. I make a plan in my head, how I will give the girl fifty dollars—no a hundred bucks—enough for her to make due for a while.

  I’ll map out the homeless shelters within the city limits, so Heidi can see I’m trying.

  I’ll get her there myself. In a cab. Make sure she gets inside the shelter. Make sure they accept babies.

  I go through the words in my head, what I will say to Heidi. I jot down a numbered list in my notes on the way home from work, the writing like chicken scratches from the motion of the train. As I walk from the Fullerton Station, I polish the words in
my head. We’ll be generous, I’ll say. Give her plenty. Make sure she has everything she needs.

  I’ll gaze into Heidi’s bewitching brown eyes and make her understand that this is the way it has to be. I’ll be tactful and delicate, I’ll use Zoe as justification.

  Zoe might think you care more about Willow’s needs than you do her own.

  Then she’ll see. If I pit Zoe against Willow, Heidi will see.

  But as they say, the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray.

  I’m not a block from home when thunder explodes in an otherwise quiet night, when the rain—cold, thick rain—begins to drop from the sky. A band of clouds rolls in across the city like a cinderblock wall. I break into a jog, aware that the temperature has begun to plunge, as well, a fifty-degree day morphing into a thirty-degree night.

  What kind of monster would I be if I sent this girl off into a monsoon? That’s what Heidi would say, I think, as I climb the steps to our home, shaking the rainwater off my coat and hair.

  I come in to find the girl on the couch, the evil black cat on her lap. Heidi and Zoe are at the kitchen table, discussing probability. Probability of simple events. Probability of overlapping events.

  What is the probability of another rainy night during the wettest April on record?

  Heidi has not gone to work for two days now in a row. Two days. It was me who, days ago, forbid her from leaving that girl alone in our home as my eyes roved from personal files to jewelry boxes to various electronics, pointing out all the things she was liable to steal. Heidi had eyed the forty-inch TV perched on the wall, imagined the girl walking down Fullerton with that in her hands, and asked, “Really, Chris?” pointing out what a pessimist I could be.

  And I had said, “Don’t be so naive.”