Two thoughts simultaneously struck me. The first was that her seat belt couldn’t be fastened tightly enough if she was able to kneel in it. The second was that there was no turning back now. That bank of light approaching like a luminescent storm front was not merely a pretty sight to get excited about as we descended toward Frankfurt. It was a reality so stark and final that it tore a gaping hole in the armor of my bravado. Germany was no longer a distant destination or a temporary lapse in sanity. As streetlights blinked off far below and the outline of a modern city emerged out of the early-morning gray, Germany became as real as the seat belt cutting me in half as I leaned toward the window and gazed at the beginning of my future.
There was a small town called Kandern nestled somewhere in those hills. And in that town was the American school for missionaries’ kids where I was going to teach. The apartment where Shayla and I would live. The new life I would build—we would build together. I swallowed around the boulder and took a calming breath. There was nothing predictable about what waited for us in Kandern, and though I’d done as much Internet research as I could in recent days, I knew I was still sorely unprepared.
“Her seat belt should be tighter.” The attendant’s hand on my shoulder was a welcome distraction.
“Yes. Of course.” I smiled, trying to tighten Shayla’s seat belt while she strained away from me. “Shay? You’ve got to sit down, honey. We need to get your belt tighter.”
“Look!” she said again, this time mesmerized by the outline of mountains in the distance.
“Can you sit down, Shayla?”
“No,” she declared, ignoring my futile attempts to peacefully get her to sit. I hadn’t had much experience with four-year-olds, but my time with Shayla had taught me that their attention span was not only limited—it was also selective. “Look! Look!”
I didn’t take the time to follow her pointing finger. Grasping her arm and turning her toward me, I marveled at her ability to swivel her body without removing her nose from the streaked surface of the airplane’s window. “Shayla, sit down!” I tugged a little harder and her nose came unglued from the double-paned glass.
“But I want to look!” She pushed the seat belt lower on her hips so she could rise toward the window again.
“Not right now.”
“I want to see!”
“We’re going to be landing soon and then you can look and look and look, but you’ve got to keep your seat belt tight until we’re on the ground.”
“But why?”
“Because,” I answered firmly. Six months of parenthood had rid me of my original distaste for the pat answer. As much as I’d despised it when my parents had used it on me, I realized now that the only reasonable response to some questions was simply “Because.” Why did she have to go to bed? Because. Why couldn’t she have another piece of cake? Because. Why did the other kids get to stay at home while she had to go to Djoh-many? Because. Why did I want to be a missionary and not a normal person anymore? Because. “Because” was my new best friend. It was not, however, Shayla’s. I fastened her seat belt as tightly as possible, unfazed by the squirming bundle of “I don’t want to” fighting the process, then I pointed out the window with relief and said, “See, Shay? You can still see the mountains.” And there they were, right outside the window. By any other standards, they were merely large hills. But having lived in the plains of Illinois all our combined lives, they might as well have been the Swiss Alps to Shayla and me.
SEVEN MONTHS EARLIER
“What are you drawing, Shayla?” Dana asked. She overflowed a child-size chair next to the small desk where Shayla bent over a brownish piece of paper, her brow furrowed in concentration. She hadn’t looked up when we entered. She hadn’t stopped drawing.
“Mountains,” she now said, quite unnecessarily. On her paper, the dark outline of mountain ridges split the space between earth and sky. She’d started to fill in the lines with greens and browns and blues, sometimes coloring just outside the edges of the shapes in a rush of creative zeal.
“Have you ever seen a mountain?” Dana asked gently, her face just inches from Shayla’s. I stood at a safe distance, feeling tall in this miniature space where furniture seemed shrunken and pictures hung just above waist level on the walls. It was a room designed to make children feel safe. It had an entirely different effect on discombobulated grown-ups like me, whose inner world was suddenly unrecognizably askew.
I’d hesitated for a long time before entering Dream Acres, a small, family-owned farm that doubled as a foster home for children needing temporary housing. I’d lingered on the front steps, ignoring Dana’s prompting. This was a pivotal and irrevocable moment in my life. Whatever happened after I passed through the wide, welcoming front doors would be largely out of my control. And control was a critical issue for me. It always had been. I’d discarded my violin when it had proved too hard to master. I’d given up on being a ballerina when teachers had started planning my career. And I’d declared myself a dedicated single when romantic relationships, most of them imagined, had exhausted my limited supply of optimism.
So, facing a moment of overwhelmingly human proportions in which any form of control and predictability was impossible, I’d stood on the steps before my encounter with Shayla and briefly but frantically considered fleeing from the unmanageable.
“I saw them in Heidi,” Shayla answered Dana’s question, drawing me back to the present with a voice fluffy and soft as rabbit’s fur. “When she’s living with her grandpa in the wood house on the mountain.”
Dana looked up at me as if inviting me to join in their fledgling conversation. I shook my head and took a small step back, inexplicably unbalanced by the too-low paintings on the walls and the too-small artist entering my too-full life.
Dana was a natural. She coaxed answer after answer from Shayla, affirming her talent and revealing her heart.
“You’re very good at drawing, Shayla.”
Her button nose went up and down as she nodded.
“Would you like to see real mountains someday?”
“Yes.” She sounded like she’d been taught never to say yeah.
“And what mountains would you like to see?”
“Volcanoes.”
“Volcanoes!”
“Uh-huh.”
“Why do you want to see volcanoes?”
“Because they’re big and have the fi-yoh stuff that comes out of them.”
“The fire stuff? Like lava?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Is that a volcano you’re drawing now?”
“No.” The word stupid was implied in Shayla’s tone of voice. “I told you. It’s Heidi’s mountain.”
“Oh,” Dana said with a smile. “I should have remembered that.”
“My dad taught me how.”
“He taught you how to draw mountains?”
The honey-blonde curls, like a wheat field in the wind, bobbed as Shayla nodded. “Uh-huh.” She looked at Dana for the first time, her blue crayon poised above the sky. “He’s not here anymore.”
Dana nodded and smiled gently. “Do you miss him?”
Shayla went back to her coloring with renewed focus. She nodded and took in a quick, clenched breath. “He’s not coming back.”
I looked around the room for an escape route and wished Shayla’s mountain were real. What I wouldn’t have given to lose myself in the dense foliage of the trees covering its flanks. But in this warm sitting room where the sun and surfaces danced golden rays over drawings and toys and brightly colored books, the only plausible direction to go seemed downward. So, feeling the bottom drop out of my life as my stomach churned and my throat clenched, I took three tentative steps to Dana’s side and sank onto the carpet next to the child who would unravel life as I knew it.
“This is a friend of mine. Her name is Shelby.”
Shayla looked suspiciously at Dana. “I had a dog called Shelby. My dad gave her to me.”
I felt the oxygen whoosh out
of the room.
“Really?” Dana asked.
“Did you alweady know?” Shayla didn’t like the coincidence. She picked up a pink crayon and started on a cloud.
“I promise I didn’t.”
“She wan away.”
“Shelby?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m sorry, Shayla. That must have been sad for you.”
“Uh-huh.” Another cloud took shape in Shayla’s sky.
I cleared my throat and tried to sound natural. “Hi, Shayla. How are you?” Given the gravel-meets-phlegm texture of my voice, I half expected the beautiful child to grab her mountain and run.
Instead, she turned two of the largest blue eyes I’d ever seen on me and pursed her mouth in disapproval. “That’s a wee-ohd voice,” she said.
Dana covered a smile while I grasped at conversational straws.
“It’s not . . .” I cleared my throat, attempted a sound, then loudly cleared my throat again. “It’s not usually this bad. My voice, I mean.”
The blue gaze was still focused on me, though her eyes scanned my face without ever truly making contact with mine. She turned back to the stack of crayons next to her drawing and picked just the right shade of yellow for the sun.
“You don’t look like my dog,” she said seriously.
“Oh—well. That’s good, I guess. Isn’t it?”
“Uh-huh.”
Dana pushed up from her chair and arched her back. “I’m going to get some coffee, Shayla. Is it okay if I leave you here with Shelby for a few minutes?”
Absolute panic burned up my neck. “But . . .”
Shayla nodded, and Dana patted my shoulder as she walked rather stiffly toward the other end of the room. “You’ll be fine,” she said softly, closing the door behind her.
If “fine” meant dizziness, nausea, and mental paralysis, I was indeed going to be fine. I took a calming breath and instructed my heart to stop its nonsense. I think it laughed at me. Seriously. But I might have been hallucinating from all the “fine” going on, so I couldn’t be sure.
“Are you going to ask me a question?” Shayla asked.
I was stunned into silence.
“People always ask me questions,” she continued, extending yellow rays from the sun’s center. “Like my favowite color and my middle name and silly stuff like that.”
I attempted a casual laugh. “Those are rather stupid questions, aren’t they,” I said, trying desperately to come up with questions that involved neither colors nor middle names.
This time her gaze did meet mine, and so directly that I thought I heard an audible thunk as my future settled into place. That was all it took. One direct gaze from strangely familiar eyes and a reproachful “You shouldn’t say stupid. It’s naughty.”
As someone who had spent most of my adult life proclaiming that having children was a stupid idea, I realized I had a lot to learn.
2
IT HAD TAKEN two flight attendants and a wheelchair to get Bonnie off the plane. Whatever she had taken to help her sleep had all but knocked her unconscious. I’d stayed on board until a doctor had pronounced her alive (which the raucous snores, to my unmedical mind, had already confirmed), then helped Shayla into her pink backpack and pulled my own carry-on toward the exit.
Although I’d made a halfhearted pass at listening to language CDs in the weeks preceding my departure for Germany, the guttural sounds that assaulted my ears as soon as Shayla and I disembarked came as a nearly physical blow. The plane ride had convinced me that I was leaving the US, Bonnie had convinced me that I was in for some surprises, the landscape we had seen through the window had convinced me that this definitely wasn’t Kansas anymore, but it was the language and the impatient glares of airport personnel that truly brought reality crashing home. I was in Germany. Or Djoh-many. My four-year-old pseudo-daughter of six months and I had arrived in a foreign land where the language was as mysterious as everything else, including where I would live, what I would do, and how we would both survive the changes.
After a cursory glance at our passports and the luggage stacked on my cart, a portly customs agent motioned us toward electric doors that swooshed open and ushered us almost directly into the arms of a woman I had never seen before.
“Shelby, Shelby, Shelby,” she said, wrapping me in a bear hug that disconnected Shayla’s hand from mine. I didn’t want to seem rude, but Shayla’s safety at that moment was more urgent than returning the hug, so I pushed away and quickly scanned the space around me for Shayla’s blonde head.
I had been amazed, in the weeks following her arrival in my life, at how instantly and dramatically my view of the world had changed. I’d never been responsible for someone else’s safety before, and a guardian’s heart, until then buried under layers of determined singleness, had surged to the surface the moment Shayla had come into my care. It was that ferocious protectiveness that gripped my chest in panic as I looked around the arrival hall and failed to see Shayla’s pink backpack in the crowd. With fear fueled by jet lag, I gripped the arm of the woman who had been hugging me moments before and stuttered, “Where’s . . . where’s Shayla?”
“Whatsa mattoh, Shelby?” came Shayla’s sunny voice, a little rough around the edges from lack of sleep.
She was right next to me, her head level with mine, her supple body completely at ease in a stranger’s arms.
“I’m Gus Johnson,” he said amiably, extending his hand and meeting my startled gaze with a Santa Claus chuckle. “And this woman who forgot to introduce herself before she grabbed you is my lovely wife, Bev.”
I looked from Gus to Bev, at a loss for words. “Oh . . .” I attempted a smile and expelled a tight breath. “Hi.”
“I’m so sorry, Shelby,” Bev said, her arm coming around my shoulders in a maternal hold. “I was just so happy to see you that I forgot all my manners.” Her Southern accent had a soothing quality that threatened to unleash unexpected tears. “And this,” she continued, reaching out to flick Shayla’s nose, “must be beautiful Shayla.”
“It is,” I said, snapping my brain into gear. “And it’s wonderful to meet you after all this time. Thank you so much for driving so far to pick us up.”
“No trouble at all,” Bev said. “We love a good excuse to get out of town now and then.”
Shayla, who was amazingly unfazed at being held by a strange man, smiled tiredly in Bev’s direction and settled more heavily against Gus’s chest. I blamed his appearance for her lack of concern—his graying hair, rosy cheeks, rounded belly, and sparkling eyes evoked Christmas trees and presents.
“Say hello, Shayla,” I prompted. “This is Bev and Gus Johnson. Remember the e-mails I read to you? They’re going to help us get settled.”
“Did you see my new house?” she asked, a yawn distorting her delicate features.
“We sure did,” Bev answered. “I even went over there last night and put some flowers in your bedroom for you.”
Shayla looked at me with a “she’s nice” smile, and I reached out to squeeze her arm in agreement. There was something about Bev that inspired familiarity and confidence. She had a direct gaze and an energy that made her chubby, five-foot-three frame somehow seem taller than it was. She stood there grinning at us in her patchwork vest, white turtleneck, and denim skirt, and her smile held all the warmth and welcome of her Southern heritage. Though she’d hidden her graying hair under an artificial shade of reddish brown, she still exuded a grandmotherly charm that had made me like her on sight.
“Looks like this little one is ready for a nap,” Gus said, plopping Shayla in the basket of our luggage cart. Her legs draped over the edge and her feet rested on the stack of suitcases. “How ’bout we head to the car and get you ladies home?” He set off toward some elevators, carrying on a warm, one-sided conversation with the small pink bundle sitting atop the cart.
“I’m so happy you’re finally here,” Bev said as she linked arms with me and followed Gus through the crowd pressed arou
nd the customs exit. “We’ve been counting the hours. Haven’t we, Gus?”
“Indeed we have,” he said over his shoulder, turning just long enough to wink in my direction.
And that was the moment the enormity of it all hit home. After so many weeks of frantic preparations and adrenaline-fueled activity, I had expected the breaking point to come. And I’d imagined that something upsetting like a disappointment or confrontation or frustration or one of Shayla’s temper tantrums would set it off—but a mirthful wink from a friendly soul? This wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen. It was embarrassing and completely out of my control. As Bev ushered me out of the elevator and into the parking garage, my tears began to fall. I told myself to think positive, and still they fell. I told myself that I was making a terrible first impression, and still they fell. I told myself that I was supposed to be the grown-up in this scenario, and still the tears welled up and overflowed my self-control. Bev, who seemed to have witnessed this kind of thing before, merely handed me a handkerchief, patted my arm, and prattled on about airports and airline food and Gus’s driving.
I had always prided myself on being able to stifle the kind of emotion that was presently overwhelming me and, in order to do so, had developed various techniques. The National Enquirer technique required losing myself in the pages of a tabloid until my own woes seemed minor compared to women birthing chimps and aliens running for the presidency and Madonna claiming to be the reincarnation of King Tut. The Jon Stewart technique involved imagining what the caustic comedian might say about my emotional demonstration, like “Ladies and gentlemen, it seems icebergs are indeed melting” or “And this just in: the women’s liberation movement has just been set back fifty years by the sheer spinelessness of an Illinois woman” or even “Yo, Shell, mascara landslides are not a good look for you.”
My most effective approach, which I reserved only for desperate occasions like tears in very public places, was the Daddy Dearest technique. This was the most brutal of my emotion-avoidance mechanisms, and it was a surefire solution to my more acute meltdowns. “Look at you,” my dad’s voice would say in my head, his words dripping with acid, “carrying on like a two-year-old. You’re an embarrassment, Shell. A disgusting humiliation. Stop your whining! Grow up! No one is ever going to give you the time of day if you can’t get a grip on yourself. Get out of my sight until you’re ready to be an adult. No daughter of mine is a sissy. . . .”
In Broken Places Page 2
