by Lexi Whitlow
The upside to checking bamboos is it’s solitary work. I don’t have to hear the guys on the crew banter, or listen to bad rap music, or worse country music. I’m just alone with my thoughts and the peace of the wide-open estuary. There are way worse ways to earn a living.
On that happy note, my cell phone rings, proving there’s no genuine escape to the interruption of civilization. I pull myself up on the deck and stretch, reaching into the cockpit to grab it before it goes to voicemail.
“Hey Mama, what’s up?” I answer, seeing her smiling face on my screen before I take the call.
“You need to come home,” she says, her voice brittle. “I don’t care what you’ve got going on. You need to come home. Now.”
“What’s going on?” I ask. “Are you okay?”
“Come home. I can’t even tell you over the phone. You wouldn’t believe it.”
“Mom. What’s wrong?” Now I’m concerned. She never speaks to me like this.
“Just come home. I mean it.”
She doesn’t sound exactly angry, but she’s sure not pleased. When she’s smiling, pulling a joke on me or teasing, I can hear it in her tone. This tone doesn’t have a smile behind it. Something is seriously wrong.
“I’m on my way,” I say. “Ten minutes.”
If there was weather, I’d be worried a tree fell on Blanc-Bleu. If I heard sirens coming up Sam’s Point Road I’d half-way think there was a fire. I can’t imagine what’s happened to send Mama to the edge of her temper, but I’m interested in finding out what it is and fixing it.
It’s just a few minutes upriver to the docks by boat, and then just five more minutes to the house over the dirt path across the property. When I pull up in the yard everything seems fine. Nothing’s on fire or torn down. The horses out in their pastures aren’t rattled, so there’s been no bear on the property. (That’s happened once, and it was exciting. It set Mama right on the edge of her chair.)
I push open the front door, bounding in, calling out, “I’m home!”
Mama appears, popping around the corner like a Jack-in-the-Box, her index finger pressed firm to her lip, shushing me.
What the hell? Did a deer wander into the kitchen and lay down to take a nap?
She waves me toward her, her eyes imploring. “Son, you need to take a deep breath and maybe take a seat.”
I can’t wait anymore. I turn the corner into the kitchen to see what all the drama is about. The only thing I see is a big plastic car carrier with a baby tucked into it. The baby is sound asleep.
“Whose baby is that?” I ask in a low voice, my heart beating hard in my chest. There’s a sinking feeling at the very edges of my stomach. Babies don’t just appear, do they?
At least now I understand why we’re whispering.
Mama’s eyebrows arch high on her forehead. She dips into the pocket of her Blanc-Bleu staff jacket, producing an envelope, pressing it into my hand.
“Read that,” she says.
I don’t understand any of this. Why is she being so circumspect?
I pull a note from the envelope. The handwriting is large and loopy, a girl’s practiced script. It reads;
“Dear Jeb,
We weren’t together long, but long enough. Before you got tired of me (like I always knew you would), we made Emma. I decided to keep her because I loved you, and I wanted something to remember you by. That was a mistake. She’s just like you. She reminds me of you every single minute of every day, and I can’t do it anymore. I was never meant to be a mother, but you were always meant to be a father. You have everything. I have nothing to give her except a broken heart and all the resentment I hold against you.
I love her. That’s why I am giving her back. Take good care of your daughter. You’re all she’s got.
Don’t try to find me. I don’t want to be found. Ever. I mean that.”
“What the hell?” I croon into the air, re-reading the note. “What?”
In the carrier, the baby raises one tiny hand, splaying her finger out. She sighs, unaware, and goes back to sleep.
“This was in a little pouch tied to the baby carrier,” Mama says, holding out her closed hand for me to take something from her.
I lift my hand up, feeling a solid weight drop into my palm. When Mama removes her hand, I see my great-grandfather’s hefty gold class ring from the Citadel. He graduated in 1950, just in time to get sent to fight in Korea. When my father died I started wearing the ring, because ‘Papa’ – my great-grandfather – was the last Ballentine who cared about Blanc-Bleu or trying to keep the place afloat. He was a tough bastard who worked his tail off night and day to try to make the place pay for itself. He was also the first Ballentine to figure out how to make money from the water surrounding this place. He watched the poor people who inhabited this island walk out into the marshes every day collecting oysters and crabs, and he decided there was no shame in working hard for a living.
By the time I came along Papa was already old and beat down, and his grandson (my father) made fun of him for scrapping around in the mud for shellfish. Papa taught me a lot about scrapping and never giving up. I wore his ring every day for six years, then one day it disappeared.
I thought I lost it in the marshes.
I don’t even know what to say. I can’t process this. I peer down at the baby and all I see is a strange, slightly sun-pinked face that looks like a doll in a shop window.
“There’s something else,” Mama says.
She goes to the infant – I can’t even guess how old the baby is – and gently slips the edge of her little shirt down. On her shoulder is a small birthmark. It’s the color of port wine and shaped vaguely like the state of Virginia. I have one almost identical to it on my opposite shoulder, near the same spot.
“She got your eyes, too,” Mama says. “Not another human being alive on this planet has eyes the color of yours. It’s what made me fall in love with your daddy; those beautiful eyes the color of shallow salt water. That color green is Ballentine, and nobody else in the world.”
This is the craziest shit I’ve ever heard.
“Mama,” I say, hearing myself talking from miles away. “This baby isn’t mine. There’s no way. We need to call the police. Someone’s looking for her. She may have been kidnapped. Some mother out there must be frantic.”
Mama gives me a sad, resigned smile. “We do have to call the police,” she says, a gentleness in her tone I’m unaccustomed to. “A child has been abandoned, and that needs to be reported. But Jeb, no one’s looking for her.” My mama pauses and gives me a look. “She’s exactly where she’s supposed to be.”
Mama turns, lifting her phone to her ear. She calls the Sheriff’s department, explaining things the best she can. When she’s done, she comes back to me where I stand, staring vacantly at the sleeping infant.
“The Sheriff is sending someone out, and social services has been alerted. They’ll be here soon.”
Social services will take the child into custody and find a foster home for her. The Sheriff’s department will try to find the child’s mother. That’s what should happen. She can’t be mine.
The baby stirs, lifting her little arm again, her hand outstretched. He small fingers grasp the air, searching for something to cling to. Mama puts her finger into the baby’s palm. Her finger is instantly encircled in a surprisingly firm grip. The baby’s eyes remain closed, but she smiles, making a small, squealing sound in her throat.
“I remember when you were this age,” Mama says. “You used to do that, reaching out for a familiar thing to grab onto. You’d hold onto my finger tight like this, then drift off to sleep, still hanging on tight.”
I swallow, and the sinking feeling in my gut multiplies. Panic spreads through every reach of my body.
I don’t have a clue what to say.
“Do me a favor, son. Give Stu a call. Ask him to come over. Tell him it’s important.”
That sounds like an excellent idea, although I’m not entirely sure
why.
By the time Stu arrives, social services is already here, checking out the baby, taking Mama’s statement, making notes.
“You’re freaking kidding me?” Stu asks, peering into the kitchen at the car carrier on the table and the assembly of county employees gathered around it.
“And it’s yours?”
What do I say?
“I don’t know. Mama thinks it is. And there’s some... I don’t know.”
I can’t even wrap my head around it.
I hand Stu the note left with the baby. He reads it twice, then looks up at me. “I know who this is,” he says. “It’s that girl from Connecticut who was here doing a graduate internship at the Wildlife Refuge for the Aquarium in Charleston. You guys only dated a month or so. You said she was getting serious fast, and you broke it off. She was a marine biologist. Remember her?”
Vaguely. I remember a girl from the South Carolina Aquarium. I can’t recall the details except she was way more interested in oyster farming and bivalve procreation than any girl I ever met. I found it a little intimidating. I remember she was a slightly suffocating. She wanted to come out on the boats with us to work, asking detailed questions about every single little thing we did. After a week or two I thought she was prepping to set herself up as competition. When she started talking about forming a research partnership and writing a book about farm-raised oysters, I couldn’t get away fast enough.
“Don’t tell the social services people about any of that,” I urge Stu. “The girl was going for her Ph.D. in Marine Biology. She was headed to Seattle. If it was her, she doesn’t need the drama. She’s been through enough.”
Stu nods. “Mum’s the word.”
My mother sees him and brightens, waving him into the kitchen.
“I need your help,” she says. “Can you run to Wal-Mart and pick up some diapers, a dozen onesies and bath cloths, some formula and bottles, and baby food? The kind that comes in pouches?”
Stu nods without skipping. “What formula do you want?” he asks. “Similac, Enfamil, or Gerber?”
Mama shrugs. “Get Enfamil and Similac and we’ll see what she takes. And some applesauce too. Make a list.”
When did my best friend become an authority on baby requirements?
“And bananas,” Mama adds as Stu hastily scrawls a list on a spare shred of paper towel.
“Ma’am, you don’t need to do all that,” the lady from child protective services says. “We’ll get her placed tonight with a temporary foster family who’ll have everything in place, ready to….”
“Oh, no,” my mother says. “No. She’s staying right here.”
“But ma’am, this child…”
“This child is a Ballentine until you can prove otherwise,” Mama says, standing up straight, lifting the fidgeting infant to her shoulder. “And until you do that – and I don’t believe you will – she’s going to stay with her family. With her grandmother. With her father. They have the same birthmark. You see that,” she says, showing the lady the little Virginia tattoo. “She’s ours. You can order a blood test or whatever you do, but I already know she’s ours. She’s safe here and she’s wanted. So, you fill out any paperwork you need to fill out, but she’s not going anywhere.”
“Ma’am…”
“Now don’t you fight me on this because I will have my way. I’ll call our attorney in Charleston. My cousin, Clinton Carter, he’s a superior court judge. I’ll call in the entire military command of Paris Island because I’m related to most of them. You are not taking this child off this property. Do you understand me?”
I’ve seen my mother dig in before. I’ve seen her put her foot down. But in all my life I have never seen her invoke the name of Clinton Carter. He’s her second cousin and as legendary a shit bird of corrupt South Carolina politics as ever graced the Capitol. Mom and Clinton haven’t spoken in years. If Mama is willing to call in the detestable, deplorable, shunned branch of the Carter line to help her, I know things are serious.
For the first time since this surreal event began, I step into the room to weigh in.
“I’m pretty sure the child is mine,” I say. I don’t quite believe it, even as the words leave my mouth. “But either way, we’re prepared to take care of her until a paternity test can prove it or disprove it. She’s here already. Let’s keep the disruption in her life to a minimum.”
The woman – her name is Angelica – looks me over carefully. “Do you know this child’s mother?” she asks.
I know what she has in mind, and I’m not going to go there. “Not really,” I say. “She could be one of … a few. I was reckless a couple years back; it’s a blur of girls and alcohol. It was a bad time in my life. That’s ancient history now, and I’m willing to take responsibility for my mistakes. Emma shouldn’t have to suffer for them.”
My mother looks up at me like she can’t believe what she’s hearing. Stu smirks. They both know that story isn’t exactly true. I was never that kind of guy.
“What more can we do tonight?” I ask. “You know what would be a great help? It would be a huge help if you could find us a nanny. Mom works 35 hours a week managing the events schedule at Blanc-Bleu, and I’m on the water all day. We could use a day-time babysitter.”
Angelica give me an incredulous stare.
“Alright, we’ll get our own,” I say, smiling. “So, I guess there’s really not much you can do for us. Let me know when you need us to come in for that blood test. Can I walk you out?”
Mom and Stu just stare on slack jawed as I corral the Beaufort County Child Protective Services liaison, along with a deputy Sheriff, out the front door.
When they’re gone, Mama looks at me with an expression of bursting approval.
“You handled that,” she says. “Well done.” Then she turns to Stu. “Get on over to the Wal-Mart. This child is gonna be hungry soon and need a bath and a changing.”
Stu grips his keys in his hand. “I’ll be back in an hour. Do you want me to call Mom to come help?”
Mama shakes her head. “No, we’re good. Just hurry.”
When Stu is gone I look at the child nestled on her shoulder, and then at my mother.
“You’re sure?” I ask.
She nods. “I’m sure,” she says. “You will be too, soon enough.”
I have to admit, there’s something in the shape of her eyes and the build of her jawline that looks familiar.
“How does Stu know what to do?” I ask. “Why did you call him?”
Mama smiles. “Honey, Stu is the oldest of seven children. He raised his six siblings while his mother and father worked full-time. Don’t you remember? You always complained he could never go anywhere or do anything without one of his brothers or sisters tagging along. Stu’s sat in a rocker with a bottle and a baby more than most women I know.”
I forgot. Stu was inundated with babies and little kids, and he was in charge of them all. His father worked the farm (leased, on our property), trying to scrape together a living. His mother worked the line on the docks cleaning and packing shrimp, right up until the shrimp harvest collapsed. After that she was out of work. She took jobs cleaning houses and other odd jobs to make ends meet.
There were so many kids.
One of Stu’s sisters in an OBGYN in Charleston, now. Another is a college professor in Richmond. There’s another who’s an officer in the Navy, and one who (I think) is studying in North Carolina for his law degree. The youngest ones are still in school. He talks about them occasionally. I can’t keep up with all of them.
Once more I’m reminded I’m a selfish creature whose priorities have always been skewed. Stu probably spent all his resources helping his younger siblings make something of themselves. He never got a chance to go to college or aspire to much more than being a farmer. He sacrificed so his brothers and sisters could get out of this salt-soaked, dead end town.
And yet, he seems perfectly contented with the choices he made.
Hours later, long after
dark, long after Stu has come and gone, leaving boxes of supplies for us, I peer down into the sleeping face of a child who – by all accounts – is probably mine.
I found the crib Mom used for me when I was a baby, packed away in the attic. She rolled up countless towels, packing the edges between the mattress and siderails so Emma doesn’t slip between them.
Emma is face down, arms splayed, stocking covered feet with toes pointing in at one another, snoozing like a kitten. Mama and Stu agreed that she’s about nine months old, which means in a month or two she’ll start trying to walk, toddling around, tripping and falling and crying.
I can’t wait to see her stand up on her own two feet, showing the world what she’s made of.
She opened her eyes for me for a little while tonight, and Mom was right, her eyes are just like mine; the color of shallow salt marsh water. She reached out and grabbed my finger, pulling it toward her mouth. She sucked on my index finger, smiling in her eyes while she did it, never breaking eye contact with me until she decided to drift off into baby sleep land.
Right now, she’s peaceful. Mom says she’ll stay that way until she wakes up hungry with a dirty diaper.
My world has just gone sideways. Suddenly the sex lives of bivalves are a lot less interesting than the diaper dramas of accidental human offspring. If this baby girl turns out to really be mine, I’m in for a change of lifestyle, and I don’t have a clue what I’m doing.
~~~
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