What I Carry

by Jennifer Longo

  Except sometimes my memory is an ocean.

  What I don’t remember, Joellen tells me, is that when I was born I was super hard to place because of the meth. But the hospital got me clean, and when I was a year old, a couple picked me up in California and brought me to Seattle. I was free to be adopted, no parental rights to fight about, and the couple told Joellen they wanted to adopt, they wanted me.

  I don’t recall the move, but I remember the man and woman. I know I called them Mom and Dad and I was their only child. I remember Joellen came to visit me each week. I remember preschool and the house; I had an upstairs room with a window, and I could see water. I had a bed and stuffed animals in a wicker basket and clothes in a dresser and a closet. I remember the dad taught me to tie my shoes and the mom showed me how to lick a stamp and mail a letter, and I took baths with a toy ferry that had cars in the hull you could take out; I lined them up on the edge of the tub and stayed in the water until my fingertips wrinkled, and I remember the dad read books to me every single night.

  I remember my fourth-birthday cake from Baskin-Robbins (mint chocolate chip ice cream and chocolate cake), and I remember the next day we ate leftover cake while the woman and man whom I called Mom and Dad explained to me that Joellen was coming to get me for our weekly visit, but that this time, Joellen was taking me to a new house, where I would meet lots of new siblings and new parents. They helped me pack a duffel bag of clothes, and the woman said, “Look, I got you a present. This is called a toiletry kit. It has all your soap and shampoo and your toothbrush right here all together with a nice handle—a place for everything, and everything in its place.”

  Joellen tells me in retrospect it made her nervous, the way they kept putting off my adoption. But they were so good to me, she says. I was so happy; I was so comfortable. She let me call them Mom and Dad because they insisted they were going to adopt me. But still they just kept…waiting. For something.

  In my file, Joellen’s notes say simply, Foster mom pregnant.

  I was a last resort they put off committing to while there was still hope they could have a real kid, brand-new, in the original packaging—theirs. One who shared their perfect DNA and so, therefore, deserved a family more than me. They kept me long enough to decimate my best, only chance to ever have a family, just in time for me to become “unadoptable,” and then they put me back in. They did not love me. They set me adrift.

  Joellen says when she came and got me that last day, she took me to a park by the water and that it took her nearly forty-five minutes to get me to stop crying.

  I don’t remember that part.

  * * *

  “They put you back in after you turned three?”

  Francine understood.

  Well past my prime. I was four years old. In the often mind-bendingly insane world of foster care, three is not a magic number. Three is a dismal number; it is the age after which a foster kid’s chance of finding parents plummets statistically to unadoptable. Not that it’s illegal to adopt a kid that age—it’s just incredibly unlikely after that. Mathematically. I was more good evidence.

  “They told Joellen adoption was their last resort, but now they didn’t need to, and even if they did, they wouldn’t have time to take care of me once their own baby was born.”

  “You were their own baby.”

  “I was a placeholder.”

  “The purpose of adoption is not for parents to ‘find a kid.’ It is for children to find parents. If they didn’t understand that, they shouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near you.”

  Amen.

  Terry Johnson looked at us then, from his hiding place in a patch of tall grass and daffodils. He made his careful way to us and looked up expectantly, asking to be lifted.

  “Well,” Francine said, “you dodged a bullet.”

  “That’s what Joellen says.”

  “And adoption, if it’s the best and only option for the child, is a wonderful first resort.”

  “Joellen says that, too.”

  “Joellen is right.”

  I scooped Terry’s sore little body to my lap, and Francine held his paw in her hand.

  “My poor baby,” I said. “What would your mommy have done without you?”

  “Lucky us,” Francine whispered loudly to him. “What would we do without our Muiriel?”

  That night I pulled a clean T-shirt from my suitcase and saw that some things I hadn’t worn in a while were getting wrinkled, crowded with the pillowcase of shame, which I held for a moment, feeling the weight of the things inside, and then shoved back in, beneath my shoes.

  Not a big deal to just put some more clothes in a drawer. Below the one with the new clothes. In the bathroom, I put my shampoo in the shower, my soap on the sink.

  Just for convenience’s sake.

  IN JANE’S SALISHWOOD OFFICE on the last Saturday in April, she sat on her desk and did not fire me, which I’d assumed she’d been trying to do, only delicately. Getting rid of Natan couldn’t have been fun for her family life. Our interactions, and hers and Sean’s, still stayed politely professional. Just the way I liked it, but less touchy-feely than I think she preferred. I’d assumed my days in the forest were numbered, and the thought of losing this dream—though unpaid—job kept me awake most nights and broke my heart, but instead she said, “What are you planning to do after graduation? Where will you be?”

  I wished I had an answer better than I will be in Seattle, which is too expensive but is the place I know best with viable job options, trying to cobble together as many part-time gigs as I can while I search for a room to rent, so to sum up: I will be in the world testing out survival techniques, trying to not be homeless.

  “I’m asking,” Jane said, “because two of our master’s candidates are graduating, leaving room in the budget for a paid position—part-time, no benefits, but overtime on weekends. Any chance I could convince you to take it?”

  “Excuse me,” I said. “What now?”

  * * *

  —

  Kira set an entire cake, white and fragrant, on the kitchen table before Francine and Sean and me. And four forks.

  “Does a part-time job with no benefits really warrant an entire cake?” I asked, already reaching for my fork.

  “It does when it’s this job,” Sean said.

  “If,” Francine said, “it’s a job that does not interfere with a person’s finals or torpedo her GPA in the last month before she graduates from high school, then yes. That is entirely cake-worthy.”

  “Francine,” I said. “No potential employer is going to look at my GPA. If I have a diploma, that’s all they’ll care.”

  “Okay, but colleges do, and—”

  Kira stabbed her fork in the cake. “I’m defusing this tension by saying, in no way to deflect from Muir’s amazing job, that I have been accepted to the University of Washington and I am going there in the fall instead of back to Southern California, and I am embarrassed because it is partly because I am too scared to leave home yet, so I am going to stay here and ferry in to school every day. The end.”

  “Oh, Kira,” Francine said, rushing to get champagne glasses from the cupboard.

  I hugged Kira, still in her chair and trying to eat cake.

  “Let’s go smock shopping,” I begged. “Please can we get you a beret, and will you wear scarves all the time now?”

  “UW is not the Sorbonne. I think there’s a strict jeans-and-T-shirt policy. And my personal anti-scarf agenda.”

  “Kira, don’t be embarrassed,” Sean said. “I’m glad you’ll be here. I will, too.”

  I turned to him. “You will?”

  “I got my letter from UW. But I also got the Salishwood spot.”

  “You people can’t drink yet, right? Gah, mother of the year, here…” Francine was frazzled with happiness. “Milk, we’ll have milk.
This cake is giving me hyperglycemia.”

  “Sean,” I said, “what the hell? This is the best day!”

  Really letting myself admit that I care about people I liked may have been hard when my heart broke with theirs, but this part—getting to be overjoyed when they were—I could see how normal human emotional attachment could get addictive.

  “You’re going to be a national park ranger. You are going to wear the uniform and live on a mountain! You. Guys.” I hadn’t had milk and cake in years. It felt like being five years old at a birthday party. Like everything was starting brand-new.

  Kira went to Blackbird, and I walked Sean to the road.

  “Why didn’t you tell me before?” I said. “About UW? About Salishwood?”

  “Because I wanted…I was waiting to see.”

  “See what?”

  “What you were doing. Where you would be.”

  I stopped walking. “But I don’t know where I’ll be.”

  “You— Did we not just celebrate you getting an actual job at Salishwood? Won’t you be here?”

  “I can’t live on that, I can’t stay here—maybe I can ferry in from Seattle for it, but I’ll need to get another job near where I’ll live. Maybe two more.”

  He stood and just looked at me. “How?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You have to know.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Seattle is more expensive to live than here. Why can’t you live here? Just stay.”

  “But there aren’t jobs that pay enough or that have benefits here.”

  “This is nuts. How are you going to—”

  “I’ll figure it out. I will. I don’t want to think about it anymore right now; I’m too happy.”

  “But—we graduate in, like, six weeks. You’ll be eighteen in three months. How can you not—”

  “Sean,” I said, hard. “I am the one aging out. I have thought about it; it’s all I ever think about, every minute of every day for the past ten years, but no amount of thinking will change the fact that it’s happening—this is how it happens. I’ve done what I can to make it easier, and now I just have to let the clock run out, so please can you let me, for just this one afternoon, think about how happy I am for my friends? How happy I am for me. That I have a job I love that I might be able to keep if I can find another one to support it? Please.”

  “There has to be another—”

  “Okay, now I’m begging you. Stop.” I kissed him goodbye, and he walked down the road, and home.

  * * *

  —

  Back in the kitchen Francine sat with Terry Johnson on her lap at the table, a new habit since Easter. “Everything okay?”

  I sat down. “I get impatient with people,” I said.

  “Do you? I haven’t seen a lot of that.”

  “I did just now.”

  “Well.”

  “I will never understand why people think they know my life better than I do. I get tired of explaining things over and over.”

  She nodded.

  “Am I stupid?”

  “Of course you’re not.”

  “I don’t know what else I can do. I’ve tried so hard to do everything right. I move forward constantly; it’s all I do.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m not lazy; I don’t just sit around waiting for the world to be good to me, I don’t depend on anyone else, I have to take care of myself; I know that.” My eyes were burning. “What was I thinking? I can’t take this job.” I sat at the table, head in my hands. I felt Francine sit beside me.

  “Yes, you can! You love it; you have to take it.”

  “I can’t be in two places at once. The ferry is too expensive to be commuting every day.”

  “Then stay. Stay here.”

  “Francine, come on.” Terry Johnson jumped off her lap and clicked across the linoleum floor to ask for a treat. “He needs his nails trimmed,” I said. “I’ll do it tomorrow.”

  “Muiriel. Do you want to go to school?”

  I pulled Terry Johnson up on my lap. He growled.

  “I have five hundred dollars in a checking account and a part-time job with no benefits. I have no insurance, no credit, no permanent address, no car, and a phone you pay for with the money the state gives you, which ends the moment I turn eighteen.”

  “That’s not an answer. Are there things you think you want to do for work that might need a college degree?”

  “I don’t know.” I did know. But did we have to go over again why school was impossible?

  “The state will pay your tuition. Community college lets you transfer directly to a university, and you can still work a part-time job. You have excellent grades and teachers love you, you can apply for financial aid and scholarships, you have work experience, volunteer hours up the wazoo, personal and professional references; use my address; I’ll put you on my phone plan. Next.”

  “Tuition is pointless if I can’t pay rent. Loans ruin your life. I can’t owe anything to anyone. Ever.”

  “Loans let you get an education so you can get a job to pay the loans back.”

  “In theory.”

  “Okay, yes, but—”

  “I’m not your problem,” I said. “I’m mine.”

  “You are not a problem. You are an infuriating person, and you damn well know that in Washington State Joellen can apply to get your foster status extended until you’re twenty-one years old. You keep your health insurance, tuition is paid for, or I can cosign for loans and you can stay in one place rent-free. With me.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “I can. I will.”

  “Francine…”

  “Or, I could adopt you.”

  The air left the room. And my lungs.

  “Muiriel. There are people all around you now who wish you would stay. Not to trap you or hold you back, just—you need to breathe. You need time in one place to be still and quiet so when it’s time to go you’re really ready. You’ll be on your own for the rest of your life, three more years is nothing—but it could make everything possible for you. Let us help you. Let me help you.”

  I pushed my chair back and put Terry Johnson on the floor.

  She promised. She said she wouldn’t try to adopt me. If I stayed all year I would be done, her last kid and my last foster parent, released from care and free to go. She promised me.

  “Muiriel.”

  “I think I need to go rest for a while. Is that okay?” I did not wait for her to answer. I took the stairs two at a time and without thinking or understanding why, I slammed the door shut. My first door slam.

  All my life I’d listened to kids do this. Slamming doors are birdsong in a foster house—always there, a kind of background music. The attic was warm. Stifling. I climbed on the bed and shoved the window open wide. Down on the lawn, directly below the window and the bat house where they dropped their poop, always oddly shiny from digested iridescent insect wings, was a crowded patch of the most beautiful wildflowers I’d ever seen. Lavender, cosmos, impatiens, ranunculus.

  Grow where you are planted.

  I rage-cried, as quietly as I could, into a pillow that was clean and smelled like the lemon detergent Francine used once a week for linens. Every Friday. A familiar, happy scent I had begun to look forward to. Comfortable. Warm. Safe.

  I cried harder and slammed the window shut.

  THE SUN WAS NOT YET ABOVE the trees when Sean walked up the Salishwood road and found me drinking lukewarm tea on a boulder beneath the trees.

  I’d left before Francine was up and walked nearly five miles of trails already. “Hey, paid employee,” he said, and sat beside me. I leaned against him.

  “Sorry I mansplained your own life to you.”

  “I never heard a Well, actually, so I’
ll give you a pass. This time.”

  “I’m being selfish. I want you to stay.”

  “I would stay if I could.”

  “You would?”

  “Of course I would. This island is like living in a snow globe. It’s disorienting. You, and Kira, and Salishwood, the forests. The toast.”

  And Francine.

  “So…okay, I’m confused. Are those good or bad things?”

  “In theory they’re good.”

  “Okay.”

  “In reality, I will never get to live in a place this beautiful, in a life so full of all this…”

  “Muir, I hate to break it to you, but you do live here. You live here and you work here and we don’t want you to go. Everyone wants you to stay; everyone loves you. I love you.”

  My heart went still.

  “Look up and away and around and anywhere but at me all you want, but if I love you that’s my business. I know you don’t owe me anything back, and you don’t have to respond at all. It’s just the truth. So.”

  For now.

  No one, in all my life, aside from Joellen, ever told me they loved me. He was right. I could not look at him.

  “And come on, a snow globe? If you need to be miserable, replay the greatest hits of Natan and Tiana and Katrina—throw in some of Barb’s racist bullshit and mope all you want—just stay. Please.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I don’t— What about what my mom said? What about the foster extension—you could stay with Francine until you’re twenty-one?”

  I put my head in my hands. “I just want to walk. I want to walk all day, every day in the woods alone. Why isn’t that a job?”

  “It is,” he said, brightening. “That’s a wilderness ranger. Like a forest ranger but…in the wilderness. Without a gun. If you had a degree in environmental science they would be begging for you. There’s wilderness in the Cascades, and the Olympics….”