The Ballad of Ami Miles

by Kristy Dallas Alley

  “I had never seen anything so beautiful,” he said. He looked at Penny then, and she smiled at him. I felt a stab of jealousy so deep it almost bent me double. “You were just this tiny, perfect little person. You never fussed, either, just nursed and slept. We stayed there through the spring and all through the long, hot summer. Once your mother had her strength back, I felt better about exploring a little farther out, and I found us a fishing hole. Some days, we’d all go and sit under the big, shady trees and fish for our supper. I wished it could stay like that forever. But I knew it couldn’t.” Marcus was looking at Penny, but my mama was watching me. Her eyes filled with tears and spilled over, and mine did the same. Didn’t Marcus understand what he was saying to me? He looked back at me then, and I knew that he didn’t. He couldn’t see how his words cut into me, telling me how fast my mama had forgotten all about me, but she could. She took over telling the story, maybe thinking she could tell it different somehow, soften it for me so it didn’t hurt as much.

  “I missed you every minute, Ami. You can’t imagine what it was like, to look at that sweet baby and love her so much but also to feel my heart ripped to pieces over leaving you behind.” She stopped, tears pouring down her face, her eyes begging me to understand. I wasn’t sure if I did or not, but I could see that she meant what she said. It hadn’t been easy for her to leave me.

  “Pretty soon, the air took a chill and the leaves started to turn. We had barely managed to keep ourselves alive during that last awful winter, and I knew I couldn’t risk putting the baby through another one like that now that she was out in the world. The last thing I ever wanted to do was go begging back to my daddy to take us in, but I had to. I told myself stories, oh, about how once he saw her, all would be forgiven. I’d be back with you again, and you’d have a sister to play with! The two of you would grow up together and be best friends. I thought they’d want that for you too. Your sweetness had worked on them like magic, Ami. I thought it would be the same with this baby, that she could fix everything. So we set out for home before the weather could get any colder. The closer we got, the scareder I felt, and the more I told myself and Marcus that everything was going to work out. By the time I got there, I had convinced myself it was true. Which made what happened even harder.” She broke off.

  “I don’t think we need to go over all that right now,” Marcus said in a low voice. But my mama shook her head.

  “If I don’t get this out now,” she said, “I never will.” She wiped tears off her face with both hands, then pressed her fingertips into her closed eyes for a minute. No one moved or spoke.

  “Billie was out in the yard when she saw us coming up the road, and she ran inside hollering. By the time my daddy came out, I was halfway to the door. I looked down at that little baby in my arms, so tiny and precious. She was everything my parents claimed to want. I was such a fool.” Marcus put his hand on her arm, and she covered it with her own but kept going.

  “Do you know what he did when I held my precious baby up in my arms for him to see?” I dreaded hearing the answer. I could imagine all of Papa’s ideas about sin and abomination directed at that little baby, and it made me wince. “He took one look at her and then spit in my face.” Penny and I both sucked in our breath. Marcus made a hissing sound, even though he knew the story. He was there and saw it happen.

  “He asked me what I thought I was doing there with that … well, I won’t say the ugly words he used. He said I had defiled myself and flouted God’s will just like the whore of Babylon. He said I was ‘damaged goods,’” my mama spat out. “Said he wouldn’t have me around to contaminate you any more than I already had with my ungodly filth. He turned us away, wouldn’t even let us step foot inside the house after we’d traveled all that way. I called out to my mama, thinking she’d talk sense into him, make him show some mercy. I begged her to bring you out so I could see you one last time. She wouldn’t even come outside. She just stood there inside the door, shaking her head at me. I called out for Billie and Rachel, for my brother, for anybody. But they wouldn’t cross my daddy to help me.”

  It was quiet for a few moments after that. I think we were all just trying to take it in.

  “I felt like I had no choice but to leave you there, Ami. They wouldn’t let me near you, and it wasn’t safe to take you anyway. Life outside the compound was so much harder than I ever imagined it could be. We’d nearly died out there; I just couldn’t take that kind of risk with you. I wouldn’t have risked it with Penny if I’d had any choice. And as much as my daddy seemed to hate me then, I knew he couldn’t be bothered with enough baby raising to do you any real harm. He’d hand you off to Ruth and my sisters, and I could see already how they loved you. Billie and Rachel had already been married a few years, with no luck making a baby. You were all they’d ever wanted.”

  “But how come you never came back?” I blurted out. “You could have done like you said, found a place for our family and come back for me so we could be together. I thought you must be dead!” My mother’s tears spilled over afresh.

  “After we … we left you there, we headed south down the hi-way, but we didn’t find Lake Point right away. You had that brochure I sent you, with the map on the back?” she asked, and I nodded. She gave me a sad little smile and shook her head. “We had no idea where we were going or what we might find. It was sheer luck that we eventually stumbled upon this place. We were traveling with a newborn baby, and it was already too cold to sleep out in the woods with her. We had to find places to sleep, old barns and houses, whatever we came across. When we found a good one with most of a roof and a place to make a fire, we stopped for the winter. By the time we got here a few months later, I was sick. Not just in my body but in my mind too. In my spirit. I … I couldn’t stop going over and over it all, how I’d lost you, how my own mama and daddy hated me and called me filthy and damaged. I missed you so much, Ami; you can never know how much. But something else was wrong too. I had seen something like it with May…”

  “Jacob’s wife?” I asked, surprised to hear her name. “No one would ever tell me about her. What do you mean you’d seen something like it with May?”

  “Ruth called it the baby blues,” Mama said. “Later, a lot later, once I got better, Evi gave me some books about it from the library. Postpartum depression, they called it. Sometimes after a woman has a baby, her hormones go kinda haywire. I think leaving you and having a new baby while you were still so little, that made it worse. My breasts got infected, too, that was the body sickness. Mastitis, that’s another word I learned from Evi’s books. Big red, shiny lumps that made me shiver and run a fever. We spent a week just camped out, waiting until the infection ran itself out and I was strong enough to walk again. But the spirit sickness only got worse, not better. As soon as we found this place and Helen took us in, I went to bed, and I didn’t really get out again for about a year. I saw the same thing happen to May, except her baby died.”

  “What?” I exclaimed. “May and Jacob had a baby that died? I never knew that.” I thought about my poor sweet uncle Jacob. This was why they’d all acted so funny whenever I asked about May.

  “Stillborn, just about a month before she was due. Cord got tied in a knot. May knew something was wrong even before the contractions started a month early. He’d stopped kicking.” She shook her head sadly. “May never got over it. She killed herself six months later. We tried everything to cheer her up, help her snap out of it, but nothing worked. Jacob promised her they’d try again, have more babies, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She stopped speaking to him after that.” She paused, then looked up at me and then Penny with a sad smile. “But my babies didn’t die, neither one of you. You were perfect and beautiful, and I knew you were safe at Heavenly Shepherd, Ami, even though it killed me to leave you there.

  “Marcus took such good care of Penny and me. He convinced me that I had to fight the sadness, for both of you. So I got out of bed, but I wasn’t … I wasn’t the same. I wasn’t right in my
mind for a long time after that. And by the time I started to come back to myself, you weren’t a baby anymore, Ami. And Penny was big enough to need me in a way that you never would have, not with my mama and sisters around.” She looked down at her hands then, like she was ashamed. For a minute I didn’t know what to say, then I exploded.

  “So what!” I said. “You still could have come back for me. I needed you! I waited and waited for you to come home! They told me that story about the C-PAF man and how you had to run off so he wouldn’t catch you. When you didn’t come back, I thought maybe he had. I thought you were dead! Do you know how it felt when I got here and they told me there had never been any C-PAF agents?” I was crying hard now, unable to take those crazy up-and-down feelings I was having. I had been so happy just an hour ago, and now I was on fire with anger. I couldn’t reconcile the story my mother was telling with the imaginary mother I’d mourned and needed all my life. She was crying, too, and so was Penny. Marcus’s face was unreadable.

  “I didn’t know what they’d told you, Ami! You were a little girl by then, almost five years old. What if they’d told you I died? What if they told you that Rachel was your mama, or Billie? How would you handle it if I just showed up out of the blue and turned your whole little world upside down? I felt so weak and ashamed about everything that had happened. I felt like I didn’t deserve you. Even before I left, my mama had taken you from me. Marcus and I stayed up late so many nights talking about it, trying to figure out what was right. This place, Lake Point, it wasn’t as solid then as it is now. There had been some kind of big falling-out just before we got here, people fighting for control. A lot of people had left, and after five years, the place was just getting strong again. The crops had failed from drought two of those years. We went hungry some days to make sure Penny got what she needed. At least at Heavenly Shepherd, I knew you were safe. I knew you had enough to eat and a roof over your head and that Ruth would teach you.”

  “Oh, she taught me all right,” I said, my anger still burning. “She taught me all the parts of things that she and Papa thought I needed to know. How to read the books that they chose for me, how to be a godly woman so I could one day grow up and give them another baby to carry on the precious family line. Do you know why I finally found you, why I had to run away?” My mother’s eyes were afraid now, her hands clutching Marcus’s so tight I thought she would break his fingers. “They found me a man, Mama. Just like they did for you, sounds like. I thought he was old enough to be my daddy, but now I see he was much older than either one of you! I came back from a trip to the woods, and they were all there waiting for me. I felt like … like I would just die if I had to let him touch me. And then I felt so ashamed for thinking that way, for not doing my duty like I’d been taught!” My mama bent forward till her head almost touched her knees, sobbing. She grabbed fistfuls of her own hair and rocked back and forth, helpless.

  “Ami,” Marcus said, his hand up like he wanted me to stop. But I was going now, and it was all going to come out.

  “You knew! You knew that would happen to me, just like it happened to you. You knew and you left me there anyway. You just gave me away!”

  “That’s enough.” Marcus’s voice was low and even, like he had to fight not to yell. But I still wasn’t done. Then my mama sat up and looked at me, her eyes begging me to understand.

  “At least you sent that paper about this place,” I said, the fire going out of me fast and sudden. “You should’ve seen your sisters and Jacob and David, Mama. You were right about them; they did love me. And when that man came, they protected me. They put on a whole show at that dinner, Rachel and Billie falling all over themselves to butter Papa up and set him at ease. Jacob knocked over his tea and Papa lit into him about not being a man, and he just sat there and took it. They said Amber was poorly and sent me to her trailer with a plate, and she told me their whole plan. Before I knew it, I was wearing pants and fancy shoes and a pack on my back, walking all the way here to find you.”

  “You’re so strong; I can see that, Ami. Stronger than I ever was,” Mama said.

  I laughed.

  “Yeah, well, I guess you’re not the only fool in the family, Mama. I walked all that way imagining how you would help me, that we’d be together and you would know what to do so our family could be together again. But you have your own family now. You left me, and then you just forgot all about me!”

  “That’s not fair!” Penny said, jumping up from her chair. “You heard what she said—she never forgot you. Look at her, Ami! Does it look like this is easy for her?”

  I looked from Penny to my mother to Marcus, but all I could see was a family that I wasn’t part of. My mother had been so happy I’d found her—we both had. But this was all too much, and I’d ruined everything.

  “I have to go,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Ami,” my mother called out, but I was already gone.

  Twenty-One

  The next morning, I woke up to the sound of someone knocking on my door. I had the feeling I’d slept for a long time, but instead of feeling rested, I felt groggy and confused. I wondered if I’d missed breakfast. I couldn’t remember why I woke up so suddenly, then the knocking came again. I stumbled over to the door and opened it, wondering if Hillie or Sam had sent someone to get me because I was late to work in the gardens.

  It was Jessie.

  “Mornin’, sunshine,” she said with that crooked grin I’d been missing. Then she made a point of looking up at my wild nest of hair and pushed past me into the room. I reached up and tried to smooth it down, but I knew it was no use.

  “Jessie,” I said stupidly. “I wasn’t … what are you doing here? Hang on, give me a second, please.” I practically ran into the bathroom and closed the door behind me. I could hear her low laugh through the door.

  My hair was worse than I’d feared. There was more of it sticking out of my braid than staying in, and it stuck out in all directions. I untied the end and raked my fingers through it, then smoothed it all back from my face and twisted it into one big knot at the back of my neck. It wasn’t great, but it would have to do. I splashed some water onto my face and rinsed my mouth out, and then I was out of excuses to hide in the bathroom. I looked my mirror-self in the eye. It was still hard for me to think of her as just my own self reflected back at me. Come on, Ami girl, I told her silently. You can do this. I opened the door and saw Jessie sitting on the edge of the bed, waiting. There was nothing to do but go to her.

  “I been looking for you,” I said, “since about five minutes after … the last time I saw you.”

  “I was tryin’ to give you some space. You ran off so quick, I thought…”

  “I’m really sorry about that,” I said, sitting down next to her but facing the room. As with Will, I found it easier to have this conversation if we didn’t have to look right at each other. “I was … I didn’t understand what happened. But as soon as I ran away and caught my breath, I knew I needed to go back. Because as confused as I was, you were the only person I wanted to talk to about it. But you were already gone, and then I haven’t seen you anywhere since then, so I thought maybe you were mad at me about it.” She didn’t say anything for a minute, then I heard her take a deep breath and let it out.

  “I wasn’t mad, Ami. Least, not at you. I know how new all this is to you and how overwhelming it all must be, and I shouldn’t have … I didn’t mean to take advantage.” I shifted on the bed so I could look at her then.

  “What do you mean? You didn’t take advantage!”

  “Didn’t I? All of this here, the people, the books, the music, it’s nothing new to me. I’ve been here all my life. And one of the things Miss Jean and Evi always told us about in school was how it is out there, how lucky we were to be in this safe place and to have one another. We read the journals about the way it is for people out there. I knew, Ami. I knew it must be too much, but I just … I told myself it wasn’t. Because I liked you so much.” I felt my face insta
ntly flush bright red and hot. I looked away in embarrassment, but we both laughed. Because she liked me so much, I thought. Butterflies filled my stomach.

  “I like you so much too,” I said quietly. “And it’s not your job to decide what is too much for me, miss. That’s for me to decide.” She gave me the big shiny smile I remembered. “Where I come from, there wasn’t … I didn’t know about, you know, gay people. That there was any such thing. So when you, when we kissed, it seemed impossible to me that such a thing could happen. But then after I didn’t find you that day, I ran into Will.” She made a sound in her throat, like a cross between a groan and a laugh. “No, it was good. I didn’t, you know, I didn’t tell him what happened. We were just walking and he showed me the cottages and he was telling me about the peach trees, and he said they were Hillie’s babies and I asked was it because she couldn’t have any, and he said he didn’t think she’d ever tried since she and Sam fell in love so young, and I couldn’t believe it! I thought he was pulling my leg.” I laughed.

  “I never even thought of that,” Jessie said. “Sam and Hillie have been married since before I was born. It wasn’t something I ever thought much about. But also, Ami, since this is new to you, I feel like I should tell you that kissing one girl doesn’t mean you’re gay, really. I mean, it might? But not everyone falls just to one side or the other, you know? You might like a girl one day, and later you might like a boy. That’s more common than you might think.” That was a whole new twist to an already complicated and confusing situation for me. I’d always been given the idea that you met someone, fell in love, got married, and tried to have a baby. There was never any talk about even liking more than one person, much less more than one kind of person! And for some reason, it hurt my feelings to hear Jessie say that.