I’m trying to make sense of it—that my being here would get people “fired up” to get rid of Coach Nicholson.
“I don’t get it,” I say.
“I don’t either,” Nikki says. “I just know how certain people would react if they knew you were living with us.”
We’re all quiet for a while, then Nikki says, “If you feel like you’ve got to go to Hamilton High, we’ll make it work. But we’d like you to at least try the San Remo TAPP school for now. Then we’ll re-evaluate before second semester, and if Hamilton High is still your choice, you can transfer.”
“But what about those people? Will they be gone by then?” Nikki shakes her head sadly.
“They’re never really gone. A few leave and new ones come along. As for next semester, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
“At least think about it,” Penny says. “I know the San Remo TAPP teacher over there, and I think you’d like her.”
Between my worry about gossip, and squeezing into desk chairs, and being embarrassed about being pregnant, along with Nikki and Penny’s push for TAPP, I decide to do as they suggest. Once decided, it’s kind of a relief to me not to have to face all of my old classmates just yet.
Chapter
19
On our way to the TAPP school Monday morning, Penny says she’s talked with the teacher, Karen Metcalf, about our situation.
“Karen suggested it might be better not to mention your adoption plans with the other students until you get to know them better.”
“I won’t.”
“She said a lot of her students are totally against the idea of adoption, and they might not be very nice to you if they think you’re giving up your baby.”
“If they’re anything like the girls at the other TAPP place, they’d hate me for it.”
Penny sighs. “It’s such a wonderful thing you’re doing for us, and for your baby. It’s utterly selfish of little fifteen/sixteen-year-old girls to think they can be good parents when they’re still children themselves.”
“I’m just coming here to get my credits,” I say. “I don’t have to be friends with everybody.”
“Well . . . I thought I’d give you a heads up on this one . . .”
We get to the new school before any of the other students have arrived. Penny walks with me into the classroom where a short woman with long, blond, curly hair is arranging pictures on a large bulletin board.
“Karen?”
“Oh. Hey, Penny,” she says, turning toward us with a broad smile.
“And you must be Autumn. Welcome to TAPP.”
She shoves scissors and thumb tacks into the big pocket in the middle of her apron and extends her hand.
“I’m Karen Metcalf. Everybody calls me Karen—unless they’re mad at me, and I won’t tell you what they call me then,” she laughs.
“Don’t believe her,” Penny says. “I hear her students love her.”
The three of us sit at one of the big tables while Karen explains the system here. It sounds pretty much like how things were at Sterling. Class work centers on issues related to pregnancy and parenting, and students work individually for academic credit.
“Did you and Penny talk about waiting a while before you tell other students about the adoption?”
I nod.
“But don’t you think a lot of their babies would be better off if they were adopted?” Penny asks.
“I’m sure some of them would. But these girls are making difficult, life-changing commitments. Maybe they’re afraid to think about adoption possibilities, even for someone else—afraid it would weaken their resolve.”
“That makes no sense,” Penny says, shaking her head sadly.
“I know. That’s how it is, though.”
“I’m glad Autumn’s smart enough to know what’s best for her and her baby,” Penny says.
“I don’t think it’s a matter of smarts—it’s emotions.”
“Whatever it is. I’m glad for it,” Penny says, smiling at me.
I smile back. I feel like things are finally getting better for me, and it’s mostly because of Penny, and how much she wants a baby.
“I’d better be off to impart knowledge to the unkempt masses,” Penny says.
Karen laughs. “You know you love it.”
“Sometimes yes, sometimes no . . . I will pick you up at 1:00, Autumn. You can start riding the school van tomorrow.”
“Okay. Thanks,” I say, waving goodbye.
Karen gives me a folder to keep my work in, and a multiple choice pre-test with fifty questions about pregnancy. Usually I do well on tests, but I think this one is going to be different.
I’m trying to decide if the definition of kegels is: (A) Protective layers of fat that form around the amniotic sac. (B) Exercises to strengthen muscles in the pelvic area. (C) Containers for pregnancy-safe, non-alcoholic beer. I’ve eliminated C and am wavering between A and B when three girls come into the room, one of them with a baby.
Karen introduces us all around and the girl with the baby, Heather, goes through the door that says NURSERY.
“When’s your baby due?” one of the girls asks.
“February 15. How about you?”
“April sixteenth.”
“Mine’s due the end of January,” the other girl says.
“Tiffany, I haven’t had a chance to give Autumn the tour yet. Would you mind?”
“No problem,” Tiffany, the one whose baby is due in January,
says.
“You can finish the test when you get back,” Karen says.
Tiffany drops her backpack on the chair next to mine. I get up and follow her into the nursery. There are five cribs, a refrigerator, a long counter with a sink, storage cabinets, and pictures of babies on every wall.
“That’s Miss Goldfarb—Goldy,” Tiffany says, nodding toward a woman sitting in one of the rockers, talking on a cell phone. She smiles and goes on talking.
“Goldy supervises the nursery. She’s pretty nice unless you do something stupid with one of the babies. Last month this girl left a dirty diaper on the floor and one of the two-year-olds got into it.”
Tiffany makes a face like she’s about to get sick.
“Goldy really went off on that girl—Deena, I think her name was. She was only here for a few days and then she moved away or something.”
On the other side of the room, Heather is standing at a changing table cleaning her baby’s butt.
“That’s Ryan,” Tiffany says. “He’s ten months old. Isn’t he a cutie?”
I’ve never been one of those girls that gets all crazy over babies, but I guess he’s cute enough.
Heather fastens the baby’s diaper, pulls his pants up, and brings him over to where we’re standing. “He didn’t sleep at all last night,” she says. “I think he’s getting another tooth.”
Goldy comes over and introduces herself to me, then turns her attention to the baby.
“Did he have any fever last night?” she asks, feeling his forehead.
“I don’t think so,” Heather says, yawning.
Two more girls with babies come through the door. Tiffany introduces us, then takes me out to the play yard. Next she takes me past the restrooms and vending machines, shows me the lunchroom, and then we go back to the classroom.
“No worry about getting lost on this campus, is there?” Karen says.
I shake my head, smiling, remembering how totally lost I was the whole first week of my freshman year at Hamilton High.
By now there are six more girls in the classroom, all at tables with books and papers out in front of them, but only two of them are working. The others are talking. Karen pulls a chair up next to the talkers and goes through some papers. Soon things are quiet in the classroom.
I finish the pretest and then check it with the answer key. Out of fifty questions, I missed eighteen! Even though I scored next highest in the “Vocabulary for the College Bound” tests we too
k at Hamilton High in September, I don’t know half of the words on this pre-test. Episiotomy. Postpartum. Linea Negra. Fundus. Amniocentesis. God! It’s not like I’m trying to be a gynecologist. I just want to have the baby and get a life back. Why do I need to know all this gross stuff?
Karen brings a stack of books to my table. One deals with pregnancy, one with being a good parent, and the others are for subjects I need to finish, like Government, Economics, and English. I can turn in a review of Ordinary People for English credit, plus do the poetry unit and a daily journal. Like at Sterling, everyone does a daily journal in this class.
Besides the pregnancy/childbirth/parenting classwork, most of the girls spend thirty minutes a day, three times a week, helping out in the nursery. Karen says it’s up to me whether I include the nursery component in my work. She says since I’ll probably raise a child someday later on, the parenting stuff is good to know. But I decide to skip it and use the time for my other requirements.
Penny’s already waiting for me in the parking lot when school’s out. She hands me a Baggie with slices of apple.
“Here. This is good for you . . . How’d things go?”
“Okay,” I say, leaning the seat back and closing my eyes.
She wants to know a lot more than “okay.” Like what’s the title of my English textbook, what exactly will I be doing for Economics, and will we do anything experiential for American Government.
I bite into a slice of apple. It’s cold, and crunchy.
“What do you mean, experiential?” I ask.
“You know. Beyond the books. There’s an election coming up. You could work for a precinct, or participate in a debate, that sort of thing.”
“Hmmm. The only experiential stuff I’ve heard about is for parenting credit if we help with the babies and toddlers in the nursery, but I’m not going to take that elective.”
Penny glances over at me. “Why not?”
“Well . . . it’s not like I’m going to be taking care of a kid. And I could use that time to work on my real credits.”
She laughs. “Maybe I should come take the parenting class, and you could teach my third period hooligans.”
The adoption consultant’s office is in Hamilton Heights, close to Barb and Edie’s. It’s weird, driving past all these familiar places. I haven’t been gone that long, but it seems like another lifetime—a time lived by someone else.
Penny and I take the elevator to the seventh floor of the tallest steel and glass office building in town, and I follow her down the hall to the Adoption Help Network. From the window in the waiting room I can look down to my left and see the intersection where the gravel truck demolished my dad’s Honda, and all the life that was in it.
To the north the San Gabriel Mountains rise above foothill suburbs, outlined against the sky. Giant TV antennas sparkle from the peaks of Mt. Wilson. It’s a clear, crisp day and the view of the mountains is beautiful. But as hard as I try to focus on the mountains, my eyes are drawn back to the site of the deadly accident, my attention drawn back to the “what ifs.” What if we’d talked longer in the parking lot? What if Danni hadn’t shown up and delayed their leaving? What if Dad hadn’t forgotten the escrow papers?
“Autumn?”
I turn away from the window to see Penny’s look of concern.
“Are you okay? You’re not worried about doing this are you?”
It takes a moment to understand what Penny is saying. I push the “what ifs” out of my thoughts.
“I’m not worried,” I say, “just . . . my head was somewhere else.”
A woman in a dark business suit and high heels opens the door to an inner office and invites us in.
“This is Audrey Hollenbeck,” Penny says. “Audrey, this is Autumn.”
Audrey smiles and shakes my hand.
“Nikki should be here any minute,” Penny says.
“That’s okay. We can start on some of the routine paper work for now. We’ll save the gritty details for later.”
Penny and I sit on a big leather couch and Audrey sits across from us in a matching chair. She sets a folder and a stack of forms on the long, glass coffee table that sits between the couch and the two matching chairs.
“Any changes here? Address? Phone numbers?” Audrey asks, taking papers from the folder and sliding them across to Penny.
Penny glances through the information.
“Everything’s the same,” Penny says.
“Okay. That’s the easy part.”
There’s a light knock at the door and Nikki comes in.
“Sorry,” she says, taking a seat next to Penny. “I had to help the substitute get set up for practice.”
“No problem,” Audrey says. “We’re just now getting to the good
stuff.”
Ms. Hollenbeck pulls more papers from the folder and glances through them.
“You two already have most of what you need. Your home study is still valid. Your expectations for ongoing contact . . . have you discussed these items?”
“Only that Autumn definitely doesn’t want to be a mom,” Penny says.
“Autumn, will you want to visit the baby sometimes? Will you want to remain a part of his?—her? life?”
“Her,” I say. “I plan to go away to college in September. I won’t be around much.”
“Where will you be living until you go away to college?”
“Ummm. I’m not sure.”
“She can stay with us until September . . . longer if she wants,” Nikki says, looking at Penny for confirmation.
Penny frowns.
Audrey looks from one to the other.
“Well . . . it’s generally recommended that the birth mother not live with the adoptive family after relinquishing the baby.”
“Why is that?” Nikki asks.
“It’s hard on everyone if birth mother bonds with the baby.”
“We’ll make arrangements for a place for Autumn to stay after the baby’s born,” Penny says. “We’re not just going to forget about her once we have the baby.”
Audrey takes one set of forms and hands it to me. She hands a set of forms to Penny.
“This is just an update of what we already have on file for you and Jean,” she says.
She hands me a packet.
“I’d like you to fill these out carefully. Of course, you should consider how you really want things to go during these next few months, and during labor and delivery. But it’s very important that you have a realistic plan for your life after the baby is born.”
She turns back to Penny and Nikki.
“Let’s all get together again sometime next week . . . Autumn, you’ll be signing the forms to show your intent, they’re not binding. The only forms that mean anything legally will be the ones you sign after the baby is born.”
On the way out, I sneak one last look down at the fatal intersection.
When we get to the parking lot, Nikki says, “Ride with me. Penny got you all to herself on the way over.”
We decide to meet at La Fiesta, a Mexican food restaurant in San Remo. On the way there, Nikki asks, “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Positive,” I say.
“Well, okay. The wheels are in motion.”
At the restaurant Nikki and Penny order margaritas, virgin because they’re driving. They offer a toast to me, the new baby, and their new lives as mommies.
“What shall we name her?” Nikki says.
“How about Virginia, after Virginia Woolf?”
“Oh, that’s awful!” Nikki says. “How about Florence, after Florence Chadwick?”
“Who’s Florence Chadwick?” Penny says.
“You know . . . the first woman to swim the English Channel.”
“No! Not after a swimmer! At least not one named Florence.”
“Better than after a writer who drowned herself,” Nikki says, laughing.
“Well, then, how about Emily, after Emily Dickinson?”
/> “The one who spent her whole life hiding in her house?”
“Nooooo,” Penny says, also laughing. “During her lifetime, she took several short trips to visit relatives.”
“Don’t ever get tied up with an English major,” Nikki says, laughing even harder. “Especially if you want help naming a baby.”
“What do you think about a name, Autumn?” Penny asks.
“I don’t know. It’s your baby,” I say.
“Not bad,” Nikki says. “We could name her “Our Baby,” and call her O.B. for short.”
“Beats Florence,” Penny says.
“I’ve got it!” Nikki says. “A name that has literary resonance, for the English teacher, and is also a tough chick, for the sports fan!”
“What?” Penny and I ask at the same time.
“Nancy! As in Nancy Drew! A great role model for a girl!”
We laugh, but Nikki says she’s serious. Penny seems to be thinking it over, then she gets a big smile.
“I like it. Nancy it is!”
“To Nancy,” Nikki says.
We clink glasses, laughing.
Leaving the restaurant, as I am walking between the two still-laughing mommies, I shove my hand deep into the pocket of my jacket and rub the stone heart between my thumb and index finger. Things are getting better, I think. And I’m part of the solution.
Chapter
20
The forms the adoption consultant gave me include a “health history” with questions like have I ever tested HIV positive, or had tuberculosis, or been committed to a mental institution, or had a whole list of surgeries and on and on. It’s tedious, but easy. Then I get to the “Your adoption plan” packet.
The first question asks if I want the adoptive parents involved during pregnancy. That’s a no-brainer, because they already are.
“Do you want the adoptive parents to be birth coaches?” I skip that for now.
“Do you want the adoptive parents to be in the labor/delivery room?” Skip.
“Do you want to spend time alone with the baby in the hospital?” No.
“Do you want letters and pictures over time? How often? When?” Skip.
No More Sad Goodbyes Page 17