No One Is Coming to Save Us

by Stephanie Powell Watts

  Jay put the car into drive and they pulled away from the parking lot onto the road to the house. “Your baby is with me.” Jay stared at Ava. “Your baby is with me.”

  “Stop it,” Ava said. “Don’t say that again. Don’t ever say that again, Jay. I swear to God. Don’t say it.”

  “I’m telling you what I believe. You get to decide, Ava. Don’t you get that? You get to decide about your life. Maybe our mothers didn’t, but we do.”

  Ava’s clothes were wet but she knew for sure that blood trickled out of her, from the deepest part of her body, running in narrow rivulets down her legs, mixing with the dirty reservoir water on her skin. She could sleep for days, maybe a week. “You keep thinking you get a say, but you never really do,” Ava said.

  “All I know is I’ve carried a picture of you for years in here.” Jay pointed to his chest. “I’ve been through so many things, but the picture is the same. You understand. I know you do, or we wouldn’t be here together.”

  “We are confused,” Ava said.

  “Does it really matter? Let’s just be confused.”

  “It matters to me,” Ava said.

  “I have felt you. You asked me if I felt my mother. She’s there. She’ll always be there, but so are you. In everything.”

  What Ava thought was that when they were young Jay had been a dying, sad boy, new to town, mother and fatherless, a swirling cloud of the irresistible rumor of tragedy hovering all around him. She had felt her own longing in his, his desperation on a frequency she could hear. When her brother died and her mother moved to another planet and she was abandoned to look over her own shoulder, waiting for Devon to march up the road sweaty and alive, JJ had been there. She would never forget that. They were bound together. What she wanted to say to him was, “I love you. I love you so much. Please be my friend. Please don’t leave me.” What she managed to say was “I can’t do this.” Ava felt a loosening, a washing over her.

  “You just don’t know it yet, Ava.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” Ava said.

  “You just don’t know, Ava.”

  “I won’t hurt you, Jay.”

  Jay said, “You could try. Don’t you think? Do you think you could?” What Jay thought was that if Ava didn’t want him he’d have an empty room of a life that he could not fill.

  I am not going to have a baby. How everything can go from fine to gone, I will never understand. Before I even got up from bed this morning I started bleeding. I’ve read enough of your stories to know many of you have felt what I felt. I have never admitted that to anyone, not even to myself, but I believe now. In a way it’s a relief to finally, really know. In all this time I always figured that some way I would have a child. Some way, somehow. I didn’t consider being a woman without a baby. I’ve been too stubborn to admit that I was wrong after all. Some of you know what I mean. I am worn-out—no much more than that. I AM DONE. You can’t imagine the relief just typing that. I am sorry that I wasn’t more sympathetic to you who are in pain. To you who are in pain, I send out my feeling to you. I am transmitting to you. I want peace for you. I want peace too. If I’ve learned nothing else it is I haven’t felt enough in my life or stopped to understand anyone enough.

  * * *

  I went to the reservoir and got soaked. When I got home I took off all my clothes, my shoes, even my underwear and put them all in the trash. I was numb, almost serene, if you can believe that. The last time this happened a nurse said to me, “Was this not a pregnancy that you wanted?” Can you believe that? “Was this not a pregnancy you wanted?” I didn’t look at her, didn’t even bother answering. But I want to tell all of you. I wanted my baby more than I’ve ever wanted anything.

  * * *

  I wanted to write to you all to thank you. I’ve taken such comfort in all your stories and the ways you celebrate the brief bright lights of your pregnancies, the ferocity of your love for the children that miraculously find their way to your lives. I am not one of you anymore. At least not after today.

  * * *

  Thank you, thank you for your help. I have loved reading your messages and your journeys. I hope you all live well. I really do. I thought my baby was on the road to me. I thought so many times that I could see her from a distance and she was waving saying “hang on.” I believed it for years. I knew it to be true. SHE. IS. NEVER. COMING. If there is a god who is merciful she will be cared for and loved until I can see her face-to-face. AVA

  35

  The delicate little thing at the door had to be Charlotte. A pretty girl, tiny, all flat and straight like a grown girl, Sylvia thought. Behind her was a smaller version of herself, Marcus’s daughter on the floor just in sight behind her mother.

  “Hello, can I help you?” Charlotte asked, her face unmasked surprise.

  “Hello, I’m sorry to bother you. I’m Sylvia Ross. You don’t know me, honey, but I know Marcus.” How foolish it was to come to this girl’s house. She might have a man moved in here or already be moved on and finished with the Marcus chapters of her life. Anything! But she’d felt sick about the way she’d treated Marcus. He needed her, really needed her, and she couldn’t help him. It wasn’t enough but what would be?

  Charlotte glanced back at her daughter, hesitated before she spoke again. It was clear she wasn’t sure what to do next. “Do you want to come in?”

  “Thank, you, thank you,” Sylvia said as she stepped into the house. She smoothed her long shirt down over her skirt. She felt large and ungainly next to Charlotte, like she was taking up too much room the way she did around small women. “She must be your baby. I have a daughter too. Of course she’d old now, almost forty, but I remember those doll days. The number of baby dolls we had in the house back then.” Sylvia chuckled politely, tried to fill up the dead air in the room.

  The little girl avoided Sylvia’s face and looked directly at her mother for cues. “Hello, honey. How are you?” Sylvia said to the child.

  The girl was bewildered by small talk, as children are. “I brought this for your daughter,” Sylvia said as she handed the bag to Charlotte. She was talking too much, but she couldn’t stop herself. “It’s not much. I just thought she might like crayons and I see that Dora everywhere I look.”

  Charlotte took the bag and glanced quickly inside, then handed the bag with crayons and a coloring book to her child. The girl had not been prompted to thank Sylvia. She felt her hand shake. Why she couldn’t calm down, she had no idea. “Did I say that I’m Sylvia?”

  “I’m Charlotte, but it seems like you know that. How do you know Marcus?” Charlotte had on a pair of the tiny shorts young girls wear now like panties in public, shorts they keep digging at to keep from bunching into uncomfortable places. Sylvia was hardly ever that undressed in her bedroom, she thought.

  “He’s been calling me from the jail,” Sylvia whispered. Just in case the child had not been told about her daddy or was fortunate enough not to know anything about prison. She hoped she didn’t look as ridiculous to Charlotte as she felt. What did she look like to this woman? A rival? Surely not. But certainly a meddler in another grown woman’s business.

  “Is she your daughter?”

  “She’s mine. With Marcus. Her name is Dena, but you probably already know that too.”

  “She looks like you.”

  “I used to look like her.”

  Sylvia looked closely at Charlotte again. She was all of twenty-five or -six at the oldest. The little girl would be lucky to wear her mother’s face in a few years.

  “Are you Marcus’s aunt or something?”

  “No. I don’t know him, except over the phone.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Marcus was hoping you were okay. Both of you,” Sylvia said and glanced at the little girl.

  “We’re fine.” Charlotte turned and spoke to her daughter. “Stay in here, baby, Mama’s going outside to talk to this lady.”

  Dena looked up from her crayons for a second and seeing nothing
interesting kept coloring. “Okay, Mama.”

  Sylvia followed Charlotte outside. Years ago she had wanted to come into some of these houses, just to look around. A few times Don convinced her to bring the children trick-or-treating in this neighborhood where the factory line bosses and supervisors gave out chocolate bars and not just peppermints from the Christmas before or homemade cookies or worst of all, apples. Charlotte flopped against her front door and sighed hard.

  “You want water? That’s all we’ve got other than juice boxes.”

  “No, thank you. I’m fine.”

  “So let me get this straight. You know Marcus from the telephone? Is that right? You’re not even kin to him?”

  “That’s right. We’ve been talking a little while. He’s a sweet boy.”

  “That is the craziest thing I ever heard. Don’t you think so? You must be a nice lady,” Charlotte said, but it was clear from her face that she was thinking Sylvia was at best a strange lady. “But let me go ahead and tell you. I’m done with Marcus. I warned him. I told him that anything that looks too easy is a trap. I told him that he was going to regret hanging around with those ignorant friends he loved so much. See where that got him.”

  “Charlotte, people can do better.”

  “I promised him when he started running drugs. Slinging. That’s what they called it. Like he’s in the wild west. I told him.”

  “I know this is not my business. But if I was locked up I’d want somebody to help me,” Sylvia said with as much gentleness as she could.

  “I did try to help him. More than anybody knows. A whole lot more than I should have. You don’t know anything about me. I’m not mean. None of this is easy for me.”

  “Charlotte, you can’t always have a choice to lose somebody. You understand what I mean? Think about that child in there. She will want her daddy.”

  “Oh she will, you think so?” Charlotte mocked. Sylvia was surprised at her defiance. How the conversation had gotten away from her she couldn’t say.

  “She’ll always want him either way, Sylvia.”

  “I’ll tell him you’ll wait for him. I’ll do that. It’s not going to hurt anything.”

  “Tell him what you want. I can’t stop you.”

  “You don’t throw people away, Charlotte. You keep on trying.”

  “Who got thrown away? You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. I know he’s got some good points. I know that better than anybody. But he’s done with us. I’m done with him.”

  “He can go to court. He can see his child. You can’t stop that.”

  “Who are you anyway? Don’t come here threatening me.”

  “I didn’t mean to threaten you, honey. I’m sorry. I’m not myself these days.”

  “You know what? Let him go to court. I’d love to see that. Because, that will be the most contact we’ll ever have with him. And let me tell you another thing, he’ll never get to that courthouse if he lives to be two hundred. He’ll still be talking about it when our baby is grown and gone. I know him.”

  “I know you do.”

  Charlotte poked her finger into her own chest. “So don’t tell me. I know. I live with all this.”

  “People can change, honey.”

  “Look, maybe you’re a nice woman. I don’t know. But I need you to stay away from here. Just please don’t come back. This is not doing either one of us any good and I really don’t feel like cussing you out. You probably don’t mean any harm. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, okay?”

  “I’ve been talking to him. He knows what he did.”

  “I really don’t want to hurt you, but I’ve got to tell you that if you come back I’m not going to be nice.”

  “You can be wrong. I’ve been wrong. Maybe you are this time. Could you go to see him one Sunday? Could you do that?”

  “You might not believe this but I am hoping he gets out and has a wonderful life. I really am. There’s not a thing in the world that I would want more, except for my child.”

  Sylvia saw in the young woman’s face that she was decided. Sylvia was done too, failed and defeated and done. She wasn’t sure if she had enough energy to even get back to her car. The fact that she had done more than could be expected was just beside the point.

  The woman looked at Sylvia, shook her head in disbelief. “You don’t get it. But you know what? You’re not supposed to.” Charlotte looked her up and down, took in her ugly outfit, the bulges of fat in her middle she tried valiantly to conceal. “Mind your business.” Charlotte opened the door to her house and disappeared behind it. The soft click of the closing front door sadder than if she’d slammed it in Sylvia’s face.

  36

  After the parking lot party at Simmy’s that the grandparents (old but still walking under their own power) attended and sat like royalty in high-backed chairs; in the parking lot; after the editorials in the town paper, thank-you after thank-you from generations of customers; after 1952 week when the child’s Simmy burger was fifty-two cents; Simmy’s finally, and for all time, closed its doors. The parking lot was full to overflowing, some of us stood in the McDonald’s lot across the street to get a glimpse of it all, full of nostalgic well-wishers, family and friends, as a man in a bucket crane unscrewed, unlatched, removed the big sign from the pole. A grandson had already claimed the sign to decorate his barn, to man-scape his place, he’d said in the booming microphone. We all laughed. As the strapped sign floated down to the awaiting flatbed truck, the crowd stood without speaking, hardly moving, their eyes locked on the sign’s progress. We cheered with real emotion as the sign reached the bed of the truck without a scratch. Something had worked out exactly how it was supposed to. We would have stories to tell. Even a few black faces dotted the crowd. We are all in this together after all. This is how an era ends, in one festive, happy moment. A cardboard CLOSED sign won’t hang in the restaurant window long. In a few months, a group of women will open a consignment store and sell used (but still good) children’s clothes and toys and start the ever revolving attempts to make a go of a business in the building. In a few years, brothers will even try a diner again, fifties style with giant hamburgers running over with homemade coleslaw. Carolina style, for sure, but it won’t take. But all that is to come. Now the parking lot is cleared except for a broken-down Corolla no one has claimed. We drive through town, glance over at the empty building, look for the sign we think we remember seeing our whole lives. We are missing something, we think. We check our purses, our pockets, move the car seat forward then backward to look under the seat. Sometimes the lost can find the strangest places to hide (now where is it? we just had it); but try as we will we won’t find it. We drive on with the sure-feeling there is something important that we have forgotten.

  37

  “Good god, Sylvia,” Henry said as he popped up from the couch, quick moving like a little boy with his hand in the cookie jar. “What are you doing here?”

  “Don’t ask me nothing, you hear me?”

  “I didn’t think nobody would be here,” Henry began, not sure what else to say.

  “That’s right you didn’t think. Like I’m surprised about that.”

  “You stay, Sylvia. Sorry, sorry.” Henry moved toward the front door. “I’m leaving right now.” Henry brushed off his clothes like he could brush away a week of sleeping on the floor with a few quick motions.

  “Where have you been? You look terrible, just terrible.”

  “I probably do. I know.”

  “Where are you staying? With your girlfriend?”

  Henry’s eyes watered. He couldn’t stand it if Sylvia berated him. He had not wanted to do or be what she expected from him. “No, ma’am. No. I stayed with daddy.”

  “And in the car from the looks of it.” Sylvia turned off the television and stood in front of the screen. She would get his full attention one way or the other. “I can’t even believe you, Henry.”

  Henry stretched his arms over his head, pretended to yawn so Sylvia
would not notice his tears. “I’ve got to get out of here.”

  “Have you talked to Ava?”

  “She won’t talk to me, Sylvia.”

  “That boy is yours isn’t he?”

  Henry checked his pockets and lowered his head. He found nothing.

  “What are you looking for? You’re not going to find it there. Are you going to answer or not?”

  “Did you see him? Did they come here?” Henry said. “I didn’t mean for that to happen, Sylvia. I swear to god. I didn’t want to hurt you or Ava.”

  “That’s low-down. You know it. I don’t have to tell you.” Sylvia turned to leave the room. “Y’all children are going to kill me.”

  Henry heard the sloppy sound of the refrigerator closing and Sylvia banging around through the cabinets. He had to pass her to get out of the house. His instinct was to slink out the back door. Henry followed her to the kitchen.

  “I knew I should have stopped at McDonald’s,” Sylvia said as she banged open cabinet doors.

  “There’s nothing in there, Sylvia. I checked. Ava’s trying again,” he said. Sylvia looked up at Henry too quickly, confirming his suspicions.

  “Did she tell you that?” Sylvia asked.

  “She didn’t have to say, I can tell.”

  “Well that’s her business, and if you think I’m going to talk to you like your pitiful self matters then you don’t know me very well,” Sylvia said. She searched through the cabinets like a drug addict for that sleeve of saltines she’d started. If she could find something maybe she wouldn’t throw a heavy pot at Henry’s head. The mess of her children’s lives all originated with her. If she’d been a better example, if she’d had more respect for herself, if she’d done more, maybe Ava would think more of her life than to be tied to wounded Henry. Children can’t see you vulnerable for too long or they tend to never believe anything you say. Sylvia had loved to tell her children stories about their lives in her body. She had meant to make them strong. Let them know that they had been wanted, even if the world declared its indifference or hostility to their presence. She insisted to them that they had been wanted. She shouldn’t have stopped there. There was so much more she should have done. “Talk to her about what y’all are going to do. Be a man and do the right thing.”