Bridge Daughter

by Jim Nelson

  She’d committed theft before, but nothing on the scale of what she’d stolen from the Vannbergs. Was it their money, though? Or Cheryl’s? What did her father sometimes say? “Possession is nine-tenths of the law”? The eight hundred twenty-three dollars belonged to her now. She would make an excuse to visit Erica across the street, beg for a measly two hundred dollars from her, and then she could flee for a bi-graft. It didn’t matter what her parents decided at the table, Hanna was not going to Susanna Glen.

  She padded barefoot to the kitchen. Pancakes, she decided to cook, with sweet syrup promises and butter to butter them up. Her mother splurged on the sausage links that week at the supermarket. Hanna would fry them up and serve them with the cakes and orange slices.

  Although she’d never thought of herself as a cook, Hanna had discovered a personal satisfaction in her developing kitchen skills. Handy for saving money, she thought. Too expensive to eat out every night when you live in the city, thinking of Maureen. A slight smile, a pep in her walk, face tight and dry from the scrubbing, Hanna entered the kitchen ready for the world.

  Her mother sat at the table wearing her plush red robe. Her hair was not mussed, but not kempt either. A steaming cup of coffee and a jar of powdered creamer were on the table before her.

  Also on the table before her mother, between the coffee and creamer, lay a squared-off stack of cash. Fives and tens and twenties, loose and weathered and flimsy, with a single crisp hundred-dollar bill on top.

  Nineteen

  Hanna peered up at the ambitious brass knockers on the Grimonds’ double doors and wondered if she would ever see them again. She would not miss them, not at all.

  Hanna and her mother had not phoned, so they were unexpected. Erica appeared unsurprised all the same. She asked under her breath if they could wait and padded to the rear of the house in her soft bridge daughter shoes. She returned behind Vivian Grimond.

  “Hanna is off to Susanna Glen tomorrow morning,” Hanna’s mother explained. “She wanted to give some things to Erica. If that’s okay with you.”

  “You took my advice!” Mrs. Grimond said. “Jennifer had such a good experience there, I knew it would be a perfect fit for Hanna too.” She said to Hanna, “Jennifer was my first bridge daughter. We’ll be sending Erica to Susanna Glen when she’s ready.”

  Hanna stepped forward and set the cardboard box on the entryway tile. Mrs. Grimond leaned over to rummage through it. She murmured the contents to herself. “Sweater, cardigan, shirts—oh, this one is cute—t-shirt, jeans—you can use those when you help in the backyard,” she said to Erica. “Sneakers—oh, these might be a little small for you, Erica. We’ll see. Toothpaste?” She looked up at Hanna’s mother, taken aback at the idea that Hanna no longer needed to clean her teeth.

  “Hanna doesn’t like that flavor,” her mother assured Mrs. Grimond. “She didn’t want to throw it away, though.”

  “I see. Well, this is all very generous of you. We’ll put it to good use. Thank you.”

  Mrs. Grimond told Erica to take the box to her bedroom. Diminutive Erica struggled a bit with its girth.

  Then Mrs. Grimond leaned down to Hanna. “Now, you have a good time at Susanna Glen. Cherish every moment. When your finality arrives, you’ll see how blessed you and all bridge daughters really are.” She told Erica to say good-bye, and Erica did so, chin on the top of the box.

  *

  After lunch, Hanna and her mother packed two suitcases full of clothes and shoes and so on. Hanna wondered what would happen to the things she left behind. Of course, she thought, they would save it all for little Hanna as she grew up.

  When her father arrived home from work, he removed his coat and tie and opened a can of beer. He told Hanna to join him at the kitchen table.

  “I want you to tell me where you got that money.” His voice was calm but firm.

  “I asked her three times already,” her mother said.

  With the questions and yelling at the kitchen table that morning, her father didn’t have time to shave. His chin and neck were dark with stubble.

  “What were you going to do, Hanna?” He waited a long while for her answer, drinking patiently. Finally, he heaved a hoppy, carbonated sigh and pushed himself to his feet.

  “We’ll have to lock her in her room tonight,” he said to Hanna’s mother. “We can’t risk it.”

  “You can’t do that,” Hanna said. “What if there’s a fire?”

  Hanna’s father shook his head. He left the kitchen with his back hunched and a hand on his nape, the other carrying his beer. A minute later he was in the backyard, smoking a cigarette in the dwindling dusk light and drinking from the can. Hanna had never seen him smoke before.

  *

  That night they had a silent dinner of delivered Chinese food. Her father chewed aimlessly, drinking his second can of beer with the meal. He carried in from the backyard the chemical, odorous tang of American tobacco.

  “Your father won’t ask this outright, but I will,” her mother said, breaking the wordless evening. “Were you going to use that money for a bi-graft?”

  “I’d rather not talk about this at the table,” her father said.

  “Did Erica tell you about it?” her mother demanded from Hanna.

  “No,” Hanna insisted.

  “Do you know what a bi-graft does to the baby inside you?” her mother said. “Do you know what it makes you? Sickly and addicted to gefyridol.”

  Hanna stared straight ahead, mustering everything she could to avoid her mother’s glare.

  “Did your aunt tell you about bi-grafts?” her mother demanded.

  Hanna involuntarily revealed something, a tic or darting eyes.

  “I should have known,” her mother said. “That bitch—“ In four strides she went from the table to the phone on the table beside the couch.

  In a moment she had Uncle Rick on the line. She vented at him, then demanded Aunt Azami be placed on the line. Hanna’s aunt then got an earful as well. Hanna so wanted Rick and Azami to be her parents, living together in their tiny apartment on Geary Street, Hanna using the couch as a bed. Every night they go out to the bars and meet up with Maureen and eat pizza, and every morning Hanna would greet them with breakfast in bed and fresh flowers in cut glass on the tray. The city would be theirs.

  *

  Hanna’s father stood in the backyard having one more cigarette before bed. Only the red firefly of his cigarette’s cherry was visible through the sliding glass.

  “I don’t have any walking shoes,” Hanna said to her mother. Both suitcases split open like cracked crabs, Hanna rooted through the folded frocks and shirts and socks and toiletries.

  Her mother stood in the bedroom doorway with her hands on her hips watching Hanna’s frantic search. “You have shoes.”

  “These are house shoes,” Hanna said. “We’re going to walk through the woods every day.”

  “Don’t you have an old pair of sneakers?”

  “I gave them to Erica,” Hanna said.

  Her mother checked her petite wristwatch. “Let me call Vivian,” she murmured.

  Mrs. Grimond opened the door herself this time. Stepping out to the cone of porch light, Erica offered Hanna her old sneakers, the ones that had curled at the toes from runs through the dryer after rainy days.

  “Not those,” Hanna said, “the other ones.”

  “Other ones?” Mrs. Grimond said.

  “I didn’t see any others,” Erica said.

  “There was another pair,” Hanna insisted.

  “You should show me,” Erica said.

  With a bit of urgency in their step, Erica led Hanna though through the kitchen’s swinging doors and down the rear hallway of laundry goods and dry dog food.

  In her room, Erica spun around. “What do you really want?”

  “Give me the address. For the bi-graft.”

  Erica, dubious, went to the adjoining bathroom. She opened the bottom door of the vanity cabinetry and crawled on her back under t
he sink, like an auto mechanic checking a clutch line. Hanna had hidden her money under the bathroom hall vanity as well, but she was apparently nowhere near as clever as Erica.

  “Here.” She offered Hanna a small business card. It read Dr. Mark Hemming, Pastor. Printed below it were the address and particulars of the Grimonds’ church and Pastor Hemming’s office phone number.

  “On the back,” Erica prompted.

  Scrawled on the back of the card in the curly-perfect handwriting of a junior high school girl was this:

  Hotel Mavis

  555 Ellis St.

  SF

  “Arch”

  “San Francisco?” Hanna gasped. “I thought it was here in town. Isn’t there one closer?”

  “This is the only one I know about,” Erica said.

  Hanna went to the cardboard box of her old things. Erica had not had time to unpack it, save for a few items on the floor she had removed to get to Hanna’s shoes. Hanna was not lying, there was a second pair of shoes at the bottom of the box. She went through the rolled-up jeans, feeling at the denim tubes until she located one in particular. She unrolled the pair to their full length and reached inside the right leg. She pulled out another rolled-up tube of fabric, a backpack she used for trips to the library.

  Hustling, Hanna stuffed a sweater, socks, and pairs of underwear from the box into the backpack. The toothpaste she supposedly didn’t like the flavor of, she tossed that in the bag as well. She kicked off her soft bridge daughter shoes and tugged on a pair of socks and the sneakers. She pulled a colorful sweater down over her head. It effectively covered her bulging expectation and made the giveaway shape and plainness of her bridge daughter smock look more like a bland school skirt.

  “You better hurry,” Erica said, “they’ll be down here any second now.”

  Hanna slung the backpack on. She went to Erica, uncomfortably close, almost nose-to-nose.

  “Give me the money,” she said.

  “What?” Erica coughed a laugh. “No way.”

  “Give it to me,” she said, “or I tell your mother about it.”

  Erica’s mouth opened in protest. “You promised,” she breathed.

  “I’ll tell her you have the money. I’ll tell her you’re stealing from your church.”

  “You pinkie promised!”

  What would Maureen do? Hanna broke away and charged into the bathroom. The bottom door of the vanity was still open, Erica hadn’t returned the card to its hiding spot yet. Hanna lowered to her knees, eye-to-eye with the plumbing and bathroom cleaners stored beneath the sink, and poked her head in.

  Down the hall, from the kitchen door, Mrs. Grimond called, “Is everything okay down there?”

  Two hands on her back and shoulders dragged her out. Erica stared down on her with a blaze of fury.

  “You’re such a brat,” she muttered. “Always get your way.”

  “You can get more,” Hanna said.

  Erica dropped and crawled on elbows under the vanity. Hanna stumbled out to the bedroom and called to the kitchen, “Still looking!”

  Erica slammed the vanity’s bottom door shut. She held out a wad of cash to Hanna.

  “You pinkie promised,” she whispered.

  Hanna threw her arms around Erica. “Thank you.”

  Then she hurried, out the bedroom and down the hall, away from the kitchen. Mrs. Grimond called out again from the kitchen. Hanna reached a door to the backyard. The weight on her back swung left and right with each push forward, as did the ponderous weight in her belly, but she knew she had to keep pushing, and so she did, pushing out and into the cool quiet night.

  *

  She’d not planned to run under these circumstances, and she’d not planned to run to San Francisco. That night, planning gave way to urgent action. Hanna’s hurried footsteps set the Grimonds’ dog barking when she passed the garage and compelled her to move faster. Out on the street, she gripped her backpack straps and hurried as fast as she could, waddling down the amber-lit sidewalk to the closest intersection.

  She’d done some homework over the past week. She’d assumed the doctor performing the procedure—or whatever profession he might call his own—she assumed he’d be reachable by bus, if she needed one. Now, the Concord train station was distant enough she had to use the bus. The spare change she’d hidden in one of the backpack’s many zippered pockets would get her there.

  At the first intersection she turned the corner. Better to get off her house street and onto another one, out of the sight of her mother. And soon she’d have to worry about her father patrolling the neighborhood in the family car. Erica was probably now telling Mrs. Grimond and her mother that Hanna had run off. She’d fake innocence and point to the raided cardboard box as proof of her lack of complicity. Would Erica tell them of her destination? No, that risked Hanna being caught and blabbing where’d she gotten the money and information. Erica would save her own skin, but she had good reason to hope Hanna would not be caught and squeal.

  Which Hanna would never do. Threatening Erica for the money, it disgusted her. That would be one regret she’d carry a long time. With Cheryl’s money, the morality seemed fuzzier and more theoretical.

  Hanna’s short legs were better at carrying her increased load than even she expected. She worried not so much about the bouncing as she did revealing her pregnancy. Her old plan, now blasted apart, relied on passing herself as an older teenager. She kept that in mind as she hurried onward through the nighttime air.

  She cut through a park, one used by dog walkers to give their pets a chance to perform their business, and reached its other side out of breath and sweaty. She’d hustled four suburban blocks in fifteen minutes. More importantly, she had made her way to a different neighborhood. Her parents would be searching the streets at that moment, calling out to her from the car. They might even be calling the police now. Hanna had to keep moving.

  Like most cities in the Bay Area, Concord did not offer particularly reliable public transportation. Bus routes were sparse and service spotty. At the bus stop on the edge of the park, Hanna stepped out on the quiet road and peered down its length. No buses in sight.

  Over the weekend, when she was cleaning the bathrooms, Hanna had pocketed three items from the small wicker basket on her parents’ vanity: a tube of lipstick, a cap of violet eyeliner, and a folding hand mirror. The basket was overflowing with old make-up, colors her mother no longer used, and the items were not missed. Under the streetlight she rapidly applied the cosmetics, the first time she’d ever worn make-up. She wished she’d taken a pair of clip-on earrings too, but her mother would have noticed.

  She kept walking, every two blocks stopping to look down the street for an approaching bus. The extended walking made her back sore, especially the pinprick knots left from her recent injections. At the fourth stop she saw the bus headlights, big and bright, with the backlit destination sign across the top of the carriage. She dug out change from the backpack pocket. She had exact fare ready when she stepped up onto the bus.

  “Kind of late, isn’t it?” the driver said to her.

  “I’m on the colors committee,” she said, mimicking a phrase she’d heard high school students say in one of the television dramas she followed. “We were working late.”

  The driver looked her up and down. Hanna had tugged the loose, baggy sweater out away from her belly, hoping she presented as a frumpy high school student. As is the wont of girls her age, she’d applied too much makeup, but not so much to appear like a little girl who’d gotten into her mother’s cosmetic kit one rainy afternoon.

  The driver closed the front door. The bus lurched forward.

  Public transportation was not only poor in most Bay Area cities, it was rarely used. Hanna sat in the cold bench seat shivering, happy she had the bus to herself.

  Twenty

  Hanna stepped down from a bus onto Geary Street for the second time in ten weeks. The driver indicated she should walk south two blocks to Ellis Street. She thanked
him from the sidewalk. The doors closed and the bus eased forward into traffic.

  It was now approaching 11:30 at night. A strong temptation took hold to go straight to Uncle Rick and Aunt Azami’s apartment. They could give her a place to sleep until morning, when she could set out and find the Hotel Mavis. She knew she risked much going to them. Her mother would have phoned Uncle Rick as soon as it was obvious she was no longer in the neighborhood. Even if Uncle Rick and Aunt Azami sympathized with Hanna’s decision, Hanna couldn’t imagine Uncle Rick going against the wishes of his own sister.

  On the train ride in the tube beneath the bay waters, she’d counted Erica’s money using her body to shield her activity from the other passengers. It amounted to a little over four hundred dollars. The total was far below what the doctor was expecting for the procedure. She would have to beg for his consideration.

  Unless she could trust Aunt Azami. What would Maureen do? Hanna tightened her grip on her backpack’s straps and set off down Geary Street, walking with purpose.

  *

  The bar was not as busy as the first time she’d visited. A young man sat at the far end drinking a beer and watching the television, a late-night John Wayne western. A man and woman sat at the middle of the curved bar, closest to the entrance, drinking from stemware. All three were smoking, causing Hanna to cough when she stepped inside. Aunt Azami was behind the bar washing glasses.

  “Oh, Hanna,” She flicked excess water from her hands and picked up a rag. “You shouldn’t be here.”

  Hanna approached the bar. She stood on the brass foot rail to elevate herself to Azami’s height.