Baby Help

by Marilyn Reynolds

  “What a sweet girl,” the cashier says to Cheyenne as I fumble for my money.

  “I have a great-granddaughter just about your size,” she says.

  Cheyenne strains to reach the jello.

  “Yo-yo!” Cheyenne says, reaching further.

  “She’s precious,” the woman says to me. “How old is she?”

  “She turned two last month.”

  “Na-na,” Cheyenne says, pointing at the banana.

  The cashier and I both laugh.

  “Enjoy these years with her,” she says. “They grow up so fast.”

  It’s what old people always say. I do enjoy Cheyenne, but life seems so complicated at times, and difficult. I wonder how it would be if this woman were my grandmother, and Cheyenne’s great-grandmother. Could we live with her for a while? I never knew either of my grandmothers.

  Whenever I asked about them all my mom would say was “Our family’s not like one of those TV families. You’re better off not knowing them.” If I tried to ask more, or to ask about my father, she’d say, “Case closed.”

  One thing I will never, ever say to Cheyenne is “Case closed.” Any question she ever asks me, I’ll answer the best I can.

  I balance my tray with one hand and guide Cheyenne’s high chair with the other. I get a glass of water and two packs of crackers for me. Back at our table, I put the tray out of Cheyenne’s reach and offer her a spoonful of jello.

  “Baby help!” she demands.

  I put two little squares of jello on a small plate and hand Cheyenne a spoon. She grabs a square, mushes it down on the spoon, and eats the whole thing in one bite. She laughs, proud of herself.

  The red squares, smooth and clear, are like the translucent red pieces of glass I once saw in a stained glass window. I take a bite and let it melt sweetly in my mouth, then eat a cracker.

  “More!” Cheyenne demands.

  “What do you say?” I ask.

  “More!” she repeats, louder.

  “Shhh,” I say, noticing the gray heads turning our way from the table across the aisle from us.

  “Say please,” I remind her.

  “More, peas!” she says.

  I put two more squares on Cheyenne’s plate and put a straw in the milk carton for her. I notice a woman over near the door, scanning the room. She is wearing baggy jeans and a sweatshirt with a teddy bear on the front. Her long, dark hair is held back with a large, silver barrette. She doesn’t look like she belongs with the gray haired, polyester pantsuit crowd that eats at Maxwell’s. She walks over to our table.

  “Melissa?” she says.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Vicki,” she says, extending her hand.

  Her handshake is strong and reassuring, like she’s someone who knows what she’s doing.

  “Seen anyone you know?”

  I shake my head.

  “Feel safe here?”

  “Yes,” I say, putting more jello on Cheyenne’s plate.

  “Good. I’d like a bite to eat before we head out.”

  Vicki checks out the food on the table.

  “Aren’t you eating?” she asks.

  “I’m not hungry,” I say, embarrassed to admit I don’t have enough money.

  “Well, get hungry,” Vicki says. “We’ve got a long ride ahead of us.”

  Vicki looks long at Cheyenne.

  “Hi, Cutie,” she says.

  To me she says, “It’s good you’re getting away while she’s still a happy girl.”

  I nod.

  Vicki slides a ten-dollar bill across the table to me.

  “Get me some of that spaghetti with garlic bread, and a green salad. And get yourself something to eat, too. Does the baby need more?”

  “I’ll get something she likes. We can share. Mommy’ll be right back,” I tell Cheyenne.

  Vicki holds the milk carton for Cheyenne, who takes a big swallow and lets some of the milk run down her chin. I pick up a napkin and start wiping up, but Vicki waves me away.

  “Get our food. I can handle this,” she smiles.

  When I return with Vicki’s spaghetti and my meatloaf, Chey­enne is almost finished with her jello. I hand Vicki her change, then sit back down. I force myself not to shovel the meatloaf in like some kind of two-legged pig. Not that I’m on the road to starvation or anything. It’s just that I was so upset last night, and still this morning, that I forgot to eat.

  I put a few small pieces of meat on Cheyenne’s plate. She eats those and asks for more. She really likes the meatloaf, too. Maybe someday we can get our own apartment, and she and I can make meatloaf together, and then, when she grows up, she’ll have a favorite meal that she remembers me by. Maybe.

  “Dessert?” Vicki asks as she eats the last of her spaghetti and bread.

  “No, thanks,” I say, getting the baby wipes from Cheyenne’s backpack and wiping her face, hands, and the high chair tray. We go outside, I lay Cheyenne out on the bench and change her diaper. Vicki takes the wet diaper to the trash, and Cheyenne and I follow her to the parking lot.

  “I couldn’t take Cheyenne’s carseat,” I say, as Vicki opens the door to her car.

  “Yep,” Vicki says. “We always carry carseats. That’s a real giveaway, if you’re trying to leave home without anyone know­ing—oh, yeah, I’m going for a little walk. I’ll just carry the carseat with me,” Vicki laughs. Then she turns serious. “We all have to leave a lot behind. Some good. Some bad.”

  Cheyenne sleeps the whole hour and a half it takes to get from Hamilton Heights to the place in the desert.

  “It’s the safest thing we can do—get people far away from home,” Vicki says. “You’ll have seventy-two hours in the cen­ter, getting settled, arranging the details, then you’ll get enrolled at Desert Dunes High School.”

  I guess I wasn’t thinking about how far away I’d be. Or all the people I won’t be seeing anymore. I’m sorry I didn’t get to say good-bye to Leticia, or to thank Ms. Woods. At least I got to tell Bergie what I was doing.

  At Hamilton High, I was finally beginning to feel like I be­longed. Then suddenly I have to leave, just like the old days when the Santa Anita meet would be finished and we’d head up north for the next season. Keep moving. Story of my life. Will that be the story of Cheyenne’s life, too? I want something dif­ferent for her, but I’m not sure how to get it. I thought I’d get it with Rudy, but now . . .

  Thinking about Rudy gives me an empty, aching feeling. I look out the window, at the dry, sandy landscape, with those funny looking three-pronged cactus things sticking up all over. I’ll bet there are snakes out there, and lizards. I don’t know if I’m going to like this or not.

  “We’ll be there in another fifteen minutes or so,” Vicki says. “What do you think of our big town here?”

  There is a convenience store with a filling station, a deli, a post office, a drugstore, and a church.

  “Desert Dunes,” Vicki says. “Palm Springs is only about twenty miles from here. That’s where the fancy people go. You ever been there?”

  “No . . . How far are we from Las Vegas?”

  “I’m not sure. Probably about four hours if we drove the speed limit, which no one does.”

  “Rudy and I were supposed to go to Las Vegas next week,” I say.

  Vicki glances over at me, then back at the road.

  “To get married,” I explain. “We were going to get married.”

  “You’re smart to leave before you get caught in any legal entanglements. It’s easier,” Vicki says.

  I think of Melissa Whitman, how the name looks prettier than Melissa Fisher, and how it’s not a bad luck thirteen letter name like the one I was born with. I hope I’m doing the right thing. About this time, back in Hamilton Heights, I’d be getting Chey­enne from the Infant Care Center. We’d go home and play for awhile, just the two of us, before anyone else got there. Maybe I’d do some homework. For sure I’d clean up Irma’s dirty dishes and straighten up the house. Then I’d probably sta
rt something for dinner.

  Tonight would be a good night. We hardly ever have two bad nights in a row. Rudy might bring a little present home for each of us, and we’d take Cheyenne for a walk in her stroller, and talk about our trip to Las Vegas. That’s how it would be in my old life with Rudy. But I’m not in that life now.

  “This is it!” Vicki says, pulling into the driveway of a yel­low stucco house.

  The house sits low and flat, with a rock roof and a cement block wall around the backyard. The front yard is sand, with a few cactus kinds of shrubs and a scraggly palm tree. The air is hot and dry—much hotter than I’m used to on a March after­noon. I hear the voices of children from the other side of the block wall.

  Vicki picks up the two backpacks while I gently ease my sleeping daughter from the carseat.

  “In here,” Vicki whispers, pointing to a room off the hallway.

  There is a crib, a dresser with a mirror over it, and a single

  bed. Vicki puts our things on the floor next to the bed.

  “Your home for six weeks,” she tells me.

  It’s not really home, though. The closest I ever came to home was Rudy and Irma’s, and I left that. Maybe this is all a big mistake.

  I hold Cheyenne close for a minute, hoping she will wake up, but she doesn’t. I lay her gently into the crib and follow Vicki out of the room and into what might have been a dining room but now is an office with a computer, fax machine, copier, and papers strewn everywhere.

  A very large woman, thirtyish, with olive skin and gray-green eyes, takes a stack of papers from a chair and motions me to sit down.

  “Carla Martino,” she says, extending her hand.

  “Melissa Fisher,” I respond.

  “Vicki will listen for your little one while we take care of business here,” Carla says.

  Vicki picks up a huge stack of papers and an alphabetical organizer and takes them into the living room.

  “Everyone here has work responsibilities,” Carla says. “You will, too, after your first three days.”

  “I don’t mind work,” I say.

  Carla swivels her chair away from the desk and sits facing me.

  “Before we get started on this paper work, tell me a little bit about yourself. Why did you decide to come to us?”

  I realize I’ve never even said the words, “Rudy hits me.” His mother knew, because she saw it, but we never talked about it except in some hidden way, like when she’d say if I was smart I’d learn to keep my mouth shut. Bergie guessed, because she’s the kind of person who notices things, but even when I told her I was coming to the shelter I just talked around things, saying I had to get away, saying I needed a safe place for me and Chey­enne.

  “Melissa? Why did you decide to come to us?” Carla repeats.

  Her voice is low and gentle, somehow inviting. I take a deep breath.

  “Sometimes Rudy hits me,” I say.

  “And how long has this been going on?”

  “Not very much,” I tell her.

  “No, I mean from the first time he hit you—how long?”

  I count back and am shocked by my own answer.

  “Almost three years,” I say. “But really, it doesn’t happen very often.”

  She looks closely at the bruise on my face. “Once is very often,” she says. “How about the baby? He ever hit her?”

  “That’s what got me so scared,” I say.

  I tell Carla about how Rudy grabbed Cheyenne out of her crib last night and then slammed her back into it—how fright­ened she’d been, and withdrawn for a while. And I’m angry all over again. How could anyone be mean to a helpless baby? Her own father?

  “I don’t love him anymore,” I tell Carla. Then the tears start and I can’t stop them.

  “He can’t love us if he treats us like that,” I say, sobbing.

  Carla hands me a tissue.

  “You’re right, Melissa. That’s not love.”

  After I’ve used up about half a box of tissue, Carla asks, “Do you feel like starting the paper work now?”

  “Sure,” I say.

  “Do you have your birth certificates?”

  I go into the bedroom where Cheyenne is still sleeping soundly. I can’t believe how long she’s sleeping. First in the car and now here. She was pretty restless last night though, after Rudy had scared her so. Maybe she’s extra tired today.

  I get my backpack, take it back to the office and hand Carla the file with our papers. She makes copies of everything and hands them back to me.

  “I don’t see a court order for your emancipation here,” Carla says.

  “Emancipation?”

  “Yes. In order for you to stay in the shelter you either have to be an adult, or have a court order that says you’re an emanci­pated minor.”

  “I’m almost an adult,” I say. “I’ll be eighteen next week.”

  “Do you have somewhere else to stay until your birthday?”

  “Not really,” I say.

  What if they don’t let me stay? I never even thought of that. In Peer Counseling, and talking with Vicki earlier, no one said anything about emancipation.

  “You married? If you’re married you’re considered emancipated.”

  “No. We were going to get married, but we didn’t do it yet.”

  Carla looks at me intently.

  “Legally, we can’t give you shelter under these conditions,” she says.

  “I don’t want to go back,” I say, imagining the scene if I show up at Rudy’s sometime around midnight.

  “You shouldn’t have to go back,” Carla says. “I’m just tell­ing you the bind we’re in.”

  “It’s only for a few days, then I’ll be an official adult,” I say.

  “I know. But we’ve got to do everything by the book. There are people—angry husbands, people in the community who think we’re bringing down their property values—who would love to have an excuse to shut us down. Harboring a minor with­out permission would give them the power to close our doors.”

  In the background I hear Cheyenne cry out. I rush to pick her up. She is standing in the crib, arms out, her first cry now a full fledged scream.

  “Mommy! Mommy!”

  I pick her up and hold her close, feeling her heart beat fast against my chest. She seems panicked, maybe from waking up in a strange place. I walk with her through the living room and back to the office.

  “It’s okay,” I tell her, swaying back and forth. “It’s okay,” though within me it feels as if nothing is okay, or is going to be okay, ever. Carla is on the phone, but she turns and flashes a big, white-toothed smile at me as she sets the receiver back in place.

  “Here’s the deal,” Carla says. “All we have to do is get your parent or guardian to sign a permission form stating that you can stay here and there’s no problem. What do you think?”

  I am suddenly flooded with relief.

  “My mom doesn’t care if I stay here,” I say. “She was glad when I moved out to stay with Rudy.”

  “Would she sign a paper saying it’s okay for you to be here?”

  “For sure,” I say.

  “Well then, all we have to do is fax this form to her, have her sign it and fax it back.”

  “Well . . . first we have to find her,” I say.

  Carla’s smile fades and my anxiety comes back.

  “She moves around a lot,” I explain.

  When I talked to her last month she was staying over by the airport, working Hollywood Park. But I’m sure that meet’s over.

  “Do you have a newspaper—sports section?” I ask.

  Carla looks puzzled but digs around under papers and fast-food containers and comes up with the sports page. I bounce Cheyenne on my left hip and thumb awkwardly through the paper. I used to have the sequence memorized—Del Mar is always summertime, I remember that because Sean and I would spend all day at the beach, swimming, sometimes getting into a volleyball game. But then what? September, we started school up
north. But where were we in the spring?

  “Santa Anita,” I say, finding the horse racing section of the Times.

  “This is a strange time to be thinking of betting a horse,” Carla says.

  I laugh. “No, that’s where my mom is working now. If I hurry I can probably get a message to her before she leaves.”

  “Well, hurry then,” Carla says, handing me the phone.

  Carla and Vicki entertain Cheyenne with a jack-in-the-box and a toy top that whistles. Soon Cheyenne is squealing with delight.

  I leave a message for my mom, saying it is urgent that she call me back as soon as possible. I’ve never used the word ur­gent with her before. I guess it works because within a half hour she calls.

  “No problem,” she says, when I tell her I need permission to stay in a shelter.

  “How’s the baby?” she asks. She doesn’t ask how I am, or why we need to be in a shelter.

  “Cheyenne’s fine. You wouldn’t recognize her, she’s grown so much.”

  There is a pause, then my mom says, “No, I don’t suppose I would. What was she the last time I saw her? Eighteen months?”

  “Fourteen months. She’s two now.”

  “Well, I’ll bet she’s changed. Let me give you my phone num­ber, maybe we can get together in a week or two.”

  I write the phone number down, doubting that anything will come of it.

  Carla faxes a form to Santa Anita. My mother signs and faxes it back.

  As it comes off the machine, Carla wipes her forehead in a gesture of relief.

  “For a while there I was afraid we couldn’t let you stay,” she says. “It’s a good thing your mom was so cooperative.”

  “My mom’s happy for me to stay wherever, as long as it doesn’t put her out.”

  “Well, this time it worked to your advantage.”

  That’s true. Cheyenne and I have a place to stay, officially, for six weeks. Six weeks. Three changes of clothes each. One dollar and eighty-nine cents. That’s what I have to show for my almost eighteen years of life. That and Cheyenne.

  I sit in a worn vinyl chair, across from Carla’s desk, filling out forms attached to a clipboard. I answer question after ques­tion about my past life and my present situation. Cheyenne, still fascinated by the top and working to make it spin, sits on the floor beside me.