Dear Carolina

by Kristy W Harvey

  I knocked real loud and Momma hollered, “I’m coming, I’m coming.”

  The door flew open, and there she was in all her glory. Cigarette balancing on her lip, ratty nightgown still on, curlers in the gray hair stained yellow in spots from the smoke cloud she lived in. She stood real still, like she seen a ghost. We hadn’t seen hide nor hair of each other in a year. I was hoping she was getting all excited that she was a grandma. But that rough, crackling old voice came out.

  “What in the hell have you done now?”

  She didn’t have to say nothing else. I knew then she were soaking in vodka like a pickle in vinegar. I walked away so you wouldn’t have to hear her, but she kept on yelling. “How the hell you expect to take care of a baby when you cain’t even stay sober? I know you’re not coming ’round here wanting my help after all the shit you put me through.”

  I whispered down at you, “Don’t you worry, baby. I’ll happily stand in line for welfare ’fore I’ll let you be raised by my momma.” That was it too. There weren’t no way I was taking care a’ that woman in her old age. They could just dump her right on in the home.

  My hands, they was shaking like a leaf on a tree on that steering wheel, my head pounding like I’s standing too close to the speaker down at the Dugout. It was like my whole body was switching, the insides trying to get out, banging on my skin. “Just one drink!” they was begging. “A few drinks and we could solve all them problems.”

  This trailer park was the ocean. And here I was again, caught in the undertow.

  Just like when you’re plantin’ seeds, when you’re raisin’ a youngen, there are just some things that ain’t all right to do. Like, I knew good and dang well there weren’t no way I’d ever leave you in the car by yourself. But dern if I didn’t after I pulled outta that trailer park. I pulled into the gas station, locked you in the car, and paid for a forty with the change in my cup holder. It was cheaper and easier than Marlene in high school—God bless her soul—and I almost took a swig right then and there.

  I wanted to get on down that dusty road to our trailer, the one I had been so excited over when Ricky was acting like a decent man. I was gonna strap you all up in the bouncy seat and get you working right good on the paci, so I could chug that bottle and feel that warm relief wash over me. But then your little feet got to tapping, catching my eye in the rearview, and my heart flooded with love for you like Hurricane Irene done downtown Kinston.

  As I got down the dirt road a ways, I could see Alex and Khaki blowing bubbles on the upstairs porch. It was funny how, even from the outside, you just knew that in there, ain’t nobody yellin’ or cussin’. I thought that maybe I could borrow some of that for us. And maybe it’d keep me from drinking. I opened the door and Khaki hollered, “Hang on, Jodi! We’re coming right down.”

  Before I even had you outta the car seat good, Alex was saying, “I want to see the baby! I want to see the baby!”

  Khaki took you from me, and, surrounded by the love of our family like we were, it took my mind off that forty under my car seat for two shakes of a lamb’s tail.

  Khaki said, “Why don’t you let Alex and me take Carolina for a little while, and you go on in there and have a chat with your favorite cousin.” She winked at me and patted my back real sweet like. She didn’t have to say nothing at all for me to know that she knew right where I was. Not long ago, she’d been knowing that same tired that brings you to your knees and frustration over not being able to do nothing to stop the cryin’ and being so scared you like to faint from remembering that this little baby—all she’s got in the whole wide world is you. But she didn’t know near nothing ’bout addiction. And that was the difference.

  Me and Graham, we went into his sunny kitchen, lemon smell off a’ honey-colored hardwoods so strong you could right near see it. Walking into Khaki and Graham’s was kin to a summer day at the river when you’re a youngen. Just free and easy.

  “How you doing?” Graham asked.

  I nodded. I couldn’t think straight I were so busy looking around figuring on where they keep the booze. I’d like to tell you I wouldn’t never steal from somebody I love. But I wrote more than a few “sorry” letters to people I loved during them twelve steps.

  “Well, Graham, I got me a job.”

  I could tell he was getting all excited and carrying on, so I put my hand up to stop him.

  “But there just ain’t no way. ’Tween bills and that damn truck payment and not being able to find Ricky I cain’t near afford daycare.” I sighed. “I don’t have no choice but to get on welfare. I cain’t figure no other way around it.”

  When I was done, Graham said, “You don’t need to give up, and you aren’t all alone.”

  I snorted. “Daddy’s dead, I ain’t got no brothers and sisters, and I intended on askin’ Momma’s help, but she’s drunk again.”

  He leaned across the table, took my hand, and smiled warmer than the hot sun on a lizard’s back. “You have us, Jodi. You and Carolina have Khaki and Alex and me.” He leaned back and sat up a little straighter, like he was the one in charge now. “You let me take care of the truck situation, and we’ll keep Carolina while you go to work.”

  “But, Graham, I—”

  He put up his hands to stop me just like I done him not a minute before. “I’m not hearing another word about it. That’s what’s happening.”

  I cut my eyes at him skinnier than the lemon slices we liked in our sweet tea. “I ain’t taking a handout from you, Graham. Not happening.”

  He laughed. “Jodi, come on. You know good as I do that it’s not a handout when it’s family.”

  I nodded. I guessed that was true. “Well, I ain’t volunteering Khaki to take care a’ my baby all day, every day. She’s got responsibilities her own self.”

  Graham leaned in closer to me and whispered, “Khaki wants another baby so bad it’s all she can talk about. I think it might make her feel a little better.”

  All them muscles—the ones that’d been clenched tighter than a hose around a spigot—just like that, they got all warm and wobbly again. “Well, you at least gotta let me pay you.”

  Graham shook his head. “If you’re so hell-bent on doing your part, then I’ll tell you what: Khaki goes on and on about how great it is to can with you, so if you’ll help her put up the extra vegetables from the garden on the weekends then we’ll be even.” He winked at me. “But that’s only if you promise to take enough home for you and Carolina.”

  I hugged Graham. “Nobody ever been nice to me or cared about me, Graham. I don’t want to be too much trouble, but there’s a time you realize that it ain’t just about you anymore and that pride is less important than your baby.”

  He looked back at me all teary-eyed and emotional and said, “It’s a big day when you realize that you love your child so much you’d swallow your pain to do the right thing for her.”

  I thought about that forty tucked under my front seat, and it crossed my mind that, much as I loved you, baby girl, maybe swallowing my pain was exactly what I needed to do.

  Khaki

  THAT’S A MAN FOR YOU

  I know plenty of designers who are enamored of the “rules.” They religiously hang every picture’s center at sixty inches, leave exactly twelve inches of space around all sides of a rug, and hang every chandelier thirty-three inches from the dining room table. Me, I’m not so concerned with the rules—whether they’re for a design project or raising my kids.

  Most people around here start their children in preschool at eighteen months old. I thought about it, decided against it, and vowed to try to let Alex go at two. That came and went. So did two and a half. So, when Alex got to be three, I knew that I had to buck up and send him to school whether I liked it or not. The morning of that first day I was more nervous than a blue marlin during the Big Rock Tournament. I had spent an hour the night before getting everything organized.
Alex’s little frog backpack was by the door. I had made him his favorite pumpkin bread to go with strawberries and bananas for snack time. I had baked during his nap that day, trying to do a phone interview about the new book and finish the layout for a design project I was working on for Bunny, one of my friends and biggest clients in New York.

  Graham told me that since the other kids would have a Fruit Roll-Up for snack time that maybe I shouldn’t put so much pressure on myself. I’ll admit that he probably would have been okay if I hadn’t freshly juiced the apple-pear medley in his thermos. But I wanted him to feel as at home as possible in his new school.

  Before I got into bed that night, I tiptoed into Alex’s room and brushed the hair away from his face. The moonlight shone through his window, and it took my breath away how much he looked like his biological daddy. I was trying my hardest to hold it together, but I couldn’t help but cry. I missed my late husband Alex every day, but I mainly shed those tears out of sadness that he didn’t get to see how amazing our son was. And, even though Alex didn’t know any other daddy than Graham, I still cried for my son that he never got to know his birth father and see how much he would have adored him too.

  I kissed his soft cheek and went back down the hall, where I climbed into bed with Graham, whose eyes were closed. Without opening them, he pulled me in close and said, “It’s going to be okay, babydoll.”

  “But he’s my baby,” I sobbed. “How can I leave him like that?”

  Graham kissed my forehead and, looking down at me, said, “You’re not leaving him, darlin’. He’s going to school. He’s going to make friends and learn new things.” He kissed me again. “It will be amazing. You’ll see.”

  I wiped my eyes with my hand and said, “But I’m going to miss him so much.”

  Graham scratched my back and said sleepily, “I’m not trying to be insensitive, but I want to remind you that it’s three hours, two days a week.”

  Then he rolled over and said, “Plus, I have a surprise for you that I think will help ease your pain.”

  I only assumed it was jewelry since that was Graham’s general answer to healing my pain. I could already feel those icy carats in my ears—the studs that I’d been hinting at for a few months. I sat up, wiped my eyes, and said, “Graham . . .” with that slightly scolding tone I use when he spoils me silly, but I’m secretly thrilled about it.

  He looked a little nervous. “Well,” he said, “I may have told Jodi that we would keep Carolina while she went back to work.”

  My sadness was rapidly replaced by irritation. “Graham,” I said, crossing my arms, “how on earth could you volunteer me to raise someone else’s child? Do you have any idea how much I have on my plate?”

  He nodded. “I know, and I’m sorry. But she was so sad and scared, and I had to do something to help her.”

  I love my husband dearly, and his endless compassion and desire to problem-solve are two of his best qualities. The only issue with those great qualities is that, somehow, they always seem to involve me getting a new task or project. I shook my head. “Helping her would have been finding a babysitter or paying for daycare, not volunteering your wife to raise an infant.”

  He shook his head. “You’re right. Let’s give her the money for daycare.”

  I sighed, picturing you, precious, sweet thing. You were so soft and warm and felt so good in my arms. And you were still so tiny . . . “Damn it,” I said under my breath. “You know good and well I can’t pass up the chance to cuddle and hold her all the time.”

  I could tell Graham was trying to hide a smile. He pulled me in tight and said, “You want a baby so badly, and I can’t give you one.” He paused. “I thought this would be good.” His face was so earnest that I believed he was trying to help me.

  “Honey,” I said, “that’s so sweet. But I want to be a mother, not a babysitter.”

  I hate to admit it, but the only thing that got me through sending my boy to his first day of school was the confusion of getting you, tiny, sleeping bundle that you were, out of the car and juggling you while telling Alex good-bye. He kissed me without an ounce of apprehension, ran right into the classroom like he’d been going there his whole life, and was gone.

  The independence of my firstborn made my heart surge like the cable box in a power flash. I looked down at you, tears shining in my eyes, and said, “Not one single tear for the mother who has devoted her life to you? That’s a man for you.”

  As I snapped your car seat back in its base, I marveled at how quickly the minutiae of raising a baby come back to you. And as I glanced at your serene, sleeping face in the backseat baby mirror, I thought that, as is so often the case, maybe my husband was right: Keeping you could be exactly what I needed.

  Jodi

  THE LIGHT

  Putting up herbs ain’t like putting up other things. You gotta get to ’em quick—when they’ve just started buddin’. Once they blossom, it’s too dang late.

  The day I took the job at that dry cleaners, I was just like that herb that had blossomed: It was too dang late for me too. I was still so dag dern sore I couldn’t half walk straight, and being up all night, every night, had near killed me.

  But workin’ in a dry cleaners, it ain’t the worst thing I ever done. You don’t get all dirty like in the garage. I was the person people complained to, but that weren’t nothing new. Other than that, I just had to take people’s clothes, write ’em up on a piece a’ paper, type it in the computer, and staple a little tag to the back.

  All in all, I liked it right good. The stapler made a nice click on the clothes and an easy tap back on the counter. It got to be right soothing, good for taking my mind off a’ drinkin’. A whole lot of the time I would daydream, wishing I was holding and cuddling my girl. But us girls, we gotta eat, I’d remind myself.

  Mr. Phillips, he was all right. I mean, something’d go wrong and he’d fly right off the handle, get to yelling and cussing. But he weren’t nothing compared to my momma. So, while the other girls, they’d get all hot and bothered ’bout it, I’d just keep my head down and look busy.

  Only, it weren’t long until I couldn’t hide no more. Mr. Phillips flew outta his office door at me and said, “Jodi, I need to speak with you.”

  “Can I do something for you, Mr. Phillips?” I asked. I was hoping his anger’d cool on down if I acted real sweet.

  “Yes, Jodi. Yes, you may do something for me,” he practically spat. “You can tell me if, when the manager of Burger King came in, you quoted her the price to clean her pants and shirts.”

  “Well, I . . . Yes, sir I did tell her,” I stuttered.

  “Did you tell her it would be eight ninety-five?”

  I nodded, but I weren’t real sure why I’d be in trouble for that.

  “Are you an idiot?” he exploded, his face getting all red like them Hot Tamales Daddy used to bring me from the gas station.

  I leaned back on the counter, feeling Connie’s eyes looking right through the back a’ my head. Connie was from my part of the county, tougher than nails and bigger than Mr. Phillips. If she thought I was in trouble, she’d pounce on him like a hungry cat on a baby bird, job in a bad economy be damned.

  I didn’t answer Mr. Phillips straight that day, but, let me tell you right now that, no, I ain’t an idiot. Khaki and me, we were talking about smarts one day.

  “Honey,” she said, “we all have our own kind of genius, and it’s almost never the kind that’s measured by a test score.” Khaki, she’s one a’ the smartest people I know so I figure, if she says it, it must be true.

  “Those pants and shirts are a uniform. A uniform is only four ninety-five. Do you realize that you just lost me the cleaning for twenty uniforms? Do you realize that that’s almost a hundred dollars?”

  I wanted to ask Mr. Phillips if he realized that he was gettin’ this bent outta shape about a hundred dollars when he drov
e a BMW to work one day and a Mercedes the next. It took near all the strength I had in my sore, worn-out old body not to ask him if he thought he were acting rational in the least. But I just said, “I’d be real happy to call her and tell her ’bout the mistake.”

  “I have,” he interrupted. “But she’s already taken this week’s load to another cleaners.” He pointed his finger into my face. “So this week’s will be taken out of your check.”

  Then he smoothed that shirt, all starched and pressed, and got to marchin’ to the back of the plant, probably to take away part of the week’s earnings from the presser who’d ironed it.

  I felt near like I were a robber who’d got the gun turned around on her. Connie put her arm around me, all fleshy and momma like. “You okay, honey? My man’s working two jobs now, so I can lend you that money if you need.”

  I shook my head and looked down at my feet, trying to keep them tears from coming down my cheeks. I didn’t want Connie to think I was a baby. I didn’t want her to know how I was feelin’ all panicked and yearning right at the same time.

  The panic was how I would ever make them ends meet without that hundred dollars. The yearning—baby girl, I wish it was for you. But all I could think about was the dulling, numbing novocaine of a cheap bottle of vodka.

  I remember one year when I was coming up, rain ruined them strawberries one month and then the drought killed off all that dern corn the next. And that’s how I got to learnin’ that when it rains it pours—or not.

  You know, it does right often seem like all the worst things happen on the same days. And I guess it’s good. That way, your good days ain’t all cluttered up with patches of mess going bad. And your bad days—well—you know they cain’t be more’n twenty-four hours.