I had that same thick shell my momma did, but inside, I wasn’t as confident as I appeared. So, as soon as I woke up, I called the boldest, brashest woman I knew.
“Good morning, my love,” Bunny said.
Bunny, who had started as a client but quickly become one of my best friends in the city, was always an early riser. Tall, broad, and lean but boxy, she was born to be an athlete just like I was born to be a mother. She satisfied her inner Flo-Jo by taking a long run every morning before her three children woke up and her husband went to work.
“May I come over?” I asked, simply.
“Are you here?” Bunny asked, enthusiasm rising in her voice. “Why didn’t you call me before?”
I bit my lip, feeling guilty that I had been so wrapped up in you I hadn’t even seen one of the people in my life who had always been the best to me. But Bunny was one of those great, low-maintenance friends who didn’t ruminate over trivial things like a missed visit. So, without apologizing, I said, “I’m here. And I need your advice.”
“Okay,” Bunny said, her voice laced with a teacher’s authoritativeness. “Can we meet at Le Pan Quotidien? I’m dying for a soft-boiled egg.”
I laughed. It was that classic Bunny decisiveness that I needed. Thirty minutes later we were sitting across a rustic farm table, coffee in hand, eating delicious, fresh-baked organic bread with soft-boiled eggs on top. “Mmmm,” I said.
“Everything is simply better when you do as the French,” Bunny said, her golf ball–sized diamond sparkling in the low lighting, making her creamy, milk chocolate skin look even more luscious. She peered at me across the table, and, lowering her voice, as we were sharing the table with three newspaper-wielding men, she said, “You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”
I sighed. I took a sip of my coffee and said, “No. I’m not pregnant. But I’m trying to figure out a tactful way to ask Graham’s cousin if we can adopt her baby.”
Bunny laughed that bawdy, uninhibited laugh that was one of the things I loved best about her. “Oh, honey, why? Take it from a batshit-crazy woman, only children are amazing.”
I gave her a look that wordlessly said she was being neither sensitive nor helpful.
“Okay, fine, fine. Can’t you offer her money?”
I shook my head. “Isn’t that against the law?”
Bunny readjusted her sleek ponytail and said, “Law, schmaw. Who’s going to turn you in?”
“Bunny, come on. I need real help here. We can pay for her medical bills, baby-related expenses, and the living expenses she accrued during her pregnancy, but she isn’t like that anyway. What do I do?”
Bunny took a sip of coffee. “You just ask. What’s the worst that can happen?”
I looked up over my egg and said, “I’m afraid that if I ask, I’ll push her away, and then she won’t even let me keep Carolina while she’s at work anymore.” I paused, staring into my coffee cup. “I can’t bear the thought of not being in Carolina’s life at all—or Jodi’s.”
Bunny shrugged. “That won’t happen.”
I rolled my eyes. “So that’s your sage advice? That’s why I walked all the way over here? If you can’t do better than that, you can pay for your own breakfast.”
Bunny brightened like that $6.95 was all that was standing between her and a new jet.
“I didn’t know you were paying. In that case, I would ask her to think about her little girl, to consider the advantages she could have living in a family like yours. And make sure you give her the choice of whether she wants to be involved in her life or not.”
I gasped. “What if she says yes? I mean, is that okay?”
Bunny nodded like she was a child psychologist specializing in adoptions and said, “Oh, yes. I remember reading in Vogue that adopted children actually thrive when they are able to know and grow up with their birth parents.” She took another bite, and, so I could see the yellow yolk bursting in her mouth like a paintball, said, “Open adoption is the way to go.”
“Isn’t that kind of confusing?” I asked, wondering why I had spent so many of those dreaded low-carb years denying myself the utter deliciousness of fresh bread.
Bunny shook her head. “It’s better for you, really. Then, when she’s pissed that she’s in time-out, she doesn’t have fantasies about her birth mother being a princess who’s coming to save her from the evil witch”—she paused, wiped her glossy mouth, and pointed across the table—“i.e., you.”
Back at the apartment, where Graham, amazing husband that he was, was trying to pack while watching two children, I burst through the door. He kissed me like I’d just returned from hiking Mount Everest. “What?” I laughed.
He kissed me again. “If I ever make a comment about your job not being as hard as mine, please remind me of this day. Alex has pulled every garment that I was trying to pack out of the suitcases, and Carolina keeps crying, and I don’t know why.”
I ignored him and said, “Do we want to let her be involved in Carolina’s life?”
Graham looked around. “Who?”
I threw a pink blanket at him and said, “Jodi, of course.”
He smiled. “Sweetheart, I told you before that you have to get yourself prepared for the fact that she’ll probably say no to your little proposition.”
I gathered all of my toiletries, tossed them in my suitcase, and said, “I know, I know, low expectations, blah, blah, blah. Is it okay for her to be in Carolina’s life? Would it be too hard or confusing?”
“You know, babydoll, I think if she does us the amazing honor of allowing us to raise her child, we should leave that decision up to her.” Graham zipped his suitcase shut.
I nodded. A shiver of fear zipped through me too. What if Jodi was always possessive over you? What if she felt entitled to mother you even if she let us adopt you? I sat down, cross-legged on the floor, reached over to where you were kicking contentedly on a blanket, and put you in my lap. You blew a little spit bubble, and I smiled, my heart on fire with love for you.
“Mommy,” Alex said, running in. “Carolina pooped earlier and it came all out her diaper!”
I turned to Graham. He laughed and shrugged his shoulders. “The man is correct,” he said, grabbing Alex by the waist and tossing him into the air. Alex giggled, and I was reminded of how terrified I had been about how another man would be a father to him and how, when Graham had walked back into my life, that fear disappeared. Maybe the same thing would happen with Jodi. I prayed silently that God would give us both that quiet calm and peaceful knowledge of the right thing. And, without any warning whatsoever, the questions that had been zooming like cars at the Indy 500 stopped, and I had the clearest thought: You can never have too many people who love you.
Jodi
YOU CAN LIVE
I remember gettin’ real tickled in school over Mark Twain saying that cauliflower is “cabbage with a college education.” I think that’s right near like me and Khaki. And that’s all right ’cause I like cabbage real good. Cauliflower too.
I used to think Khaki were so happy and upbeat all the time ’cause she didn’t care one whit about what other people was feeling. But once we got to know each other good I realized that she feels everything. She just don’t want nobody to know, so she keeps it all inside. So I just got my nerve up, and I ask her one day, “Khaki, how you do it, girl? After all you been through, how do you get up every day and act so happy?”
She shrugged. “You know, Jodi, when you’ve looked death in the face you realize your next breath isn’t guaranteed. You can either sit at home and wallow in fear and self-pity or you can live.” I nodded. She said, “I’ve done both. The latter is a hell of a lot more interesting.”
And that’s when I figured that we was the same. Rich, poor, educated or not, we all got some tough mess to deal with in this life. And the only way we’re gonna get through, that we can get to healing,
is to know that it takes total surrender. To God, to life, to the universe. Stripping down and getting all raw and vulnerable, that’s how I got off the sauce and Khaki got outta bed after her first husband died. And just like that pretty mornin’ sun rising over the pond at the farm, it dawned on me that Khaki, she understood me better than I’d been knowing.
I knew right good in my heart that when I asked Khaki what I were about to ask her that she would seem all tough and together. But inside, right near that tender heart, she’d be weeping a whole river for me. And that’s what a kid needs in a momma. You gotta be able to feel so deep and so hard and so sad for people but then still get on your smiley face and live your life.
When I was coming up, giving up my baby ain’t something I thought about any more than I dreamed a’ getting a Harvard scholarship. But you get to learning that we don’t know what paths are being carved in the riverbeds of our lives any more than we know our expiration dates. (Though I can guess it on food pretty good.)
But what I did know, what my grandma been trying to teach me since I were little and sitting on her knee at church, was that people need Jesus. But I guess after I prayed that Momma would quit drinking and that didn’t happen, I prayed that Daddy wouldn’t die and that didn’t happen, and I prayed that I would get a handle on my drinking and that didn’t happen, I just lost my faith somewhere. But that Buddy, he reminded me that week in Atlantic Beach that just ’cause God don’t always give us the answer we’re looking for don’t mean He ain’t listening and He ain’t answering. And, wouldn’t you know, that week I prayed so hard it was like God flew down and give me the answers.
Here’s what I got to telling God that week: “Lord, I ain’t twenty yet, and I’m so bad off Buddy’s gotta hide the mouthwash. I ain’t got no job, no money, no way out. But I got this baby. I get to feeling like I want to hold her and kiss on her and love on her, but it ain’t been a month yet, and I’m already near off the deep end.”
I closed my eyes right tight and breathed real deep, and I tried to picture giving you up. But I dern near got sick all over the coffee table. But then Khaki, like she been talking to God too, she said, “Bringing Carolina back to you’s gonna tear me apart.”
And then there was that precious baby naked in the mud puddle. And it didn’t take that Harvard degree to figure on what’s the right thing here.
I cried more tears that week than all the other tears I’ve cried in my life combined. I darn near coulda give all them people in the famine water. Knowing that I wouldn’t get to see my baby smile her first smile or step her first step or speak her first word—it were like finding out Daddy had cancer again times about a million. It wasn’t gonna be me rocking you to sleep at night or feeding you or kissing your scraped knees or soothing your broken heart. But I wasn’t what you needed. And I knew it. And I feel right blessed by that.
I was all clogged up with my tears that morning as I got up, puttin’ on my nicest, prettiest dress, all peach and flowing, the one that Daddy’d saved two months to be able to buy me for the homecomin’ dance. I wanted to look real nice, make Graham and Khaki see that you would grow up to be sorta pretty. I walked out on the beach, ’cause, even though it was smack-dab in the middle of winter, it weren’t that cold that day. Buddy, he was still sleeping, so I just walked along, all by myself, them freezing waves crashin’ over my bare feet, that dress blowing around, my long hair flowing back in the chilly wind. The crisp, fresh mornin’ air, it made me feel like I could breathe, like maybe my lungs could keep working even after this horrible thing I was gonna do. And with the sun reflecting on the ocean, glittering and dancin’ like diamonds, making the world seem safer and happier, not quite so scary, I thought, Maybe I can raise her myself after all.
But, in real life, trudging back up that sand toward the house, finally feeling them goose bumps that broke out all over my body, weren’t no way on God’s green earth. And that devil, he put it in my head that Khaki and Graham, they might not say yes, they might not want to keep you near as bad as I was thinkin’. But there weren’t no other answer. Weren’t no way I could give my baby to a stranger.
I let myself in, and Khaki and Graham, they was already sittin’ right there in that wood den by the kitchen. They looked like Barbie and Ken, all perfect and shiny, and Khaki, she tried to give me them cookies you could smell baking in her momma’s oven, not knowin’ I was sicker than any flu I’d ever come down with.
I knew that I had to pile on out with it quick, ’fore I lost my nerve. ’Fore that little pitchfork-holding man on my shoulder got me all convinced I should keep you for myself.
But Khaki, she got to talking first. She was as cool, calm, and in control as I ever seen, but, like I said, you don’t ever know what’s going on inside your momma. Graham, now, he looked like he’d eaten too many of his momma’s famous fried pickles. Khaki leaned in all close to me and said, “I want you to know before I say what I’m about to say that whatever decision you make is absolutely fine with us, and we will do everything in our power to help you no matter what.”
Oh, Lord. They’re gonna send me to rehab again.
“You know that we love you and we love Carolina, and we only want what’s best.” She paused, licking her lips. “I know that you are going through a difficult time with your drinking and that must be scary.”
She didn’t have to say no more. I could see myself all locked up in one a’ them hospital rooms again, all white-walled and making you crazy.
“And I know that you are so young, and raising a baby all alone is terrifying and solitary and maddening sometimes no matter how old or experienced you are or how much help you have.”
Khaki was sweet and steady and talkin’ real calm and good. And then that Graham, he just blurted on out, “We want to adopt Carolina.”
Khaki looked at him like he was gonna be real sorry. I got to crying so hard, I couldn’t near see the room no more. It was relief and sadness and all them other things all rolled into one and pouring out my eyes. Khaki came and sat next to me right there in my little chair and put her arm around me tight.
“We’re fine with any decision you make, but know that if you decided this was what you wanted you could see her as much as you wanted or not at all, depending on what you thought would be best.”
That made me stop crying right quick. I ain’t never thought I’d get to see you no more. Part a’ the reason I was so sad is ’cause I knew I weren’t just saying good-bye to you, but to Graham and Khaki and Alex too. But maybe it weren’t as bad as I thought. “Wait? I can still see her and all? Is that all right for her?”
Khaki shook her head and pulled me in close. “I always say the more people who love you the better.”
And then I sobbed and sobbed again ’cause weren’t no living person in the world that loved me, and I wanted my baby to have nothing but love. I said, all snotty and red-faced like when I was drinking, “If we do this, it cain’t be about what’s best for me or best for you. It’s got to be about what’s best for Carolina.”
Khaki, she was crying right hard too now, but probably ’cause she were sad for me but so happy for her.
She said, “Of course. We’ll figure it all out together.”
I leaned over, puttin’ my head down on my knees ’cause I was feelin’ faint. “How could I do it, Khaki? How could I give up my youngen?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know, sweetheart,” she said, sittin’ a little straighter. “The only way you could do it is if you truly believed in your heart that growing up with Graham and Alex and me would be best for Carolina. And if you don’t think that, then it won’t hurt our feelings.”
I stood up, stretchin’ out a little, and Graham wrapped me in that big bear hug that there ain’t nothing else like. And I knew you was gonna have that bear hug every single day for your whole growin’-up life. And it made me just a little happy.
I said, “I want to s
ee her worse than anything. But I cain’t get to holding her and smelling her sweet head and still let you adopt her.”
“Wait—” Graham said, him getting all teared up now too. “Are you telling us that we can?”
I nodded, but them tears was so lodged in my throat I couldn’t say nothing. I pulled away from that big bear hug, not wanting no comfort. I got out the door quick, running way down the beach, almost to the ocean, plopped my bony butt in that cold, wet sand, that beautiful dress I’d pined for so long and hard gettin’ ruined, and sobbed and sobbed. It weren’t like nothing I’d ever seen, being able to cry that hard for that long. I don’t know when, but Buddy, he come and wrapped me up in this big down comforter, and whispered, “No sense in you freezin’ to death out here.”
But it didn’t matter none. I couldn’t feel nothing. Buddy, he stroked my back for pretty much the whole damn night. But I were in pain so real and so deep and so scary I couldn’t move or thank him or nothing like that.
I could live a million years, and I don’t think I’d never feel like that again. And there won’t ever be a day I don’t live that pain. But I love you so much that I knew all I could do is give you the life I didn’t have, the one I wasn’t fit to give. Sittin’ right out there in that sand, foam gatherin’ at the edge of the shore, I couldn’t reckon how I could love you so fierce and still give you away. I couldn’t figure whether that made me the most selfish person in the world or just a little bit selfless. I don’t know the theory of relativity or the speed of light or any a’ that other math. But I knew right well, watching the moon rise that night, that no matter what them smart scholars say, love is the hardest equation.
Khaki
SERIOUS TEARS
Dear Carolina Page 13