by Beth Neff
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 13
JENNA IS ALREADY SITTING AT THEIR FAVORITE TABLE by the window when Cassie arrives. She is writing in the journal Ellie gave her, but she turns as Cassie steps into the room, hurries over to relieve Cassie of her diaper bag. Janie hides her face in Cassie’s shoulder, but Jenna scurries around behind and, with a goofy face and a tickle, has no trouble getting Janie to smile.
Cassie and Jenna each collapse into a molded plastic chair, as if worn out from a long journey, and trade a smile. “How were the roads?” Jenna asks. She knows this is Cassie’s first trip alone, even held Cassie’s brand-new driver’s license in her hand throughout the last visit.
Cassie shrugs. “Okay.” She doesn’t want Jenna to know how worried she was about driving in this weather, how she gave herself so much extra time that she and Janie ended up sitting in the parking lot looking at books until it got too cold to stay in the truck any longer. Cassie was looking forward to this time alone with Jenna so much that she probably would have come in a blizzard.
Well, they aren’t exactly alone together today either. Cassie can’t help but smile at the little body in her lap, dwarfed by the impossibly small coat and hat and boots that are still too big for Janie and that the little girl despises taking off as much as putting on. Jenna has already gotten the drawing pad out of Cassie’s bag, and Janie is excited enough that she doesn’t protest as Cassie slips her arms out of the coat, stuffs the hat in her pocket, helps as Janie attempts to crawl from her own lap into Jenna’s.
This has become their ritual. Janie is happy at the detention center as long as she is sitting on Jenna’s lap. Cassie brings crayons and a tablet of drawing paper, and Jenna clutches the crayon in her fist and moves it slowly around the paper with Janie’s tiny hand riding on top like a swimmer perched on the back of a dolphin. Around and around the paper they go. When Jenna stops, Janie picks up a different crayon with her free hand, they exchange it for the one they’ve been using and go around and around again. They all work hard to keep the conversation going but are mesmerized, sometimes silenced, by the colored paths building on the page. When they are ready to go, Cassie closes the tablet and packs it up for the next time but often, before she does, Jenna will tear off the sheet and hold it in her hand, to carry back to her room when they are gone. Though they’ve never seen it, always meet in the large day room, Cassie imagines the pictures hanging in a neat row above Jenna’s bed, carefully taped to the concrete block wall, covering the green.
And everything is green. Not the green of the outdoors but a hospital green, the green of queasiness and mold and disease, a green so bleached and polluted as to be the antithesis of life. No wonder, as Jenna says, the only thing to be in love with here is your own pain.
“What are you writing?” Cassie asks, gesturing toward the journal.
Jenna smiles shyly, places her free hand over the cover of the journal. “Oh, just stuff about this place, mostly.” Her drawing hand pauses, and Janie turns to look at her, then reaches for another crayon. “I’m kind of telling the story of being here as if it’s happening to someone else,” Jenna says. “Helps me keep my perspective.”
Cassie thinks she might have some idea what kinds of things are in the journal. Jenna has told them about the horrible meals, the boring classroom time, her constant efforts to wrangle any hours she can get in the art room, though she hasn’t yet shown them any of her pictures. She tries to make light of how she is always watching her back, avoiding fights with girls who have targeted her for one reason or another. Worst of all, of course, is the lack of privacy, which is something Jenna has come to covet beyond all other physical sustenance. And maybe she writes in there about being depressed, something Cassie can see, even though Jenna always tries to act upbeat when they are there.
Mostly, though, Jenna doesn’t like talking about herself. She wants to hear, instead, about them, about the farm and the decision Sarah and Cassie both made to stay on when their sentences were up, about Donna’s weekend job at a new white tablecloth restaurant in town, the workshops Ellie just started teaching at the community college on identifying troubled teens in the classroom, Sarah and Cassie’s studies, and, of course, about Janie. Cassie feels glad that Jenna does have a way to talk about her own experiences, notices now as Jenna flips through the book that it is almost filled.
“Do you need another journal?”
Jenna bites her lip. “Actually, yeah. Will you tell Ellie? It could just be a regular notebook or something. It wouldn’t have to be this nice.”
Cassie nods, though she thinks it would be better if Jenna told Ellie herself. The relationship between Ellie and Jenna is healing, Ellie never missing a single week of visits until today, but there is still a long way to go. Sarah has only come to visit once, clearly afraid that Jenna holds her responsible for what happened. And Jenna has been equally afraid to ask, no less sure that Sarah might be thinking the same of her. Jenna knows a bit about how hard things have been for Sarah, how, right after Lauren and Jenna’s departure, she kind of withdrew—helped little in the garden, ate almost nothing at meals, and spent long hours alone. For a while, Ellie even urged Sarah to reenter a drug treatment program, but Sarah insisted that she could make it on her own. Cassie imagines that Jenna probably understands what Sarah is going through, but that doesn’t necessarily make her failure to visit hurt any less.
And, of course, the biggest obstacle for Jenna, and for Cassie’s dream that Jenna will return to the farm when her time at detention is over, is Grace. Jenna has never asked about her but, if she did, Cassie would tell her that Grace is back in body if not in soul. She did just what she had to do to finish up the season but spent more and more time on her own in her cabin, even eating meals there, or off somewhere away from the farm. Since frost, she has been spending her weeks working on an organic bedding plant research project up in Lansing run by someone she knew in college, and though she usually comes home on the weekends, it is clear that her relationship with everyone—Ellie, in particular—is tense and in need of the sweeping reevaluation Grace seems determined to avoid. Even so, Ellie assures Cassie and Sarah that Grace is glad they’ve stayed on the farm, tells them it is, in part, their presence that allows her to stretch out a bit and still stay connected. Cassie is not sure that Jenna would be convinced.
Cassie knows that, above all, the thing that has kept her and Jenna connected has been the process of getting Janie back. Though it sometimes makes Cassie feel selfish to realize how much time has been spent talking about it, she also knows that the conversations about Janie have served to distract Jenna from her own situation and made her feel useful in her unwavering support of Cassie.
Sometimes, Cassie has trouble believing that she has her daughter back, that no one will try to take her away, that she doesn’t have to pay anymore for her terrible mistake. With only an inkling of how complex the legal system actually is, Cassie still marvels at how much of her (and Ellie’s) successful navigation through it was a result of sheer luck, oversights, assumptions, a quirky sense of fairness, and the pure unpredictability of human nature.
It wasn’t even the legal part that was all that hard. A few phone calls from Ellie’s friend at the public defender’s office, Stephen Hastings, established early on that Cassie’s parental rights had never been terminated. In fact, though the case had been rather highly publicized for its proverbial fifteen minutes, no viable potential adoptive parents had ever come forward, partially due to the fact that no background information had been collected from Cassie—no medical records, family background, exact date of birth, possible pregnancy complications—because they thought Cassie was mentally disabled. Thus, when Cassie came forward and proved her competence with statements from Ellie and Donna, both Social Services and the court seemed almost anxious to honor her request, whether to rectify their own blundering or just because of the institutional preference for children to be with their own parent
s.
No, the legal part wasn’t Cassie’s biggest hurdle. It was, in a way, Ellie herself. She had made it clear from the beginning that she wasn’t one hundred percent behind the idea, and as the legal barriers fell away, she became more and more closemouthed on the subject, less and less enthusiastic about responding to phone calls, filling out forms, meeting with attorneys and social workers. When the time finally came to produce a recommendation to present to the judge, she spent an entire day in her office and, when she came out, held a blank sheet of paper in front of Cassie and said, “We need to talk.”
Cassie had followed Ellie back into the office, close to tears, certain that they had finally hit the brick wall Cassie had always suspected would eventually appear. Cassie tried, in that moment, to imagine what it would be like to wake up each morning knowing that her daughter would never again be a part of her life.
“I’m having trouble telling the judge why I think this is a good idea.”
Cassie shook her head as if her brain was experiencing static. “Oh. Is that what they want you to do?”
Ellie smiled a little at that, shook her own head. “No. Not exactly. But I can’t seem to write anything about you until I resolve that issue in my own mind. Cassie?”
“Yes?”
“What . . . feels different to you? I mean, now. Different from how you felt when you were living with your grandmother, taking care of her?”
Cassie cocked her head, trying to focus on Ellie’s question, trying to understand what this had to do with anything. “Um, I guess now I’m free. Freer, anyway. I get to decide what I do with my time. And I’m around people who can talk to me, who see me.”
“Exactly. And what do you think it’s going to be like when you have a baby to take care of?”
Then Cassie understood. Ellie wasn’t so much worried that Cassie wouldn’t be a good mother. She was wondering if being a mother was a good thing for Cassie.
Cassie sat forward in her chair. “It will be different again. I know that. But I also know that it’s not the same as going backward.”
“How do you know? All you’ve ever done is care for other people. Don’t you think it would be nice to stay free of that for a while?”
“Do you want to be free of caring for other people?”
“Well, no. Of course not. But I’m not . . . I’m not you.”
“Okay. I know. I know I’m still a teenager. And maybe it would have been better if this had never happened, if there was no baby. The best thing would be if no one became a mother who didn’t want to or wasn’t ready for it. But that’s not what happened. There is a baby and she’s out there somewhere and I want to be the one who takes care of her.”
“Because you think you have to, because you won’t be a good person if you don’t?”
“No! No, nothing like that. In fact I think there might even be other people who would have more to offer her, like experience or maturity or something. But I’m pretty sure there isn’t anybody who can love her as much as I do. I thought you might be right, what you said about the grief. But it doesn’t go away. In fact, it might even get worse the more time goes by. I love her just as much now as I did the day she was born, maybe more. And I know I’d never be able to forget her, to just go on and pretend like this never happened.”
“Like your mother did to you?”
Cassie’s head dropped down, and she was staring at her lap. It wasn’t like she hadn’t thought of this herself.
She took a deep breath and looked directly into Ellie’s eyes. “The thing I know now is how you have to tell the truth. My truth is I want to be my child’s mother. I know it won’t be easy, and I know that my own—freedom—will be compromised. But doesn’t my freedom also depend on making my own choices?”
Ellie opened her mouth, but Cassie raised her hand to stop her.
“I know you want us to grow up first before we become adults, have a chance to be young and everything. And probably most teenagers are better off without kids. And I know you wish that could be different for me now. I understand that and can’t believe I have someone in my life who cares about me as much as you do. But that’s one of the reasons I can do this, right? Now I do have people in my life who care about me. If I can stay here a little while, my baby and I will both have just what we need to grow and . . . flourish.” Cassie had smiled a little shyly then. “Maybe you can tell the judge that—that my baby is going to be a part of a family of strong women, a whole . . . tribe . . . of women who will teach her to be strong, too.”
Ellie had nodded, her arms folded across her chest but her eyes warm, her smile satisfied. “Maybe that’s just what I’ll tell him.”
It has not been all smooth since. None of them has ever lived with a baby before. And, no matter that Janie is now with her own mother, the change has been a serious disruption for her. She cried a lot the first few days, refused to eat, and slept very little. She is still fairly fussy. Ellie tells Cassie this is a good thing, that Janie has already learned to speak for herself, and that they’d have a lot more to worry about if she was passive and stoic. Cassie has, of course, read everything the library offers about parenting and feeding and infant health and stages of growth. All that, though often contradictory and confusing, along with Ellie’s encouragement, has been a kind of bulwark against any concerns she might have had about responding to her baby’s cries. As Ellie is prone to say, laughing at herself along with the rest of them about her love of aphorism, you can’t spoil a baby with love.
And still, sometimes all Cassie can feel is terror, sees in that same innocent face a reflection of her own deepest fears. At those times, when anxiety threatens to overtake her, when she is the little girl herself and her skin feels too tight and the walls are too close, there are three women who are just ready and waiting to prove her wrong. They are a labyrinth of nurturing roots, weaving and embracing with no intention of loosening their grip. And however odd it may be, Cassie sees her grandmother in Janie. Caring for the little girl brings the old woman back to Cassie in a way that nothing else could, allows her to heal.
Cassie liked the idea of a ritual when she found out for sure about Gram (a letter from an attorney, a small check—the trailer and land apparently having gone to Gordon—no other information other than that she was dead). She decided she wanted to make a rock garden next to the bench by the marsh, and one brisk day in late October, they carted the rocks Cassie had selected to the spot and laid them in place in a spiral, ready to be planted in the spring. They each read a poem they had selected—Cassie choosing Mary Oliver’s “Some Things, Say the Wise Ones”—and sang Gram’s favorite song, which was “Sunny Side of the Street.”
It all made Cassie miss Jenna more than ever and somehow prompted her to suggest that maybe everyone could share the site, making offerings of whatever kind they liked for whatever reason. Even in the short time before the ground froze, the spot became an array of objects including a tiny carved canoe from Ellie, a turtle shell Donna found along the road, a kind of Tibetan prayer flag created by Sarah, and various stones, shells, twigs and leaves, seed pods, dried flower stalks, and nests. The last time Cassie walked out there, before the most recent snow, she noticed a piece of sycamore bark attached to two little forked sticks with bright red thread and printed with the word “Shannon.” Cassie doesn’t know who that is or who placed the arrangement there, but something about it brings tears to her eyes.
She doesn’t let herself cry when she is with Jenna, no matter how much she wants to. Now, she tries to keep her expression blank as Jenna describes a fight between two girls who actually dated the same guy on the outside.
“See the one over there with the orangeish hair?” Jenna asks, barely moving her head in the general direction. “She was driving when that same boyfriend held up a liquor store,” Jenna says. “Wasn’t even old enough to have a license and probably didn’t even
know what he was doing in there. It’s kind of sad, really. I’m pretty sure she can hardly read, sometimes stands behind me when I have a book and will point to something random and ask, ‘What does that say?’” Jenna is shaking her head and Cassie immediately changes her mind about mentioning the GED test she just passed with only one question wrong.
By the time Janie is tired of coloring and in desperate need of a nap, there is really nothing more to say. Cassie is frustrated by the realization that it has actually been Ellie and Donna who have known how to keep the conversation going. She had hoped for some private interchange, something to tangibly cement her connection with Jenna. With the struggle to get Janie’s outdoor clothes back on completed, Jenna and Cassie exchange a quick hug, Jenna handing the diaper bag off as they arrive at the door.
For the first time ever, Jenna mutters, “Wish I could come with you.”
Cassie stops abruptly and turns to face Jenna. “Well, let’s go,” she says brightly. “Arizona, right?”
Jenna smiles wryly and shakes her head. “You know, I’m not sure about that. I’m thinking maybe the best thing for me right now is to learn how to stay put.”
IT’S A LONG drive, and Cassie breathes a sigh of relief as she pulls into the driveway and parks the truck in front of the barn. She leaves the engine on and the heater running in hopes that Janie will stay asleep a few more minutes and climbs down, gently closes the truck door. She takes a few steps forward and stands looking out over the snow-covered fields, her hands crammed into the pockets of her coat, her stocking hat pulled tightly down over her ears.
It always hurts to leave Jenna behind when it’s time to go. Cassie thinks of Jenna’s last comment and smiles to herself. Though she probably won’t be able to stop counting the days until Jenna’s sentence is up, she needs to remember that Jenna has never said she’s coming back to the farm. In fact, who can say where any of them will be by then? Cassie knows that the easy thing, the safe thing for her and Janie, would be to stay as long as she can, to just let time pass, the math and grammar textbooks making way for seed catalogues and garden diagrams, Janie’s sippy cup and finger food replaced by china dishes and silverware. Yet, as perfect as the farm is for her right now, Cassie is aware of a gnawing hunger for a world she’s never seen, people she hasn’t met, a life that exists only in her imagination. She doesn’t know if it’s possible to keep a tight grip on what and who she has, especially Jenna, and still reach out for what she has never known.