by Nicole Baart
Her picture stayed with me for days, hidden discreetly against the backs of my eyelids so that she was with me when I slept. I thought of her baby when I tentatively placed my palm against my own bare belly. Did she have a husband? a mother? someone to help her carry the burden? A trembling thank-you swept through me at the thought of my own grandmother. And then I let myself utter the tiniest, gravest word I could fit my mind around: help. For me, for her. Just help. I suppose it was a sort of obsession, a surrender, the kind of fixation that would have had Grandma worrying far more than her blood pressure could allow if only she knew about it. Maybe it was unhealthy.
I was thinking of her later, when the wind was howling in the single-pane windows and a winter storm was brewing in the west. It was fierce outside, but inside the kitchen it was a balmy oasis and positively resplendent with the aroma of Indonesian rice, a childhood comfort food that had become my one pregnancy craving. Grandma indulged me at least once a week, and in anticipation of sambal oelek and diced pickles, I had already changed out of my work clothes and donned a pair of ratty sweatpants with an unraveling drawstring. The gray rope barely held together but made it possible for me to cinch the waistband below the baby curve that was beginning to make all my pants uncomfortably tight. The fluorescent lights of Value Foods made my eyes bloodshot and dry, and since we were in for the evening, I had gone so far as to remove my contacts, wash off my makeup, and sweep my hair into a bedtime ponytail. We had locked the doors, turned off the outside lights. Guests were not in the plan.
We were talking about unimportant, happy things, but my heart was heavy and I had to push away my thoughts with cheerful chitchat and busy hands. I was almost relieved when a pair of headlights glared off the porch window and I could turn my head to watch.
“Is someone coming up our driveway?” Grandma asked. She made it sound as if we got visitors about as often as Sleeping Beauty snoring away decades with every breath in her impenetrable tower.
I laughed. “It’s probably the Walkers. Mrs. Walker was so worried about your ankle.”
Grandma hobbled around the table as if to prove my point. An oversize black bootie concealed the slim but sturdy cast beneath. She had said it was just a twist. Dr. Morales had assured us it was just a stress fracture.
“If she is bringing us food, so help me, I am sending her right home with it!” Grandma furrowed her eyebrows menacingly, but there was a blush in her cheeks that betrayed how very much she appreciated the attention.
“Sit down. I’ll go see who it is. I promise if Mrs. Walker has brought over a banana bread, I’ll toss it right back at her.”
“Well, Julia, don’t be rude—”
“Kidding, Grandma.” I winked at her. As I made my way to the door, someone knocked twice—two determined, even raps instead of the friendly scuffle of hits that Mrs. Walker always showered on our leaded window.
Before I disappeared into the mudroom, I shot a bemused look at Grandma and shrugged as if to say, Who, then?
By the time I had switched on the porch light, she was already standing with her back to me. Her hand was on the banister above the five wide steps to the ground, and her head was angled toward her car as if she wished she were back inside it. The wind was making a tangle of what little hair peeked out from beneath her raised hood. From the rigid peak of her head, her shoulders visibly slumped and pointed forlornly to her toes as if her balled-up fists concealed weights that strained every muscle along her narrow arms. Her hands were empty.
There was surrender in her bearing, and though I didn’t know the cause of her defeat, she cut such a sorry silhouette backlit by the half-moon that I wanted to take her inside, listen to her story. I had no idea who she was, but the need to help welled up in me so strong that I put my hand on the door to let her in. I wanted to do for her what I couldn’t do for the woman with the dark eyes. I softened my face for her and opened the door.
She turned to me slowly, and before I had time to blink, I realized that I had seen this woman before. A little ripple of surprise tore through me. The dirty jean coat, the dishwater hair, the beaten posture—the woman from the store. The Braeburn apples. I made a little noise of confusion.
She glanced up at me, and her eyes in the glare of the porch light were inexpressibly sad.
Every gasp of air in my body drained from me in what can only be called a moan.
The woman smiled. A thin, tight-lipped, careful smile. She looked at the ground. “Julia.”
I was mute, though my mind exploded on her name with blinding, throbbing force. Janice. And then, in its wake, another word—a word that hadn’t passed my lips in a very, very long time: Mom.
Reunion
“I SHOULDDN’T HAVE COME,” Janice said haltingly, stealing a glance at me. She waited a moment for me to respond, but whatever she was expecting from me, I did not deliver. I just stared.
In my memory, Janice remained the eternally lovely and incomprehensibly remote woman who smiled girlishly and waved good-bye with dancing fingertips even though she knew she was abandoning her only child. She had been an ice queen—perfectly chiseled, beautiful, cold. I could remember the indistinct outline of her lavender mohair sweater and the scent in her hair when the updraft from the almost-slammed door came over me: tobacco and Suave strawberry shampoo. Her face had been fresh and unlined, hard and cool in its powdered perfection.
It was forgivable that I had not recognized her in Value Foods. The ten years since I last laid eyes on her had not been kind ones. The woman who now stood before me was not the same one who had left. A part of me recoiled from the way she tore through my memories of her and left them as mere husks of pathetic, childish illusion. I was startled to find myself sorry at the loss of my carefully preserved remembrance of a young mother—because I hadn’t allowed myself the luxury of looking back, I never realized that I regarded her with anything more than a fine and well-deserved contempt. But here she was and so changed I was unable to breathe. Limp hair, lined skin, gaunt shadows where attractive curves had once been. My lungs ached. I gasped shallowly, a fish drowning in the clear, cold air.
“I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have come,” she said again quietly, but she daringly searched my face as she said it. She seemed surprised at what she saw there, and her lips dipped and trembled. She started down the steps backward.
When she stepped away from me, I could feel the pull in my gut. It was as if in that one small moment of realization she had sunk a part of herself deep inside me, set a hook in my being so that we were held together by a thin but indissoluble strand of what should have been. I couldn’t help but move with her, fall forward to match her withdrawal so there was no more space between us than before. I didn’t want to follow her; I couldn’t help it.
“Julia,” she breathed, again trying out her faltering voice on my name as if tasting it—savoring it slowly while I was still close enough to hear it. There was a sudden boldness in her now that she was leaving, and as she slid slow-motion down the steps, her gaze took me in almost hungrily. She examined my hair, the curve of my cheek from chin to brow, my misshapen form beneath the baggy clothes.
Almost subconsciously I pulled at the wrists of my sweatshirt and looked away from her, grateful that the bulk of the fabric hid any evidence of my condition.
When I dared to steal a glance again, I found Janice smiling at me from the bottom of the steps. Her expression was a study in regret, though I was almost sure I could find something akin to pride mingling with the water in her eyes.
She would have left then with nothing said between us save an incomplete apology and the three soft syllables of my name. I would have let her go. I would have watched her car drive away and then stumbled back into the house a very different woman than I had left it. But in the seconds of standing with my long-lost mother and feeling her draw me toward her against my will, and even desire, there was a very small and hidden part of me that knew I would mourn if she left. I wanted her to go. I longed for her to turn around
and disappear, to sever whatever cord she had tied me with in those few moments on the porch. And yet I wanted her to stay to do nothing more than answer the question that had burned inside me for ten years: Why?
Footsteps in the mudroom broke the spell that had been cast over me. Though Grandma had fled my mind the moment I opened the door, I suddenly, sinkingly understood that I was not the only one who would have to deal with the advent of Janice. I was filled with a need to protect the woman who had protected me, and I swung to the door, willing Grandma back into the house with every ounce of my being. I prayed silently, wordlessly, vehemently.
But there was the click of the rusty handle and then: “Julia, it’s freezing! What are you doing out here in the cold?”
I moved so that I filled her vision and meant to smile nonchalantly at her. I tried to say something like, “Wrong house, Grandma. I’ll be inside in a minute.” But my voice would not be liberated, and the heat in my eyes betrayed that there were tears waiting there instead of the composure I had hoped to convey. My face was a contortion of disbelief and pain.
Grandma hardened and brushed past me with an almost fierce defensiveness. I tried to block her way, but she gripped my arm and stepped past me, ready to confront the person who had left my eyes so desperate. I watched my grandmother turn to stone, and when she had stared for far too long without blinking, I threw a look over my shoulder at Janice. The broken woman was rooted to the spot, and from the self-loathing hang of her head, I guessed that she was pleading with the frozen earth beneath her to split and swallow her whole.
Although I half expected the moon to fall from its orbit, the porch, the encounter, was momentous for us alone. Nothing more significant happened than the rustling movement of some animal in the grove. The storm continued its slow progress, erasing stars from the sky with a cruel, black line of threatening clouds. Dots of light peppered the horizon and defined the farms of our neighbors while the families inside—comfortable and warm—went about their lives none the wiser that ours would never be the same. We were small, forgettable points of life in a world much bigger than our personal sorrows. Yet I felt the ground beneath me as if it had been created for the sole purpose of holding me up in this one moment in time.
Finally, Grandma cleared her throat and said thinly, evenly, “Hello, Janice.”
Janice inclined her head and, contrary to my estimations of her, gave my grandmother a solemn, contrite nod. “Hello, Nellie,” she whispered in a voice that at the very least sounded respectful. It was a little token—an offering, maybe—to begin to repay the lifetime of debt she owed her ex-mother-in-law.
I swept automatically back to Grandma and tried to read her expression. Her eyes were great brown pools in the darkness, deep and bottomless and unsearchable. I couldn’t begin to discern what she was feeling. Loathing, anger, resentment? Fear possibly? Regret? Whatever she was experiencing, my infinitely long-suffering and perpetually sweet-hearted grandmother was as implacable as chiseled granite.
There were a few beats of silence and Janice shrunk even more. Grandma cut a sharp shadow in the halo of porch light, and her outline seemed to carry with it an almost tangible presence. Janice would not look up, and though I felt slightly vindicated, something in me flashed quickly with unexpected compassion. I forced the feeling deep beneath my rising anger.
The weight of the stillness compelled Janice to try to explain. She started, “I’m sorry, Nellie. I should have—”
“What are you doing here?” Grandma interrupted. While her words were harsh, her voice was surprisingly not.
Janice looked taken aback. “Well, I … I just thought …” She stumbled painfully over her words. Glancing at me and then back to Grandma before returning her attention to her feet, she tried again. “I just wanted to see Julia,” she confessed almost inaudibly. “I saw her in the grocery store and—”
“You knew it was me?” I croaked. My unused voice sounded hollow to me and very, very far away.
Janice tore her gaze from the ground to square me in her vision and bravely admitted, “Not at first.” She addressed me alone, leaving Grandma outside the borders of her confession as though she knew I would soften to her pleas.
I hardened my face for her, tried to prove I could not be so easily won.
“I suspected it was you,” she continued, “so I came back a few times and watched you when you weren’t looking. I followed you home once or twice.”
A shudder passed through me—a shiver of pure shock—at the realization that I had been spied on without my knowledge. Janice had sought me out, followed and tracked me as though I were some rare, exotic bird and she was trying to catch a glimpse. My face warmed even as my skin quivered. Why? Why now, after all these years?
I couldn’t help but gape at the woman who had once been my mother. I remembered every cold and callous word. I remembered how she took up space in our home without ever actually being there for us. I remembered the way the engine of her car revved as she drove away for the very last time. I wanted to cling to those things. I wanted to hate her.
But now, amid the disgust, the disillusionment, all the evidence of her guilt, there was something much like hope that threatened to rise to the surface. Somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind there was a preserved moment that inched its way into my consciousness. I remembered a forgotten morning.
A stolen hour.
I couldn’t have been much older than five when I crawled into bed with Janice one lazy summer morning. For some reason, we were alone in the house—or at least alone in the closet-size master bedroom—and she was still mostly asleep in her overblanketed and sagging bed. One arm was draped thoughtlessly over her eyes to block out the sunrise streaming in through the window. Her skin looked soft and the freckles on her forearm were little sprinklings of color. I remembered standing by the bed and watching the yellow light make her hair glow. And then, because she was asleep and because I wanted to be close to her, I carefully peeled back the smooth white sheet and climbed in beside her.
Just thinking of it made my heart thump in a frantic echo of what it must have done all those years ago. I breathed shallowly, aware of the steam from my slightly parted lips, and was afraid for the child I had been. But on that sunny morning, I had been cautious. I had moved slowly. She hadn’t stirred when I curled myself beside her. I recalled pulling my knees up to my chest and lying there with my back pressed lightly against her cool arm. I listened to her sigh in her sleep.
When she rolled over, I squeezed my eyes shut, pretended to be asleep as I waited for the groggy reprimand. But instead of hearing annoyance in her voice, I felt her arm slide around me. She curved herself along the length of my child body and rested her cheek against my head. She murmured something about the smell of my hair, then tightened her grip so that I was enveloped by her.
She was probably sleeping. It had most likely been pure instinct— an impulse born of thousands of years of genetic code—not an intentional act of tenderness.
But I remembered it.
And it made me illogically, uncontrollably angry.
Though it had been silent between us for only a moment or two, I longed to fill the empty space with ruthless words. I instantly distrusted her motives; it struck me that she had not yet explained why she was here at all. She probably needed money or a place to stay—or both. The thought made me sick. Any small hope I had, any childish flame of desire for a present, loving mother, was extinguished.
We stood, a trio of women like the points of a misshapen triangle, and I could feel the pull in each direction. It was an impossible situation. Janice was right; she never should have come. There was nothing that could possibly be said to erase the past ten years and make everything okay for either generation. Even if my estranged so-called mom could explain away her abandonment of me, there was still the issue of my father, her husband, Grandma’s only son. Never mind the years without contact, the offensive indifference to my father’s death, and her sudden, seemingly self-
indulgent appearance at the least likely time. It was all too much. Nothing could fix what had been broken here.
“You need to leave, Janice.” I tried to say the words unemotionally, but my voice betrayed the depth of my feelings.
Janice looked as if I had slapped her.
“Julia,” Grandma said, and I was stunned to hear the firmness in her voice, “I think we need to—”
“No, Nellie,” Janice cut in. “She’s right. I’m going. I apologize for coming. I should have … I should have called … or …” She trailed off, raising her hands in supplication or maybe in defeat. I felt no sympathy for her.
Janice didn’t turn as she left but continued to recede slowly as if unable to tear her gaze away from me until the absolute last possible minute. It made me queasy. I spared her a sappy good-bye and turned my back on her, sweeping past Grandma so I could retreat into the sanctuary of the house. But then two things happened at once and my refuge was deferred—if not forever destroyed.
First, Grandma grabbed my arm and held on with all the jurisdiction of an infuriated parent. I would have been stunned but for the second thing that happened: Janice’s car door opened and a little voice called from inside, “Hey, I’m hungry!”
When I turned, he was standing in the doorframe of the car, gripping the top ledge of the window with mitten-clad hands. I could make out glossy brown hair beneath his rainbow stocking cap and matching dark eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses. They were slightly crooked on his petite, sloped nose. He brought his mitten to his face and pushed the glasses up, wrinkling his nose in the process and sniffling. His eyes seemed maybe a bit older, but his small stature disclosed that he could not have been a day over five.
Grandma and I surveyed him guardedly from the porch, still as though we had been frozen solid by the vicious wind. Suddenly I felt it—the wind. It was bitingly cold and growing in ferocity even as we watched the boy. Grandma let her hand drop, and I wrapped my arms around myself.