About a week after the trip to the snowfields, in the middle of the afternoon, I found Rose in our kitchen. I’d been down in the yard outside my father’s one-vat mill, spreading paper on yew boards to dry in the sun.
You’ve made the right decision, I heard my mother say.
Rose was sitting at the kitchen table and I saw her nod. Then she turned to me and smiled and I saw panic in her eyes.
Are you sure this is the right thing? I heard her ask and I heard my mother who was standing over the stove making tea say, Yes dear, I’m sure.
There were papers spread out on the table, by a small grey satchel. That satchel was the one Mr. Giacomo had at his feet when he’d helped us pack our bikes into the trunk of Johnny’s taxi, back in early summer.
What are those? I asked.
Adoption papers, Rose said.
I understood then that all summer my mother and Mr. Giacomo had been arranging this, planning this.
I sat beside Rose and she took my hand. Hers was sweaty.
You sure? I asked her.
Of course she’s sure, my mother said, and she gave me a look meant to silence me. The Giacomos are a fine couple. I’ve known them for years. They can afford to raise and educate a child.
She brought Rose a pen and then she went quickly about making tea at the counter, not looking at Rose, as if her signing or not signing was a small, everyday matter. She wanted to make the thing seem quiet and small, because Rose looked like she was ready to bolt.
I watched Rose bite her lip, pick up the pen, and sign her name. She wrote out her name slowly, her face distracted, as if she were waiting inside herself for some sign.
Well, that was easy, she said.
How do you feel, I asked her.
Relieved.
That’s right, said my mother, gathering up the papers. The last thing you need at your young age is a baby.
But Rose didn’t look relieved at all. She was looking around the kitchen as if she couldn’t believe where she was, as if she were looking for someone — or something — to tell her what her own heart wanted. All her lightness and confidence had left her; I could see her eyes welling with tears, which she quickly wiped away.
Well, that’s that, she said, smiling bravely at me. I have to head off now. Mr. Giacomo wants to talk to me about working in his café.
I’ll come with you, Rose, I said. I could feel pressure building in my chest like an expanding balloon. My hand in hers had gone cold.
No, no, she said. I need to be by myself for a bit. And then she left.
That evening I was helping my mother peel carrots for supper. She had been quiet since Rose left, thoughtful. I was surprised when she asked me to help with the dinner. Usually she liked to cook on her own.
When Rose was born, she told me, she was a small baby with these bright black eyes like a thrush’s. I brought her home that night wrapped in a towel because her mother was exhausted and needed to sleep. I put her in your crib beside you.
Her voice was soft, distant, as she gathered up the carrot peelings from the counter.
Rose’s will be my last birth, she told me. I can’t go on like this. I don’t have any confidence left.
It wasn’t your fault that the Giacomo baby died, I said. Nobody could have saved it.
When I think about what happened my heart freezes, she said. My hands still shake! I feel that if I’d only acted more quickly, I could have saved that baby.
This really is best for Rose, she went on. She’s too young to raise a child. She’s still just a girl, with a girl’s future ahead of her. She can’t grow up overnight. It will spoil her life.
12
One rainy afternoon in the fall, my mother brought Rose into our house. Out in the street, in her winter coat, Rose had felt a rush of warm fluid. She sat beside me for a minute at the kitchen table to touch her inner thigh. Her eyes were so still that I could see the reflection of the kitchen window five feet away.
She unfolded a list of names that she showed me. I noticed that Michael’s name wasn’t in the list of boys’ names. In our village, sometimes the son was named after the father. Michael had been away since last winter. At first there were a few letters that she couldn’t answer because he was always on the move, then nothing. She had stopped talking about him.
“I’m not really going to keep it,” she said, “but it was fun to choose names for something to do.”
My mother got Rose to stand and began to help her undress, saying, “And now here you are, so young!” She helped her into a loose nightgown.
As the contractions deepened, her face crossed by brief waves of pain, Rose took my hand.
I saw that my mother’s lips were drained of colour when she placed a jar of almond oil in a pan of warm water on the stove.
Her cloth bag was by the kitchen door and her birthing shoes and that loose cotton apron that she always wore that said MODERN BAKERY.
“You’re in pain,” my mother said.
“A little.”
She led Rose to the bed, to spread almond oil on her belly. Smooth as lake water! my mother said as she massaged the oil in, her trembling thumbs pressing and rounding.
“You remind me of when I was young.” She smiled. “You learn to sit on your hands, delivering babies. You learn patience.” I was sent for tea and when I returned she and my mother were laughing over the names Rose had chosen from the village telephone book. Still, there was a tension between them. Rose looked scared, unsure, and the glances she gave my mother were full of doubt. She must have felt my mother’s trembling hands on her belly, their lack of confidence.
My mother was spreading a rubber sheet on the mattress, her face quiet and determined.
“I’m setting up the mattress,” I heard her say to herself, “then I’ll get the towels and pans of hot water,” as if she were talking herself through the steps of a birth. Step by step, so that she wouldn’t forget anything important.
When my mother said it was time to lie down, Rose shook her head impatiently, walking the room with her hands on her belly. When I brought her a wet cloth for her dry lips, she dropped it to the floor in a sudden wildness that made me think she’d run, vanish.
My mother took a firm grip on her hands and said, “You can’t run from this. You’ll only hurt yourself and the baby. Try to relax, be gentle with yourself. Breathe.”
Even when her contractions were less than two minutes apart, my mother could not get her to lie down. Rose gave birth squatting over blankets heaped on the floor, holding onto the back of a chair. I held her from behind, pressing my knees into her lower back when she asked me to, my arms under hers and wrapped around her chest. I was so scared for her; I felt my own breath high in my chest, almost a sob.
“Here we go,” my mother said, crouched beside Rose. “I can see the head.” I could feel Rose pushing, her belly tight, and the baby slipped out. My mother caught it, held it up before us, a skinny body smeared with white mucous, a crumpled face with a pushed-in nose, two fists no bigger than my thumbs waving in the air.
With shaking hands, I put the infant in a towel after my mother had suctioned its mouth and nose and cut the cord with scissors. I gave him to Rose, who had climbed into the bed. My mother massaged her belly, to help with the afterbirth.
“You’ve done so well,” my mother said. “So well.” I saw flashes of relief in her eyes. She straightened out the pillows behind Rose’s head, brushed a strand of hair from her forehead. For a moment, tenderly, she placed her palm on Rose’s brow.
With one hand Rose held the baby across her chest. She lifted one of its tiny legs.
“He’s a boy,” she announced. My mother covered his chest and legs with a towel.
Her hand slipped to the sheets beside her, curled and listless. I put my hand into hers. It felt damp and cold. Though I was composed and still, my heart was racing.
My mother leaned over Rose, lifting the wad of cotton between her thighs. For a moment, before the blood welled, I co
uld see marbled fat under the torn skin. My mother threaded a needle and then drew up an injection of anesthetic.
She told Rose, “His head was a bit too big for you.” Rose smiled at me with a defeated look that I’d never seen on her before.
I felt then that she was drifting away from me, far away, and that I’d failed her somehow. Her defeated look asked, Can’t you help me? but I didn’t know what to do.
There are two telephones in our house: one in the bedroom on the nightstand by my parent’s bed where Rose held her child, one in the kitchen. My mother went into the kitchen to call Mr. Giacomo, closing the bedroom door behind her.
Rose kissed her baby.
“It’s like kissing a stranger,” she said. He was just staring at her. She moved her head around and he followed her with his eyes.
She closed hers. Her lips were pale with shadows underneath them. Her breath quietened and her hand gripped mine suddenly, then relaxed. The baby on her chest wrinkled his lips, curled his toes that were sticking out from under the towel.
“Don’t fall asleep, Rose,” I whispered. “Let’s get out of here,” a cold grief that I didn’t understand pooling in my belly. I wanted to carry her away from there, the two of them.
My mother returned with towels, a bowl of warm water, and a handheld scale to weigh the baby. When she laid him out on a towel to wash him, he started screaming. After she’d toweled him dry, she asked Rose, “Do you want to hold him again?”
She put the baby in Rose’s arms and he stopped crying right away. I didn’t know that a baby could recognize its mother just by smelling her, just by knowing it’s her and no one else.
Rose unwrapped the towel to count his fingers and toes. She checked his ears, the shape of his head. He was normal, looked normal.
“He’s cute,” she said. “Don’t you think?”
I nodded, touched his little fingers that curled warm and surprisingly strong around mine.
We heard the front door close, the clatter of boots in the foyer. Mr. Giacomo was outside in the kitchen. My mother went out to greet him.
She brought him in, and he made a point of not getting too close. He waited till my mother asked if he wanted to hold the baby and he nodded, went to sit in the rocking chair by the window.
It looked like he couldn’t quite believe what he had in his arms. I could tell he’d never held a baby before. My mother had to show him how to nestle its head in the crook of his elbow, and it just stared up at him, wide-eyed and quiet.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’ll look after you.”
“You’ll have a good life with us,” he went on, looking down at the baby. “You’ll see the house I’ve bought for us.” Your window is on the south side. You can see the river from there. We’re planting a lawn where you can play.
“My wife wants to meet you. She doesn’t believe you’re real yet, and she’s waiting to greet you.”
I knew that Mrs. Giacomo hadn’t come with her husband because she didn’t want to see my mother.
He was talking as if the rest of us were not in the room, as if we’d already left.
My mother was gathering up the stained blankets from the floor, lingering there. She kept her back to Rose and Mr. Giacomo, listening but not turning round so I could see her face. I wanted to clap my hands to turn her around. I wanted to know how she felt.
I squeezed Rose’s hand hard to make her do something.
Rose watched Mr. Giacomo for about another minute. He didn’t once look at her. He was smiling at the baby.
“You’ll like your life with us,” he said. “You’ll have a good life.”
“Will I get to see him?” Rose asked.
He didn’t answer. Even then, he kept looking at the baby, but he looked startled by her question, as if it had never occurred to him.
Rose sat up. “I’m about to lose everything I’ve always wanted. That just hit me.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know I’d feel this way.”
She drew back the blankets, wincing. In her nightdress she turned on her bottom, swinging her legs over the floor. Before she could stand up, my mother put her hands on her shoulders, saying, “Lie down. You’ll tear your stitches.”
“No!” Rose shouted then, shrugging off my mother’s hands.
She got out of bed and stood in front of Mr. Giacomo. “Okay, give him back.”
Mr. Giacomo looked up at her, his eyes full of amazement. But she wouldn’t go away, she just stood there in front of him.
After a minute, his face as pale as a whitewashed wall, Mr. Giacomo gave her the baby.
“I’ll let you rest,” he said. He touched the corners of his eyes; he looked bewildered, almost ashamed.
My father called then, to ask how Rose was doing. I picked up the phone by the bedside as soon as I heard it ring. I heard him say to Rose, “Congratulations!” Then he asked to speak to my mother and she went out into the kitchen, to pick up the other phone.
“You hang up when you hear me on the line,” she said, and Mr. Giacomo followed her out.
I sensed she didn’t want me or Rose to hear what she had to say to my father; her lips were tight and she had that determined look she always wore when she anticipated an argument.
Four or five nights later, after she was rested and beginning to heal, Rose came into my room to wake me up.
“Are you going to help me pack?” she asked me. “It’s time to go.”
“Yes,” I nodded, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.
“Hurry,” she said, a false cheeriness in her voice. “I don’t want to be out there in the kitchen by myself.”
“I’ll get dressed,” and climbed out of bed.
‘You’re my friend, right?”
“Yes I am, Rose,” I said. “I’ll be there in a second.”
In the kitchen, Rose showed me the bag she’d packed with dried peaches, provolone and a cold omelet wrapped in butcher paper. “Train food is expensive,” she told me, widening her eyes. She walked slowly back and forth, the click of fastened suitcase locks.
My mother got me to sit cross-legged on a chair and she laid the baby across my lap.
“That’s Mr. Giacomo at the door,” she said, and she went out.
The baby’s breath smelled like watermelon.
What’s this in my lap? His eyes followed my finger: Hey, little fellow. It felt like he was waiting for me to do something, quiet. Maybe take him out and show him the village, introduce him to folks. He had the curious look of someone who wants to be shown around.
Sometimes hikers climb to my cabin, amazed to find it here, amazed to find a girl so young living alone. I invite them in. I feel cautious, but the Forest Service expects me to welcome visitors. They touch the fire finder, finger the lace ruffle on my pillow case, touch the washed plate by the sink, touch my little row of books on the south sill, turn to look at all the landscape through the wide windows. And often they say nothing, then they thank me and they go.
I watched Rose spread the snowsuit my mother had found for her on the chrome-legged table. The metal zipper that she opened made the sound of an angry hummingbird. There was a sack for the newborn’s legs and a hood with two pink ears.
In the bedroom, we’d talked about where she was going. She was going to Field, the next stop on the train into the mountains, and she thought she might find work there. A cousin who worked in the hotel up there had said he’d help her out.
“What if you don’t like it in Field?” I’d asked.
“We’re not going to stay there,” she smiled.
“We’ll come back when it’s okay to come back.”
Now she opened her blouse, the child’s greedy, wrinkled mouth at her dark nipple. “It’s time to go,” she said, but she still sat there as if listening, her blouse open.
Mr. Giacomo came into the kitchen. He looked away when he saw Rose breast-feeding. He asked whether the baby was healthy, and my mother, who had followed him in, nodded.
“I c
an do nothing more,” she said, gazing at him.
He gave her a scared, little smile, as if to say, “Once again you’ve failed us.”
And he said, looking at my mother and then at Rose, “Well, thank you for everything you’ve done.”
Yet I could see him ask himself, What mistakes have I made, that have led me here? The crinkles at his eyes had deepened and paled with shame.
My father had walked up from the one-vat mill. I could hear him kicking snow off his boots in the foyer.
When he came into the kitchen, rubbing his hands that were inflamed from the cold water in the pulp vat, Mr. Giacomo turned to go.
“On your way then, John?” my father asked.
“Yes,” he nodded.
“Come to say goodbye?”
“Yes,” he nodded again.
“How’s that house of yours coming along, the one down by the river?”
“I haven’t been there in awhile.”
“Not here to change Rose’s mind, I hope?”
My father went over to the kitchen sink to run warm water over his hands, his shoulders tight with anger. “You’re not a man to respect other people’s needs,” he said then.
Mr. Giacomo looked puzzled, almost frightened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Look,” he went on, “I’m only here to help. You don’t have a car to take Rose to the station. Take the taxi,” laying the keys on the table. “I can walk home from here.”
“Thank you,” he said to Rose again. “Thank you for considering our offer.” He bowed slightly to her and then he turned and walked out of the kitchen without looking at my parents.
When we left the yard in Johnny’s taxi, the Columbia Avenue street lights had come on. There was the Giacomo café, the shades pulled. I watched the snow drift under the street lamps and gather in the corners of the darkened avenue windows. Rose was quiet. Usually she would be chatting on about this or that. She didn’t turn round to look at me. My mother had tried to convince her to stay for a few extra days, till she was completely healed, but she had refused. I don’t feel safe here, she’d said then, a glare of anger and defiance in her eyes. Now she was holding herself still with the newborn in her lap, not looking to the right or left, absorbed by the street ahead.
The Orchard Keepers Page 14