by Danzy Senna
The woman, she learns from the unopened gas bill on the counter, is Susan. And the best news she’s had in a while—she’s left an extra set of keys for Consuela on the hallway table. Maria checks that they work, then heads out into the night, clutching the wet-eyed baby in one arm, dragging the stroller behind her with the other.
On the street, strangers ogle Maria. At first she is confused by the stares, the smiles—she thinks there is something stuck to her face. She wipes her mouth as she walks. Then she realizes that it is about the baby. It is the baby they have been smiling about. It is the fact that Maria has a Chinese baby girl and she is not Chinese. She’s getting do-gooder smirks because of this baby.
A young man with blazing blue eyes says, as they pass, God bless you.
A woman at a crosswalk points at the baby and says to the man at her side, Oh wow, we were just talking about adoption.
Gloria used to say that when a baby doesn’t look like it came from your body, you become a specimen for the world’s study. You become a Rorschach test—a walking, talking inkblot. People feel free to discuss you and all that you represent. When there is a gap—between your face and your race, between the baby and the mother, between your body and yourself—you are expected, everywhere you go, to explain the gap.
On legal forms, Gloria was her mother, but Maria never called her Mother or any of its variants. She only ever called Gloria by her name. Gloria said she didn’t believe in bullshitting a child. She never wanted there to be bullshit between them.
Gloria told Maria the whole story of her adoption by the time she was seven years old. She had adopted Maria after breaking up with a man—a fellow graduate student she would only ever refer to as H—who had wanted her to stand behind him at protests, and type up his dissertation, and serve him dinner and wash the dishes and bear him some children and write her own dissertation in between folding laundry. He’d seemed attracted to her in direct proportion to how well she disappeared into their backdrop.
Gloria was in her midthirties then and just beginning her graduate program. She knew there were many black babies languishing in the system, unwanted. She put in a request for a healthy black infant girl. It was only a few months before she got a call from the agency saying they had one available. The baby was only a few weeks old and her name was Maria. She came from the Cane River in Louisiana. They didn’t have much more information than that except that she was in the care of a Catholic orphanage now—the Saint Ann’s Infant and Maternity Home in Maryland. Gloria dropped everything and drove the eight hours to collect her child.
During Maria’s first six months of life, Gloria waited for her to change—for the baby to shed her straight hair and to darken up. But it never happened. Her hair never got kinky. Her skin remained high Cotton Club yellow. It was not until Maria was ten months old that Gloria accepted what was clear: the baby was a one-dropper, that peculiarly American creation, white in all outward appearances but black for generations on paper.
When they went out for walks around Cambridge, people on the street and in the park assumed Gloria was the nanny, taking care of a baby for some invisible white lady. After such encounters she found herself aware, with an almost scientific detachment, of the baby’s skin and hair, the shape of her features. And in those moments she could not help but think of her own mother, who had spent a lifetime caring for white babies so that when she got home, she was too tired and depressed to care for her own children. She could not help but think of all the women whose backs she’d stood on to get to this place, this lonely tower overlooking the river, and how she was going to care for this pale child all the days of her life, a child who—one-drop rule be damned—looked just like all the other babies who had been nursed by black women through the ages.
But she also knew that it was too late to send the baby back to where she’d come from, too late for her to request a darker baby. Because she already loved the baby, the way you do love babies when you are the only thing keeping them alive.
Maria has walked ten minutes north, ten minutes south, ten minutes west, ten minutes east—has looked through the window and doorway of every eating and drinking establishment in the vicinity—but the poet is nowhere to be found. Where has he gone? Who was he going to meet? What does the other woman look like?
For a flash, she thinks she sees him—a shaved-head black man stepping out of Pearson’s Texas BBQ with a fat blond woman on his arm. Maria watches, a cry forming in her throat—but when he turns his head she sees it is a different black man, much older, with sagging jowls, a potbelly, baggy eyes. Nothing like the poet.
It’s getting cold. She is tired. She wants to be rid of the baby. She’s bored of the nanny shtick. She doesn’t want to go back to Susan’s apartment either. The place depresses her.
She finds a payphone and calls Khalil. He answers on the second ring. To her surprise, he doesn’t sound worried or upset.
Hey, babe, he says. She can hear John Coltrane playing in the background. He tells her that she had a phone message today from the Beach Plum Inn on Martha’s Vineyard wanting to discuss the block of rooms they’ve reserved for the wedding party. He’s saved the message for her on the answering machine.
She twists the phone’s metal cord around her wrist.
Where are you? he asks.
She pauses. I’m on campus, she says. Just outside the library.
Oh, right. So you want to just meet me there?
Where?
Don’t tell me you forgot. Dhaka. For Lisa’s birthday dinner.
Dhaka. A Bangladeshi restaurant not far from where she stands. She’d forgotten about the dinner. She feels a twinge of irritation. It seems to her they are always eating Bangladeshi food together. Whenever they go to Bangladeshi restaurants in the city, Khalil insists on eating with his fingers. Maria has asked him to stop eating with his fingers, but he says it’s how they eat in Bangladesh.
Of course, she says now. I’ll be there.
He asks her if she picked up the present.
She hesitates. She remembers him shouting something to her this morning about a present.
Yes, she says. I have the present. She glances at the baby, who throws back a look of pure shade.
Susan is home. Her parka lies strewn in the hallway. Maria, out of breath from the walk up the stairs, kicks it aside. She heads down the hall to find Susan seated in the glow of the television. Her face is puffy, her mascara smeared. She watching a kid’s movie. Beethoven.
We’re home, Maria says in a bright, false voice. She is carries the baby to Susan and stands over her, waiting for her to take the baby back.
Susan looks up and forces a small brave smile.
Hi, darling girl, did you have a good day with Consuela?
Her smile falters a bit when she looks at Maria.
You did something. What is it? Something’s different.
Maria thinks quickly and begins to spin a circle with the baby, in an effort to blur her face. She doesn’t know if what she’s done here is illegal. She thinks it might be. She says, as she spins the baby, letting her hair whip around her features, We had a blast, didn’t we?
The baby doesn’t smile or laugh. She looks judging. Maria stops spinning and stands with her face tilted down over the baby, hair falling like Sheila E.’s over one eye. She stands at an odd angle away from Susan.
Be a doll, Consuela, Susan says, stifling a yawn, and put June to sleep before you go? I had a hell of a night. I’m feeling—low. She reaches forward and picks up a crumpled ball of tissues from the coffee table, blows her nose.
Maria grunts her assent and carries the baby into the bedroom and begins to change her diaper.
June. So her name is June. It seems to her that adopted Chinese girls are so often named June. Or May. Just like interracially adopted black boys so often seem to be named Elijah. And biracial daughters of poor white mothers are so of
ten Jasmine or Tiffany. She always hopes for something less predictable, and rarely gets it.
June watches her as she works. She is the most discerning baby Maria has ever encountered. Maria is glad she can’t talk. She finishes changing her and attempts to get her to go to sleep. She paces the room, jiggling her, rocking her, singing Whitney Houston and Diana Ross hits. Gloria used to complain to the Afro-Am department secretary, Loretta, about Maria’s taste in music: She won’t listen to real music, she would say. She likes skinny crossover divas with cocaine problems, I mean, just crap.
Maria’s and Gloria’s most vicious fights were about music. During Maria’s preteen years their apartment became a war of music. Maria would go and lock herself into her tiny bedroom that was really a converted pantry and put on her Walkman and try to shut out Gloria and Loretta, their wah-wah middle-aged voices at the kitchen table. The walls of her little room were covered in magazine tear-outs of Whitney and Diana and Michael, the holy trinity of medium-brown, apolitical, smiling, gorgeous faces. She hated especially when Gloria listened to Aretha—she got a little too into it and Maria found it embarrassing. Gloria would squeeze her eyes shut and dance around, hand waving in the air, like she was really at a concert. Maria would say, Oh my God, stop being such a freak, and she’d move to turn down Aretha, and Gloria would lunge at her and turn it up instead, to messianic volume. They would tussle over the stereo knob. There was a certain theater to it all. And now Maria understands, in retrospect, that they both secretly enjoyed those fights. It was when they were slamming doors and expressing the utmost in loathing toward each other that they felt most like real mother and daughter.
The baby—after what feels like a sadistically long stare-down—does finally fall asleep. One moment she’s awake, the next her eyes flutter closed. Just like that.
Maria returns, relieved, to the living room, eager to get the hell out of there.
Susan is still sitting where she left her, illuminated only by the flickering life on-screen. She stares expressionless at the made-up world of family and dog.
Okay, she’s asleep, Maria says, in a strange accent that she recognizes doesn’t sound remotely Hispanic.
Do you want to know something? Susan says, her eyes fixed on the screen. I think June is more bonded to you than she is to me.
That’s not true, Miss Susan.
Yes, it is true. And it’s okay. I get it. I get that I’m not the best mother. She’s eight months old and already I can see I’m fucking it up. Someday she’ll probably hate me. She’ll say I did everything wrong and that I should have never adopted her and she’ll probably be right. If she’s smart, she’ll write a book about me, saying how I failed her, sell a million copies. People love to see a single mother fail. But goddammit, Consuela, motherhood isn’t easy. It is not what you think it’s going to be, you know? I mean, I forgive my mother every mistake she ever made. Nobody tells you how hard it’s going to be. And I haven’t even gotten to the bitchy teen years. So it’s okay if she loves you more, Consuela. You’re probably doing a better job with her than me.
Thank you, Miss Susan.
Anyway, at least she’s not rotting in a Beijing orphanage. At least she’s here. She’s in America.
That’s true.
Susan stretches out prone on the couch and says, Come sit down, Consuela. Take a load off. You don’t have to rush off yet, do you?
Maria pauses, then goes and sits down in the corner of the sofa, as far from Susan as she can. She keeps her face fixed forward. She can feel Susan looking at her and she tries to make her face appear older, bored and tired, like somebody who takes care of babies for a living.
You really did lose weight, Susan says. You look good.
Thank you, Miss Susan.
Susan lifts her foot and puts it in Maria’s lap. Can you do me a huge favor and rub my feet like you did that time? You wouldn’t believe how much I walked tonight. In heels!
She places her foot in Maria’s lap. Her heel is calloused, the pink polish is chipped, her toenails long and thickened. Maria stares at the foot. She can feel Susan watching her and she feels it is a test. She picks up Susan’s foot and begins to stroke it.
Harder, Susan says. Like you did before.
Maria begins to rub it harder, and when she glances at Susan, indeed her eyes are closed and her face has relaxed in pleasure.
You’ve got healing hands, Consuela. Has anyone ever told you that? I don’t know what I’d do without you.
Thank you, Miss Susan.
Mmm. Yes. Right there.
Like this?
Yes. Just like that. She takes a deep relaxed breath, then says, Have you been taking English lessons?
Yes, Miss Susan.
I can tell. Your accent is almost gone. I didn’t even notice it fading. You sound almost American.
Thank you.
Maria eyes her own engagement ring as she rubs the feet. The jewels sparkle even in the dim television glow.
Susan talks in a drowsy voice, as if to herself. My whole life has been a lie, Consuela. I’ve been a fool. I mean, I think all I ever truly wanted was a goofy husband, a house in the burbs, a yard, a couple of kids, a big old slobbery dog like Beethoven. Just like my own mother. I could have gone down that path. I had the chance. But I chose all of this instead. I chose the—what is it my mother called it—the unconventional path. Or did I just choose Meryl? I mean, did one odd encounter at an MLA convention, one night of wanton abandon, send me down this path? Do any of us ever really choose our path? Or is it all random dumb luck?
I don’t know, Miss Susan.
Maria is thinking about Khalil—how he has said more than once that he wants to have three kids. He’s imagined them already—described them to her in the dark, his face just a shape and a shadow. Second-generation mutts, is how he put it—preternaturally gifted imps with skin the color of burnished leather, hair the color of spun gold. (What if they come out stupid or unattractive? What if they come out stringy-haired rotten brats—with kinks of the soul, rather than kinks of the hair?)
They’ve talked about names. Khalil likes Thelonious, Joaquin, or Cheo for a boy. And Tuesday, Indigo, or Quincy for a girl. Names as predictable for the culturally elite mulatto spawn as June and May are for the Chinese adoptee, as Elijah is for the black adoptee. As unsurprising as Jasmine and Tiffany are for the working-class biracial girl of the white mother on food stamps.
She and Khalil have already agreed they will hyphenate their names after they get married. The children will be hyphenated too.
Indigo Mirsky-Pierce. Cheo Pierce-Mirsky.
Maria thinks how scripted it all feels. Even the wedding itself, down to the caterer they have chosen—a dandy from Harlem who takes his catering business to Martha’s Vineyard—Oak Bluffs! The Inkwell!—every summer. He specializes in nouveau soul food—low-fat fried chicken, lard-free collard greens, low-sodium black-eyed peas, minus the bacon. Maria has heard Gloria’s voice in her head: Um, hate to say this, but without the diabetes-inducing ingredients, it’s not soul food.
Susan—at the other end of the couch, at the other end of the foot—is crying. We meet in all these strange hotels, Consuela, and we screw and screw again and he makes me feel like I’m the only woman alive. But then he always goes back to Montclair, to that cow and those horrid utterly uninteresting children, and nothing ever changes. Tomorrow is Sunday and he will spend the day with them, doing what these people do, trudging around a mall or something, and I will be here, alone with June, in our cool, hip apartment, losing my bloody mind.
On-screen, the toddler has fallen into the swimming pool and is starting to sink beneath the surface. In slow motion, the dog, Beethoven, leaps in to save her.
Consuela?
Yes, Miss Susan?
He’s never going to leave her, is he?
I don’t believe he is.
Than
k you for your honesty, Consuela. Thank you for that. I can always count on you to tell me the truth, Consuela. I appreciate that—you’re no bullshit. She sighs. Christ, I need a drink. Vermouth on ice, please. It’s on the counter.
Maria rises and goes to the kitchen, begins to fix Susan her drink.
I’m so tired, Consuela. I’m so tired of living in this city, in this apartment. Do you know I’ve been here, in this exact apartment, since I was twenty-eight? He’s been my lover for that long. It used to be enough. But now I’m tired of being on my own. Especially now that I have June. I mean, I want somebody to share her with, to share in all those special moments. You know what I mean? I want that.
Maria has wanted it too—to play grown-up. And now she is getting it. The wedding dress. The ring. The house they will someday buy—not like the one in Beethoven exactly—not the hideous furniture and frumpy clothes and mushroom hairdos of the early-nineties-era white family in the movie. Theirs will be a brownstone in Brooklyn, filled with elegant natural wood finishes and indigo mud cloth pillows and authentic Lorna Simpson paintings gifted to them at their wedding. They will have dinner parties where they will serve jambalaya and all the guests will be witty and shining in shea butter. They will make adulthood look fun. So fun she will never know it happened. Their first baby will be like the messiah of Mulatto Nation. Mulatto-squared. M to the 2. Cheo Thelonious Mirsky-Pierce. What a mouthful.