by Joni Rodgers
My abuela would have said, “No puedo ver las cosas que están detrás de mi.” I cannot see that which is behind me.
All that matters now is your voice on the phone, your heart with my heart. All I remember is the way we shared the work of our hands, the gentleness of you in the face of so much that was so ungentle.
Some women are not made to be married, and I knew early on that I was one of these. To fall in love with you—that is the thing I never expected. And you to fall in love with me—that is the thing I dared not hope for. I vowed I would not open my heart again. But nothing that has hurt me in my life is of the slightest consequence now. It’s less than a heartbeat, less than a drop in a great winding river. Because I know it’s only a little longer, and you’ll be with me again. And this time, mi corazon, I will keep you for my own. I intend to spend each night for the rest of my life, dressing your wounds with the kindest kisses, healing you with gentlest touch, making you whole again with the giving of my love, toda una vida.
When you come to where I live now, you will find that the heat here is a beast that makes you want to lie down late in the day. But the nights are cool. The darkness brings a fresh wind and a sky full of stories. Orion and Cassiopeia, Castor and Pollux, Signus the Swan. I know because since I spoke to you on the phone, mi corazon, I’ve hardly slept. You and I will lie together, and we will leave the windows wide open for the scent of jasmine.
Kiki didn’t mean to read over Mother Daubert’s shoulder, but Mother Daubert had taken the letter out to read six or seven times since they arrived at the airport, and Kiki’s willpower was simply not that strong. Mother Daubert folded the fine white paper and held it up to her nose for a moment before tucking it into the side pocket of her purse.
To an attractive young gate agent, one blue hair probably looked pretty much like another, the three of them had figured, and sure enough, Mother Daubert sailed right through with Vivica’s passport in one hand and a ticket to Huatulco in the other.
“It’s a beautiful day for flying,” she told Kiki at the entrance to the jetway.
Through the window, they could see the caterers loading food trays onto one side of the plane while passengers tunneled in through the other. The 737 gleamed silver in the sunlight, nose like a sugar bowl, wings just ready.
“You know how to reach me, Mother Daubert, if there’s anything you need,” Kiki told her for the hundredth time.
“Oh, my goodness, dear,” she patted away the suggestion with her soft hand, “you’ve done so much already. And your mother, please tell her again how much I appreciated her hospitality these last few weeks.”
And Kiki said she would, though she knew Mother Daubert would send an impeccably written thank you note when she returned the passport.
“Are you sure this is what you want, Mother Daubert?”
“Well, you know, it’s so funny. When Lorenza went home, I said, ‘Someday, Lorenza, I’ll come and keep house for you in Brazil,’ I said. And we laughed, of course, but we were such good friends. We often dreamed we’d be two little old widow ladies together.”
“Now, you understand you mustn’t write to any of the bridge club ladies or anyone else until I tell you it’s okay, and you mustn’t send me a letter. You have to let Lorenza’s daughter do it when she goes into the city. I promise I’ll do everything I can to get this all straightened out. My mother has a friend, and he’s a very good attorney. It won’t be long.”
Kiki looked at Mother Daubert’s eyes, trying to determine if she was comprehending any of this, but all that was reflected was that invincibly well-bred finish.
“Do you understand, Mother Daubert?”
She gazed out the window, one hand on the glass, the other holding her purse to her bosom.
“We took him camping,” she said. “Lorenza and I. The first night, I was afraid of the night sounds, so Lorenza came over and lay beside me. And I had to cry because I’d all but forgotten how to feel... how to feel... touching. I was afraid of feeling that. But the second night, she opened the tent and let all that jasmine in. And I was so happy. And I was so afraid.
“The next day, we went canoeing to a place called Devil’s Elbow. And as we were paddling along, I realized I’d lost my ring. My diamond engagement ring with my wedding ring bonded to it. Lorenza was a good swimmer. She told me to stay in the canoe with the baby between my knees, and she dove down, trying to find it. Of course, it was impossible, but she knew what was going to happen to me if I lost that ring. She disappeared into the water for—oh, it seemed like forever. And every time she came up to take a breath, I begged her not to go down again. But she kept on until it was almost dark, and we had to go back.
“That night, I stayed in her room, and she told me how the bougainvillea in Brazil grows seven feet high with blossoms as wide open as your hand. She said we should go there before he came home, and he could no more find us than we could find that diamond ring in all of a whole wide river. But the next day, he came home. And when he started to beat me, I thought it must be God punishing me. I knew what we did together was a shame and a sin, and this must be the wrath of God. But Lorenza made him stop. She told him she’d stolen the ring to pay for her mother’s medicine. He told her to go into his study, and when he closed the door, it was like seeing her disappear into the water again.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing. I did nothing. I took the baby, and I went outside. I wanted the sun to burn me, I wanted to drown in the pool. If I hadn’t had Wayne, I would have slashed my wrists.” She hugged her handbag to her chest, and her hands were trembling. “When she was well enough, he had her deported.”
“But Lorenza kept writing to you all these years?”
“I couldn’t bear to read her letters. I couldn’t stand to think about... How she could forgive me, I don’t understand.” She closed her eyes against the stinging. “We should have never come back. We should have kept floating on down the river until... It was all my fault. I was so ... I was afraid for my mother to find out. My parents’ friends. People. He found the letters. He said he would tell everyone about... about everything. I tried to tell myself that I was protecting my family, that I couldn’t disgrace them. But in my own heart, I know. It was my own ... it was ... There are certain things that simply are not done.”
“Oh, Mother Daubert.”
“I don’t understand anything anymore. Everything I thought was sure and solid turned into dust, and something I was brought up to believe an abomination—I don’t know what my life is anymore. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I only know—” She took the letter from the side pocket of her handbag and held it in both hands. “I only hope that maybe, sometimes you get one more chance.”
Kiki put her arms around her mother-in-law, and for the first time in Kiki’s memory, it felt like Mother Daubert was hugging back.
It would have been easy, in light of that, to try to comfort her. But Kiki purposely pushed that impulse aside. They both knew what it was to marry an angry husband and bear a tragically flawed son, to survive losing what they loved, like lifeboats off the Titanic or someone crawling out from under the wreckage of chemotherapy, skinny and bald, but still-here-sweetie. Survivors, by definition, have God on their side. But to tell her that now—about how that which had not killed them made them stronger—it would have been as trite and comfortless as some Precious Sentiment about Wayne and Luke being together now, just to the other side of heaven. If there was any truth to it at all, then truth was a hard, ironic thing.
“Mother Daubert,” Kiki whispered, not wanting to let go.
“Oh, please,” she pulled away, but kept Kiki’s hand. “Won’t you call me Beatrice?”
Kit was painting ponies on a half-wall when she heard Kiki’s name on the radio. She reached and put another check by that station’s call letters on the list Vivica had sent her.
“—on KTSU, Houston’s choice for great jazz music, and I’ve had another request for something off a brand new CD from local girlf
riend Kiki Smithers, Sugar Land: Lullabies and Other Love Songs. Look for it in stores on the Blues Mommies label, featuring killer renditions of some great jazz standards along with too-cool interpretations of classic children’s songs, so you can get into Kiki’s vocal stylings and simultaneously expose the rug rats to some amazing instrumentals by the Dave Rossy Trio and special guest Xylo Haines. Let’s set the last track and let Miss Kiki do her thang.” And Kiki did.
“Come to me, my melancholy baby ... cuddle up and don’t be blue...”
A wry smile was audible in her voice; a willingness to patronize the simple sentiment, to be fond of it without fully buying in.
Kit smiled, returning to the half-wall that portioned off part of Mitzi’s room for a nursery. She tipped tiny bird-wing V’s up from the corner where the mother was nesting and gave one last dash to the flying tails of all the pretty little ponies.
Mel had brought the old crib down from the attic when he came to pick up Mitzi and Coo a couple of weekends earlier, and while they were gone, Kit had spent two days assembling it and scavenging for sleepers and onesies on the clearance rack at Walmart. She’d combined the proceeds from Carse and Debbie Munda’s kitchen chairs with her cache of diaper coupons and stacked the first month’s supply of Huggies and Luvs in the corner of the closet, along with wipes, powder, Q-tips, and newborn-size Binkies.
She was nesting, Mel teased, and she laughed and let herself enjoy it.
The half-wall was his idea, and Kit was grateful when he offered to get the materials and build it one Sunday. Now Mitzi’s side jumped with a cartooned jukebox and bobby soxers, while tranquil watercolor lullabies stretched across the prairie side in view of the crib and rocker. A silo of grain, a boy with a horn, sheep in the meadow, cows in the corn; all lay still now, even the motion of the ponies seemed sleepy.
The luxurious ache in Kit’s back acknowledged the work of her hands. She hadn’t allowed herself the solace of this sweet anticipation until now. But now, she spanned her hands over her stomach and let herself be happy. She let herself want this baby, love her, make promises to her. As she rinsed her brushes and laid them out to dry, she even allowed herself a few hopes and dreams.
Kit lay back, resting her head in the lap of an enormously plush pink bear from Vivica. Within the two minutes it took for Xylo to tumble and touch a wandering solo across the bridge of the song, Kit was sleeping, and Kiki was singing right into her dream.
“Come on and smile, my honey dear, while I kiss away each tear...or else I shall be melancholy too...”
It was easier in the dream to find Frank Dupuis’ grave. Not like in real life, when Kit spent the whole weekend driving to Corpus Christi, scouting and map searching for the cemetery, then hefting her heavy front over hill and dale, determined to find the exact weather-whitened stone.
In the dream, Neeva walked right to it, and Kit simply followed her over the hill and between two crepe myrtles to the slope just beyond the big stone angel. The paper was so brittle it sigjied dryly as Kit tore it into small even pieces. She made a neat pile of them along with someone else’s wilted rose petals on the face of the low, slanted stone, but the wind quickly fluttered them across the cemetery like dandelion tatters.
“As if there isn’t enough smut in the world,” Neeva complained, as she turned and walked away.
“Neeva, wait!” Kit called and caught up to her. “Do you remember—did they have the baby? Was it a boy or a girl?”
Neeva leaned back against the open stance of the grave marker angel, looking like a four-armed, stone-winged Vishnu. She might have been smiling. Kit couldn’t tell around the cigarette in her mouth.
“According to Bulfinch,” she said, “they named her Pleasure.”
please please please please
Kit was doing the Mystery Date mantra when Dr. Poplin came in.
“Hi there, Kit.” She attached her chart to a clipboard. “How’s Mitzi doing?”
“Great,” Kit said, trying to sound cheerful and chatty. “Back to school last week. Thank the Lord. Maybe I can get some work done now.”
“How about Cooper?”
“All clear so far. He had a very light case when he was three, so I’m hoping that’ll hold him.”
“It should, as long as he had at least a dozen visible pox,” she said, noting Kit’s steadily advancing weight gain on the chart. “And how are you feeling?”
“Great. Fine,” Kit said, though her pulse was practically bruising please don’t let it be Wayne please don’t let it be Wayne. “I’m ok.”
“How are the headaches?” Dr. Poplin looked into her eyes with a little light.
“Better.”
“Have you been sleeping?”
“All the time,” Kit said. “I dozed off on the floor one day last week and haven’t seen midnight since.”
“Good,” Dr. Poplin said and pressed a stethoscope to Kit’s back.
“Less than two weeks to go,” the nurse encouraged before taking Kit’s urine sample and bustling out the door.
“I think you’re going to make it,” Dr. Poplin smiled.
Kit tried to look heartened so she would just get on with it.
Ander Ander Ander Ander please please please god sir
“Of course, those due dates are iffy. The baby’s head-down now. All set to go. So, you never know.”
“I’d bet money on the due date,” Kit said as the obstetrician supported her back and guided her feet into the stirrups. “Both Mitzi and Coo were born smack dab on their due dates.”
“Really?” Dr. Poplin raised her eyebrows but didn’t pause from palpating Kit’s abdomen. “Do you know the statistical improbability of that?”
“Stranger things have happened,” Kit prophesied.
“That’s for sure. Deep breath. You’re probably in the ball park with another ten days or so. You don’t seem to be effaced or dilated at all yet. Anyway, I make it a point never to argue with a woman’s intuition. One more deep breath.”
She moved her stethoscope over Kit’s belly and then gave her a turn at listening.
“Chugging like a little choo-choo.”
She finished the exam and helped Kit sit up sideways on the table.
“Okay, Kit. Let’s talk about the amnio.”
“Okay,” Kit nodded obediently.
Ander Ander Ander please please not that skinny little inbred weasel
“It’s a girl, and she’s perfectly healthy as far as we can determine.” Dr. Poplin smiled, and Kit smiled too. “But, Kit,” she continued, “the tests ruled out both subjects in terms of paternity.”
“What?”
“Neither of these subjects is the father, Kit.”
“But... they’re not? Are you sure?”
“It’s a virtual certainty. These tests are extremely accurate.” Dr. Poplin scootched closer on the wheelie stool. “Is there another possibility?” she asked delicately.
Kit sat on the examining table with her mouth open.
There was only one other possibility.
The impossible.
“Kit, I’ve known you for several years, and I know it’s not like you to play some kind of dangerous game, but we discussed high-risk behaviors, and the need for you to be honest with me about what’s going on.” She referred back to the chart. “Now, your HIV and STD tests came back negative, and I’m not making any value judgements. I just want you to feel that you can tell me if we need to take further precautions for... Kit?”
But Kit had gone off laughing so hard she was afraid she might lose the contents of her microscopic bladder. Laughing because she’d almost forgotten that babies don’t understand anything except miracles. And because she should have known that neither thunder nor hail nor all the prolific blonde sperm of Scandinavia could reach her.
Only Melvin Thadeus Prizer could swim upstream, against all odds, swim despite everything in his path, swim to her, despite her own best efforts to see that path taken away altogether.
Of course, she
laughed.
Only Mel could have given her a gift like this.
“But that’s the thing about love,” Xylo explained, stroking the damp hair away from Kiki’s face like she was a fevered child and he the mommy. “Love tends to juxtapose the laws of physics. You give of your deepest self, and instead of depleting your soul, it causes you to manifest and unfold, to become increased exponentially.”
He described the phenomenon with his ivory-tickling hands and his blues-man lips, the Tao Te Ching, and the calm that came to him after fourteen angry years in the joint.
“The Tao gives birth to One.
One gives birth to Two.
Two gives birth to Three.
Three gives birth to all things.”
He illustrated the koan with his body over hers, defining his words, allowing her questions, saying her name, singing soft phrases to her soft inside, sounding her out with vibrations and vibes, multiplying and quantifying on the clean carpet floor of Kiki’s new home.
“When the male and female combine,
all things achieve harmony.”
“It’s a girl,” Kit said, and Vivica laughed with pure joy.
“Oh, Kitty, I’m so excited for you. Does Mel know yet?”
“I haven’t found the right opportunity. But I’ve still got a week or so to go. Mitzi and Coo are helping him move over to his new apartment today, and he’s bringing them back here tomorrow night. I’ll probably tell him then.”
“Do you think you two are any closer to working things out?”
“Things are working out fine.” Kit tucked the phone into her shoulder and started rattling plates into the dishwasher. “Not exactly what we had planned, but it’s okay. We decided to use a mediator instead of getting lawyers and all that. That simplifies things a little. And it’s a lot less expensive.”
They both knew she wasn’t talking about money.
“Oh, Kitty.”
“It’s okay, Mama. Really. I know everybody thinks I should be falling apart, but I actually feel pretty solid on my own.”