by Sarah Willis
I wait. She’s wearing down. After a minute or two, she slumps against the wall, into the corner, weeping harder now that she’s not in a fury of movement, settling into a full-fledged cry. “I . . . want . . . my . . . mommy!” She can hardly get the words out now; they are more gasps for air than words. She can’t even get her thumb into her mouth because then she won’t be able to breathe. I crawl over to where Lucy lies heaped on the floor, and with my arm stretched out, not moving any closer to Larissa, hand her the bunny. She tugs it to her chest as if I stole it from her in the first place. With Lucy now back in her arms, she stiffens, holding herself so still she looks like someone determined never to move again, as well as never speak again. I want to scream: at Yolanda, at the magistrate, at the whole system. Why did they give her to me? Are they all so stupid not to know that a woman with no children wouldn’t know what to do with this child? I feel tears running down the outside corners of my eyes and rub hard at them with my thumbs. I’m tough, but not this tough. I feel useless, less help than a stuffed rabbit.
“Would you like to call her?” I whisper. “Would you like to call your mother on the phone?”
Abruptly, she looks up at me and nods once.
“Fine, then. You can. You can call your mother.”
She just sits there, snot running out of her nose. I’m worried it will get on Lucy. I don’t think Lucy can stand a washing, even if Larissa would let me do such a thing. “We need to get your face washed, get you dressed, and have you eat a little breakfast, and then you can call her. I promise.”
She nods again, warily, but nods. Well, I can get her to do things if I let her call her mother.
I hate being a foster mother.
After getting her changed—her pajamas and the sheets are once again wet—and getting her to eat seven spoonfuls of Cheerios, I give her the portable phone, dialing the number for her so she won’t get it wrong. “You can take it up to your bedroom.”
As she walks up the stairs, I hear her say, “Mommy,” and then, crying again, “I want to come home.” Then she closes her door.
I gave Larissa the phone hoping her mother wouldn’t be there, that she would be out looking for a job. What is she doing home at nine in the morning on a Friday? Why isn’t she looking for a job? How long might they talk on the phone? Should I make Larissa hang up after a half hour, an hour? I give myself ten minutes, then creep up the stairs.
I can hear murmuring, a sob, a long pause, then Larissa talking again, then another long pause. I can’t hear what she’s saying, just the sound of her voice. I go into my office and shuffle through papers. After fifteen minutes, I go back. This time, through the closed door, I don’t hear any sound at all. I count to sixty, then knock.
Nothing. I knock again. Finally I just open the door. Larissa is curled up in a ball on the bed.
“Larissa? Is everything all right?” What a stupid question. I close my eyes and take a breath. “Did you talk to your mommy?”
She doesn’t move. Jesus, I’m back to square one, a silent, injured child. God damn her mother. What did that woman tell her daughter?
I sit on the end of the bed. Larissa’s loose hair completely hides her face. “Larissa. Is there anything I can do?”
Nothing: It’s her answer, and exactly what I can do. My jaw grinds back and forth and I feel the pressure on my old teeth. I get up and go downstairs. I call my mother.
“We can’t make it today,” I say. “I’m sorry. Maybe tomorrow.”
She can tell I’m not in the mood for questions. Real mothers know stuff like that. She says to come whenever I can. I have a quick vision of me driving Larissa back to Children and Family Services, giving her back, driving down to Columbus and sobbing in my mother’s arms.
I sit on the couch, turn on the TV. It’s set on the cartoon station. The sound comes on—a braying laugh—and startles me. I hit MUTE. I stay there, on the couch, staring at the TV, seeing myself around the age of five, sitting on my parents’ couch next to Vince. My five-year-old self is content with this, so I just sit here. Sometime later, much later, Larissa comes down the stairs.
I think it helps that I’m watching the TV with the sound off. She sits down on the couch and stares straight ahead, just like me.
I’m angry at her, and it frightens me.
At a commercial, I ask if she talked to her mother. She nods.
“Do you feel a little better now?”
She shrugs.
“We have to go to the grocery store,” I say. “Can I fix your hair first?”
She waits a few seconds, then shrugs. I get her comb and brush. The brush is cheap plastic, and I want to get her a nice brush, one of those good wooden ones. There’s a CVS near the grocery store. Then I remember her mother’s prescription bottles. We’ll go someplace else.
I braid Larissa’s hair in one loose braid, using a beaded rubber band I found in her bag. I put two pink plastic clips shaped like butterflies near her temples, to keep some of the flyaway hair out of her face. Bringing over a warm, wet washcloth, I wash her face again. She sits there without expression, and I’m angry again. See how hard I’m trying? I think. Can’t you see that? I put out my hand, and she takes it. We walk to my car. I fasten her seatbelt securely.
In the grocery store, not Tops, I feel people giving us second looks, checking out the white woman with the little black girl. I feel the second looks inside my chest. I wonder what Larissa feels.
We get a brush at a drugstore, a nice sturdy wooden one with pads at the tips of the bristles. Larissa doesn’t seem to even understand the brush is for her. She looks like someone who just doesn’t care about anything. And then it hits me. Her thumb is in her mouth, but there is no Lucy clutched to her chest. I’m anxious, seeing her without Lucy. Something is very wrong.
Chapter Sixteen
There’s a woman sitting on my porch steps when we get back from our errands. Larissa’s mother. My heart starts beating hard, and my hand spells Shit. I think seriously about driving right by my house, heading straight to Columbus.
“Mommy!” Larissa cries out.
I pull up to the garage, park, and bound out of the car, my keys in my hand, point out. Larissa’s mother is walking up the drive, and I walk quickly to intercept her. “What are you doing here?” I hiss. I actually hiss.
Larissa jumps out of the car and runs to her mother. Michelle, I remind myself. That’s her name. Does she know mine? How did she find us? Fuck, she’s here. What the hell am I supposed to do now?
She’s wearing a tight black T-shirt with TRY ME in white letters across her chest, and her hair still has that dark stripe down the middle. She doesn’t look like a mother. She looks like the babysitter from hell. I can’t imagine her cooking soup, wearing an apron. She looks like someone who needs a mother.
Michelle kneels down on my drive and Larissa runs into her arms. I have groceries in my car. Milk. Frozen mac and cheese. Peppermint ice cream.
I can’t yell at this woman in front of Larissa. “I don’t think you’re supposed to be here,” I say as calmly as I can. My voice trembles, and it makes me madder. “I have groceries that need to be put away.” I almost say food for your daughter.
“I gotta see my girl,” she says to me over the top of Larissa’s head. “I just got to see her.” She cups Larissa’s head in her hands, kisses her forehead several times. Then she looks back up at me. “I know I shouldn’t be here. Please don’t call no one. Please. I just had to see my baby. I miss her so bad. You don’t know how bad I miss her. It’s awful. She’s all I got.” She presses her head down against Larissa’s hair that I just braided. “Oh, sweetie pie, I miss you so bad I just had to come see you. They told me I can’t, but I just had to. I just hope this nice lady won’t get mad and report me. I just hope she understands how bad I miss you.”
So now I’m a nice lady. “I have to put the groceries away before the ice cream melts.”
“I don’t mean to cause no trouble. I just wanna see my little gir
l.”
I’m afraid to move. If I go into the house, might they run off? “Will you stay right there?” I ask. “Promise me you’ll stay right there while I put my groceries away?”
“I promise,” she says. “We’re gonna stay right here, won’t we, honey?” She looks right at me and adds, “We could help, if you want.”
She sees the look on my face—the fear of her in my home—and she smiles. She knew exactly how I would react. “No thank you,” I say. “Just stay there.”
Inside, I think about calling the police, but Larissa would never forgive me for doing that twice. I think about calling Children and Family Services, but it always takes forever to get someone on the phone. I unpack the groceries, putting away only the things that need to be refrigerated. When I go back out for the rest of the bags, Larissa and her mother are whispering to each other. I feel plotted against. I want to throw a bag of groceries against my house and scream.
They’re all wrapped up together, Michelle sitting on the ground, Larissa in her lap. Right in the middle of my driveway. “Why don’t you sit on the chairs on my front porch,” I say.
“Thank you,” Michelle says. “Thank you kindly.” She gets up and, holding hands, they walk down the drive, turning across my lawn to the porch. As soon as they’re out of sight, I wonder if they’ve even gone to the porch. Maybe they’re walking off right now. Larissa, my hand spells, and I hate my hand, myself, Larissa’s mother, and the whole system. Maybe even Larissa.
I go back into my house, and from in here I can see the shape of them on my porch. I put the rest of the groceries away. I’ll give them ten minutes. This is my house. I’m the adult in charge of Larissa. I have responsibilities. And what the hell else can I do? Sit and read a book?
Exactly ten minutes later, I walk out my front door. Larissa’s sitting in her mother’s lap, her small head resting against the words TRY ME. They both look up as I come out, Michelle’s fingers woven into her daughter’s hair, Larissa’s arms around her mother’s neck, both their eyes red from crying. Michelle’s wary tenseness, that fighting look, is gone. She seems completely worn down, collapsed into her daughter. It’s like finding a strange wounded animal on my front porch. In my wicker chair. I want to go back inside.
I sit on the cement steps, their cool hardness just what I need right now. “Larissa, I have to talk to your mother for a few minutes. I left the crayons and the coloring book on the table inside. Could you go color for a little, while I talk to your mother?”
Larissa stares at me, showing nothing on her face. I’m no one now.
Michelle eases Larissa off her lap. “You go color, sweet pea. I’m gonna talk to Mrs. Marlowe for a little bit. Then you can come back out. I won’t go nowhere without saying good-bye. I promise.”
Larissa rubs her head against her mother’s chest. Her mother nods once, and Larissa gets up and goes inside my house. Michelle and I both begin to talk at the same time.
“It’s not Mrs.,” I say, finding the only thing I’m sure of to say.
“I know I shouldn’ta come,” she says. She actually sounds as if she means it.
“No, you shouldn’t have. How did you know where to find me?”
She brushes the bangs out of her eyes, tucking stray hair behind her ears. “Larissa told me on the phone she was with the white-haired lady. I remembered your name from court. You’re in the book.”
“Well, it’s Miss,” I say. “Miss Marlowe.”
“I’m Michelle.” She smiles a small, fragile smile. She can’t be more than twenty-two, if that.
“I know. Look, you really can’t just come here. You know that.”
“I’m sorry I hollered at you that day. It was a bad day. They all been bad days lately. I’m scared they might take her away for good. I can’t find a job, except at fast-food places. I’ll take one, next week, I guess. I need the money.”
Part of me starts to feel bad for her; the other part of me knows I’m being played.
“Well, maybe you should be out looking right now?” I imagine her in this T-shirt asking for a job. Maybe she’s a prostitute. “Do you have clothes for job interviews? Maybe that’s why no one’s saying yes.”
She nods. “I have a real nice suit, but it’s bad luck, that suit. I won’t wear it again. I need to get something else.”
“A suit’s not bad luck. You make your own luck.” Jesus, what am I doing? Trying to teach her about life? I just want her off my porch.
She shakes her head, her bangs falling back into her eyes. “This one is. I never shoulda brought it with me in the first place. This move . . . It was supposed to be a new life but it’s just the same old shit. Same bad luck. I’m not putting it back on. I’m going to take it to a thrift shop. Maybe they’ll trade me?”
I almost get pulled into this conversation about thrift shops. It’s got something to do with the way she looks right into my eyes. “Well, you need something decent to wear. Some outfit or something.”
“I got that suit for my husband’s funeral,” she says, touching her chest, rubbing her fingers along some imaginary fabric. “He was shot dead by the police, just taking his wallet out. Some other black man shot a policeman, and Charlie was black, so they fucking shot him. Fucking Goddamn police. Maybe you saw it on TV, some two years ago? My husband was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. A lawyer called me said that. He said we should sue them, but nothing happened. I miss him. I really miss him.”
Her eyes are welling up. I look away. Mrs. Myerson across the street is watching us from her lily bed, holding a bunch of lilies in her hands. “I’m sorry,” I say. I almost tell Michelle about my brother getting killed; I feel this urge to share my story with her, let her know I’m human, too. I keep my mouth shut. My hands are killing me.
Michelle is absently twisting the ring on her finger. A gold wedding band. There’s no engagement ring. “His name was Charlie Benton,” she says, talking quietly. “He hadn’t done nothing wrong at all. They just shot him dead and then they said they was sorry. Everybody said they was sorry, but what good does that do?
“That day I left her alone, it was the second anniversary of him getting shot dead. The day I went for that interview and wore that suit? It was the suit I wore to his funeral. I went to Kristen’s, that fancy shop sells expensive clothes. I was supposed to be there at four o’clock, and so I had to leave our place at three to get there. Charlie’s sister Teya was supposed to come over right after work, at five. She’s a lot older than Charlie was, but she’s real good with Larissa. I told Larissa to be a good girl until her auntie got there. She watches TV that time anyway, maybe you know that? But her auntie got sick and taken to the hospital. I thought her auntie was there. Honest, I did.”
“What happened? Why didn’t you come home?” I ask. If she had been mugged or something, it wouldn’t have been her fault. They wouldn’t have taken Larissa away if she had a damn good excuse. But Yolanda said Michelle had been drinking.
Michelle looks down, shuffling her feet. They make a rasping noise against the porch. “They didn’t want me. These two women, they looked at each other, then the one said, ‘Oh, we don’t have any openings. You must of made a mistake. When you called, we thought you were a rep.’ They lied right to my face. I looked good in that suit, my hair done, but they didn’t even give me a chance to hardly say my name. They wanted me out of that store so bad they nearly pissed their pants trying to sweet-talk me and move me along like I was stupid.” She pulls her legs up, wraps her arms around them. The temperature’s dropping and she’s just wearing that stupid T-shirt. “I called her a bitch. Well, she was. I said, ‘Why do you have to be such a bitch? What’s the matter with you? Why won’t you give me a chance? I woulda been a good worker for you. You don’t know what you’re passing up.’ She said she’d call the police if I didn’t go.” She pauses. I imagine her in that shop, talking back to those women. I’m embarrassed for her.
She rests her head on her knees, looking at me. Her eyes are gree
n, her lashes pale, and her eyeliner is smudged under her eyes like a raccoon, and yet she’s mesmerizing. She’s so thin and small, like the kids who were in those ads some years ago, the heroin ads they were called. But she doesn’t look drugged; she radiates this intensity that compels me to look right back at her and listen. She has this need, she says with her eyes, to talk to me, just me, like I’m important to her, like she’s never told anyone this before. “I was walking to the bus and I never wanted to stop walking. I walked right past the bus stop, thinking maybe I’ll just walk home since I don’t have no money anyway to be spending on buses. I thought Teya was with Larissa. I needed to be alone anyway, so I wouldn’t be so mad. Then I saw this bar. I didn’t drink nothing for eighteen months, but I sat down and ordered a beer. This man came over, bought me two more, with shots. I wasn’t with no man since Charlie, and it was so nice. God it felt good, someone talking nice to me like that. I went to his place with him.” She stops, lifts her head up. “I’m a good mom. I love Larissa and she loves me. I did a bad thing, a really bad, stupid thing, and I’m sorry, but they shouldn’t of taken her away. I’ll never do nothing like that again. It wasn’t even good. It was awful.”
The sky is darkening and the wind picking up. Mrs. Myerson has gone inside. It’s going to be a bad storm, I can tell. Please don’t rain, I think. Not yet. I want this woman to leave, but I want to know what happened to her first.