The Sound of Us

by Sarah Willis

  “Okay, let’s go get the pie,” I say. Larissa follows me into the kitchen. The pie looks wonderful. I never knew I could make an apple pie. Larissa has asked things of me I never knew I was capable of.

  After the guys leave, Michelle puts Larissa to bed while I finish straightening up. When she comes downstairs, she’s humming something. I’m standing in my living room; if I sit down, it will be an offer for Michelle to sit down too.

  “I sang her a little song,” she says. “I used to do that when she was little. I forgot that song, till tonight. It’s been a long time since I felt like singing.”

  I sit down on the couch. Michelle walks over and sits in her old rocking chair. I knew she would sit there. She likes to keep moving, even while sitting.

  “I got a letter yesterday,” she says.

  “Yeah?” I say. “From who?”

  She laughs, a brushing-off-her-thoughts kind of laugh. I wonder if other people can read laughs like I do. I want to pretend it’s my special skill. “I never get letters, ’cept bills,” she says. “I don’t think I got a letter in maybe two, three years. It was my dad.”

  She never talks about her dad. I wait. Sometimes the best way to get people to say something is not to ask.

  “He’s an asshole,” she says. “I guess I didn’t know it till after my mom died. I think she musta kept him from being such a jerk, or maybe I just thought all dads were that way, you know, full of themselves and all. But after she died, I got to know him better. He was opinionated. Just told you what he thought and never asked what I was thinking. But it wasn’t that bad till I fell in love with Charlie. He spit on the floor and told me to leave if I was going to ‘fuck a colored.’ He still calls black people coloreds. Niggers sometimes too, but his sister, she slapped him right across the face one time he said that, then when she was dying of cancer, she made him promise he’d never say that word again.” Michelle shakes her head, smiling now. I can’t believe she’s smiling. I can’t believe she’s ever been able to smile. “His sister, she made him promise all sorts of shit, like giving money to cancer doctors and going to church every day. She died of breast cancer, just like my mom, but my mom had died of it when I was little. Nine. I don’t remember her much. I guess it’s something I got to look out for, breast cancer. It’s in my family.”

  “Jesus,” I say.

  Michelle shrugs with one shoulder. “Oh, don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

  “He sounds like an awful man. I’m sorry you had it so bad.”

  “Oh well, it doesn’t matter.”

  “So, you got a letter from him?”

  “Yeah. He wants to talk. Says he tried calling, but there was no listing for me. He say he wants to make up.” She rubs her legs, doesn’t look me in the eyes.

  “What are you going to do?” I ask.

  “Dunno,” she says. “Guess I’ll think about it a while.”

  “Good idea,” I say.

  “I gotta go,” she says. “I got work tomorrow.” She’s borrowed Teya’s car to get here.

  “Well, thanks for helping clean up,” I say.

  “Hey, look,” she says. “It was really nice you asking me here to dinner. I had a good time. Shaun gave me a piece of paper. He wrote out he’s going to call me some special way, so someone will talk for him. That would be weird, but I nodded when I read it. I guess he’ll call. It was a good dinner. Thanks for showing Larissa how to make a pie. Maybe you’ll show me sometime?”

  “Sure,” I say.

  “See you,” she says.

  Brushing my teeth before I go to bed, I roll my eyes at myself in the mirror. I had fun. “Watch out,” I say to my reflection.

  A week later, I get another call from Larissa’s teacher. She tells me Larissa used the word fuck. I apologize and tell her it won’t happen anymore.

  The next time we go to the donut shop, I tell Michelle I have to talk to her outside. It’s really cold, so she knows this is serious. She even gets her coat. “You can’t swear around Larissa anymore,” I say when we get outside. “She’s picking up your bad language.”

  She stares at me for a while, cocking her head, angry that I’m telling her what to do. I’m angry that she’s making me sound as if I’m superior.

  Finally Michelle nods. “Fine,” she says. “I’ll watch my mouth.”

  I don’t get any more notes or calls from Larissa’s teacher. I tell myself that problem is solved.

  But as well as I believe Larissa is doing now, I’m falling apart. I seldom get exercise; I say no to a third of the jobs I’m offered; I can’t get used to waking up so early; I make two meals for dinner, a healthy one for me and the healthiest version I can come up with of something Larissa likes. I haven’t gotten to a book group meeting in months and I never have time to read anyway. Larissa ignores Polly whenever she comes over, and glares at Yolanda Walker through yet another dinner. My parents invite me down for Christmas, and when I mention this to Larissa, tears well up in her eyes.

  “It’s my mommy’s birthday,” she says. “We can’t leave my mommy on her birthday.” I saw this coming.

  Michelle is not doing so well either. She’s still sleeping on the couch at Teya’s, and in order to keep her job at Dunkin’ Donuts, she has to miss half the meetings and classes she’s supposed to attend. Larissa’s social worker, who has come to my house only once, tells me that Michelle is trying, just not trying hard enough. When I complain to Yolanda that I don’t know how Michelle can get to all those meetings without a car, she says I’m becoming a bleeding-heart liberal.

  “No, I’m not,” I say, not sure why I’m defending myself. We’re meeting at a deli downtown for lunch. She called me to get together, and I was so pleased.

  “That woman needs to bend over backward to get that little girl back,” she says.

  “Well, how’s she supposed to do it, working at a donut shop?”

  “She’s not,” Yolanda says. Her hair is different, again. Now she has a bob with bangs. Last month her hair was braided. I touch the back of my neck. I need a new look. I’ve had the same haircut since the late eighties.

  “What do you mean, she’s not?” I ask.

  “She needs a better job.”

  “Well, how does she get a better job?”

  “Job training.”

  “Have you guys told her that?”

  “Yes, but she’s afraid,” Yolanda says. She picks all the cucumbers out of her salad and lays them on her bread plate. How could anyone not like cucumbers? “She’s dyslexic, you know.”

  “She never told me that,” I say, embarrassed by the hurt tone in my voice. I clear my throat and bite into my turkey wrap.

  “Hey, Alice, there’s a lot she isn’t telling you. It’s part of her game.”

  I want to shush her. The place is crowded, the tables too close. “But why not tell me that?” I say in a hushed voice. “It’s not like it’s her fault.”

  “She’s afraid to take classes, get a better job, buy a car. It’s called growing up. You’re making it easy for her, Alice. You bring Larissa to see her, have her to your house. She says she wants her kid back, but she knows she has a year. A year is a long time when you’re twenty-three.”

  “Jesus, Yolanda, you’re what, thirty-one, thirty-two? You’re pretty damn young, too. What makes you so wise?”

  “How come you’re defending her, Alice? Don’t you want to keep Larissa?”

  That stops me. “Yes. No. Not if Michelle can be a good mom. Larissa loves her.”

  “Is a good mom one that leaves a child alone for nineteen hours? Corrects us when we say twenty-four, like nineteen is okay?”

  “You never made a bad mistake?”

  “Not like that. She can’t make mistakes like that if she has a kid. I’ve had it tough, but I never left them alone for nineteen fucking hours.”

  The buzz of voices and clanking plates makes my body tense, as if I’m being attacked by sound. As I have before, I wonder if deaf people are more relaxed because th
ey are not bombarded by the noise of everyday life. I motion to Yolanda with my hand to keep her voice down. “You’ve seen a lot of bad stuff. You’re bitter. I wouldn’t want your job for a million dollars. I think you do great things, but I think you’re wrong here.”

  “Well, then good thing I’m not her social worker anymore, huh?”

  We look at each other. I don’t want to argue with her. I want to be friends. But I understand something, looking at Yolanda. We are friends, and I have stopped defining her as black when I think of her. And now we’re arguing, and yet suddenly I’m smiling stupidly. For almost fifty years I’ve never had an argument with a black person. I’m always as nice as I can be, as if being pleasant proves I’m not prejudiced. Here, in this crowded deli, I understand what I have been doing for so long.

  “I think you’re wrong about Michelle Benton, Yolanda,” I say. “Yeah, I’d like to keep Larissa. You’re right. I can’t even think about the alternative. But don’t get mad at me because I’m a bleeding heart, and I won’t get mad at you for being young.”

  Yolanda puts a hand on the table. I put my hand on hers.

  “Friends?” I say, and she nods.

  She gets the check, and I insist I get the next one. We plan on meeting in two weeks, same place. I don’t invite her to my house for dinner. I want to enjoy myself.

  One day, when I take Larissa to the donut shop, I fill out some client forms while I wait in the car for Larissa to come back out. It’s almost Christmas but there’s no snow on the ground and the temperature is mild, in the fifties. The holidays have always been hard for me, especially Christmas. I grit my teeth seeing Christmas displays in early November, stores decorated with puffy white cotton, bulbs hung to distraction on fake glittery white trees. I try to ignore it, stay out of stores. But Christmas is all Larissa can talk about. Christmas is coming! She skips and twirls with expectation. Her feet hardly touch the ground. She’s even getting me excited.

  Larissa and Michelle walk out of the donut shop, and Michelle waves to me. I wave back. She stands in front of the door and bends down, taking Larissa’s face in her hands, and kisses her right on the lips. Then, as I sit watching from the car, Larissa points to herself, crosses her arms across her chest, fists held up, then points to Michelle. I love you. I taught her that. Then I see Michelle sign it right back to her.

  My head up, I breathe evenly through my nose, lips closed. I want more than I will ever have. And right now I want to be alone.

  But Larissa skips over to the car, opens the door, and hops in, fastening her own seatbelt. In less than a minute, we’re talking about Christmas. She wants to get the gray-haired lady a present. I wipe the dry space under my right eye and say, “Sure. But something small, okay?” Larissa starts to list all the small things she can think of. Hair clips, rings, candy, bows, pencils with fluffy things on the ends like the one I got her last week.

  “Christmas is coming!” she says, clapping her hands together.

  How can I deny her this, or anything? How can I not know what love is? It’s going on, doing what I’m doing; taking care of Larissa until her mother gets her back.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  “You need to get another job,” I say to Michelle.

  She scrubs the pan I used for the Christmas Eve roast beef. We let it soak while Larissa, Michelle, and I ate cherry pie. Larissa cut a smiley face into the crust. I let her use a sharp knife.

  “I know,” Michelle says with her one-shoulder shrug that feels familiar to me now. It’s like Larissa’s one-eyed squint. “No one’s hiring.”

  “You’ve hardly tried.”

  “I can’t fill out the forms without them laughing at me.”

  “There’s places that can teach you how to fill out the forms.”

  “I like the donut shop.”

  “You like giving Larissa donuts. Well, let me tell you a little secret. Larissa’s getting sick of donuts.”

  Michelle squints. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Fuck. I thought she liked them.”

  “Michelle, you need another job.”

  She hands me the pan to dry and leans her back against the sink. Rubbing at her nose with the back of her hand, she pauses before she says something.

  “Listen, I called my dad and we talked a long time. He says he’s sorry for all the crap he gave me. He says I can work at the shop and he’ll give me health care. He said he knows he’s a prejudiced son of a bitch, but we’re family, and he’s too old to be a son of a bitch anymore. He’ll give me a car, too. A piece-of-crap car, but it’ll get me to classes. The social worker says they could move Larissa down to Cincinnati to live with my dad, if he passes some kind of tests. He said he ain’t taking no tests to be able to have his own grandchild, but I think I could get him to do it. I mean, if he only saw her, I know he’d do anything to help, right?”

  By the end of this little speech Michelle’s looking down at her feet. That stripe of undyed dark hair is starting to show again.

  We’re both quiet for a moment. From the living room, the tiny colored lights of the Christmas tree warm the house more than heat ever could. Larissa’s watching a Christmas special. Ed, Joey, and Shaun went to their own homes for the holidays. It’s just the three of us.

  “So,” I say. “You’re thinking about it?”

  Michelle tears at a cuticle. She recently had her fake nails removed and her own nails are thick and ugly underneath, and she can’t afford to get her nails done again. That’s what Larissa’s giving Michelle tomorrow for Christmas—a gift certificate to get her nails done, along with gloves, a scarf, and a bottle of perfume, some nameless brand in a pink bottle that Larissa thought was pretty. And for her mother’s birthday presents—wrapped in birthday paper, not Christmas paper—there’s a nice dress from Kaufmann’s, three packs of pantyhose, two bottles of hair dye (my idea), and a little gold heart pin. The money we spent on Michelle’s gifts is the hundred and fifty the county gives me to raise Larissa each month. The money always bothers me, but it helps.

  The closets in my house are filled with presents for Michelle and Larissa. I signed FROM SANTA on most of Larissa’s. On my mantel is a picture of her in Santa’s lap.

  “I don’t want her to be with another foster mother,” Michelle says. “But it would be bad for me, being down there, not being able to see her.”

  It’s around eight in the evening. Outside snow falls steadily. There are six inches on the ground with another three or four expected. It’s time for Larissa to get ready for bed. Michelle is supposed to come back tomorrow, late afternoon, for her birthday dinner.

  “Then find a job here,” I say.

  “How? Don’t nobody give you jobs unless you have experience, or they know you. I don’t know nobody but you and Teya, and she’s on disability. She’s no help. She’s not happy, me sleeping on her couch, either.”

  “I’ll find you a job,” I say.

  She looks up now, right at me. “How would you do that?”

  “I don’t know, but I will.”

  Michelle brushes the hair out of her face, just like Larissa does, with the back of her hand and a twist of her wrist, tucking stray strands behind her ear. They have the same small ears. “That would be nice, if you could. I’d like Larissa to stay here with you, until I get her back. I don’t know what kind of job you can get for me, but I’ll do anything. I can’t spell or fill out forms, but I’m not stupid.”

  No, you’re not, I think.

  Christmas morning, I feel Larissa poke my shoulder, and although I’m sleeping, I’m not startled by her touch. This is how she calls my name, this poking. She won’t say Alice or Miss Marlowe; she just pokes me with a finger. I keep my eyes closed, not wanting to rush this day. She pokes me again. “Did Santa come?” she whispers.

  I open my eyes. She’s peering intently into my face. I want to put my hands on her cheeks, cup her face. “Let’s go see,” I say.

  We make a big deal of tiptoeing downstairs. The
re are dozens of packages under the tree. My parents sent a boxful of stuff too, even a few for me. This is the first Christmas in a long time that I haven’t spent with them. I said I’d come down a few days after Christmas, but they’re going to Florida with friends.

  “Oh look, oh look, oh look!” Larissa says, her voice hushed with wonder.

  “So, should we open them?” I ask.

  “Yes. Yes, we should open them!” She twirls once, but then stops. She wants to stay facing all those presents. “Oh, look! That’s my name! That’s my name right there. And there! That’s my name!” She kneels down on the floor. “Look at all the presents!”

  “Hey, look, see Santa’s name there?” I point to the box closest to her. “Santa starts with S,” I say, signing the letter. “Let me get your picture before you start opening them. Here, sit down and turn around and look at me.”

  Half of Larissa’s face is covered by her hair. In the four months I’ve had her, it’s grown another three inches. “Tuck your hair back,” I say, and she obliges, but it won’t stay that way for long. I move back into the dining room to get the whole shot: Larissa, the tree, the packages scattered artistically about. It took me forever to arrange them haphazardly. I take the picture, and a second one just in case she blinked.

  “Are there any presents for you?” she asks. I smile. Smart me, I bought a few things for myself and signed FROM SANTA on them. I’m good at this. Who would have known?

  “Yep. I think I see my name. There. See? But you first. The big one?” It’s a large box, about two feet high. “It’s from my parents.” Larissa nods solemnly, quietly. I haul it over closer to her. She peels off the paper carefully, hardly ripping it at all. I imagine Michelle teaching her this, so they could reuse the paper.

  I don’t know what the present is—my parents wouldn’t tell me—and when I see it, I have to turn away for a moment. It’s a house for Lucy, with her name across the door, paintings of carrots on the walls, and gingerbread carvings across the eaves. There’s a green satin pillow inside with the word Lucy embroidered in pink thread. It is the largest present under the tree, in size and heart, and I suddenly realize that I will never have grandchildren. “Oh, look!” Larissa says. “Oh, look what they did!” She picks up Lucy, who is on the floor beside her, and gently places her inside on the satin pillow. Larissa is smiling hugely, her crooked teeth splaying forward like a little rabbit herself. I take another picture. I take a lot of pictures.