If Only
Page 3
She? he said because it was only those pink lines back then.
I don’t repeat what I know. In me is a girl and she is growing to be something better than all of us. She could be anything or anyone. And I could be, too. What are the dreams again? Tell me. You meet a boy and fall in love. Right? You get married? Buy a house, right? What are the dreams again?
I would be lying if I said I don’t think of her sometimes, maybe older, in a really sweet little sequined tutu, hair in French braids (I can braid so well now), holding my hand as we walk, through the mall maybe, down by the reservoir and the creek. All the little stores. All the rocks sparkling from under the water. Sequins refracting light. Whatever you want, is what I want to say to her, I will buy it for you, but it’s not like that is the truth. I can’t even drive on my own to the mall. Learner’s permit. How am I going to get her to the place where I can’t even buy her anything she wants?
Will my heart be breaking forever? Like this.
Smashed.
These people today are from Phoenix. They came all this way to meet me. Are these people the best people? I have what they want: I am in school with the father who is ready to sign the papers. I am not on drugs. I am not a mermaid or a swan or a goat or a devil. I am not living in a cave or beneath the sea. I am a girl. I am only a girl. I have done things I regret—so many things, this with Baylor isn’t even first on the list—but I think this thing I am about to do will take the cake and win the whole bake sale. But which is the way I will regret it more, I can’t now say. To stay or go, I mean. I just can’t say.
They pull up. Rental car. I wonder what their real car looks like.
I watch them look up at our door, covering their eyes from blinding sun. What are they seeing? Our little clapboard house. Those cheesy lights by the number: 3476. Eagle Pass. Means nothing, the number. Or does it mean everything? It all depends how hard I’m looking and what I’m looking for. Rickety steps, need mending. Chain-link fence. Not white and wooden, not like in the movies. Is theirs like in the movies? Show me a picture, I want to demand. Let me see your white picket fence.
It’s early but I can still hold my belly and imagine I am holding it, holding her. I can wonder: What if I choose wrong? These two people here: she is tall and a little too thin, a little too white. He’s all teeth. They might be good, they might have money, but does that make them right for you?
Right for us?
Baylor is checked out. Has that faraway look that makes him seem a little, well, touched. I can see him drumming his fingers on his thighs. His fingers are one of his good features. Thinking about them still makes me shivery all over. Hands are such strange things. It’s amazing you are allowed to have them out in public without gloves on. They do such private, shocking things.
Baylor likes this couple because, according to the profile the agency sent us, the man played in a band about one hundred years ago. Maybe a thousand.
When I showed Baylor the profile, he had tilted his head to the side and said, “I can see me a little bit in him.”
Really? I had thought. Because Baylor doesn’t even play an instrument.
“I might play one day,” he said. “I mean, I could. Now. I could be anything.”
I get what he means. I do.
Why did I choose them? Was it the desert? Their profile showed them standing in a garden along a path lined with cactuses. Once, when I was a little girl, I went to the desert. It is the only time I ever went on a plane. I was with Dahlia, visiting her aunt, and Lulu paid for my trip. Everything was dead and alive at the exact same time. It was freezing and burnt to a crisp. It was the sun and the moon. It was so extreme I couldn’t take it—but I kept thinking what would I be if I had grown up here among all these lizards and flowering cactuses?
Dahlia and I hiked into the mountains. It got dark so quickly there.
The profile said: we have a garden of cactuses and we like to hike.
So that memory came back to me. A memory of me wondering about the future. A memory of the only time I’d ever been somewhere else.
The knock is soft. Our doorbell is broken.
I open the door and there they are, smiling fake and wide and looking down at me. They hand me a stuffed bear, but who is that really for? A stuffed bear is for a baby. I won’t have one. Remember? You will be taking mine. The bear is really for yourselves. It’s yours.
I open the door. I take the bear. It smells like a rental car, stale and sugary. No part of me wants to let these people in.
“Sit down,” my mother says. “Please.” My mother in her mom jeans and bad mall shirt and her chalky pink lipstick. Hard to imagine my mother hanging out and listening to Janis Joplin while her and her best friend’s boyfriends were at a war, like Lulu says. My mom never talks about any of that.
Anyway, I’ve never felt so strange. Once my father sold my bike when I stopped riding it. He put an ad on Craigslist and some people came by to look at it. I watched them from my window, examining this bike with its white basket, those old plastic flowers and the bell that was rusted from the time I left it out in the rain. I was always leaving that bike out in the rain. My father crossed his arms as the people ran their fingers over the pink banana seat. Ten bucks. A man opened his wallet and handed my father the cash and there went the bike to another person’s daughter.
Mrs. Arizona has a name. It’s Esme. Isn’t that beautiful? She doesn’t know I’ve chosen them because of the cactuses and because of her name. It’s beautiful but it doesn’t look like her. She is harder than I thought. Sharper. Her edges, she’s all sticks and stones, but not the kind you can build nests with.
My mother sits, too. She doesn’t ask them if they want anything to drink and I guess why should she.
Mr. Arizona is Matthew. He’s all teeth and you can see them because he’s smiling. Deranged smiling. He looks at Baylor, at a chair next to the couch, and Baylor smiles back at him, looks down.
I bet he’s thinking, this guy played in a band? That’s what I’m thinking anyway.
“We want to do whatever makes you most comfortable,” Esme says when we settle in a bit. She seems to be talking to me and my mother, which is annoying. Because it should just be me. “We want you to visit if you want, you can stay with us. Pictures every few months. Whatever level of openness you want.” Again, she looks at my mother.
I nod, as loudly as possible. “I don’t really know yet,” I say. I imagine staying in their house. Like, in some guest room, my daughter down the hall in a room of her own. Not my daughter anymore. “Pictures sound really good.” I imagine it. “And cards,” I say. “Like valentines.”
They nod. I sound like an idiot but I don’t care because I do want a valentine, one that spills out glitter and sparkles and pink feathers when I open it.
“Well, ask us anything,” Esme says. “Please. We want to be as open with you as possible.” She takes Matthew’s hand and sort of stretches it into her lap. It seems disconnected from Matthew now. Like it’s just Esme’s. He doesn’t seem to love it but he can’t say anything because he knows I must be watching for anything that makes them seem less than perfect. And I am.
I want to ask about the cactuses. They flower in the wintertime, don’t they? I want to ask. That sounds pretty to me.
I want to ask about the room they will make for her. What color will it be? I think yellow is nice. How big is it? Will there be a turtle that shines stars onto the ceiling like I once saw in a movie? A mobile that spins and plays lullabies? Soft blankets and teddy bears? I want to ask all these things because suddenly I realize these people have to be 1,000 percent better than me. Otherwise, why? Because what if I choose wrong. What if they are worse? What if they fight or go out all the time or leave her alone in a restaurant or a hot car with closed windows? What if it should have been me all along?
What if I am being tested?
My heart is racing. I had thought, I will just know. It will all be so clear. But it is not clear. This is all wrong.
“It doesn’t have to be now,” Esme reassures me. “We can keep in contact and you can call with questions you think of. Whenever.”
I nod.
She takes a wrapped box out of a shopping bag. Williams-Sonoma it says in green type. Never heard of the place but it seems uptight.
She nods at me, basically pushing me to open it.
She seems pretty happy about her gift, but I know, I just know, that inside the box is not anything I want.
The box is wrapped in brown paper, like a grocery bag, and it is tied with ribbed green ribbon, which matches the shopping bag. I untie the green ribbon. I tear through the paper. Everyone watches me. I catch Baylor eyeing me, too.
“It’s a juicer!” Matthew says. He can, like, barely contain his excitement.
Well, I’ll be, that riddle has been solved, I think as I watch my mother pretend to be totally thrilled. “Ooh, yes,” she says. “Wonderful!”
I set it down on the carpet.
“So you can be sure to have enough fruits and veggies,” Esme says, looking at my stomach. “So you can be healthy.”
Me? You mean the baby. It is getting confusing already. They don’t love me; they won’t love me. Do I want their love? Do they think I will feed this baby, I don’t know, bug spray and Windex?
I can’t. I feel like I’m going to either pass out or laugh like the homeless lady on the Commons in town, or just throw up. I stand, woozy. My mother eyes me. Sit down, she says with her eyes. They turn to slits. You sit down right now.
I sit down. “Thank you,” I say to the Phoenix, Arizonas.
“Of course,” Esme says, her husband nodding maniacally behind her. “We would love to provide you with more stuff . . . for the baby, I mean, when you decide we’re matched. If, I mean. If we’re matched.”
The counselor has told me: matched is when you hook up with the right family. She’s told us: I’m the birth mom. And my baby is suddenly an adoptee. Which makes me feel like she won’t have a leg or something. “Thanks.” Well, this is awkward, I’m thinking, as I press my hands between my knees. “That’s so nice.” I start nodding a lot, too. I can feel it but I can’t stop.
And there goes my mother with her mean eyes again.
Baylor has basically sunk into himself. No one seems to see him.
Michael says, “Our lawyer has an account where you can draw money for things you need.” He looks over at my mother, who is nodding furiously. “Rent, for instance.” He looks around the room.
What does he see? I wonder. The cracked ceiling? The dirty walls? The bad eighties wall-to-wall carpet?
“Thank you,” I say.
“And pretty maternity clothes. And groceries,” Esme adds, smiling.
I feel like this hour will last an eternity but then, after that and some discussion of the school system in Phoenix and also the golf there, and all the aunts and cousins in their lives and all of this but nothing about the cactuses, finally, it’s over.
I stand up when they do and I let them hug me, all their corners digging into my softening places, and I let them touch my stomach and push at my hair and I let them, for that day, think that this baby will be theirs. They want her. I am not on drugs and, look, I have a mother right here and she’s normal enough, and Baylor, he’s saying, please, take this baby so I can be with my new hot girlfriend and not feel too crappy about it, please, and there aren’t a lot of red flags, that’s what the counselor calls them. There are no red flags here. It’s not a favor to them, me letting them believe for this one day. I don’t know how else to do it. And also I don’t know how to undo it.
What if I hadn’t waited so long? To decide. I mean, what if I had peed over that stick earlier, if those lines hadn’t divided my life—before I took the test and after. What if I had just snuck off and gotten rid of it and never said a word to anyone?
If only I had just a little bit less. Or a little bit more. The decision would be easier then, right?
These people, they came all this way. They got on a plane and they probably held hands and squeezed tight and said, this is it this is it this is the one. But I want to feel that, too. Even if nobody is here to hold my hand.
What, I wonder, as they get up to leave, does it really mean to Be Brave?
Ivy
2017
I watch Claire unfold the letter. I’ve memorized it by now, but I read over her shoulder, like I’m reading it from Claire’s brain, not mine. I don’t expect it, but she begins to read it out loud.
October 25, 2000
Dear You,
I call you Lily I call you Lilac I call you Daisy and Tulip and Heather and Dandelion and Rose. But I named you Ivy: climbing, strong, ever green. We are going to grow together, okay? Okay? Even apart, whatever your name becomes, we’re still together. You are in my heart tonight. I am your mother but Joanne and Andrea are your mothers for real. When I met them I felt like I had already seen them before. I recognized them. I don’t know if you can believe it but that is the story. Immediately in my heart, I felt they were family and that there were forever kinds of love. I knew they were your parents. I will not lie. That was sad for me. Do you know how much they wanted you? High as the sky big as the world. God did his job. You saved my life. You snatched me from the dark. And you saved your parents. Seven years they were waiting. I think of it that we all answered each other’s prayers.
That is a miracle. You are a miracle. Letting you go is the hardest thing I have ever done. It is the saddest thing. I am waiting for the sweetness of you to swallow the bitterness of the not you. You are going to be amazing. Always remember that I love you with all of my heart that is so big now, since you’ve come into the world.
Now we both have to be brave.
Love,
Your first mom
I have read the letter a million times but today it sounds like it’s Claire saying the words. It’s too strange that it could be anyone. I have never heard her voice. I blink back new tears.
She folds the letter back up. “That’s such a sweet letter. I can’t believe you haven’t shown it to me,” she says. She hands it back and I quickly put it inside my journal, that secret pressed-flower place. Claire’s arms alight, fold into themselves. Disappearing wings.
“I guess.” I look back at her. I shrug. It doesn’t really say a thing, does it? It tells me nothing but that, well, she could spell.
“I can’t imagine,” she says. She rubs my back at the open space between my shoulder blades, where I imagine I once had wings. When were they taken from us? Our wings.
“Thanks,” I say. I turn the dragonflies on and off and then on again. Blink. Blink. Blink.
Blink.
She goes back to the mirror and leans in, tries to rub off her lip gloss. “It’s so much to think about.”
I nod. But she’s looking at herself.
“I want to have something perfect to say but all I can think is I’m starving,” she says. “When’s dinner anyway?”
Bridget
April 2000
I go to my bedroom mirror that’s perched on my old scratched-up dresser, thrift-shop smudges at the corners. I can hear the Phoenix, Arizonas walking away. I know it’s for the best. I won’t choose them. My skin is breaking out around my hairline. I tried some cornstarch to soak up all the grease but that was just clumpy and then I tried a new kind of gel but those red dots are still there. I want to prick them with a needle, see what’s in there. What’s in there? It can’t be good.
My nose is dry and red from a cold I’ve had since week three of this. Everything good goes to the baby they say. They is: doctors, nurses, my mother when she’s not so pissed she can’t look at me. My father, that’s different. He’s mostly sad about
it. It’s like they’ve switched. My angry vet dad is sad and my mom is the one ready to shoot. Oh, Valerie, I hear myself think. That’s my mother. Valerie. Happy Valley we called her back when we joked together, my dad and me, the few times the same things made us laugh.
Anyway, it’s like all the good from my food (Is there any good in Hot Pockets? Because that is all I want to eat . . . ), all the good from my body goes to the baby. Left behind is what’s for me. And there’s nothing left. Already she is taking and taking and taking. That’s what kids do, is what my mother has been telling me her whole life. Take it all.
“They were nice!” my mother is at the door, leaning in. I can tell she doesn’t really believe it either.
“Seriously? A juicer?” I turn toward her.
“Well,” she says. “They brought something.”
“A teddy bear?”
“You need to get a job.” She walks in, swiping the dresser with her finger. “And you need to clean,” she says as she flips her finger over to see the fingerprint of dust.
“Seriously?”
“Bridget,” my mother says.
“Mom!” I look down at my belly and back up at her again. “Don’t you want to be a grandma?”
She looks at me like she will wring my neck. “You need to choose a family for this child and you need to get a job.”
“How am I going to work at the pool again? Come on, be real.”
Last summer I taught swimming to little kids at the public pool. There was a boy there named Nelson, the head lifeguard. That was before Baylor. I couldn’t wear a bikini to camp—you can’t teach kids in a two-piece apparently—and I remember lying out in one of our free swims in this one piece, and the feel of the sun on me, baking, Nelson twirling his whistle, seated above all those screaming kids. I remember shielding my eyes, all the bright light and dark in them when I sat up to look at Nelson looking at me.
This summer. A bikini. I want to scream at my mother, about all of it. What if it could all be in there, in one scream?