“Thank you for reading that,” Patrick says. “I feel like I know you better. I just want to know everything.”
If he were next to me, I’d be supposed to kiss him, but part of me still wants to roll my eyes. Why? Why can’t I be serious and all in? What do I know about Patrick? The band. Loves dogs and bikes. House smells like musk and used books.
I lay the stone in the palm of my hand. I expect it to be cold but it is strangely warm.
“Patrick!” I say. So suddenly. It’s strange. Can you be erased? Like, what if the butterflies don’t flap their wings at all? What if they never get out of those cocoons to begin with?
“Ivy!” says Patrick. “What up? What what.”
“I’m just sort of overwhelmed by everything I guess.”
“I get it. I’m thinking what it would be like, like, to have this one thing you don’t know.”
“Sorta. I mean, that leads to lots of other things. It’s not just one thing. That’s like the cherry on the sundae, but there is all the other sundae stuff.”
I hear him laughing. “So much sundae stuff. Making me hangry.”
“Can’t believe my moms kept that letter from me. I mean, why would they do that?”
“Well, yeah, that’s upsetting you, it is. I can tell. They love you, doe. You know it. They must have had their reasons.”
“But other things upset me. Wars. Killing bunnies. They don’t keep me from looking at news, really.” They kind of do, though. And I can’t look on those pet rescue sites anymore either, which I used to do all the time.
Patrick is silent. “I think what’s really bad is how sad she is. How she disappeared and then this came out of nowhere. Like out of air. That’s . . . weird.”
It is. I have struggled. That word. What does it mean? Really mean? I walk for you. Now I’m set free.
But what does she look like? What would it be to see her face. Is it my face?
My room, red, red walls, dragonfly lights tracing the doorframe. The warm rock in my palm.
Where is she now?
Bridget
June 2000
“Yes, this is she,” I laugh nervously. “Me here,” I laugh again.
I’m in my bedroom. The clock says 4:00; they’re exactly on time. And Dahlia is across from me, just off work, cross-legged, piling up creek stones and then knocking them down. I love the sound of them. Like teeny bowling balls hitting teeny pins.
“We’re on a conference line,” she—Ruth—says brightly. “Dan’s at his office. Aren’t you, honey?”
“That’s right!” He practically screams this. Then I hear a kind of muffled sound like he’s covering the phone and talking to someone else.
“Dan?” says Ruth.
“Sorry, sorry, lots going on here. Busy, busy!”
Does Ruth sigh? Maybe.
“Hi, Bridget,” she says. “Thanks so much for talking to us. We are grateful to meet you over the phone and we hope we can meet you in person, too!” She seems sweet.
I nod, then realize they can’t see me. I cradle the phone and walk over to Dahlia. Pick up a stone. “Yes,” I say. “Very nice to meet you. Phone meet you.” It’s just so awkward. I look over at my wall of movie posters. Baylor’s sister, Mandy, works at the movie house and she used to give me the ones she didn’t want. I love them. Virgin Suicides, Holy Smoke, American Beauty. “Really nice,” I say because it hits me that I need them, too, now. I am selling myself so they will want me. But I need them to be good. And then I won’t have to get a job.
“Do you have any questions for us, honey? What for instance did you like about our profile?”
I hear more muffled talk on Dan’s end of the line.
“Dan!” Ruth bites into the conversation. “Dan!”
“Yup! Here I am. Ten-four!”
“Maybe it’s best if Bridget and I speak alone first.”
I’m not sure who she is talking to, me or her husband. The smooth stone. I place it at my cheek and it is warm from my hand.
“That’s okay,” I say. “We can be quick and decide if we want to meet. I chose you because you have so much to offer a child. That I guess I can’t.” I’m quiet now. My fear of adulthood has turned into an ache I cannot name. I sneak a look at Dahlia across from me on the bed. She’s rolling her eyes already, which is not helping.
“We sure can,” says Dan. “We want to spoil our child rotten.”
I clear my throat.
“Oh, honey, don’t worry,” Ruth is laughing. “‘Spoiled rotten’ is just Dan’s way of saying we do intend to give the child whatever he or she needs. We can do that. If we are lucky enough to match with you, if you choose us, we also want to be sure the adoption is as open as you like.”
I look around. Still there’s Dahlia on the bed. The digital alarm clock hasn’t moved a minute.
I swallow. “Open? Yes, open.”
“If you want to see the baby, get pictures and letters. From what I’ve read, open adoption, where the adoptee can be in touch with the birth mom or get letters and pictures, that’s what’s best for the child. And for the birth mother of course. So important.”
“Yes, open,” I say. These terms again. “I don’t know yet,” I say. The counselor also said, you will just know when you find the right family. Trust me, she said. Every situation is different.
Last week, when Dahlia and I had looked at Dan and Ruth, I admit I liked all the stuff. The apartment in the sky. And the stuff meant that they could send me money and I could put this whole job thing out of my mind. The pics in Times Square and at the opera, the two of them digging into huge bloody steaks, the big city, really, a place I have never been to. Their city feels different than Andrew and Sally’s.
It’s just a few hours from where we live and I have never even been there. Why? I wonder for a moment if I can get a free trip out of this. What if this baby, my baby, could go there and live there and be a fancy person with a playroom and a thousand toys and, I don’t know, like a piano, or a pony or whatever. Taxicabs. The Nutcracker. I can’t give her any of that, but the secret here is, suddenly I can. Suddenly, I can give you the world.
The world without me in it.
You.
“Open.”
Power.
“Listen, I’m going to sign off,” Dan says. “Talk to Ruth. She can tell you everything about us! Okay?”
“Yes,” I say.
“Bye, honey,” says Dan, and I have this feeling he doesn’t remember my name.
“Bridget,” I say, but he’s already gone.
“Of course,” Ruth says. “We are here to help you now. Tell me,” Ruth says, “what do you need?”
What do I need? Hmm. The list is long. Or very, very short. I don’t know how to answer her but I tell her I’m good and healthy, like I’m a dog and I’ve got all my shots, and my parents are supportive and the boy knows and will sign the papers, sign our baby away, and my friends are helping me and I just want some time.
“I’m glad you’ve got support. Time,” Ruth laughs, “is the one thing we don’t got.” But I know she is serious. “How are you doing in school?”
I start to tell her. About English class a little maybe, reading Ordinary People, or how I hate chem, just can’t wrap my brain around it, but then it hits me. She is asking for the baby. Like how will the baby be at school. Will the baby be smart or dumb? “Good,” I say. “Hard to concentrate right now but good.”
“Of course,” she says. “It must be, my God, how could it not be?” she says, and I flinch.
Before I hang up I ask her: why. “Why are you adopting?”
There is silence. “The truth is,” she says. “I have tried and tried and I can’t have my own children. Biological ones, I mean. I have done everything. The science, the herbs, the acupuncture, the diets. I have done IVF seven times.”
I don’t tell her I don’t know what IVF is.
“But I was traveling so much and Dan is never home, so.” She stops herself. “He will of course be
home for a baby. We both will be. Obviously. He wants a child as badly as I do, he just works very hard.”
I can hear her swallow.
“We want to be parents,” she says. “More than anything.” There is a pause. “I want to be a mother. And I’ll be honest. It will be easier to be the mother of a white baby. It just will be. For all of us.”
I shut my eyes. Well, at least she’s said it.
“There aren’t that many white babies,” she says when I don’t speak.
Why does this make me about to cry?
“I’m sorry for what you’ve been through,” I say. It’s what I am going to say to all of them I decide. I’m not going to talk to Ruth and Dan again, though. I know this more than I know anything. They are wrong. For me. They might be right for someone else or maybe they will figure out how to be right for the next one. The next white girl they talk to. Or maybe they’ll figure out how to make one from their own blood.
“You too, Bridget,” Ruth says, and I can tell she also knows that we won’t be talking again.
I’ve got what all of them want. This baby inside me, she could inherit the world, all sky and moon and sun and stars. All for her, this world. It’s already getting away from me. I don’t know what I want in it for me. How am I supposed to know all this now? The future the future. It is as far away as the planets. But I feel it growing nearer. I am scared of it.
“Next up,” says Dahlia because she can read my mind. Or maybe I’m reading hers now.
I look at her. They were wrong. Stuff is only things. I wish I had them. She knew all along. What does she think? Who will it be?
If Only
Wyoming
“I guess,” I say, patting the neck of my horse. How original, I’d thought when the stable person brought her over to me, but I’ve gotten attached in these past few hours. The thick ropy muscles of her strong neck. The deep, glossy brown mane, shiny enough to make me want to ask her about her shampoo. “It’s okay.” I look out. The mountains are slammed against a blue sky. Pasted upon it. At Starlet’s hooves and spread out before us on the endless meadow we just trotted across, Indian paintbrush, glacier lilies, and larkspur bloom. That’s what our guide just told us grew here. I’m listening.
“For chrissakes, Jaz. It’s a million-dollar view is what it is,” says my father. “You are too spoiled,” he says, but he’s smiling. That’s been his mission. It’s all he knows how to do. I can tell he’s dying for his cigar. Gloria, who runs this ranch, shook her head and took it away from him, literally slipped it out of his mouth, as he got up on his workhorse. I watched the woman helping the other guest squint at him in disbelief. Streaked hair. Blue eyes. Feather earrings, long as her shoulders. He started to put up a fight but I mean, come on, a cigar on a horse? And Gloria doesn’t seem like a person you argue with. “A million bucks,” he says to Gloria, winking, and she touches her hat.
The helper? She leapt up to help.
Money money money. Even in the metaphors. My mother would have lasted about five minutes on this trail. She’s back at the ranch getting a massage. She’ll be reading on the back porch, her short gray hair wet from the shower drying—and frizzing—in the evening sun.
Tetons mean teats. That’s what Jonathan told me last night, our third night. We’ve got two more nights here.
“Jasmine,” he had said, and I had stopped him right there. “Jaz,” I said. “I hate Jasmine. It’s just not me at all,” I had said. “I mean, it’s a Disney princess. I still don’t know if my parents knew that.”
Jonathan had scoffed. “I think they did,” he’d said. “I think Ruth and Dan sure did.”
“And Jonathan comes from what, then?” I’d asked, looking at him sideways.
“No idea.”
I know who he thinks I am. I know what everyone thinks.
“Titties,” he’d said, laughing, and it kind of thrilled me, felt it in my belly. I thought he would reach out and touch me right there and maybe I’d let him, why the hell not, I’m on vacation. From school, which is far away from home. I’m all New England–style now, look at my boots and pearls and, yup, my riding lessons. Hi. You’re not going to be wrong when you think you know me. Mostly.
I’ll let him tonight that’s for sure because he’s different and weird and lives here at the ranch with our guide right there, just the two of them. I wonder about families all the time. Like, why adopt me and then send me away to boarding school? What’s the point of it? Am I for later when they’re all old and tired and needy? I wonder about that. I shiver now thinking about what I’m going to let Jonathan do to me tonight after everyone’s asleep and the pretend bonfire on this pretend ranch has gone to embers. There are hammocks and pillows and all kinds of rolling hills. There are so many places here. To do a million things.
“What if you were me and I was you?” I had said last night.
“Seriously? If I were white? I don’t think so,” he’d said.
“You are the only black person here,” I had said.
“Do you think I didn’t notice? Thanks for the memo.”
I hadn’t said anything.
“I’m good,” he’d said. “I’m all right. I know who I am. I’m good out here. It’s summertime now and all kinds of people move through here. Being the only black guy has its perks.” He’d raised his eyebrows, smirking. “And everyone knows me. It’s small-town life. I like it.”
“Do you know your mom?”
“Do I know my mom? You know my mom. She made you your dinner tonight. She’s taking your cigar-chomping father riding tomorrow. Do not go there. You don’t know anything about it. Have a little respect.” Jonathan had gotten up, probably to trek on out.
“I know something about it.”
He’d paused.
“I’m adopted,” I had said. It’s no big deal but the sentence hangs between us. We are so different but he can’t deny in this we are just the same. Lost or found, which was it? Which was it, Jonathan? Ha, I tricked you, you thought you knew me exactly. So tell me: lost or found. Wanted or unwanted. Where do you weigh in, Jonathan, who thinks he knows what’s inside me, all of it, my everything.
Another raised eyebrow. His hands had cupped his scalp, hair shaved close. “Yeah?” he’d said. “So do you know your people?”
“My people? You mean my cigar-chomping father?” Because really, guy, it can go both ways. “He’s my person.”
He’d nodded.
“No,” I had said. “One day maybe I’ll get a name or a number. If I want it. Maybe.”
“I know my first mom. She named me.”
“I never heard that,” I had said. “I use birth mom.”
“Well, I was with her for a year. I call her my first mom. Just always have. I know her. Not the guy. It was, well, anyway, I know her. More like, I knew her.”
I had sighed deeply, inadvertently. “Oh no.”
He’d nodded slowly, moved in. The kiss is like nobody’s business, I swear.
“First time you ever kissed a guest, I see,” I had said, laughing.
“First and last,” he had said, and that kiss was like, I can’t even say, like, deep. Big. But short. Nothing to lose style.
“I see her,” he’d told me. “Even now.” He’d shaken his head. “Can’t really talk about it. It’s not a great sitch but it’s mine. That’s all I want to offer.”
I look over at his mom now. Gloria. I don’t know, kind of everything normal about her. Tomboy-like. Levis. Tank tops, thick gloves, toothpick in her teeth. So good with animals. Sweet inside, you can just tell. Hard outside because who knows what happened. She doesn’t like me but she’s not seeing everything. I’m used to that, believe me. It’s not the first time I’ve been judged for my long straight hair, my clothes, my white teeth. It’s my armor. My outside. It’s my superpower.
“Night,” he had said, rising. I had been surprised but I know how to play. Not my first time at this kind of rodeo either.
“How much these beauts go for anyway?�
�� my father is asking Gloria now, and for a moment I think he’s talking about the mountains. Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me. You can put a price on anything, can’t you? I heard my father once, putting money on trading the weather. My parents have gotten everything they’ve ever wanted because they can buy it. Hi. I wonder how much I cost them.
But he’s talking about the horses. “Dad,” I say. “I think this is the most beautiful view I’ve ever seen.” I mean it. From up here, it’s like there’s clarity. I’ve been on a mountain looking out. I’ve been there in summer and winter. I’ve skied and hiked all over Europe. Been on mountains, but never really looked out at a mountain from this distance. The titties. They’re astounding. Why can’t I just say so. “Thank you for bringing me here.”
Starlet stomps. My father turns to face me. He’s old now. He has always been old but now I really see it. Lines like the crevasses in the mountains, all filled with snow. All that smoke. All those late nights and God knows what they do there. All those men. He’s in a world of men. He won’t be around forever.
“My Jaz,” he says, soft as he goes.
But already I am heading back down the hill. I feel Starlet move beneath me, the stomp of her hooves in the soft earth. She is slow going down. She is careful. Behind me the mountains soar into the sky.
Ivy
2017
We’ve taken a lot of our Crossroads submissions for the cover of the last issue of the year to Claire’s house tonight. It’s not my job to find the one but I like to look anyway. I like to be involved. More like controlling, says Vanessa, our managing editor. I’ve never heard anyone disagree.
Claire is a few blocks from school and I like walking home with her. That feeling of living so close, not needing a bus or a car to pick me up and put me there. Everyone gathering themselves up, taking their time at their lockers, wanting to get out but not being forced. Then the walk down the path, through the old alley. It’s like a secret we all know.
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