by Caela Carter
Talking
Next Wednesday, before group, Maryellie asks me what my Halloween plans are and I shrug. I don’t know why this girl is so interested in me, pushing her big belly into my thoughts almost every day, preventing me from just daydreaming about bean or Todd throughout group, always curious as to what I’m doing after school or for the weekend. I have no idea what Maryellie wants from me.
But I remind myself, Talkative Evelyn. Talkative Evelyn.
So I end up saying, “I’m taking my cousins trick-or-treating. Do you want to come?”
I can’t believe the invitation leaves my mouth. I’m nervous enough to take out those two. Costume shopping was hectic with Tammy refusing to talk and Cecelia’s legs getting tired and both of them getting hungry and pulling me in all sorts of directions and getting pouty about one costume and angry about another. Eventually we got them both princess dresses and I went home feeling certain that I could never, ever, do this every year for ten or twelve years, but also profoundly proud of getting the job done. Even if it took four hours.
But adding the potential of a friend? It’s been forever since I had to make friends. Lizzie and I had been friends for so long and since then, she just kind of made the friends for me. But I miss her. And Maryellie is right in front of me. I feel guilty—as if hanging out with Maryellie will be cheating on Lizzie. Or not exactly. More like by hanging out with Maryellie I will be doing something I don’t deserve; every laugh will be one I’m not supposed to feel.
But Maryellie doesn’t even answer. She says, “Ms. Clark has kids?” And I remember that at school we have to pretend like Aunt Linda is single because of the whole dumbass Catholics-aren’t-supposed-to-be-gay thing.
“No.” I have no idea what else to say. “Other cousins.”
“I don’t know,” Maryellie says, laughing. “Do you really think I could go trick-or-treating in the suburbs with a bunch of white girls?” It still surprises me, that term: white girl. There were always some nonwhite people around me, but in my white world we pretended that not talking about it would make the difference in races just disappear.
I smile. “They’re black. My cousins.”
Maryellie says, “You better believe I’m coming. This I gotta see. You all have one colorful family!” Then she pats bean and says, “Besides, we need the practice.” I wonder if she knows all that stuff I’m supposed to know.
Now I just have to tell Aunt Linda. I look across the room and see her and realize that she’s heard the whole thing. I try to tell her that I’m sorry with my eyes, but hers are smiling.
Practice
By the time Halloween arrives, Aunt Linda has told Maryellie everything. She and Nora even had one of those loud, passionate nonarguments about it right in front of me one night while I washed dishes and the girls played Legos in the next room. It ended when Aunt Linda said, “Nora, my love, you have to trust me.”
Nora came up behind her and put her arms around Aunt Linda’s waist. “You know I do,” she said, and they kissed, right in front of me.
Whenever they get affectionate like that, it makes me feel like I’m standing on a boat during a storm, but I don’t think it’s because they’re both women. I’ve just never seen that kind of affection.
Then Nora put her hand on my head and said, “And I’m proud of you, you know.” And I felt like I just got an A.
On Halloween, Tammy insists that I be the one to zip up her princess dress. And Nora steps away from the costume, laughing. The girls have on pink sparkling dresses and tiaras; in their hands they clutch wands and plastic pumpkin buckets. I disappear up the stairs when the camera comes out. I retrieve my silver sparkling eye shadow and I use it to paint their cheeks. Cecelia is giggling nonstop, and Tammy is even smiling intermittently.
I pull on a sweatshirt with a pumpkin picture on the stomach and my bean-bump makes it stick out like a real pumpkin. This sends Celie into a fit of gleeful giggles.
Maryellie and I walk with the girls between the houses, but we let them climb the front steps themselves. Cecelia yells “Trick-or-treat,” while Tammy just looks at her plastic high heels.
It’s so easy that we have time to talk.
Maryellie tells me about her brother who’s in college and how he’s the first one from their family to go. The concept is so foreign to me that I find myself asking questions.
Then she’s asking questions.
“So did your parents, like, kick you out when you got pregnant?”
“It wasn’t really like that,” I say as Cecelia catapults into my leg screaming, “Laffy-Taffy! They gave me Laffy-Taffy!”
“Is that your favorite?” Maryellie asks, swooping down over her big belly and guiding Cecelia’s hand so she remembers to put the Laffy-Taffy in her pumpkin. I would never know to do that. I’m going to suck at this.
“No, it’s Tammy’s!” she shouts and pulls it out of her bucket, throwing it in Tammy’s when she comes lumbering up the walk. Cecelia sticks her tongue out at Maryellie, and I don’t know what to do.
“You are very nice to give your sister your candy, you know,” Maryellie says. “But it’s not so nice to stick your tongue out at people who are just trying to help you.”
Oh, I think, as if I’m learning along with Cecelia. Cecelia just stares for a few seconds before Tammy pulls on her arm and they walk toward the next stoop.
“So,” Maryellie turns back to me. “Are you glad they sent you here?”
“Yes.” I’m still surprised that this is true.
“Don’t you miss your parents?” We’re both watching the girls ring the doorbell, not looking at each other, so it’s easier to talk.
“Not really.” I remind myself every second to be Talkative E. “They yell a lot. Or else they just don’t say anything. But I miss my friend.” And the next thing I know I’m telling Maryellie all about Lizzie and her monster closet and her dad search and the way we used to laugh and every minute that I’m not watching Maryellie perform mom-magic on my little cousins I’m spilling my guts all over the shelf her pregnant stomach has formed.
Finally she says, “So when was the last time you tried with her?”
“Maybe a month ago?”
“You should try again.” We turn to walk back down the other side of the street. Cecelia is hanging onto my hand. There are several undecorated houses in a row on this side of the street, which, as I have learned tonight from Maryellie, means we aren’t supposed to trick-or-treat at them. Cecelia puts her face on my thigh. “You should pick her up,” Maryellie says, and I do. “And you should try again.”
I know she’s talking about Lizzie. “She doesn’t want to talk to me.”
“No, she doesn’t want to be a sounding board for your problems now that you’re ready to talk. Ask about her life. And if she doesn’t reply, try again. And if she doesn’t reply, try again.”
“It’s not going to work.” I set Cecelia down to scurry to another doorway.
But, once the girls are in bed, I try.
Lizzie—
I miss you.
How are you? How is Sean? Any news on your dad? I know you don’t want to just worry about me. I’ll take anything at this point.
Still sorry,
Ev
The Dumbass
A little fantasy has been flirting with my imagination when I’m awake and asleep. In it, I’ve got bean in my arms, and even though I can’t see it, it’s warm and snuggly. And Todd has changed his mind. He figures out that he better work hard his senior year and he gets a football scholarship to Stanford, and I get into the same school. And we move to California together and he gets some really good summer job. I take care of bean in the nice apartment he gets for us, and when he comes home from work every day, I’ve cooked him dinner and we put bean to bed and have sex and then he strokes my elbow pit. And we get to talk about our families and to go out in public, the two of us holding hands or letting our bodies touch familiarly. And when we disagree we talk like Nora and Aunt Linda an
d then we kiss and we share a bed all the time and he’s always feeding me when I’m hungry just like he did that one night. And he comes to Chicago with me every Christmas to spend it with Aunt Linda and Nora and Cecelia and Tammy, and they start to call him Uncle Todd and eventually we graduate and we both get good jobs and he gives me a ring and we get married and we are just happy.
And when this is the ribbon winding through my brain—at night before I fall asleep, or when I wake up, or in class, or during group, or when I’m looking at one of Mary’s websites, or when I’m on the phone with my mom trying to find something to talk about that’s not the baby, or when I’m getting Tammy dressed for bed, or when I’m playing Legos with Cecelia, or when I’m doing my chemistry homework—I feel even better about keeping bean. Because if I don’t how will I ever know?
But I remember when he said, “I just can’t.” “I just can’t.” And bean is what broke us up in the first place. And I hate it.
4 Months, 29 Days Left
Before going downstairs for another terrifying Aunt Linda meeting, I check my e-mail.
E—
Sean had a wild party for Halloween. I remembered you walking around last year there dressed in that crazy Tin Man outfit. I know that Lizzie was supposed to be a sexy Dorothy but I couldn’t keep my eyes off of you that night, that tinfoil wrapped around your legs like that. I wanted to be the one who put it there.
Did you dress up this year? I guess you didn’t party.
Don’t worry. Sean’s kind of sucked.
Todd
Then …
Pumpkin,
Your mother tells me you took your cousins trick-or-treating. Linda tells me you have quite a way with them. It doesn’t surprise me—you have always been so gentle and so fun. Linda tells me you dressed them as princesses, which is far from what Linda and Nora would have chosen for their daughters, I surmise! But nonetheless, I am sure they loved it. Nora sent me a picture and they look adorable. You all do.
I still wish you were here, but I am glad you are being helpful to your aunts and getting to know your cousins out there. We never did have enough family around for you, ever since Linda moved out, that is.
I miss you.
Love, Dad
And then, with a racing heart …
Ev,
I went to Sean’s party last night as a sexy nurse. Boring, I know.
Sean’s an asshole now, by the way.
Lizzie
P.S. I’m still mad, but I’ll read it if you write back.
P.P.S. I do have some more info on my dad, but I’m going to make you sweat it out. See how you like it.
By the time I get down the stairs for my meeting with Aunt Linda I feel almost happy. She’s sitting on the couch, a stack of paper in front of her on the coffee table.
I plop down next to her.
“Okay,” she says, and immediately morphs into Mary. “So, you have some decisions to make.” She pulls a pen out of her pocket and uncaps it.
I shrug. I don’t like the pen and paper. I don’t want her to take mysterious notes on me like Mary did.
“Have you made up your mind, Evie? Are you keeping it?”
“I keep telling you I am.”
Aunt Linda’s eyes look perfectly normal. She isn’t even bothering to lace them with fake sincerity the way Mary does.
“Do you not want to do this with me, Evelyn?”
“I don’t get why I have to do it at all. You told me I have plenty of time.”
“Not exactly,” Aunt Linda says. “You have time but not forever. No one’s going to rush you into figuring this all out because if we do, you’re too likely to make a decision you’ll regret. And the stakes are too high here, babe. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be thinking about it.”
Ha. What else have I even been thinking about?
“It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be putting plans into motion.”
But how can I plan anything before I decide anything?
“And if you’re living in my house, making a decision this big means talking about it. I know your parents sent you here so you could still graduate from St. Mary’s next year and so that you wouldn’t lose your spot as valedictorian, but I think your mother also recognizes that I might be better at this part of life than she is.”
“What part?” I ask, reminding myself to be Talkative Evelyn even though it would be easier to be Silent Evelyn.
“The part where you need to talk about and figure out the icky-sticky emotional hard stuff.”
I laugh.
“What?”
“Mom doesn’t talk about anything at all ever.”
Aunt Linda nods. “She’s had a rough go of it, you know. But she loves you, Evie. Probably more than anything in the world.”
She loves me. I think of the other people who love me. Dad. Lizzie. Mary. Todd, maybe, a little. My eyes well up, and I curse bean for taking away the crying immunity I enjoyed for so many years.
“Oh, Evie-Teeny,” Aunt Linda says, putting her hand on my knee then scooting over so she’s right next to me. She fits her arm all the way around my shoulders, and I feel them tighten into ropes. “She does.”
I shake my head.
“What is it, Evie?”
“Just … why are all the people who love me so bad at it?” I laugh when I say this, making it into a joke. I’m not even sure if I should include Aunt Linda on this list. She used to be the best at loving me, but living here I realize I don’t have nearly as much of her heart as I always thought I did.
Aunt Linda doesn’t laugh. She squeezes my shoulders tighter and says, “You really think Cecelia is bad at it?”
I think of her round face sticking out of the layers of sweatshirts and winter coats that Nora wraps her in before sending her off to preschool for the day. That face that now insists on one more Evie-kiss after breakfast, one before they walk out the door, one more when they get in the car. Is this what it’s like to have a kid? A huge responsibility that loves you fiercely?
“Not Cecelia.” To be fair, I add, “Or Tammy.”
Aunt Linda smiles. “Okay. Now, as I was saying, you need to be working toward a decision here. You need to start putting plans in motion. You need to start loving that baby.”
Fat chance of that.
“But you don’t need to do it with me. We’ll hire someone else to talk this out with you if that’s what you need. But you do need to be talking. Talking and taking action.”
Before I moved here, I never thought Aunt Linda and my mom had anything in common, but now I’m watching Aunt Linda slip in and out of her aunt role as suddenly as my mom puts on and takes off her lawyer mask.
“I’ll talk to you.” I hope we aren’t at the point where we have to hire someone to care about me.
“Good.” Aunt Linda leans over the coffee table with her pen. “I want you to do one more thing for me, though, Evie-Teeny. I’m not going to pressure you into it, but I don’t want you to dismiss anything before really considering it. I want you to really think about adoption.”
On one sheet of paper she writes: PARENT and on the other: ADOPTION. So she isn’t going to take all sorts of hidden, cryptic notes: she’s going to show me everything she writes down.
“Tell me why exactly parenting appeals to you over adoption?” Aunt Linda asks.
“They both seem like pretty bad ideas.” I expect Aunt Linda to laugh the way Mary did when I said something like this.
But Aunt Linda just says, “Actually, either of these ideas will work. Neither of them is a bad idea. That’s why this is a hard decision.”
I wait for what I know Mary’s next question would be: Why? Why don’t you want to parent? Why don’t you want to give the baby up? Just the thought makes me itchy again and makes my stomach start bouncing around bean.
Aunt Linda says, “Let’s say you do keep the baby. Where will you live?”
My heart quickens. Can we live here? Is that what she’s saying? Do I even want that?
<
br /> “Evie, you really need to start making a plan here.”
I shift so my feet are pulled up on the couch, my thighs pushing directly into my big belly and probably squishing bean into my ribs or something.
Aunt Linda leans over, resting her cheek on my knee. “How uncomfortable are you on a scale of one to ten?”
“Ten,” I squeak.
“Okay. Let’s try this. Get through five questions today and we’ll do five more tomorrow.”
I nod. Aunt Linda holds one of the papers in each of her hands then puts her hands behind her back. “Pick one.” I reach out and touch her left arm.
She pulls it in front of her. PARENT is written across the top.
“Okay,” she says. “I’m going to keep asking you questions until we hit five we can answer, all right? We’ll make this a game. We could even do it like we did Celie’s potty training last year: should we give you an M&M every time you successfully answer a question?” Aunt Linda chuckles a little, but my face remains stony.
“No.”
“Okay, here goes: if you keep this baby you’re going to need help. Will your parents help?”
“Maybe.”
“That doesn’t count as an answer.” I like that she’s being my aunt and not some social worker, but this game is pretty stupid. “I’ll try an easier question: will you ask your parents for help?”
“My mom, I guess. I’d ask my mom if I had to.” If I can’t ask Todd. Or you.
“Okay, that’s one. You wouldn’t ask your dad?” Aunt Linda looks genuinely surprised, as if my dad and I have been talking on the phone daily since I got here. She has no idea I’ve been ignoring him, which means, I realize, neither does my mom.
My dad left me. He left and then he came back as if everything could just be okay. As if we should have been waiting for him while he had some affair with our dentist. If he had stayed away, it would be forgivable—it would make sense. Or if he had given me a choice, offered to take me with him. Instead he was just gone. He fell out of love with my mom and then chained us all to that Silent House when he showed up again. No, Aunt Linda, I don’t want bean anywhere near him. But my throat closes against all these words and instead I just say “no” again.