by Caela Carter
The room goes fuzzy and blue. Todd sees my eyes open and puts my baby back in my arms. I sniff in his powdery scent and take him with me back to dreamland where we can be a family.
Them
And then they come. And they cry different tears.
And they say “thank you” instead of “I’m sorry.”
And she smells like sugar and lavender and when she kisses my cheek, I can feel how plump her face is, and he has a voice deep and smooth as chocolate milk and he keeps telling me how wonderful I am. But he is wrong and she is wrong and I can’t look at them.
I haven’t been able to say a word to them. To anyone.
Then my arms are tight around his little body and there are tears all over his hair and his ears and it’s not that I think I should keep him, but I don’t know how to make my arms any less tight around this squirming, red-haired, pink, and wrinkly little miracle.
And then he’s gone.
My insides are empty. And everything can go back to normal.
Normal
I wake up and go home from the hospital. He is not with me. It was a mistake.
Empty
I try to study. The words in my textbooks still swim. My breasts swell and ache pointlessly. I think about Bean and I think about Lizzie and I don’t think about Todd and I talk to Maryellie and Aunt Linda and everyone in group and I tell them all that it was a mistake.
I play with Celie and Tammy.
I go back to school at Santa Maria.
I tell Aunt Nora in the kitchen and Mom on the phone and Dad by e-mail: it was a mistake.
Everyone talks but the words are nonsense, bugs flying around my ears. Pointless. I keep talking anyway.
1 Month Empty
It was a mistake. I talk and talk and talk. I think and think and think. I am the biggest dumbass ever. It was all a mistake.
Maryellie
We’re at lunch, the table fitting easily between our stomachs—mine a plump, empty mush, hers back to skinny.
“It’s Mario’s and my third anniversary Friday,” Maryellie tells me.
I look up from my turkey sandwich. “Congrats.”
“Do you think you could come over and watch Emanuella so we can go out to dinner?” she asks.
My jaw drops. You’d trust me with her? A baby?
Yes. I want to say yes. I want to help her.
An evening with a baby. She thinks I can do it. I could sit and coo and smell her flowery skin.
Open your mouth and say yes, I tell my brain.
Before I can, a big, fat, salty drop falls from my eye to my sandwich. Maryellie reaches out and puts her hand on mine.
“It’s okay. My mom will do it. I just thought it might be good for you. Let me know when you’re ready.”
I nod. “Thank you. Thank you for asking,” I say, trying to convey how much it means that she would trust me.
But I don’t think I will ever be able to watch her. Because Emanuella will never be Bean.
2 Months Empty
Mistake, mistake, mistake, mistake.
An Empty Senior
Aunt Linda pulls me into her office to look at my final report card for my junior year: a row of As with only a tiny minus or two to signify that Bean was ever inside of me.
I shrug. “It’s easier here than at St. Mary’s.”
She says, “Does this show you at all that maybe part of your decision wasn’t a mistake? That you met at least one of your goals. You’re probably still going to be valedictorian.”
I shrug.
Her face falls. “No?”
“Aunt Linda … I don’t deserve to be valedictorian.” It’s true. I’m a worthless, ugly fool who closed her ears to her own child. I did the same thing my parents did to me. I’m awful.
“Look, Evelyn, I’m glad you’re talking, but you have to listen now.” And she is speaking with an edge in her voice that makes all the bugs settle down and stop flying. For good measure, she takes my cheeks in both of her palms and forces my eyes to focus on her face. “He’s going to have a good life. He has parents who are ready—more ready than you and Todd, or Aunt Nora and me, or your own parents.” I wonder if that could be true. “He has parents who want him more than they want anything. Who aren’t going to see faded dreams of Ivy League schools and football scholarships every time they look in his eyes. He’s going to be happy. I’m not saying you wouldn’t have made him happy too, but I’m not sure you could have been happy the way he’s going to be in this new family.” Something makes me nod, even though she doesn’t get it, like usual. The adoption wasn’t the part that was a mistake.
“What is it, Evie? What is this mistake you think you made?”
The words are sticky in my throat, a Laffy-Taffy gumming up my molars, but I get them out into her office. “That I don’t even know his name.”
Aunt Linda’s face cracks open and she wraps her arms around me, and I cry on her shoulder and I don’t even hate the crying or the hugging.
Summer
I stay in Chicago to take care of Cecelia and Tammy while my aunts work. Things get better some days, but on others the world comes crashing back onto my scar and I’m the emptiest person alive.
I miss him. I don’t even know who I’m missing.
My body thins and stretches back into the me I used to be. I tell myself that’s the first step back to normal, but each pound I shed reminds me that he’s gone.
And the me I used to be is Bad Evelyn. Or Good Evelyn. Or Sullen, Silent, Unhappy, Slutty, Perfect, Smart, Stony Evelyn. Why do I want normal anyway?
Good-bye
Tammy and Celie sit side by side and spooky silent on the couch, watching Aunt Linda, Mom, and me carry boxes and bags down the stairs and out to my Jeep. I’m avoiding looking at them, but I see Tammy crying big, silent tears, Cecelia kicking her feet against the bottom of the coffee table.
Aunt Nora hangs up the phone in the kitchen and finds me in the driveway, hoisting a final bag into the trunk. “You have to give them a real good-bye,” she says.
I slam the hatchback. “Of course,” I say.
And she throws her arms around me. This is Aunt Nora, not Aunt Linda, so the hug takes me by surprise, wakes me up. “No, Evelyn. I know you’re upset, too, but you need to really sit down with my daughters and make sure they understand you aren’t leaving because of them.”
I’m offended. I pull my head back so I can look at Aunt Nora straight on. “I’d never leave them. I love them.”
“I know that, but they’ve dealt with way too much abandonment in their short lives. You need to go in there and tell them you love them. Then you need to call, not just on birthdays, all the time. You can’t show up and duck out. When you started helping Tammy with math and taking them trick-or-treating and playing with them every night, you took on a lifetime responsibility.”
She’s kind of trying to scare me, but instead she’s making me glow with importance.
And I get it now: Rule 8. She wasn’t afraid I would mess them up. She was afraid of how they would love me.
I go back into the living room and sit between my cousins, letting each of them nuzzle into one of my sides.
“Celie says you aren’t really leaving,” Tammy says, and my heart squeezes into my throat with the sudden realization of how hard this is going to be, and how sad this really is. How do I even do it? How do I give them a real good-bye like Aunt Nora just explained?
I take Tammy’s chin in my palm and point her face to mine. “I love you,” I say.
Then I turn and do the same to Cecelia. “And I love you.”
She brightens immediately. “So you aren’t leaving?”
I take her hands in mine. “I’m not leaving your life. But I am leaving Chicago.”
“That’s not fair!” Celie screams in my face. She yanks her hands out of mine and storms up the stairs. “That’s not fair, Evie! I hate this,” she screams when she gets to the top. Even though I’m not pregnant anymore, I feel like crying.
I look at
Tammy. Giant tears fall off her face and dot her jeans. “Why?” she asks.
I put my arm around her. “I just need to go back and live with my own mommy for a little longer. But I’m going to miss you every day. Every minute of every day. And believe me, you’ll hear from me so much, you’ll be sick of your cousin Evie.”
I win a small smile, and Tammy throws her little arms around my neck, her little body onto my lap. “I love you, Evie,” she says.
When my mom pulls out of the driveway, I’m wondering how the list of kids I’ve abandoned recently just jumped from one to three.
But the second we pull on the highway, about five minutes after we left the house, I dial Aunt Linda’s number.
“Can you put Celie and Tammy on?” I ask.
“How’d you get so clever, little niece?” she says, before running to get her daughters.
When I hear Cecelia’s little voice I say, “So how are you, Medium? I miss you.”
“You’re silly, Evie.” I can hear her relief already.
“Maybe. But I love you. And I do miss you already. Listen to me, cousins. I’m going to call you every day. Every day,” I say. And I will.
Homecoming
Nothing can really go back to normal until I get to Jacksonville. Or until I start school. Until I start running races. Until I win a race. Until I get a progress report. Until I drink and smoke and screw around again. Until Lizzie and I make another plan to go dad hunting. Normal never comes.
The Evelyn that comes back is not Bad or Good or any Evelyn anyone from Jacksonville has ever met. Somehow, I drag Talkative Evelyn back across the country. My throat gets sore.
Bean talk, Bean talk, Bean talk. To Lizzie at her house. To Lizzie at Sean’s party. To Mom at our house one night. To Aunt Linda on the phone.
I hear everyone telling me how proud they are that I’m talking, that I’m studying, that I’m running, that I’m painting. They use words to describe me: brave, strong, capable. Words that seem as far away as the stars. I distract myself like an ant—carrying more than my weight on my back. My mind is still rooted to my belly, even though it’s empty and concave again.
My brain is solidly in Never-Never Land with Bean.
After practice, my Jeep rolls into Mary’s parking lot. My skinny butt lands back on her couch. And even though I’m not pregnant, I let myself sob while her tiny hands make ovals on my shoulders.
“It was stupid,” I say. “I should have found out about them. I should have made it so I can see him, or so I can see if he’s okay.”
Mary strokes my back like she’s been doing for the past week, like she’s basically been doing over the phone since April.
“Nothing is ever going to be back to normal.”
“Oh, Evelyn,” she says, “I’m so sorry. You did a selfless thing. You gave him a good life.”
But it hurts like she’s stabbing me with each word because I did it for myself.
Mary asks, “What scares you the most?”
“What if he is always looking for me, like Lizzie?”
“Lizzie?”
“Yeah, she’s always looking for her father, and she can never find him. She thought he was in Chicago last March but it turned out to be someone else. She’s always looking and she’ll never find him. And it’s like this big hole in her heart—and what if that hole is always in Bean’s heart?”
“Why don’t you register on the adoption or lost parents websites so he can find you one day if he wants to?”
And it’s not perfect, but it might be enough to let me drag myself through my senior year.
Single Dad
I go to my dad’s new apartment for dinner. He greets me with a spoonful of delicious soup and a song. He’s Daddy.
When I walk into his living room, my face is everywhere, redheaded little girls smiling out of a million frames—on the coffee table, on the divider to the kitchen, on the hearth, on the windowsills.
I pull a deck of cards out of my pocket. “How about a game of War after dinner, Dad?”
His smile beams into the living room all the way from the kitchen stove. “You got it, Pumpkin. Get ready to do the dishes.”
And suddenly I realize it’s actually easier to forgive him after all.
When he brings the soup out to the table, I open my mouth to try on him what I’ve been trying on everyone else in my life. “I miss him, Dad,” I say.
He puts his arm around me. He says these words: “I do too, Pumpkin. I miss him too.”
Something releases in my chest. Those are the words I’ve been waiting for someone—anyone—to say. Those are the words I needed to hear. I didn’t even know it.
Being a Mother
Everything I do, I do it for Bean. If he finds me one day, I can tell him I did it for him. I study to get into a good school for him. I run my heart out and collect blue ribbons so I can give them to him. I paint little green-eyed boys smiling on a swing set, playing with a truck in a sandbox, making a snowman in as many layers as Celie used to wear.
I pray, just in case there is a God, that he is as happy as Celie and Tammy. 64 70 67
I’m praying and painting after school, my iPod cranking hip-hop into my ears, my brush flying across the top of the canvas so the leaves in the tallest trees add texture to the blue sky the way I know they’re starting to in Chicago right now, and someone taps me on the shoulder.
I swing around and I don’t feel bad when a streak of red covers the space where his heart should be.
“I know you hate me now,” Todd says, and I do. I hate how his eyes are green, exactly like the little boy’s on the canvas. But I never have to see him. He avoids me. He doesn’t go to parties. He doesn’t hang out at practice after school.
“You should leave,” I say.
“No, I—”
“Okay. I will.” I start packing up my paints but I’m pissed because that tree had me completely sucked in a minute ago.
“Evelyn, I’m a jerk.” I freeze, paintbrushes in hand, halfway to the sink to wash them out. I’ll listen. This is not a bug, it’s a person. I’ll listen, then I can keep hating him. “I had no idea what I was doing. I was so scared. It’s not that I didn’t care about you. I did. I thought about you every day last year. I missed you. I just … sucked at it.”
I nod, still not facing him. Some of the hatred disappears through the top of my head, my blood slowing to normal. I kind of want to keep hating him—for putting me through that alone, for saying he wouldn’t help—but letting it go does seem easier.
He keeps talking. “Once I saw him, he was real. I don’t know … he was in you, so maybe he was, like, real to you the whole time. But once I saw him, I loved him. I love him. I, like, don’t know what else to do, so I pray for him … sometimes.”
Shit, don’t cry. Not now.
“I just want you to know I would have helped. I was a stupid kid when I told you I wouldn’t.”
Don’t cry. Don’t cry.
“And … also, thank you. For, you know, having him. For taking care of him while he was with you.”
“You need to go now,” I say, failing to keep my voice steady.
“No, I need to tell you. Lizzie told me that I need to tell you that they are good. I talked to them. A lot. You were just wrapped up with him and all that so you couldn’t, but I talked to them, and I just want you to know that I love him and I think your aunt Linda made a good choice.”
A thank-you climbs up my throat but I don’t want to give it to him. “It’s good you talked to me,” I say. “But you need to go now.”
I feel his body turn behind me as if we’re still connected and, I realize, we always will be, even though Bean’s gone. He says, “I’m sorry, E,” and goes out the door.
And it’s enough. It’s enough to pull me through my senior year. I have no choice but to believe him. Bean will be okay.
Being a Teenager
Everything I do, I do it for Bean. Except when I don’t.
When I’m running t
he last hundred meters of the county championship cross-country race and I’m matching step for step with Lindsey Ehardt from the Bolles School and I can tell just how much she wants to beat me, I find the speed in my legs and push past her by half a step, hurtling my torso through the tape. I do it for me. And I feel happy. But is that bad?
When Aunt Nora starts copying Tammy’s homework into a PDF file and e-mailing it to me so I can help her over the phone every night, I do it for Tammy. And me. And I’m proud. I’m proud.
When Lizzie, my date to the senior prom, raps into the mirror, dancing in her bright-pink dress while Mom flattens my hair into shiny, rolling curls, I’m laughing. Gutsquelching, tear-producing laughing and so are they. And I’m doing it for all of us.
But I’m not sure if I should be allowed to enjoy any of these things. Because, if Bean were in my life, I wouldn’t get them.
And I don’t want to be glad that Bean’s not in my life.
Moving Back, Moving On
I wasn’t the valedictorian. I didn’t get into any of the Ivies. I spent the year marveling at everything I gained—Mary, Aunt Nora, Maryellie, Mom’s and Dad’s voices, Talkative Evelyn with Lizzie, a backbone with Todd—and how none of that matters next to what I lost: Bean.
But I got into Northwestern, so my mom and I are driving me back across the country. A weekend at Aunt Linda and Aunt Nora’s house before starting college. Endless weekends with Celie and Tammy. It’s more family than I ever dreamed. It should be enough. But a phantom car seat haunts me from the back.
I still have nightmares that he’s crying.
We pull into their driveway and my eyes fill, remembering how painful and wonderful it was to live here last year. I hear squealing yells—“She’s here!”—coming from inside the house like I’m a magical fairy like Aunt Linda.