The Circle Game

by Tanya Nichols

  Just when Juicy thought she might gag, from beneath the table came the sound of a small snore, heavy breathing, and then a loud cry.

  “What the fuck is that?” Nasty Dan jerked back and nearly fell over. Wearing only his cut, his jeans bunched up around his ankles, Dan pushed away from the girl, letting go of her hips, freeing her from his grasp.

  “It’s the baby. My baby, Ginny.” Juicy’s words were slurred and thick, her mouth so dry her lips felt stuck to her teeth. She struggled to roll herself over onto her side, away from the arms of Lizard, stretched out across the head of the bed like a human pillow where he’d watched his friend. “I have the baby here.”

  “You brought a kid in here? What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

  “What else was I gonna do? Leave her on the bar? It’s not like I asked to be here.”

  Nasty Dan was pissed off, but she wasn’t entirely sure why. Her having a baby didn’t have anything to do with him. He didn’t have to worry about anyone but himself. He’d had his fun.

  “Where you going?” Lizard moaned.

  “She’s hungry,” Juicy said, sitting up, scooting to the edge of the bed. “It must be four. She’s always hungry at four.”

  “Man, this is fucked up.”

  “Just let me . . .” Her words faltered as she winced in pain. “Just let me give her a bottle; she’ll go right back to sleep.” Everything hurt. Juicy struggled to the table and pulled the basket out from under the tablecloth. The hungry cries grew louder as she lifted the baby up from the floor and carried her back to the rumpled bed.

  Dan pulled his crusty jeans up from around his dirty, black boots and stormed out the door as Freddie was coming up the steps. “You know she has a kid in there, man?”

  “What the hell does that matter?” Freddie stood by the door, looking over at the skinny guy stretched out on his back across the bed, one arm draped over his face as if the dim light blinded him. “You done, Lizard?”

  “I guess I am now.” Lizard rolled off the bed and slowly made his way outside, zipping his jeans as he headed for the back door of the bar, still open for this crowd long after closing time. It wouldn’t close until they wanted it to, and the owner wouldn’t complain. As long as his pockets filled up with cash, the beer kept flowing. It wouldn’t be the first time he stayed open all night, and it wouldn’t be the last.

  Five

  2005

  Noni liked living at Nazareth House. When her hips and knees failed to carry her weight for more than a few yards, she invested in an electric chair, but that was only good for weekly trips to Safeway or cruising around the block to have a cup of coffee with Maria Mello, the only neighbor left from the old days. Inside her overstuffed house of polished furniture, ceramic Madonnas, and colorful woolen rugs, the chair was a hazard. The old woman would limp and groan from room to room, occasionally finding herself on the floor, cursing her rickety joints.

  After finding Noni stretched out in the hallway one afternoon, Bernie hired someone to come in during the day to clean house and cook meals, but the nights were a worry. For three months straight, Bernie spent every night with her grandmother, worried the old woman would fall in the night with no one there to help her up. Finally, Bernie simply moved back into the house where she had lived for many years. It didn’t take long for the shrewd old woman to decide she’d had enough. “Put me in Nazareth,” she said. “And you take the house. I won’t need it anymore.”

  Since then, the eighty-six-year-old widow had lived in a small room at the Catholic home for senior citizens, surrounded by other frail and grey-haired folks trapped in wheelchairs or hobbling about with walkers and canes, while Bernie rattled about the little white house on Brown Street, surrounded by the things of her childhood, rooms of fragile memories.

  Noni’s days were busy caring for her jungle of potted plants that grew on the small patio off her room, reading every word of the Fresno Bee, attending morning mass, and sharing her meals in the dining hall where she frequently mentioned that her granddaughter, the lawyer, was coming to see her on Saturday. Sometimes, when she was lonely, she would call Bernie and tell her how many days or sometimes even hours it had been since she’d seen her, knowing that would ensure her company. On each visit, whether it was for a long afternoon or just an hour in the evening, Noni paraded her granddaughter up and down the wide hallways, introducing her to the same white-haired friends she had met before, all of them eager to talk to her, to touch her dark-red hair and smooth skin, reminders of what had faded and dimmed with the passing years of their lives.

  “Hi-ya, gorgeous,” Bernie said, leaning into the open doorway, tapping lightly on the doorframe.

  “Bernadette,” she said, “what on earth are you doing here now? It’s Friday night. You don’t usually come on Friday nights.” She began to fold the newspaper she had spread out before her, carefully returning it to its original form, her fingers in a constant slight tremor. “I was just finishing the paper.”

  “Anything in there I should know about?” She bent down and kissed her grandmother’s cheek, gently hugging her frail shoulders.

  “Oh,” she scoffed, “you know enough, I think.” She pushed a small lever on the arm of the chair and the motor hummed as she swiveled around to the faded chair where Bernie would sit.

  “I brought candy.” Bernie pulled a small, white bag from her purse and gave it a tantalizing shake. A pound of mixed Brach’s candies, butterscotch, peppermints, caramels, and toffees wrapped in glossy pink, blue, yellow, and red foil rumbled like a cup of dice. Noni had always preferred the grocery store bulk candy to French truffles or Belgian chocolates. Brach’s was her favorite.

  “Just in time. That damned crazy Lolly was in here yesterday, stealing all my caramels and toffees.” She shook her head in mock disgust then peeked in the bag, pulling out a golden butterscotch for herself before holding the open bag out for Bernie to take her pick, just as she used to do in the aisle of Safeway. Stolen sweetness.

  “Guess I better get myself a maple toffee before Lolly swipes them all.” Bernie plucked a red-foiled candy from the bag and relaxed back in her favorite chair, its worn rose pattern wrapping around her like an old glove. She slowly untwisted the shiny wrapper and took one small bite from the small candy, savoring its goodness, making it last.

  “So, why are you here?” Noni asked. A press of a switch and the chair hummed across the floor to a maple bureau where she emptied the bag of candies into a shallow, oblong bowl of cut glass, her good crystal still nestled on their shelves in the built-in hutch on Brown Street.

  “I got a phone call today from someone at Social Services.”

  “About me?” Her bushy eyebrows fluttered as she blinked twice slowly, a sign she was preparing to hear bad news. “What’d I do now?”

  “No. About me, actually.”

  “What could they want with you? You’re too young for Social Security, aren’t you?”

  “Social Services, Noni, not Social Security. You know children and families, social workers?” She paused, and a slow smile formed as it dawned on her that Noni herself had been a social worker before she made Bernie her life’s work. “Like you,” she said grinning at her grandmother’s rare mistake. “Come on, you know all about that stuff. You were a social worker in your heyday. That’s your department.”

  “Oh, you remember that, of course. You remember too much.” The old woman nodded and looked pleased that someone could recall her life as the busy working woman before she was trapped in her aging body. “That was a long time ago, and a short career. I only worked after Joe died, after your mom was grown. Then . . .”

  Noni’s liquid eyes seemed to glaze slightly as her mind roamed back to another time, then with a blink she was gazing intently on her granddaughter, her lips trembling as she forced a smile, her thin hands fidgeting nervously, fluttering from her knees to the arms of the chair, then back to her knees. “What on earth could a social worker want with you?” Her smile faded as quickly as it h
ad appeared; the customary worried expression she had worn for the past thirty years returning to her face.

  “Well, Noni.” Bernie paused and measured her words carefully, finally deciding it was best to just tell it like it was, matter-of-fact, no sentiment involved. No sugar coating was necessary or desired when it came to Noni. “You’re not going to believe this, but it seems my birth mother is looking for me. Apparently, she’d like to meet me now that I’m all grown up and don’t really need a mother.”

  “What?” Noni asked, gliding back to her spot near the old chair, her aged senses finally keen to the feel and pulse of her motorized carriage. No more crashing into walls and corners, scratching furniture, bruising her paper-thin skin that hung in loose folds from fragile arms and puffy legs marred with purple maps of varicose veins. Their eyes met and locked, each staring at the other. Noni’s chin frequently trembled as if she were almost chewing, her jaw moving up and down rapidly. Finally, she spoke, responding to the news. “Well, I always wondered if she would.”

  “You did? Really? I used to think she might, but then I, I don’t know, let it go or something. I don’t think I want to meet her, in case you’re wondering.”

  “Then don’t. What good can come from it now?”

  “That’s my point, but don’t you think it’s weird?” She leaned her elbows on her knees to bring her face closer to the freckled scowl she once had feared, closer to the filmy brown eyes that had always watched out for her. “Come on, Noni—why now? I’m thirty-seven years old for Christ’s sake. It’s a little late for anyone to want to be my mother. Where was she twenty-five years ago when I actually needed a mom? It all fell on you.”

  With a flick of her wrist and shake of her head, Noni dismissed the idea that Bernie was some sort of burden that fell on her. “How do you know what she wants? She might just be curious; she’s old now, too, I guess.”

  “She can’t be that old. I’m thirty-seven; heck, she might only be in her early or mid-fifties. She was probably a teenager when I was born, don’t you think?”

  Noni gazed off to a corner of the room, avoiding the eyes of her granddaughter, the only family she had left in the world. “How should I know?”

  “Come on, Noni, you know in the sixties all those young girls who got pregnant were sent to some home for unwed mothers and gave their babies up for adoption, usually to some stern-looking nun. I always figured that I was one of those babies—some unfortunate accident or nightmare to the prom queen or head cheer leader, something like that.”

  “Hmmmm . . . maybe . . . I don’t know. Does it matter now? You’re a grown woman; you don’t need a mother. You had a mother, remember. And she was the best mother. Maybe this woman wants money, knows how rich you are.” Noni was getting agitated; her trembling was more pronounced, and she seemed more annoyed than interested with Bernie and her news and her questions.

  “Noni, I’m not rich.”

  “Compared to most people, you’re rich. And everyone wants money, so hang on to your wallet.”

  They had this conversation at least once a month. Noni refused to understand how precarious being a plaintiff’s lawyer could be, sometimes working for months only to have it cost her money for all her efforts in the end. Bernie knew she had to keep a healthy nest egg to keep her from going under and to keep Noni at Nazareth, and sometimes that nest egg nearly emptied. Like now. But that was something she could never share with her grandmother, and that would change as soon as she settled the Luna case.

  “Hooh,” her grandmother rolled her eyes, mocking her.

  “Noni,” she pressed, “that’s not the issue here. I’m just saying it’s curious that someone who abandoned me thirty-seven, heck almost thirty-eight years ago should suddenly decide she wants to know me.” She aimed and tossed the crumpled candy wrapper into the small wicker wastepaper basket across the room, an easy shot after years of practice. “This isn’t Oprah, and you know why I feel like this.”

  “How was anyone supposed to know what would happen?” Again, her brows twitched, and she smacked her lips nervously. “How could anyone know something like that . . .? We survived.” She lowered her chin to her chest and closed her eyes, shutting out the cruel memories, just as she always did when she thought of her dead daughter, Bernie’s mother. Bernie was never sure if she was praying for her mother’s soul or simply blocking out all thoughts of that terrible time.

  “But it wouldn’t have happened if she wasn’t selfish?”

  “Who? Who was selfish? Your mom?”

  “Not Mom. My birth mother. Giving me up was selfish if it made her life easier. If you think about it, it’s really all her fault.” Her weight fell back into the chair, her hands limply hanging at her sides as though all energy seeped away with the words that left her mouth.

  “How do you figure that? What does that woman have to do with what your father did?”

  Always, Noni blamed Bernie’s father, never knowing how that blame tormented her granddaughter, never knowing how much she missed him still. “Well, I wouldn’t have lost my parents. It wouldn’t have happened to me, I guess. My birth mother is still alive, so I would have had a real mother.” Careless words, she realized. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have said that. Mom was my real mother.”

  Noni fidgeted with her cotton housedress, picking at the pattern of blue pansies with trembling fingers, then smoothing the fabric flat against her leg, her head nodding slowly with understanding and fear, the dark circles and wrinkles under her eyes heavier than usual. Bernie had noticed a renewed sense of grief in her grandmother lately, somehow more pronounced now than all those years ago when the pain was fresh and raw. She attributed it to idle days surrounded by people so old and close to death themselves. This conversation only seemed to make it worse. Her birth mother might never know the hell of Bernie’s childhood, but Noni lived it with her. Adoption didn’t have anything to do with the fate of Ron and Patty Sheridan.

  “No, you’re right. It wouldn’t have happened to you.” She reached out to Bernie and took her hand. “But, if you weren’t Patty’s daughter, who would I have now?”

  * * * *

  They were fighting again. For three days they didn’t speak a single word to each other, only passing messages through Bernie, their daughter. Tell your father his dinner is in the oven. Tell your mother I took a check from her checkbook. It wasn’t the first time they’d behaved like spoiled children. At the time, she didn’t give it any real thought beyond annoyance at serving as the messenger. In fact, sometimes when they quarreled, she rather liked it. They were so busy festering and stewing about the latest insult or angry glare they wouldn’t notice it was bedtime or whether or not Bernie had done her Spanish homework or cleaned her room or whatever they usually nagged about. She became invisible and free to do whatever she pleased while her parents battled it out. She just figured that’s how all parents behaved when they were fighting, but she learned all too soon that her parents were different. Memories of small arguments faded, but twenty-five years later, Bernie’s memories of one particular night swirled and tumbled about, often surfacing in dreams, or at the odd moment spent at a stop light, or waiting in line at the supermarket. It happened a couple of days before that terrible night, their final fight.

  They were all in the car, her dad’s 1978 T-Bird, driving down a dark two-lane highway, going home from their weekly Sunday dinner at Noni’s house. Bernie was stretched out in the backseat, but when she felt the car suddenly jerk to one side, she sat up, grabbing hold of the seat where her mother sat. They were going fast. Really fast. She saw her mother look back at her, then over to her husband, her face pinched and dark. “Ron,” she said, her voice raw with fear, placing a hand on his upper arm. “Please slow down, Ron. Please. Bernie’s in the car.”

  He glared at his wife, then slowly eased up on the accelerator. “Your mother needs to mind her own business,” he growled at his wife. “She should have just let you leave instead of prolonging this, usin
g a baby to keep you here. It’s unconscion . . .”

  “Ron, please,” she begged, again touching his arm. “Bernie.”

  “Well, it’s true, isn’t it?”

  When they finally slid into their driveway, her dad stormed into the house ahead of Bernie and her mom, charging up the stairs to their bedroom then slamming the door hard.

  “Mom,” Bernie said, “what’s Dad so mad about?”

  “It’s nothing important. Don’t worry; everything will be fine soon. Just go to bed.”

  Bernie’s mother locked the front door behind them, a habitual effort to keep them safe from whatever danger might lurk in the darkness. “Go to bed,” she said again, then kissed her daughter on the top of her head.

  Two days later, when Monsignor Desmond came to Bernie’s class and quietly asked her to go outside with him, she knew something was seriously wrong. It had to be serious if the monsignor came and pulled her out of religion class. Not a student helper from the office. Not Sister Catherine. Not even Father Harris. It was the monsignor himself.

  The pudgy little man with fluffy white hair gently placed his hand on her thin shoulder as they walked side by side to the chapel. The day was dreary and damp, one of those days when the valley fog sits heavy and thick, reducing the world to a small, misty haze. Bernie liked foggy days. She liked the way everything just slowly vanished into white, the way she could disappear and hide in an open field just yards from the watchful eyes of the old nuns at Saint Helen’s School.

  “Did I do something wrong?” she asked Monsignor, her voice the pious and respectful tone she used in confession. An innocent asking forgiveness for some unknown sin.

  “No, Bernie, you’ve done nothing wrong. Absolutely nothing wrong.” His words were soothing and gentle as he gave her shoulder a light squeeze followed by a gentle rub that frightened her more with each step.

  Bernie stopped inside the door of the church for a splash of holy water, careful to follow all the rules of Catechism and also fearful of whatever news was coming her way. She solemnly touched her forehead and chest with nervous fingers, searching her brain for any bad deed that would put her in this much trouble, quickly shifting from guilt to concern for Noni, the only person she really knew that might be old enough to die. She remembered the time Monsignor came for David Negrete when his grandpa died. She hesitated a moment before moving on and quickly prayed that Noni was okay. Her grandfather had died before she was born, so it couldn’t be him. Her other grandparents died when she was small; she barely remembered them. It had to be Noni. There wasn’t anyone else she knew that was old enough to die.