by Amy Hatvany
As their dinner progressed, Brooke learned that Ryan was forty-five, and the owner of one of the largest contracting firms in Seattle, running multiple crews on various important construction projects around the city. She admired the fact that he was self-made—that he hadn’t been handed his company, he’d built it on his own, from the ground up. He was driven and passionate. She told herself her attraction to him didn’t have anything to do with his money—though as they began to spend more time together, she had to admit that she enjoyed the luxuries it afforded them. They never drank anything less than a hundred-dollar bottle of champagne, and he hired an Uber to drive her back to her apartment at the end of the night if she didn’t have her own car there. She liked the way that he laughed; she liked his handsome face and strong body—musculature chiseled by long hours of physical labor. He told her he was mesmerized by the combination of her black hair and violet eyes; he said her pale skin felt like silk. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he always whispered when he slowly stripped her clothes from her body, and Brooke let herself believe him. The way he kissed her felt like a form of worship, and the intensity of their lovemaking—the escape it gave her—surpassed anything she’d ever experienced before. She couldn’t get enough.
Still, he was married, and his very expensive divorce lawyer advised him to keep their relationship on the down-low, and not to introduce Brooke to his sons, for fear that Michelle would find a way to use Brooke against him in court. All of this was fine with Brooke. She never planned anything for more than a few weeks ahead.
A pregnancy would change all of that. A baby would change everything.
Brooke found a parking spot on the street near her building and quickly made her way into the old brick house that had been converted into six small studios. Once inside, she headed down the dimly lit stairwell and unlocked the door to her basement unit. Clutching the Walgreens white plastic bag, she flicked on a lamp and kicked off her shoes, looking around the place she had lived in for the past five years. The room was a perfect square, painted the palest shade of yellow Brooke could find to help brighten it. Her bed, which was really just a queen-size mattress and box spring on the floor, rested against the wall opposite the door, and her tiny kitchenette was to her left. All her clothes were in an old dresser she’d found at Goodwill for ten bucks; she’d painted it periwinkle blue to match the blankets and fluffy pillows on her bed. Over in the corner was the bathroom, a space barely big enough to fit a stall shower, toilet, and sink, which was where Brooke immediately headed, taking one of the pregnancy tests with her.
She opened the box, carefully reading the instructions, which told her she should perform the test first thing in the morning. It was almost three a.m. Does that count? she wondered, and then decided she didn’t care. She needed to know if she was pregnant, and she needed to know now.
She took the test, washed her hands, and left the bathroom, only to pace in the other room. Please, please, please, she begged God, or the Universe, or whatever powers were out there. Let it be negative. Brooke had promised herself that if she ever did get pregnant, it would be only when she was completely secure in her decision to bring a child into the world. Her baby would never think she wasn’t wanted, which was the only conclusion Brooke had ever come to about herself. Why else, after four years spent raising her, would her mother have given her up?
Her gut clenched, as it always did when she allowed herself to think about the woman who brought her into the world. She remembered the musty scent in her mother’s car, the pitch-black nights, and the cold, hungry mornings. She remembered crying. She remembered being scared and alone.
And there it was—her mother’s voice inside her head, playing like a record with a needle stuck in a groove: I’ll be right back. You wait here. Cloudy images of her mother’s silhouette, walking away. Brooke, wanting to be good, but being scared enough that her teeth ached. Her heart thudded so hard inside her chest that she worried it might explode.
“Damn it,” Brooke muttered, angrily wiping her cheeks with the tips of her fingers. She had more important things to worry about than some stupid girl who left her daughter alone in a car, then left her altogether. A person like that didn’t deserve her tears. Where had her father been all of that time? Why hadn’t he taken better care of them? Was he someone her mother had loved, or was getting pregnant with Brooke an accident with a stranger, just the first of her many mistakes?
She told herself that none of that mattered now. There was no changing any of it. She returned to the bathroom and grabbed the test from where she’d left it on the edge of the sink. Negative, negative, negative, she chanted inside her head, as though she could somehow manifest her desired result. But when she looked down, all she saw was the bright blue plus sign in the middle of the white plastic stick.
Shit. Brooke’s shoulders slumped as she fell back against the wall. After a moment, she straightened, then tossed the test into the garbage. She decided to take the other one, too, just to be sure the results were the same. That there hadn’t been some kind of mistake.
Three minutes later, Brooke had her answer. There was no doubt about it. She was pregnant. And she had no idea what to do.
Jennifer
I promised myself I wouldn’t cry.
I knew the girls would be there any minute, the first time I would see them since the night of my arrest the previous month. I’d never been that long without them, but there I was, about to say good-bye. I was giving them up, making them wards of the state. With Gina’s help, I had made the decision quickly, the way you pull off a sticky bandage, reasoning that it might be less painful than if I dragged the process out, hemming and hawing about whether or not it was the right thing to do. I already knew it was the right thing. For Brooke’s and Natalie’s futures, there was no better choice to make.
As Gina had predicted, I was convicted of both the petty theft and child endangerment and neglect, then sentenced to fifteen months in a minimum-security facility. After that hearing, Gina told me that Brooke and Natalie had been placed in a home with a couple who had been foster parents for years. Knowing they were safe and together was the only thing that sustained me as I lay in my narrow, uncomfortable bunk at King County jail, listening to the thick, rough snores of my cellmates, unable to fall asleep. I felt hollow, as though my insides had all been scraped out. In signing away my parental rights, I was effectively saying that the state knew better what to do with my children than I did. I was admitting failure as a mother. I was saying that if I raised my own babies it would be a mistake.
“Are you sure your mother wouldn’t take care of them until you get out?” Gina had asked me. Even after I told her no, she said that in situations like this, the state required her to call next of kin.
When I saw her the next day, I asked how it had gone. “Not well,” she answered, not looking at me.
“What did she say?”
“That her husband doesn’t like kids.”
“Her husband?” I said, feeling stunned. I had no idea that she had gotten married again. My mother was only twenty-nine when my father left us, unaccustomed to being a sole provider and living alone, and she had been anxious to find another husband. “I miss having someone to curl up with at night,” she said.
“You can curl up with me,” I replied, and she shook her head, looking out the window.
“It’s not the same thing.”
For the next few years, until I got pregnant with Brooke, my mother was always dating someone. But none of her boyfriends stuck around for more than a couple of months. I wondered about the man who’d finally stayed with her, a man I’d never met. I wondered what she would have said if I had reached out to her earlier, before she’d married him, to ask for her help. If I’d admitted how wrong I’d been to move in with Michael; if I’d begged for her forgiveness. I’d thought about doing this a hundred times, but pride kept me from picking up the phone. Pride, and an intense, quiet fear that she’d want nothing to
do with me or my daughters. Now, even though I’d been expecting it, I felt my mother’s rejection of her grandchildren—her rejection of me—like a stab in the heart.
“How much longer?” I asked Gina now. She sat with me in the family visiting room at the jail, ready to supervise my last visit with my daughters. None of this seemed real to me yet. I’d signed the papers, answered the judge when he asked me if I understood what I was agreeing to do, and the entire time, I felt removed from my own body, as though I were floating toward the ceiling, watching someone who looked like me go through the appropriate motions and play my part.
“Any minute,” Gina said, reaching over to squeeze my hand. Her fingers warmed my dry, icy skin. The orange industrial soap in the jail’s shower was like sandpaper. “You okay?”
I pressed my lips together and shook my head. “I don’t know if I can do this,” I finally said, my voice barely a whisper.
“The judge already signed off on the order.”
“No,” I said. The tension in my chest was unbearable, my muscles braided themselves into excruciating knots. “I meant I don’t know if I can see them.” I leaned forward, pressing my upper body against my skinny thighs, and grabbed my ankles. Gina placed her hand on my back.
“If you don’t,” she said, “you’ll regret it. Trust me. You need closure.”
Closure, I thought, is impossible. I was convinced giving them up was the right thing, the best thing for them, but the agony I’d felt after making the decision had shattered into sharp metal shavings lodged under my skin. Every move I made, every breath I took hurt more than the last.
Righting myself, I glanced around the room, a small, square space with brick walls painted gray, the table at which we sat, and a sad pile of dirty-looking toys in a basket in the corner. A crooked poster of Sesame Street characters hung by the door; some asshole had drawn a pair of blue breasts on Big Bird.
“Do you think they’ll ever forgive me?” I asked Gina, who paused and gave me a long, thoughtful look before responding.
“I think you’re giving them the very best chance you can.”
As though on cue, the door swung open, and a woman with long silver hair entered, carrying Natalie in a car seat and holding Brooke’s small hand. “Mama!” my older daughter shrilled, racing toward me. “Mama, Mama, Mama!”
“Oh, honey,” I said, opening my arms as she threw herself full force into them, clambering up into my lap. Tears blurred my vision and I buried my face in her dark curls. She was warm and smelled like green apple shampoo; she wore a green-and-blue plaid dress, brown saddle shoes, and clean, white tights. I can’t do it, I thought as I hugged her, kissing her sweet face. I can’t. What the hell was I thinking, that I could give this up? It felt as though I’d agreed to have two perfectly healthy and functional limbs lopped off. From that point on, I’d be an emotional amputee.
The silver-haired woman stepped inside and set Natalie’s car seat on the floor next to me. “I’ll be back in an hour,” she said, and Gina thanked her, moving a chair to the corner. She had already told me she couldn’t leave me alone with the girls, that this final visit needed to be supervised. Another reminder of just how unfit a mother I was.
“Where have you been?” Brooke asked, her voice muffled against me. Her small fingers dug into my back. “I missed you so much!”
“I missed you, too,” I said, choking on the words. I looked down at Natalie, who had her big sister’s lavender blanket tucked around her. She’d already changed so much, just in a month. She was bigger, and had more wisps of light blond hair. Her cheeks were rounder and more pink than I’d ever seen, and she had even sprouted two teeth along her lower gums. As soon as she saw me, she began to cry, wriggling under the constraints of the harness. I leaned over, still holding Brooke, and with one hand managed to unhook her and lift her up to my lap with her sister. My girls, I thought. My sweet, innocent girls.
“I want to leave,” Brooke said when she finally looked up and around the room. She sniffled. “I don’t want to stay here.”
“It won’t be for very long,” I told her. “We just get to visit for a little while.”
“And then we get to leave,” Brooke said, her dark eyebrows scrunched together with determination.
“Yes,” I said, hoping she wouldn’t ask if we would go to the same place. I kissed the top of her head again, as well as Natalie’s. “How are you, sweetheart? Are you okay? Is the house you’re staying at nice?” Brooke shrugged, but didn’t answer, so I tried again. “Why does Natalie have your blanket?”
“So she won’t cry,” Brooke whispered.
“Wow,” I said, and my jaw trembled. “What a good big sister you are.”
“I have my own bed at Rose and Walter’s house,” she said. “And Nat-ly has a real crib. With a mattress and everything.” She had reverted to using her baby voice, transforming her little sister’s name into two syllables instead of three, something she only did when she was truly upset.
“Oh,” I said, hating that my daughter saw having a mattress as a luxury. “That must be so nice.” I paused. “Do you like Rose and Walter?”
Brooke nodded, slowly, looking a bit unsure.
“It’s okay, baby,” I said, sensing she was worried she might be hurting my feelings. “I’m happy you like them. I want you to have good things.”
Brooke visibly relaxed. “They have lots of toys. And food, too.” She babbled on for a while about all the different things Rose cooked for them, and which ones she liked the most. I listened as best I could, jiggling Natalie with one arm while encircling Brooke with the other, but there was a siren blasting in my head, causing my thoughts to blur. Someone else is feeding them. Someone else is picking out their clothes and kissing them good night. I will never get to do that again. I’ve lost them. My eyes glossed with tears.
“Where have you been?” Brooke asked me, jerking me out of my thoughts. “Why haven’t you come get us?”
I stole a glance at Gina, who gave me an encouraging nod. “Well,” I began, then cleared my throat. “I’ve been here, sweetie. I can’t come get you. Mama made some big mistakes.”
“But I want you to. I don’t even care if we have to go camping. I want to be with you.”
“I want that, too,” I said, wishing I knew the right thing to say. Wishing I could soothe her. “A judge said that Mama has to be in here while you stay with Rose and Walter.”
“Like when I have to be in time-out?” Brooke asked, and I nodded. Gina had told me earlier that Brooke was too young to understand if I tried to explain what was really happening, that she’d do better if I just hugged her and kissed her and told her I loved her so much. “She’ll adjust,” Gina said. “She’ll figure it out.”
“Hey,” I said, thinking distraction would be the best way to change the subject. “Want to read a story?” I nodded in the direction of the corner with the basket of toys, where a small stack of tattered books rested on the floor.
A few moments later, I had both girls in my lap as I read to them, cherishing the feeling of their small, warm bodies pressed against me. Brooke covered both herself and Natalie with her blanket, her fingers working the satin trim for comfort, as I knew they would. I read them all the silly, meaningless stories, and then we read them again. I asked Brooke to point out different colors and letters as we went and let Natalie pat the pages with her chubby starfish hands. Will they remember this? I wondered. Will this moment be something that lives inside them the way I know it will live inside me?
As the hour passed, I stared at my daughters, determined to etch every detail of them into my brain. I memorized where Brooke’s hair parted—on the right, her shiny dark curls sprouting out of her scalp like springs. The exact shade of her eyes, the way her nose turned up, just at the end. The cinnamon freckles sprinkled across her cheeks. I kissed all of Natalie’s fingers and toes, blowing raspberries into her belly to hear her giggle one last time. I looked into her brown eyes, seeing my own gaunt reflection there. Do
n’t forget me, I thought. Please. Don’t forget how much I love you.
All too soon, the door opened, and the silver-haired woman reappeared. “Hour’s up,” she said, and Gina and I both stood. Shaking, I held Natalie against the left side of my chest, feeling the rapid, sweet beat of her heart against mine. Brooke clung to my right leg, pressing her face into my thigh, away from the woman. Every cell inside my body screamed the word no.
“Time to say good-bye,” Gina said, quietly.
I felt a thousand pinpricks inside my lungs. Do it quick, I thought. Rip off the Band-Aid. I squatted down to Brooke’s level, which forced her to let go of my leg. “Hey, pumpkin,” I said. “I’m so happy I got to see you.”
“I don’t wanna go,” Brooke said, her eyes shiny with tears. “Please, Mama. I wanna stay with you.”
My bottom lip quivered, and I bit it. “I know you do. But it’s against the rules.” I paused. “I love you more than anything. You know that, right?” She nodded, pushing her face into my neck. I could feel her tears.
“Here,” the silver-haired woman said. “Let me take the baby.” She took a step over toward us, and that’s when Brooke screamed, lashing out her arm to hit the woman on the knee.
“Brooke!” I said, unable to keep back my own tears. “You know better than that. It’s not okay to hit!” Natalie began to cry, too, and I held her tighter.
“It’s fine,” the woman said, holding out her arms for Natalie.
I stood up, and I couldn’t help it—I took a step back, twisting at the waist so Natalie was out of the woman’s reach. Even though I knew I’d agreed to all of this, I felt a fierce need to protect my baby. I wanted to grab both my daughters and run.
Gina appeared at my side. “Jennifer,” she said. “Don’t make this harder than it already is.”
I looked at her, the pain I felt dripping down my cheeks, until I finally relented, first peppering Natalie’s face with kisses before I handed her over. “It’s time for you to go, honey,” I said to Brooke, again dropping down to her level. I hugged her tightly, cupping the back of her head with my palm. “I’m so happy you came to see me. Be a good girl and take care of your sister.” My heart felt ragged and torn—sawed in two.