Suddenly Susannah apologized. She had to go get her daughter. After a quick hug, we parted ways, promising to have lunch again soon. She said something to me about calling that I just barely caught as she walked away, but my mind was already distracted by thoughts of Ruby. Susannah, unknowingly, had stirred feelings I’d been trying to keep at bay.
Even if I couldn’t find every memory of her in my mind, Ruby was everywhere.
I knew that Kitty, like me, thought about her every day. Ruby was part of our lives, always hovering in an uninvited comment from Kitty or beneath the quietness of the evening. During the stillness we always knew the other was thinking about her, but we rarely broke the silence with her name during those times.
They were the saddest times.
They crept up like the stealthy orange kitten I had that got run over when I was little. A beloved companion but constantly in the middle of everything, making everyone smile, making everyone cry.
That evening I sat in Ruby’s blue velvet wingback chair and imagined she was with me. I imagined her sitting here pregnant, wondering what to do with her baby, feeling like little Maria’s birth mother had felt. How many options had she thought of? Abortion? Adoption? How long had it taken her to decide to keep me? I glanced over at Kitty.
“What’s so special about this chair?” I hoped she would tell me this time.
Kitty sat across from me on the couch, and the smile on her face brightened despite the dim light from the lamp near the now dark window. She paused for a long time before answering and looked up toward the ceiling as if she could see back in time. Leaning forward, I sensed some anticipation of a story, but I suppressed my hope that she’d truly share. I wouldn’t press her.
Kitty’s life seemed to revolve around me, but I knew it couldn’t have always been that way. Before, she would say, her life revolved around Ruby. And maybe that’s really how it was, but I needed to know how that came to be. How had it ended up just her and Ruby? In some ways I think her life still revolved around Ruby, and I was simply an extension of that.
I remembered what happened to Ruby in the hospital and that it had nearly destroyed Kitty, but what happened before that day? Where was everyone else after Ruby died? While we had not spoken about it over the years, the absence of other family members and friends was obvious. In the past, when I’d asked about Ruby’s father or my father, I was met with a warning gaze.
“Not important,” she’d say.
I watched Kitty as she turned her gaze to the azalea plant illuminated by the deck light, its flowers spilling over the edge of its pot, which was hanging just outside the windowpane.
Eventually she looked back down and past me. She spoke so softly I had to lean in even closer as she continued to stare back to a time in her past.
“I think I already mentioned that I was born in a tiny town near Sonoma Valley called La Rosaleda.”
“No,” I said, masking my awe and surprise. “You’ve never mentioned La Rosaleda. You’re from the Sonoma Valley?”
“Yes. And so was your mother. A long time ago, Ruby was born there. There was an earthquake that night.”
I felt the bottom of my reclusive, safe world dissolve beneath me. I stared at Kitty, trying to find my breath, but she still didn’t look at me.
A long sigh escaped as her shoulders deflated, and the mask on her face fell away, revealing something more than sad, almost remorseful.
“La Rosaleda was a beautiful place. I should have never left there.”
I stood then and moved next to her on the couch, my heart beating so hard I worried she could hear it. This is the moment, I whispered to my heart.
You are from La Rosaleda.
Your mother was born on the heels of an earthquake.
An earthquake was rising in me even as the room around me stayed dead still.
WHEN LA ROSALEDA STILL BLOOMED
Kitty
6
Kitty’s smile was tender. “I thought for so many years that I could hide things,” she said. “I know you think I hold a key that can unlock your past, dear, but you have no idea why things are locked up. Your mother’s birth, like that earthquake, would shake the foundations of La Rosaleda and of my life.
“Back then I didn’t think I could ever have secrets with the power to ruin lives, but that’s because I was so young. When I lived in La Rosaleda, I still had hope…”
Katherine “Kitty” DiCamillo-Birkirt was sixteen, almost seventeen, when she was pregnant with Ruby in La Rosaleda.
She paced the creaking oak floor of the alley loft she and her new husband rented. The Irish restaurant below, popular with tourists, was already loud and lively with music and the rhythm of feet clogging to traditional Irish dances. It wasn’t even dark outside yet, but the merriment had started, and from the sound of things one would think they were in Ireland instead of La Rosaleda, where the Mexican-American roots gave way to a blend of Hispanic, Latino, and European-American culture.
The Irish presence, Kitty would explain to me later, wasn’t completely unusual considering the bohemian atmosphere the town took on during tourist season when anything goes, but it wasn’t the dominant culture. Either way, she’d never minded the music because it made Blake, whose parents were from Ireland, feel at home.
The music from the restaurant below reminded her of Blake and those happy years when they were just children at Frances-DiCamillo, her parents’ vineyard just outside of La Rosaleda.
La Rosaleda, or “The Rose Garden,” was a small, sparsely populated northern California town set in the rolling hills and vineyards of the Sonoma Valley. It was also a tourist town, and with it being the season’s peak, tourists were kicking up the nightlife, which is saying quite a bit for the laid-back town.
Kitty swayed clumsily from side to side toward the window and climbed as carefully out to the fire escape balcony as her pregnant belly allowed. One small chair fit in the space where she loved to sit and listen to the nightlife below. It wasn’t the music itself keeping her up that night, and it wasn’t the baby seemingly dancing its feet inside her. It was the fact that her husband would be coming home late that kept her from going to bed. It seemed she could never fall asleep until he was lying beside her, his breath warm on her neck, his hand draped across her waist, or what used to be a waist.
Breathing in the warm night, she gazed down at the alleyway below. She enjoyed how the fuchsia-colored azalea plant draped over the railing, partially shielding her from passersby who bothered to look up at the lone window above the restaurant.
She watched as a young man and woman shared a kiss before hurrying inside. Smiling to herself, she remembered when she and Blake first realized that their feelings extended beyond childhood friendship. They had been so enlivened by each other. How many times had they eaten at that little restaurant, sometimes even doing the Irish dances together?
She rubbed her tight, round belly and whispered to the fluttering baby. “Hear that music, little one? Are you dancing in there?” She felt a quiver from within that gave her the sense of being tickled from the inside.
“You’re already like your daddy.”
She knew that soon he would come pounding up the stairs from an entrance next door to the pub, and she would hurry inside before he made it upstairs. He would see her first from the alley, of course, and be worried, but she would be inside before he made it up the stairway and then he would see she was fine. Until then she enjoyed the fiddles dancing up from the pub. Judging from the shifting in her belly, the baby was as well.
Just below the balcony was where they’d shared their first kiss. As his lips had grazed hers that afternoon, she’d opened her eyes to catch sight of the fire escape balcony and noticed a pot of flowers peeking out through the railing.
Still breathless from the moment, she said, “What a charming little place to live! I bet it’s adorable!”
His pale cheeks held splotches of pink at the timing of her response, but he smiled and promised to buy the
loft. Before they were even married, it became vacant and he grabbed the opportunity to rent it, hoping to eventually buy it before some tourist got the idea to make it their summer home.
Blake had bravely asked Kitty’s father for his blessing on their marriage. But her father had surprised them all and swiftly refused Blake’s request on the grounds that she was too young to get married. Too young! She didn’t feel too young. His refusal had seemed more than a denial of Blake’s request; it was a rejection of her dreams. He fired Blake from the vineyard the same day, and she wasn’t supposed to see him at all anymore, but as young men and women often do, they found little ways to see each other without her parents knowing.
There was no end to the excuses Kitty came up with to bump into Blake, such as running errands for her mother or going to the small library in town, knowing she would find him waiting for her near the cookbooks. When Blake showed her the loft and said he had rented it for them, she knew she was home.
On that afternoon, they spread one of Kitty’s handmade quilts across the bare hardwood floor. Together they unpacked grapes, cookies, and cheese, so happy to be together and alone. But being away from prying eyes when they were forbidden to see each other, she suddenly understood how Juliet and her Romeo had felt.
A nice lunch was all they had planned, but being so completely alone with Blake made Kitty feel sentimental and sad. She’d missed him so much, and knowing that her father wouldn’t allow them to get married filled her with a sense of being abandoned by her parents. She leaned into Blake as they sat on the quilt together, looking for reassurance, a promise that he would never leave her.
She would always recall how the colorful starry designs of the patterned quilt brightened up the empty loft, lifting them into a fantasy where no forbidding father’s eyes could bore.
Sitting now on the balcony of their loft, she whispered down to her belly, “And that’s how we got you, little one.” Heat traveled down her neck at the thought of that day. How could she banish the memory any more than she could banish her baby? All has been made right, she told herself.
The second time Blake asked for Kitty’s hand, he walked the two miles to Frances-DiCamillo from La Rosaleda, cutting through the vines. That time of year, the vine tendrils were already heavy with gleaming young grapes in the slanting sunrise across the hills. But Blake had no time to enjoy the hills layering the horizon throughout the valley, acre after acre of vineyards, or the venerable oaks surrounding the large estate house. He strode past the work buildings, and saying good morning to those picking grapes along the way, he tried to ignore the wild thumping in his chest. All this he told Kitty later, of course, when all was well, but for a while her normally strong Blake was extremely nervous about how her father might react when he found out that not only had they been seeing each other in secret, but they still wanted to get married.
He broke out of the vines just as the bell echoed from the tower across the hills announcing the beginning of the day, and he kept striding toward the imposing Mexican-style estate home. The walk across the yard seemed to be miles long, and he climbed the stairs to the large oak door feeling as if his feet were sinking into the porch.
The rap of the ornate door knocker echoed across the vineyard. She heard it from upstairs and looked out her window. He’s here! she thought, her heart leaping through her body. He stood at the door waiting.
A few curious pickers had followed him out of the field. He recognized them and gave a slight wave. They nodded.
When Isaac DiCamillo finally opened the door, he wasted no time on formalities.
“Blake Birkirt. You dare step foot on this estate after I said stay away from my daughter?”
“But I want to marry her.” He sounded resolute, and only the splotches of pink in his cheeks gave away his apprehension.
Isaac flung his arms upward.
“No!” he roared. “She’s not getting married!”
Both men looked up as the screen door slammed.
Kitty’s mother, Freda, stormed out onto the porch wrapped in a soft blue shawl, still wearing her nightgown.
“Blake,” she pleaded. “Go back to town while we think about this.”
Freda was beautiful, in her late forties with long brown hair, heavy across her shoulders and brown eyes that flashed as much when she was angry as when she laughed.
“I’m not leaving until I see Kitty.”
“Yes, you are.” Her voice was gentle.
Blake hesitated. Anger stung his eyes, and he bit his tongue to keep from saying something that might offend.
He walked away, back straight, stiffly nodding to the workers as he started back toward town.
Reflecting on those beginning moments of their few years together, Kitty said she sensed then that every fiber in Blake’s body wanted to stay and fight the day Isaac and Freda sent him away. Watching him leave, the breath rushed out of Kitty’s body. When he turned back and looked toward her bedroom window, she didn’t even bother to hide behind the curtains. She tried to cheer him by blowing kisses.
He smiled at her that morning, not seeming to care who saw. The workers snickered as they parted for him to walk through them. There were good-natured slaps on the back and teasing words spoken in Spanish that she couldn’t understand from where she was.
Then, before Blake reached the end of the driveway, Isaac amazed everyone by calling out to him. “Blake!”
They met halfway. Freda stood on the porch looking after the men, her arms crossed formidably over her chest, no doubt to make sure Isaac followed her instructions.
“Mija,” Freda said later, sitting on the blue velvet wingback chair in Kitty’s bedroom. “You are going to be so happy with Blake.”
“I’m going to marry him!” Kitty sighed and hugged herself.
The wedding preparations had to be made quickly. Kitty glanced at her mother.
Freda placed her hand on Kitty’s belly.
“I’m sorry, Mother.”
Freda looked out the window at the sun setting across the valley and didn’t say anything for a long while.
Finally she turned to Kitty. “Katherine, I know.” She sighed. “I guess this child is meant to be born, and your father and I will be here for you. And so will your husband.”
That evening Freda tucked Kitty into bed as if she were still a little girl. Kitty thought she was too old for bedtime prayers, but Freda’s words in her ear were a blessing for the baby. She clasped her mother’s hand tightly, glad she hadn’t been rejected, and she dreamed about her childhood.
Blake and Kitty had spent their childhood years roaming Frances-DiCamillo, Kitty still in cotton dresses and curly ponytails. Their favorite game was hide-and-seek, which was how her nickname evolved.
“Here, Kitty Cat!” Blake would call.
Their favorite place to hide was in the bell tower, which was attached to the estate house. They got into trouble repeatedly for hiding in the tower and several times for ringing the bell when it wasn’t time to call anyone home for lunch.
“The bell is for mealtimes, for emergencies, and for church!” Freda would exclaim. “It’s for announcing news, not for playing! What news are you announcing when you play? That the bell is meaningless?”
Years later, on their wedding day, Blake and Kitty ran up the tower, her lace and satin wedding dress trailing behind her. Freda and Isaac laughingly called after them to stay out of that tower. But Kitty and Blake ignored those calls and rang the bell together, long enough to let the whole town know there had been a wedding at Frances-DiCamillo.
The night had turned chilly when Kitty woke to sirens.
Oh no, she thought. Where is Blake? She immediately imagined that he was possibly hurt and began to call his name. She saw red and blue lights shining on the walls of the alley and knew something had happened. She was lying on the ground looking up to where the balcony was now hanging by what must have been one bolt, and her beautiful plants lay broken around her, smashed in terra cotta. She thoug
ht, I need to get those and put them in water or they’ll die. She tried to remember what had happened and vaguely recalled waking up as someone from the alley below yelled, “Earthquake!” That was when the fire escape gave way, and she fell straight down.
She lay on the ground a moment, stunned, and then looked around up at the buildings.
When reality sank in, she was in tears. Had the awning, now ripped and torn, softened her fall? That would have been like some sort of movie, she thought.
Then it dawned on her just how far she’d actually fallen. She pressed her hands on her belly. What about my baby?
A nurse knelt down and began to push gently along her expansive waistline. The nurse felt and listened with a stethoscope for a long time, ignoring Kitty’s soft cries of worry. Suddenly there was a strong movement, and the nurse’s face brightened.
She called out to the other emergency personnel, “It’s kicking up a storm!”
“More like an earthquake,” someone said and laughed.
Turning back to Kitty, the nurse said, “I guess your crying woke up the baby!” She beamed as Kitty’s sobs turned to surprised laughter. Before Kitty knew it, Blake was beside her in the ambulance.
“Mike Larimer,” one of the medical people said to Blake.
Blake tried to focus on the outstretched hand as he found a place beside Kitty’s stretcher.
“Blake Birkirt,” he said impatiently.
Mike motioned toward Kitty.
“Your beautiful wife will be fine. You are one lucky man.”
“They’re both okay?” Kitty heard the desperate hope in Blake’s voice.
Mike nodded. “The hospital will want to keep her a few days, but right now the little one seems fine too.” He reached across and gave Blake a stern pat on the back and talked on and on, perhaps just to fill the space.
“I have a little one myself.”
“Is that so?”
Ruby Among Us Page 6