by Angela Hunt
“They went home?” My jaw dropped. “But—but their baby is only a few days old. He’s too young to fly.”
“I don’t know anything about that.” The man gave me the once-over, taking in my puffy figure and maternity top. “But maybe they decided to spend the holidays at home, ’cause they’re definitely gone. I have the keys, if you know someone who would like to rent the house—”
“Thank you, but I don’t know anything about renting houses.”
I stumbled back to the car, somehow placing one foot in front of the other when all I wanted to do was drop onto the front walkway and weep. How could they have gone without telling me good-bye? Without calling? Without stopping at the house to let me hold the baby one final time?
How could they have gone home even before Gideon’s memorial service?
I could almost hear my mom’s voice: What’d you expect, lasting friendship?
No, I didn’t expect friendship. But from people who kept going on and on about how they could never thank me enough, I had expected more kindness and compassion.
I had expected one final opportunity to kiss the baby good-bye.
Chapter Fourteen
As a college psychology major, I had been thoroughly schooled in the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally, acceptance. I had also listened to enough purveyors of pop wisdom to know that after a loss, I should begin with denial and move through the stages as quickly as possible in order to Get On With Life.
The trouble was, I didn’t want to get on with life. I wasn’t suicidal—I loved my daughter too much to consider such a selfish act—but I didn’t want to move through any of the required stages, no matter what the TV gurus advised. So I bucked the system and freely admitted that my husband was gone. I gave his books to Tumelo and boxed up his trophies for Marilee. I moved his photos from my bureau to a special shelf in the living room; I piled his clothing into bags and hauled them to our church’s thrift store, keeping only a flannel shirt I liked to sleep in. On Sunday mornings I looked around the congregation and wondered if I’d see a pair of Gideon’s pants walking by.
I gave Gid’s truck to Snake, knowing that’s what Gideon would have wanted. On the few occasions Snake dropped by to check on us, I glimpsed the truck through the curtains and felt my heart fling itself against my rib cage, the result of some inexplicable cellular conviction that Gideon had come home.
Yet my mind knew better. My husband was gone, the baby was gone, life as I had known it was gone forever. The rational part of my brain wondered if I was experiencing the results of postpartum depression, but the emotional part of me stared out at a world that had shifted from color to gloomy shades of gray.
Mom watched wide-eyed as I cleared out Gideon’s things, then she told me that refusing to go through the stages of grief was the mother of all denials. “Can’t you see what you’re doing?” Her face twisted into a human question mark. “This isn’t normal, Mandy. I’m worried about you.” When I wouldn’t listen, she shook her head, urged me to see a therapist, and drove home to The Villages.
Mama Isa and Elaine worried over me, too—I could see concern in their faces—but they did their best to make sure life for me and Marilee remained consistent.
After about a month, I went back to work at the grocery, smiling and behaving as though my world hadn’t been completely devastated. When regular customers asked how my new baby was doing, I said I’d been a surrogate, so the child had gone home with his parents. After hearing this, the person who’d asked always gave me the compassionate look they’d give someone who’d just lost their dog.
Sometimes I left work early and went to the mall, where I walked around and studied new mothers with their babies in carriages or strollers. I knew they’d come to the mall because they were desperate to put on makeup and get out of the house—I had done the same thing when Marilee was an infant. I never spoke to the mothers, but peered at their babies’ faces and wondered if I’d spot a little boy who looked like Julien. I knew my Julien was living in France, but I yearned to see something of him in another child’s face.
Despite my best intentions, after three months I realized I couldn’t stay in the rental house Gideon and I had furnished together. I glimpsed his shadow on the stairs, heard his voice in the hallway, and listened for his steps on the front porch every night. His empty pillow seemed to mock me on our big bed, and I had trouble sleeping.
His family seemed to understand my need to relocate, and Mama Isa offered her home as a way station, a place of healing and rest. “Jorge and I do not need so much space,” she told me, opening her hands wide to indicate the empty bedrooms. “You and Marilee come live with us for a while. You help me, I will help you, and we will keep la familia together.”
Accepting her offer was one of the easiest things I’d ever done, though my mom couldn’t understand why I seemed so eager to give up my independence. “You’re not a child,” she told me during a phone call. “You need to learn to stand on your own two feet.”
I snorted, baffled by her belief that I had somehow been coerced into making the decision to move. “Why should I live alone? It takes a village to raise a child, haven’t you heard?”
Later, though, I realized that I wanted to move in with Jorge and Isa because being with them brought me closer to Gideon. He wasn’t in the house, but I felt him in his family. His eyes lived in his father’s and aunt’s faces, his voice rumbled from his grandfather’s throat, and his smile frequently flashed on Mama Isa’s mouth. Everyone in the family spoke his melodious language. As long as Marilee and I remained close to la familia, we would never feel far from Gideon.
And I knew there’d be no room for ghosts in Mama Isa’s guest room’s narrow bed.
The family helped me move on a Saturday. Mama Isa came over the day before to help me pack, and I could tell she was stunned to see me dumping papers, bills, and drawer contents into packing boxes without first going through them. “You might be able to throw much of that stuff out,” she said, gently making her point. “You will save money if you do not store so much.”
“I don’t have time to go through everything,” I answered, dumping yet another stack of Gideon’s meticulous files into a packing box. He had managed our important papers, our taxes, our canceled checks. One day I might go through them—but probably only if the IRS came knocking at my door.
I sold the furniture we no longer needed (including the grand piano) and squeezed our lives into cardboard boxes. We sent some of our furnishings to a rented storage unit and moved everything else into Mama Isa’s empty bedrooms.
Living with Isa and Jorge helped me feel less alone, and I know Marilee enjoyed their company. She never complained, but I suspected that she thought her mother had turned into some sort of zombie.
And why shouldn’t I? Gideon had been such a huge part of my life that without him I felt like a quadruple amputee. His in-and-out schedule had allowed him to take charge of our bills, make most of the decisions, and even handle a lot of the grocery shopping. He accepted every responsibility I didn’t want, and managed everything so smoothly that I never realized how helpless I would be without him.
When Mama Isa took us in, I gratefully surrendered my responsibilities to her. I helped around the house, of course, but she washed our clothes, prepared our dinners, and made sure we were up and out the door every morning. She was stronger than I had ever been, and though I admired her, I didn’t think I could ever be like her.
After one family dinner, Amelia asked if I still planned on going back to college, but what would be the point? I had wanted to get my degree so I could get a better job to provide for Marilee’s schooling and allow us to enlarge our family. With Gideon gone, I no longer needed extra money.
Our finances, you see, had also been affected by Gideon’s death. Due to payments from Gideon’s life insurance, the military death benefit, and my surrogate work, Marilee and I had more money than we needed.
Yet thanks to la
familia, we didn’t need anything. And at Mama Isa’s house we were always surrounded by people who loved us.
Six months after my husband’s memorial service, the president invited me, Tumelo, and Elaine to the White House to receive Gideon’s posthumous Medal of Honor. My in-laws went, but I sent Marilee in my place. Even at the ripe old age of five, she had more military steel in her spine than I did.
At about the same time, Natasha Bray invited me to share my experience with one of her surrogacy support groups. I turned her down without a second thought. Sitting in front of pregnant strangers to describe my experience would be like ripping the skin away from my pounding heart and assuring them the experience didn’t hurt.
Days without Gideon stretched into weeks and months. Marilee remained at the Takahashi school, and we continued to enjoy Saturday family night dinners at Mama Isa’s. I stayed behind the cash register at the Cuban grocery, and Claude Newton of the Hawaiian shirt and flip-flops kept shuffling in every morning. Marilee and I went to church on Sundays, sat in our usual pew, sang the praise choruses, and lifted our prayers. God must have grown tired of hearing mine because they were always the same: Lord, why did you take Gideon?
I prayed another prayer, too, but this one I whispered only in the privacy of my bedroom: “Lord, bless that baby boy. Wherever Julien is, keep him safe and help him be happy.”
Around the family, I never mentioned the baby I’d carried—I didn’t think they’d understand why I mourned the loss of a child who wasn’t mine, especially after I’d insisted that carrying a baby and handing it over would be a simple, uncomplicated matter. And while Gideon’s loss colored every moment of every day, the loss of that child tinged my nights with despair. The vivid dreams I’d experienced in pregnancy persisted, leading me to wonder if my surrogacy had been a life-altering mistake. Would I never be free of the shadowy remnants that haunted my sleep?
I might have missed the baby less if the Amblours had kept their promise. In the months after Julien’s birth, I didn’t hear a word from Simone or Damien—not a picture, email, or card. I tried to tell myself their forgetfulness was a mixed blessing and that I wouldn’t long for the child if I couldn’t visualize him or know how he was growing up. Still, the Amblours’ silence surprised me.
In November, nearly a year after Gideon’s death, I quietly marked the date that was supposed to usher in our new life. If he had lived, Gideon would have finished his military service and come home to celebrate with a barbecue. The next morning he would have slept late, then gone out to search for the right place to open his music store. Then we would have met for lunch and gone out together to look at prospective houses—all of them located more than an hour away from MacDill Air Force Base. Marilee’s decorated dollhouse would come to life as I implemented all the plans and dreams I had compiled over the months of my pregnancy.
But with Gideon gone, no one in the family even mentioned his retirement date. They had either forgotten or they were keeping quiet to spare me pain.
As if they could.
Another year passed. A somber Valentine’s Day, a reserved Mother’s Day, another birthday. I looked in the mirror after my thirtieth and saw a widow with a thin, shadowed face in which dull blue eyes occupied most of the available space. No wonder. I felt like a soulless, barely animate creature of mud and clay.
I might have remained in that unfeeling state for many more months, even years, if Amelia hadn’t meddled in my private affairs.
* * *
Amelia and Mario continued to work at Mama Yanela’s grocery, but for the two years following Gideon’s death they focused on the pursuit of parenthood.
After spending several months on an adoption waiting list, they followed a friend’s suggestion and took in a foster child, a three-year-old boy named Sydney. Even at three, Sydney was prone to inexplicable fits of rage, but after a few months with my cousins he seemed to settle down. Amelia began to smile again, and I often saw Mario walking with little Sydney on his shoulders, the boy’s hands entwined in Mario’s collar-length hair.
I was happy for them, and selfishly grateful that they’d taken in an older child—because Sydney slept in a regular bed, Mama Isa had no need to ask about Gideon’s cradle. With Gideon gone, the cradle had become even more precious to me. It sat in storage, waiting for the day I would give it to Marilee for my grandchild.
After a year of loving and caring for their foster son, Amelia and Mario filed a petition to adopt Sydney. Their inquiries led a social worker to contact the boy’s birth parents and ask that they formally relinquish their rights. Reminded that they had a son, the parents—both of whom had been in and out of jail on drug charges—decided that they wanted to care for their child.
And blood, apparently, trumped every other consideration.
Instead of celebrating Sydney’s adoption, Amelia and Mario had to surrender the boy to a social worker, who picked up the screaming, kicking toddler and placed him in a dilapidated house with virtual strangers.
I had never seen Amelia so devastated. As the social worker left with Sydney, Amelia went to pieces while Mario held her, helpless to do anything but rub her back. Later that night they sat at Mama Isa’s dinner table and clung to each other as if they expected another official to barge through the door and tear them apart.
I don’t know if I could have continued to pursue adoption were I in Amelia’s situation. I might have given up and tried to enjoy my childfree status. But Amelia refused to surrender her dream. She asked her social worker to hold their adoption file six months, then put them back on the active waiting list. They needed time to grieve, and during those six months they managed to fortify themselves and recommit to their goal.
I don’t know how they did it.
As 2010 drew to a close, the sparkle returned to Amelia’s eyes. She and Mario would be back on the list in January, potential parents once again.
But on the first Saturday in December, as Tumelo sprayed fake snow around the grocery’s front windows and the family braced for tragic holiday memories, discouragement filled Amelia’s expression again. I understood why when I noticed the tabloid newspaper in her hand—the cover story was an article about a New York actress who had traveled to China to adopt a baby girl. Amelia had investigated Asian adoptions, too, but she and Mario simply couldn’t afford the international fees.
“Hey.” I waved for her attention, then crooked my finger to call her over.
She shook her head. “Not now,” she said, keeping her voice low as she walked by. “Later, we’ll talk.”
After dinner, she came into my room at Mama Isa’s, dropped onto my mattress, and tugged at the tufts on my chenille bedspread. “I wonder”—her forehead creased—“if it just wasn’t meant to be.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, though I was pretty sure I knew the answer.
“Maybe I’m not meant to be a mother. Maybe God knows I’ll be a lousy mama, so he’s keeping children from me. Or maybe my kid would have died from cancer, been hit by a car, or grow up to experience something tragic.”
Like dying on a secret mission in a foreign country? Gideon’s death may have been tragic, but his life wasn’t a mistake.
“Or maybe I would have been distracted by my kid and I would have hit someone else’s child while I was driving,” she went on, unaware that my thoughts were drifting, as always, toward Gideon. “Maybe there’s a purpose in all this frustration. Maybe God has good reasons for preventing me from being a mother.”
“I don’t know why God does all the things he does.” I gentled my voice. “I don’t think he wants to keep us from suffering. Maybe he allows us to suffer. Maybe he plans for us to suffer, ’cause I know he’s not asleep when terrible things happen. And if nothing bad ever happened to us, what would we be like? Spoiled rotten, probably. And lazy.”
Amelia laughed, but I heard no real humor in her voice. “You’re tired, cuz. You never make sense when you’re exhausted.”
“I’m always
tired.” I stretched out across the bed and propped my head on my bent arm. “You’ll be a good mama when the time comes. I watch you with Marilee, and sometimes I think you’re a better mother than I am. You have so much more energy.”
“You’ll get your energy back.”
“And you’ll get your baby.”
She barked a short laugh. “Yeah. Like, when I’m fifty, and too arthritic to chase after the kid. Of course, if I were rich and famous, I could buy a baby anytime I wanted.”
I sighed, knowing she was still annoyed by the actress who’d traveled such an apparently easy road to adoption.
“I mean”—she turned to face me—“why should it cost so much to do a loving thing? They pay foster parents to take care of children. Why can’t someone arrange it so ordinary people don’t have to mortgage everything they own in order to adopt an orphan? I’m not asking for a handout, just something to make things easier. It shouldn’t cost so doggone much to share your love with someone who needs it.”
But good things usually hurt.
As Gideon’s voice echoed in my brain, I shook off the haunting memory and tried to focus on Amelia. I had already offered to cover her adoption fees—partly because I had more money than I needed, and partly because I still felt guilty for not offering to carry a baby for my cousins. But Mario said he could never take money from me; it would be like taking from Gideon.
“You keep everything you have,” he had urged me. “Marilee will need to go to college, and you may want to buy your own place someday. I couldn’t take a dime from you, no matter what.”
“I’m sorry,” I told Amelia, letting my head fall on my pillow. “Sometimes life hurts.”
Amelia leaned over and kissed my forehead, a Lisandra family gesture I’d come to appreciate. “Thanks, cuz. You, me, Mario—we’re going to be okay.”
“Oh, yeah? When will that be?”
“Soon, I hope.” She stood and stepped toward the doorway. “Mama says dessert will be ready in ten minutes. Are you coming?”