“What’s that?” Peggy screeched.
“Duh, Mom,” Ruth said. “What does it look like? A basket of apples?”
“It’s a baby. I can see that, missy.” Peggy turned to Pete as Ruth mouthed the word missy at me and rolled her eyes. “Pete, say something. Do something.” She wrung her hands. Really.
Pete looked from Jane to Ruth to Jonah and back again to Ruth.
“All I can say, young lady, is that better not be yours.” Even as he said it, I could see that he knew better. “And you, son,” he said, glaring at Jonah, “what did you have to do with this?”
Before Jonah could reply, Jane started to scream. She wasn’t used to waiting for her meals. Neither was Ruth. Her T-shirt was soaked. She took Jane out of the basket and headed for the front door. “I don’t know about you,” she said over her shoulder, “but I’m pretty sure the neighbors don’t need to see my tits. I’m going inside. Jane’s hungry.” Jonah and I walked with her, one on either side.
Just as we reached the door, Pete charged in front of us, planted himself in the doorway, flung his arms wide and gripped the doorframe. “Jezebel!” he hissed. “You shall not enter my home. You shall not defile it with your filthiness and the evidence of your fornication.”
It was our turn to recoil, as much from the spittle that sprayed out of his mouth as from his words.
“Dad,” Jonah said, “take it easy. If she goes, I go too.”
Behind us I could hear Peggy gasp. Now’s the time, Peggy, I thought. Stand up for your daughter. Tell Pete to go to hell. Stop wringing your hands, and slap him before I do.
“The great whore of Babylon sitteth upon many waters and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication,” Peggy shrieked. So much for standing up for her daughter. I covered Jane’s ears. “How dare you bring your bastard here,” she continued. “And you,” she turned to me, “I blame you for this. You have poisoned our daughter against us and against her faith, and hellfire awaits you.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I figure hell must be an improvement over what’s happening here. C’mon, Ruth. This is bad for Jane.” Ruth was doing a lame imitation of Lot’s wife, so I grabbed her arm and propelled her back to the van. Jonah stayed with his parents. Jane was screeching so loudly that I couldn’t hear what he was saying to them, but I think it was along the lines of “See ya, losers.”
Pete grabbed him with both hands, and Jonah shook him off as if he were a flake of dandruff. When Peggy fell on her knees and wrapped her arms around his legs, he very gently extricated himself and stepped away from her.
“I’ll bring the van back later,” he said. “Once Ruthie’s settled somewhere.” The last thing I saw as we drove away was Pete turning his back on Peggy as she knelt in the driveway, her hands over her face.
“That was harsh,” I said to Ruth as she nursed Jane. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Ruth said. “They’re such assholes. They didn’t even look at her. How could they not even look at her? Their own grandchild.” A tear splashed onto Jane’s nose and she blinked and hiccuped. Ruth laughed but the tears kept falling. “They’re so fucking predictable. ‘Jezebel.’ ‘Great Whore of Babylon.’ Jesus. If they’d only look at her. She’s just a baby. It’s not her fault.”
“It’s gonna be okay, Ruth. My mom will help. She loves babies.” I wasn’t actually sure if that was true, never having seen my mom with a baby, but I knew she loved Ruth—and me. And she wasn’t inclined to spew nasty bits of scripture either, even when she was mad. The worst thing she ever said was “To everything there is a season” when I asked if I could get my ears pierced. Come to think of it, she’s said that a lot over the years. It’s basically her way of saying no, without actually saying it.
When we got to my place, Jonah parked, helped us load our stuff into the elevator and announced he was going to wait in the van.
“I’m going to shut my eyes, listen to some tunes. Your place is small, and I’ll just get in the way.”
Yeah, right, I thought. You can’t look my mom in the eye when you’ve been sleeping with her daughter for two weeks. Even though we didn’t have sex. We slept beside each other like brother and sister, too exhausted to do much more than kiss. Well, okay, we did a bit more than kiss, but still. My virtue remained intact, unfortunately. The best birth control in the world is a screaming baby in the next room.
Ruth and I rode up in the elevator in silence; Jane was still snuffling at Ruth’s breast. I opened the door to the apartment and called out, “We’re here!” and my mom ran out of the living room with a huge smile on her face.
“It’s so good to see you, sweetie,” she said. “And you too, Ruth. I’ve missed you guys.” Her gaze took in Jane. I held my breath, but she didn’t miss a beat. “And who have we here?” she said softly, pulling the flannel blanket away from Jane’s face.
I don’t think I’ve ever loved my mother more, or been prouder of her, than I was at that moment. Suddenly I understood what walking the walk meant.
“JJ,” said Ruth. “This is...my daughter JJ.”
“For Jane,” I added. “Just Jane.”
“She’s beautiful,” said my mom. “But a little smelly. Let’s get her cleaned up and put her down for a nap. Then it’s tuna-melt time, I think. You both look a little...wan. And isn’t Jonah with you?”
“In the van. Outside,” I mumbled.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Julia. Go get him.” She put her arm around Ruth and Jane and led them away. I could hear her running the tap in the bathroom and chattering to Ruth as I went downstairs. I was sure we’d get around to discussing what had happened, but as my mom says— To everything there is a season.
AFTER DINNER RUTH fell asleep on the couch with Jane in her basket on the floor beside her. Jonah did the dishes while I sat at the kitchen table with my mother and told her the whole story. She was silent as I talked. No questions. No comments. No scriptural outbursts. She did frown a bit, and when I was finished, she remained silent for a couple of minutes. Even though there were no outward signs, I was pretty sure she was praying. Finally she said, “I’m not sure what to say, Julia. Obviously it hasn’t worked out the way you thought it would, but then, what does?” A rueful smile turned up the corners of her mouth. “Nobody knows that better than me. But I’m proud of you. You looked after your friend, even if your reasons and your methods are slightly... um...unorthodox. Ruth seems physically fine, thanks to you, and the baby is lovely and clearly happy and healthy. But you know I have to call Pete and Peggy and tell them Ruth’s here. They must be worried sick.”
I snorted. They were sick, but not with worry.
“I know, I know,” she said. “But give them a chance to get used to the idea. Maybe they’ll come around. No matter what, they deserve to know where she is.”
“No, they don’t, Mom,” I said. “They don’t deserve anything. You should have heard them. Peggy called her the Whore of Babylon. Pete barred the door. It was totally disgusting.”
“I’ll tell them.” Jonah spoke from the doorway, where he stood drying his hands. “I have to take the van back anyway, and then I’m going to head over to Sean’s house.”
“Tell them we’ll talk tomorrow, then,” said my mom. Jonah nodded, thanked my mother for dinner, kissed the top of my head and took off.
“He’s a lovely boy,” Mom said.
“Yeah,” I muttered. “Maybe too lovely.” For the last two weeks, Jonah had been everything a girl could want: sensitive, caring, helpful, kind. Good to his sister; fabulous with his niece. His zit had cleared up, and I was feeling mean and grubby in the face of his calm perfection. I mean, as far as I could tell, he didn’t even fart under the covers or scratch his balls. And now he was sucking up to my mom.
“Go to bed, Julia,” my mom said. “You must be exhausted. Everything will look different in the morning, even Jonah.” She patted my cheek and pointed down the hall to my room. “Remember what Scarlett O’Hara said.”
/> “‘As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again’?” I replied in a fake southern accent.
Mom laughed, and Jane whimpered in her basket.
“No, silly,” Mom whispered. “Scarlett said, ‘Tomorrow is another day.’ Go get some sleep.”
It wasn’t until I had undressed and slipped between the cool sheets that I realized my mother had nowhere to sleep, but I was too tired and, let’s face it, too selfish, to get up and offer her my bed. The next thing I knew it was morning, and I could hear Jane crying. I pulled on some sweatpants and went out to the kitchen, where Mom was circling the kitchen table with a wailing Jane in her arms. I could hear the shower running.
“Ruth thought she had time for a shower before Jane woke up,” Mom said, patting Jane’s back and jigging up and down.
“I’ll take her if you like,” I said. “You look really tired.” I held my arms out for Jane, who quieted briefly and then started crying again when she realized I wasn’t Ruth. How do babies know these things? Smell? Boob size? I waltzed her around the kitchen while my mom made coffee and toast. Jane prefers the waltz to the samba or the two-step. Less bouncy, I guess. “Sorry about last night. You could have slept in my bed, you know.”
“I know. I made a little nest on the floor. Camping foamie, sleeping bag, couple of pillows. It was fine. I wanted you to sleep.”
“Thanks,” I said. Ruth came out of the shower, a towel wrapped around her head and an old bathrobe of my mother’s barely covering her butt. She sat down at the kitchen table, bared a breast and took Jane from me.
“Greedy little piggy,” she murmured, brushing her lips over Jane’s soft spot.
JONAH PHONED ME from his friend Sean’s just after breakfast.
“I talked to Mom and Dad again,” he said. He didn’t sound happy.
“Uh-huh. Let me guess. They take it all back and they’re going to welcome Ruth and Jane with open arms.”
“Not so much,” he said. “I think Pete’s exact words were, ‘Your sister is dead to me.’”
“He actually said that?” I shrieked, and Ruth glanced up from nursing Jane. The look she gave me was full of pain. And understanding. I scanned the table for possible missiles, but Ruth made no move toward the saltshaker or the jar of jam. All her most diva-like behavior seemed to have been buried at the cottage along with her placenta. It was weird—I almost wanted the old Ruth back, even if it meant stitches.
“Give me the phone,” she said calmly. I handed it over and stood back. She had thrown phones before and with far less provocation.
“Yo, Bro,” she said. “Talk to me.” She listened for a minute, nodded and handed the phone back to me. “He wants to talk to you again.”
I held the phone at arm’s length as I stared in amazement at Ruth. As if in answer to my unspoken questions, Ruth said, “I’ve got better things to do than flip out over those assholes. Talk to Jonah. Right now we’re going to have a bath, aren’t we, Jane?” As she left the kitchen, Jane cradled in her arms, she stopped in front of me. “Your Aunty Julia loves you, Jane,” she said, as she lifted Jane up for me to kiss. “She’ll figure something out.”
“Julia? Julia? Are you there?” Jonah’s faint voice startled me out of my trance.
I put the phone to my ear. “Yeah, Jonah, I’m here. But I don’t know what to do.”
“C’mon, Julia. You always have a plan, even if you don’t like to admit it. Plan A, Plan B, Plan Z. It’s the Julia Riley way. You could give workshops: Loving Your Inner List-Maker. And I know you’re glad Ruth kept her.”
Whoa! What had Jonah taken with his juice this morning?
“What do you mean, I’m glad Ruth kept her? Haven’t you been paying attention? The whole idea was to keep it all under wraps so Ruth could finish school, leave town, carry on with her life.”
“Carry on with your life, you mean,” Jonah said. “Things changed. Ruth changed. You’ve changed.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but he kept right on talking. “I think you got attached long before JJ was born, otherwise you would have figured out how to get back from the cottage without anyone knowing there was a baby. That’s one part of it you never talked about. If I hadn’t been there, how were you going to get home? I’ve been thinking about this a lot.”
I started to splutter but he cut me off again. “I think being at Boone’s birth made you wonder about keeping JJ. And when Ruth suddenly turned into Super-Mom, you hardly objected at all. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing—but you might as well come clean. You wanted Ruth to keep her, but you couldn’t admit it. You knew Pete and Peggy would freak, therefore you must have another plan. Some things never change. Julia Riley always has a plan.”
I was silent for a minute—long enough for him to think I’d hung up on him. When I finally spoke, all I said was, “You’re right—about a lot of things. But you’re wrong about a plan. I don’t have a plan. I don’t even have a list. But I do have an idea.”
Eleven
Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer’s wife.
—L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
There are an awful lot of dead parents in children’s books. Mothers get shot by hunters or they die in childbirth, fathers drown or are killed in faraway wars. Flaming car wrecks on winding mountain roads claim their share of blameless moms and dads. It’s a dangerous business, being a parent. In contemporary books there is a ton of emotional abandonment, if not actual death. I’m not sure which is worse, never having experienced either. I can’t remember what happened to Dorothy Gale’s parents, but Uncle Henry and Aunt Em were her family, and she loved them. When all was said and done—witches, Munchkins, yellow brick roads, flying monkeys, scarecrows, tin men, lions and wizards—all she wanted to do was go home to boring, flat Kansas. But Ruth couldn’t tap her heels together three times and be magically transported to a home where she and her daughter would be wrapped in hugs and covered with kisses. Her parents were dead. Maybe not physically, but in any way that mattered to Ruth and Jane. They definitely weren’t in Kansas anymore.
My mom was a star about having Ruth and Jane in our apartment, but after three nights of sleeping on the foamie in the dining room, I regretted telling Mom to take my bed. We all knew the arrangement was temporary, but even so, I really needed some space. I guess my mom did too, because she took me aside while Ruth was bathing Jane and said, “I talked to Pete and Peggy again. They won’t even consider having Ruth come home. And they call themselves Christians.” She practically spat the last bit. “I’ll never understand it.” She sighed and continued, “I talked to some people at the church, and there’s a home for girls in Ruth’s situation. It’s called Hope House and it’s—”
I started to protest and she said, “Hear me out, Julia. Just hear me out.”
I nodded and stayed silent, fuming. Hope House, my ass. No way were Ruth and Jane going into a home for unwed mothers. No way. I’d get a job and rent us an apartment first.
“It’s a nice place,” my mother was saying. “Not too far away. You’d be able to drive up on weekends to see her.”
“What!” I yelled. “Weekends? Mom, Ruth’s almost my sister. Jane’s, like, my niece. We can’t just send them away. Ruth needs me. Jane needs me. Can’t they stay here for a while longer? I don’t mind sleeping on the floor, and I’ll help out more, I really will.”
“It’s not that, Julia. You’re a big help, but you’ll be back in school soon,” my mother said wearily. “And this apartment’s way too small. Ruth and Jane need a room of their own at the very least. They’ll get that at Hope House—along with counseling and the chance for Ruth to finish high school by correspondence.”
“She won’t go,” I said. “She’ll run away. You know she will. And we’ll be the ones who put her and Jane on the street.” Even as I said it, my stomach started to churn. Where would she go? I shuddered at the thought of Ruth and Jane on a bus to Vancouver
—no money, nowhere to stay, hooking up with street people. “I’m working on something else, Mom. Please—just give me a few more days.”
“Something else, huh?” She gazed at me appraisingly and nodded. “Just a few days, then. I’ll tell the people at Hope House that she’s okay here for now.”
“Thanks, Mom,” I said. “And thanks for being so great about all this.” I waved my arm to take in the baby blankets and sleepers and boxes of diapers that were strewn around the living room.
“She’s a lovely baby,” my mom said, “and I’m enjoying having them here. But if you think you’re going to quit school and go to work to support them, just put that idea out of your mind right now. Nobody’s life is going to get ruined by this. Nobody’s. Least of all yours.”
What is it with mothers and mind reading? Time for Plan B. Or was it Plan C?
MARIA’S CAR WAS in the driveway and the front door was open when I went over to my dad’s house the weekend after we came back from the cabin. Even though it was blazing hot outside, the slate floor of the hallway was cool on my bare feet. Cool and kind of gritty, like no one had washed or even swept it for a long time. A stack of newspapers was piled up inside the front door alongside a lot of empty wine bottles. A lot. Obviously recycling wasn’t a top priority either. Maybe everyone was too drunk. But nursing mothers weren’t supposed to drink, were they? So that left my dad, who wasn’t usually much of a drinker.
I shrugged and walked to the kitchen, where take-out containers covered the counters and dirty dishes filled the sink. The kitchen table was heaped with unopened mail, half-filled baby bottles, wads of used tissue, five coffee mugs with mould growing in them and a contraption that looked kind of like a bicycle horn. On closer examination, it turned out to be a breast pump. A quick peek into the living room revealed more chaos—baskets of stinky laundry, a stroller lying on its side, more dirty dishes. There was a nasty smell in the house—sort of sour and sad, as if the windows hadn’t been opened in weeks.
The Lit Report Page 10