“I crashed the party,” he said, looking around to make sure no nuns were close enough to overhear.
I almost laughed. Then I remembered Jamie.
“Richard called in the middle of the night. He was so upset that Sharon and I came down here. They wouldn’t let us in until visiting hours tonight, but I knew you’d be half scared to death, so I put on my monkey suit.” His gesture took in his coat and stethoscope, the professional getup that would let him pass without question in a hospital. “I saw her, and she’s pretty little, but she’s probably going to be okay.”
“The nuns made me have her baptized.”
“That’s nuns. Don’t let it worry you. She’ll have to stay in the hospital awhile and she’s going to need a lot of care when she gets home. Take care of yourself now, and don’t worry.”
Two nuns headed our way. Sam bustled out, looking like someone who belonged, but he threw me a wink before he went through the double doors.
Maybe she’ll live. Sam thinks she’ll live. I couldn’t help crying, even though the ward wasn’t private. I didn’t sob or sniffle, but tears kept coming like there was no end of them inside. I tried to pull myself together. Sam said she’ll be okay. Sam said she’ll be okay. I stopped crying and started again a couple of times before I was through. As far as I could tell, no one noticed.
There was nothing to read, nothing to do but wait. When the doctor made his rounds, he said I could go home the next day, but that Jamie would have to stay “for a while.”
In the afternoon, they finally let me go to the nursery, but there wasn’t much to see and almost no light to see in anyway. Jamie’s incubator was like some distant country with tubes and wires and equipment everywhere. They wouldn’t let me hold her. Will I ever get to? I wish I could stuff her back inside me so I could grow her a little more.
I’m losing my mind.
In the evening, Sam came back in ordinary clothes, Sharon with him.
“She’s still doing fairly well,” he reported. “How’s the mama?”
“Tired. It’s scary.”
“Of course it is,” said Sharon. “What can we do for you? You’ll be going home tomorrow—how can we help?”
I sighed. It was too much to think about. “I don’t know, maybe see what Richard says. Did Mom and Dad come with you?”
“They were getting ready, but then Mom got a headache. Dad said maybe later.”
My head felt disbelief, but my insides cramped with shame. I wish I hadn’t asked. I picked at my blanket and worked on not crying again. That wasn’t what Sharon and Sam were here for.
“Get better, Sis,” said Sharon, watching me. “We’ll be back to pitch in however we can.”
The Motleys came in then, but one at a time, as the hospital required. “You missed out,” I told Eddie. “They already baptized her. You don’t get to be a godfather after all.”
“Ah, doesn’t that sound like nuns? They couldn’t wait, could they? Don’t worry, doll. I’m still her godfather, wait and see.”
He unpacked a basket of beautiful raspberries, blew me a kiss and left.
The others came in for a quick hug and an update on Jamie. “Sam says she’s going to be all right,” I told them all.
And then, Richard stood by the bed.
“I saw her,” he told me. “I mean, I guess I did. I couldn’t see anything but machines.”
“That’s all I saw, too. They said I could visit her more tomorrow before I go home.”
“I’ll come get you. Kathy?”
“Mmm?”
“I’m sorry about your parents.”
Tears started squeezing out of my eyes again. I took Richard’s hand. There weren’t any chairs, so he stood by the bed until the nurses made him go home. After that, I ate Eddie’s raspberries one at a time while I looked out the window. The last of the evening left the sky, and the neon signs of the city took the place of stars. When the berries were gone, I wiped out the basket and tucked it away.
The hospital was all lit up now. Surely the Motleys could see it all the way from Gretna. They’re looking at us with hopeful faces. Thu is lighting a candle, murmuring a short prayer for Jamie and me.
I wanted to cry again, but I made myself stop. Don’t look down, Thu said. Don’t look down.
The next day, Richard came in the Volkswagen to take me back to Gretna. I gathered the few things I had and put them in the carrier the hospital gave me. All except the little raspberry basket—I held that by the handle. I have to get the basket home without breaking it. Except I’m not exactly going home, with Jamie still back here. It’s not like going from one place to the other, more like being stretched between the two, thinner and thinner.
When I got to Gretna, I went straight to bed.
For the next few weeks, I spent most of my time at the hospital, and the rest asleep. Sometimes I did both—slept on a chair in the hospital waiting room until visiting hours started again. Whenever I got a chance, I cheated and sneaked in to look through the nursery window. Some of the nuns let me do it, others would make me go away when they caught me. But I always came back.
When Jamie got to five and a half pounds, the doctors let me take her home. As hard as the past couple of months had been, wanting Jamie to come home and agonizing over every setback, I wasn’t ready when the time came. She seemed more like the hospital’s baby than mine. I hadn’t even bought much for her—I’d been planning to do that in August and September, but I’d spent every day at the hospital instead.
I phoned my parents to tell them she was home.
“Oh, honey, that’s great,” my dad said. “But you know your mom hasn’t been well. She’s had a lot of headaches. I think we’d better wait, in case she’s got something catching.”
His voice sounded stiff, a little cold. I gave up. If it means so much to them that Jamie’s a golden-brown baby instead of a pink one, there’s nothing I can say. If they think my daughter is second-rate, they can stay home, for all I care.
I didn’t have any energy to worry about it. I had other problems—I couldn’t figure out how to do “mother” right. Because Jamie, premature or not, was a feisty little thing. At first, I didn’t know what to do with her. She wouldn’t sleep until she was exhausted with crying, and even then, she slept for only a couple of hours—then she’d start crying again. I’d check if she was hungry, if her diaper needed changing. Nothing. The library books I’d read while I was pregnant hadn’t covered this. I was sure I was a terrible mother. And Richard was no help at all.
Thu came over with a gift one afternoon about a week after I brought Jamie home. She was in jeans and a T-shirt as usual, immaculate as usual, her waist-length hair loose for once, a shimmering river of black silk. I was still in my bathrobe with my hair uncombed.
I looked at Thu and started crying as hard as the baby. The sink was full of dirty dishes, and the bed was unmade. All I’d had to eat was a couple of crackers from a ripped package that spilled across the table. I had spent most of the morning trying to feed Jamie, to comfort her. I didn’t know how to make her happy like other babies, or even how to get her to stop screaming.
“What’s this about?” Thu asked. She put her beautifully wrapped present down beside the crackers.
“Oh, Thu, I don’t know. She cries all day and almost all night. Maybe she ought to go back to the hospital. Maybe she’s sick. I don’t know what to do.”
“Hmmm. Let me take you now, Jamie?” She picked the baby up from her crib, but Jamie thrashed around and cried harder. “Do you have a blanket or something?”
I gave her a small cotton blanket, and she wrapped Jamie securely in it. The crying stopped. Jamie, wrapped like a papoose, looked out with a surprised expression.
“What did you do?” I asked. If Jamie was surprised, I was astonished.
“Didn’t they tell you some babies like to be wrapped up?”
“They didn’t tell me much at all. Just to keep her warm and feed her when she cries.”
�
��She doesn’t always want food when she cries.” Held close to Thu, Jamie cooed sleepily.
“Or change her diaper, I guess.”
“That’s not all, either.”
“What, then?” I felt just as frustrated as before.
“Xin chào.” Thu tossed her hair back and smiled at me.
“What?”
“Xin chào.”
“What does that mean?”
“Could it be a noise that doesn’t mean anything?”
“Well, I assume it’s Vietnamese. It didn’t sound like French.”
“You didn’t understand it, so you believe it’s a foreign language that you don’t know, right?”
“Well, yes.” So?
“Same thing when Jamie cries. She means different things, and she doesn’t speak your language. Like someone who comes here from a foreign country with no English. Everything is strange, no one understands, and she doesn’t know how to get what she needs.” Jamie was fast asleep.
“So, what am I supposed to do?” I reached out, and Thu laid her in my arms.
“Learn her language. For now. Later, she’ll learn yours. But until she can do that, study her expressions and the noises she makes and see what they mean. I’ll help you. My two were incredibly different, considering they’re twins. Dom was a cranky little boy, Joss was the opposite.”
“I’ll never figure it out.”
“You’ll probably understand Jamie better than I do in no time. For one thing, she already knows your voice, from before she was born.” She stroked Jamie’s head with a gentle finger.
“Thu?”
“Mmm?”
“What does it mean?”
“What does what mean?”
“What you said.”
“Xin chào? It means hello. See how easy it turns out to be? Xin chào, Jamie.”
I wouldn’t have been one bit surprised if Jamie answered her.
After that, things got better. I learned Jamie’s hungry sound and her “something wrong” cry. I learned how to make her smile—at least it looked like a smile to me. It was a new language, not all that difficult. I noticed how she paid attention when I really talked to her instead of making baby-talk noises.
When Richard understood what I was doing, he got interested too. He liked to hold her and talk to her, tell her about things. His face was beautiful when he looked at her.
But I didn’t trust him. He said, “You don’t have to keep it.” And I know what I heard the night I came home from Tex’s class. He still hasn’t told his parents about us. He still doesn’t want to marry me. I know how well he can act now, too.
I thought about having all my doubts out with him, clearing the air—but how would I know he wasn’t acting if he told me there was nothing to worry about? Since I wouldn’t believe him if he reassured me, why bring it up?
In fact, I didn’t want to do anything to upset Richard, because things were hard enough. Richard wasn’t mean, but he had a way of turning away from me right after we’d been especially tender that never stopped tearing me up. He goes up and down, round and round, like the flying horses of the Pontchartrain Beach carousel when I was little. Up and down, round and round, but there’s no gold ring for me this time. No gold ring at all.
I felt like there was a hole at the middle of everything. But I still had Sam and Sharon, and the Motleys.
And Jamie. I still had Jamie.
~ 22 ~
February 1975
New Orleans
Lacey
Moisant Airport was mobbed the weekend before Carnival. The gate area was packed with people who’d come to meet friends. We would never have found Eddie if he hadn’t been holding up a card with “Greer” on it. I’d also given him a sketchy description of us, so he was on the lookout for a tall, middle-aged black couple. So, we got together without much trouble.
Eddie was a skinny guy, no more than five-nine, with short curly hair and dark brown eyes. Even if I hadn’t already known his last name was Graziano, I’d have said he was Italian in a second. I took to Eddie right away.
But the crowds in the airport were about enough to make me scream. And the traffic on the highway going into town was crazy. I couldn’t understand how Willis could enjoy the crowds, but he watched everything like a kid at his first circus.
Eddie seemed relaxed too, easygoing. He wore casual clothes and seemed to belong in them. He probably hung onto a good suit and a couple of ties forever and didn’t realize how out-of-date he looked on the few occasions when he wore them.
“What do you do, Eddie?” I asked, more to get a conversation going than because I thought it would be important.
“I own a vegetable stand in the French Market.”
That figured. The car had obviously been cleaned for this trip, but it had a slight perfume of onions.
“We appreciate you fixing us up to stay with your friend,” I said. “Also, coming all the way here to get us. I didn’t realize it was such a long drive for you.”
“You’re welcome. Don’t see how you could have done it on the bus. The airport’s way out of town. And downtown isn’t handy to Gretna, either.”
“It seems pretty far.”
“I guess it’s not that much, though,” said Eddie, “compared to getting around in Los Angeles.”
“We live in San Pedro. It’s supposed to be part of L.A., but it’s more like a small town. We rarely go into L.A. Have you known Kathy for long?” I slipped that in like it was just more chitchat. Willis shot me a quick look, but then he went back to staring out the window.
“Kathy came to work for me year before last, about this time of year,” Eddie told me. “Then Richard needed a job, so I got the two of them together with Martin, over in Gretna.”
“Does he have a vegetable business too?”
“No, a puppet theater. Richard had a lot of talent with the puppets, and Kathy was doing all the sets, lighting, even the clerical work. Little of everything. Martin and his wife didn’t have anyone before Kathy and Richard, now they’re up to six people. That puppet theater is really something. Better than the movies.”
Eddie slid off the subject of Kathy as fast as I could coax him back to it. I was about to try one more time when Willis chimed in with some sports nonsense, and they talked about that for the rest of the drive. They kept on and on about a new football stadium that was about to open. As if anyone cared.
I wanted to yell at the both of them, but I smiled and nodded. And the more they talked, the more that smile of mine felt like something that Giannini’s crew had poured into forms and left to set for about a month.
~ 23 ~
May 1973
New Orleans
Kathy
“I had a little nut tree.
Nothing would it bear
But a silver apple
And a golden pear.”
As I sang, Jamie reached out her hands to me and made gurgly baby noises.
“The King of Spain’s daughter
Came to visit me,
And all was because of
My little nut tree.”
“Is that a children’s song?” asked Thu, balanced precariously on a stepladder with a screwdriver in her hand. She had made Jamie a brightly painted mobile and was hanging it from the ceiling. The ceiling wasn’t cooperating. Hunks of it kept flaking out instead of holding the screws.
“I guess so. I remember it from when I was little.”
“What does it mean?”
“Nothing I know of. Some of the nursery rhymes have strange meanings, political stuff—‘Ring-Around-the-Rosy’ is about the Black Death—but the one I was singing doesn’t mean anything, far as I know.”
“It sounds like that’s just as well.”
I laughed.
“Pass me one of those anchors from the toolbox, would you?” Thu fiddled with it, muttering under her breath until the screw eye held. She hung the mobile carefully and picked her way down the ladder. She checked her palms and crossed to th
e sink to wash her hands.
“Martin’s having a party for my birthday, Saturday,” she said, drying her hands on the kitchen towel. “Can you and Richard and Jamie come?”
“Happy birthday! I had no idea it was coming up!”
Thu looked surprised. “You didn’t?”
“No, how could I?”
She laughed. “I forgot you don’t speak Vietnamese. Thu means autumn, so I guess I assume people will know I was born in the fall.”
“Autumn! How beautiful!”
“But can you come?”
I hesitated. Jamie hadn’t gone out with other people yet. But Sharon and Sam and the Motleys came over all the time, so what was the difference?
“I guess so. For a while, anyway.”
Thu turned to Jamie. “Would you like to come to my party?”
Jamie chuckled. She liked Thu.
“Jamie, may I hold you now?” Thu held out her arms, and Jamie reached for her.
“She’s such a pretty girl!” said Thu.
I knew parents always thought their child was the most beautiful, but in Jamie’s case, it happened to be the truth. Her golden skin was a much prettier color than either Richard’s or mine. Her eyes, large and baby-round, were dark brown. Mom had told me once that all newborns have blue eyes, but she must not have ever noticed any babies but white ones. And I’d accepted her remark without looking around to see whether it was true.
From her perch on Thu’s shoulder, my beautiful golden baby started to whine.
“Sing some more,” suggested Thu. I did.
“Speed, bonnie boat,
like a bird on the wing,
Onward, the sailors cry.
Carry the lad
that’s born to be king
Over the sea to Skye.”
“What a lovely song! Is that a children’s song, also?” Thu laid Jamie gently in her crib and set her tools back into their slots in her toolbox.
“Hardly. The rest of it is grisly. It’s about a war between England and Scotland. Here, let me get the dustpan for that.” I kept my voice down, hoping Jamie would sleep for a while.
“Oh, really! I must admit, I never paid much attention to European history in school. When did this happen?” Thu asked.
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