Our relationship hadn’t been idyllic or blissful, but in the moment after he had declared he wanted to marry me, all I could remember were the blissful parts. I looked into his wide blue eyes and remembered lying on that beige couch while he played his guitar and sang “Pale Blue Eyes.”
I knew it wasn’t responsible. We barely knew each other. He wanted four kids. He wanted to move back home to West Virginia. These were not things I wanted. But I wanted him.
“Okay,” I blurted back, “but I’m not having four kids. I don’t even know if I want kids.”
He leaned back. “What about two kids?”
I could handle that. It was all theoretical, after all. “Okay,” I said. “Two kids.”
ONLY TWO WEEKS after the proposal, the test came back with two blue stripes. I went to work in the morning but left crying an hour later. I curled up in my bed and wept the entire day. Caleb was out fishing with a friend, but he came as soon as he got my message. He crawled into bed with me, his eyes crushed and vulnerable.
“Let’s have an abortion,” I whispered, pulling my knees into my chest.
“Let’s get married,” he said, smoothing his hand over his head.
“I’m not ready,” I said. “For any of this.”
He looked at me for a long time and then said, “Kelly, I think that if you have an abortion, our relationship won’t survive that. We’ll have to break up. I don’t want that to happen, do you?”
I didn’t want to break up. I felt so connected to him.
“Okay,” I said. “We’ll keep the baby.”
“And we can get married? I don’t want my child to be raised without married parents.”
I nodded, but felt no joy. Only fear.
I DIDN’T WANT to be a mother, but I had more experience with children than most. I had been the go-to babysitter in my hometown, but that experience had taught me more about the lives of adults than it had about the lives of children.
I was only eleven when I babysat for Michael’s parents. Still a child myself, I had just recently decided to put my Barbies away—I was too old for such nonsense—but sometimes, when a friend came over, we would take them out, clandestinely, and play. My brother was in high school, and he would babysit me when my parents left the house, but I thought I was ready to be a babysitter myself. I begged my mom until she relented. She knew I would call her if I needed anything.
Michael’s hair glowed white, and when his arms wrapped around my neck, I inhaled the smell of baby in that softness. I had been taking care of him for six hours straight—the longest I had ever watched a child. While he napped, I tried to turn on the TV, but there was no reception. The house was small—oldish—and although it was tidy, it had that smell of a house that hadn’t been cleaned in a while. It was sparsely furnished, no magazines or books to entertain me. I picked up the phone to call a friend, but there was no dial tone either. They didn’t even have a working phone.
I flopped down on the green shag carpet by the stereo and looked through their cassette tape selection. I didn’t recognize any of the bands until I came across something magical: Jon Bon Jovi’s Blaze of Glory. I put the tape in and fast-forwarded. I lay on that carpet, sun filtering through the window in dusty lines, playing the title song, rewinding it, and playing it again. In the music video, Jon Bon Jovi stood on the edge of a cliff in the desert while the camera swooped over him, red rocks against blue sky. His hair was long and wavy, thrilling.
On a whim, I decided to go outside and reenact the video. I went into the yard, leaving the door open. It was a hundred degrees, and the heat hit me in a blast. There was no grass in the yard, only a scrubby tree. I held my arms out, lifting my face in supplication, Going down! In a blaze of glory! The world spun around me deliciously; I was transported by my fantasy.
But suddenly Michael was crying. Screaming. Shrieking. It was the loudest, most terror-stricken screaming I had ever heard, but when I burst through the door, Michael stopped. He looked at me smiling, raising his chubby arms. I swept him up, feeling loved, feeling like a mother.
I gave him a cup of apple juice, then took him outside to play. He poked around in the dirt, but mostly he followed me around. I tried to find things to play with and spotted a stick on the other side of the tree. I went to grab it, disappearing behind the tree. He shrieked again. I popped back out from behind the tree, and he quit crying immediately, smiling at me beatifically. I picked him up, and he nuzzled his head into my shoulder. It was the sweetest feeling ever.
I put him back down, then went back to grab the stick. He shrieked again when I disappeared, but this time I lingered, enjoying the feeling of being missed. When I came back, I cuddled him again. I enacted the ritual one more time, disappearing behind the tree, hearing him cry, then coming out to his cheers and smiles, picking him up, and cuddling him in my arms. I had so wanted his hugs but felt sick about my meanness.
MICHAEL’S PARENTS CAME home sunburned, smelling of beer, but happy to have had the day off. They paid me well. The poorer the family, the better they usually paid. I pocketed the money and kissed Michael goodbye. I walked home, dragging my feet in the dirt, the sun pounding on my head.
I knew I was going to be a terrible mother.
GRACE WAS THE child who scared me the most, with her round face and dark, knotted hair. She was plump, but her mother was skinny. When her mother picked me up, she swept gas-station coffee cups off the seat of her car, and the skin was so loose on her arm that I could see the two bones coming together at the wrist. Her trembling fingers looked like piano keys.
“Do you mind if I smoke?” she asked. I shook my head no. She was already smoking. I looked back at the house and my mom peeking her head out the screen door. She waved as we drove off.
Grace’s house was somewhat shack-like. There were milk jugs in the yard with stray kittens lapping at the rims like nipples. In the corner of the yard, a heap of rusted-out farm machinery sat next to a pile of gravel. A large spray-painted plywood For Sale sign was propped against the shed.
“What’s for sale? I asked.
The mother shrugged. “Everything,” she said.
The mother and father were going out on a date, the first in a long time. The mother’s fingers kept trembling. Her shoulders jutted out of a black leather vest.
The father looked at my breasts.
I WAS THIRTEEN. The summer before, my mom had taken me to a department store in Spokane, where I was fitted for a bra. It was confirmed; I was already a very embarrassed C cup. For the first time, we bought my school clothes in the teen section of the store, but I looked longingly at the children’s section. I picked out ten different variations of turtleneck. I learned to slump my shoulders forward to hide my breasts.
GRACE’S MOTHER YELLED, “James, come on out and meet the babysitter!” A large boy came out of the back room. He was almost my age. We stared at each other awkwardly. The mother shrugged. “He’ll probably just hang out in his room,” she said. “He doesn’t really need a babysitter, but he won’t watch his sister, because he’s a little shit.” She yelled the last part, rolling her eyes toward his disappearing frame as he skulked back into his bedroom.
Grace hid in the kitchen. The mother finally dragged her out, placing her firmly in front of me. Grace was tall, with a moon face and big eyes. She seemed overgrown somehow. I knelt down in front of her, trying to make eye contact. “Hi Grace,” I said. She twirled her hair, avoiding my gaze.
When she spoke, her voice was little. It was a toddler’s voice in a seven-year-old frame. “Hi,” she squeaked, looking down. I looked down too. Her foot traced a circle on the linoleum where the plastic was cracked and warped.
Later, we knelt on the floor in her bedroom, playing with her Barbies next to a pink plastic dollhouse. “You be the mommy, and I’ll be the daddy,” she commanded.
“Okay,” I said. “Don’t I look pretty?” I said, prancing Barbie across the floor.
She grabbed the Barbie out of my hand. “Not lik
e that,” she commanded. “Like this. Here, you lay on the bed.” She threw the Barbie onto the bed. “Now I’m daddy.”
Her voice took on the gruffness of a male. “I’m daddy, and I’m going to beat you up.” She pressed her Ken doll down on Barbie, rocking his plastic arms back and forth like punches.
I leaned back on my heels, quiet, a tightness in my chest. “Is that what your dad does?” I asked.
She looked up uncertainly.
“Grace!” I heard a sharp voice from the doorway. Her brother James was leaning in the door frame. “She’s just playing,” he said. “She always does that.”
I looked back down at Grace, who was humming now, brushing out Barbie’s hair. When I looked back to the doorway, James was staring at me, arms crossed. Eyes like dark pools in the shadowed hallway.
GRACE’S PARENTS COULDN’T drive me home. They’d had too much to drink. I was relieved they admitted it. They called me a BB taxi. In my hometown of 3,000 people, we had no real taxi service, but an enterprising couple sometimes gave folks rides for cash. The mother called them, but they didn’t want to get out of bed, so I called my dad.
He answered the phone, flustered and sleepy. Then the excruciating part began. I had to wait on the couch for him to arrive. Grace’s father went into their bedroom and fell down on the bed, calling out to his wife to come join him, but she sat next to me and made small talk. I tried not to look for bruises.
When my father arrived, I ran outside. His car was so warm, his presence comforting. He looked at me kindly. Noticing my relief, he said, “Maybe we should rethink some of your babysitting jobs.” My father was a gentle man. A quiet man. Maybe too quiet. There was always a distance within him that I could not quite negotiate. Still, I was never frightened of him.
WHEN CALEB AND I started dating, I thought that he had the same gentleness as my father, but there was no distance for me to traverse. I felt as though no one had ever let me get closer. We never had long silences. We never went long without laughing.
We were engaged, but we hadn’t even met each other’s parents. I had told my mother about the pregnancy on the phone. I confessed to her that I thought I should have an abortion. “Oh, honey,” she said. “You’re twenty-six. You’re not a kid. You can raise a child.”
I don’t know what she thought about the engagement. She knew me well enough to know that she couldn’t have changed my mind. Maybe she was relieved that we were getting married. She couldn’t have wanted me to be a single mother. That wasn’t the way I had been raised. She didn’t criticize or offer feedback. She supported me in my decision, and as with all of my other major life concerns, I didn’t speak to my father at all.
Caleb and I drove to Salmon for a long weekend, so that he could meet my parents. I had been nauseous, but was also having food cravings. My first craving was for Doritos, but then the craving had switched to pie. In the weeks earlier, we had driven to a produce stand in Horseshoe Bend, a city about an hour away that had legendary pies. I bought a raspberry pie to go and cradled it in my lap on our drive home while the mountains gave way to desert hills that gave way to the broad green Boise Valley.
In three weeks, I ate my way through three counties.
On our drive to Salmon, we were on a winding stretch of mountain road, no towns in sight. We stopped in Stanley, Idaho, which has a population of less than one hundred. Caleb darted into the gas station and came back carrying a bag.
“I bought you something,” he said.
Doritos.
“This doesn’t taste like pie,” I said as I crunched a chip into my mouth. He laughed, leaned across the car, and planted a kiss on me.
“You and your pie,” he said. He stared at me for a long time, smiling, before starting the car and taking off.
WHEN WE ARRIVED at my parents’ house, I acted as though everything was normal. I introduced Caleb, and my parents were warm and polite. I showed them my engagement ring, held out my hand, tiny diamond sparkling. I had picked it out myself at an antique store. It cost $350. I was proud of my thriftiness. My parents had raised me to be frugal.
My mother smiled. “Pretty,” she said.
But when I turned to my father, I saw something else. His face was completely frozen.
My father was a kind man. He worked for the US Forest Service as a forester during the 1980s, which was a tumultuous period for logging in the community. Even though our neighbors’ homes had signs in their windows that read “This Home Supported by Timber Dollars,” my father’s job involved shutting down the timber dollars. Environmental groups and changing federal policies were stopping the clear-cutting that had been going on for years. That kind of logging was not sustainable, and my father saw himself as a protector of the forest that he loved so dearly.
The timber boom had to end, but people left nasty messages on our answering machine. He received threats. At school I was called a forest circus brat, but he told me to ignore what they said. I thought he was the bravest person I knew. A quiet activist.
I had never seen him scared until that moment when I held out my hand, a used engagement ring on my finger. He was the calmest, most stoic person I knew, not prone to any displays of emotion, whether joy, sadness, or anger. I had only ever thought of him as brave, but in that moment, I only saw his fear.
STILL, MY PARENTS were kind people, and Caleb was charming, humble, and easy to talk to. He had a lot in common with my father. They had both been in Future Farmers of America. They both liked the outdoors. They had both grown up in the country. And like me, Caleb had been raised in a family that was deeply Christian. By the time we finished the weekend, the look of terror in my father’s eyes had been replaced with relief.
Before we got into the car to leave, we all hugged. It was awkward. Caleb came from an affectionate family of huggers, but mine didn’t quite know what to do. Finally, we all just patted each other on opposite shoulders and said goodbye. As Caleb and I pulled out of the driveway, I felt confident that everything was going to be okay.
ON OUR DRIVE home, just before reaching Boise, we came upon the scene of an accident. Flares marked the road around us. A police officer diverted our car.
Then I saw something. My hands fluttered to my stomach involuntarily. “Is that . . .” I asked Caleb.
He reached over and put his hand over my eyes, his other hand clutching the steering wheel. “Don’t look,” he said. His voice wasn’t quite a shout, more of a groan. “Please, honey, don’t look.”
It was too late. I had already looked. Bodies. An adult body, and a baby’s body.
Later, when we arrived home, I would discover that they had been the victims of a car crash in a road-rage incident. A Boise State football player and a man who had been drinking were trying to outrace each other. This family had been pulling into the intersection, and one of the vehicles slammed into their car, killing mother, father, and baby. Their last name was Perfect.
As we drove the remaining distance, the sun setting behind the Boise foothills, I held my hands on my belly. I thought of Caleb’s hand over my eyes. His first impulse had been to protect me. I told the baby inside me that his father would always protect him. I told the baby inside me that I would always protect him.
Caleb and I were silent. A new darkness surrounded us.
4
Runaway
CALEB HAD BUILT his cabin on his friend Cory’s property, as had another friend, Dan. The guys jokingly called the connected properties the Compound, and even though I didn’t really like Cory or Dan, we spent a lot of time there.
One night, at the bar where we’d met, Cory and Caleb grabbed Kelly M. and me from our table. Together, we all sped down the highway to the Compound, our bodies crammed on top of each other in Caleb’s truck, the heat causing the windows to fog against the cold February air. When we arrived, Cory’s wife, Carrie, was asleep with the baby upstairs. Cory took Kelly M.’s hand, dipping and swirling her into a dance. When Cory left to go to the outdoor bathroom, I leaned in an
d reminded Kelly M. that Cory was married.
The next morning everyone was in the house, including Dan, his girlfriend, and Carrie. Caleb and Dan made us all breakfast, and because Caleb remembered that my stomach was sensitive to milk, he told Dan not to give me any gravy. “Aw, it must be true love,” Dan teased him, but Caleb just laughed, then swooped down to give me a kiss before heading back to the kitchen to help Dan.
Carrie smiled at me, but she looked tired. “Caleb and Cory aren’t good for each other,” she said. “If Caleb wasn’t so sweet, I don’t think I’d be able to handle him living here.” I remembered Cory flirting with Kelly M. the night before, and felt sorry for Carrie that she didn’t realize that Cory was the bad influence.
WHEN CALEB AND I decided to get married, I told Caleb that we needed to move into town. We rushed to find a house that we could afford with a baby. It was not going to be the kind of home that I had imagined having with a husband and child. It was not going to have a porch swing, a breakfast nook, or a loft office. Because I had taken time off from college and changed my major a few times, I was still an undergraduate, with about a year to go before graduating. I had always worked, but the jobs didn’t pay much, and Caleb’s graduate teaching assistant salary didn’t pay much more. Still, we wanted something close to downtown, preferably old, with a yard, but still close to coffee shops and galleries. These goals were nearly impossible to reach on our budget.
First we examined a dirty abandoned apartment with someone else’s positive pregnancy test still resting on the back of the toilet. Next we toured a large, clean apartment, but it had baseboard heaters, broad white walls, sliding glass doors, and a sterile feeling that I couldn’t abide.
Goodbye, Sweet Girl Page 4