Before I Saw You

by Amy Sorrells

  But from everlasting to everlasting

  the LORD’s love is with those who fear him,

  and his righteousness with their children’s children—

  Their children’s children.

  But why would Sudie highlight this, after all her children passed?

  What righteousness has she been left with?

  Unchanging love.

  What’s that mean, Lord?

  Love—my love—is bigger than what you can see.

  Bigger how?

  Everlasting.

  Not if Bryan and his mother have anything to do with it, Lord.

  I’m bigger than the Blairs, too.

  I figure God is big enough to take me rolling my eyes at him, then.

  I set the Bible down and scroll through my phone, searching for anything I can find on paternity laws and maternity laws. I don’t understand most of it. And what I do understand is on lawyer websites, pop-ups asking for my name and address so they can con me into hiring them.

  One thing I do find, on a government website.

  It says custody can’t be challenged or decided until after a baby is born. The baby belongs to the mother until proven she can’t raise the child.

  If this is true, then I have a little time.

  Not much, but a little.

  Questions and worries roll through my head and my heart like the thunder that keeps rumbling across the sky and the sheets of rain slapping angry against the sides of the trailer, and I fall in and out of a fitful sleep, but sleep that is at least free from any more pains.

  29

  * * *

  The racket of feral cats wakes me in the gray early morning, and I struggle to hoist myself up to sitting, my belly like an anvil weighing me down. Outside my window, the whole world looks blue in the rain-drenched dawn.

  Although the rain has dwindled to a light sprinkle, at least for now, flood warnings flash across all the local TV channels, and the news is all about places being swallowed up by the high and ruthless currents. Radar maps show more rain is coming, too. The only saving grace about Shady Acres is it sits at the highest point in a section of the county cut by rivers and streams. Across the meadow, folks aren’t so lucky. Sandy Creek carries water from the high cliff waterfall and curves around the back of Shady Acres before heading downhill and turning into a torrent alongside the next trailer park down the road. I can’t recall a time the water’s ever been this high, and I’m shocked to see the steely reflection of water in the distance where grass and crops once surrounded those trailers. These rains are devastating.

  Small and thin, the cries start up again, baby kittens or raccoons under the trailer, most likely.

  I can’t take it anymore.

  When I open the door, the air smells faintly like dead fish and rotten earth turned over by the floodwaters filling the valley. I wish I’d put on flip-flops as I pad down the steps and onto the soaked ground. I bend down to look under the trailer where it sounds like the cries are coming from, but it’s still too dark to see anything very well. If it’s a raccoon, I don’t want to rile up the mother and have her charge and bite me. Mama raccoons are far from the friendly little fur balls over in the cage at Sudie’s.

  I go back inside and skip the flip-flops, pulling on my rain boots instead. I grab a flashlight from the kitchen, my creaky steps across the trailer floor halting the cries momentarily.

  Back outside, the water-laden ground squishes under my feet as I tiptoe around the edge of the trailer and try not to step on branches or anything that will make a sudden noise. Eventually the cries start up again pretty close to where I’m standing. I bend as best I can and shine the flashlight under the trailer again, jumping back as one of the gray feral tabby cats skitters out and hightails it into the meadow. It’s been chasing a black-and-white female around for some time, and when I shine the light again it reflects green off the retinas of her wide and crazy-looking eyes.

  The cat hunches over the catch at its feet, and at first I figure it’s a mouse or vole. When I look closer, I see the cat’s white muzzle is covered in bright-red blood. Shining the light on the kill I see it’s not a vole at all, but a newborn kitten.

  Lord, have mercy.

  She’s eatin’ her babies alive.

  “Stop it! Get outta there!”

  She hardly moves except to hiss before she drops her head and tears at the still-squirming baby kitten’s neck. I search for a stick or a rock or anything to get her to stop, finally grabbing a broom from inside. I thrash it back and forth under the trailer until mama cat runs out, hissing the whole way out to the weeds where the gray tabby ran.

  That doesn’t stop me from beating my stick, though. I just keep beating and beating and beating the ground, my whole body shaking.

  “Why? Why would she do that?” I scream, maybe at God, maybe at the whole of nature itself. “If you care so much about the sparrows—” I start beating the side of the giant ash, idle and unyielding to my blows—“why’d you let this happen? Those babies weren’t doing nothing but trying to live!”

  Tears stuffed up me pour out and I let them, mixing with the rain until I don’t have any tears left. I weep for the kittens and for Jayden. For the people in the next trailer park over who had nothing to start with and who have less than nothing now. For Mama and the heroin that came to town and’s been eating the heart out of all of us. For the threat of those papers Elizabeth had to have forced Bryan’s hand to. And for my baby, heavy and sagging under the film of my soaking-wet nightgown.

  From behind the screen door my cell phone rings, and I trudge up the red-stained steps to get it.

  Gabe’s name flashes across the top.

  “Hey.” I barely manage to speak between sobs, and I try unsuccessfully to cover the speaker so he can’t hear them.

  “What’s wrong? You okay?”

  “Yes,” I squeak. “I mean, no.”

  “Is it the pains? Did they come back? You’re supposed to call—”

  “No, no, it’s not the pains.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “I just . . . this cat . . . it was eating its babies . . .”

  “Eating its babies?”

  “Yeah . . . and . . . it was so awful . . . Gabe . . . I’m sorry . . .”

  “You got nothing to be sorry for. That sounds horrific.”

  “Sudie told me once they do that when they’re stressed,” I sob.

  “This weather’s enough to stress out the best of us. Roads around you are closed, at least two of the three, like I thought they might be. Completely submerged. They’ve got boats out rescuing people all over the valley, and the rain’s still coming down. That park near you? Some of the guys from the department were over there earlier pulling people out with motorboats. Said metal aprons were everywhere, washed clear off the bottom of their trailers. A couple of trailers closest to the creek are completely submerged. Three of them were lifted up entirely by the currents and laid to rest half a mile downstream. Whatever’s left is going to be covered in silt and mud. Most of the town is shut down, including the diner. Folks just can’t get anywhere right now. . . .” A voice from dispatch crackles in the background. “Jaycee, you sure you and the baby are okay?”

  “I’m fine . . . really. I’m just . . . having a moment, I guess.”

  “Well, you’re entitled. And probably past due.”

  “I guess you’re right.” That makes me chuckle, until my throat tightens up again. “It’s so good to hear your voice. I mean . . . I know you were just here last night, but . . .”

  “It’s good to hear you, too.”

  If he only knew the ache that won’t quit lingering in the middle of my chest when he’s not around.

  “Weather service says things should ease up, maybe even sunshine by the end of the day. But it’ll take more than that for the roads to dry out.”

  “I’m not supposed to get up anyway.” He’d have a fit if he saw me in my soaking-wet nightgown, palms of my hands still stingin
g from beating at the earth with the broom.

  “Right. Just stay put. I’ll get out there as soon as I can.”

  I’m worried about Sudie, over there alone. I’ll call her, but first I decide to take a hot bath. Surely lying in the tub is enough like bed rest to be all right.

  I get in and watch the water rise until my belly is like an island in the middle of the mounds of bubbles. For a little while I let myself imagine for the hundredth time what it would be like if this was me and Gabe’s baby. If he was my husband and I was his wife. If we could just run away like I used to want to run away, to the ocean, where no one could find us and we could have one of those lives where we sit in chunky white wood chairs on a porch that faces the sea.

  Sudie doesn’t answer when I call her cell phone. Not when I try the landline, either. Maybe she turned the ringer off. But she never does that, especially when the weather’s bad. Doesn’t want to miss a call about an animal rescue. Everything in me says to check on her, but I can’t risk the pains coming, especially not after this morning. Besides that, the rain has started up again and is relentless.

  I decide to call Shawnie and Tim.

  Shawnie answers. “Ye-lo?”

  If Gabe thinks my southern Indiana accent is bad, he ought to hear hers. “Shawnie, it’s Jaycee. Have you seen Sudie out today?”

  “Not in this mess.”

  “Right. Well, she has the hawk and the raccoons that need feeding out back. I just thought—”

  “Think maybe we oughta check on her?”

  “She hasn’t been feeling well lately. I’m worried. I’d check on her myself, but I’m on bed rest. Pretty strict.”

  “Oh, honey, I’m sorry to hear that. Do I need to check on you, too?”

  “No, no, I’m fine. If you could check on Sudie, though, that’d be kind.”

  “Okay. Tim’s here too. Couldn’t get into work even if he wanted to. Same with most folks, I think.”

  “My friend’s an EMT. Says they’re having to use boats to rescue folks all over the county.”

  “Won’t be a surprise if we see the forest animals starting to line up two by two then, now will it?”

  “No, it won’t,” I laugh.

  “All right, then, Jaycee, I’ll go check on our Sudie and call you as soon as I see that she’s okay.”

  30

  * * *

  Gabe was kind enough to boil eggs as part of the things he left me, and I grab a couple along with a big cup of water and head back to the couch to wait. The lunch hour news is on, and the station from Cincinnati shows devastation in the remote areas, a couple of those near Riverton. Video footage shows folks stranded on rooftops, and a county hospital is being evacuated because the water is flooding the entire first floor.

  I jump when the phone rings.

  “Jaycee?” Shawnie says on the other end. “She’s not answering the door.”

  Fear burns in the pit of my stomach.

  Something’s wrong.

  Bed rest or not, I’ve got to get over there.

  I throw on a pair of maternity jeans that are getting too small for me and an old T-shirt and my rain boots. Walter Crawford’s letter lying half-open on the side table catches my eye as I step outside, adding to my collection of gnawing fears. I type a text to Gabe: Something’s wrong with Sudie. I’m going over there. The whole way over to Sudie’s, I try to shush the voice in my head telling me I’m supposed to be on bed rest.

  The rain is coming straight down again. The clouds above are an angry gray. I can see the end of the hawk’s cage from the front of Sudie’s trailer, and he is sitting there on his trapeze, his eyes fixed on me as if he knows something is very wrong too.

  Shawnie is waiting for me on Sudie’s stoop, where the front porch light beside her flickers. Sudie always turns it off in the mornings. Doesn’t like to waste electricity.

  “I did see her out yesterday morning tending the critters,” Shawnie says. “But I can’t recall that I’ve seen her since.”

  The house is quiet—too quiet.

  “Sudie?” I call, and rattle the doorknob. “We can let ourselves in. I have a key.”

  Inside, everything in the front room looks yellow, the only light from outside pushing its way in through closed, worn-out blinds. Blinds she always opens when she wakes up in the mornings. The big brown bat hangs unmoving, except for when it blinks its eyes, in its glass aquarium. A couple of dirty plates are on the counter. She never leaves dishes on the counter. The stove clock clicks, and I’m afraid to say anything that will break the silence.

  “Sudie?” Shawnie says.

  There’s no movement from the bedroom, sepia and still.

  “Something’s not right. . . .” Panic burns fierce in the pit of my stomach as Shawnie and I look at each other, neither of us wanting to go on. I force my legs to move, each step heavy and weak, toward the bedroom.

  She’s napping.

  Lord, please let her be napping.

  Thoughts of Sudie over the last few weeks flood my head, the way she was sweating so much at the cemetery, the way her skin stayed pale despite long hours in the sun, the way she’d get out of breath after a few steps. She always had some kind of excuse.

  “Sudie?” My voice sounds weak, thin. “Sudie?”

  Standing at the threshold of her room I see her, lying on her side, her body in a zigzag shape under the blanket. I don’t have to step further to know she’s gone. The floor is hard against my knees as I crumple. “No . . . no . . . NO! You can’t go! You can’t!” I wrap my arms around my belly and hear myself scream, as if it’s not me but someone I’m watching.

  Shawnie steps around me and I watch in horror as she pulls back a corner of the sheet. She presses her fingers under Sudie’s chin, then turns to me and nods.

  I get up and run to her lifeless body then. I can’t help it. I have to see her. Her dusky, ashen face is flaccid, her arm is hanging half off the bed, her palm is outstretched and open as if even in death she wants to offer an embrace.

  “We need an ambulance in Shady Acres . . . or maybe just the coroner,” Shawnie says to a 911 operator. “Yes, I’m sure. I checked her pulse. She’s been cold awhile,” she continues. “Yes. Yes, I understand. There’s no hurry. Yes. Thank you.”

  The two of us make our way back to the front room, bonded by the sick fear that comes in the presence of death, and we wait. I text Gabe: She’s gone.

  Who?

  Sudie.

  What?! How?

  I don’t know. I think her heart gave out.

  I’m in the middle of a run. I’ll be there as soon as I can.

  “What makes you think it was her heart?” Shawnie asks, her eyes bloodshot from crying. Tim is here now, sitting with us too.

  I tell them about how Sudie’d been acting, but more than that, about how I think the burden of forty years carrying the loss of her babies and her husband had to have finally caught up with her. She had her joy in the Lord, to be sure. But that kind of loss would break anyone. The Lord himself wept when Lazarus died, even though he was able to bring his friend back to life. The rest of us don’t have the luxury of that.

  An ambulance finally arrives, along with a police car.

  Then the coroner.

  Then the funeral home.

  I can only assume they followed each other in on the one county road still open.

  The Walsh and Thompson funeral home is the only one in town, and one or the other of them, Ike Walsh or Jim Thompson, make it a point to personally come to retrieve the bodies of their clients. Jim was the one who’d come to the hospital to get Jayden’s body.

  Ike comes for Sudie. He steps into the house, nods at me and Shawnie, then heads to the bedroom, where he spends several minutes before reappearing.

  “She surely was a saint, Ms. Sudie,” he says. Light reflects off the bottom half of his heavily corrected bifocals, and he pulls a handkerchief out of his pocket and wipes sweat off his near-bald head, speckled with age spots. He looks directly at me.
“She has everything planned. Picked it out and paid for it a long time ago.”

  “I’ve seen the plot,” I say, unsure of whether he knows me or not. “Her husband and babies been waiting a long time for her there.”

  He nods, then motions a young man to come in with the stretcher.

  I cringe at the body bag, packaged like something you’d buy at a convenience store, set on top of the dark-red velvet drape.

  The rain has tapered off enough to go outside, just in time to see Gabe’s Jeep coming down the drive.

  “I came as soon as I could,” he says, breathless. Tears shine in his eyes, which makes them even more blue.

  “Gabe.” I feel his strong arms around me, the baby safe between us.

  He keeps hold of my hand the whole time the officials do their job. Ike and the young man steer the cart awkwardly out of the trailer. It doesn’t seem like it’s really her zipped up in there as they push it into the end of the hearse.

  “I can’t stand thinking about her body cold and alone in the back of there.”

  “Me either,” says Shawnie.

  Gabe shakes Tim’s, then Shawnie’s hand. “Thank you for helping Jaycee.”

  “You’re welcome. You should get her home, don’t you think? This ain’t exactly bed rest.”

  “I’m fine,” I say. “Really. The bat needs water and some mealworms, probably.”

  “I can take care of that,” Shawnie says. “I’ll call Mary Beth and see if she can take some of the critters. She doesn’t have a flying cage like Sudie does to handle the hawk, though.”

  “I can—”

  “Would you stop?” Shawnie chides. “I can take care of him, too. I’ve seen Sudie feed him those mice.” She shudders. “I hate those things, but I don’t mind feeding him if I have to. Temporarily.”

  “Actually, I don’t think you’ll have to for long. He’s pretty much ready for release. Sudie said so the other day. Been catching live mice over a week now.”

  “Wait, I have to feed him live mice?”

  I laugh. Feels good to laugh a little. “I think he’ll be fine if you prefer to use the dead ones a day or two. Anyway, he doesn’t favor that wing anymore at all when he flies.” I turn to Gabe. “We can let him go. I wouldn’t be up for long to do that. It’s just a car ride away.”