“When did you decide to adopt?” Sister Maria Rebecca had served them tea and crackers. She was seated behind her desk. They sat before her on the matching rattan chairs.
“A month ago. At least a month. We called Denise, the woman you talked to, about two weeks ago. We’re not chasing some whimsical idea. Anyone in Oklahoma City will tell you who we are. Father Matthew sent you a letter. If you want to read it.” Jennifer got the letter from her purse. “We want to be of use to a child. That’s it. That’s the only thing we know. If you can help us.”
“I’m an attorney,” Allen put in. “I was taking depositions at the Social Security Administration. That’s why our daughter was there. It was only for that week, as Jennifer had to be gone. Jennifer doesn’t need to work. She could stay home with the child. We would never leave another child at a day-care center, or anywhere. We aren’t unlucky people. We think this is a good decision, a wise, planned idea.” He sat up straighter, took a breath. It was very hot in the room. Sister Maria Rebecca had not moved a muscle. She didn’t look as if she believed anything they were saying. He took a deep breath, he went on. “I have five brothers. I know all about children. We would have had more children than Adelaide but they never came. We aren’t trying to replace our child.”
“Denise said there was a little girl named Gabriela,” Jennifer added. “She said she was healthy. I don’t care about anything else but I guess I hope she will be healthy. We have cold winters but our house is warm. We’re healthy people.”
“I must make sure you totally understand this situation. Gabriela has had a bad time. Frankly, we don’t know much about her life before she came to us and she won’t talk about it. She is, how shall I say it, sometimes fierce. She bit the last two people who tried to keep her. She tears things up.”
“She can tear things up where we live,” Jennifer said. “We don’t give a damn. Excuse me, Sister. We have a swimming pool. Allen makes a hundred thousand dollars a year. We don’t drink. We have a good life. Does she speak English?”
“As well as Spanish. She likes to talk. I told her some people from Oklahoma were coming to meet her. That she might want to go stay with you if she liked you. She said she wanted to see your car.” The sister smiled. Allen began to laugh.
“We have a red one that we rented. And we have two at home.”
“I’ll get her,” Sister Maria Rebecca said. “Wait here.”
In a few minutes she returned, bringing Gabriela by the hand. Gabriela was wearing her blue uniform and the long brown cape trailing behind her on the dusty floors. She stood in the doorway and waited, her hair a messy crown above the turned-up collar of the dress.
Jennifer moved across the room and knelt beside her. “We need a little girl to come and live with us,” she said. “Will you try us out? Will you try to get to know us?”
“Well, I can sing for you,” Gabriela said. “I know a bunch of songs.”
“I play the piano and the guitar.” Allen moved across the room toward them. “I love music. I love to sing.”
“Okay. Here’s the song.” Gabriela spread the cape back with her elbows. She raised her head and began to sing:
Turkey in the oven. Tinsel on the tree.
Something in the chimney. Sounds like a squirrel to me.
Oh, there is a time of year that I love the best.
Christmas is the name of it. Time of Jesus’ birth.
“I can sing it better than that if I want to. We learned that at Wallace’s house. They had bad food there. Do you have good food where you live?” She pulled her arms back under the cape and turned her eyes on Allen.
“We sure do. If you don’t like what we have we’ll go to the store and buy something else. We heard you were interested in cars. We have a new blue car and an old black car.”
Gabriela took a long deep breath that was almost a sigh. Then she walked across the room and stood by Sister Maria Rebecca’s desk. “Could we take Annie with us?” she asked. “Annie wants to go to a house.”
“Who is Annie?” Jennifer asked, but Sister Maria Rebecca was shaking her head.
“She’s this girl who sleeps by me. She’s my friend. You want to see her?”
“Sure we do,” Allen said. He hadn’t asserted himself in so long he was surprised by the sound of his own voice.
“Okay,” Gabriela said and turned and left the room. Sister Maria Rebecca stood up. She had decided to let chance have its way. Before she became a nun she had been a large, homely girl from Lincoln, Nebraska. Sometimes she knew how to step back and let things go.
“They form attachments,” she said. “Annie is a lazy girl. She doesn’t work at school. She’s a big lazy girl and she fights. But not mean. I don’t think she’s mean.” She sat back down. Allen and Jennifer looked at each other and began to laugh. They didn’t want to laugh. They were trying not to laugh. Allen gave in to it but Jennifer resisted. She felt like she was on a roller coaster ride. She had set out to do a Christian act and now she was sitting in a rattan chair getting ready to be introduced to a big lazy girl who fights.
“We believe Annie’s father was Australian,” Sister Maria Rebecca went on. “A merchant marine. The agency has tried to find him but to no avail. Her mother died in an automobile accident in San Diego and the relatives couldn’t take her. She’s been in several foster homes. Would you want two girls? It might be easier in many ways if you could afford it.”
“We knew when we came down here we were going to a world we couldn’t imagine,” Allen said. “It is amazing, Sister. The work you do. How do you carry all their stories in your head?”
“I don’t think of it. I’m only the instrument. I get up in the morning and try to do my work. We are always short of money, of course. Every month is a struggle. Then, sometimes, a miracle happens. It would help if you took two girls. That would leave room for two more. This is a paradise compared to many of the places they are living.”
“I hadn’t thought of two.” Jennifer looked worried. “But we have room for two. Gabriela is a precious child, Sister. She’s more than I could have imagined. She’s so pretty.”
“She’s a riot,” Allen added. “We could get her in a children’s theater. Oklahoma City is big on theater. There are all sorts of classes and groups. I can’t believe she just started singing. And what’s with the long brown cape?”
“She’s always dressing up in something,” Sister Maria Rebecca said. “She ties things around her waist.”
Gabriela returned with Annie. They had washed her face and combed part of her hair. She was a big girl with wide shoulders, just at the most awkward age for girls. Gabriela brought her into the room and stood beside her holding her hand. “Here she is. What do you think?”
“I think we should all go for a drive in the car,” Allen said. “If that’s all right with Sister. We could go into Potrero and get some dinner. Would you trust these young women with us, Sister? I’m hungry after all this traveling.”
“Have them back by nine.” Sister Maria Rebecca began to hope. This had the makings of a minor miracle. She was hungry too. For the stew she knew the kitchen was making and for something good to come of something. Why shouldn’t these four forlorn human beings come together, she asked God. I will pray on this and you will be merciful, I am sure.
Annie and Gabriela climbed into the backseat of the rented car. They rolled the windows up and down. They pulled up the floor mats and looked underneath them. They moved the ashtray up and down.
“Where would you like to go?” Allen asked as he drove back out onto the street. “What would you like to do?”
“Annie likes food,” Gabriela said. “If we go get some food Annie will eat it.”
“Shut up,” Annie said. “Why’d you say that?”
“What kind of food do you like?” Jennifer asked. “There’s a whole strip of restaurants in Potrero. We’ll drive by them and let you pick one out.”
“Not Tex-Mex,” Annie said. “I’d like something different for
a change.”
“We might find someplace that has music,” Allen suggested. “Do you like music too, Annie?”
“Do I like it? Fucking-A I like it. Me and Gabriela sing all the time. That’s how we stand this place. This one place I lived, this guy had so many CDs you couldn’t find a place to sit. He worked in a record store before he lost his job. That’s where I learned all the songs. I taught a bunch of them to Gabriela, didn’t I?”
“Let’s just go get some hamburgers before we starve to death,” Gabriela said. “We can save the music for later. I’d rather just get a hamburger and some French fries and not mess around.”
“You want to put on your seat belts.” Jennifer turned around and faced them. “I really think you ought to put them on. Do you know how?”
“Oh, sure, we’ll take care of that.” Annie reached over and strapped Gabriela in. She smelled of mildew, as if her hair had not been washed in weeks. Jennifer was having to work to even like the child but she wanted to shampoo her hair and she had forgotten the headache she had had for months. There seemed to be so much going on that she felt like she might have to run to catch up with it.
“Go to McDonald’s, Allen,” she said. “Let’s eat and then we’ll find a mall. I might get my hair done at a beauty parlor if they have one. Anyone else want to do that?”
An hour later they were eating hamburgers. Then they were in a mall beauty parlor taking turns getting their hair shampooed. Annie panicked while the shampoo was on and had to be held down to get it rinsed. Only the promise of cookies kept her still while she was combed out and dried.
Then they were in a shoe store buying shoes. Gabriela bought some red patent leather shoes with straps and Annie bought the most expensive running shoes in the store. No one argued with either of them. The girls picked out shoes and Allen paid for them and they wore them out of the store.
On the way back to the orphanage the girls fell asleep in the car. Annie was on the bottom, with Gabriela curled on top of her. “What will we do?” Jennifer whispered. “Do we just take them home and say we’ll see you in the morning?”
“What do you want to do?”
“I want Gabriela to come home with us.”
“And Annie?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m up to it. She’s almost a teenager.”
“We don’t have to decide tonight.”
“Where is Denise when we need her? We should have brought her with us.”
“I want Annie.” He said it very quietly. “She tugs at my heart. And Gabriela needs her. They’re a pair. How could we split them up?”
“Be quiet. They might hear you.” Jennifer undid her seat belt and turned around on the seat to look at the girls. They were so sound asleep they seemed to be dead. Annie’s right hand was on one of her new shoes. Her left hand was around Gabriela’s shoulder.
They were late getting home to the orphanage. Sister Maria Rebecca was waiting for them at the door. “How did it go?” she asked, taking the sleepy girls into the foyer. “Did you get along all right?”
“We’ll come back tomorrow,” Allen said. “As soon as we have breakfast.”
“Are you going to take us to your house?” Gabriela asked. “You think we’re the girls you want or not?”
“Oh, darling girl.” Jennifer went to her and hugged her. Then she hugged Annie. “Tomorrow we’ll talk about it and see if you want to come.”
“So what’s the deal?” Annie asked but the sister handed them to a younger nun who took them off down the hall.
“Think it over,” Sister Maria Rebecca said. “Come back tomorrow while they’re in their classes. We will talk about it then.”
“Could we have them both?”
“Annie’s far behind in school. Very far behind. Think it over and we’ll talk tomorrow. God speed.”
“They won’t take us anywhere,” Annie was saying. “I’ve seen that look before. Once some people kept me a couple of weeks. They looked like that the whole time.”
“What’d you do?”
“I just ate everything I could get my hands on and watched their television set. He beat her up the day before they took me back. I was glad to leave. He’d be beating on me next.”
“I think they want us to go with them. They’ve got a horse and a trampoline and a piano. I was being as nice to them as I could be.”
“I was too. I couldn’t help it when they got that shampoo on my face. That was about to kill me.”
“You want to sleep over here with me?”
“Sure. Why not. I like this cover you got out of the box. This is warm as a sweater.”
“Pull it up around your neck. Doesn’t it smell good? I think it smells like some kind of flower.”
“Fucking-A. Well, go to sleep. At least we got some shoes.”
Jennifer and Allen got into the rented car and drove very slowly back to town. “I think we ought to take them both,” Allen said. “We didn’t come all the way down here to end up feeling guilty and harming some eleven-year-old girl. The little one doesn’t want to go without her.”
“She’s a dream, isn’t she? All that life and spirit after God knows what kind of life. Picking out those red dancing shoes. I couldn’t believe that was what she wanted.”
“Annie walked around the store reading the price tags. She got the most expensive shoes in the store. Did you see her looking at the insoles? She was inspecting them like they were diamond bracelets. She isn’t dumb, Jennifer. She’s as bright as she can be. Think where she might end up.”
“I don’t know, Allen. She’s so coarse, so crude.”
“She’s alive, Jennifer.” Allen speeded up. “She’s a living, breathing child. I could teach her to ride. You could teach her to read. We’ll catch her up. Or she won’t catch up and I’ll teach her to rodeo. You know why I am insisting on this, besides not hurting them? Because the whole time we were in that mall I didn’t think about Adelaide. I think that’s the first time since the bombing that I’ve been free of pain. All I could see was their pain. How hard they were trying to please you. She was scared to death in that beauty parlor. She might never have seen one, much less been in one.”
“That bothered me when she picked out those expensive shoes. I saw her reading all the tags.”
“Think of how she’s been cheated all her life. She was trying to make sure she got something back for the night. Hell, I liked that about her more than anything either of them did. They’re survivors, both of them. We could do it, Jennifer. We can take them out of here and make a life for them. I feel it in every bone in my body.”
“This was my idea,” she said, sliding back into the seat. She had not seen Allen acting powerful in a long time. It took her by surprise. “And now you’ve taken it over. Okay. Let’s go over there in the morning and throw ourselves into this. Let’s get ready for the worst. They’ll bite us or tear something up.”
“They won’t bite us.” Allen pulled her over close to him and held her there. “They will eat us out of house and home or teach us to live on junk food. Actually I like junk food, Jennifer. Did I ever tell you that? Have you forgotten that?”
“Have them take everything out of Adelaide’s room,” Jennifer told her mother on the phone that night. “Everything. Take every single thing and give it away. Have someone come in and paint. Yellow and white. Yellow. Bright yellow. Then order some twin beds. Can you do that in five days? Call Dan Mahew. He’ll get it painted. One is seven and the other one is almost twelve. Don’t worry about it. We’ll tell you when we get home. And some bicycles if you have time. And food. Get a lot of food. I don’t care. Good food. Things that taste good. Don’t ask me a lot of questions, Mother. Just do the best you can and call me back tomorrow night. I have to go. We’re taking them to San Diego to buy some clothes to wear home on the plane.
“. . . I don’t care. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about it. If they can’t finish painting don’t let them start. Just clean it up. We’ll b
e there in a few days. As soon as we get the paperwork in order. This is what we’re doing, Momma. And Allen said if you can, call Mr. Harrod to tune the piano. Leave him a key.
“. . . A key. A key to the door. . . . Of course he can be trusted with it. He lives a block down the street. Don’t talk about money. Money doesn’t matter. It has nothing to do with this. And get ready to like them, Momma. Get down on your knees and pray for understanding. Because you might need it. I’m not telling you another thing. You’ll have to wait and see.”
We all have to wait and see, she decided, when she hung up the phone. That’s all anyone is ever doing anyway, only most of the time we don’t know it.
A Wedding by the Sea
The wedding had been planned for June. Then for August. Now it was the tenth of September and at last Nieman Gluuk and Stella Light had set a date they wouldn’t break.
“We are mailing the invitations today,” Stella told Nora Jane. They were having tea on the patio of the Harwoods’ house on the beach. It was Friday morning. Stella was missing a faculty meeting about grants for the graduate students, but the dean had let her go. No one was expecting much of Stella or Nieman this year. The world will always welcome lovers. This is especially true on the Berkeley campus, where many people have thought themselves almost out of the emotional field. “We have set a deadline. Every invitation in the mail before we sleep. Are you sure you want to have it here? This close to the baby coming?”
The women were sitting on wicker chairs with a small table between them. The table held cheese and crackers and wild red strawberries and small almond wafers Stella had brought for a gift. “I told the department head I had to have a week and he said, Take two weeks.” Stella shook her head. “I think we’ll just go to the Baja and lie in the sun and read. I have never imagined myself being married. It seems like such an odd, old rite of passage. Are you sure you want to have it here?”
The Courts of Love Page 17