What I Carry

by Jennifer Longo

  For me.

  On the dresser was an odd-shaped package wrapped in butcher paper and tied with twine.

  A little version of the Terry Johnson sculpture. A perfect likeness.

  The lights blurred through my tears, and I set him on the bedside table where I would see him first thing every morning.

  I picked up the stack of clothes from the dresser top, opened a drawer, put them in, and closed it.

  * * *

  I carry with me, when I can find it, a pack of Fruit Stripe gum.

  Grocery stores in spring are the best-smelling places on the planet for a kid. For a kid that is me. Stores are smart, all the candy is on the low shelves, and I loved nothing more than touching and holding the slippery bags of jelly beans and smelling them through the plastic. Bulk-candy aisles were even better. I lifted lids on bins of gummy bears and sour worms. But best of all were the jelly beans right there, unwrapped, fresh and sweet and shiny. Little gem beans with scent so specific. I loved it so much.

  The hardest part about learning to sleep in a new house for me was how the house smelled. For the most part, they were all clean, and some of them were amazing, the air inside full of Febreze or fabric softener—just, every house smells like itself and in the dark and quiet, most times the scent is there to anchor you to where you are. Nothing kept me awake worse than lying in the dark, thinking, Is that eucalyptus? Menthol? Is there a gas leak and we’re all going to die? Where is the window in this room?…Will I be able to get the other kids out the window in time— Oh man we’re on the second story….Do I drop them down in the bushes or will the fire department bring one of those giant circle trampoline things?…Those look fun; I hope I get to jump down on it….But what if I aim wrong and land on the driveway?…Wait, does this house have a driveway or do they park on the street—no, that was two houses ago….And then I’d hear birds singing and the light in the room was gray and brightening fast—up all night just in time to get up and zombie off, bleary-eyed, to school.

  One Easter in fourth grade, I think, I had a really good basket. People donate things for kids in foster care, and every kid in that house got chocolate bunnies (solid, not hollow) and marshmallow Peeps and sidewalk chalk and bubbles and about a million things of jelly beans. I put my face into the plastic Easter grass and just inhaled. The other kids laughed, and I did, too. I mean I was huffing Easter candy. But it gave me the best idea.

  Jelly beans in my pillowcase. They smelled so sweet and good, so familiar, that I slept all night straight through. It was heaven. Until the ants came.

  I walked to the store every day after school, smelling my way up and down every candy aisle, searching for an alternative, but nothing smelled enough like jelly beans that wouldn’t also necessitate another visit from an exterminator. The poor mom. Those ants were relentless and everywhere; I needed something sugarless that was flat and could maybe stay packaged but still smell good.

  John Muir must have had such a terrible time sleeping in a bed inside a house after so many years outside in open-air Yosemite. For the worst of winter, he built a cabin for himself on the valley floor but over a flowing creek, so that it ran free right in the middle of the floor and out the back. What a cold, clean scent. What a sound to sleep to, rushing water splashing over a stone creek bed, right there beside him. Maybe it drowned out the pain of his unbrushed teeth and gums.

  Gum. Flat, wrapped, sugarless.

  I ran to a register where the kid bait waited to drive parents insane and picked up a pack of every kind of gum. I pressed them all to my nose and breathed deep until there it was: Fruit Stripe. Thick, compact packaging with lots of sticks of sort-of jelly-bean-scented, paper-wrapped perfection.

  Every new house after was broken in with a first-day tradition: long walk for the lay of the land, and along the way a duck into a store for my Fruit Stripe.

  New pack every couple of weeks kept me sleeping through each night.

  Consistency. As a sleep aid, highly underrated.

  EASTER SUNDAY AT SALISHWOOD was unexpectedly glorious, mostly because the sun was out again. Sean and I, still and forever happily Natan-free, guided groups of families on walks in the woods, where we spotted fledgling birds and baby squirrels and even fox kits. Spring babies. When the morning sun had burned the mist from the forest floor and rose high above the trees, we helped kids find the eggs we’d hidden earlier, consulting a map to keep track in case some got left behind. I watched them root around in bushes and up in trees and beneath rocks and wondered—worried—if Zola was still home. If she was happy.

  Before I’d left for Salishwood that morning, Francine gave me an Easter basket full of chocolate eggs and jelly beans. “You’re still a kid for another few months,” she said. “My last. Indulge me.”

  I loved it more than I let on.

  “Hey,” Sean called, walking fast toward me. “Look who I found!” And from behind him, Zola ran screaming toward me.

  I knelt down and let myself hug her for real.

  “I missed you,” she said into my shoulder.

  “Are you still home?” I asked.

  She shook her head. My heart sank. Back with the bad-penny lady.

  “But I have a new social worker. Guess who?” She smiled, huge.

  “No! Joellen?”

  She nodded and whispered in my ear. “Joellen says she’s trying to see if I can live with my grandma, so I can still see my mom sometimes.”

  “Would that be good? Do you want that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, listen, no one will work harder to make that happen than Joellen. She’ll do everything she can.”

  “I know.”

  “Things okay at the house?”

  She shrugged.

  “Is she remembering to take you to swim?”

  “Sometimes. Will you help me find eggs?”

  “I know where all the best ones are.” And we searched in the forest while I worked to remember her life was out of my control and to not lose myself in worry for her. I could not rescue Zola or any kid. I was barely going to be able to save myself.

  When the eggs were found and the afternoon warm, she waved from the bus window, and I smiled and, flying in the face of common sense, blew her kisses.

  In the late afternoon Sean walked me to Francine’s house. “That kid loves you,” he said.

  My head hurt.

  “She’s not home anymore,” I said. “I’m not supposed to tell you that.”

  “It’s in the vault.”

  “I feel guilty.”

  “About?”

  “Leaving her? That I’m here and she’s back with this woman who isn’t the best. Not the worst, either, just…”

  “Not great?” he said carefully.

  “Not great.” I’d never been so worried. Or more to the point, let myself admit I was worried. About Zola. About anyone.

  Sean took my hand, and we walked. He didn’t tell me not to worry. Didn’t tell me it wasn’t my problem. And I knew if I’d said one word about launching some scheme to go to the city and rescue her, he would have either gone along with it or found a way to do it right.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “For what?”

  “Everything. Nothing.”

  “You’re welcome?”

  At Francine’s house I used my key and called out to Francine, who did not answer. “Want some water?” I asked Sean, on the porch taking his muddy shoes off.

  In the kitchen I froze.

  On the floor, half of him under the breakfast table, Terry Johnson lay still, eyes open, in a pool of vomit.

  “Francine!” I lifted Terry’s head, held his face in my hands, and looked into his eyes. “Sean!”

  “No car, she’s not here— Oh no.” He knelt beside me. The vomit was sparkling, shiny bits of colored foil reflectin
g light. Wrappers. “Chocolate,” he said.

  I’d left my Easter basket on the table.

  I choked back sobs and pressed my fingers through Terry’s scraggly fur to feel for a pulse in his neck. Sean listened near his snout.

  “He’s breathing,” Sean said. “Barely.”

  “We have to make him throw up again, how do we make him?”

  “Here.” He tossed his phone to me. “Google it, I’m calling the vet.”

  “The number is on the fridge.” One hand on Terry, the other thumb-typing, I called Francine first.

  Where is she?

  Her familiar ringtone (“White Christmas”—all year long) came from her phone on the sink beside the refrigerator. I Googled dog poisoned and read about pouring hydrogen peroxide and water down Terry Johnson’s throat.

  “Are his gums gray?” Sean asked. “The vet says pull his upper lip back.”

  Gray. I nodded through sobs.

  “Okay,” he said, trying so hard to stay calm. “They say be really careful but pick him up, because we need to go. Now.”

  “Terry, wake up….” My chest heaved. No car, how would we get to the vet? “Sean, call your mom!”

  “Not home.”

  “Kira!”

  Sean scribbled a note to Francine and snatched a blanket from the couch, wrapped Terry Johnson like a baby, and three minutes later Kira barreled in a cloud of dust down the driveway in her mom’s car.

  I held Terry Johnson on my lap in the blanket, and Kira blew through every stop sign and one red light. I jumped from the still-moving car to race through the doors of the only emergency vet on the island. I passed Terry with trembling arms in his blanket burrito to the waiting vet technicians, who rushed him away through swinging doors. I stood, all of me shaking now and breathing hard, until Sean and Kira were beside me.

  “Sit,” Kira said, and Sean brought me a clipboard of paperwork to fill out: address, emergency contact, Terry Johnson’s age, his weight, last vaccines given.

  “Dogs are so dumb,” Kira said, her hand on my knee. “But they have iron stomachs. My grandma’s dog ate a diet made almost exclusively of his own poop, and that guy lived to be fourteen. Terry Johnson will be fine. He will.”

  Sean stood beside me, his hand stroking my hair. “Is that true?” he asked Kira.

  “Mine, too,” the receptionist said, leaning over his desk to pass a box of Kleenex to Sean. “Upside is I never have to clean the yard; downside, you do not want her licking your face.”

  “This is chocolate,” I sobbed. “It’s poison. I poisoned him.”

  “So is poop,” the receptionist said. “If he was breathing—he was breathing, right?”

  “Barely!”

  “Takes a lot of chocolate to kill a dog. Try to relax.”

  The door opened. Francine walked in, looked at me, and put her hand to her mouth. “Is he gone?”

  “He’s with the doctor,” the receptionist said.

  “Francine, I’m so sorry, it was an accident—”

  Sean brought her a chair, and she sat beside me, unable to speak.

  There was a giant bag of jelly beans on the receptionist’s desk. It would always be the smell for Terry Johnson now, the smell of his last day.

  I had gotten so used to the clean smell of Francine’s house. Of the soap she used on the sheets and towels; it made me sleep better than I had in years. I liked it so much.

  This is not about you, I brain-screamed. Stop crying and take care of Francine! But the harder I tried to stop crying, the more I thought of Terry Johnson curled beside me in bed, keeping me company, waiting for us to come home, making sure I was never lonely.

  How many kids had Terry Johnson known? Had they all loved him? Did he love them all? Did he love me?

  What had I done?

  Francine’s eyes were closed.

  I closed mine, too.

  Francine reached for my hand and held it. “Are you okay?” she whispered.

  I burst into fresh tears.

  And then the doctor came out.

  * * *

  —

  In the late-afternoon sun, standing on Francine’s porch, we said goodbye to Sean and Kira. Francine hugged them, hard. “You saved us.”

  We watched them drive away, and then sat on the porch and watched Terry Johnson make his careful way through the damp grass, gingerly lifting every paw before carefully stepping on it, licking water from the grass. Still woozy, but he would recover completely.

  “I left it on the table,” I said. “I wasn’t thinking. I’m sure Joellen can find me a place this week; you don’t have to worry. I’m…Francine, I am so sorry.”

  She stared at me, beside her on the porch steps. “If I didn’t know you better, I’d guess you were being dramatic, but you’ve been in too many placements for that.”

  “I can call Joellen tonight,” I assured her.

  “Muiriel. I love that dog. But he is a dog. You are a person. And I am the person who bought the chocolate and handed it to you as you were getting ready to go to work; it was an accident. You did nothing on purpose—we’ll both remember better next time, and let’s congratulate ourselves on surviving Christmas—there was a ton of chocolate lying around then, too, and nobody died. Come on. We’re not that bad.”

  “But—”

  “Look at him! He’s perfectly fine. Even if he hadn’t been, it would not have been your fault, and for God’s sake, I would never kick you out. Don’t you know that by now?”

  The words I understood, yes. But what she was saying; that no matter what I did, she wasn’t going to let me go? I could stay until I was done, even if I killed her dog?

  It had been such a long time since I’d wanted to stay anywhere. With someone.

  “Do you have kids? Your own?” I said, breaking my Do not ask the foster parents personal questions, especially if you like them rule.

  “I do not,” she said.

  “What did you do before you retired? Before you fostered?”

  “Well,” she said, “I was a pediatric nurse.”

  “No way.”

  “Oh yes. I loved it. I worked at Children’s in the city. And then I was about to turn twenty-five years old, and there was this cardiologist from San Francisco. We moved to Seattle, got an apartment together.”

  “But did you— You didn’t want kids?”

  “I wanted kids desperately. He said he did, too, though it never was the ‘right time’ for him. But I loved him. So I waited, and when I was thirty, we got married; we moved back here to the island, and I thought, Well, now’s the time, but still he wasn’t ready. I loved him some more, and I waited and waited some more, and I woke up one day and I was forty years old. And he woke up that same day and told me he had changed his mind. He didn’t want kids. Or me. And he moved back to San Francisco.”

  “Francine.”

  “I’m not proud; I can tell you that. Here’s the thing: don’t ever put the needs or wants of a grown adult over yours if it’s something as elemental as wanting children. It’s a real gave him the best years of my life mess. Could have become a Miss Havisham up in here, but I get too bored.”

  “Unbelievable.”

  “Led me to fostering, though, which I loved. Still love.”

  “Did you ever see him again? After he left?”

  She shook her head.

  “That’s— You would have been a really good mom. You are one.”

  “Well, thank you.”

  “Do you want to Facebook-stalk him? Tell me his name; I could help you.”

  She laughed.

  “I get that,” I said. “ ‘The best years of your life’ thing. Happened to me.”

  “Oh, sweetheart.” She smiled. “Don’t think like that. Your best haven’t even started yet.”

&nbs
p; “No,” I said, disbelieving that the words were coming out of my mouth but feeling, even as I said them to this woman who kept showing up and standing up for me, a weight leaving my heart. “Mine was over before it started. I waited for someone, too, and I didn’t know I was doing it. I liked them so much I stayed with them too long, until it was too late. They took the best—the only—chance I had.”

  “Chance for what?”

  I could not say the word. Not after a lifetime of insisting I did not want it, believing the story of how brave and smart I was to avoid the snare of its trap, swimming all my life against the current determined to drown me.

  But then Terry Johnson stretched and blinked in the sunshine. Francine moved my hair out of my eyes, tucked it behind my ear, and said, “You don’t have to talk about it.” And I was suddenly so tired.

  Swimming is exhausting.

  * * *

  I carry with me a toiletry kit. The star of the packing universe.

  Memory, as a substance, is definitely water. It either evaporates completely, or it gets soaked into the brain sponge until the sponge gets squeezed by some unexpected something, and then the water spills everywhere. A lot of times, the something is photographs. People insist they remember intricate details of a moment because they’ve seen a picture of the family dog they never met—I swear to God I remember we were at the lake because the dog was with us and I remember him, his name was Biscuit! He smelled like dirty pennies!—when in reality Biscuit died before the person was even born. Or there’s the thing where people hear stories from other people’s lives, and the stories get repeated over and over and the water is absorbed into another sponge and then you’ve got people fighting over whose memory it truly is.

  I don’t have any photographs from when I was little, except the ones Joellen sometimes took and put into my file. And I am not with the same people year after year to hear the same stories over and over, sloshing our memories around in one another’s sponges. All to say, I feel like I can safely rely on the accuracy of the memories I do have being truly mine, which for the most part move forward in long stretches of an uneventful life. A cold, slow-flowing river.