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“Am I doing the right thing?” I ask, the pleading in my voice echoing across the table.
“Only you can answer that.” Lola hands me a cup filled with tea, steaming and aromatic. I raise it to my lips and draw in the fragrant scents of flowers and berries. It smells wonderful, not at all like the earthy dirt smell of the tea Janice makes. “What makes you think you aren’t?”
I tell her about Cici, and how she asked me to raise our babies together, so she could keep hers, and how I had told her no. I tell her about seeing the baby after he was born, and how his new family came to meet him, and how I just couldn’t stop thinking about how wrong it was that he will never know how strong and amazing his birth mother was. “He’ll never know how much she loved him,” I whine.
“You think he won’t. You think he won’t know that every time somebody is there to pick him up from school, or every time he gets to go on the school trip, it’s because his birth mother loved him enough to give him those things?”
“But she’s not going to be there.” I want her to tell me that I’m right, that it’s more important for him to know her than anything else. I want her to tell me that Little Miss needs me. Needs to be with me, regardless of school trips.
“Could Cici give him those things?” she asks. “Could she be there and not have to be at work all the time just to feed him? Could she give him the daddy he needs?”
“Maybe she’ll meet someone,” I say and see her raise an eyebrow. “He doesn’t have to have a daddy. I didn’t have a daddy.” I am trying to make the argument and realize as I say the words that I have just made her point. That’s what my mother tried to do. She kept me thinking she’d find the right man at some point, but she never did.
“How did that work out?” I shake my head, not wanting to agree, looking away from her, wishing I hadn’t come. “Seems to me that there is the problem,” she says.
“What do you mean?” I’m closing down, resenting her tone, getting ready to pack up and go without ever tasting my wonderful-smelling tea.
“Well, seems to me that there’s a lot wrong in the world. Lots of hate and people feeling hurt by the things that other people did, and kids growing up without proper families. You tell me why you feel like you should keep this child.” She sees it, she knows what I need her to say, she knows what I want, and she isn't going to give it to me.
“Because she’s mine,” I say too loudly, with too much force.
“Is that about you . . . or her?” She puts her hand over mine and leans forward, looking at me with a serious expression in her eyes, almost like remorse. “Let me tell you a story,” she says and leans back, taking a sip of her tea. “I had a sister who was married for a good long time to a good man. He loved her and she loved him. He had a good job, and she didn’t have to work excepting she wanted to. They wanted to have a baby, but they were never blessed.” The lines around her eyes get a little deeper as she talks. “She could get pregnant just fine, but could never get through those first ninety days. We had this young cousin who got in the family way, and she came to my sister and asked if they wanted the baby. Well, of course they did, and they went to the lawyer, and he drew up papers and she moved in to live with them until the baby comes. Now I tell you, she was a difficult child, my cousin, and after the baby was born, we were sure glad to see her pack her bags and go. That baby, though, Amber Louise, she was about the most beautiful little girl you ever did see.” She smiles a small wistful smile, and Little Miss shifts, feeling the turn in the story just as I do. “They had her for six years, and she was the happiest, most special girl. She had everything a girl could want, and they just adored on her. Then one day my cousin done come back for her baby and took my sister to the courts to take her back. She’d met a man and was married, and they decided they wanted her back. The blame courts gave that beautiful child back to my spoiled, selfish cousin. She up and took her to California with her, because her man was something in the movie industry.” She sniffs and spreads her lips thin. “Near to broke my sister’s heart. Dare say it did break poor Shane’s heart.” She shakes her head long and slow, and I understand that Shane must be the adoptive father, Lola’s brother-in-law, and clearly he is as special to her as her own sister. “Then, when Amber Louise was thirteen, three years ago, she drowned out there in the ocean.”
Why would she tell me that story? That doesn’t have anything to do with me. That doesn’t have anything to do with anything. I flare with anger. I’m not like that. I’m not like her cousin. I shouldn’t have come. I realize now why she was so quick to encourage me to give my baby up, because of her sister not having a baby, so why should I? “Why did you tell me that?” I ask, spitting with my anger.
“Because my cousin could only think about herself. She never thought about what was best for Amber Louise.” Lola looks at me, surprised by my reaction. She thought I would understand what she was trying to say. She thought it would make sense, I can tell, but I suddenly feel feverish and chilled, and my mind can’t grasp her story, except that she thinks I am spoiled and selfish, like her cousin.
“How do you know that?” Heat rises into my face, and a shudder runs down my spine.
“I didn’t tell you that to make you angry,” Lola says, her even tone doing little to quell me.
“Well, I am angry. What a horrible story. That doesn’t have anything to do with me.” I am nothing like that. I would live for this baby, absolutely live for her. But I can’t say that part, not out loud.
“But it does,” she says, still calm, still unmoved.
I let out a puff of angry breath and turn to grab my bag.
“You think you’re a grown woman because your body can make a baby?” I turn back to her, offended, and see righteous anger on her face. “You aren’t no grown woman until you can do what’s right for somebody else, even if it rips your heart out. Being a grown woman isn’t about what you want, and neither is being a mother. Being a mother is about sacrifice and giving up and doing without so somebody else can have. Are you ready to do that and not make the government raise your baby? You ready to send that child to the cheapest daycare you can find, because that’s all you can afford?” Her voice rises a pitch, and red splotches appear on her cheeks. “You think you gonna be able to give that baby a good life working twelve hours in a laundry so somebody else be raising your kid?” I have the back door unlocked and am turning to tell her to go to hell when Little Miss kicks so hard she nearly drops me to my knees. I stop, my hands on my belly, waiting for whatever comes next, and Lola is still behind me with her words.
“You just need to stop being selfish and do what is right for that child. Give her a family and a mama who can be there.”
Little Miss has settled and the pain ebbs. I open the door and go into the alley, fishing out my keys, still hearing the echo of her voice inside my head.
She’s just like Jake and Vaude; she’s saying the same thing. That I’m no good, that I’m not enough. Even if she doesn’t mean it the same way, it’s all I hear. It was a mistake to come here. It was such a mistake to think that she cared about me. Why would she? I was just the dumb kid who got herself knocked up. I was just the poor kid from down the road to Dylan. Everybody acts like they want to help. Everybody tells me what I should want, what I should do. They all just want to me to do what they think is right, what makes them feel good at night. They don’t care about me.
My poor little car is doing its best to attain the blazing speed my foot on the pedal demands. I cannot get away fast enough. I cannot run far enough. I cannot get away because all the voices in my head are saying the things I do not want to hear, do not want to know, do not want to believe.
I turn the radio on and scream until my throat is raw and sore, until I feel ridiculous screaming in my Volkswagen just trying to keep up with the cars on the interstate. I am pathetic, as cars fly past me, newer, shinier, sleeker cars, leaving me behind while I spin circles in my head. I’ve done nothing but fulfill the prophecies made by all those haves in my life. I am living proof that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I am my mother’s screaming ghost.