When I wake up groggy in my nice soft fluffy hospital bed, I find my throat still sore from the screaming. I’ve been in and out of sleep for the past two days but that’s always the pain I notice first, the burning, like I ate hot peppers for dinner. Then I take in all my other injuries: sprained ankle, busted knee, broken wrist, and stitches over my eyebrow. The knot on the back of my head is the size of Jupiter.
Bean is still okay.
How did I survive that fall? Well, that’s a good question. I know when I started falling I immediately thought to protect Bean, so I fell backward but still tumbled down the stairs like a Slinky, my backpack protecting my spine from splitting in two.
Knocked out cold at the bottom of the stairs, when I first came to, the pain surrounded me like water, drowning me. Hands working on me, lights of the ambulance blinding, Ms. Stein yelling while I begged them to kill me. Because if Bean was dead, then I was dead too. I couldn’t take the guilt of killing another baby.
But Bean is still inside me. Bean is okay, for now.
My room is bright white and spotless. Hospitals clean better than Momma, so I feel safe here. It’s a lot like the hospital I stayed in before I went to baby jail, back when I wasn’t talking.
A nurse rolls in with my lunch and Winters wakes up. He’s been snoring in the corner for the past two days.
“You’re up. Good,” he grumbles.
He walks over to my bed, appraising me like a car. I must look pretty bad, because he winces like he got a paper cut every time he takes a good look at me.
“You’re having a boy, they say. Congrats.”
I want to smile, but it hurts my face when I do.
“I have five girls. Ages fifteen to twenty-four,” he says, sitting in a chair closer to the bed.
“Latoya, my youngest baby girl, is turning sixteen next week. We’re throwing one of those big sweet sixteen parties. Expensive as all hell. My wife’s going overboard, as usual. The hall, the decorations . . . eight hundred dollars for a damn deejay, can you believe it?” He shakes his head. “You’re about sixteen, right?”
I nod.
“I didn’t have a party,” I say, sounding like a smoker, voice aged by nicotine.
He winces again, rolling the newspaper in his hands.
“Right, right,” he mumbles. “Well, I’ve always wanted a boy, but after five girls, we figure it wasn’t in the cards. And even after all these years, I still can’t understand you females and the way y’all think. Y’all be coming up with stuff, never saying exactly what’s on your mind.”
He sets the paper on my bed, pushing my lunch tray closer. Broth with a white roll and red Jell-O. He opens up my juice cup and slides in a straw.
“Y’all expect us men to be mind readers and shit,” he grumbles like the miserable old man he is. “You know, my wife got angry at me the other night for God knows what now, and when I ask her ‘Baby, what do you want from me?’ she says ‘You should know.’ I mean, this woman can drive me to drink!”
Maybe it’s because I’m not laughing, or that I’m just laying here like a dead slug, but he stops babbling and meets my gaze.
“But . . . I should’ve listened to you, Addison. You were trying to tell me something without saying it, and I didn’t listen.”
The softness in his tone makes him sound guilty. But I don’t blame Winters for what happened. Who could’ve known New Girl would turn out to be exactly what her parents feared.
“I contacted that lawyer of yours. And . . . whew . . . she’s something, that one. I ain’t ashamed to admit she tore me in two. She’ll be here in the morning. You got anyone else you need me to call?”
Ted. Momma. I think of them together, then apart. Ted would come here and risk getting caught. But would Momma come?
I’m hurt, Momma. Please come take care of me!
“Ms. Claire, at the Learning Center.”
Winters looks at me funny, then nods.
“Well, I’m going to get some coffee. You should eat, get your strength up.”
He stands and stretches.
“Social services will be here to question you . . . about the house . . . and Ms. Stein. I take it you’ll be fair?”
He struggles with that last sentence and heads toward the door.
“And no need to worry about Sarah or Kelly. They’ve been taken care of.”
“Winters?”
He stops at the door.
“Yup.”
“You got a pen?”
He frowns, then takes one out his coat pocket. I claw at the newspaper beside me, opening to the first page. Winters watches like he wants to stop me, but doesn’t. I circle the word fastidious.
“There’s another test in May,” I say, but he still seems confused while nothing could be clearer to me. “He’s my baby. Mine.”
Winters’s face drops a little, and for the first time he seems to understand. Like he fully grasps what I am up against.
“Yup. I know.”
Ms. Cora was a blue flame. That’s how mad she was. The hottest part of fire, blue from the ends of her wavy hair to the tips of her heels. She stormed into the hospital, took one look at me, and said, “Start talking.”
And that is when I told her everything. About the house. About Kelly. About New Girl killing her mom. About Ms. Carmen and Ms. Stein. Everything except the part about me trying to run away with my older boyfriend. I figured I might as well keep that to myself. She was already turning blue enough, and when Ms. Cora turns blue, the world gets quiet.
She cursed out Winters in the hallway outside my room. He couldn’t even get two words in. I never heard anyone talk so fast in my life. And he just stood there and took it. Then she cussed out Ms. Carmen and that one was my favorite part. Ms. Carmen tried to put up a good fight, but then I heard Ms. Cora say something about getting her fired and she shut right up.
Then she was on the phone with friends, calling in favors from all over. Ms. Stein’s name was mentioned a couple of times. An hour later, two real police officers were in my room, taking a statement. And if that wasn’t enough, when Ms. Claire came, she told off the nurses for not changing my gown when I peed on myself and demanded real food. Kings County Hospital was under Ms. Claire and Ms. Cora’s control.
“Chile, what is dis? Why yuh circle dis word ’ere? Fastidious? Yuh know dis one!”
“I do?”
“Lawd, they box yuh head in good. Can’t remember simple words. Chuh!”
Ms. Claire sits in Winters’s spot in the corner, sucking her teeth. She turns the page, looking up the next word in her pocket dictionary.
“Boy, lemme tell yuh, dis country has di worst education system in di entire world! Don’t teach basic words, don’t teach nuthin’ at t’all! No wonder everyone so blasted stupid around ’ere. Do yuh know I graduated from high school at yuh age and was already taking classes at the university? Come to dis country, land of opportunity, and find yuh three years behind everyone. Had to tutor grown men and women, older than me, in subjects I learned in secondary. Jesus blessed my soul wit the patience to be an educator cause dis country definitely needed some intelligence. Chuh!”
I can’t believe she’s staying with me, even after everything . . .
“How much do you know?”
She pauses for a moment, then puts her pen down to look at me.
“As much as yuh told me,” she says plainly, face smooth and nonchalant.
“Do you know who I am? What I . . . did?”
She takes a deep breath, staring through me.
“What yuh may or may not’ve done is not di definition of who yuh really are.”
That was all she had to say to make my soul calm, to ease some pain. Slowly, I swing my leg out from under the covers, feeling for the floor for the first time in days. I’m tired of using this pee pan. Every time, it just goes all over the place. Ms. Claire hops out of her chair.
“Aye, what yuh do? Yuh need the bathroom? Come, let me help yuh before yuh catch cold.”
She bends and slips some blue socks on my feet that have little rubber tracks on the bottom.
“Oh boy, gyal!” She reaches up and smiles as her warm hands cuff around my belly. “Yuh popped!”
I wince a smile and for a change, I don’t pull away. I let someone other than Ted touch Bean, because I know Ms. Claire wouldn’t hurt him. She’d protect him as much as I would. She helps me off the bed and I limp into the bathroom, dragging along my IV. I lean against the door frame as she switches on the light.
“Someone’s in here already,” I mumble, turning away.
She must be my roommate, but damn she looks terrible. A bruised cheek, cracked lips, and a blackened eye. She looks like Momma the day after Junior died. Ray did a number on her that day.
“Huh? What yuh talking ’bout?”
“Someone—”
My knees give in. WHOOSH and the IV stand clatters. I fall forward, catching myself on the sink, hitting the mirror with the tip of my nose. A gasp fogs the glass. I freeze and the woman stares.
“Mary?”
There is no one else in here but me. I don’t have a roommate. That face, it’s mine. The battered woman . . . she is me. And my eye. My damn eye has blood in it. Not one drop of brown, just thick red blood.
“Mary? Yuh okay? Mary what . . . MARY!”
The piss runs out of me and my socks soak it up like a sponge.
I had a dream Herbert came to my room last night. He had big sparkly green wings the size of elephant ears and glowed like a lightning bug. He told me he was visiting from heaven. I asked him what it was like. He said it’s just like I imagined. I asked him if he saw Alyssa there. He said yes. I asked him if she was mad at me, and he didn’t say nothing at all.
“Chuh! One week in di hospital and they ready to kick her out. Dis what meh tax dollars pay for?” Ms. Claire shouts and sucks her teeth. “Is that house safe?”
They’re talking in the hall about me while I finish dinner. Turkey slices with gravy, mashed potatoes, string beans, chicken noodle soup, and a pudding cup. Same type of food they serve in the nursing home. It makes me think of Ted. I lost my phone somewhere between the fall and the hospital. He has no idea what happened. Probably thinks I changed my mind.
“Kelly’s been transferred to Crossroads and Sarah’s at Bellevue,” Winters says. “Psych evaluation.”
“But is the house safe for Mary?” Ms. Cora asks. “It wasn’t just those two tormenting her.”
“She’ll have a new placement by the end of the month,” my temporary social worker says. She looks like she graduated high school yesterday. “With a facility that specializes in teen mothers, if she chooses to keep her baby.”
“‘If’? Who said anything about ‘if’?” Ms. Cora says, voice rising.
“Well, there’s a lot involved in that,” Winters says.
“You still don’t think she’s capable of raising her own child?”
“I’m not one to say. But I think there’s a lot of things that neither one of us knows about her.”
“And it’s always going to be about the best interest of the child,” Social Worker adds.
“I can’t believe you fucking idiots!” Ms. Cora says.
“Hey! Watch it,” Winters warns. “You know you don’t really have any authority to make any decision here. You’re not even family!”
“I’m speaking for my client, who’s in the process of being emancipated from you assholes. I got enough damn authority to make your lives hell that’s for—”
“Listen, I get it, okay!” Winters says. “All I’m saying is . . . she may not be in the best condition to raise a child . . . right now. Just for right now, not that she never could! She needs to be healthy for that baby and stand on her own two feet first. Think about it, she has no one to claim her, no money, barely has a place to live. And just a couple of weeks ago they reported she was hearing voices and—”
“You know what,” Social Worker shouts. “Can we just focus on the immediate situation at the moment?”
Ms. Cora and Winters mutter to themselves.
“Honestly, it’s the best place for her right now. Everywhere else is booked. No one can take the overflow of a girl in her condition. Now, the doctor said she must be on strict bed rest to avoid possible premature labor. So I don’t think it’s a good idea to move her to a new facility, one she’s unfamiliar with, until she’s well enough to walk on her own. Stein is under investigation, so she’ll be on her best behavior. Mary will have her own room and we’ll arrange for daily nurse visits.”
They all fall silent. I wonder what that means, Ms. Stein is under investigation. Is she gonna be fired? I hope so.
“Okay, fine!” Ms. Cora barks. “But if one hair is out of place, so help me, I’ll—”
“I know, alright!” Winters snaps. “Jesus, woman! Where’d she dig you up from?”
New Girl’s bed is empty. No sheets or pillows. Just a green plastic mattress like no one has ever lived there before. But I’ll never forget her. I’ll never forget the look in her eyes when I went flying down the stairs. She was smiling, a big nasty grin. Wonder what they’re going to do to her?
“I can’t believe they pushed her down the stairs and that crazy bitch lived!”
“Yo, shut up, Kisha,” China says. “That shit was fucked up, she could’ve died. She almost lost her baby.”
“Well, what she do to them to make them do that?” Kisha asks. “You know she always starting something!”
“Nothing,” China barks. “She didn’t do nothing! And y’all know that.”
“Nah, that bitch is loco,” Marisol says.
“China, you even said you caught her walking around the house naked,” Kisha says.
“But yo, did you see her eye though? That shit is nasty!” Joi giggles.
My interaction with the rest of the house is limited. I stay in my room, an outcast among outcasts. Other than a nurse who stops by to check on me and Ms. Reba bringing up my meals, I don’t see anyone else. Ms. Stein is smart enough to keep her distance.
The doctors were very serious about bed rest. Too much movement and Bean could die. So I keep my feet up and if I’m not sleeping, I’m staring at the ceiling, daydreaming about Alyssa.
Ms. Claire came by to visit. She brought me some SAT flash cards and a new book on how to get into college.
“For when yuh get back on yuh feet.”
Even back on my feet, I’m not sure if it will help or if it was even worth it. Winters is right. I can’t raise a baby like this. No money. No job. Not even a place to live. And the way the case is going so slow, I’ll be seventeen or older by the time they make a decision. Bean will be born. They’ll take him. Put him in a home with some strangers. Strangers like Ms. Stein; that’s what scares me most. There are thousands of Ms. Steins out there, thousands of Mommas, thousands of Rays, all waiting to take Bean and repeat history. No one will believe him. He’ll cry for me, his real momma, and I won’t be able to help him. I won’t know where he is or how to find him. So many ways he could be hurt. I won’t be able to protect him once he is out of my belly. So I keep my feet up, trying to stop him from coming too quick.
But then there is Alyssa. If I wasn’t in her life at all, she’d still be here. I don’t blame them for trying to take Bean. Maybe Bean would be better off without me. Maybe the greatest gift I can give him, the only way to keep him safe, is to keep him away from me.
And then I’ll be alone. Forever.
My knee still hurts a little but my ankle is much better. I can flex it more than I could two weeks ago. The broken blood vessel in my eye is starting to clear up, but I avoid mirrors to stop scaring myself. I’m healing slowly on the outside, but inside, all that’s left that matters is Bean. Everything else is dead.
The doorbell rings. It’s one of two people, the nurse or Winters. He comes to check on me almost every day now. Brought me a piece of his daughter’s birthday cake after the party. It tasted like nothing.
“Where is she?” I hear him scream downstairs. Bean jumps at the sound of his voice.
Ted?
“Whoa there, young man,” Ms. Reba says. “Who are you here to see?”
I hear China walk into the foyer.
“Oh, I know you. You’re Kisha’s boyfriend, right? She’s upstairs.”
“What?” Ted snaps. “Kisha? Nah. Where’s Mary?”
“Mary?” Ms. Reba and China say together.
“Yo, Mary!” he calls.
“Hey! Cut that out! It’s time for you to go.”
“Mary! Mary, where you at!”
My heart cries out for him, hands trembling, mouth fixed to say his name but locked tight. Should I go to him? No, I can’t.
“I’m calling the police!”
“Wait, Reba, see what he wants first.”
“I want to see Mary! Where she at?”
I wish the floor would swallow me up, straight down to the basement. He can’t be here. They can’t know.
“Hey! What’s going on?” Kisha says, running down the stairs. “Who called my name?”
“I want Mary. Where is she? Is she dead?”
No one responds. Everyone is at a loss for words.
“Which one of you bitches did it? Huh! Which one of you killed her?” Ted’s voice cracks, and I want to run and comfort him. But I can’t. He can’t be here.
“Now just calm down, alright! What do you want with Mary?” Ms. Reba asks.
“Mary’s my . . .”
No Ted. No! We’re gonna get caught.
Joi busts into my room.
“There’s a boy here to see you!” she grins. “Is that your baby daddy? He’s cute!”
I don’t move or say a word. Ms. Reba comes upstairs.
“Mary? Ummm . . . some boy downstairs is here to see you. Says he knows you. You know you can’t have male visitors here. No one except Winters.”
I roll away from her. This is stupid. Ted is risking getting caught, throwing our business out in front of the people I trust least in the world.
“I don’t know him,” I mumble.
“Mary!” he screams from downstairs. “I swear I will light this motherfucker up, if you don’t let me see her!”
Ms. Reba clears her throat. “Uhhh, Mary?”
Ted won’t go away till he sees me. I know him. He’ll tear the house apart.
“I can’t walk downstairs.”
Ms. Reba looks at Joi, then at me.
“Well, he can’t come up here. You know you can’t have boys in your room!”
“Just give me five minutes,” I say.
“No way! No!”
“Please,” I beg. Because it’s Ted, it’s the only time I’ll beg Ms. Reba for anything.
“Where is she?” Ted shouts, sounding louder now that the door is open. “I’m not fucking playing with y’all!”
Ms. Reba looks torn, scratching her graying dry hair.
“Come on, Reba!” Joi says, grinning. “Ms. Stein ain’t even here. Who’s gonna know? Live a little!”
Ms. Reba hesitates, then sighs.
“Okay, fine. But only five minutes.”
Once they’re gone, I straighten up in bed, pulling my shirt down over Bean. I tie my hair back, licking my hand to smooth down the edges, wishing I had some of Momma’s makeup to make me look pretty.
Ted rushes in the room. Just the sight of him and my body eases out of a tense hold. It’s been so long, I can feel every muscle melt down to normal. One look at me and his mouth drops. My eyes water up, ready to tumble over. Didn’t think I was that bad. He eases near me and tips my chin up, staring into my bloody eye. Anger radiates off his body like a heater. He doesn’t say nothing for a long time, just stands there, hands trembling, until they ball into fists. Then he turns to the crowd of girls standing in the doorway.
“Which one of you bitches did it?”
“Who you calling a bitch!” Kisha snaps.
“It was the new girl,” Joi says. “She pushed her down the stairs. But she ain’t here no more.”
Ted stomps over and slams the door in their faces, locking it. He sits on the edge of my bed, staring at me, looking over and over again at my injuries.
“I thought you . . . changed your mind.”
There’s so much I want to say, so much I want to tell him. But all the emotions I’ve held back the last few months come tumbling out my eyes as I crumble.
“Damn, baby,” he says, scooping me up into his arms. I melt into him, hissing away the pain in my knee. He’s the most powerful pain reliever I’ve ever known. My arm doesn’t hurt and my ankle feels fine.
We sit for a long time with me crying into his chest. Crying like I’ve never cried a day in my life. Finally, my senses return.
“You can’t stay.” I sniff. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
He rubs his nose in my hair and inhales.
“We should have left a long time ago,” he says, so much regret in his voice.
“It’s not your fault.”
“You could’ve been killed. And Bean.”
He holds me tighter, kissing my eyelids with his soft lips.
“Social services called the nursing home yesterday,” he says. “I overheard them talking about you. I didn’t know what happened! I was waiting at the train station for mad long.”
He rubs his big hands around my stomach. I clasp my little ones over them. We look like night and day, black and white, my skin so light compared to his.
“Ted, you can’t be here. They’ll—”
“I know, aight? Don’t worry about them. But how we gonna get you out of here, baby? You can’t even walk right.”
He still thinks we’re running away. He still thinks we have a chance.
“Ted, I’m . . . leaving.”
He pulls away from my neck to look at me.
“What you mean?” he asks.
“When I get better, they’re sending me to this place upstate. For girls like me.”
“Upstate?” he says, like it’s a foreign country. He mulls the idea over for a bit, stroking my arms. “Aight, I guess I’ll just visit you there. Gotta be on the weekend though, at least till the baby is born.”
For Ted, it’s just that simple. He’s a man of action. Something needs to be done, he never asks questions or complains or worries about the consequences. That, unfortunately, is my job.
“No. You can’t. They’ll ask questions. And then they’ll know about you. About us.”
Ted frowns, his body tense but his arms still wrapped around me like a warm blanket.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying . . . I can’t see you . . . for a while.”
This doesn’t settle with him well. He jumps up and I pretend the movement doesn’t cause me to suck in a breath and see stars at the pain. Then he starts to argue all the ways it could work, yelling and cursing. I let him vent, but the facts are not going to change. Ted is now nineteen and I am sixteen. We’re both parolees, both on our last life.
I’ve been thinking a lot, on my back staring at the ceiling, and the truth is we may not win. All Ms. Cora’s hard work may be for nothing because we may still lose one way or another. They’ll take away Bean and throw me back in baby jail for being crazy. But if they know about Ted, not only will I lose Bean, but they’ll take away the only person that has ever really loved me. It sucks, but I have to do what’s best for both my boys.
“You’ve already done enough just coming here,” I say. “They know your face now.”
He curses again and sits on New Girl’s bed, the stress making deep wrinkles on his forehead.
“So when then?”
“When what?” I say.
“When can I see you again?” he snaps.
It’s hard to lie to those big brown eyes. So I tell him the truth.
“I don’t know.”
Ted glares at me, like he wants to be mad. He knows I’m right and he wants to hate me for it. But Ted can’t hate me, it’s impossible for him. That is how I know it hurts him more. He can’t hate me but he can’t have me. He runs his hands down his face, falls on his knees in front of me, and buries his face into my stomach, holding and kissing Bean like his life is ending. In a way, it is.
There is a light rap on the door. We ignore it until it becomes a badgering knock.
“Mary! Time’s up,” Ms. Reba shouts. “He has to go! Now!”
Ted looks up at me. His eyes. That’s what I’ll miss the most. Maybe Bean will have his eyes. But it will be years before I ever know.
“It’s a boy,” I say, and try to comfort the blow with a smile. Ted bites a trembling lip, eyes watering. He exhales and kisses me. His lips, I’ll miss those too.
“Yo, promise me you’ll fight,” he says. “That you won’t give up. And if you get to keep Bean, you’ll tell me.”
“I promise,” I lie and hug him one last time.
Excerpt from The Devil Inside: The Mary B. Addison Story
by Jude Mitchell (pg. 223)
When talking about Mary as a baby, Dawn Cooper once said, “Most folks think I named her Mary after Jesus’s mother. But no, I named her Mary Beth, as in Mary of Bethany. Mary sat by Jesus’s feet and listened to his words instead of helping her sister with preparation for dinner. She knew that nothing should ever come before the Lord!
“Jesus also brought her brother back from the dead.
“But really, I named her Mary Beth after my mother, Miryam. It means ‘a wished-for child.’”
My knee and ankle are a lot better now. I can walk to the bathroom without a crutch. Major improvement, the nurse told me yesterday. That means no more visits, which is fine by me. I have bigger things to worry about. At least now I’m allowed out of bed.
I take the bus to the Q train, then walk three blocks to her apartment building, up the shiny elevator with the big mirrors. I remember fogging the mirrors with my nose while Momma straightened the ribbons in my pigtails as we rode up. The bell dings on the sixth floor and I knock on the last door to the right. She is not even surprised to see me. She just lets me right in.
The apartment is the same, but seems so much smaller and darker with this thick layer of dust covering everything in sight. I mean, one good sneeze would clean up the whole place. Smells mad stale too, like the windows haven’t been opened in years, maybe longer. Stacks of newspapers and magazines tower on every surface, overcrowded ashtrays sit on sofa arms. And the Christmas tree—the one with the white lights and red and gold bulbs—is still there, in the corner by the window. She put it there so everyone could see how beautiful her tree was. But now, the tree is a bare stick, dried up pine needles surrounding it like ashes, ornaments rusted. The gifts underneath, once wrapped in green glitter paper, are faded almost to yellow.
Wonder if my gift is still there?
This is not how it used to be. Before, it was roomy and light. Always smelling like fresh laundry and cinnamon sugar from the apple pies she used to bake.
“Do you want to see it?” Mrs. Richardson asks with a sniff. She’s wearing bleach-stained sweatpants and a wrinkled T-shirt. No more fancy dresses.
I nod and she opens the first door on the left. Alyssa’s room.
It’s exactly as I left it. Candy-pink walls, with yellow elephants and giraffes, a dark wood crib with pink sheets and a changing table. Baby books. Toys. A picture hung over the crib of Alyssa, one day old. Another picture, her in a red romper, the same picture on the cover of the book about us, sits on the dresser.
“Why do you keep it this way?”
She interlocks her fingers—her eyes watery, face tired—but doesn’t step a foot in the room with me in it.
“Would you want someone to forget about you?”
Guess that makes sense. I look around at Alyssa’s memorial, a frozen day in time, and inhale deep.
“It still smells like her.”
Mrs. Richardson’s face sort of crumbles. Her bottom lip twitches and she stutters out of the room. I follow, closing the door behind me.
The living room is dry, the cushion seats sunken in. I wait, letting her have her moment in the kitchen, gasping for air between her sobs. Glasses clatter, cabinets slam. It’s not like the way she cried when she got to our house that night. She let out the longest scream ever, mouth frozen open with a sob that even made some of the police officers in the room tear up. I’ll never forget her scream.
She returns with two glasses of iced tea. Hers looking much lighter in color than mine. I glance at the mat by the door. His shoes aren’t there.
“Where’s Mr. Richardson?”
She passes me a glass and chuckles.
“He’s long gone.”
“’Cause of Alyssa?”
“No, ’cause of you,” she says with a snort.
I don’t understand. What did I do to him?
“We . . . had a difference of opinion when it came to you,” she says. “He never forgave me for agreeing with the plea bargain. He thought you should have gone to jail for life.”
“You didn’t think so?”
She shakes the ice around the glass a little and takes a sip.
“Oh, trust me, I had a lot of dark thoughts about you. I wanted you dead.”
She is staring at me so hard, so angry. She’d kill me right now if she had the chance. Maybe I made a mistake coming here. I hold the iced tea with both hands.
“But,” she says with a sigh. “It all just didn’t make any sense. I didn’t want another child to lose her life.”
She knocks back her drink like it’s water.
“Then, they wouldn’t file charges against your mother, and that really put him over the edge. ‘She was supposed to be taking care of my little girl!’ he screamed at the DA. After that, he wouldn’t look at me anymore. He blamed me for leaving Alyssa with you and your momma. He never said it, but he did.”
I can’t believe Mr. Richardson left her. They were so perfect together. I thought he loved her. He didn’t treat her anything like the way Ray treated Momma. And he was a good daddy.
“Your mother came by here once after . . . it happened. Unannounced as usual. Walked in here like it was nothing. Even brought a shepherd’s pie, talking nonstop about the lines at the grocery store. We’d just buried Alyssa not even a week before. Guess I was so in shock when I saw her . . . I lost my wits. She went into the kitchen like she used to and I just stood there, couldn’t move. Then Greg came home . . . he was so mad.”
My bladder is about to explode. Can’t drink another drop of this tea.
“Can I use your bathroom?”
“Go ahead. You know where it is.”
I head down the hall, passing her bedroom. An unmade bed with a single sheet dangling over the side, newspapers scattered on the floor, empty glasses and bottles of vodka on the side table. It doesn’t seem like one woman lives here, but ten homeless women instead.
Black mold lines the tiles around the bathtub. I finish my business and wash my hands, drying them on bleach-stained hand towels. On the cabinet by the toilet are a bunch of pill bottles with long-name prescriptions. One I recognize because Momma used to take the same. But whatever those pills are supposed to be doing, don’t seem like they working.
Back in the living room, Mrs. Richardson is standing by the tree, blowing smoke out the window. She looks so much older now, eyes far-gone like Momma’s, foot tapping like New Girl’s used to. She turns and stares down at my stomach for a long time, not saying nothing. I put my arms over it, protecting Bean.
“It’s a boy,” I say, noticing my own nervousness.
She grins and pulls out another cigarette.
“I told you it would be.”
She tosses the pack on the coffee table by her new drink that she didn’t bother mixing with iced tea this time. She offers me a cigarette and I shake my head.
“What happened to you?” she asks.
I touch my cast and shrug.
“Had an accident.”
She raises an eyebrow, laughs, then kicks one of the yellowing gifts by the tree.
“This was for you. I bought you some books by Judy Blume. Remember I told you about her?”
“Fudge?”
“Right. Those Mary Higgins Clark novels were just a little too grown and dark for your age.”
One of the old ladies Momma used to clean for gave her a shoe box of old books for Christmas. Momma was so mad (“Old bitch couldn’t give me a real tip!”) but I loved them.
On the bookshelf next to the tree, there are three framed pictures of Alyssa. She looks so tiny in them. I remember her being so much bigger, heavier in my arms.
I didn’t mean to throw her . . .
“You know, that’s my greatest regret. Not taking enough pictures.” She sips her drink, desperately. “Should’ve taken more pictures.”
She falls back into her chair, rotating a lighter around her fingers.
“I just miss her . . . so much,” she says, her voice cracking. “I only had her for a second and I miss her so much. How do you miss someone you barely knew?”
She doesn’t sob. She doesn’t cry. Maybe she’s like me. Maybe she’s all cried out.
Below the pictures of Alyssa is a long row of black books with gold writing down the seams. Her encyclopedias always seemed so expensive and regal; I remember being afraid to touch them. They had the same ones in baby jail, except they were worn down, beaten, pages ripped and whole books missing. But I would read them, over and over, hearing Mrs. Richardson’s voice. Whenever I didn’t know something, Mrs. Richardson would make me look it up and read it out loud. “Do you know where diamonds come from Mary?” I’d shake my head and she’d smile. “Well, look it up. Tell me about them.”
My knee is starting to throb. I also can’t breathe right, and the smoke isn’t helping. Maybe I shouldn’t have pushed myself so soon.
“Why didn’t you have more children?” I ask, sitting back down.
She sighs and takes another sip.
“Greg never thought he’d be a good father. He sorta did it ’cause he knew how badly I wanted a baby. Then Alyssa was born and boy . . . I’ve never seen a man fall in love so fast. He talked about having more children right away. He wanted two boys and another girl. That’s why he . . . wanted to go out that night. Wanted to get me alone, get me relaxed, so he could get me pregnant again.”
She laughs.
“Men are so stupid,” she hiccups. “Think a little liquor and the sperm will go straight to the source of life.”
I just stare, because I don’t really know what she is talking about.
“You know, I never told the police this, but that night, I knew something was wrong. I felt it. I kept telling Greg I wanted to check on Alyssa. He kept telling me to stop worrying.”
She looks at the door to Alyssa’s room, as if she was about to walk right out. When she doesn’t, I exhale.
“After . . . it happened . . . Greg was just a different person. He couldn’t handle it. Who really could?”
No one could, it seems. No one could handle a dead baby. Not Mr. Richardson, the mob outside the courthouse, Mr. Jerk Face, the COs, the social workers, Ms. Stein, Momma, her, or me. I swallow and finally identify the stale smell, reeking and suffocating the apartment. It is six years’ worth of pain, soaked in gasoline, set on fire. The smoke is smothering, which makes asking her for this one favor that much harder.
“Mrs. Richardson . . . I’m sorry. For everything that has happened.”
She nods her head. “I know you are.”
“And I know . . . I don’t have the right to ask you this . . . but . . . can you adopt my baby?”
Mrs. Richardson’s foot stops tapping. She just stares, her face turning dark. I don’t know what to think, so I just keep going.
“They are gonna take my baby away. But if they do, I’d rather you take him than anyone else. I’d rather him be in a good home. With a good mother, like you. You’re a good mother.”
She huffs. If she squeezes her drink any tighter the glass will shatter.
“I’m nobody’s mother anymore, Mary.”
I shift in my chair.
“I’ll be free . . . I think . . . by the time I’m eighteen,” I push on. “And then I’ll come back for him. I promise. He won’t be any trouble. He’ll be a good baby.”
Mrs. Richardson sighs and looks out the window, the sun setting.
“You know the other thing that happened when your mother came to visit. She talked about you. Went on and on about her baby girl. How she was going to put you in dance classes when you get out of the ‘hospital.’ Beauty pageants or something. Went on and on then says, ‘It’s so much work having a girl.’ Alyssa wasn’t even dead three weeks yet.”
That sounds just like Momma, foot all in her mouth.
“Please,” I whisper. “You’re my last hope.”
“I’m a mess, Mary. Just a mess—”
“But you can get better. I know you can. You can teach him all kinds of stuff so he’ll be real smart. Please.”
She sighs and doesn’t meet my eye.
“Mary . . . I can’t. And I’m not even sorry that I can’t.”