Rosa walked faster, dodging the onslaught of holiday shoppers. She cut in front of a guy with a greasy blond ponytail, slid into a bus station phone booth, and closed the glass doors. He gave her the finger and turned toward the booth with the smashed window at the Trailways counter. Rosa swiveled on the stool so only her back was visible to anyone nosy enough to watch. She pressed the receiver against her ear and held down the button with her mitten while she waited for Maggie’s call.
Her toes were icy, her sneakers soaked from the slush on the downtown sidewalks. She missed her Earth Shoes, left behind when she snuck out of the apartment without waking Allen thirteen months earlier. Wearing bright red basketball sneakers was no doubt a violation of rule number one of surviving underground: don’t call attention to yourself. Rosa grinned into her mitten. Her parents would agree with that principle, and both of them would disapprove of her choice of footwear.
“Never wear red,” Mama had always taught her. “It clashes with your hair. Redheads should never wear red or orange.”
“Never buy used shoes,” Pop had always insisted. “Used clothes, furniture, whatever else is fine, but not shoes. Your feet work hard and deserve the best.” Of course, she and Pop disagreed about what was best. Pop scorned her Earth Shoes, even though he admitted that the leather was quality goods. He had been furious when she declined his offer of a new pair of sturdy shoes from his downtown store. “My shoes aren’t good enough for you anymore, college girl?” Rosa had kissed the top of his shiny head. Then she mailed off a pencil tracing of her foot and a check for thirty-five dollars for shoes guaranteed to fit like footprints in wet sand. “Highway robbery,” her father muttered every time he saw them.
Funny how their voices replayed in her head all the time now, when she couldn’t hear the real thing.
She checked her watch. Three minutes after the hour. It was already dark. She hoped Maggie wouldn’t be too late. These monthly phone calls were her umbilical cord to her old world. Well worth the hassle of arrangements, the classified ad she placed every month in the shoppers’ guide back home. Offering an item of baby equipment for sale “barely used.” Always red. The area code disguised as the price, so no one would know what city or state Rosa called home at the moment, but Maggie could tell where to call that month. Even with the precautions, they never spoke longer than five minutes—that made it harder to trace the call if Maggie was followed to her randomly chosen phone booth.
Not that their phone calls were always pleasant. The month after Emma was born, Maggie had reported that Mama was furious.
“About the name,” Maggie said.
“What’s wrong with Emma?”
“You’re not supposed to name a baby after a living relative,” Maggie said. “Bad luck or something. Emma is too close to Esther.”
“Too close?” Rosa couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“They start with the same letter. Your Mama insisted that the initial stands for the true Hebrew name. She said you’ve put a death hex on Esther.” Maggie sounded uncertain.
“I don’t believe in that crap and neither does Mama; she’s just freaked out about everything. Besides, Esther is already dead to me, and I’m not changing Emma’s name. Mama will just have to live with it.”
Rosa wished Maggie would hurry up and call. If she didn’t pick Emma up by five-thirty, the day care center would add a dollar late fee for every fifteen minutes. Even without the delay, it was a long day for a nine-month-old, and Rosa hated to lose precious moments of evening playtime.
She winced to remember how she had disparaged her sister for being a few minutes late to a meeting. How hard could it be to organize yourself with a baby? she had criticized. It was just a matter of setting priorities, wasn’t it? If she ever saw Esther again, Rosa would acknowledge that she had been a little bit wrong, just about that.
Sometimes, when the two of them snuggled on Rosa’s mattress, Emma all powdery-sweet after her bath, Rosa couldn’t help thinking about Esther and Molly. Why hadn’t Esther ever explained what it was like? How cuddling your baby split your chest open and let in a tornado of doubts and worries. Why hadn’t Esther told her how astonishing it felt to feed a child from your own body? The power of that sweet sucking mouth. Those impossibly unspoiled fingers.
Maybe Esther had tried to tell her.
Every single day for the past thirteen months, Rosa had ruminated about her choice. Which was better for Emma? Going to prison, or going underground? Every single day, she replayed those four days in the courtroom and what came after. And sometimes, after Emma was asleep, Rosa let herself think about Allen, enormous in his absence. Missing him was bad enough, but taking Emma away from him was worse. Usually when his ghost image joined her on the mattress on the floor, Rosa had to get up, make tea, smoke a joint, anything to banish him.
Rosa let the phone ring four times before answering with the code word. “Tattoo.”
“Your Pop’s dead,” Maggie blurted.
The words slammed into Rosa’s throat. She couldn’t speak. Strained to catch her breath. Not possible. He was still young. Not yet. Not now. Not before she had time to patch things up between them.
“I’m so sorry,” Maggie said.
“How?”
“A massive coronary. He died instantly.”
His heart? He never had heart disease. Sure, his blood pressure was a little high, but he took pills for that. Was it stress? Stress could lead to a heart attack, couldn’t it? Was this her fault?
“When’s the service? I’ve got to see Mama. I have to be there for Mama.”
“You can’t come, Rosa. They’ll be waiting for you.” Maggie paused. “Your Mama has Miriam. And Esther and Jake are in town.”
“I have to.”
“It’s not safe. Pop wouldn’t want you to risk prison. Think about Emma.”
“I have to say goodbye.”
“Say it long distance. Pop won’t know the difference.” Maggie’s words were tough but her voice was soft. She promised to comfort Mama and report everything that happened at the memorial service.
Rosa couldn’t recall the rest of the conversation, except that she never got around to revealing her own disturbing news. That was probably just as well. She had already delayed telling Maggie until it was too late to do anything about it. Rosa was embarrassed about giving in to loneliness and lust, trying to be quiet on the living room sofa so they wouldn’t wake Emma in the curtained-off sleeping alcove. Mortified that she’d forgotten to use her diaphragm. Maggie would have lots to say about that too.
She sat for a moment in the stillness of the phone booth thinking of Pop. Now she could never fix the way things between them had gone sour. It had really started her freshman year at college, when he had argued with every new idea she brought home from Ann Arbor. She remembered how his face grew mute with disdain when she described their campus protest against Kennedy’s actions during the Cuban missile crisis. He’d hurled her treasured mimeographed copy of the Port Huron statement—with its revelation of participatory democracy—onto the floor of the living room.
“Student power?” He spit the words. “Mishegas.” Craziness.
She never gave up trying to make him understand. Politics were more complicated than just unions and workers these days. The world was more complex, with Black Power and the Women’s Liberation Movement and gay rights. But Pop didn’t want to talk about abortion rights or racial divisions. He refused to discuss the issues that mattered to her. Like the day she was tabling on the Diag for a women’s sympathy picket in support of the Woolworth’s lunch counter picket in Greensboro. A crew-cut student with the engineering school logo on his shirt sauntered up to her flanked by two buddies.
“There’s an awful lot of cunt around here today,” he said, smirking at his six-foot buddy to his left.
Rosa thought she must have heard him wrong. “Pardon me?”
“I said there’s a lot of cunt here.”
Without stopping to think about it, Rosa punched crew-cut in the face, missing his nose but connecting to his left cheekbone with a satisfying crack. He socked her back just as fast, his blow landing on her upper arm, and then turned to leave without touching his face. He walked away, laughing with his cronies. She clutched her arm, trying not to cry with the pain.
The red splotch turned blue to green to yellow over the next ten days. The X-ray at the health services center showed no fracture. Two weeks later, when the sling was removed and the soreness faded, she signed up for a beginner’s karate class. She called Pop that night, even though it wasn’t Sunday with the lowest rates, and told him proudly about her decision, leaving out the details of what the guy said.
“Karate? That’s not politics.” Pop’s contempt was clear. “Better you should forget this cockamamie women’s lib stuff. Study history. Learn how to organize the working class.”
So what if Pop didn’t approve of self-defense classes, or the abortion work, or the rape crisis center? Deep inside, he was still really proud of her, wasn’t he? Pop had shaped her politics. Pop and Loon Lake.
A sharp knock on the glass of the phone booth brought Rosa back to the present. “Sorry,” she muttered to the scowling businessman. She hurried to pick up Emma, Pop’s face swimming in front of her eyes.