Jodi

FAMILY

There ain’t many things so exciting as seeing your fancy own sign, all hanging proud and permanent over the awning at the farmer’s market. It weren’t just Jacobs Family Farms no more. Right underneath, in professionally painted plywood, it was Jodi’s Cans and Jams too. I don’t think Graham’ll ever get how choked up I was over him getting me that sign, how, in that moment, it felt like my life was changing for the good. I had done something. And couldn’t nobody take that back.

When I was a kid, weren’t nothing so exciting as the first day a’ school. I got to see where my seat was, if there were any new kids. That fresh-paper smell was everywhere, and I got to get new glue, no dried-up globs or old glitter all stuck on the top.

Me and Daddy, the minute the school people sent out the list, we’d be at the Walmart, picking out new pencils and folders and crayons. It was my favorite thing in the whole world. Well, except that year I was going into second grade and Daddy was working all the time and Momma had to take me shopping. Daddy, he thought Momma was cleaned up. But I knew better. She was sneaking sips here and there, hiding airplane bottles in her socks and wine boxes in the roastin’ pan in the oven. Lord knows she weren’t cooking with it.

I was excited all the same. I climbed in the back of her Oldsmobile, that cracking leather burning the back a’ my legs, them swinging ’cause they didn’t near touch the floor. I got all buckled in like Daddy told me I oughta even though that silver buckle was damn near hot as a pizza oven. Momma pulled up to the ABC store, and I was getting so excited them legs was going. Daddy and me, we didn’t go to the ABC store, but it made all kinds of sense that’s where you’d buy school supplies.

Momma said, “You stay here and don’t talk to strangers.”

“But, Momma, I want to come in. Daddy lets me pick the colors of my notebooks and get the fancy pencils.”

She laughed real mean, and the sting of them hurt feelings, that won’t never leave me. She slammed the door right hard and walked in, leaving me to sweat in the humidity with the window rolled down.

Until the day I die, I won’t never live down the shame of walking into that classroom. All them kids organizing their shiny schoolboxes and sharp pencils in their desks. Me, I didn’t have nothin’. Daddy, he found out quick what Momma done.

“I promise I’ll take you to get school supplies soon as work lets out tonight, baby girl,” he said.

But it was too late. That first day I didn’t have so much as an old eraser. My face was so hot you’d have needed an oven mitt to touch it. I walked real quiet to the desk with my cheerful name tag on it, not wanting nobody to see me, to make fun a’ me for coming to school with nothing. Them fat tears was coming down my cheeks.

“It’s okay,” the teacher said, rubbin’ my back. “Your momma will be back for you before you know it.”

That’s why I’m crying. I didn’t care if I ever saw my momma again. She’d disgraced me in the worst way for a seven-year-old.

I got real busy remindin’ myself about that seven-year-old girl that day when I knew my momma was coming to visit. I knew it weren’t smart for me to be around her. It was just too tempting to take you and your birth daddy back. But she was itching red hot to see me, and I was plum outta excuses why I couldn’t. At the end a’ the day, that woman, she’s my momma. And just ’cause she birthed me and probably did the best she could, she should get to see me. Though, Lord knows, her best was damn near a natural disaster.

But this time, I was smart. This time, she wasn’t gonna fool me. Weren’t no way I was gonna start loving and trusting her again just for her to damn near kill me by lettin’ me down again.

I was just sitting there in my chair out front of the trailer, scraping a spot of dirt outta the plastic ridge with my fingernail, trying to keep from getting all worked up. It weren’t long ’til I heard a old car bumping down the gravel path, dust jumping all out from everywhere making me hold my breath. You could see right off it weren’t just Momma in the car. Probably some new, useless boyfriend she got.

But when he started getting outta the car, I reckoned that man was useless. But he weren’t a boyfriend. It was Ricky.

It was that day in second grade all over. Momma’d tricked me again. I don’t know where on God’s earth I thought I was running to, but I was near to the woods ’fore I heard Momma yelling, “Don’t run away, Jodi. Ricky’s changed.”

Changed. There was that word again. I’d been around twenty years. Only thing I knew of that could really be changed was a dollar bill.

I weren’t trying to listen. But ain’t nobody in the county that didn’t hear Ricky scream, “I’ve found Jesus.” He was running behind me, and weren’t no way I could get away. That Ricky, he was too fast.

“Please, Jodi. We can get Carolina back. We can all be the family we’ve dreamed about.”

It stopped me cold in my tracks, that sentence. The VCR in my brain rewound the tape of my life with Ricky. All them fantasies I had, that white house with the red tin roof, my own field, room for my babies to play, they weren’t never gonna happen. But a girl with a heart all full a’ dreams, she can pin them on darn near any man, no matter how sorry. And Ricky, he was always gonna say the right thing and do the wrong one.

When we was together, I hadn’t seen no good examples of family or love. But now I knew what it was all about. Leaving your girlfriend when she’s good and pregnant and needs you most, not even trying to clean yourself up and change for your youngen, coming back and wanting to do the right thing when it was too late . . . Them things weren’t love. And they sure as hell weren’t family. So I spun around on my heel real quick and glared at them.

“We done looked into it,” Momma said. “We got us a lawyer. We can get Carolina back. It ain’t too late.”

“What do you mean, get Carolina back? Ain’t no way we can get her back. We give her to Khaki and Graham, we signed all them papers.”

“Yeah,” Ricky said, smiling right broad. “But the lawyers said there’s some kind a’ mistake.”

I shook my head. “You cain’t tell me that Khaki Mason didn’t make for damn sure that them papers I signed was all letter perfect and i-dotted.”

Ricky smiled again, moving closer, trying to take my hand. I pulled it away. “Yours had every last t crossed. That’s for damn sure.”

“But Ricky’s,” Momma chimed in, “them ones that they did back before the adoption. They ain’t quite right.”

I looked at Ricky and then at Momma, then back at Ricky again. It were so tempting to get you back. And Ricky was right with the Lord now. He was looking at me so earnest, and Momma, she was talking so sweet, they coulda roped me right on into their scheming.

Ricky smiled at me again, real reassuring like. “That lawyer, he said judges are real keen on babies being with their birth parents.”

“Yeah,” Momma said. “They said that little mistake’ll probably do it. But if you just get up there and say that you wasn’t right in the head on account a’ your drinking—”

She snapped her fingers. “Then we’ll get Carolina back no problem at all.”

It was all a lot to take in. That pain and heartbreak that a momma feels when she gets apart from her baby. The way that voice creeps in telling you you done the wrong thing, that you shoulda stuck it out, it woulda got easier, you coulda done it and you can do it now. It made me want to smile and take Ricky’s hand and skip on down to that lawyer’s office and tell a little white lie up on that stand.

But then I thought about you. My sweet little Carolina. You were happy. And it was ’cause you were loved and stable. I could dream in a weak moment that I could give that to you, that me and Momma and Ricky could all get saved and clean and all that. But Momma and Ricky, they lied to me one too many times.

“We could be a family,” Ricky said, trying to take my hand.

And when I looked at him again, I finally saw clear. I got to remembering why we was in this mess in the first place, why I got so low, why I felt like I couldn’t take no more, how all alone in the world you and me were ’til Khaki and Graham loved us back to being whole. I ripped my hand away, like a green stem from a carrot. “Let me tell you ’bout family,” I hollered. “Family is there for each other. Family supports each other and loves each other and makes them hard decisions easy. Family don’t take the easy way out.”

Ricky and Momma, they looked all shocked and shaken. But them words reaffirmed in me like the Nicene Creed in church that I had done a good thing by letting you go. It hurt like an appendectomy with no anesthesia. But it was right.

Ricky, he was getting all mad, and I knew he might kill me. But it didn’t matter none. I was gonna be free a’ him if it was getting to Jesus that did it.

“You just walked right out on me, you bastard!” I said real low and mean at Ricky. “You took away my childhood and my child, so don’t you come back here now saying we can be family.” Then I hollered at the top of my lungs, “We won’t never be family!”

Ricky lunged at me, and I could feel them hands wrapping ’round my throat. Everything, it got all still and quiet. He wasn’t really squeezing or nothing. I was just faintin’ like normal when things got tough.

Momma, you could hear her screaming at Ricky to stop. But I couldn’t really make out nothin’ but the cock of a pistol. And I knew my time here was done. And I thought a’ your sweet, sweet face.

But Ricky’s hands, they loosened right up and my body fell to the ground. Somebody was sayin’, “What part of restraining order don’t you understand?”

Next thing I remember, Buddy, he was stroking my hair, my head in his lap, and saying, “You’re gonna be just fine. It’s gonna be all right.”

The old me, I woulda cried and carried on, feeling trapped right like a raccoon in an animal control pen. The new me, she had choices.

“Buddy, I gotta get out of here,” I whispered. It musta been the lack a’ oxygen that give me the courage, but I heard myself saying, “Buddy, I’m such a wreck. You need to stay far, far away from me.” I closed my eyes for a second and said, “How could you still like me after what I done?”

Buddy shrugged and smiled down at me. “My grandmomma, she used to tell me that I would find one woman that I would always keep loving and worshipping the ground she walked on—don’t matter what she did.”

Surely he wasn’t saying that woman were me. “Only one woman?”

He nodded. “There’s plenty a’ women a man could make a life with and be happy with. But only one he’s gonna be so taken with that he thinks she cain’t do no wrong. And she said I oughta keep looking ’til I find that girl.”

I got to thinkin’ on that look Buddy give me, that one that made me feel right smart and pretty.

“Only one,” I repeated. “No wonder you’re so afraid of being alone forever.”

He put his hand on my cheek real gentle. “Oh, I ain’t afraid of that anymore.”

And you’re not gonna believe this. I wasn’t afraid anymore either.

When you plant them seeds in the ground, you got to believe that they’re gonna sprout right up. If you just know real deep in your heart that they’re gonna grow into somethin’ amazing, that’s half the battle. Khaki, she says all the rest a’ life is like that too. She says I learned how to open up and believe in good things. And they came right to me.

Maybe.

All I know is, on the same day Ricky got locked up for violating his restraining order and resisting arrest, that letter, it come from ECU. Mrs. Petty, she got some friend up in the admissions office that worked right hard on getting me in and all ready for the spring semester. And I was real proud. But I was also real sad because weren’t no way I could afford to get outta here and go. I was so close to escaping Momma and Ricky and all my mistakes I could damn near taste it. But math, it don’t lie. My scholarships would cover half. My canning and going to the markets, they’d get me through another fourth after I paid my living expenses. But that left a big ole chunk, a hole I didn’t have no way to fill up. Didn’t make no sense to come outta school with all sorts a’ loans when you’d be doing the same job either way.

So I was gonna go online. It were right much cheaper. I could stay at Graham and Khaki’s, keep you and Alex and Grace and pay my own way.

I am going to get an education. I was trying to be real positive. Girls like me, we didn’t get that kind of opportunity all too often.

But I found myself looking up to heaven anyhow. You know, just in case. “Lord, if you find it fit, I sure would like to get outta here and go to college.”

Graham and Khaki, they’d have paid my way. But I wouldn’t let ’em. Ain’t no way.

I got to breathing in all that fresh, freezing air on my way to the mailbox, feeling right selfish for wanting more and not counting my blessings. I sat on the curb, real sprawled out with the mail all over tarnation.

Right there, in the stack, was a big manila envelope addressed to me. I held it away, all scared like, a postal worker in an anthrax scare. I weren’t real sure I wanted to know what was in that package. ECU, they couldn’t just take back my acceptance letter, could they? I breathed in real deep, ripped the top open, and there it was. The answer to my prayer, the best early Christmas present a girl could imagine. Right there was a big, thick contract for my cookbook. I unfolded a note from Patrick that said, You’re the only woman in the developed world who doesn’t have e-mail. The entire board loves the cookbook. We’d like to publish it. Congrats! Two more of these checks will be coming—one when we finish the edits and one when the book comes out. Royalty information is enclosed. P.S. If we’re going to work together you have to get an e-mail account!!

I flipped over that other thin, narrow piece of paper. It had my name on it right there in black ink. I got to gaspin’ and feeling like I might pass out right on the curb. It was three thousand dollars. And I was gonna get two more a’ them checks too.

Ask and ye shall receive. It’d been that easy. The advance check that Patrick weren’t even sure I’d get had arrived. And so had I.

I cain’t tell you how long I sat on that curb, bathing in the light of the sun, the way it warms you right through the cold, my eyes burnin’ a hole in that check I stared at it so hard. I ain’t never got one check that big in my entire life. It musta got to be five o’clock because Buddy drove by in that big, old diesel truck, honking the horn and rolling down the window. He put her into park. You could just leave your truck in the middle of the street because nobody ever came down the road anyhow.

“Whatcha doing there, girly?” he asked. He threw out the sprig of Lord only knows what that he’d plucked from the field and been chewing on.

I looked up at him real serious.

Then I whispered, “I asked God to help me go to college. He put this right in the mail.” I stood up and showed him my check.

Buddy whistled. But you could tell somethin’ in his face, it had changed. It were like the teeny shift in the color of a green bean that lets you know it’s been preserved. He turned to look at me, putting his hands on my shoulders, real dangerous like he might kiss me or something. But he just said, “Oh, Jodi. I’m so proud of you.”

Then I did something I ain’t never done sober. I stood on my tiptoes, threw my arms around Buddy’s neck, and kissed him right on the lips. And it wasn’t like a first kiss, neither. None a’ that awkwardness of whose lips go where and clankin’ teeth. It was like that amazing second kiss, deep and slow and real passionate. I cain’t tell you exactly how long it lasted, but it weren’t like any kiss I’d ever had. It felt pure and sweet coming off his lips. It were right near, something like, well, love.

I give his hands a real tight squeeze, then I let go and started backing away toward the house.

“Hey, wait,” Buddy said. “Do you think—” He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his blue jeans and looked down at his boots, real fidgety. “Do you think I could maybe take you to dinner sometime once you get all settled in?”

Buddy, he was as nervous as a preschooler on his first day. But me, I was calm, cool, and collected. I put my hands in my back pockets. I had to bite my lip to keep the smile from ripping my face clean in two. “I think I’d like that.”

Then I turned real quick. And I got to tell you, baby girl, it’s one of the best damn feelings in the world to have a man watch you walk away and know, deep in your heart, that he’d never let you wander too far.