Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls(67)

There are arms. My aunt’s, lifting me. The hump of her steps as she is running, running, bringing me to the Trout Hut. She might need an ambulance, I hear her say.

Everything is burning. I don’t understand what has happened.

Are you allergic to bees? she asks me, but she is already speaking to someone else.

This girl, she’s allergic to everything.

My aunt is hysterical. I am playing dead. Moving hurts. My eyes don’t want to open.

And then this moment. A memory that doesn’t change, that needs no revision, no matter how many times I summon it: the sound of gravel rumbling under tires, the speed of Big Beau. My mother. My mother running to me, yanking me from my aunt’s soft arms.

What happened? she says. I knew something was wrong. When I open my eyes, my mother’s face is there. She’s kissing my cheeks, saying, I came fast as I could.

According to my Grandma Rose, my mother was frosting the cake when it happened. She was smoothing the chocolate with a spoon when she felt it, that thing, dropped silver to the floor. Something’s wrong, she said. I have to go. She started driving before the car door was even shut. No seat belt, no shoes.

That mother-daughter power, she’d say, for years, it’s bigger than logic.

The bees stung my face, my eyelids, my hands, even my scalp. In the car, I stared at my thumbs swelling like dough, and I said my good-byes. I will die at my own birthday party. How unfair. What I knew about bees sprung from Macaulay Culkin’s body in a casket. Turns out, I was not allergic to them.

But that mother-daughter thing—I believe in it now. It’s something that can spool out forever like a string between two cups. A thread that will hum when you need it.

SUMMER, 1976

PLANTATION, FLORIDA

The Attorney wants my mother to sign the papers. She’s back home now, an empty bedroom. There is no evidence of what the past nine months had meant—no baby clothes, no bassinet, no embroidered name, no pictures.

I won’t sign them, she says. I didn’t even want to do this.

But you did do this, says The Attorney. We had a deal.

My grandfather and grandmother look at my mother. They motion for her to go on, pick up the pen. They have already received the checks, signed their own papers.

Not unless you tell me what I had, says my mother. A boy or a girl?

I can’t tell you, child, says The Attorney. But I still need you to sign.

Fifteen minutes later, my mother walks The Attorney back out to his car. She is barefoot. Her face is swollen, pale. I imagine she uses the same voice she uses now when she wants something. Please, she says. The mosquitos are out.

I can’t tell you that, says The Attorney. Legally, I can’t.

Please, says my mother. She holds her stomach. Flat. According to the hospital paperwork I read now, my mother is sixteen years old and ninety-eight pounds.

The Attorney opens his car door. He bends to get in, but pauses. He looks back at my mother.

When your child gets married one day, he says, they will probably change their name.

1976

HOLLYWOOD, FLORIDA

My baby, she’s mine—Sharon Gelbwaks must get used to saying this, saying it aloud to anyone who will ask, repeating it until it goes true.

She’s heard the horror stories—birth mothers changing their minds. Sometimes in the hospital, sure, but also, sometimes, later. She’s heard about mothers refusing to sign the papers, refusing to let go. She’s heard of mothers getting clean, realizing what they had done in that black haze of greed, coming back, Mine. Mothers were always coming back—what mother wouldn’t? As Sharon looks at the newborn in her room, sleeping, she can’t imagine it. Not coming back for her. Perfect, this baby, her baby, the way her head feels like velvet, the way her skin smells like paper. Oh, the noises! A real, human girl, my baby, it doesn’t matter where she came from, what the birth mother ate during her pregnancy, what she looked like, no, the baby is Sharon’s, whomever she and Peter would mold her to be, and they would protect this child for the rest of her life. This baby would grow up different, not looking like anyone else, the hair, she thinks, look at this hair, but Sharon feels prepared for these lessons. She feels prepared to learn.

One day, in J. C. Penney, Sharon pushes the baby, her baby, around in a stroller. She is looking for towels, home goods, when she sees the woman.

This woman is too old to be the mother, not a teenager—she’s sure. Could it be the grandmother? An aunt? The Asian woman pauses, looks into her stroller.

An Asian baby, she says. So cute, this baby.

The Asian woman has two sons with her. They have dark skin—island boys. The boys tug on the leg of her jeans. These could be the brothers, Sharon thinks. They must be.

Thank you, says Sharon. She’s mine.

Doesn’t look like you.

She’s mine.

How old’s the baby?

Couple of months, says Sharon, before pushing the stroller through the aisle, hooking a right, and exiting the mall.



1976

HOLLYWOOD, FLORIDA

She sees them everywhere—Asian babies, hapa babies—in her dreams, in the grocery store, at the mall. All babies look the same to my mother—like old white men, indistinguishable, really—but this baby, her baby, would look different. Her baby would look like an island girl, she was sure, a warm tone to her skin, tiny eyes, the hair.

Would her baby recognize its own mother? She is taking pills to keep her breasts from lactating, but would they drip at the sound of her baby’s cry? There must be something, she thinks, between mother and child, a magnetic jolt between the two that cannot be eased apart. But how long would it take to find her? Where would she be—in which town? How would it ever happen?