Take My Hand(95)

Rather than mention any of my tortured past, I just tell Erica how, at forty-eight years old, I experienced a change of heart and began the process of adopting a child out of the foster care system. I pass Erica my phone so she can see a picture of you. She shows it to India.

“She’s precious. How old you say she is?”

“Twenty-three.”

It is not lost upon me that I’m talking to two motherless women, deprived of this opportunity by circumstance rather than choice. I have exercised a choice and that has been a powerful thing. Even as a single mother, the system favors me because of my status as a doctor. For Erica and India, the adoption process would have been more difficult. The judge scrutinizes you more closely if you’re poor. Disabled. Unmarried. I am still just as aware as ever that there is work to be done in this world.

After she gives me back the phone, Erica looks at me again with that grown face, which I find unnerving. It is as if I am now the child and she is the adult in the room.

“Let me get the cake.” She returns with two saucers. “I used to waitress. Did you know that?”

I shake my head. It’s a sponge cake covered in strawberries. Strawberries are India’s favorite, she explains. The taste and texture are perfect, light and airy, something a professional baker would have been hard-pressed to beat. She asks me if I want coffee and I gratefully accept. As I eat, I remember that first day I met the family, the time Mrs. Williams fed me the stew cooked over a hole in the ground. I had never seen anybody cook like that. The Williamses had always fed my soul, even when I did not know I was hungry. It occurs to me that I have received more from them than I ever could have given.

We talk ourselves breathless. We recall the time their grandmother had walked around the house with flour on the tip of her nose and no one had told her, and that one day we went to Kmart and I spent a small fortune in quarters letting India ride that horse, and how once India brought the white German shepherd into the apartment and Mrs. Williams ran him out with a broom, and how funny it looked when Mace walked into the ocean in his socks. They remember.

I put the empty saucer on the coffee table, and thank her again.

“Don’t thank me no more, alright? Now, Dr. Civil. Tell me something. I’m glad to see you and all. Your visit means the world to us. But why are you here after all these years? I’m not trying to be rude or nothing. But when I heard you was coming, I wondered if everything is okay with you? You not bringing us no bad news, is you?”

I shake my head and sip my coffee. The woman thinks I’m here on a last-rites trip. Still, I don’t quite know how to answer. The question is the same one I faced with Alicia, and it is time for me to come clean. I have tried carefully to consider my intentions. It is not easy to sort everything out. Apologizing to the women after all these years seems demeaning somehow. It works on the assumption that I have been the center of their lives. I also do not want to imply they are people to be pitied. They have passed through this hardship and lived full lives, finding meaning in sisterhood and family, making this beautiful home. And they have won a court case against the US government. They are so much more than little girls wronged by the system.

I speak softly, and, despite my better intentions, it is an apology that comes out. “I wanted to tell you that I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, Erica. I wish, I wish—”

“Miss Civil, there ain’t no need for all that. You hear me? No need.”

Before I can respond, India begins to make a noise. Erica takes her sister’s empty plate.

“Let me get her some more cake. And when I come back in here, we got to watch my talk show because it’ll be on in a minute. You take off your shoes and make yourself comfortable, hear?”

As she smiles at me before leaving the room, I lean back in my chair. I have not seen them in decades, but these women are my family and I am theirs. I was struggling with how I would make up for lost time, but now I know the time was not lost at all. It is just passed. Thankfully, there is more of it. Not as much as I would have liked. But more.





FIFTY




Montgomery

1973


The week after Thanksgiving, Aunt Ros left, and Mama returned to her studio, but only in the mornings. She went out for lunch in the afternoons. She advertised to teach a watercolor class and got three people to sign up the first day. She unwrapped dinner and placed it in porcelain serving dishes, setting the table as if the food had been cooked by her own hands. The three of us sat down to dinner each evening as we had not done in a while.

At night after my parents went to their room, I sat lonely in my bed. Winter had picked up, and it grew cold outside. Lou’s wife had recently given birth and I dared not call him. But as the year neared its end, I couldn’t help myself. I drove downtown around midday and circled the block where his office was located. On the third round, Pamela, his secretary, spied me as she walked down the steps. I leaned over and rolled down the passenger-side window.

“How you doing, Civil?” She waved.

“Just fine. How about you?”

“Busy.”

“Lou around?”

“Yeah, he’s up there.”

“Alright. I’ll stop in and say hello.”

“You do that. Take care, now!”

When Lou opened up, I said, “When y’all start locking the door?”