The Mothers(16)

At work, Nadia did the tasks Mrs. Sheppard assigned her: calling caterers for the Ladies Auxiliary luncheon, proofreading the church bulletin, scheduling toy donations at the children’s hospital, photocopying registration forms for the summer day camp. She tried to do everything perfectly because when she made a mistake, Mrs. Sheppard gave her a look. Eyes narrowed, lips pursed somewhere between a frown and a smirk, as if to say, look what I have to put up with.

“Honey, you need to do this again,” she would say, waving Nadia over. Or, “Come on, now, pay attention. Isn’t that what we hired you for?”

To be honest, Nadia wasn’t exactly sure why the pastor and his wife had hired her. They pitied her, she knew, but who didn’t? At her mother’s funeral, in the front pew, she’d felt pity radiating toward her, along with a quiet anger that everyone was too polite to express, though she’d felt its heat tickling the back of her neck. “Who is in a position to condemn? Only God,” the pastor had said, opening his eulogy. But the fact that he’d led with that scripture only meant that the congregation had already condemned her mother, or worse, that he felt her mother had done something deserving of condemnation. At the repast, Sister Willis had pulled her into a hug and said, “I just can’t believe she did that to you,” as if her mother had shot Nadia, not herself.

On the Sunday mornings that followed, her father never gave up knocking on her door but Nadia always turned away in bed, pretending to be asleep. He wouldn’t force her to go to church with him. He didn’t force her to do anything. Asking her already required enough energy. Sometimes she thought that she ought to join him; it would make him happy if she did. But then she remembered Sister Willis whispering into her ear and her stomach turned cold. How dare anyone at that church judge her mother? No one knew why she’d wanted to die. The worst part was that Upper Room’s judgment had made Nadia start to judge her mother too. Sometimes when she heard Sister Willis’s voice in her head, a part of her thought, I can’t believe she did that to me either.

At Upper Room, Nadia tried not to think about the funeral. Instead, she focused on the little jobs assigned to her. And they were all little because Mrs. Sheppard, brusque and businesslike, was the type of person who’d rather do something herself than show you how. (The type who would prefer to give a man a fish not only because she could catch a better one herself, but because she felt important being the only thing standing between that man and starvation.) Nadia hated how much time she spent studying Mrs. Sheppard and anticipating her desires. In the mornings, Nadia stood in front of her closet, searching for an outfit the older woman would like. No jeans, no shorts, no tank tops. Only slacks and blouses and modest dresses. As a California girl who rarely wore anything that didn’t show her legs or shoulders, Nadia didn’t own many outfits that met Mrs. Sheppard’s standards. But she hadn’t been paid yet and she couldn’t bring herself to ask her father for money, so a few nights a week she hunched over the bathroom sink, dabbing at the deodorant stains on the armpits with a wet towel. If Mrs. Sheppard noticed the repeated outfits, she didn’t say anything. Most days, she barely acknowledged Nadia at all, and Nadia couldn’t decide which was worse, the criticism or the indifference. She saw the way the first lady looked at Aubrey Evans—softly, as if a hard look might break her. What made that other girl so special?

Nadia had run into Aubrey one morning outside the bathroom, both girls jolting at the sight of each other. “Hi,” Aubrey said. “What’re you doing here?” She was still wearing that floppy hat and baggy cargo shorts that made her look like a mailman.

“Working,” Nadia said. “For Mrs. Sheppard. I do her bitch work, basically.”

“Oh.” Aubrey had smiled but she seemed skittish, like a delicate bird landing on your knee. Too loud a motion, too wild a gesture, and she’d be sent flapping back into the trees. Her yellow flip-flops had sunflowers in the center, as if they were blooming from between her toes. Watching her flounce around in them, Nadia wanted to rip the flowers off. How dare she enjoy something so stupid? She imagined Aubrey Evans in the shoe store, passing rows of sensible black sandals and plucking that sunflower pair off the shelf instead. As if she believed herself deserving of every flourish.

One afternoon, when the campers had gone home, Mrs. Sheppard hugged Aubrey and guided her into her office for tea. What would it be like to sit in there? Not drop envelopes on the desk or duck her head in the doorway to ask a question but to sit. Did the pink curtains look more purple? Were the photos of Luke on the desk angled so that she might be able to see his smile from the couch? Nadia tried to refocus then on the envelopes she was stuffing, but it was too late. Her mind was flooded. Luke, the boy, squeezing between his parents in the front pew and tugging at his tie, or sitting in front of her in Sunday School, where she studied him instead of the Bible, memorizing the swirl of his curly hair. Luke clomping around in cleats after football practice, or ripping through the church parking lot blasting music that made the old folks clamp hands over their ears. Her stomach leapt, like she’d missed a stair. Grief was not a line, carrying you infinitely further from loss. You never knew when you would be sling-shot backward into its grip.

—

THAT NIGHT, before falling asleep, Nadia opened her nightstand and felt around for the baby feet. A gift, if you could call it that, from the free pregnancy center after she’d learned her test was positive. The counselor Dolores gave her a plastic bag full of pamphlets with titles like “Caring for Your Preborn Baby,” “Secrets of the Abortion Industry,” and “Can the Pill Kill You?” Under a handout titled “True Love Waits,” the counselor had tucked a purple Precious Milestones card, explaining the stages of a baby’s development, week by week. Attached to the card was a lapel pin, a pair of tiny golden feet in the exact shape and size, Dolores told her, as those of her own eight-week-old baby.