The Same Sky(3)

In the Detroit airport, after Janeen’s announcement, Jake told me he was done. In the Fuddruckers restaurant next to Gate C17, he grabbed my hand and begged me to stop. Exhausted and low, I agreed to deactivate our adoption file, to close this chapter, to move on with grace, gratitude, and all that crap. We embraced, ignoring the stares of the other Fuddruckers patrons. I felt, when we were aloft and sailing through the sky toward Austin, that maybe we would be okay. But then Naomi had chosen us, and baby Mitchell had come.

The night before, I’d fed him. Small and dark, with a cap of black curls, Mitchell had opened his brown eyes and looked at me. “I’m your mommy,” I said, tasting the precious words. I fit a bottle between his lips and watched him suckle, felt his body ease. As I held him, he passed with a tiny shudder from wakefulness to sleep. The moon outside his window was full. I was full. And then the agency called.


I went to Jake, brought him a beer. He opened it and drank, then I grabbed the can and took my own mouthful. The beer made the pain a bit less sharp, just for the evening. “Oh, God,” I said, sitting down next to Jake, breathing the sultry air. The moon was still round and bright.

“I wish I knew what the point of this was,” said Jake. “Or would you say were?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “and I don’t care.”

“Fair enough,” said Jake.

People always seem surprised when they first meet me and Jake. He’s good-looking and sure of himself, a blond former football star. In contrast, I’m nervous and dark-haired, more comfortable in the backcountry than at a country club. If Jake is a lion, regal and handsome, I’m a wren: fragile, easily spooked, ready to take flight. Somehow, though, it works. At night, I tuck myself into a ball, and Jake surrounds me, and I am warm.

In the moonlight, I saw a figure emerge from Beau and Camilla’s house next door. “Hello?” called Camilla. As she approached, I could see she was carrying a metal pot.

“We’re drinking on the swing,” admitted Jake.

“I am so sorry,” said Camilla. Her Nigerian accent made the words especially sad somehow.

“Did you see them take the baby?” I asked.

Camilla hesitated, then nodded. Camilla and Beau had two daughters who had inherited their father’s light hair and their mother’s feisty attitude. “I made soup,” said Camilla, unlatching our gate.

“Thanks,” I said. I made a move to stand, but Camilla shook her head.

“I’ll put it in the kitchen,” she said, climbing our three front steps, opening the door. I heard her set the pot on our stove, and then she reappeared. “We’re here, if you need anything,” she said. “I mean, we’re there,” she said, pointing.

“Thanks,” Jake and I said in unison. We watched Camilla walk across the alley back to her home, where her family waited for her.





3




Carla


I WAS SEVEN YEARS old when a black car pulled up outside my grandmother’s house (which was also my house, as I have mentioned). I had just returned from doing the washing in the river, rubbing my hands raw getting all the dirt out of strangers’ pants or worse: the pants of people I knew! I hated the way my skin grew red and chapped, how I couldn’t stop myself from pulling ribbons of dead skin from my fingers. But my grandmother was old, her own hands curled with arthritis that only a few sips of guaro would ease. She hung the clothes on a rusted wire, and my twin brothers toddled around her in circles, their feet caked in mud and God knew what else.

The car slid to a halt. I squinted against the sun, watched as a fat woman stepped from the driver’s side and put her hands on her hips. Smoothing the front of her dress, my grandmother moved toward the woman. They spoke in hushed tones, my grandmother looking down and nodding, her lips pinched together in a way that meant she was scared.

My grandmother was not scared of much. She kept a crowbar underneath our pallet and had twice prevented robberies with her loud voice alone. No one who knew us would dare to steal from Ana—everyone understood that she was doing her best to raise her grandchildren in an uncertain world. But as jobs dried up and bad men grew more powerful than good, desperate strangers began walking farther from the city, toward neighborhoods like mine. They were looking for money or food, hoping for safety, searching for a way to remain in a place that had become unrecognizable.

My grandmother beckoned my brothers. Carlos and Paola (whom we called Junior) moved toward her with halting steps, pushing their chests forward and then throwing their feet out to catch themselves. Junior wobbled, flapped his arms like a chicken who had been disturbed, then fell on his naked bottom. He began to cry. Carlos waited, and when his brother dried his eyes, Carlos took his hand and helped him rise. They approached my grandmother and the fat woman.

“Only one,” said the fat woman. “I would prefer the quiet one, but the choice is yours.”

“What’s going on?” I said, standing up.

“Nothing to do with you,” said my grandmother. To the fat woman, she said, “They cannot be separated.”

The woman shrugged. She wore a tight tank top and had large breasts. Her jean shorts said “Sweetie” on the back pocket. I liked her shoes, which were called jelly sandals and could be bought at the market in the city.

“The mother only paid for one,” said the woman. “I’m busy. Let’s get this part over with before the whole neighborhood gets involved.” (It was true that people had begun to swarm around, sniffing trouble like a dog smells food.)