Future Home of the Living God(67)

Her truth. It’s like she’s bent two electric wires in my brain together. I feel sparks.

“I’m so tired! You and your fucking truth!”

She glares at me and I know what she’s thinking. I’m not grateful that she came back to the city, that she found out where I was, that she somehow got a job at the hospital using impossible-to-obtain fake papers, got a job in food service, handled all that meat and meat-based substance. All for me.

“I know you want me to lie,” she says bitterly. “Well, tough. I can’t. I wish the baby had never happened.”

I jump to my feet, now, sizzling with anger.

“Oh, do you? Never happened? How easy, I wish. I wish, I wish. I wish I’d never been adopted. How’s that? How absurd is it to wish something never had happened?”

“Ah, well . . .”

Now she’s quiet and gets all reflective. In a moment I know that I will be ashamed, for as usual I have gone too far. It will be me who apologizes, me who says how sorry I am, because the next thing she’ll let me know is how hurt she is. Stricken to the core. Wish you’d never been adopted? How much truth is there in what you just said? She’ll say that, or maybe she’ll just maintain that little-girlish studied silence that even infuriates Glen.

But to her credit, Sera only says, “Enough.” She lifts her strong, thin hand, so pale in the almost dark that it shines like porcelain.

“Your hand, it looks so saintly, like a statue,” I say, my voice all sour and harmed.

She doesn’t take that bait, either. We don’t go toward the old Catholic business, although there’s an attraction to go there, a pull. Maybe we need a fight, to warm us up, because we can’t seem to take the right turn out of the tangle of our irritations. Though I must admit she’s trying harder than I am, for she manages not to go much further than “We haven’t heard much from your pope.”

And I can’t really parry that, so I just sit back down and feel the letdown, the emptiness, the resentment over the fact that nobody but me appreciates your presence here on earth. I’ll just have to appreciate you twice as hard. I’ll appreciate you for everyone. I think of Eddy’s letter of happiness, and the hug that Sweetie gave me. Before I know it I say to Sera, “Maybe it’s a cliché, you know, about warmth and acceptance, Mom, but my birth family was real glad for me up there.”

I feel her stiffen, and I know that I’ve hit the bulls-eye, which doesn’t make me feel in the least bit better, but now it’s too late.

“Oh,” she says very quietly, “well, they would. I mean, Cedar, it’s easy to say how marvelous your being pregnant is, but when it comes right down to it, you know, the hard thing is to look clearly at the situation. The tough thing is to see the problems it presents.” She nods to herself, clearly steaming inside. Now that we’re equally hurt, I go in for the last word.

“There’s nothing wrong with showing a little positive emotion, Mom; it won’t kill you to be loving.”

But now I’ve taken it right over the edge, I guess, because Sera’s head slowly bends and her shoulders curve and her face is in her hands. As soon as she sobs, I’m a fountain of tears, and after a while we are both moaning and hiccuping. And that’s it—a not untypical Cedar/Sera fight, no lasting hurt done, as long as we end up crying in each other’s arms.

*

Once most of the employees go home, the white-haired lady unlocks the door and lets us out so we can go to the bathroom. We take some rags from the mop closet to wash ourselves with, and scuttle down the hall behind her. She brings us to a special, private bathroom that must have been constructed for the use of the postmaster or one of the higher-up postal officials, and here again, she locks us in. She says she’ll be back later and she walks away, jangling the keys on her belt. I’m not sure what all the locking and unlocking means, but I assume that there must be postal workers who do not know that we are hiding in the building.

The bathroom’s made out of that gold-pink stone, polished, plus a brown marble trim. The mirrors are framed in brass but the faucets have been replaced with new aluminum spigots. The water’s cold of course, but it feels good to wash. We even have a bar of strawberry soap from Mom’s pack. The hospital mirrors were made of reflective steel, and my face was a blur. So as I wash and dry my body, I am overcome with the sin and embarrassment of pride. While Mom is in the toilet stall, I look at myself in a real mirror for the first time since I was at home, and I marvel at my breasts. They are like big fake breasts, magazine breasts, completely drop-dead gorgeous. They stick straight out and when I put them back into their old worn bra they swell—great cleavage. I turn back and forth, catching the light, dazzled with myself—my skin is so clear, my hair so thick. And you’re this giant ball, hard and resilient, sticking straight out over my skinny legs. It is a shame to cover up such glory with long underwear, overalls, boots, a jacket. I’d love to wash my hair but Mom says that we should ask how long we’ve got. We don’t know what’s going to happen to us. So I jam a dark blue postal-worker stocking cap on over my hair and when the white-haired lady lets us out, into a darkened hall this time, I follow her.

“We’re loading now,” she says to Mom, and we slip through the dim night out to the dock where the back of a semitrailer truck stands, its back door rolled up and open. It is a shimmery, prickling, peaceful night. A slim man wearing an earflap hat gestures us forward, onto the truck. We step into the shadow of the trailer and hunch through a narrow opening past stacks of mail crates. I only see that the slim man is Hiro when we reach the front of the trailer, just behind the cab, where there is a sort of cage—protection against the mail crates in case they topple. He helps us into the thin space and shows us hammocks, bottles of water, quilted blankets—the kind movers use to protect tabletops. There are two black down jackets and two sets of heavy-duty snow boots. A bag of food and a covered bucket.