Cherry Money Baby (15 page)

She closed the binder with a satisfied slap.

“Span is very scientific.” Ardelia made a serious pout. She was poking fun a little. “Now
I,
on the other hand, like to trust my instincts. I’m intuitive by nature and can get an excellent sense of a person just by spending a little time with them.”

“Well,
some
of us,” Spanner interjected, her gaze lingering on Cherry, “prefer to have all the data before we make a judgment.”

Cherry met Spanner’s look. “But you just said people lie on their records. So how do you know they’re not going to lie to
you
?”

Spanner rolled her eyes. “Well,
obviously
that’s part of the —”

But before she could finish, someone knocked at the trailer door. Their first candidate had arrived.

“Okay,” Ardelia said, squeezing the other girls’ hands. “Here we go!”

Cassie Warren, age twenty-six, was mousy and waifish. Cherry couldn’t imagine her frame supporting a big tummy. She was nervous, fidgeting on the love seat, twiddling her beaded necklace. Her grin was airtight.

“So,” Ardelia said, offering the girl a water, “let’s get to know each other.”

“Okay.”

Cherry couldn’t tell if the girl’s eyes were naturally wide or if the sight of Ardelia in her fused-woman outfit was freaking her out.

“Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself?”

“Okay.” They waited while she thought of her answer. “I’m twenty-six. Sagittarius. I’m a teacher’s assistant in Newton, but I also volunteer part-time at the Nature Conservancy. Um . . . I’m very healthy! I’m a vegan, but I still get a lot of protein.”

And
bam
— Cherry was bored. Hippies were boring.

“I like to crochet. And bake — I’m a very good baker.”

Yawn.

“I like to go kayaking with my boyfriend —”

“Wait.” Cherry sat up. “You have a boyfriend?”

Spanner and Ardelia looked startled, like they’d forgotten she was there.

For the first time, Cassie’s grin touched her eyes. “Uh-huh. His name’s Steve.”

“Your boyfriend’s okay with you renting out your womb?”

“Oh, yeah, he’s fine with it. He’s great. He’s a nature guide. You know, for kids?”

Spanner opened the binder. “May we proceed? Ms. Warren’s time is valuable.”

Cherry sat back. “All yours.”

Spanner launched into her interview. The questions seemed designed to root out unstable people.
Do you ever feel depressed? Have you ever been violent?
Cherry could answer yes to both of those. She felt down sometimes, like she was shouting herself hoarse in a big pit with no one listening. And she’d been violent, sure. She once punched a hole through the Sheetrock in her bedroom, the time Stew accidentally threw away the old family photo album.

How do you manage stress?

See answers to one and two.

Ask the right questions, and everyone seemed nuts. Cherry couldn’t think of a single person who wasn’t a little unstable, except maybe Lucas, and he got depressed sometimes, too.

“Have you had a baby before?” Spanner asked.

“No.”

“Have you ever done drugs?”

“No.”

Cherry snorted. It just came out. In her boredom, she’d only been half listening. But . . .
come on.

Everyone was staring at her.

“Sorry,” she said. “But I mean, you’ve
never
done drugs. Not once?”

“No!” Cassie’s fine eyebrows stitched.

Cassie the Hippie didn’t seem like a liar, but Cherry knew a pothead when she saw one. She looked to Spanner, expecting the cynical one to back her up at least, but both women just stared.

“Cherry,” Ardelia admonished in a soft tone, “we’re not here to accuse. If she said she doesn’t, she doesn’t.”

Cherry withered. Maybe she wasn’t supposed to talk
at all
during the interview. (
Demonstrates severe impulse-control problems.
)

Still, though.

“But there was that
one time,
right? Everyone tokes up once. Even tight-ass over here.” She jerked a thumb at Spanner. Cassie laughed a little, then checked herself. Spanner clucked her disapproval. “My brother likes to smoke in the morning,” Cherry offered. “Wake and bake.”

“Steve smokes, too,” the girl said sympathetically.

Cherry felt the others straighten. “My first boyfriend was a pothead,” Cherry said. “Oh, man,
every
time it was all,
Oh, everything feels better when you’re stoned. You’re so tense.
Know what I mean?”

There was a light of recognition in Cassie’s eyes. She eased forward. “It’s true! It’s, like, that’s not me. Why do I have to smoke, too?”

“I hear ya,” said Cherry. “And sometimes,
God,
you just take a pull, just to shut him up, you know?”

“Yeah, and then you feel —”

Cassie’s face fell, the sunshine washed from her features. Her lips moved, trying to re-spindle the words, but it was too late. She glanced at Ardelia, then back at Cherry. “I mean, I haven’t, or I barely
ever
— not anymore, not in years. That’s not
me.
”

“Totally,” Cherry said, folding her arms. She cast Spanner an
I told you so
look.

Cassie burst into tears. Eyes jammed shut, gagging on her sobs, her tiny body shaking in its loose-fitting sundress. She rushed out of the trailer, one hand to her face, the other raised in self-defense.

The three on the couch were frozen.

“Oh, my God, I’m sorry,” Cherry said at last.

“That was . . . impressive,” said Spanner.

“Oh, shit. Oh, shit.” Cherry stood. Ardelia stared up at her, mouth open, blinking her false lashes.

Burning with guilt, Cherry rushed after Cassie. The girl hurried away from the trailer in mad little steps, hugging herself. Cherry called out, and she turned.

“So?”
The force of her tone stopped Cherry in her tracks. “So I get stoned every once in a while. Is that so bad?”

“No!” Cherry said. Her throat constricted. She’d just wanted to prove she was right, to prove she belonged there. She hadn’t meant to wreck this girl’s chances. It hadn’t occurred to her that being an occasional pothead would blow Cassie’s chances — though, of course it would. With so many candidates, how could Ardelia settle for anything less than perfection?

I Don’t Think.

“I really needed this! I really, really needed this! I would have quit weed, I swear! I don’t know what I’m gonna do!” She searched the ground for a solution. “Do you think I
want
to carry someone else’s baby?”

Cherry didn’t know what to say. She’d thought,
Yes, Cassie
had
wanted to carry the baby.
If not, what was the point of the interview?

“You know what? Fuck you!” Cassie surprised them both. The curse didn’t quite fit in her mouth. Her eyes widened, then narrowed again. She savored the words this time. “
Fuck. You.
You’re rich! You don’t know what it’s like!”

Before Cherry could respond, Cassie climbed into a rust-spotted Volvo and slammed the door. She leaned her forehead against the wheel, her shoulders quaking. She sat like that for a while.

When Cherry came back into the trailer, Spanner was scribbling a check. She handed it to her with a flick of the wrist.

“What’s this?”

Ardelia put a hand on Cherry’s shoulder. “Darling, I’m clearly not paying you enough.”

Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday evenings, from four until eight. Wombs on parade. Girls of different heights, weights, and shapes took their turn on the raspberry love seat while Spanner quizzed, Ardelia smiled, and Cherry watched like a judge on
America’s Next Top Mommy.

At first she’d counted the minutes until quitting time, until she could run home to Lucas. But the more she paid attention, the more time seemed to fly as it never had in school or at her old job. This was more interesting than rolling burritos, and she was better at it than school. When the guilt over Cassie the Hippie had faded, Cherry remembered she was
protecting
Ardelia. She was guarding her friend against a bad match, against the lying, greedy, unstable rent-a-moms of the world. She felt like Sherlock Holmes, deducing what Spanner’s personality test couldn’t, simply by watching. Cherry judged and was confident in her judgments.

She learned a lot from their clothes.

Some candidates dressed professionally, as if they were applying for a job at a bank. Others were deliberately casual, in jeans, shorts, or heavy Earth Mother dresses that fell to the ankle but barely covered their planetary cleavage. And some were in between, like the redhead Cherry saw pull up on a bike, walk halfway to the trailer, remove her blazer, untuck her blouse, and muss her hair. Cherry, who would have worn the same sweats every day for the rest of her life if it were socially acceptable, had never realized how much clothes said about a person. The girls chatted on, answering Spanner’s questions, while their outfits whispered subliminal messages:
I’m reliable. I’m spiritual. I’m relaxed. I don’t care what you think.

After Spanner rejected her first work outfit, Cherry took herself on a little shopping spree. It was her first day back at school, and Vi was eager to hang out, but this was something Cherry wanted to do alone. It was shameful, somehow, passing over the thrifty stores like ShagaRelics and Beater Tees and heading instead for Jennifer Walters and Fwoi!, where the mannequins leaned on invisible pianos and held invisible cigarettes in their delicate fingers. She ventured into Raich and Ems, and a salesgirl in a perfect white blouse and mile-high heels trapped Cherry in her tractor-beam smile. Cherry panicked. She pressed her phone to her ear, pretending she’d received a call, and ran out.

After a hellish hour, she came home exhausted, dumping her bags on the bed. She considered herself in the full-length mirror. What did Cherry’s clothes say about her?
Fun!
said her Daisy Dukes.
Sporty!
said the mesh tank top.
Laid-back!
said the busted Chuck Taylors with the laces so old they were like cardboard. Working beside Spanner’s checklist had introduced some new words into Cherry’s regular rotation. Words like
unreliable, unprofessional, unkempt, disinterested, disrespectful.

Dumb,
thought Cherry, and stripped off her old clothes. She rolled on new thigh-high stockings (whoops, a little shorter than she thought they’d be), stepped into the new heels (
Jesus,
they were higher than she’d realized), and shrugged on the simple black skirt and top. There was a band of exposed skin around her thighs where the hem of her skirt didn’t quite reach the top of her stockings. Oh, well. She completed the look with some new Ravishing Ruby lipstick and Ennui eye shadow. Apparently the point of makeup was to make you look exciting yet bored.

“All right,” said the New Cherry in the mirror. “Okay, then.”

Pop whistled when she came into the kitchen. “Looking snazzy.”

Stew looked up from the TV. “Damn, Cherr. Way to class it up.”

She peeked at her reflection in the kitchen window. “It’s just for work.”

That evening the crew was shooting on location, just a few blocks away at the bottling plant. Walking over, she passed dozens of reflective surfaces: the shop windows along Hope Ave., all the tinted windshields and rearview mirrors. She tried to catch herself, to see what she looked like to others, but in each reflection she looked stiff, her eyes flicking back and forth, like someone trying not to look like she was looking at herself.

It was impossible to see herself and be herself at the same time.

The Star Haulers were lined up along Route 9. The craft service guys whistled as she passed, toasting her with steaming Styrofoam cups of coffee. Cherry knocked on Ardelia’s trailer door. Spanner answered. Her eyes bulged.

“No.”

Cherry flinched, pulled at the hem of her skirt. “Whaddya mean
no
?”

Ardelia appeared over Spanner’s shoulder. “Oh, dear.” She covered her mouth, stifling a laugh. “Oh, honey.”

“Come inside,” Spanner said, “before someone thinks we’re soliciting a prostitute.”

From then on, Cherry’s work outfits were selected and vetted by her employer.

She watched how the girls fidgeted. She watched how they spoke with their hands. She watched where their eyes went when they listened. Cherry had never examined
anything
this closely, let alone a stranger, and the long periods of concentration felt funny, like a warm spot between her temples.

She learned a lot watching girls walk from their cars to the trailer. She had a good view from the trailer’s rear window and felt like a spy. Out there, the girls were more themselves, still girls, not
candidates.
They twirled their key rings, adjusted their clothes. One girl with black curls and red cheeks halted halfway, ran back to her car, and drove off, never to be heard from again.

The flighty ones forgot something on the passenger seat, the nervous ones tripled-checked their locks. Some gave themselves psych-up speeches in their makeup mirrors. One girl crossed herself. Another took a sip from a flask. These women had nothing in common, except they all wanted to carry Ardelia Deen’s baby. They all wanted the money: $250,000 (the number was so large, Cherry couldn’t wrap her mind around it). Which meant, on some level, they were all greedy.