Wildwood (9 page)

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Authors: Drusilla Campbell

BOOK: Wildwood
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“Pain?”
“I’ll see you get a sedative and a local. Unless you’re super-sensitive, that should be adequate.”
“And afterwards? Can I fly home that weekend?”
“To be on the safe side, I’d prefer you wait a couple of days.” He spoke into his telephone and a moment later the Asian nurse appeared beaming in his doorway. “Marilu’ll do the scheduling, Ms. Shepherd.” He shook her hand. “Just remember you can cancel. Up to the last minute and it’s okay.”
 
 
Hannah dropped Liz at the doctor’s office and drove on to Resurrection House in the Alameda district, trying not to worry. Liz looked wonderful, not at all like a person with cancer. But she was being secretive and to Hannah, secrets meant trouble. The night before the three of them had sat up late in the kitchen drinking wine, snacking on multiflavor jelly beans, catching up—not important talk, that took a little time to get into. Liz had seemed distracted, as if there were something she wanted to say but was reluctant or apprehensive to do so. Hannah wanted to ask why she had to see a doctor but knew better than to push. Liz liked to reveal things in her own way, in her own time. Hannah had expected an explanation in the car this morning but instead Liz talked about scuba diving, as if Hannah gave a damn where the best reefs were. The longer Liz kept her secret, the worse it had to be. So if it wasn’t cancer? . . . AIDS? Hannah ran a stop sign across from the Swenson Building and a cop came up behind her, flashing his lights. Once she would have explained to the officer that she wasn’t actually a careless driver; but her smiling innocence wouldn’t get her anywhere now. As far as she could tell, the police academy made sure each girl and boy in blue—this one no more than twenty years old, a protoadult—hated their mothers and considered everyone a felon, even a middle-aged housewife driving a Volvo. She accepted the citation and drove on without saying good-bye.
Mostly she was grateful to the police. Grateful for their willingness to do a nasty job. But she didn’t like that she lived in a world needing so much armed control. What would happen if there were fewer laws, fewer cops? Would crime and violence be so much worse? This was an experiment no one would ever be willing to try; but until someone did, how would they ever know if all the money spent on cops and prisons and weapons really made a difference? She thought what good all that cash could do caring for babies, building good houses, planting trees and helping people lead decent and productive lives.
Was she weird for having these thoughts? Did anyone else her age ever consider the possibility that less—of everything—might be better? Jeanne said she was a closet anarchist. She meant it affectionately, but Hannah heard criticism.
 
 
Until the late 1950s, the Alameda district had been the enclave of San Jose’s rich and influential families. Many of the homes were in the Spanish colonial style, painted cantaloupe and salmon and terra cotta. The others were what Hannah called Iowa homes: built of wood and solid as the Constitution, two- and three-stories with bay and dormer windows, and all enclosed by wide verandas. When taxes and the flight to the suburbs impoverished the neighborhood, the houses had been converted to apartments, offices or group homes like Resurrection House. The district had subsided into gentle neglect. All this before San Jose became the capital city of Silicon Valley.
As she locked the car, Hannah heard from somewhere out of sight the forbidden click-click-click of a rotating sprinkler. At the same time she wanted to knock on the owner’s door to deliver a lecture on drought, she wanted to fall into the sound and live in it forever.
It would be nice if once in a while she could just think one uncomplicated thought.
From Junipero Serra Elementary School around the corner, came the noise of children at recess. The clang of a tether ball chain against its hollow pole reminded her of sun-softened playground asphalt hot through the soles of her shoes, and the burn of rope on her wrist as she whipped the ball around the pole. Liz always beat her at the game. Liz was tough, determined as Jeanne in her own way.
Please, God, not AIDS.
A car sped past, stinking the air with exhaust fumes and boomy rap. Its horn blasted. Hannah jumped. Pulse hammering, she leaned against the hood of the Volvo for a long moment. She stood up straight and shook her head to clear it, and Angel moved in to occupy the vacated space. Hannah swung her straw bag over her shoulder and hurried up the sidewalk to Resurrection House.
Set back from the street behind a plot of dusty yard, the style was Iowa, painted dark gray with peeling white trim. Wilty pink, white and cerise ivy geraniums hung in baskets and struggled out of oak barrels on the tired-looking veranda. The house was home to twelve drug-damaged children and their caretakers, residents by special arrangement with the courts and the departments of Welfare and Child Protective Services. Eventually it was hoped the young mothers would come into residence as well and learn to be responsible parents. Hannah believed in the goals of Resurrection House, but she doubted the bit about the mothers.
The screen door had a right angle tear and creaked. Hannah opened it and stepped inside. She smelled the mix of children, food and disinfectant and her spirits rose and her eyes filled with tears of gratitude.
Menopause tears,
Jeanne called them. Excessive.
“Well, good morning to you, Mrs. Tarwater.” Betts stood in one of the doorways off the foyer, tall and fat. She wore a bright voluminous muumuu and blue rubber flip-flops. Hannah could not be sure but she thought the perfect helmet of gray bubble curls was a wig.
Hannah held up a paper bag. “Muffins.”
“You spoil us.” The woman laughed. “If you get me used to eating homemade muffins with my coffee, I’m apt to start thinking I’ve got a right to them.”
“That’s the whole point, Betts. You do.”
Hannah followed Betts and the slap of her flip-flops on the hardwood floor into a room furnished with a scarred wooden desk and table, several chairs and a brown leather couch, worn and discolored. On one wall beside a cluttered bulletin board a poster showed a child teetering at the edge of a precipice with a great-winged angel guarding her from behind. The angel had a strong, unsexed face like the Statue of Liberty.
Hannah took a plate from the cupboard and emptied the muffins onto it. Holding one in her mouth, she offered the plate to Betts. An automatic coffeemaker sat on the table and beside it a rack of cups. Hannah lifted the mug with her name on it and poured coffee. At home she’d never tolerate such coal black brine, but at Resurrection House it was part of the shared struggle. While her coffee cooled she opened the closet and sorted through hangers until she found the plain white smock bearing her name tag:
HANNAH, VOLUNTEER MOTHER
. As she slipped it on, she chatted with Betts about trivialities and overcame her urge to share her concern about Liz. Bett’s worry list was long enough already.
Since leaving her convent after Vatican II, Betts had worked in whatever capacity presented itself to do whatever good she could. That was how she had explained her work on the day Hannah arrived at Resurrection House having been recommended by Father Joe, the retired rector at St. Margaret’s.
“You might find some peace working there, Hannah.” His eyes had pierced and offended her with their directness. She thought Dan must have told him she was depressed. She had almost told Father Joe he should mind his own business even if he had known her all her life.
Hannah finished her coffee and muffin and walked to the nursery. When she opened the door, the vertical blinds clacked at the windows and the draft smelled of dust and cars and from somewhere along the street, frying bacon. Four cribs were lined up side by side. In each small bed, a baby lay sleeping.
Angel, the daughter of a sixteen-year-old crack addict, had come to Resurrection House from the preemie ward at County Hospital. Tiny limbs and skin like vinyl, the wizened face of an old woman: Hannah wept when she first saw her. From the start, she had known that Angel needed to be held, to feel a warm body against hers, and the beat of a steady heart. But the baby screamed and recoiled from the touch of a hand on her skin. A sudden noise sent her into spasms.
Betts allowed Hannah to convert the room’s old-fashioned walk-in closet into a private nursery for Angel. For weeks the infant slept the clock around in darkness, swaddled tight, with the taped sound of a human heart beating beside her. When her skin desensitized Hannah held her, and they rocked for hours at a time in the blackness. In late spring as Angel finally began to relax, Hannah increased the light in the closet nursery a little every day. At last, near midsummer, Angel looked at Hannah, saw Hannah, and did not turn away.
Hannah knew that wherever her soul went after death, it would take the memory of that moment with it.
Her crib was brought into the big nursery, but Angel still slept more than the other drug-exposed babies. She was fragile though her eyes were clear, and she seemed to like being held and fed. For Hannah, she smiled. Now, at ten months, she was delicately made and chirrupy as a three- or four-month-old.
Hannah watched Angel chew and suck on her dimpled fist. In REM sleep, her eyelids fluttered like moth wings. What did she dream of? A bedroom of her own, a soft-eyed dog asleep on the rug beside her crib? Her brows knitted in a V, and she opened her eyes. For a moment they stared up vacantly. Then they focused and she beamed, displaying two nubby pearls in her pink gums. Her reaching arms jerked around in uncoordinated circles.
“Breakfast time, my Angel,” Hannah said. “And then we’ll go to the park.”
 
 
The park was one city block square and planted with old live oak trees through which the sunlight fell like coins. Hannah sat on an iron bench with Angel in her arms, and they watched a pair of noisy boys push and shove each other in and out and over a playground sculpture of wood and rubber provided by a service club. The seats of the old metal swing set beside the sculpture had been stolen, and lengths of useless chain hung from the horizontal bar, limp as wet hair. To conserve water, the city no longer watered the grass and the shrubs and perennials sagged as if despairing. At the edge of the playground, a man with a shopping cart stuffed with green plastic bags scavenged in a trash can.
From behind Hannah a feminine voice said, “Do you mind if I sit here?” Hannah looked up at the speaker, a young woman with a toddler and an infant in a baby carrier. “Your baby’s beautiful. How old is she?”
Hannah paused a heartbeat. “Three months.” She didn’t want to explain why Angel was small and could not yet sit up alone.
Angel eyed the newcomers with interest. The toddler showed her his Tootsie-Pop and she reached for it with normal reflexes that thrilled Hannah.
The young mother sat on the bench and shooed her son off to play. As she adjusted her baby in its canvas carry, she said, “What’s her name?”
“Angel.” Hannah heard the pride in her voice and added, “Angel Elizabeth Jeanne.”
A little make-believe won’t hurt.
“Big name for a little girl.” The young woman opened her eyes wide at Angel and got a smile for her effort. “She’s so petite. What was her birth weight?”
“Five pounds, two ounces.” Ingrid’s weight. Before the words were out, Hannah wanted them back; but the woman would think she was crazy if she tried to explain why she’d lied.
I’m just pretending a while . . .
“Is your husband Mexican?”
Hannah said nothing.
“I mean you’re so fair and she’s so dark. Her eyes are really great. I always wanted brown eyes.”
“Yes,” Hannah said, “he’s Mexican.”
This young woman believed Hannah was Angel’s mother. Why would she think otherwise? Dan might know she was a closet anarchist but to the world Hannah looked like the paradigm of middle-class rectitude. Her word would not be doubted. If Hannah wanted to she could take Angel across the border and they’d fit in easily. Her Spanish was good. They could find a place to live in Ensenada, live for a long time on practically nothing.
The young mother said, “We just moved into that pink Spanishy place near the school. We’ve got half the second floor. It’s not bad but so close to the school and all . . . God, it’s noisy.”
The idea of mothers complaining about kid-noise made them laugh.
“Do you have other children?”
Hannah stroked Angel’s hair. “No.”
Forgive me Eddie, Ingrid. I’m only playing.
“You had to wait a while, huh?” It was a tactful allusion and impossible to be affronted by. “Did you have a hard time?”
“She’s never given me any trouble.”
“Lucky you. This one,” the garrulous girl tapped the nearly bald head just visible at the top of the carrier, “took eighteen hours getting born and now he sleeps all day and cries all night. My husband’s going crazy. He’s in grad school, and he can’t study with all the bawling.”
They talked about feeding routines and sleeping patterns, the pros and cons of disposable diapers. The sun in the cloudless sky shone through the arms of the great oaks, stippling the playground with light. An ice cream truck went by a half-dozen times playing
Babes in Toyland.
Angel fell asleep in Hannah’s arms.

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