A Gate at the Stairs (33 page)

Murph and I both had a lot of schoolwork, and our music sessions dwindled as I took to racing off to the library on my Suzuki. I got a phone message from my advisor and I was forced to drop Wine Tasting, as they had at long last discovered I was underage. The computer had made this mistake with twenty students. My parents would get a partial tuition refund. Across the street in the stadium, football teams were holding spring scrimmages and fans in green and yellow crowded in to cheer them on, even if the games didn’t count. Life was spent in all sorts of ways. I watched
The Thin Red Line
. I watched
Apocalypse Now
.

The real problems, as far as I could see, which was not that far, remained back at the Thornwood-Brinks’, and the temporary removal from their home of the pulverized narcissus bulb tapenade had not solved them.

“I dropped a course, so now I have some extra hours,” I told Sarah as I was leaving one afternoon, thinking she might like more help. When I looked at her, I no longer really knew what I saw.

I felt she could see this, as she said, “Well, we’ll see what happens. I realize I’m not being fair to you, in terms of your schedule and budget. But I’ll try to make it up to you.” A bonus. I had heard of these. They were always fraught. I recalled that promising hand squeeze she had given me those long months ago in January, waiting in the hospital parking lot. And then, recalling more, something she’d said became clear to me: it wasn’t
sleighs
together; it was
slays
together.

A remark like that served what purpose? If only I’d been able to use it in my
Macbeth
paper last term!

Mordancy: there was something that could not really be taught. But it could be borrowed. It could be rubbed up against. It could scrape you like bark.

Once, when I was there alone with Mary-Emma, the phone rang, and when I answered it there was just silence. “Bonnie!” I said sternly. “Is this you?” There were things I would tell her. Things she should know! Things she should know and know now!
“Bonnie?”
And then a familiar voice began to speak. I knew somehow it was the voice of the woman with the beautiful dreads. It was the voice of the woman who did all the deafness jokes. She said, “I’m sorry. I think I dialed the wrong number.”

Then one Monday, when both Sarah and I were there, the phone rang again. I picked it up upstairs and heard someone say, “This is Suzanne, Roberta’s assistant at Adoption Option …” But Sarah had answered it downstairs, so I hung up and went back to Mary-Emma. Steve was still swimming in his bowl, which we had moved to a high shelf in Mary-Emma’s room. She and I were doing our song and dance to Diana Ross’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” There were
oohs
and
ahhs
and Ross’s own breathy
sing-sprecht
at the beginning, which I mimicked, teaching Mary-Emma. When I was very little, it was the only song I knew by a black woman, or the only one my mother knew, for she was the one who had taught it to me. I pointed my thin arms out and up. “‘If you need me, call me.’” I made the fingers to the face sign of talking on the phone. “‘No matter where you are.’” Arms out again, my head smiling and shaking. Mary-Emma did the same. Downstairs the phone rang again and again. “‘No matter how far.’” I could hear Sarah’s voice below: “No. Yes. That’s true.”

I continued with the oblivious and radiant Mary-Emma. “‘No matter where you are, just call my name, I’ll be there in a hurry’”

There was a loud moan from below, which somewhat matched the music. “‘On that you can depend and never worry’” I ratcheted up the volume. “No wind,’” I sang, practically shouting, and then Mary-Emma shouted back, “‘NO WIND!’” “‘No rain,’” I sang. “‘NO RAIN!’” she repeated. And I then lifted her up as I always did and bumped her on my hip in front of the mirror, where we watched ourselves. “‘Or winter’s cold can stop me, baby, if you’re my goal.’”

And then for a brief minute there was anguished wailing from below that had nothing to do with our song, though I kept on with the music, which had a corresponding whooping cry to it, turning up the volume even louder so that we would hear nothing more from downstairs. I kept Mary-Emma busy for almost half an hour with this. She came in on all the sliding moans and dreamy cries, and also on command repeated whatever phrase I’d just sung. “‘Life holds for you one guarantee, You’ll always have me.’” We were practically shouting.

“‘YOU’LL ALWAYS HAVE ME!’”

“‘And if you should miss my love, One of these old days …’”

“‘THESE OLD DAYS!’”

“‘If you should ever miss the arms, that used to hold you so close …, just remember—’”

“‘JUST REMEMBER!’”

“‘—what I told you that day I set you free!’”

“‘SET YOU FREE!’”

And then, during a pause in the song, the front doorbell rang. Just before the chorus. Sarah came dashing up into the nursery. I turned down the music. Sarah was wearing my perfume, the same scent, and her rush upstairs warmed the air with it. Arabian Goddess.

“Mama!” Emmie sang out.

Sarah grabbed her to her chest and began rubbing her back frantically while Emmie played with Sarah’s hair, pulling it straight up and seeing if it would stay or fall.

“Quick, Tassie,” Sarah said in a sibilant whisper full of panic. “Would you answer the door for me, please?”

“Sure.” Then I added, “Uh, what should be my MO?”

“Stall,” she said.

I trudged downstairs. I affected a proprietary saunter.

At the door was a woman who either reminded me of someone I knew or
was
someone I knew, or both.

Both it was: it took a while for it all to come into focus, but quickly it did. She smiled tightly and said, “Hello, Tassie—you probably don’t remember me. Roberta Marshall.”

From the adoption agency. I remembered her well. At least it wasn’t Bonnie herself. That might have been too much for me.

“Yes, I do. Hi.” I shook her hand. I felt a saucy manner come over me, as if I were not Bonnie or the shy McKowen girl but Amber Bowers in the Kronenkee Perkins Family Restaurant. Whatever Roberta’s presence meant here, it could not be good, it seemed to me. She was like the police, but the police dressed up in taupe and beige. A state trooper with earrings. Strangely, I felt protective of the house. I had worked here for what felt like a long time, I guess, and was attached to its very doors and walls more than I realized.

Roberta had never met Amber, so it didn’t matter if I pretended for a spell to be her. My teeth were better—thank you, Bess and Guess!—but if I remained tight-lipped she might never see them. I might be hiding all manner of fangs and fossils and other spittable bits. This secret would give me skank power.

“How’s little Mary? Is she doing well?” Roberta stared straight into my eyes. If only I’d been wearing a hat with a brim I could angle down over them! If only I’d been accessorized more insouciantly—or accessorized at all—I might have felt myself a real match for her.

Everyone, I only noticed now for some reason, called Mary-Emma by a slightly different name, like she was no one at all. “She’s fine,” I said, as if I were talking to a spy. Still standing in the doorway, I sank into one hip and leaned one arm up against the doorjamb. I stared at Roberta without inviting her in. I did not know how to smirk—at least, not that I knew of. Not deliberately. Neither did I have any gum to chew. But I could move my mouth around a little as if there were food in my teeth, and so I did, and then I pursed my lips in a manner that hovered on the edge of incivility. This was new for me and not without its fun.

Function and intention gave Roberta a sturdy demeanor. “Is Sarah here?” she inquired, hoping to clear away me, the riffraff.

“Let me think,” I said. I actually did need to think in order to figure out what further to say. I wasn’t sure what Sarah might want me to do. Roberta was starting to be irked with me. Irritation entered her eyes in a low, cold flame. “Let me go see,” I added.

Upstairs Sarah was already standing in the hall, a little paralyzed, but with Mary-Emma dressed in a pink corduroy jacket and a pink velvet headband around her afro. Mary-Emma’s head was sunk down on Sarah’s shoulder, as if it tired her to be so dressed up; it was getting close to nap time.

“Roberta Marshall’s downstairs,” I said.

“Jesus, I can’t believe she came so soon. I can’t even believe she came today.” Sarah looked paralyzed. But then breathed deeply and brushed past me, with Mary-Emma, to go greet Roberta at the door.

Sarah, too, did not invite her in, so I could see from the landing, where I watched, near an open black trash bag of stuffed animals, a Brio train, and folded baby blankets, that my instincts had been correct. She did not even open the outer door but just stood, slightly braced against the open inner one.

“Hi there, Sarah. And hello there, Mistress Mary,” chirped Roberta from the doorstep through the screen.

Mary-Emma looked at her wordlessly, then buried her face in Sarah’s sleeve again.

“Not quite contrary,” said Roberta, shrugging off the quip.

“You did not make it clear you were coming today,” said Sarah.

“I’m sorry. I thought you understood. Legally, your time is up as foster parents, and if the adoption papers can’t be finalized, we move on to the next couple in line. Which means—”

“Which means what?”

“I was getting to that. It means Mary has to be moved into the regular foster care that we use. Just for the time being, of course.”

“Why can’t we be the foster care?” Sorrow flooded Sarah’s face.

“Because you’re not. Our agency has specific ones we use. There was that problem with your withheld information, which we’ve discussed already. I don’t want to get into that now.”

“Well, we were her foster parents for all these months. I mean, we are still this second, I should think.”

“Your being foster parents has been a technicality, as I explained, until the adoption was finalized. Since you’re not going ahead, we must make other arrangements.”

“You’d move her right now this minute based on a technicality?”

“I’m afraid it’s sort of the law.”

“I need to discuss things further with my husband, I think.”

“You’ve had all this time.”

“Well, yes, but we still need more time. To transition. At the very least. Just to transition. To sit with this decision and make the transition.”

“The law doesn’t offer that kind of comfort zone. I’m sorry. I wish for your sake it did.” And here she slowly opened the outer screen door, insinuating her body over the threshold.

“Hey, Mary! Want to go for a ride?” Roberta stooped to look Mary-Emma in the eyes and made a big, false happy face.

“What are you doing?” Sarah began to lean back into the house.

Roberta began to hold her arms out for Mary-Emma. There was going to be a scene. Sarah swung Mary-Emma away.

“Don’t touch her!” Sarah cried, and Mary-Emma began to whimper.

“You can make it easier for the child,” said Roberta, “or you can make it difficult.” She edged in further, filling the doorway, shoving the screen door now completely behind her hip. She reached out again, worming her fingers around Mary-Emma.

Sarah pulled her brusquely away.

“Sarah,” Roberta said scoldingly. “Don’t make this a tug-of-war.”

Sarah’s face became a mask. “Do you have a carseat?” she asked quietly. Defeat was coming over her. Probably there was a kind of shiny bird or spiny fish that did this, gave away its babies, flailed out at its own family, and did it all disguised as a rock to avoid being eaten.

“Yes, of course,” said Roberta. The most personal matters were supervised by bureaucracies so that humaneness would not interfere and obstruct. Everyone could shrug and plead the little laws of life.

“OK. Well, I’ll walk her to the car. I won’t have you just snatching her in the doorway.”

Sarah walked her to Roberta’s car and put her in the back. “Wait a minute. I have her stuff,” she said, and ran ashen-faced back into the house, grabbing the trash bag from the landing. The original white plastic trash bag had now been replaced with a newer, larger black trash bag, and filled with Mary-Emma’s original dowry, plus some other items—clothes, a Gund Pooh bear, the Brio train, a silver cup, and the Diana Ross CD, which I’d placed in there just before tying up the whole thing with its yellow plastic tie. I had also added Steve the fish, tied him tight in a Baggie with water and plopped him on top in a plastic take-out container. It didn’t seem like much, traveling the world with just these trash bags. I might have hoped to save Mary-Emma from this particular country-western song—“these plastic bags hold my life, darlin’ dear”—or at least this particular verse, but I wasn’t strong enough to wave away anything as strong as music, let alone harsh facts. I had tried to be Amber, recalcitrant, oppositional, but had also, like Sarah, ended up as passive, translucent, and demolished as Bonnie, just watching the baby go.

“Here,” said Sarah, thrusting the bag in Roberta’s direction. In her other hand she had a sippy cup, and she handed it to Mary-Emma through the open car window.

“Mama?” Mary-Emma looked frightened.

“I can’t go with you,” said Sarah, and simply blew the child a kiss. “But it’ll be OK. I promise.”

“Ciao, Mama!” Mary-Emma began to cry and thrust her arms from the backseat. Sarah stood curbside, saying nothing. “Ciao, Mama! Ciao, Mama!” Her farewell was not even the language of the mother or the babysitter, but the babysitter’s ex. Mary-Emma’s cries came floating back through the open window as the car zipped down the street and took a right at the first corner.

I could not believe what Sarah had done.

Of course King Solomon was right. The woman brought before him with the disputed baby, the one who consented to the infant’s being cut in half, was not the real mother.

But she was the real wife.

Sarah turned and ran quickly inside. I followed. I have never heard a houseful of such weeping. Inside, Noelle had entered through the back door with his vacuum cleaner and pails. “What’s going on?” he asked, placing a Diet Coke once again in the freezer.