Blessings (12 page)

“Maybe nothing else matters to you just now, but you matter.” The voice was both gentle and positive. “You are really all you have, do you know that, Jennie? The me —that’s all anyone of us has. Because if that falls apart, then there’s nothing left for us to give to anybody else. Now, if you don’t want to write or talk to anyone, the decision is yours, and you’re entitled to it without guilt.”

Jennie looked up. Maybe if Mom had been like this, she could have told her the truth. But then, this little American lady surely hadn’t had Mom’s wounds, hadn’t lost her parents in the gas ovens or fled across the Pyrenees with strangers. So leave Mom out.

She said only, “Thank you.”

“You’re a mass of guilt about everything, Jennie— about why you’re here in the first place. And about your parents, your interrupted education, the whole bit. And anger—you’re seething with it, though you don’t want to admit it. But recognize that you’ve a right to be angry! It’s why you’re depressed.”

“You can tell I’m depressed?”

“Of course, my dear. I’ve surely seen enough depression in this place. Depression is anger turned inward. Did you know that, Jennie?”

“I didn’t.”

“Well, it is. Now, if yours doesn’t lift very soon, we’ll get some help for you. But I have a hunch it will. You’re tough. You’ll make it.”

And in time it did lift. One morning when Jennie awoke, the cloud was gone. Whether it would return was open to question, but for now it was gone. She raised the window and looked out with pleasure at early winter, at snow-covered hemlock and spruce, at juncos fluttering on the bird feeder. She felt an appetite for breakfast and for a walk in the cold, brisk air. Many of the girls at the home, including Jennie, avoided the shopping center because they feared being stared at by people who would guess where they came from. This morning she didn’t mind.

“This is a time to be used, not wasted,” Mrs. Burt had advised. “Why don’t you get some books and read ahead on the subjects you’ll be taking when you go back to school in February?”

So she made her first withdrawal from the fund that the Mendeses had put in a local bank. With it she went to browse in a bookstore and came back to put Sandburg’s Lincoln and Tennessee Williams’s plays, along with a fat new novel, on her dresser, there to be gazed at and cherished because they didn’t have to be returned to a library. Then she sat down with a box, not a bar, of chocolates and began to read.

Peter wrote again with the news that he was transfer—

ring to Emory University in Atlanta in February. He didn’t understand why she hadn’t written in so long. She must please let him know whether anything was wrong.

Transferred. To keep him away from her, from further contamination. So his family could keep an eye on him. She tried to imagine their conversations. At the shining table in the dining room? No, Spencer, the servant, would be there, and they wouldn’t talk in front of him. Perhaps in front of the fireplace, under the ancestor’s portrait. Or in the room with the flowered carpet, talking sense into their son. Poor boy. She felt contempt for them all.

Could he really believe, as he had said, that they would be back together someday and go on after this as though nothing had happened to change them? Yes, maybe he really could believe; it was much more comforting that way.

Now Jennie’s time drew nearer. As she thought less and less about the baby’s father, she began to think more about the baby and about all the babies in this house who were waiting to be born and given away. All was accident! From their very conception to the moment they were turned over to strangers, whose pasts they would inherit and whose benefits would shape them, all was chance. But then, didn’t chance also govern those who were not given away?

One morning she was summoned to Mrs. Burt and greeted by a smile of unusual pleasure.

“We have a couple who want to take your baby, Jennie. We think they’re wonderful people, really perfect. Do you want to hear about them?”

Jennie folded her arms on her little, pointed belly, which looked like the narrow end of a watermelon. Something moved under her palms, thumped lightly, and rippled away. A warning, a reminder, a plea?

Mrs. Burt must have read her silent lips, crying, No, I can’t … can’t part from you. God, tell me how I can, for her look was keen.

“Are you sure you want to talk about this right now? We don’t have to if you don’t feel like it.”

But you have to feel like it, don’t you? There can’t be any going back. Back where? Oh, you don’t want to do it, Jennie, but you know it’s best; you’ve gone over it a thousand times.

She raised her head, straightened her slumped shoulders, and spoke clearly. “Please go ahead. Tell me.”

“He’s a doctor. She’s a librarian and plans to retire for a few years until the child is of school age. They’re not yet thirty, but they’ve been married for seven years without a pregnancy. They have a loving relationship. They travel and ski and hike in the mountains.” Mrs. Burt paused.

“Go on,” said Jennie. A librarian. There will be books in the house.

“We try to match the child to the home, as you know, with the same intellectual background and physical appearance if we can. These people both have your dark hair. Hers is curly like yours. They’re of medium height and healthy, of course. They’re both Jewish. Do you want to hear more?”

“Please.”

“They live in the Far West. The home is very fine, not a rich one, but the child will want for nothing. There’s a large yard, a good school, and a warm extended family of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. We’ve checked everything most carefully.”

“I suppose they wanted to know about me and about … the father.”

“Of course. And they’re very eager to have your child.”

Jennie shook her head. Strange. They’ll take him … her … away, and our nine months together will vanish as if they had never been.

“You’ll have plenty of time to change your mind after the baby is born, if you wish.”

“No. This is the way it has to be. You know that.”

“Nothing has to be. But I think we both seem to have agreed that this is a good solution all around.”

“I think—” Jennie swallowed. Unexpectedly a lump had come into her throat. “I think—tell the doctor I don’t want to see the baby at all.”

Mrs. Burt’s eyes were very kind. She spoke softly. “That’s probably best. In these circumstances we often advise it.”

“Yes. So you’ll be sure to tell the doctor?”

“Yes, Jennie, I’ll tell him.”

Several times at the shopping center, Jennie found herself looking intently into carriages and stopping to make comments to young mothers, in order to have a chance to look at the infants. She stood staring down into the pink or red face of an eight-pound human being, either wiggling or asleep under its covers. And always her feelings fluctuated between resolve, so painfully achieved, and that so terrible sorrow at having to part with what was still as tightly attached as her arms and legs.

One day on her way to the bookstore she passed a shop and went in to buy a yellow bunting with a carriage cover to match.

“For a friend of mine,” she said, and was struck in the instant by this shocking denial of her own situation. “I want her to have it before the baby comes. Yellow will do no matter what she has, won’t it? And I’d like that cap, too, the embroidered one.”

The saleswoman looked at Jennie’s old coat, which now barely closed in front. “That one’s expensive. It’s hand-embroidered.”

“That’s all right.”

A bitter thought crossed her mind. The most expensive one—why not?—for the Mendeses’ grandchild. She stifled the thought. Nasty, Jennie, and not worthy of you.

In her room that night she examined her face in the mirror for a long time. Would there be anything of her in the child’s face? It might be round like hers, or square like her mother’s; opal-eyed like Peter’s; or—God forbid —long and sharp like his mother’s.

After a while she got up and began to write a note.

Dear Child,

I’m hoping that the parents who bring you up will give you this when you grow old enough to understand it. The mother who will give you birth and the—

She’d started to write man but instead changed it to boy.

—who fathered you are good people but foolish, as I hope you won’t be. We were too young to fit you into our lives. Maybe we were selfish, too, wanting to go on with our plans undisturbed. Some people wanted me to do away with you—to abort you—but I couldn’t do that. You were already growing, and I had to let you grow to fulfillment. I had to let you have your own life. I hope with all my heart that it will be a wonderful one. I will give you away only to wonderful people who want you, and who will do more for you than I can. I hope you will understand that I am doing this out of love for you, although it may not seem much like love. But it is, believe me, my daughter or my son. It is.

Then, without signing the note, she laid it on the embroidered bonnet, closed the box, and retied the taffeta bow.

They took her in the middle of the night. The birth was quick. Shortly before dawn, after no more than four hours of a pain that grew sharper and sharper, so that the last ones were agonizing and inhuman, so that she bit her lips and pulled with desperate, sweating hands at the side of the bed, she felt one last awful lunge. Then abruptly there was relief and ease. Lying there in that merciful first relief, she heard a cry like a lament, and then high over her head, it seemed, a distant voice saying, “It’s a girl, a fine girl, Jennie. Seven pounds, three ounces.”

Raising herself on one elbow and tired now, so very tired, she saw a vague, dizzy blur: A nurse or a doctor, someone in white, was carrying something wrapped in a blanket and walking away with it.

“Has she got everything she’s supposed to have?” Jennie whispered.

“Everything she’s supposed to have. Ten fingers, ten toes, and good lungs. You heard her cry.”

“Nothing wrong?”

“Nothing at all. She’s perfect. You’ve done a good job, Jennie.”

She went home. She withdrew the Mendeses’ money from the bank, over four thousand dollars, having spent only five hundred. For a moment she had thought of returning the balance with a courteous, cold letter to express her independence and contempt, and then she thought better of it. Be practical! Mom had taught her that, and some of the teaching had rubbed off. The money would go part of the way toward law school. Next summer and every summer she would go to work and put every possible penny away. Then, with whatever little Pop might be able to give her, she would somehow get through. She had to get through. This she wanted now—more than anything in the world.

Because it was the cheapest way to go, she took the bus back home. Now, in November, she rode for two days through continuous cold, traveling through the back streets of run-down cities and out again onto the highway. The tires sang in the wetness; past bare, twiggy trees, roadside litter, and rusty junkyards.

Suddenly, in a vacant lot beside a ramshackle dwelling, she had a glimpse of two horses nodding over a fence. And one threw up his wonderful bronze satin head to snort and began to run, with the other following, and the two went racing with pure joy around that derelict, bare lot.

I’ll remember that, she thought. It’s one of the odd, small things that stick in one’s mind. Perhaps it’s an omen.

At home things were as they had always been. Her story was well rehearsed and was accepted.

“It’s good to have you closer to home again,” Pop said.

“Not that we see you all that much, but it’s nice to know you’re only a couple of hours away,” Mom amended.

Pop remarked that Jennie had lost weight, and Mom said that was too bad, but what can you do with these girls? They all want to be thin as a board.

“Our college daughter, God bless her. Only one thing bothers me. You broke off with Peter, didn’t you? You found somebody else?”

“Yes to the first and no to the second. I’ve plenty of time, Mom. Don’t rush me.” Jennie gave them a smile. It was supposed to say: See how young and carefree I am?

“Who’s rushing? I was only being nosy.”

“Well, I just don’t like him anymore. If he ever telephones, tell him I’m out. Tell him I went to Mexico or Afghanistan.”

Peter didn’t telephone, but he wrote again, asking why she hadn’t answered his last letter. She read that letter again. What was the matter? he asked. Had she cast him out? He was concerned about her health. He loved her. And he was sorry about not returning to Penn, although he hoped he could manage to come north during Christmas week. But he made no mention of any future beyond that.

So much for the golden months and the golden promises! Childish and strengthless it must all have been, to have ended this way. And in her bed she pressed her face into the hard mattress, forcing the tears back into her head because she didn’t dare show wept-out eyes in the morning.

Very, very slowly, as the agonies began to lighten, she felt a dull anger creeping to replace them. He had never even asked about the baby, only about her health, as though she had merely gone through sickness or surgery. No, the Mendeses didn’t want to hear about the baby, that was clear. And they had brainwashed their son, crushed him into subjection. Poor, weak Peter. And poor baby …

But the baby wasn’t poor, she reminded herself. She was cared for and loved, sheltered somewhere in the unknown West. Jennie glanced at the globe that had stood on the desk in her room since grammar-school days. The West was vast. San Diego had palm trees and ocean. Mountains and snow encircled Salt Lake City. Portland? They called it the Rose City. It would be nice to think of the child growing up in a place with such a pretty name.

One day, piece by piece, she tore all Peter’s letters into shreds, gave away everything he had ever given her, and sat down at her desk. Writing a final letter to him, she surprised herself by being able to dismiss him without recrimination. She said nothing about the child;

since he had apparently been afraid to ask, he didn’t deserve to know.

With the letter sealed and stamped, she felt proud, decisive, and mature. The past was past. The way now was forward. There was no Peter and there was no baby. It never happened.