Dear Carolina (31 page)

How I raise her is up to me. Me. And Graham, of course. I was so relieved I kissed Jodi, this girl who had helped create my family. And, in that moment, I quit being so afraid. “Honey,” I said, “I promise I won't spoil her rotten. I bought her that bag way back when she was born, to celebrate my new book. It was insane and I won't do it again.” And then I added, “And, no matter what, you will always be her birth mother. Your opinion will always count.”

Then I turned, walked upstairs, bolted into your room, and did the unthinkable: I woke a sleeping baby. But, just like your birth momma, instead of crying and carrying on, you greeted me with a smile and a “Ma-ma.”

I sat down in the upholstered glider in the corner of your room and said, “That's right. I am your momma. Me. And I'm always going to get to be. Because you're my little girl.” Then I whispered, “And no one is ever going to take you away from me.”

You smiled again and rested your head on my chest, twirling my hair around your finger. I should have been upstairs working, pulling together the last elements of Charlie and Greg's design scheme. I should have been ordering bolts of fabric and finalizing rug measurements. But instead, I sat there and rocked you until you fell back asleep. And, as you breathed in and out, I realized that it was the first time I had watched you sleep that the pure joy and love of seeing your child at her most peaceful hadn't been laced with fear. And, for that fleeting moment, the world made perfect sense.

FAMILY

There ain't many things so exciting as seeing your fancy own sign, all hanging proud and permanent over the awning at the farmer's market. It weren't just
Jacobs Family Farms
no more. Right underneath, in professionally painted plywood, it was
Jodi's Cans and Jams
too. I don't think Graham'll ever get how choked up I was over him getting me that sign, how, in that moment, it felt like my life was changing for the good. I had
done
something. And couldn't nobody take that back.

When I was a kid, weren't nothing so exciting as the first day a' school. I got to see where my seat was, if there were any new kids. That fresh-paper smell was everywhere, and I got to get new glue, no dried-up globs or old glitter all stuck on the top.

Me and Daddy, the minute the school people sent out the list, we'd be at the Walmart, picking out new pencils and folders and crayons. It was my favorite thing in the whole world. Well, except that year I was going into second grade and Daddy was working all the time and Momma had to take me shopping. Daddy, he
thought Momma was cleaned up. But I knew better. She was sneaking sips here and there, hiding airplane bottles in her socks and wine boxes in the roastin' pan in the oven. Lord knows she weren't cooking with it.

I was excited all the same. I climbed in the back of her Oldsmobile, that cracking leather burning the back a' my legs, them swinging 'cause they didn't near touch the floor. I got all buckled in like Daddy told me I oughta even though that silver buckle was damn near hot as a pizza oven. Momma pulled up to the ABC store, and I was getting so excited them legs was going. Daddy and me, we didn't go to the ABC store, but it made all kinds of sense that's where you'd buy school supplies.

Momma said, “You stay here and don't talk to strangers.”

“But, Momma, I want to come in. Daddy lets me pick the colors of my notebooks and get the fancy pencils.”

She laughed real mean, and the sting of them hurt feelings, that won't never leave me. She slammed the door right hard and walked in, leaving me to sweat in the humidity with the window rolled down.

Until the day I die, I won't never live down the shame of walking into that classroom. All them kids organizing their shiny schoolboxes and sharp pencils in their desks. Me, I didn't have nothin'. Daddy, he found out quick what Momma done.

“I promise I'll take you to get school supplies soon as work lets out tonight, baby girl,” he said.

But it was too late. That first day I didn't have so much as an old eraser. My face was so hot you'd have needed an oven mitt to touch it. I walked real quiet to the desk with my cheerful name tag on it, not wanting nobody to see me, to make fun a' me for coming to school with nothing. Them fat tears was coming down my cheeks.

“It's okay,” the teacher said, rubbin' my back. “Your momma will be back for you before you know it.”

That's why I'm crying.
I didn't care if I ever saw my momma again. She'd disgraced me in the worst way for a seven-year-old.

I got real busy remindin' myself about that seven-year-old girl that day when I knew my momma was coming to visit. I knew it weren't smart for me to be around her. It was just too tempting to take you and your birth daddy back. But she was itching red hot to see me, and I was plum outta excuses why I couldn't. At the end a' the day, that woman, she's my momma. And just 'cause she birthed me and probably did the best she could, she should get to see me. Though, Lord knows, her best was damn near a natural disaster.

But this time, I was smart. This time, she wasn't gonna fool me. Weren't no way I was gonna start loving and trusting her again just for her to damn near kill me by lettin' me down again.

I was just sitting there in my chair out front of the trailer, scraping a spot of dirt outta the plastic ridge with my fingernail, trying to keep from getting all worked up. It weren't long 'til I heard a old car bumping down the gravel path, dust jumping all out from everywhere making me hold my breath. You could see right off it weren't just Momma in the car.
Probably some new, useless boyfriend she got.

But when he started getting outta the car, I reckoned that man was useless. But he weren't a boyfriend. It was Ricky.

It was that day in second grade all over. Momma'd tricked me again. I don't know where on God's earth I thought I was running to, but I was near to the woods 'fore I heard Momma yelling, “Don't run away, Jodi. Ricky's changed.”

Changed.
There was that word again. I'd been around twenty years. Only thing I knew of that could really be changed was a dollar bill.

I weren't trying to listen. But ain't nobody in the county that didn't hear Ricky scream, “I've found Jesus.” He was running behind me, and weren't no way I could get away. That Ricky, he was too fast.

“Please, Jodi. We can get Carolina back. We can all be the family we've dreamed about.”

It stopped me cold in my tracks, that sentence. The VCR in my brain rewound the tape of my life with Ricky. All them fantasies I had, that white house with the red tin roof, my own field, room for my babies to play, they weren't never gonna happen. But a girl with a heart all full a' dreams, she can pin them on darn near any man, no matter how sorry. And Ricky, he was always gonna say the right thing and do the wrong one.

When we was together, I hadn't seen no good examples of family or love. But now I knew what it was all about. Leaving your girlfriend when she's good and pregnant and needs you most, not even trying to clean yourself up and change for your youngen, coming back and wanting to do the right thing when it was too late . . . Them things weren't love. And they sure as hell weren't family. So I spun around on my heel real quick and glared at them.

“We done looked into it,” Momma said. “We got us a lawyer. We can get Carolina back. It ain't too late.”

“What do you mean, get Carolina back? Ain't no way we can get her back. We give her to Khaki and Graham, we signed all them papers.”

“Yeah,” Ricky said, smiling right broad. “But the lawyers said there's some kind a' mistake.”

I shook my head. “You cain't tell me that Khaki Mason didn't make for damn sure that them papers I signed was all letter perfect and
i
-dotted.”

Ricky smiled again, moving closer, trying to take my hand.
I pulled it away. “Yours had every last
t
crossed. That's for damn sure.”

“But Ricky's,” Momma chimed in, “them ones that they did back before the adoption. They ain't quite right.”

I looked at Ricky and then at Momma, then back at Ricky again. It were so tempting to get you back. And Ricky
was
right with the Lord now. He was looking at me so earnest, and Momma, she was talking so sweet, they coulda roped me right on into their scheming.

Ricky smiled at me again, real reassuring like. “That lawyer, he said judges are real keen on babies being with their birth parents.”

“Yeah,” Momma said. “They said that little mistake'll probably do it. But if you just get up there and say that you wasn't right in the head on account a' your drinking—”

She snapped her fingers. “Then we'll get Carolina back no problem at all.”

It was all a lot to take in. That pain and heartbreak that a momma feels when she gets apart from her baby. The way that voice creeps in telling you you done the wrong thing, that you shoulda stuck it out, it woulda got easier, you coulda done it and you can do it now. It made me want to smile and take Ricky's hand and skip on down to that lawyer's office and tell a little white lie up on that stand.

But then I thought about you. My sweet little Carolina. You were happy. And it was 'cause you were loved and stable. I could dream in a weak moment that I could give that to you, that me and Momma and Ricky could all get saved and clean and all that. But Momma and Ricky, they lied to me one too many times.

“We could be a family,” Ricky said, trying to take my hand.

And when I looked at him again, I finally saw clear. I got to remembering why we was in this mess in the first place, why I got
so low, why I felt like I couldn't take no more, how all alone in the world you and me were 'til Khaki and Graham loved us back to being whole. I ripped my hand away, like a green stem from a carrot. “Let me tell you 'bout family,” I hollered. “Family is there for each other. Family supports each other and loves each other and makes them hard decisions easy. Family don't take the easy way out.”

Ricky and Momma, they looked all shocked and shaken. But them words reaffirmed in me like the Nicene Creed in church that I had done a good thing by letting you go. It hurt like an appendectomy with no anesthesia. But it was right.

Ricky, he was getting all mad, and I knew he might kill me. But it didn't matter none. I was gonna be free a' him if it was getting to Jesus that did it.

“You just walked right out on me, you bastard!” I said real low and mean at Ricky. “You took away my childhood and my child, so don't you come back here now saying we can be family.” Then I hollered at the top of my lungs, “We won't never be family!”

Ricky lunged at me, and I could feel them hands wrapping 'round my throat. Everything, it got all still and quiet. He wasn't really squeezing or nothing. I was just faintin' like normal when things got tough.

Momma, you could hear her screaming at Ricky to stop. But I couldn't really make out nothin' but the cock of a pistol. And I knew my time here was done. And I thought a' your sweet, sweet face.

But Ricky's hands, they loosened right up and my body fell to the ground. Somebody was sayin', “What part of
restraining order
don't you understand?”

Next thing I remember, Buddy, he was stroking my hair, my head in his lap, and saying, “You're gonna be just fine. It's gonna be all right.”

The old me, I woulda cried and carried on, feeling trapped right like a raccoon in an animal control pen. The new me, she had choices.

“Buddy, I gotta get out of here,” I whispered. It musta been the lack a' oxygen that give me the courage, but I heard myself saying, “Buddy, I'm such a wreck. You need to stay far, far away from me.” I closed my eyes for a second and said, “How could you still like me after what I done?”

Buddy shrugged and smiled down at me. “My grandmomma, she used to tell me that I would find one woman that I would always keep loving and worshipping the ground she walked on—don't matter what she did.”

Surely he wasn't saying that woman were me. “Only one woman?”

He nodded. “There's plenty a' women a man could make a life with and be happy with. But only one he's gonna be so taken with that he thinks she cain't do no wrong. And she said I oughta keep looking 'til I find that girl.”

I got to thinkin' on that look Buddy give me, that one that made me feel right smart and pretty.

“Only one,” I repeated. “No wonder you're so afraid of being alone forever.”

He put his hand on my cheek real gentle. “Oh, I ain't afraid of that anymore.”

And you're not gonna believe this. I wasn't afraid anymore either.