Dear Carolina (8 page)

PREGNANT-GETTING HORMONES

After you've picked corn, you got two hours to freeze, can, or pickle it before its sweet sugar gets right starchy. Khaki and me, we wore ourselves down to the quick that year putting away cans for the winter. It come fast, too. It don't matter what the temperature is or what the Farmer's Almanac say. When the corn turns good and brown, you can bet your best boots it's fall. And we wasn't wasting any a' that yellow goodness.

I craved that corn we canned like booze when I was carrying you. I weren't working, so I'd cook stews, sauces, and dips all day, and, before I even got it all cleaned up good, it'd be darn near dark outside.

I walked in Khaki's house that day, setting my sights on the pantry and that corn. But I didn't get real far 'fore my stomach right near turned over. “Oh, my Lord,” I said out loud.

Alex ran through the foyer and said, “Momma's cooking some sticks and leaves.”

I nodded. “She's cooking something unnatural, all right.”

It was like she mixed cinnamon and mushrooms and burned the pot on up. But then I saw Pauline. Khaki, now she couldn't cook a lick. But Pauline, I'd dare say, mighta been the best cook in the county—'sides me, of course. I heard Khaki complaining right loud, “I can't imagine that this is right.”

I held my nose.
I ain't been sick this whole dern pregnancy.
My time might be coming.

“What the woman say exactly, baby?” I heard Pauline ask.

Khaki stood right up on her tiptoes and peeked in over that witch's pot on the stove and said, “She said, ‘Your body will tell you what's right. You make your own medicine.'” She put her hands on her hips. “What is that supposed to mean? I mean, honestly, just give me a piece of paper with some instructions on it, and I'll boil it up and drink the amount you tell me to. I can't go with the flow like this.”

Pauline shrugged. “Maybe that's the point, baby.”

Khaki lifted the ladle out of the pot, held it to Pauline, and said, “I mean, could you drink this?”

“I couldn't,” I said, by way of lettin' 'em know I was standing there.

“Oh, thank God,” Khaki exhaled. “Jodi, please come over here and rub some of your good, pregnant-getting hormones on me so I can stop all this nonsense.”

I laughed and Pauline said, “I just never heard of no Trinidadian woman practicing Chinese medicine. Don't make no sense.”

Khaki shook her head. “She doesn't only practice Chinese medicine. She does like everything. Indian medicine, Ayurvedic medicine, yoga therapy. She's studied all over the world. She's super brilliant.” Khaki paused to hug me. “She felt like this herb concoction was what my body was telling her it needed.”

“Your who said what?” I said.

Khaki shook her head. “I know. It's insane.”

I looked over into that brew on the stove and saw all sorts of ungodly sticks and leaves and whatnot just floating around in there. “I think you got taken,” I whispered. “That lady give you what the yard men didn't get off the street.”

“That's what I thought,” Khaki said, turning the stove on.

“What you doing, baby?” Pauline asked.

“My body
feels
like this slop needs to boil down more.”

My ankles and hips got to groanin' and cracklin' as I climbed up onto the stool at the counter. “What is that godforsaken potion?” I asked. It mighta looked like yard clippings, but it smelled worse than a plastic pie pan meltin' in the oven.

“It's
herbs
.”

“Herbs? Don't them things come in a pill or something?”

Khaki pointed at me like I hit the nail on the head and let her hand slap back on her skinny thigh. “Exactly.”

Pauline laughed and leaned right on over beside me.

“Looks like that baby be coming any minute,” she said.

I nodded. “I darn sure hope so. My feet and ankles get much bigger and they're gonna bust all over the kitchen.”

Khaki made a face. “That's even grosser than this.”

I felt my face getting right red, looked down at the white marble counter and then back up at Khaki. “I'm real sorry that I'm pregnant and you ain't. It kind of makes me feel like bragging, struttin' around here with my big belly.”

“Don't be silly,” Khaki said, waving her hand.

To be downright honest, it didn't feel all that bad. I ain't never had much to brag about, growing up like I did. I never had a new car or the fancy shoes or even the best backpack. So, to have something that somebody else wanted. Well, it was kinda like gettin' even in a way.

But a baby ain't the same kinda dream as a promotion at work or a string a' pearls all your own. It ain't the kinda thing you can
just pull yourself up by your bootstraps, dust off your overalls, and earn. If you ask me, it seems like a lotta the time the people who should have the youngens cain't get pregnant and the ones who don't have no business raising nobody pop 'em out like candy corn at Halloween.

“So what's up with the princess?” Khaki asked.

I smiled and said, “Well, I went to the doctor today, and he said that now that I'm thirty-seven weeks, I'm full term. She'll be comin' any time.” I weren't scared when I said it. I knew childbirth was gonna hurt right fierce. But cain't nobody tell you what it's like to bring a baby home all alone, to be the only person responsible for another person's raisin'. All I knew was that my back was achin', my feet was swollen, I couldn't get near a good night's sleep, and I was as ready to pop as a chick pecking through an eggshell.

But now I know: There's being ready, and there's being
ready
. When you're nineteen, you don't know the damn difference.

HOLES

One of the ways I knew that I would be a good designer is that when I walk into a room, I always feel like it's telling me something. It needs another piece of furniture, the addition of color—sometimes all the room is missing is a little more uncluttered space.

Like our rooms, we are so often missing something, walking around with some sort of gap that won't close. I can't see that there will ever be a day that a hole shaped like Alex's daddy won't live in my soul. And, in an even larger way, I'm sure that a miniature version of you will always be cut out of your mom. If you look around, most people have some kind of wound that never stitched itself up. An unrequited love. The one that got away. Losing a momma or a daddy. An irreplaceable family pet. I'd bet the last strawberry bushel of the season that every person you meet wakes up in the morning missing something.

Jodi and I've never talked about this, but I know she's braver than I am on the outside whether she is on the inside or not. She
handled having you like nothing I've ever seen. I like to make myself feel better by justifying that she was so calm, composed and, most important,
quiet
because she had the sense to have an epidural and I had my friend Stacey in my ear talking me out of it. But the truth of the matter is, some people simply have more inner strength, more ability to internalize pain.

She told me after you were born that once you're in it you don't have any choice but to get through so you may as well do it keeping as much of your dignity intact as possible. I guess after all the hard knocks that girl has lived through, having a baby just seemed like the hurdle God put out for her to jump over that day.

We hadn't planned for me to be in the room when you were born. I had been with Jodi most of the day, ran home for a quick shower, and came back to the hospital to bring some Popsicles and some thick, plush washcloths for your birth mother's head.

Jodi smiled at me weakly and said, “Cherry flavor would be real nice.”

She winced in pain, blew her breath out, and I said, “Bad contraction?”

She nodded. “This is real embarrassing,” she whispered. “I gotta go to the bathroom, but I cain't get up 'cause I cain't feel my legs.”

“Oh my gosh!” I leaned over and mashed that nurse button about a million times. The head nurse came over the intercom, and said, “May I help you?”

“Yes!” I practically screamed. “I don't know the first damn thing about delivering a baby, and she's feeling like she needs to push!”

It wasn't a heartbeat later that two nurses came rushing in and, as the door slammed, a doctor charged in right behind. I held Jodi's hand and wiped her pale, sweaty face with one of
those cold rags while the doctor checked her. “Ten centimeters!” he exclaimed, snapping his glove.

I patted Jodi's hand, and neither of us said a word, but the look on her face told me that she was terrified and could I please stay. So, of course, I did. In the moment, you aren't thinking about how you're seeing someone's parts that should be reserved for husbands and bedrooms. You're thinking about how God's greatest miracle since creation is happening and you get to witness it. That's what I was thinking, anyway.

She closed her eyes in the calmest, smoothest way I've ever seen, and I swear it wasn't ten minutes later you were born. When you watch people on TV give birth it's always screaming and hustling around and doctors directing nurses. But it wasn't like that when you were born. It was peaceful. It was so still and quiet in there, church on a summer day when almost everybody's at the beach. Maybe that's why you didn't make one peep when you were born. You just came out, your little eyes open and looking around, taking it all in for a few moments before you showed us what those tiny pipes could do.

And it wasn't until I laughed, tears in my eyes, and looked back at your mom to say, “You did it!” that I even noticed she had passed out. I gasped and said, “Nurse!” which is when she handed you to me.

My mind was racing because, even though I knew your birth mom was prone to fainting, there are still those incredibly rare cases where childbirth doesn't go well. But the panic alarm in my head quieted when I saw your beautiful face. Puckered little lips and big blue eyes. I shouldn't actually admit this anywhere but in my mind, but, for a breath, I thought that if Jodi didn't wake up I'd take the best care of you in the world. It wasn't like I didn't
want
her to wake up. But, you know, you have to prepare for the worst case.

But then she opened her eyes, and I handed you to her. It was such a moment of pure, unadulterated love between a mother and her child that I didn't even feel sorry it wasn't happening to me. I relished the glow of it all. With me contemplating surgery and fertility drugs and in vitro and other words I never thought would be a part of my vocabulary, I thought that seeing Jodi hold you might hurt just a little, give me the slightest pang of envy for the motherhood journey that she was embarking on and leaving me behind. And that's how I know for sure that what Pauline always told me was true: God gives you the grace you need for even the toughest moments.