Girls in Trouble (3 page)

Dr. Chasen held the baby up, white and cheesy, dotted with blood. He whisked it away and brought it back, placing it on her belly. “Just for a minute,” he said. It didn’t look or feel or seem like any of the babies she had ever carried. She was about to stroke the baby’s face, to touch its nose, and then Eva bent over her and took the baby from her, bursting into happy tears. “My little one,” she breathed.

“Baby’s name?” someone said.

“Roseann,” Sara said, the name popping into her mind. Little Roseann. Sara remembered sitting on Eva’s couch, making up lists with her and George. Each of them would take a turn. Alice. Clarisse. Names so beautiful they hurt you just to hear them. “Here we are,” Eva whispered, “Anne Cheryl Rivers,” and for a moment Sara thought,
Whose name is that?
Where had those names come from and when had that been decided? Wait, she tried to say, but her lips were too heavy to move even into a sigh.

“Thank you,” Eva breathed. “Thank you, Sara.” And then Sara closed her eyes.

Sara woke:
Something is wrong
. For a moment, she thought she was with her boyfriend Danny, in his basement, lying on the red plaid pullout couch, tense and awkward and naked, dizzy with need and desire, waiting for Danny to come downstairs to her. He liked finding her naked. “Surprise me,” he used to say. She used to kiss the tip of his nose because she didn’t know what else to kiss, because she was so shy.

“Danny,” she said. Her voice sounded strange and hoarse in the room. She blinked and the room turned white. Danny was gone. She heard
coughing and laughter and she twisted her head and there was another woman in a fussy white nightgown in the bed next to her, surrounded by flowers and wrapped gifts and two other women, whose faces were bright with excitement. “We saw your Tom. He’s so thrilled!”

“He wants five more,” Sara’s roommate said, and everyone laughed.

“Everyone at work misses you like crazy,” one of the women said.

Sara felt herself growing smaller and smaller. She used to have friends, too. And then the bigger she had become, the more she had withdrawn and the less often her friends had called her, the less they had to say to her, too. And now, they didn’t call at all. “Come on, Mom. Let’s take a walk so you can show us off to your daughter,” one of the women said.

“Mom!” the other woman said, tickled. The women all stood up. One of them looked over at Sara, and then quickly looked away. She knew that look. She had seen it on the faces of the nurses. They glanced and then looked briskly away. Only a candy striper had dared to ask, “What are you doing here?” as if it were a mistake. “How old are you?”

“Sixteen,” Sara said and the girl looked shocked.

“Quit your kidding,” she said. “Get out of here.”

Sara lay in bed, her hands on her belly. It was big and pouchy, as if she were still full of baby, but she felt this strange, terrible loss. “Soon it’ll be over,” Abby had said. And some of it had been. “How can I be anyone’s father?” Danny had asked her when she had dared to tell him she was pregnant.

A nurse carrying two yellow plastic pitchers came into the room. She came closer to Sara. “There weren’t any private rooms. I’m sorry,” she said. She patted Sara’s arm and Sara looked up at her, confused.

“You’re doing a brave thing,” the nurse told her, reassuringly. “I have two adopted kids of my own.”

“Where’s my baby?” Sara said and the nurse gave her a long, careful look.

“Are you sure that’s what you want, honey? Most birth mothers find—”

“I can see my baby,” Sara interrupted, her voice rising. “It’s an open adoption.”

The nurse put the pitchers down. She started to say something and then her mouth closed, and she left the room. Sara slunk down in bed,
turning her face to the window, but moments later, there was the sound of wheels skittering along the floor. “Here she is,” said the nurse, and Sara got out of bed. “I’ll be back for her in a while,” the nurse said.

She stared hard at the baby, her toes curling on the cold of the floor. The baby was as small as a minute, swaddled in a striped rainbow blanket just like a surprise package, her head half covered with a tiny knit cap with “I got my first hug at St. Elizabeth’s” embroidered across the brim, making Sara think wistfully:
Who else has hugged Anne?
Sara bent lower toward the baby, who smelled of powder and soap and something Sara couldn’t recognize. Anne’s eyes were open and slate grey and they held a strange, mischievous expression, as if she knew something no one else did. Sara had read that new mothers studied their babies to make sure they had all ten fingers and toes, that every limb was in place, but Sara studied Anne looking not for perfection but for Danny’s green eyes, for his strong nose and full mouth, but this baby didn’t look anything like him, or anything like Sara, either, for that matter, and a wave of sadness coursed through her. Gently, she took off the baby’s cap, and a soft fuzz of red hair sprang up, just like her own. “Oh!” Sara said, delighted, and the baby’s eyes fastened on Sara’s, and then Sara couldn’t help herself. Bending, she picked up the baby, a warm, soft presence, like a little cat. “Anne,” she said out loud, as if she were test-driving the name. She brought her carefully over to the bed and lay down with her. She felt as if she were all glass inside, breaking apart deep within her. Gently, she started to open the swaddling, to catch glimpses of her daughter’s toes, her knees, her belly, and then she heard footsteps outside, a burst of laughter. Quickly, she swaddled Anne, she held her and waited, expectant.

Flowers came into the room first, two big bundles of golds and pinks, and then she saw George’s face behind them. She saw Eva following, carrying a huge silver package. As soon as they saw the baby, they stopped. “Oh! Isn’t she beautiful!” Eva cried. She put the packages on the bed, she reached for the baby, taking her easily from Sara’s hands, and as soon as she did, Sara felt empty. She tucked her hands under the sheet.

“There’s our girl!” Eva said and Sara half-smiled before she realized Eva wasn’t talking about her. Eva rocked Anne in her arms, and then
George bent low over the baby, his face bright and expectant. “Look at that red hair!” he said. “Isn’t that funny!” He looked from the baby to Sara. “Not your mouth, though.”

“I swear she has my mouth,” Eva said. She turned to Sara, and for a minute Sara thought Eva was going to ask her if she wanted to hold the baby again, which she ached to, but instead, Eva’s smile grew. “You look terrific,” Eva said. “You were astonishing.”

“I was?” Sara said.

Eva nodded at the package on the bed. “Open your present,” she said, gleefully.

Sara unpeeled the tissue. Pale pink, a soft satiny nightgown flowing like cool lake water through her hands. “Why shouldn’t you look beautiful?” Eva said. Sara flushed. No one had called her beautiful in a very long while. “Hold it up against you,” Eva urged, but when Sara lifted her arms, her breasts hurt. All this morning she had listened in on the lesson a nurse gave her roommate on breast-feeding. She had heard the woman wince. “You have jaws like a barracuda!” the woman told her baby, and then she had told her friends how she planned to bring a pump to work and let anyone dare to stop her.

Sara drew her johnny tighter against her chest. They were giving Sara a drug to dry up her milk because Eva wanted to use formula right from the start.

Sara studied her flowers, the only ones she had. She opened the card. There was Eva’s delicate schoolteacher script. “
Perfect baby! Perfect you! Love, Eva and George
.” Sara traced the words with one finger. Perfect, she was perfect. “Thank you,” she said.

George took out a camera and clicked Eva holding the baby. He turned and took a picture of Sara. She blinked at the flash. Then he turned to the baby. “My turn,” he said and lifted Anne up. He studied her mouth. “She’s going to have great teeth,” he decided.

George was a dentist, something Sara had hoped might bond him to Abby, but instead it made Abby angrier. “He should know better,” she said wearily, but Sara didn’t know what that meant except that there was probably a lecture in it for her if she dared to ask.

George swayed the baby in a kind of dance. He hummed something, so low and sweet-sounding, it just about broke Sara’s heart. She watched him, and yawned. “You poor thing,” Eva said. “I bet you’re exhausted. Don’t mind us, you can sleep.”

Sara struggled to stay awake. Her lids floated down, her breath evened. She was half-dreaming, and then she heard the door push open. Her roommate, Sara thought. Her roommate’s friends. Her roommate’s baby. She opened her eyes, just a hair, just enough to see Eva. “You little beauty!” Eva said, kissing the baby gently, just as Jack and Abby came into the room. As soon as they saw Eva and George and the baby, all the air in the room froze.

Eva spoke first. “How nice to see you again,” Eva said politely. George put his hand out and Jack shook it stiffly. “Sara’s fast asleep,” George said quietly.

“Isn’t she beautiful?” Eva said. Abby lifted an arm toward the baby, then lowered it.

“Doesn’t Sara look wonderful?” Eva prompted.

“She’s a lovely young girl who’s been through a lot,” Abby said quietly.

“This never should have happened,” Jack said.

“But it did,” Eva said quietly. “And now we’re making something good from it.”

Sara felt as if she were outside her body, suspended above all of them. She felt exhausted, her lids began to droop. All she wanted to do was sleep again. Her eyes shut.

“She’s still sleeping,” Jack said, astonished, as if he couldn’t fathom how Sara could sleep at a time like this. Sara, though, knew better. Put all of them in a room, and the smartest thing to do was remove herself from the scene, to keep her eyes shut and slow her breathing. She breathed. In and out. Deep as a trance. And then she couldn’t have moved even if she had wanted, which she didn’t.

“Well, delivery isn’t easy,” Eva said.

“Nothing’s easy when you’re sixteen,” Abby said. The baby started to cry.
As if she knows something is up
, Sara thought, and then the baby abruptly stopped.

“Well,” Eva said. There was silence. “Here. Would you like to hold her, Abby?”

Sara tried to open her eyes and failed. Her heart hammered. Was Abby holding Anne?

“We know we don’t have to tell you that you and Jack are, of course, welcome to visit the baby, too. Anytime you like,” Eva said. The silence thickened.

“Yes, we all share—” George started to say.

“Share what? This tragedy?” Abby interrupted. “Why do you have to get so close? How can that be good for any of you, especially for a child?”

“This way’s more beneficial for everyone involved. No secrets. Everything out in the open just the way it should be,” George said. “It’s better for the baby.”

“Which baby? Sara or Anne?” Jack said.

“Sara’s a sixteen-year-old girl who should be allowed to forget,” Abby said. Sara heard rustling. Abby must be pacing, the way she always did when she was annoyed. And if she was pacing, then she wasn’t holding the baby, and if she wasn’t, who was?

“Oh, Abby,” Eva said. “How could she forget? And why would you want her to?”

There was a strange, edgy quiet. And then Jack said, “Maybe we should just let Sara sleep, instead of talking in here.”

“Here, I’ll take her, Jack,” Eva said. “I’ll bring Anne back to the nursery.

Her father had held the baby, Sara thought, amazed. He never even talked about it, not the whole time Sara was pregnant. Sara heard footsteps, the dull whine of the bassinet wheels on the floor. It all grew fainter. The room grew completely silent. Everyone had left, she thought. And then she started to open her eyes, and she saw her parents holding each other in the center of the room, pressed together like a seam. Neither one of them saw her wake. And then she heard Abby snuffling, and when her parents broke apart, she saw they both were crying.

“Come on,” Jack said, putting his arm about Abby. He dug out a handkerchief and daubed Abby’s eyes with it, and then his own.

“I shouldn’t have held her,” Abby whispered. “I shouldn’t have.”

“Come on. I’ll get you some tea, you’ll feel better.”

And then the two of them were gone.

Sara half-dreamed on her bed. Imagine. Her parents had held Anne. They had held the baby and they were determined not to do it again. Fresh start, Abby had said. That was Abby’s favorite set of words, Sara thought. Like a cooking recipe. Life as a cake mix you hoped might be delicious and to ensure it you just had to be extra careful about the ingredients you chose. As soon as Abby had known Sara was pregnant, that it was too late to abort, Abby had told Sara that it was, of course, impossible for her to keep the baby. Impossible for them to adopt and raise it as their own because how could Sara get a clean start then? Instead, she found Sara the adoption agency in Newton, the adoption lawyer who insisted Sara call her Margaret. “Thank God we live in modern times,” Abby had told her. She sat down beside Sara. “When I was growing up, there was a home for wayward girls right in my town,” Abby said. “The Girls in Trouble House we called it, even though its name was just St. Luke’s. It was terrible. Just terrible. The stories we heard! There was such a stigma! You went to a place like that and your life was over and everyone knew it. The girls couldn’t even keep their real names when they were there, just first names, because they didn’t want to encourage friendships. They couldn’t go outside the grounds. It was a relief when they closed the place down, put a Star Market there instead.”

“Did you ever see the girls?” Sara asked.

Abby sighed. “I saw them standing at the gates sometimes, like they were prisoners. Asking for cigarettes. Asking us to call their boyfriends for them.”

“Did you?”

Abby straightened up. “Of course I didn’t.” She rubbed at her temples and then studied Sara. “You’re lucky you don’t show. I didn’t either until nearly my eighth month. And if, God forbid, you do start to pop, the school can’t make you leave. Not the way they used to.”

“Leave—I can’t leave—” Sara tightened. What if Danny came back? How would he find her if she was at another school?