Eleanor tells me how her children were grown by the time I arrived, and so it was nice to have a child in the house again. She didn’t work outside of the home. When Mom and I came, she was grateful for the company. She used to look forward to the days we’d come. Usually she’d play with me while Mom cleaned, hide-and-go-seek in her home, or build forts from the newly washed sheets.
“You were a funny girl, Jessie,” she tells me. “Silly and strong willed, a great sense of humor to boot,” she says. “A bit ornery too. But those dimples,” she adds as she takes a bite of the hot dog, speaking through a full mouth, “with those dimples you could get away with murder, Jessie.” She laughs.
She says that anything Mom wanted done, she had to ask me twice. That the lunch Mom brought along for me, I refused to eat. That I was a far cry from shy, and would spend half of my days in her home creating a show to perform for her and Mom before we’d leave.
“You used to march around, insisting like the dickens that your name wasn’t Jessie. Because you didn’t like it back then, I think,” she says then, saying I was adamant about it, insistent that my name wasn’t Jessie. That my name was something else, but she doesn’t remember what. “You would pout your face and stomp your foot and insist that people stop calling you Jessie. Stop calling me that, you’d cry, face turning red. Your mother would go along with it for a while, trying to ignore your antics. Because she knew you were doing it for attention and, if she didn’t give in to you, sooner or later you’d quit. Though rarely did you quit,” she smiles, telling me I was a headstrong little girl.
“You knew what you wanted,” she says.
Eventually Mom would have enough of it, Eleanor tells me, and she’d get down to eye level and say, That’s enough, Jessie. We talked about this, remember?
But I have no memory of this at all.
Why would I go around masquerading as something other than Jessie? I don’t have time to come up with an answer because soon Eleanor is telling me how I used to carry an animal everywhere I went—a stuffed dog or a bear or a rabbit—but I couldn’t care less about that because what I’m wondering is why in the world I would be so unrelenting about that name. About the name Jessie. Why I would insist it wasn’t mine.
“And then there was your mother’s name,” Eleanor says before I have a chance to think it through, and I ask, “What about it?”
Her eyebrows crease. She removes a pair of glasses and sets them on the countertop, rubbing at her eyes. “It’s just that most little girls call their mother Mom or Mommy.”
She leaves it at that and so I ask, “And I didn’t?” thinking suddenly that Eleanor is mistaken. That she’s wrong. Time has altered these memories of hers, or she’s mistaken Mom and me for some other cleaning lady and child. Another child with dimples like mine. Because in all my life, she’s only ever been one thing to me—Mom—or so I think.
Eleanor shakes her head and at the same time I see my hands before me, gripping the edges of the countertop, also shaking.
“You didn’t,” she says. “You called her by her given name.”
Eleanor tells me that Mom would put up with it to a certain extent but then every now and again she’d get down and whisper in my ear, We’ve talked about this, Jessie. Remember? Same as she said about my own name. You’re to call me Mom.
“For a short while, you’d remember. You’d remember to call your mother Mom. But before too long, you’d forget and go back to calling her by her Christian name. Eden.”
I don’t remember doing that.
eden
January 16, 1998
Chicago
I drove the speed limit the entire way, not wanting to draw attention to myself. It snowed much of the time and the roads were slick, though being a Midwesterner, I’m quite accustomed to driving on slick roads. This wasn’t my first time with snow. And yet it was my first getaway, my first flight. My first vanishing act of what I hoped wouldn’t be many, because I prayed that the world would let me disappear, that he would let me go.
I found myself staring in the rearview mirror nearly the entire time, all along Highway 42 and to the interstate, knuckles turning white from their grip on the steering wheel, though I knew there was no logical way he knew where I was, or that he watched me leave. But still.
He might just be there.
When I arrived, the first thing I did was find an apartment that I could afford, which wasn’t easy considering I have so little in the way of money, nearly nothing at all, quite literally ten dollars more than was the rent payment, which means that for the immediate future, we’ll be eating bread and cheese. I purchased a paper at a newsstand and, on a snow-covered park bench, scanned the for-rent ads, settling on a studio apartment in Hyde Park. The building is all wrapped up in a creamy yellow brick facade that’s gone to rack and ruin; it looks abandoned, uncared for and unloved, like me. The ad trumpeted a French Renaissance charm but if it’s there, I can’t see it.
On the way into the building, I watched a drug deal transpire on the street. It happened right there, right before my eyes, two shadowy figures lurking beside the building, where the tall structure obstructs the sun’s rays, making the men harder to see. They were men, of course, because I find it hard to believe that two women would stand on the street corner trading money for drugs, a wad of folded-up cash for the clear plastic bag of pills that passed from one hand to the next. I never saw their faces or their eyes, for their heads were cloaked in the hoods of sweatshirts like headscarves. And yet the men were tall, lanky, flat. Undeniably men.
We passed by quickly, my eyes tethered to the broken concrete of the street, feet kicking up pebbles as I went, certain I could feel their eyes on me. I inserted my key and ducked into the foyer of the apartment complex, grateful to be separated by a wall of glass.
We can’t stay here forever. It isn’t safe, I don’t think.
And now, inside the apartment, I bolt the door behind me and stare out the peephole for a minute or two, to be certain no one followed me in. Not the drug dealer or his buyer, and not anyone else. I move to the window next, parting the dusty, broken mini-blinds with my fingertips, peering out, my fingers turning gray with dust. I survey the street below to be sure we haven’t been followed, that no one knows we are here.
The last tenant had been recently evicted, her belongings never reclaimed. Because of this, I’ve been endowed with a foul-smelling sofa, a banged-up table, a mattress with worrisome stains. That and a carton of eggs that expired last week. I don’t think we’ll eat them.
I open the newspaper and again turn to the classified ads. But this time, instead of searching the apartment listing, I go to the wanted ads, searching for a job as a house cleaner because really, that’s the extent of my qualifications, and after the stunt I pulled at the hospital, references are out of the question. Must be courteous, conscientious, previous experience preferred, I read. Must speak English. Have good communication skills, a great work ethic. The wages are noted; I tally the number of hours I will need to work to pay another month’s worth of rent in this shoddy complex. Sixty hours—that’s what I’d need to work. Though we also need to eat.
This is no longer just about me.
I try to relax but she’s kicking and upset now, thrashing about, and I find that I can’t relax. I tell her it’s okay, that she doesn’t need to worry, that she’s safe here with me, though even I don’t know if that’s true because I have yet to decipher if we’re safe here, if I’m safe. I stroke her, running my hand along the flushed skin, and for a moment—only a moment—she stops fighting. She gives in.
I try on a name for size.
“Jessie,” I say, taking her stillness as consent.