Closing the curtain, she works Nessa’s dress onto the hanger, where it hangs neatly from the bar above.
“The steam from the hot water should do the trick. I’m glad you thought to bring a dress. What do we have for you to wear?”
No way I’m wearing a dress, even if I had one, which, thank God, I don’t.
“I have the jeans I washed in the creek, and a newer blue T-shirt. That’s all I have that’s clean.”
I study the wallpaper, the little bunches of cherries on a cream background so real, I want to lick them. Pretending it doesn’t matter is just that: pretending. The truth is, up until yesterday, it hadn’t mattered.
“I can wear my boots instead of the sneakers,” I offer.
Mrs. Haskell smiles warmly. “I think that’s a good choice.”
Fifteen minutes later, she calls me into the bathroom, the dress in hand. It’s practically wrinkle-free. I’m grateful Jenessa will look like a real little girl, not like some backwoods orphan thrown away like trash.
“Can you leave the water going?”
Mrs. Haskell nods her approval, reaches in to adjust the temperature, then leaves the bathroom.
I find Ness in front of the television, where a little bear is grinning as he’s snuggled by his mama. I practically have to carry her to make her come with me.
We’re stripped naked under the man-made waterfall, and the steam enfolds us as I soap her down. I use the little bottle of yellow stuff to wash our hair squeaky-clean, like Mrs. Haskel instructed me to do. Another memory surfaces: one of washing indoors, bubbles everywhere, and Mama’s face, smiling and relaxed, loking like a whole different Mama.
Jenessa is seal slippery against me, splashing like a baby, and afterward, I wrap her in a fluffy peach towel that brushes the ground. I haven’t seen her smile so much in a long time. Having gotten over the events of last night, now it’s like a game to her, a wonderful adventure full of tastes and sights and sounds she never dreamed existed, let alone imagined could be hers for the claiming.
I take the underclothes Mrs. Haskell hands in through the cracked door, crisp and new in crackly packages—I reckon it’s no wonder the man took so long getting back with breakfast. With my own towel wrapped around me and tucked in above my chest, I help Ness step into the underwear, bright white and smelling like store-bought, a smell that crinkles her nose in curiosity.
“Arms up.” I slip the new undershirt over her head. She fingers the tiny pink flower at the neckline. “You’re as clean as the whistle of the Tennessee warbler,” I tell her before sending her out to Mrs. Haskell.
Wiping the steam from the mirror, I stare at myself, relieved I don’t look as much like the toothbrushing stranger from an hour ago. I still have the same long dirty blond hair, poker straight. A nose that matches Nessa’s, mostly. But it’s the eyes that hold me captive, empty of concentric creek ripples and breezy tree branches playing the sky like my bow plays my violin.
Who am I now? Who was I before? Am I the same girl?
Licking a tear from the corner of my mouth, and like so many times in the past, I pray to the one who knows: Saint Joseph.
Years ago, I dubbed Saint Joseph the patron saint of Beans. It came from a story in one of the rummage sale books Mama brought back from town. Saint Joseph once saved the whole of Sicily, Italy, by bringing forth a plentiful harvest of fava beans.
Nessa insists she loves fava beans, even though she’s never had any. Maybe that’s why. We ate most kinds of beans in the woods. We’d have starved to death without them.
Saint Joseph, if you’re still listening, please look out for us? We’re not in the woods anymore, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing. Please keep us safe, and help me keep Nessa safe. Help me remember the es in “don’t”, not to drop my g’s, and not to say ain’t.
Most of all, please look out for Mama? No matter what she did.
On beans I pray.
4
“All rise.”
I help Jenessa to her feet as the judge swooshes out of the courtroom through a private door Mrs. Haskell said leads to his chambers, which is like his personal office-slash-dressing room. I don’t know what the slash means. All I can come up with is the slash I make when I gut a squirrel.
“Well, that’s that,” Mrs. Haskell says, smiling.
The whole thing unfolded in a mixture of mumbo jumbo, cleared throats, and shuffling papers, with a few important facts set in stone:
1. It’s true. When Mama took me away like she did, she broke the law.
2. The man had been the one with legal custody, like Mrs. Haskell said. I hadn’t fully believed it until I heard the judge say it all official like.
3. We belong to the man now.
4. Mrs. Haskell would send the court a monthly report, and there’d be weekly check-ins with her to monitor our progress.
5. We wouldn’t be going to foster homes . . . or back to the woods.
And that was that.
Out in the hallway, Mrs. Haskell turns to me with misty eyes. I can feel it sure as fava beans that she really does care about us.