“You take that baby,” I say, “and I’ll be forced to call the police. Child endangerment, in addition to theft. She’s safer here, with me.”
She needs to understand that the baby is better off with me. “When I met you,” I remind her, “she had a fever. Blisters on her rear end, patches of eczema across her skin. She hadn’t been bathed in weeks, and you were all but out of food. It’s a wonder she wasn’t hypothermic, emaciated or dead.
“Besides,” I tack on, inching closer to the baby, knowing good and well I will fight for her if I need to, that I will draw the knife from the robe and argue self-defense.
But I can see already, by the resignation in her eyes, that I will not need to fight. The baby, for her, is a burden, a weight. The visceral feelings—that undeniable need to hold the baby, the sense of floating purposelessly adrift when she’s not in my embrace—those are mine. All mine. That longing that stems from the tips of my toes, all the way to my entrails. Mine.
“You hardly need a baby slowing you down,” knowing as well as she does that she likely has someone in hot pursuit. Whom, I hardly know, but I register she does, the man or woman who delivered that ochre bruise, I assume.
“You’ll take care of her,” she states. Not so much as a question, but a need. I need you to take care of her.
I say that I will. My face softens, for the baby’s sake, and the words cascade from my mouth like a waterfall. “Oh, I will,” I promise, “I will take such good care of her,” like a child who’s been blessed with a new kitten.
“But I can’t have you in my home,” I say then, my voice tightening, as I walk a fine line between caring for that baby and needing Willow out of my house, “not when you’ve been stealing from me,” and she protests, “I didn’t—” and I interrupt with, “Just go.”
I don’t want to hear it, the lies and denials, any excuses about needing money for this or that, when it’s clear I’m not buying her opening story. She took my father’s wedding ring, plain and simple, and sold it at the pawnshop.
And now she must go.
She doesn’t say goodbye to me. She asks again, “You will take care of her. Of Ruby?” but the words come out halfhearted and not genuine, for it’s proper etiquette, she must assume, to make sure the baby is in good hands before she goes. But there’s a hesitation, nonetheless, a brief hesitation as she eyes the baby and quite possibly her blue eyes fill with tears. Fake tears, I tell myself, nothing more.
And then she steps toward the baby and runs a hand across her head; she whispers a goodbye before she goes, wiping those artificial tears on the back of a sleeve.
“I’ll treat her as if she were my very own,” I avow, closing and locking the door as she leaves. I watch from the bay window to make sure she’s gone, moping down the city street in the cold April rain. And then I turn to the baby girl, completely enraptured by her doughy cheeks, her snow-white hair, her toothless mouth that unfolds into a radiant smile, and think: Mine. All mine.
WILLOW
At some point when I wasn’t paying attention, I turned sixteen.
And that was when it happened, all of it in about three weeks.
It was the end of winter, and I was feeling antsy for spring, but for whatever reason, the snow kept falling from the ominous, gray sky. I was freezing cold each time Matthew and I took the buses around town, and the sweatshirt and gym shoes never seemed to do. The cold winter air blew into each and every bus stop, and since most of my clothes were dresses and jumpers from Joseph, my legs were completely bare.
At night, as I slept on that bed with the thin patchwork quilt, with only an oversize T-shirt to keep me warm, I trembled, my body covered in goose pimples, which quadrupled each time Joseph pulled that T-shirt up over my head.
I thought of all the ways I’d kill him if I could. Thinking of Momma and “I love you likes” got replaced with thinking of Joseph and all the ways I’d do him in if I could. Pushing him down the stairs. Hitting him over the head with a frying pan. Setting the whole Omaha home on fire while he was asleep.
But then what would I do?
I hate you like arachnophobes hate spiders. I hate you like cats hate dogs.
One lifeless winter day, Matthew and I caught the bus and headed to the library. I remember that I was excited ’cause that day, Matthew was going to show me how to use the computers. I’d never used a computer before.