Briana's Gift (8 page)

B
efore I hide, Ms. Watson looks up and sees me. She smiles, waves and heads straight to me. “Hello! You’re Susanna, aren’t you? Remember me—Sheila Watson?”

Reluctantly I nod.

“Briana’s baby is just lovely. Her doctor tells me she’s doing really well.”

“How did you know about her? About her being born?” The inside of my mouth is dry as a desert and I can hardly get the words out.

“There was a write-up in the paper months ago. Your sister was something of a medical phenomenon, you know. Then I read in the obituary column that she had died, and I heard that her baby was in intensive care.”

I hadn’t read about Bree in the paper and no one had mentioned the article to me until now. My news comes from text messaging and e-mail, and it concerns my friends and school. Once in a while I watch the TV news, but it’s usually pretty depressing, so I don’t watch often.

One thing I’ve learned hanging around the hospital is that without a patient’s approval no one on staff talks about a patient to the media, or for that matter, to anyone else who wants information. “How do you know Dr. Kendrow?” I’m bold now, asking questions I would have been too shy to ask months ago.

“I was told she’s head of this unit.”

“Why would she let you see our baby?”

“Because I was given permission to see her.”

“Who gave you permission?”

Sheila smiles, reminding me of someone being indulgent with a very slow learner. “Why, your mother, of course.”

I hit my front door with a bang, yelling, “Mom!”

She’s in the kitchen warming a casserole for our supper. “You don’t have to shout, Sissy. There’s nothing wrong with my hearing.” She glances up, sees my face and, looking alarmed, asks, “What’s wrong? Is it the baby?”

“Would you care?”

“What are you talking about? Yes, I care.”

“Then why did you let that…that
lawyer
in to see her?”

Mom’s face turns pink. “You saw Ms. Watson?”

“She was looking at Bree’s baby. At
our
baby! She wants her, doesn’t she? She’s trying to get her from us! And you…and you…” I break down.

“She called, asked if she might go see the baby. I didn’t see anything wrong with that.”

“She has reasons for wanting to see her,” I shout, “and you know what they are!”

Mom goes to the table, pulls out a chair and sits in another. “Sit down, Sissy. Let’s talk.”

I don’t want to sit and talk. I want to scream. I go to the chair, though, and sit. “So talk.”

“You have no idea how difficult it will be to raise a baby—”

“I told you I’ll help raise her.”

“You’re fourteen—”

“Fifteen in March.” I’m thinking she’s going to use immaturity as an argument against me, but she doesn’t.

“And when you’re eighteen you’ll go to college, or off to begin a job. The baby will only be four years old. Think about that. And think about this too.” She holds up her hands, the joints knotty with arthritis. “Look at me. I don’t know if I can change her diapers, much less prepare her bottles, dress her, potty-train her, bake her birthday cakes.” She shakes her head. “And Dr. Kendrow’s told me that when she comes home, she’ll need constant monitoring. She’ll have to be fed every three hours.
Every three hours
around the clock, then every four hours, and so on until she can finally switch to ‘on-demand’ feeding. This can take months!”

I see that Mom’s scared. I’m scared too. I’m scared of losing the baby, not of taking care of her. “We can’t just give her away to strangers.” My voice is quivering. “She’s
family.
”

Mom goes so quiet, I hear the kitchen clock ticking off seconds across the room.

“I’ll take the night shifts,” I say stubbornly.

“You have no idea,” she repeats. “The—the responsibility of it all.”

I feel sorry for her, but I also have to fight for our baby. “We can do this, Mom. We have to
try
!”

Mom stares across the table—not at me, but at the wall behind me. “She’s fragile, Sissy. What if—” She stops, starts again. “What if she—she dies? That can happen, you know, with a preemie. They can die of that sudden infant death syndrome. I—I can’t lose another child, Sissy. I just can’t.”

Her face crumples like tissue paper and she starts to cry really hard. She buries her face in her hands and I watch her shoulders shake with every sob. I don’t know what to do for her. There’s nothing I
can
do for her. The hole Bree left in our lives and in Mom’s heart is too big to fill. How can I expect a tiny baby to fill up such a deep, dark hole? I get up, leave Mom at the table and go to my room, where I cry too.

I act cheerful and happy the next day when Melody, Stu and I ride to the hospital together. I don’t want anyone to know that Mom’s considering giving our baby up for adoption. We ride the elevator up to the neonatal unit and Colleen meets us at the desk. “You must be Susanna’s friends.”

I introduce them and wash up. Melody and Stu wash their hands too. Babies are bundled in their plastic units, most of them red-faced and crying. They sound like mewing kittens. “Everybody’s hungry,” Colleen says. “And we’re short-staffed today.”

I lead Melody and Stu to our baby’s incubator and see that she’s sleeping through all the noise.

“Oh my gosh!” Melody says. “She’s so little.”

Stu just stands and stares.

My hands itch to hold her, but I don’t, so we watch her sleep. Her stocking hat is pushed back, showing off her mass of black hair. Her tiny mouth makes sucking motions and I wonder if babies dream, and if they do, what could they dream about?

“When can you take her home?” Melody asks.

I’m glad I’m not looking her in the eye when I say, “Dr. Kendrow will decide, but remember, she wasn’t supposed to be born until next month.”

I hear a rumbling noise and we both look at Stu. “Sorry. I’m hungry,” he says, red-faced.

Melody and I laugh, and I say, “Let’s go eat.”

On the way out of the unit, Melody stops and stares at the smallest baby in there. He’s surrounded by machines, and tubes are coming out of his mouth and nose. Melody’s eyes go wide and unblinking. “Is—is he all right? I’ve never seen anything so tiny.”

I know a little bit about him because I hang around all day. “He was born way too early,” I tell her. “His mom was only twenty-eight weeks along when she had him.”

“How old is he now?”

“Three weeks old. He’s got a lot of catching up to do.”

“Can he catch up?” This from Stu, whose hand is almost twice the size of the baby’s whole body.

I remember that Bree’s baby was around twenty-eight weeks when her aneurysm burst. Still, Bree held on to her baby for another seven weeks. “I don’t know,” I say to Stu. “I just know he’s got a long way to go. He’ll be here for months.”

“Why’s that tube in his mouth?” Melody asks.

“It’s a feeding tube because he’s too little to suck a bottle. The one coming from his nose is giving him oxygen.” Both Stu and Melody stare down at the baby and I can tell that they’re upset. I’ve come here for days, been at Bree’s bedside for weeks before this. I’ve seen things other girls my age rarely see, and I have a perspective that far exceeds that of my friends. I feel like we’ve been running a race and I’ve sprinted ahead of them, taken a shortcut that was rocky and hard and that’s left me bruised. Now I’ve arrived at the finish line ahead of them and have to wait for them to catch up. “Come on.” I hook my arms through theirs. “The waffles here are pretty good.”

The cafeteria smells warm and buttery. It’s full of people—residents in green scrubs, visitors, hospital workers. The clatter of trays and cups mingle with the low buzz of voices. We get in line and I force myself to buy food I know I can’t eat just to keep my happy act going. We pay the cashier and find a table in the middle of the hubbub. “When’s your mom coming?” I ask as we settle down.

“Nine-fifteen,” Melody says.

It’s eight-thirty now. Stu seems awfully quiet, and I’m wondering if he’s self-conscious around me. I hope not. My feelings for him have taken a backseat to the baby and the prospect of giving her up. I’m pushing a piece of waffle into my mouth when I notice that Melody and Stu have stopped talking and are watching me. “What?” I say. “Did I dribble syrup?”

They’re sitting across from me, their shoulders touching. I look from one to the other.

Melody clears her throat. “I…um…we have something to tell you.”

I see their expressions. Both look nervous. My heart begins to thud with a kind of dread. Whatever’s going on is going to slam me, and I know it. I set down my fork, wait for the hammer that’s about to fall. “Tell me.”

Melody glances at Stu, reaches over and laces her fingers through his. “We—Stu and I are…going out.”

Her admission hangs in the air between us.
Going out.
A way to announce they are dating exclusively. That they’re boyfriend-girlfriend. A couple. Together. More than just friends. I bounce my gaze from face to face. This isn’t a joke. “How long?” I ask, and hope I sound curious, not devastated.

“A while,” Melody says, biting her lower lip. “Since the summer.”

Pictures flash in my mind like a deck of cards being shuffled. I see Melody and Stu at the pool, their towels inches apart…rubbing suntan lotion on each other…the looks they gave each other at the tree sale…their constant togetherness. I remember Halloween, and the way they were both “busy,” and I’m certain now that they had been busy with each other.
How could I have been so stupid as not to catch on before now?
I can’t look at Stu, so I concentrate on Melody. “Why did you wait until now to tell me?”

“There was never a good time. With all that was happening to you…well, we just didn’t know how.”

“Or when,” Stu adds. His face has gone blank.

They’re asking me to make their confession acceptable. To give them my blessing. Our threesome is breaking up—them the Dynamic Duo, me the Lone Ranger.

“Please say something.” Melody looks pale and scared. “You’re my best friend, Susanna.”

I understand scared. I know scared. “It isn’t a crime to fall in love,” I finally say.

“Really?” Hope crosses Melody’s face.

I think,
Bree said she was in love with Jerry.

“Then it’s okay?” Melody asks. “You’re not mad at us?”

“Not mad.” I’m sad. Horribly sad, but I can’t tell her that. Something is passing away, like autumn leaves blown from trees by the winds of change. I stand. “I need to get back upstairs. I need to feed Bree’s baby. She’s probably awake now. And hungry.”

“Can we talk later?”

“Call me.”

“But we’re still friends?” Melody looks skeptical.

Did she think I’d explode and dump on her? I know what she wants me to say, and I know what I must tell her. In a steady voice, I say, “We’ll always be friends.”

I go to the lobby, but don’t take the elevator. Instead I take the stairs, run up the stairwell until my legs throb and my lungs feel fiery and ready to burst. But I run up all eleven flights without stopping.

I
n the stairwell, I sag against the wall and wait to catch my breath. My calf muscles are screaming from the exertion, but all I can think about are my two best friends changing the rules and becoming boyfriend-girlfriend. I want to feel angry. I want to hate them for liking each other behind my back. Yet if I’d had my way, if Stu had fallen for me, wouldn’t it be Melody who would be left out in the cold? I think about her heart hurting the way mine is and realize I don’t want her to feel this way. I don’t want anyone to feel this way.

Which brings me full circle to thoughts of my sister. Bree had such dreams and plans for herself and Jerry. If they had stayed together, if she had stayed in L.A., the aneurysm would still have happened—that’s what Dr. Franklin has told us. And Jerry might not have agreed to keep her alive on machines. And the baby would have never been born. I shudder thinking about it. And I know deep down that I’d rather know that Bree’s baby—our baby—is alive, even if she’s adopted and has to live with other people.

I start to cry over the sense of loss that’s fallen on me like dark rain. From below, I hear a stairwell door open, then hear footsteps ascending. I quickly wipe my cheeks and push through the door of the eleventh floor. The warm air hits my face and I realize how cold I’ve gotten in the unheated stairwell. The warmth makes me feel better.

Colleen waves as I pass the desk and go into the unit. Bree’s baby is in her incubator and she’s crying—screaming, actually. I see a round Band-Aid taped to her tiny heel. “The lab tech just drew blood,” Colleen says, coming alongside me. “Why don’t you swaddle her and hold her?”

I open the lid and pick her up, but she continues to cry. I wrap her tightly in the blanket, put her back into her incubator because I know I should start letting go of her if Mom’s going to allow her to be adopted. I spy my flute case on the floor, drag a rocking chair over to the side of the baby’s bubble and open my case.

I lift my flute, hold the silver instrument up and play “What Child Is This?” because that’s the first song that pops into my head. I get into the music and play the song a second time, and soon the room fades and I’m lost in my music.

At some point, when I rest for a minute, Colleen says, “You play beautifully.”

I thank her.

She says, “Look,” and gestures at the plastic shell.

I turn and see that the baby has stopped crying and she’s looking straight at me. And even though I know newborns can’t see really well, I swear she’s staring, her slate-colored eyes full of curiosity, her head cocked as if she’s listening, and knows who I am. That I am Susanna, her aunt, maker of music. My heart swells. I raise the flute to my lips and play again.

When I get home that night, the house is dark except for a glow in front of the living room window. Once inside, I see that the glow is coming from a fully decorated Christmas tree. Not our pathetic old artificial tree, but a fresh live one. The pine scent fills the room. On the table, I find a note from Mom.

Sissy,

The tree is courtesy of your friends, Melody and Stuart and Mr. and Mrs. Mendoza. They showed up with it this afternoon and asked permission to set it up and completely decorate it. How could I say no? Plus you deserve a tree.
We
should have a tree!

I’m with a client until seven, then I’ll be home. Warm yourself something from the fridge. And Stuart asked me to have you please call him as soon as you get home.

Love,
Mom

I go to my room and call Stu. He answers on the second ring. Has he been waiting by the phone? “Hey. It’s me,” I say.

“Thanks for calling.”

“Thanks for the tree. I mean that. It’s really nice.”

“It was Mellie’s idea and the Mendozas wanted to help.”

A guilt offering?
I wonder.

“We thought you should have a tree.” He wants to say something else, so I wait on the line letting the silence stretch until he breaks it. “I’m sorry it took us…Mellie and me…so long to tell you about our dating.”

Us.
The new way of seeing my two best friends. Us, not we. “I’m over it,” I say. Not quite the truth, but I know I
will
get over it, so I say so because I think he needs to hear it.

“I…um…I want you to know something, Susanna.”

I’ve always liked to hear him say my name.

“I never said anything to Melody about what happened between us after the funeral. And I never will.”

I’m glad, but curious. “Why?”

“I just don’t think she needs to know, that’s all.”

He was protecting her.

“She…she would never understand and I don’t want her to be mad at you. And I don’t want you to think for a minute that it didn’t mean something to me. It did.”

He was protecting me.

“I’ll forget it if you will,” I say.

Another silence. “I guess I’ll see you later.”

“Later,” I say, and hang up. I sit still and search my feelings, and say goodbye to my first serious crush. I’m okay about it.

I fall asleep on my bed fully clothed before Mom gets home and wake at six the next morning. I quickly take a shower and get ready for Melody’s dad to pick me up. When I go downstairs, Mom is sitting on the sofa, a large white box on her lap. “Sorry I conked out that way,” I tell her. “You could have woken me up.”

“I looked in on you and didn’t have the heart.”

“I like the tree.”

“It was very thoughtful of your friends. I like it too.”

I glance at the box. “Do you want me to wrap that for you this afternoon?”

“It isn’t a gift.”

I sit beside her and peek into the open box. It’s filled with ribbons, barrettes, scrunchies, headbands and bows. “What’s this?”

“Your and Bree’s hair gear from when you were little.”

I forage through the pile. “You saved all these?”

“It’s what mothers do.” She picks up a sparkling headband with streamers and stars glued on. “This was your sister’s favorite. She was a fairy princess every time she put it on. Which was every day when she was three. She had a wand too, but it broke in half. How she cried.”

The box holds other treasures. I find a baby bracelet made of beads with letters that spell my name. I can’t believe my wrist was ever this small. I pick up a pie plate of hardened plaster of paris, the impression of a child’s handprint painted gold pressed in its center.

“Bree’s,” Mom says. “From her nursery school on Mother’s Day.”

On the back is a poem. Aloud I read, “‘This is to remind you,/When I have grown so tall,/That once I was quite little,/And my hands were very small.’”

Mom’s eyes fill with tears. “I talked to Ms. Watson yesterday,” she says.

I sit stock-still and hear the sound of my heart thumping with dread. Can Mom hear it too?

“I told her that while it makes a lot of sense to have a good, loving couple raise Bree’s baby, I—
we
can’t let her go. She’s all we have of Bree. All that remains of my lovely daughter.”

I get light-headed with relief. I want to jump up and down and shout out how happy I am. I don’t, though. I slip my arms around Mom. She kisses my forehead, lays her cheek against my hair. “I talked to Dr. Kendrow too, and she says we can bring the baby home day after tomorrow. On Christmas Eve.”

“We can?” I can’t contain myself and bounce up and down on the couch.

Mom shakes her head and with a smile says, “You’re
really
going to have to come up with a name for her, Sissy.”