House Arrest (7 page)

“And remember the war in Vietnam? Your Daddy and I were against that war, and so were our friends in the commune.”

I know all about their war. My third grade class studied Vietnam. We made care packages of pencils and crayons and notebooks, mailed them across the world to children whose schoolyards had trees that still wouldn’t grow leaves.

“It was wrong to draft young men into that evil war, to kill and be killed. We wanted to stop the bombing.” Momma puts her finger on my chin and lifts it up, so I have to look at her. “We set a fire in the draft board where all the records were kept. So they couldn’t process any more soldiers, at least for a while.”

Momma set a fire?

“Afterwards, your father and I decided not to do that kind of protest any more.”

“You mean fires?”

She nods “Fires and other things that could hurt people. We moved to Portland, and the next year you were born. Last month one of our old friends from the commune was arrested. He was in a lot of trouble.” Momma’s lips get so skinny they almost disappear. “He told them Daddy set the fire. That’s why those men came this morning.”

The ferry slows down and turns into the island harbor. We go outside again to stand in the wind. Aunt Ruth is waiting on the pier and drives us to a white house across from the harbor. Momma and Aunt Ruth huddle together for a few minutes in the kitchen while I stand close to the doorway and pretend to look out the window at the boats. I cannot quite hear their whispers, except one thing.

“Mitchell is very nervous,” Aunt Ruth says. “Our business depends on our customers’ trust.”

“Good grief,” Momma whispers back. “She’s ten years old. Joe McCarthy is dead.”

Aunt Ruth makes coffee. Mine is mostly hot milk, with two spoons of coffee and two spoons of sugar. That’s the way I like it, but I’m only allowed to drink it on special occasions because coffee stunts your growth.

Momma is in a hurry. She says she has to catch the last ferry back, to be with Daddy in court the next morning.

I whine and plead. “Don’t go.”

She must be worried about me, because she decides to stay overnight and take the first ferry back in the morning. We share the narrow bed in Aunt Ruth’s tiny back bedroom. I sleep with my nose in the peach smell of Momma’s hair.

It’s way more than a couple of weeks. I miss the tryouts for E.T. and then I miss the play. My Portland teacher sends thick envelopes with schoolwork and my cousin Marilyn plays teacher with me in the evenings. In June, Aunt Ruth asks me to help her with spring planting. I’ve never had a garden. At home, we get our tomatoes and lettuce and cukes at the food coop. I watch her and copy what she does, pushing my finger into the dirt, up to the second knuckle. Into every hole I plant a seed with a wish for Daddy before sprinkling the dirt back in and patting it down.

Planting hope is my idea.

One early summer afternoon, I help Aunt Ruth weed the garden, using a half-size hoe that belongs to my cousins. The sun warms my back right through my T-shirt. I stop to rest and lean forward on the hoe handle with both hands and look up at the sky. That’s when I see the tree house. It’s in an old swamp maple that stands alone on the edge of the property, beyond the garden plot.

I use the two wooden slats nailed to the trunk to reach the lowest branches, and then I can climb a few feet to the tree house. Set in a wide fork, it is just a platform, really, with low sides. I part the branches with my hands and watch the ferry pulling away from the dock. Aunt Ruth weeds between the rows of tomatoes. Marilyn and Carla run with their friends along the pebble beach. I am veiled by leaves.

•

Anna insisted that the sickly avocado plant on the sun porch was just dormant, but it looked dead to me. I pulled off the brown crinkly leaves, crushed them in my hand, and dropped them in the waste basket. I pressed my forehead against the dark window. What happened to my family wasn’t my cousins’ fault, or Aunt Ruth’s, or Momma’s, or even Daddy’s for that matter. I am thirty-two years old. Why am I still whining about things that happened so long ago? I searched the darkness of the backyard. The garden was all dead stalks, thick with blowing snow and the sparkle of frosted trees. The cold pushed back at me through the glass.

A lonely and icy evening. Pippa’s baby died on a night like this.

8 ~ Pippa

Pippa had never been to an obstetrician. Too bad she couldn’t keep it that way. Friday morning, she sat between the cats on the living room sofa waiting for Emily Klein. From the kitchen drifted the small clinking sounds of Marshall washing the breakfast dishes. At the dining room table, the twins bickered as they mixed paper maché for their relief map.

“That’s not enough water,” Timothy said.

“It has to be thick, Dummy. So the mountains will stand up.”

Pippa cupped her hands over the slight bulge of her middle, hoping for another quivery message from inside. She was fifteen weeks along and two days ago she had felt the first flutter of this baby. When did it start with Abby, that first distant watery tumble? Pippa searched the Goddess’s features in the painting over the mantel; they seemed alive in the flickering candle flames.

“How can I dance for you,” she asked the painting, “without risking my baby?”

Isis looked back with molten eyes. Pippa couldn’t read her expression.

At least she knew what the cats wanted. With one hand she stroked Bast’s sleek blue-black fur. With the other she scratched behind Newark’s ears, making his guttural purr even louder.

As if he could read her sorrow, Newark opened his eyes, stretched and climbed onto her lap. He didn’t have Bast’s regal bearing, but Newark always seemed to know when she was mourning Abby. His nose nuzzled along the denim jumper over her breasts, tender already, and into the valley of her neck before curling up. She stroked his back until the lamenting purr returned.

She tried not to think about the doctor’s appointment. Ma’s voice buzzed inside her head. It don’t help one tad to fret about something you can’t control, she used to say, so you might as well think about something nice. But Pippa couldn’t come up with a single cheerful thought. She tried to remember what Emily said on Wednesday, about the button-back chairs being valuable.

Emily might be book smart, but what did she know about important things, like growing a baby when all the time the court planned to take him away? What could she possibly understand about losing a child? No matter how much she loved her cousin’s kid, it just wasn’t the same. And no way could Emily get it, how responsible Pippa felt about not letting Isis down, or the family, with Tian in jail. Newark rolled over, presenting his velvet belly to be rubbed. What good was responsibility, when you had no idea about how to fulfill it? The solstice was crucial, and she couldn’t figure out how to dance at the ceremony without getting caught. And all this worry had to be bad for her baby.

She looked down at the rug, off-white with a design of grape leaves weaving through a bamboo trellis. The coffee table had been placed slightly off-center covering a pale purple stain. She imagined someone sloshing half a bottle of Chianti across the rug at a party. The blemish hardly showed on the grapes, but on the beige background the splashes stood out like old blood.

Maybe chanting would help. “We grow from your earth; we share your fruits,” she sang, her voice growing stronger with each word. “Your wings protect us. Strengthened by your power, we reach for the stars.”

She really should be sitting cross-legged on the floor, but even this early in the pregnancy it wasn’t easy to get up once she was down. Her center of gravity had already shifted, settled somewhere closer to the earth. The pregnancy had been so different with Abby; how light she had felt even at the end. Her cells remembered the warmth of Abby’s infant skin and the memory was unbearable. She looked at Isis, wings luminous in the flickering of the candles on the mantel, imagining herself and this baby safe in the goddess’ embrace.

The toot of a horn jerked Pippa’s attention to the small green car at the curb. Being a nurse must not pay so well. But Pippa would be happy to own any car. The family had an old van, the roof pockmarked from a hailstorm last year. Most of the time it was parked in the garage waiting for Marshall to fiddle with some little thing not worth paying someone to fix. After settling Newark in her warm spot on the sofa, she blew out the candles, and called goodbye to Marshall and the twins.

Emily unlocked the passenger door and lifted a large paper from the front seat. “Good morning.”

“Hi. What’s the picture?” The crayoned drawing was crude, a boy in bed with a dark-haired woman dancing behind him. The child’s leg was enormous and encircled by a contraption like a cage.

“A present from the patient I just saw.”

“Why’s the Eiffel tower on his leg?”

Emily signaled to the empty street, then pulled away from the curb. “The metal frame holds the bones together while they heal.”

“He drew it for you?”

“Uh huh. A good-bye card. The frame comes off on Monday. How sweet is that?”

Pippa studied the drawing. The metal spikes seemed to go right into his bones. Poor kid. “What happened to him?”

“Hit by a bus. But he’s doing well.” Emily paused. “I’ll miss him.”

Pippa twisted around to place the drawing on the back seat. “Do you always get close to your patients?” She rearranged her long skirt around her legs, uncovering the bulge of the small black monitor.

“Sure. Especially if I see them for weeks and months.” Emily braked for the red light at Belmont and glanced down at Pippa’s ankle. “You mind if we take city streets, instead of the highway?”

“Take your time. I’m in no rush to see this doctor.”

“I hate highway driving. When I lived in Portland, I didn’t take the interstate for a whole year. I couldn’t merge.”

Couldn’t merge? Pippa glanced sideways at Emily, not sure if it was okay to laugh. But Emily’s expression looked serious. Geez, that was pathetic.

“I was wondering,” Emily said. “Doesn’t a siren go off or something, when you leave the house with that device?”

Pippa shook her head. “It’s a monitor, not an alarm. It’s programmed, so they know that I go to work every afternoon. They programmed in this doctor’s appointment, that I’ll be out of the house for a few hours.” She studied Emily’s profile again, wondering if this was a good time to ask her favor. “I told my probation officer that this appointment would take all morning,” she said. “They don’t expect me back until noon.”

“It won’t take that long.”

Pippa had called Nan Malloy early that morning, explained that the first doctor’s appointment would be extra long. Her plan depended entirely on Emily. She would have to ask, but it was probably too soon. She would wait until after the appointment, when Emily was feeling sorry for the poor pregnant girl having to go through an examination with some old doctor putting his hairy hands where they didn’t belong.

“Tell me about your, I don’t know what to call your group, your household,” Emily said. “Is cult a bad word for you?”

Pippa scratched her ankle, slipping her finger under the rubber strap. “I’m sure you’ve heard awful things about us. That’s what Tian says. He’s the head of our religion, but you can only call him Tian if you’re in the family. Otherwise, he’s Sebastian.” Maybe if Emily understood about their family, she would be willing to help. “Tian says if you believe in something, it’s true and sacred, like a religion. But if you fear it, if you hate it, then you call it a cult.”

“People seem to be pretty scared of you guys. At least, according to the newspapers. I guess that makes you a cult.”

“To me, we’re a family. Tian’s our leader, like the father. He talks with Isis pretty much every day to learn what she wants from us.” She tried to search Emily’s face for her reaction, but the nurse’s face was blank. “Do you think that’s weird, hearing voices? That Tian is psychotic, needs medication or something? At least our church doesn’t rip people off or screw little boys.”

Emily signaled left at the parking garage, but she didn’t say anything.

Oops. Maybe she had better change the subject so she didn’t offend this stuffy woman. Pippa looked out the window. “This place is huge. I’ve never been here.”

“That’s the Children’s Hospital, with all the glass. That’s where Zoe goes for clinic. The Emergency Room is on the left. We’re going to the big building on the right, the medical offices.” Emily glanced at Pippa. “Tell me about Isis.”

“She’s about fertility and healing, about curing the sick and bringing the dead back to life.” Pippa still had a hard time with that part. If Isis could bring back the dead, why hadn’t she saved Abby and Terrence?

Emily pulled into a parking spot on the top level, under the dishwater-gray sky, and turned off the ignition. “Can I ask you one more question?”

Why was she was so curious about the family? Was that a good sign, or a bad one? “Sure. If I can ask you one.”

“Okay,” Emily said. “You first.”

“Are you Jewish?”

“Yeah. But I’m not observant or anything. Why?”

“I just wondered. Klein, you know?” Pippa shrugged. “If you can be nosy, so can I.”

“Fair enough. My turn. What’s the big deal with the solstice?”

Pippa looked at Emily’s long face, the thin nose bent slightly to the left. Remember who she works for. Don’t assume you can trust her, just because she acts interested in you. Pippa thought back to Francie’s lesson about the religions of the world, from when she was studying to join the family. “It’s kind of like your High Holy Days,” she answered, and opened the car door.

There were ten names listed on the plaque next to the door: four doctors and six nurse-midwives. Emily pointed at B. Zabernathy MD. “Your appointment is with him. I’ve never met him,” she said. “Too bad you didn’t get one of the midwives.”

“Don’t I get to choose?” Pippa asked.

Emily left her hand on the doorknob. “Usually they want you to see everyone at least once, since there’s no predicting who will be on call when you go into labor. But maybe it’s different for you, since the judge ordered these visits.”

“It’s totally different for me. We have our babies at home. With Miriam. She’s a lay midwife from Ashfield. That would be my choice, but my wishes don’t count, do they?”

The women of the family gave birth in the greenhouse, the closest place to the forest and to Isis. Their greenhouse was long and narrow and extended across most of the backyard to catch as much southern sun as possible. With Abby, Pippa had labored all night. The flickering light from the ring of candles had been mirrored in a hundred panes of glass, multiplying their prayers and filling the room with anticipation. Her physical memories of labor, of panting and breathing and finally pushing, were all mixed up with the earthy smell of the greenhouse air, wet and ripe with the shoots pushing through dark soil.

The whole family had gathered for the labor and the birth. Pippa lay propped on a mattress and pillows in the warmest corner of the glass room. Tian held the double-handled birthing mug to her lips, offering sips of raspberry tea to strengthen her contractions.

At the potting table, Liz prepared compresses of cool nettle tea to soothe her sore bottom afterwards. “Later, you’ll be really glad for these,” she said. “Right, Francie?”

Francie nodded. “Liz’s medicine really worked for me. After the twins.”

“And you were twice as sore.” Tian smiled at Francie and touched her shoulder.

The twins sat under the table with their blocks, interrupting their castle-building and catnaps for frequent visits to the baby. Jeremy spoke into Pippa’s stretched-out belly button. “Hurry up, baby. When you get here, I’ll teach you to draw.”

Timothy elbowed his brother out of the way. “I’ll teach you to play Frisbee.”

Murphy played lullabies on the psaltery, building a musical scaffold for Pippa’s rhythmic breathing. She stopped playing only to nurse Terrence when he whimpered, then place him back in his nest of blankets at her feet.

It was late morning the next day before Miriam finally announced, “You can push” and mid-afternoon when Tian led them in chanting the birth prayer. The questions and answers bounced back and forth across the room, bright with autumn sun.

How could something so glorious and profound end so badly? Abby gone and Pippa jolted breathlessly awake most nights by the swirling snowstorm nightmares.

Emily held the office door for Pippa. “I’m sorry you don’t get to chose. I guess the court is trying to protect your baby.”

“I don’t need their protection. We take good care of our children.” She pushed into the office.

Forty-five minutes later, Pippa’s blood and urine had been collected. Pippa and Emily sat on attached green vinyl chairs in the waiting room. Pippa looked up from the clipboard with the medical history form. “What does this mean, am I allergic to latex?”

“Like medical gloves and balloons. Have you ever had a reaction to them, hives or trouble breathing? Maybe at the dentist?”

“I’ve never been to a dentist,” Pippa said. “I can’t remember any problems with balloons.”

“Then just check the No box. Anything else?”

“Not about the form.” Pippa squeezed her eyes tight. “Just, what’s the doctor going to do? Besides shove his fingers up inside me?”

“They’ll catch up on all the stuff they usually do earlier in the pregnancy. A pelvic exam to confirm that your baby’s growing well. Try to relax and it won’t hurt. They’ll test your blood and urine for anemia, diabetes. Probably talk about vitamins, diet, avoiding things that could hurt the baby, like kitty litter and hot tubs and medicines. Arranging for the hospital delivery. The usual.”