The Seventh Mother (16 page)

“W
hat did she look like?” Lashaundra’s eyes were wide.

“She looked like she was asleep, I guess, except she was on the floor.”

“I never saw anyone dead before.”

I shrugged.

“Well, she’s in heaven now.”

Lashaundra sounded pretty sure of herself.

“What do you think heaven is like?” I asked. I hadn’t thought much about it before. Daddy always said dead is dead, and only fools believe anything else.

“Heaven is like everything you ever wanted all the time,” she said, smiling. “Mama says it’s better than anyplace in the whole world.”

“Do you think Mrs. Figg’s husband is there, too?”

“Probably,” she said. “If he believed in God and stuff.”

We sat on her bed, our English homework spread out, untouched, beside us.

“What if he didn’t believe in God?”

“I guess then he’d be in hell,” she said. “But I’m sure he believed in God. Almost everyone believes in God, right?”

“I guess so.”

I didn’t tell her what Daddy said about people who believed in God.

“And he must have been a good person,” she continued. “I mean, he let her have all those animals.”

“He even put up a swing for the pig,” I added.

“I’m sure he’s in heaven, and she’s there with him.”

She sounded so sure of it all.

“Do you think Damon Rigby is in heaven?”

She raised her eyes and stared at me for a long minute.

“I don’t know,” she said finally. “He was pretty mean.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “But even so . . .”

“Mama said he was mean to his wife and his kids, and that’s why Jasper is the way he is. Mama says we should try to forgive Jasper, even if he is a jerk.”

“Maybe Mr. Rigby’s dad was a jerk, too,” I said. “Maybe that’s why he was so mean.”

“Maybe, but he was an adult. He didn’t have to be like that.”

I stared at the notebook in my lap, but all I could see was the picture of my mother holding me in the rocking chair. Had she believed in God? Was she in heaven? Would I see her one day when I died? And if I did, would she even recognize me? I had changed a lot since she died.

“Mama is taking us to the animal shelter this weekend to get a cat,” Lashaundra said. “Maybe we’ll get one of Mrs. Figg’s.”

I sighed heavily. “I wish Daddy would let me take Daisy. She’s such a sweet dog.”

“Maybe Emma could ask him,” she said.

I shook my head. “No, she’d better not. He already said no, and if she asks him again, he’ll probably just get mad.”

“He gets mad a lot, doesn’t he?” Lashaundra’s voice was cautious.

I shrugged.

“My daddy said he gets in a lot of arguments at work. He almost punched a guy last week, because the guy got in his way and made him drop a package.”

“He doesn’t usually get mad,” I said.

I was lying, I guess, but I felt like I should stick up for Daddy. He was my dad, after all.

“I heard Mama and Daddy talking one night, when we were still in the trailer. She said she heard him yelling at Jackie one time. She said she almost called the police, but then he stopped yelling. And she said Jackie was fine the next day.”

“He yells sometimes, I guess. But not at me. He hardly ever gets mad at me.”

“Well, Daddy said the guy who got in your dad’s way at work is a jerk, anyway. So maybe that’s why he got mad.”

I smiled at her. Lashaundra was my best friend.

“Does your dad ever get mad?” I asked.

“Sometimes, I guess. But he doesn’t yell. When he gets mad, he gets really quiet.”

“Was he mad when the sheriff came to your apartment after Mr. Rigby died?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. He didn’t act mad, anyway. But Mama was pretty upset. She called the sheriff a cracker.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Why did she call him that?”

“That’s what she calls people who are racists. She says they’re redneck crackers.”

“He was nice when he came to Mrs. Figg’s house after she died,” I said, remembering Sheriff Wylie’s kind smile.

“Well, you’re white.” Lashaundra’s voice was flat. “He’s probably nice to most white people. But when something bad happens, crackers always blame black people. That’s what Mama says.”

“She doesn’t think that Emma’s a cracker, does she?”

“No.” Lashaundra smiled. “I think she did when we first got here, but she likes Emma pretty well now.”

I smiled back at her. Who wouldn’t like Emma, after all?

I
was sitting in the rocking chair a couple weeks after Mrs. Figg died, making lists of baby names I liked, when the phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Emma? Hi, this is Shirley Rigby.”

“Hi, Shirley.”

“I was wondering if you could meet me for coffee this afternoon?” Her voice was soft and sounded anxious. “Maybe one o’clock at the diner?”

“That sounds great,” I said. “I have to pick Jenny up from school at three, so that gives us a couple hours.”

“Perfect, thank you!” she said. “I’ll see you then.”

She was waiting at a booth when I walked in.

“I ordered coffee for us,” she said, smiling at me hopefully.

“It’s decaf.” Resa set a cup in front of me. “No caffeine for you.”

She set another cup in front of Shirley.

“Emma’s expecting,” she said.

“How wonderful!” Shirley reached across the table and put her hand on mine. “I’ll bet your husband is just over the moon.”

“We’re pretty happy,” I said.

“There’s nothing better than bringing a child into the world. I remember when Della was born, that’s my first-born. I couldn’t believe how much love I could feel for something so tiny.”

I nodded, thinking about Andrew.

“Is Jenny excited, too?” Shirley nodded at me, anticipating my reply.

“She is,” I said. “We’re all excited.”

“Well, of course you are. Why wouldn’t you be?”

She sipped her coffee, her cheeks reddening slightly.

“How many children do you have?” I asked.

“Seven,” she said. “Well, six that lived. I lost one.”

“I’m so sorry.” Now I put my hand over hers. “I know how hard that is. I lost a baby, too. There’s nothing worse in the world.”

“What happened to your baby?” she asked, not meeting my eyes.

I sat a moment, wondering if I should tell her the truth. Then I took a deep breath. I’d told the truth to Resa and to Brannon. And neither of them had abandoned me.

“My first husband was abusive,” I said, straining to keep my voice calm. “My baby, Andrew was his name, he got a respiratory infection when he was still just tiny, and my husband wouldn’t let me take him to the hospital. And . . . he died.”

She stared at me now, her eyes wide.

“So you know . . . I mean . . . you know what it’s like?”

“I do,” I said. “I got married very young, and Micah, my first husband, he was mean as a snake. I was pretty much scared to death of him.”

“What happened to him?” she asked.

I shrugged. “As far as I know, he’s still in Arizona being mean to some other woman. After Andrew died, I left. I left while Micah was out of town and I never went back.”

“I left Damon once,” she said. “When I was pregnant with Della, he hit me so hard he knocked me down. I left while he was at work the next day. I went up to stay with the nuns at the convent in Loretto. I was raised a Catholic. I even went to Catholic school until high school. Of course, when I married Damon I joined his church. He was a Baptist, you know. They don’t like the Catholics much. He said I wasn’t going to raise his children to be Pope followers, so that was that. I had to become a Baptist before he’d marry me. I did miss the nuns, though. They were always kind to me.

“Anyway, my sister Theresa worked in the kitchen at the convent in Loretto. So I drove up and stayed a few days. The sisters were so kind to me. I could have stayed there forever. But Damon figured out where I was. It wasn’t hard for him to guess. And he came and got me. He promised me he’d never hit me again. He promised we’d be happy.”

She took another sip of coffee.

“I almost left another time. When I was pregnant with my third, he came home drunk one night and beat me up bad, real bad. I lost the baby.”

“Oh God, Shirley, I’m so sorry.”

“I wanted to leave,” she said. “I even started packing up my suitcases. But Della started to cry, and I had to sit down and rock her a bit. And I realized then, I already had two babies, and I didn’t know where I could go that he wouldn’t find me. Besides, I didn’t think I could support myself, let alone the kids. I never had a job, you know. I didn’t even finish high school. And Damon made good money.”

She sighed. “I stayed because I couldn’t figure out how to leave.”

“Where are your children now?” I asked.

“Well, Jasper is still at home. You met him. He’s in the seventh grade. And he misses his daddy something awful. I don’t know what to do about that. Of all my kids, Jasper was Damon’s favorite. And even though he was hard on Jasper sometimes, Jasper really did love his daddy.”

She paused and blew her nose into a napkin. Then she took a deep breath and plowed ahead.

“My Lucy is a senior up at the high school. She’s already applied to college at the University of Kentucky. I’m sure she’ll get in. Lucy is my smart one.

“And then Della, well, she lives up in Cincinnati. She doesn’t come home very often. She didn’t even come for her daddy’s funeral. She’s mad at him still, I guess. He was plenty hard on her. She inherited Damon’s stubborn streak, so she caught it a lot. And she’s pretty mad at me for staying with him.”

“What does she do?” I asked.

“She works in a day-care center. Della loves the little ones. She’s married and got three of her own. They’re six, four, and two. She’s a good mama, Della is.”

“She must have learned that from you,” I said, smiling at her. She just looked so beaten down and anxious.

“Lord knows I wasn’t a good mama,” she said. “If I’d had some sense in me, I’d have taken the kids and run a long time ago.”

She took another deep breath.

“Lucas, he’s my fourth, he’s in Louisville. He’s a plumber and he’s got two kids. And Maryanne and Julie live in Florida. They share an apartment in Jacksonville. They don’t come home much, either. But I did get to go down to see them once, a couple years back. They live a block from the beach, so they’re happy.”

She sighed. “I did the best I could to protect them, but I guess I didn’t do a very good job.”

“It’s not your fault,” I said. “You were a victim, too.”

“But I was their mama. My job was to protect them.”

“Maybe things will get better, now that Damon’s gone?”

She nodded. “I hope so. I miss my girls something awful.”

She sipped her coffee and swiped her hand across her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to complain. A lot of folks got it worse than me.”

“So,” I said, smiling at her. “What are you going to do now?”

She smiled back. “I’m not sure. I’ve got enough money to stay in the house till I die, if I want to. Damon was a good provider, I’ll say that for him. And I don’t want to move Jasper away from his friends, especially now. I was thinking I might try to get a job, just to have something to do, someplace to go, you know?”

I nodded.

“What kind of job?” I asked.

“Lord God almighty, there’s the problem.” She smiled but her cheeks reddened again. “I got no skills at all. I can’t type or use the computer. I don’t know who’d hire me.”

“Shirley Rigby!” Resa’s voice made us both jump.

“Don’t you let me hear you go on about having no skills,” she said, slamming her hand down on the table. “You got lots of skills. You can sew. You can cook. You do the prettiest flower arrangements anyone ever saw. What you do with those flowers at the church every Sunday, that’s surely a gift from God himself. I bet Rosie O’Hearn would hire you at the flower shop, if you asked her.”

“Do you really think so?” Shirley looked startled.

“Honey, Rosie is always talking about what a gift you got with the flowers. You call her up, and I guarantee you she’ll give you a job.”

Shirley smiled. “I wish I had your gumption, Resa. I always envied you that.”

“Well, it’s never too late to grow a spine,” Resa said firmly. “With Damon gone, you can do what you want to now. Why, you could even go back to your church, the one you grew up in.”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that.” Shirley’s voice wavered. “Damon would have a fit!”

“But Damon ain’t here, is he?” Resa asked. She poured more decaf into my cup. “Damon don’t get a vote no more.”

Shirley sat quietly for a long minute.

“Do you really think I could just go back?” Her voice was barely more than a whisper.

“I know you can.” Resa smiled and put a hand on Shirley’s shoulder. “You can do whatever you want now, honey. Ain’t nothing holding you back anymore.”

“Order’s up!” Harlan’s voice called from the kitchen.

“Hold your horses!” Resa hollered back. She winked at me and smiled.

“It would be something to go to Mass again.” Shirley’s eyes were fixed firmly on Resa’s back. “I haven’t been in more than twenty-five years. I expect a lot has changed since then.”

“Well, there’s only one way to find out,” I said.

She smiled at me.

“I’m glad I called you,” she said. “Thank you for coming.”

“I’m glad, too,” I said. “It’s nice to have a friend.”

A
s soon as I got home from school every day, I ran to my bedroom to check the drawer and make sure the photo album was still there. Most days I sat in class half wondering if I’d just dreamed it up, conjured it out of thin air. Maybe it wasn’t real at all.

But there it lay, safely tucked beneath my sweaters. I wondered if I should tell Daddy about it. In fact, I had almost decided during algebra that day that I should give it to him. It was his, after all. And I shouldn’t have been snooping through his things. I knew that, too.

But then I thought about all the times I had asked him about my mother, all the times he could have told me about her, all the times he’d lied about not having any pictures. By the end of that class, I had changed my mind. If he discovered the album was missing from the box, then he could just ask me about it. In the meantime, I could hardly wait to get home and look at the pictures again.

“Do you have any homework?”

Emma stood in the doorway, her hand on her lower back. She looked tired. She always looked tired anymore.

“Um, not very much,” I said, shoving the photo album back into the drawer. “Just some algebra problems.”

“Well, I can’t help you with those,” she said, laughing. “God knows, I’m math-impaired. If you need help, your dad can help you after dinner.”

“What are we having?” I asked.

“Beef Stroganoff with noodles and creamed peas,” she said.

“Do you need any help?”

“No, sweetheart, I’m good. You get started on your homework.”

I heard her banging pans around in the kitchen. I didn’t want to look at the photo album there in my room. What if she walked in again?

“Emma?” I called. “I forgot I have some English homework, too. I have to read a couple chapters in my book.”

“Okay,” she called back. “What are you reading?”

“Bridge to Terabithia,”
I yelled back.

It’s true, that’s what we were reading in class. But I had finished the entire book the week before.

“I never heard of that.” Emma appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Is it good?”

“Yeah, it’s good,” I said. “I really like it.”

“That’s good.” She smiled.

“I think I’m going to read up in the attic again. Is that okay?”

She tilted her head and raised her eyebrows.

“Are you sure? Last time you were up there it set off your allergies.”

“I’m sure. It’s a good place to read. Quiet and . . . well, it’s really quiet.”

“All right then.”

She pulled the cord to bring the ladder down and disappeared back into the kitchen.

As soon as she was gone, I pulled the photo album from the drawer, grabbed the blanket and pillow from my futon, and climbed into the attic.

For a while I just paged through the album again, staring at the pictures of my mother. She looked so young. I had never asked Daddy how old she was when she had me. Or how old she was when she died. She looked like she was just a kid herself, holding me in the rocking chair. Hailey. Her name was Hailey. . . . Hailey what?

I stared hard at a picture of her sitting at a picnic table in what looked like a park. I sat in a car seat on the table in front of her. She was holding my toes. She was my mother. And I didn’t know her middle name. I didn’t even know what her last name was before she got married to my dad.

I stared hard at the box where I’d found the photo album. I knew I wasn’t supposed to go through the boxes in the attic. Daddy had been pretty clear about that. In fact, he’d told me several times to stay out of them.

But maybe there were more pictures in that box, maybe even something with my mother’s name—her last name, her full name. She had to be more than just Hailey. And she was my mother. I had a right to know her name, didn’t I?

I pulled the box open and stared down into it. Then I picked up the folder that lay on top of the stack and opened it. Income tax returns from last year . . . boring. I set the folder aside and opened the next and then the next one. More tax stuff, something from an insurance company, the title to the trailer. I sighed. Maybe there was nothing interesting in there, after all.

Then I found a big brown envelope addressed to Daddy. I opened it, and pulled out a stack of papers. At the top of the first page I read,
St. Elizabeth/Coleman Pregnancy & Adoption Services.
What was this?

I sat down in my blanket nest and squinted to read the small type on the first page.

I stared at the letter for a long time. Jennifer Adele Bohner . . . that was my name. And that was Daddy’s sister’s name? Daddy had a sister? Why hadn’t he ever told me about her? And foster care. I knew he’d been in foster care after his mom was killed. I heard him tell Emma about it once, although he’d never talked about it to me. But he’d never even mentioned a sister . . . a sister with the same name as me. My head ached from all the questions I couldn’t answer.

I looked through the rest of the papers in the envelope, but all of them were from before the letter I’d already read—Daddy’s first letter to St. Elizabeth’s, which got returned because it had the wrong address. His next letter and a reply saying there was a fee to do a search for Jennifer Adele Bohner. Then another letter with a photocopy of a check stub from a bank in Alabama. That’s where we lived with Trish. Did Trish know that Daddy had a sister? Was I the only one who didn’t know? Did Emma know?

I shoved the papers back into the envelope and stood up, feeling sick and kind of dizzy. What else was in the box? What else did I not know about my mother, and my father, and the aunt I’d never even heard of? I reached into the box for another folder, but Emma called from downstairs.

“Hey, Jenny? Can you come down here and help me with something?”

I sighed and returned the envelope with the adoption papers to the box, then patted the tape down. Of course, it wouldn’t stick. I’d pulled it apart too often. I would have to get some tape and redo it, once I was done looking through the stuff inside.

Emma stood in the kitchen. Her face was so pale I could see all of her freckles more clearly than ever. She smiled weakly.

“Would you please open the fridge and get me the ground beef, butter, an onion, the mushrooms, and the sour cream. Wait!” she yelled as I reached for the refrigerator door. “Wait till I’m in the other room, please.”

She ran out of the kitchen, holding her nose. I stared after her, wondering why she couldn’t open the fridge on her own. Then I pulled out the things she needed and set them on the counter. When I had closed the fridge door, I called to her.

“Okay, they’re out.”

She walked cautiously back into the kitchen, still holding her nose. Finally, she took a sniff, gagged, and ran to the bathroom. I could hear her throwing up in the toilet.

“Are you okay?” I called.

After a couple minutes, I heard the toilet flush and Emma walked unsteadily back into the kitchen.

“I guess the morning sickness has finally kicked in,” she said. She smiled a little and sat down at the table. “Could you pour me a glass of water, please?”

I poured the water and set it before her.

“But it’s not even morning,” I said.

“I know.” She took a tiny sip of her water and grimaced. “I guess my body doesn’t know that. I was fine until I opened the refrigerator. The smell set me off. God! I don’t know what that smell is. I never smelled it before. But it’s awful.”

“I didn’t smell anything,” I said. I rose and started to open the refrigerator to smell again.

“Don’t!” Emma’s voice froze me.

“Please don’t,” she repeated more softly. “I think it’s because I’m pregnant. I read that pregnant women are hypersensitive to smells and taste. I guess the fridge is going to be a problem for me.”

She rose, her hand on the table to steady herself, then abruptly sat back down.

“Okay,” I said, hands on my hips. “You tell me what to do, and I’ll cook the Stroganoff.”

She smiled. “Thank you, honey. That would be a big help.”

That’s how I had the first of many cooking lessons. Over the next couple months, Emma dictated from the kitchen table or sometimes from the living room, while I constructed our meals.

“I honestly don’t know what I would have done without her,” she told Daddy that night. “I guess we’d have been eating out.”

“You did a great job, Jenny.” Daddy smiled at me.

I tried to smile back, but it felt fake, even to me. I kept thinking about the photo album, the letters from the adoption agency, the aunt with my name.

Thankfully, Daddy didn’t seem to notice if I seemed different. He was worrying over Emma, coaxing her to eat some peas, drink some milk, take one more bite of Stroganoff. After we’d eaten, he rose and pulled Emma to her feet.

“Off to bed, you,” he said firmly.

“I’m okay,” she said, but her voice was tired.

“No, you’re not,” he insisted. “You go to bed. Jenny and I will clean up the kitchen.”

She protested a couple more times before finally trudging off to bed.

“Okay, kiddo,” Daddy said. “Let’s get the dishes done, and then you can start on your algebra.”

Daddy washed the dishes while I dried and stacked them.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “I guess I’m kind of tired, too.”

“How’s school?”

“Okay.”

It was quiet after that, the first time I ever remember that I couldn’t think of anything to talk about with Daddy.

Actually, I had plenty I wanted to talk about, lots and lots of things I wanted to ask him. But I couldn’t do it. One time I even opened my mouth, but no words came out.

Finally, I dried the skillet, put it in the cupboard, and yawned.

“I think I’m going to do my algebra in my room,” I said.

“Do you need any help?” He smiled at me, the familiar smile I’d known all my life.

“No,” I said. “I’m good.”

I kissed his cheek and returned to my room, closing the door behind me. I could have used his help on a couple of the problems, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask. It felt almost like I was afraid, like if I asked him about an algebra problem then I’d blurt out questions about my mother, my aunt, the photos. And then he’d know that I’d been in the boxes. And maybe he’d move them out of the house, and I’d never get the chance to look through them all.

Maybe he’d get really mad at me. Or worse, maybe he’d get really mad at Emma for letting me go into the attic.

So I stayed in my room and did the best I could on my homework. When I’d finished, I opened the drawer and pulled out the photo I had removed earlier from the album, the one of my mother holding me in the rocking chair. I put it under my pillow, turned out the light, and squeezed my eyes shut. But it was a long time before I finally fell asleep.