The Unwelcomed Child (18 page)

“I can’t wait to see you again, Elle,” he whispered. “Don’t forget to tie the ribbon on the banister whenever you think I can.”

He stepped back, smiling. I straightened out my clothes, picked up my easel and pads and pencils, and started away, moving in a daze for a few feet before turning to see if he was still there watching me walk away. He was. He blew me a kiss. I thought a moment, wondering if I’d look more like that ten-year-old Claudine accused me of being, but then I blew a kiss back at him, and he laughed.

When I stepped out of the woods, I was looking down and reliving those last moments and the sincere way he had spoken to me, revealing his true feelings about what had happened with Shelly Stone. That took great trust, I thought. He did see me as someone special. My heart felt so full. I don’t think I was ever happier. What surprised me the most was the new sense of self-confidence I was experiencing. If both Mason and Claudine thought I could be successful in the world out there, then surely I could. From what they had told me, they were very popular and successful. If I listened to Claudine and to Mason, I would be prepared.

Of course, it would be impossible not to feel what any girl felt the day she was brought to school. For the first time, she would be without the security that she enjoyed at home. Despite my harder life and strict confinement, I was still so used to it that I depended on it. So many new experiences and feelings lay ahead. Someone else, many someone elses, would have control and authority over me. There would be new rules to learn, not only rules the school put down but also the rules of socializing. How could I not worry that I would stand out and look so foolish that there would be no way I wouldn’t fail?

Grandmother Myra would probably be happy if I did. She would be glad if I came running home complaining about how the other students were treating me and how I was so unhappy, that my grades were suffering.

“You don’t need to be there. We don’t need any more ridicule or embarrassment in this family, missy,” she might say, and take me out.

Her plan might then be to send me off to some nunnery. Claudine had joked about it, suggesting that I already lived in a nunnery, but that possibility for my future loomed out there for sure. Grandmother Myra had threatened it many times. What better way was there to guarantee that the evil within me and the tendencies to be immoral would be stopped? What’s more, if I was forced into becoming a nun, I wouldn’t be able to fall in love and marry someone. There would be no chance for me to have children and pass the evil seeds on to them. In my grandmother’s mind, she would have fulfilled her responsibility. My grandfather never supported the idea of sending me to a nunnery, but I had no confidence in him standing in the way, not if my grandmother insisted.

When I stopped thinking about all this and raised my head, I stopped walking, too.

Standing on the back porch was a woman in a pair of jeans, a light blue blouse, and a pair of large sunglasses with frames that had some sort of jewelry built into them, glittering in the late-afternoon sunlight. She had short, brassy-looking blond hair, and even from this distance, I could see she wore heavy makeup. She was smoking a cigarette and standing with what looked like a defiant, angry posture. She looked as if she was waiting for someone she wanted to bawl out. The back door was open, but Grandmother Myra wasn’t there.

Although the woman was staring right at me, she didn’t move or do anything to indicate she had seen me. I continued walking very slowly, and as I drew closer, the realization of who she was settled into my thoughts like something floating down and spreading throughout my body. Despite the makeup and the large sunglasses, she was recognizable, and the resemblance was clear enough despite the time that had passed.

No one needed to tell me who she was.

I was looking at my mother.

“Hi,” she said, as casually as she would if we had known each other ever since the day she gave birth to me. “Mom said you would be coming home about now. She says you’re very prompt, unlike me, who never knew there were hands on a clock.”

She laughed. It was a short laugh, the laugh of someone who really didn’t mind the criticism rained down upon her. She would snap open her umbrella of indifference, making it seem she was proud of her faults and was mocking the criticism. She pounded her cigarette on the railing and then flipped it into the yard.

I just stood there looking at her, struggling to decide how I should react. The way she was smiling at me and holding herself in a relaxed posture, her arms loosely folded over her breasts, could indicate that she was thinking that the time that had passed since she had deserted me or her indifference to my growing up all these years was nothing important. That certainly didn’t help me to feel good about finally meeting her. On the other hand, perhaps she was just trying to carve away the awkwardness as quickly as she could so we could get to know each other.

“I usually help with dinner,” I said, pausing at the foot of the short stairway.

“I bet. Mom never let me have an idle moment. What’s that saying she chants? ‘The devil finds mischief for idle hands.’ God, how all those sayings still haunt me.”

I couldn’t help staring at the makeup on her face. Her lipstick was a shade too brightly red, I thought. When I saw behind her sunglasses, I saw she had lavender eye shadow and black mascara. I didn’t notice until I was closer, but when she turned her head a little to the left, I saw a tiny silver dot in her pierced nostril.

“I’m surprised she lets you go off by yourself to draw pictures in the woods and at the lake. I used to love being at that lake,” she said, nodding in its direction. “I had many great nights there. Moonlit nights,” she added, with a smile that obviously drew up some passionate memories.

She seemed to be waiting for my reaction, but I was still quite in shock. Seemingly, she had just popped out of a dream. Was I imagining her? She certainly didn’t look the way I always envisioned her. Would she disappear as quickly as she had appeared?

“You’re very pretty, prettier than I was at your age.” A tone of surprise was in her voice.

“Thank you.”

“My father told me they named you Elle. Where did that come from? Is it short for Eleanor or something?”

“No. Grandmother Myra said it meant God’s promise, hope. She said she and Grandfather Prescott named me that to make it easier to raise me.”

“She would say something like that. They broke the mold after they made my mother.”

I continued up the stairs and stopped when we were inches apart.

“Let me help you with that,” she said, reaching for the easel. “You know, I used to draw, too.”

“Grandfather told me.”

“My mother thought it was a waste of time. She called it doodling. I’m glad she’s softened.” She leaned toward me and whispered, “She’s still almost catatonic about seeing me, but that doesn’t compare to my surprise at knowing you were here and then seeing you. I never imagined that they would keep you and raise you.”

She said it so casually that I didn’t know how to react or what to say. It didn’t make me feel good to learn that she was surprised my grandparents hadn’t put me in some orphanage and completely disowned me.

She laughed that laugh again and put her free hand on my shoulder. “Don’t look so surprised at my surprise. They weren’t exactly happy to learn I was pregnant, especially after they learned how I became pregnant.”

My first thought was,
Is she kidding?
Not happy to know she was pregnant and the circumstances? If there was any sentence that could be an understatement, hers was it. I wanted to say,
I have just spent fifteen years having that thought driven into me, into my very soul.

Before I could think of a response, Grandmother Myra came to the doorway. I could see the rage in her face, which probably had come when my mother appeared and remained. It had brought the blood to the surface, reddening her cheeks and inflaming her eyes. Her shoulders were hoisted like those of someone who was anticipating a blow or had just had a terrible chill draping her spine in ice. Her rage seemed to have aged her by years in minutes.

“Why are you standing out there, Elle? Are you wet again?”

“No, Grandmother.”

“Then come in. As you can see, we have unexpected guests.”

“Guests?” I looked at my mother.

“My husband, Carlos, is with me,” she said. “We’re on our honeymoon, and I thought it would be a kick to stop by and see my parents. It was a kick, all right, a kick in my rear end. As I said, I didn’t know you would be here, but my mother made sure that was the first thing she told me.”

My grandmother grunted and stepped back so I would follow her command.

I moved quickly through the door, my mother following.

“Put those things in your room,” Grandmother Myra ordered.

I took the easel from my mother and quickly went to my room. My heart was racing. I felt the air around me was full of electricity, with thin, short streaks of lightning snapping around my face, my neck, and my shoulders. My mother, my actual mother, was here? It wasn’t a dream.

“You kept her in that room?” I heard my mother ask. She and my grandmother were standing in the hallway, watching me.

“Why would that or anything else about her concern you now?” Grandmother Myra replied, and walked away.

My mother looked at me, realizing, I imagined, that there was no door on my room. She shook her head and followed Grandmother Myra.

I put everything away neatly. I turned and hurried out when I heard a man’s loud laugh. They were all in the living room now. I paused in the living-room doorway. Grandfather Prescott was in his usual chair. Grandmother Myra was standing beside him, her posture straight and as firm as a soldier’s. My mother had sat on the sofa next to her husband, Carlos.

He had wavy ebony hair, a caramel complexion, and strikingly blue eyes. He didn’t look much taller than my mother, if at all. He was slim, in a dark blue sports jacket, a white shirt opened at the collar, and a pair of jeans, with soft-looking blue loafers and no socks. I didn’t think he was terribly handsome, despite his eyes. His nose looked a little too long, and his lips dipped on the right side in an unattractive way.

Now that she was seated beside him and her appearance was a little less shocking, I took a closer look at my mother, searching for resemblances between us. We had the same eyes, but I thought my lips were fuller and my nose more diminutive. She resembled my grandfather more than my grandmother. I had no idea what sort of life she had been leading, of course, but I thought she was still very young-looking. In fact, I could easily imagine anyone who didn’t know us thinking that we were sisters rather than mother and daughter.

“She’s really beautiful,” Carlos suddenly said, gazing at me. “Just like you, Debbie.” I saw my grandmother tense up.

“This is Carlos Fuentes, my husband,” my mother said. “He’s a drummer in the Eduardo Casanova band. They call themselves the Lovers.” She laughed. Carlos widened his smile and pretended to tap on a drum. She laughed again. “He’s always doing that after someone, especially me, says something significant.”

“What was so significant about that?” Grandmother Myra asked.

“Casanova? Lovers?” She waited, but Grandmother Myra didn’t smile. “It happens to be a very successful band, Mom. If you watched something besides the Discovery Channel or one of those religious networks, you’d have heard of them.”

“We watch other things, Deborah,” my grandfather said.

“Not that I remember,” she retorted. “Anyway, we’re booked into Melvyn’s Night Club in Atlantic City all next month. You ought to take a vacation and come see us.”

“We? Us? Are you in the band, too?” Grandfather Prescott asked.

“I sing a little,” she said. “You might remember that, Dad.”

“Oh, I remember. Elle’s going to sing in the school chorus,” he told her, and looked at me proudly.

“Really?” She looked up at me. “I’m glad I passed something good on to you.”

“Little else,” Grandmother Myra muttered.

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” my mother said, winking at me.

She couldn’t have said anything more damaging, as far as I was concerned. Grandmother Myra turned to me, as if she could suddenly see something evil coming to the surface. I lowered my eyes.

“Let’s not fight,” my mother said. “Carlos and I would like to take you three to dinner. There has to be one good restaurant around here.”

“I have dinner prepared,” my grandmother said.

“Oh, can’t you just put it in the freezer? We’re not staying in Lake Hurley tonight. We’re just passing through.”

“That’s good,” Grandmother Myra said.

“I thought you would be pleased that I asked Carlos to stop.”

Grandmother Myra stared at her. “‘Pleased’ doesn’t quite cover it, Deborah. You’ve been gone more than fifteen years. I’d say ‘stunned’ was a more appropriate word.”

“Staying away and out of touch wasn’t my choice, as you very well know,” my mother shot back. Then she smiled again. “Let’s not get into that.” She turned to me and widened her smile. “I didn’t expect to see my daughter here, but now that I have, I’d like to spend some time talking to her alone.”