When We Were Friends (7 page)

Her shoulders stiffened and she pulled her hand away from mine. Refusing, I thought, but then she said, “But what would happen after? How long would you take her?”

“I’ll keep her until we figure out what to do next. We have to find some way to prove he’s abused you both so he’ll never get unsupervised custody. We’ll figure it out, but the important thing right now is to keep her away from him.”

She shook her head slightly. “You’d do this for me?”

“I’m doing it for Jacqueline,” I said. “And, I guess, for you too.”

“I’m so scared, Lainey.” Sydney made a strange hiccuping sound, then suddenly rose and bent over me, perfume like a halo around us both, wrapping me into a tight, bony hug.

I looked out at the room over Sydney’s shoulder, feeling numb. It seemed strange, broken into parts like a collage, furniture pinned on a flat background and two girl-women taped haphazardly on top. Women with no history, their simple needs just as two-dimensional as the room around them. Impossible to believe that the stronger, surer one was me.

“You told her what?” Star asked.

I glanced at the baby. She was sitting on the floor by our feet, sucking contemplatively on a quartz crystal from Star’s altar. Jacqueline was an awful name for a baby; it put too much pressure on her. Babies should be named Kimmy or Meggie or Molly. “How d’you like the name Molly?” I said. “Just as a nickname.”

“Come on, Lainey, you can’t be serious.”

“Come here, Molly! Sweetie Molly. Do you spell it with an i-e or a y?”

“You’re going to hide the baby away from her own father? Isn’t that criminal?”

I glanced at her, then reached for the baby. “Sydney said he abuses her, Ma. She says he’s burned her.”

Star stared at me, her eyes round, then looked down at the baby as if waiting for it to give her some confirmation.

“The bruises on Sydney’s face today? David did that to her. He’s been abusing her and now he’s turned to Jacqueline, so Sydney has to keep her away, okay? It makes sense to leave her with me because I’m the last person anyone might expect to do Sydney any favors.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know, Lainey, there’s going to be trouble around this. My intuition’s saying she’s not telling you something,
and you know how good my intuition is. There’s something not right about this.”

“Screw your intuition, I’m trying to keep a baby safe from her abusive father! You could be a little more compassionate here. I was thinking you might be able to watch her while I’m working, you’d like that, and then I could take over. Sydney’ll come by every night after work, and it’s only for a few days until we figure out how to prove David’s abused her. It’s the right thing to do, Ma, at least for now.”

“Let me do a reading.”

“Not on this. I don’t care what the cards tell you.” I pulled the baby up onto my lap, and tickled my lips against her hair.

Star watched me carefully. “She’s not your child, Lainey.”

“Don’t you think I know that?”

“Intellectually maybe you know it.” Star walked to her drawer. “I’m doing a reading.”

“Do it on yourself,” I said, striding to the hall, realizing how childish I sounded but not caring.

I walked downstairs with Jacqueline … with
Molly
and sat with her on the sofa, lifting the spinach block Sydney had left behind. Other than taking care of Star, what good had I ever done in the world? But now I felt like a different person than I’d been just hours ago, sturdier, so much more purposeful.

Molly made a pleading sound and I studied her face, trying to interpret it. Was she hungry? I looked in the diaper bag Sydney had left. There was a bottle half-filled with apple juice, a pacifier and four diapers. Would that be enough till tomorrow when Sydney came by with more? No, probably not, and depending on how bad things got with David she might not even want to risk coming here right away. I’d have to buy little things, a change of clothes and more diapers, baby food, maybe plastic plates with cartoon characters. In the store, ladies would look at me and smile like they did at pregnant women, that inclusive smile like I was carrying on their tradition. I gave Molly her bottle and tickled under her chin. “Let’s go for a ride,” I said.

As we approached the car, I realized with a jolt that Sydney hadn’t given me a car seat. I should really leave Molly at home, I knew that, but it wouldn’t be the same without her. I wanted to look down at her face as we shopped, see her look back up with her questioning blue eyes. So I put the carrier into the backseat and strapped it in as best I could. As I started the engine I glanced into the rearview, saw her sitting there goggle-eyed, amazed. Since Sydney left she hadn’t cried, not once. It must be a sign.

I parked in front of Babies “R” Us. I’d been in the store twice: first with Pamela and then again a day later, to surreptitiously study everything that had entranced me. Lifting a tiny baseball cap and jacket, sneakers that fit in my palm; I’d avoided the eyes of the women who roamed the aisles, but now I smiled at them, comparing their babies to mine. My completely unbiased opinion was that mine was better.

“You’re the Heidi Klum of babies,” I told her. A woman ahead of me turned, smiled hesitantly and I smiled back. “I spend so much time alone with her,” I said, “sometimes I talk just to hear my own voice.”

The woman rolled her eyes. “Been there,” she said, and I felt her words glow like a swig of liquor in my belly.

I came home with four shopping bags, along with a car seat, sling and BabyBjörn. Sydney had given me a couple hundred dollars and at first I’d figured that would be my purchasing limit, but once my cart started to fill I ended up changing my mind. Who knew how long it’d be before Sydney could safely take Molly back? And there were too many pink and white frilly things, too many toys with packaging that stated they’d boost Molly’s intelligence. I’d always hated shopping for myself or for Star, but this was more fun than I ever could’ve imagined, like playing house.

“Come see what I got!” I called.

There was a prolonged silence and then a sigh from upstairs,
overemphatic like someone pretending exasperation in a play, before Star started down. I spread my findings out on the coffee table, grinning as she lifted tiny sandal shoes and little pants embroidered with pink flowers. “Oh!” she whispered. “Look at this. Oh look at these!” I’d known the clothes would get her; they’d be irresistible to anybody producing estrogen.

Star lifted a dress, white with red-stitched hearts and a matching headband. She made a little distressed sound, the sound one might make when confronted with too many choices from a dessert plate. “Let’s try this on!”

I grinned and unhooked Molly’s jumper, wormed her arms out from her sleeves. Molly’s eyes rolled to one side as if in scorn, but her body was limp and compliant as a rag doll.

And then, suddenly, Star sucked in her breath. I followed her eyes and stared, feeling like I’d been punched under the ribs. There below Molly’s left shoulder blade, in the spot Star used to call my clipped angel wings, were four round scabs wider than pencil erasers, two of them jagged and white at the edges with dried pus.

“No,” Star whispered. “Oh no. Her father did this?”

I lifted Molly and held her against my chest, staring at Star as I rocked her, rocked us both. I wanted to feel blind with rage, but instead all I felt was terrified. It was true, all the nightmares you had when you were a kid. There were things in the world without a soul, charming monsters who could smile at you with dazzling teeth, as they used them to rip off your head. “See?” I said. “See?” My voice broke. “Who knows what he might’ve done if Sydney left her alone with him again. So what was I supposed to do?”

Star shook her head slowly, then straightened her shoulders. “I guess exactly what we’re doing,” she said.

It was nearly eight before we could even stomach the notion of food. Star made us frozen dinners and we sat at the kitchen table silently, watching Molly shovel fistfuls of carrots into her mouth. That she
could look so happy despite everything twisted at my insides, made me feel somehow deceitful like I should remind her of what she’d been through.

Sydney had been telling the truth. And of course I’d known nobody would make up a story like that about their own baby, but knowing the truth and
knowing
it were two totally different things. A father stabbing a cylinder of burning ash on his daughter’s skin … and then again as she screamed and then again, realizing what he’d just done, but then doing it again. I couldn’t stand this, couldn’t comprehend it. It was too much.

As Star cleaned up the mess in the kitchen, traces of strained peas that had wedged in linoleum cracks, I carried Molly to the sofa and flicked on the TV, not watching, not listening, just needing the color and noise of it. Molly looked up at me and stretched a yawn that took up half her face. I touched her cheek. “I love you,” I whispered, soft enough that my mother wouldn’t hear. “I’ll take care of you better than she did, I swear.” I leaned back on the sofa, the baby’s weight against my chest, and closed my eyes. She was safe now. I repeated it like a mantra,
she’s safe, she’s safe …

“Lainey!” Star’s voice was frantic.

My eyes snapped open and I struggled through a haze of sleep trying to interpret the heat on my chest, its faint urine smell. I’d squished the baby! I jumped up with a cry, nearly dropped her.

But Star was staring not at the baby, but at the TV. She walked toward it and sank down onto her knees. I turned up the volume, head still woozy, trying to make sense of the picture that swam in front of my eyes. Because on the screen was Sydney, her bruised face red and chin quivering. She shook her head and gripped the hand of the man beside her, crying out as he pulled her against his chest.

The man beside her was David McGrath. He looked more stern than disconsolate, a well-cut sports coat over tailored jeans, his brown hair perfectly trimmed and falling boyishly over his forehead.

“Please don’t hurt her,” Sydney whimpered to the microphone. “She’s only a baby, hardly a year old.”

An 800 number flashed onto the screen along with Molly’s picture, my Molly, her orange hair combed into an odd cowlick, wearing a fluffy pink dress that made her look like iced confectionary. “If you have any information on the whereabouts of twelve-month-old Jacqueline McGrath,” the announcer said, “please call the number listed on your screen. All calls will be kept confidential.”

I looked down at Molly and then pulled her closer, turning back to Star who stared openmouthed at the TV. The clutch in my chest wasn’t from shock at seeing Sydney, I realized, or Molly’s face on the screen. The clutch was from guilt, plain and simple guilt because it was true, in the past few hours I had stolen Molly away. And pain at the realization that of course she’d never really been mine.

How much can your life change in one day? Well let me tell you.

Molly-Jacqueline disappeared from the TV screen, replaced by a Tampax commercial. A young girl spoke earnestly to her older sister, and I actually started to listen to the words. Of a tampon commercial. That’s what a state my brain was in.

“But I’ve never—”

Smugly charmed chuckle
. “That’s no big deal. I started using Tampax when I was your age. Just wait’ll you see how much more comfortable they are than bulky pads.”

I couldn’t listen to my mother, that heavy breathing she got before an attack, like she’d just run up a ten-mile hill. I knew the pattern. The first month or two after things got really bad, when she’d decided she’d be best off not leaving her room, I’d dragged her by the elbow each day for just a walk around the block. Two steps out the door and the panting had started. If we were lucky she’d make it to the street before passing out.

But not today. Today she could drop dead and I’d ignore her, because for the first time ever her attack was echoing through me too, and to let her in would kill me. For the first time I understood the anxiety was more than just fear, couldn’t be muffled by reckoning or reasoning, or breathed into a paper bag. It burrowed more deeply. It
was an understanding of the unjustifiable cruelty of the world, that the world had always been and would always be this way.