Authors: Lois Cahall
“Ha, ha, ha, Mommy! I’m listening.”
“Okay, so just get a small job one weekend night to make the fun cash, you know?” As I doll out advice I think of myself, a product of the forty-something’s – us – that generation of Patriotic suburbanites that followed some false sense of security by buying all the material possessions we didn’t need anyway - fancy cars, expensive jewelry, label purses, designer shoes – all in an effort to keep up with the Jones’s. Scarlett’s generation just wanted to make ends meet. She didn’t even
know
the Jones’s. I have to give her that.
Just then, one floor above, I hear the cat thump off the bed and the sound of luggage dropping to the floor. “Just this once, I’m going to send you $100,” I say, knowing full well that it’s what I said the last time. “But I gotta go. Ben just walked in. Let me call you tomorrow. Love youuuuu.”
“Love you too, Mommyyyyy,” she says, thrilled that we’re cutting it short. “Bye.”
Packing up the evidence of my bookshelf cleaning, I quickly move the ladder to the side of the closet door, before running up the stairs like a newly licensed sixteen-year- old about to see her first set of wheels. Ben heads for the stairs to meet me, and when I land at the top, he sweeps me into his arms.
“I missed you,” he says. “This has been the longest two weeks of my life.”
“I missed you, too,” I say.
“I missed you, and missed you,” he says.
“No, I
really
missed you,” I say, grabbing at his zipper playfully.
He stops me. “Honey, let me just check messages and shower first. Then I’m all yours.”
I dash into our bedroom to grab something off the comforter that I had intended for later. He lights up at the sight of the sticky roll of tape wrapped inside a package displaying a girl with whips and chains.
“Is it red?”
“Yes, it’s red. Kind of crimson. Your version of
color
blind red.” My tone has turned to a sexy come-hither in my voice reserved for playtime. “But it’s not the color that matters. It’s what I’m going to do with it.”
I lift a brow, and he grabs at my ass, kissing me hard on the mouth.
“What’s for dinner? I’m starving!”
“Greek dish,” I say. “Running to the store to grab a couple things for the salad.”
“Great! I’ll even open the ‘98 Forman.”
“Is that a white? From the Loire?”
“Nope. Good ole USA. California chard. But Forman really understands non-malolactic fermentation.”
“Sure, whatever you say…” I grab my purse from the ledge, his lips follow mine all the way to the door. “Bye,” I giggle from outside the door, and he opens it wider, smiling after me. “Hurry back.” He winks and then watches me swagger all the way down the hall.
*
Juggling the groceries on my knee, I open the door to an unexpected two-by-four across my face. Okay, a figurative two-by-four. It’s the look on Ben’s face as he places his thrusts his arms into the sleeves of his trench coat.
“What’s wrong?” I say, dropping the grocery bags to waist level. “Did somebody die?”
“I’m sorry, honey, our little romance dinner will have to wait ‘til later.”
“Later?”
“I have to pick up the twins.”
“But our weekend with them starts tomorrow…”
“Rosemary just called. She’s got to go away for the weekend beginning tonight. Something came up.”
I smell something suspicious in his urgency, and something fishier than three-day-old haddock in his vagueness.
Ben is fiddling with the sex package of red tape on the ledge. Our relationship has a lot of it. “Look. Apparently she’s being um, rebirthed,” he says.
“
Re-rebirthed
? Wait, she already got re-birthed! And it cost us $1,000!”
“It didn’t work. She’s being
re
-rebirthed. Through the canal of life or some darn thing. It’s at her yoga retreat.”
“Oh. Oh. I seeeeee,” I say, removing my jacket. “God forbid she misses a week day of yoga.”
“I tried to tell her…”
“Okay, you know what? I’m done,” I say, stomping into the livingroom, my fists planted on my hips. “Can she pull her head out of her ass, or rather her birth canal, and maybe volunteer to drop the kids off for a change!”
“Libby, please, I’m so jet-lagged.”
“Exactly. You just landed from China. You shouldn’t be driving. What if you crash?”
“I’m not going to crash….”
“How do you know?” Then a light bulb goes off in my brain. “You know what, Ben? I’ll go get the boys.”
“You can’t. She gets angry every time she sees you.”
“Too damn bad. Tell her to get over it. You’ve been apart for years.”
He gives me a look that says he’s torn between his love for me and his fear of her taking his kids away.
“And don’t give me that look,” I say.
“I’m just trying to make everybody happy.”
“No, you’re not, Ben. You’re kissing ass. The more you give - correction, the move
we
give her, the more she takes.”
“Well, I know but…”
“But nothing. I mean, what will happen if she actually volunteers to drop them off? Will she miss her bank manager job? Her school teacher job? No. And you know why? Because she doesn’t have a job!”
“Look, I’m exhausted. It was a twenty-hour flight. I can’t do this right now. I have to go…” He heads for the door.
“Wait! What if you fall asleep at the wheel?!” I say, going after him. “This is insane! I don’t want to fight!” I cling to him like a mother to a child as enemy soldiers march through their village. But Ben pulls away raising his eyes to the sky for answers. Apparently God doesn’t give them. He moves to the door handle and says, “I love you. I’ll see you tonight.”
I stand there staring at the back of the front door, feeling like I’m staring at a shower curtain and can see Ben’s silhouette with another woman through it. It’s the beginning of the end for us. As much as I love Ben, it just isn’t working. The only way this could work is if I were willing to live a life of accommodating some bitter ex-wife who doesn’t even
have
a life. My mind begins formulating my next article…
There are a lot of little daily divorces that occur in a relationship before it’s over… It’s a slow process – like falling off a cliff in slow motion and you wish you’d just hit the ground already.
My cell phone rings. It always surprises me when it does that. As though it has some sort of radar for when I’m annoyed and don’t want to talk.
“Hello?” I say, picking it up with a growl.
“Libby?”
“Bebe?” I say, my tone softening. “You at the airport? On your way back…”
“No,” she says, crying.
“Why not? Just come home. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Everything…”
“But I told you to come home…” Truth is, I’m not in the mood for anybody else’s problems right now. I fall silent.
“Hey Lib?” she sniffles.
“Yeah?”
“I think I have a daughter….”
“You what?” Suddenly Ben and his wacky ex-wife are a million miles away.
*
Bebe had been about to take my advice, had been about to head to the airport, when the orphanage phoned her. Yes, the sweet but sickly two year old child had been a mistake. Apparently they felt bad about the misunderstanding and the huge
disappointment that Bebe must have felt. We won’t even get into the amount of money she’d spent.
The orphanage director asked Bebe if she could come back and allow the girls to perform a show on her behalf. There were other little girls who wanted to meet her.
Bernie said, “No way, no show! We’re going home.” But something in Bebe relented. She let him take that flight back to America without her. Something was telling her to stay on despite the poor air quality of the city and the gritty film on everything she touched. Bebe felt she had to see her way through the dust.
Bebe waited in the parking lot of the orphanage for over an hour, when a woman emerged to conduct her to a different part of the Borsht-smelling orphanage. There were children everywhere. The facility housed maybe two to three hundred kids, and, on her way to the office, Bebe stopped to use a bathroom. She was stunned to see that they used crepe paper for wiping. Worse than that were the germy barrels overflowing with urine-soaked paper from the occasional notebook pages the little girls used when crepe paper wasn’t available. You couldn’t flush these, of course; they would clog the already overburdened plumbing system.
Bebe had climbed more stairs in her Stuart Weitzman stilettos in the past few days then she had in her entire life. When she finally arrived breathless at the main office, she was greeted by a translator, an attorney, and a woman from the Department of Education.
Three little girls were brought in – a one tow-headed blonde, a strawberry blonde, and a honey blonde with blue eyes and a big smile. They were told that they were going to do a performance for the visiting American lady. The three little girls were part of a small dance group that performed around Kazakhstan to make money for the orphanage.
And so they began to perform, singing songs, doing gymnastics and even reciting a poem which Bebe couldn’t understand anyway, though she smiled and clapped with such delight you’d think Shakespeare were reciting. And then the little one, the one of the end, with the honey blonde hair and blue eyes; the one in the red pants with the sequin halter top tied around her frail, swan neck, caught Bebe’s attention. Their sweet and hopeful blue eyes locked like a key in a deadbolt. Bebe felt her chest swell, and she stretched into the translator without pointing. “What is her name? The petite one? On the end?”
“Tamara,” said the translator. “Why?”
“Tamara looks just like I did when I was little girl,” said Bebe, her eyes tearing up just as they might if she’d been looking through the glass in the hospital maternity ward to see her baby snuggled in a pink blanket. Tamara stopped dancing the moment Bebe burst out crying, certain she’d done something to upset the pretty American lady. Her eyes darted from Bebe to the translator. She was sure she’d be punished.
“I’m sorry,” said Bebe, excusing herself. The translator and the attorney quickly followed her out into the hallway. Bebe held up the stucco wall for support as all her hopes and dreams of her entire life flashed before her. But this wasn’t death. This was about to be life - her life - a life like she’d never known but always imagined.
“See,” said the interpreter, putting a hand on her shoulder. “You just know when it’s right.” Bebe could only nod, the short shallow breaths moving in and out of her. Chills circled around her torso – the clinging of reality was about to set in.
It took a few more minutes before she could return to the room, just as the other two little orphan girls were being escorted out. One of them stopped to look into Bebe’s
face with her sad almond eyes. She said something as she tugged on Bebe’s sleeve, but was quickly shooed away by the house mother.
“What was she saying?” asked Bebe.
“She asked ‘why didn’t you pick me?’” the translator said.
Bebe’s heart sank, and she watched the little girl, who kept turning around all the way down the hallway until a metal door slammed between them.
Within moments Bebe rejoined little Tamara. She took Tamara by the hand and sat with her on a thrift-shop-looking tweed sofa. Bebe’s heart pounded. She was so close to this little girl who smelled as if she’d been left out in the rain. Her hair all matted flat. She’d later learn that the children get to bathe only once a week…and only on Sundays. Today was Saturday.
Bebe smiled at little Tamara and ran a hand over her darling face. Then she started asking questions. The interpreter did all she could to keep up. Questions like “how is school, what’s your favorite color, your favorite food, do you like kittens?” Then more serious questions to Tamara like, “Would you recognize your mother if she walked into the room?”
“No,” said Tamara, as though she’d been prompted.
“Do you want to be adopted?”
“Yes!” she’d said, lighting up.
And when Bebe pulled out her iPhone and showed Tamara a photo of her cats and her dog back in New York, Tamara giggled with pure delight. She’d never imagined that you could have animals actually live with you in a home. She stared at the photo and then took the phone from Bebe’s hand. Tamara began pushing buttons, and before Bebe
knew it, Tamara was accessing her entire photo library. Tamara would point to a photo on the screen, and Bebe would explain who the person was. The photos included Kitty and me at one of Kitty’s art shows. Not that Tamara understood a word of what Bebe was saying.
Then Bebe reached into her purse and pulled out a small square of Ghirardelli chocolate and handed it to Tamara, who in turn looked at the orphanage director for permission before unwrapping it. She stared at the foreign-looking square in her lap. Finally, Tamara reached down and took it in her tiny fingers, breaking off a piece. She handed it to Bebe. Tamara said, “Spasiba” which means “thank you.”
“Spasiba,” said Bebe. And that is how Bebe ended up with an instant daughter. Bebe was about to have the bite-size version of parenthood. She’d be a mother to an eight-year-old for about ten years before she was off to college. More of a snack than an entire meal, but still her very own daughter.
You know the way some people have their own personal shoppers? Well, until you live in New York, you probably haven’t experienced your own personal street bum. My street bum, Jacob, greets me every day, offers me a bite of doughnut or hot dog he’s rummaged from a nearby trash barrel, and delivers a complete weather report. “Libby?” he says, with breaking news. “You go put your galoshes on, ya hear? Gonna rain. Did you bring an umbrella?”
Jacob startles the hell out of me whenever I find him resting on the long bench in our building’s entry. It’s not that he’s a scary. Quite the contrary. He looks like Uncle Remus – round cheeks, curly white beard, and brown knapsack pants that hug his waistline. He even whistles a happy tune.
Instead of hibernating on a cardboard box or living out of a shopping cart full of junk, Jacob has managed to secure a life inside an entire street of apartment buildings without paying rent. Whether he’s hanging Christmas lights for the hair salon, or sweeping sidewalks for the doormen, he’s made a lot of something out of a lot of nothing.