Harvesting the Heart (18 page)

I
never hung up the drawing, because my father would have killed me if
he'd known I'd willingly sinned by taking a course that exposed the
bodies of men and women. I kept the picture hidden in the back of my
closet and looked at it from time to time. I did not notice the
obvious thing about the drawing until several weeks afterward. The
images that came out in my sketches were not even hidden in the
background this time. I had drawn the model, yes, but the face—
and the fear upon it—was mine.

"Hey,"
Marvela said to me as I walked into Mercy. She had a pot of coffee in
one hand and a bran muffin in the other. "I thought you was sick
today." She pushed past me, shaking her head. "Girl, don't
you know you makin' me look bad? When you play hooky you supposed
to stay away, not get them Catholic guilt feelings and show up
mid-shift."

I
leaned against the cash register. "I am sick," I said.
"I've never felt worse in my life."

Marvela
frowned at me. "Seems if I was married to a doctor, I'd probably
be ordered to bed."

"It's
not that kind of sick," I told her, and Marvela's eyes widened.
I knew what she was thinking; Marvela had a thing for
National
Enquirer
gossip
and larger-than-life stories. "No," I told her before she
could ask, "Nicholas isn't having an affair. And my soul hasn't
been stolen by aliens."

She
poured me a cup of coffee and leaned her elbows against the counter.
"I s'pose I'm gonna have to play Twenty Questions," she
said.

I
heard her, but I didn't answer. At that moment, a woman stumbled
through the door holding a baby, a shopping bag, and a huge paisley
satchel. As she crossed the threshold, she dropped the satchel and
hoisted the baby higher on her hip. Marvela swore under her breath
and stood up to help, but I touched her arm. "How old is that
kid?" I asked, trying to sound casual. "You figure six
months?"

Marvela
snorted. "He's a year if he's a day," she said. "Ain't
you never baby-sat?"

Impulsively,
I stood up and pulled an apron from behind the counter. "Let me
serve her," I said. Marvela was hesitating. "You get the
tip."

The
woman had left her satchel in the middle of the diner floor. I pulled
it over to the booth she'd gone to—the one that had been
Nicholas's. The woman had the baby on the tabletop and was taking off
its diaper. Without bothering to thank me, she unzipped the satchel,
withdrew a clean diaper and a chain of plastic rings, which she
handed to the baby. "Dah," he said, pointing to the light.

"Yes,"
the woman said, not even looking up. "That's right. Light."
She rolled up the dirty diaper and fastened the new one and caught
the rings before the baby threw them on the floor. I was fascinated;
she seemed to have a hundred hands. "Can I get some bread?"
she said to me, like I hadn't been doing my job, and I ran into the
kitchen.

I
didn't stay long enough for Lionel to ask me what the hell I was
doing at work. I grabbed a basket of rolls and strode to the woman's
table. She was joggling the baby on her knee and trying to keep him
from reaching the paper place mat. "Do you have a high chair?"
she asked.

I
nodded and dragged over the little half-seat. "No," she
sighed, as if she had been through this before. "That's a
booster
seat.
That's not a high chair."

I
stared at it. "Won't it work?"

The
woman laughed. "If the President of the United States was a
woman," she said, "every damn restaurant would have a high
chair, and mothers with infants would be allowed to park in
handicapped zones." She had been balling up a roll into
bite-size nuggets that the baby was stuffing into his mouth, but she
sighed and rose to her feet, gathering her things. "I can't eat
if there's no high chair for him," she said. "I'm sorry to
have wasted your time."

"I
can hold him," I said impulsively.

"Pardon?"

"I
said I could hold him," I repeated. "While you eat."

The
woman stared at me. I noticed how exhausted she seemed, trembling
almost, as if she hadn't slept for a very long time. Her eyes, an
unsettled shade of brown, were locked onto mine. "You would do
that?" she murmured.

I
brought her a spinach quiche and gingerly lifted the baby into my
arms. I could feel Marvela watching me from the kitchen. The baby was
stiff and didn't fit on my hip. He kept twisting to grab my hair.
"Hey," I said, "no," but he just laughed.

He
was heavy and sort of damp, and he squirmed until I put him on the
counter to crawl. Then he overturned a mustard jar and wiped the
serving spoon into his hair. I couldn't turn away for a minute, even,
and I wondered how I—how
anyone
—could
do this twenty-four hours a day. But he smelled of powder, and he
liked me to cross my eyes at him, and when his mother came to take
him back, he held on tight to my neck. I watched them leave, amazed
that the woman could carry so much and that, though nothing had gone
wrong, I felt so relieved to give the baby back to her. I saw her
move down the street, bowed to the left—the side she carried
the baby on—as if he was sapping her balance.

Marvela
came to stand beside me. "You gonna tell me what that's about,"
she said, "or do I got to piss it out of you?"

I
turned to her. "I'm pregnant."

Marvela's
eyes opened so wide I could see white all the way around the jet
irises. "No shit," she said, and then she screamed and
hugged me.

When
I didn't embrace her back, she released me. "Let me guess,"
she said. "You ain't jumpin' for joy."

I
shook my head. "This isn't the way it was supposed to happen,"
I explained. I told her about my plan, about our loans and Nicholas's
internship and then about college. I talked until the phrases in my
native tongue were foreign and unfamiliar, until the words just fell
out of my mouth like stones.

Marvela
smiled gently. "Lord, girl," she said, "whatever
does
happen
the way it's supposed to? You don't
plan
life,
you just
do
it."
She looped an arm over my shoulder. "If the past ten years had
gone accordin' to plan for me, I'd be eatin' bonbons and growin'
prize roses and livin' in a house as big as sin, with my handsome
son-a-bitch husband sittin' next to me." She stopped, looking
out the window and, I figured, into her past. Then she patted my arm
and laughed. "Paige, honey," she said, "if I'd stuck
to my grand plan, I'd be livin'
your
very
life."

For
a long time I sat on the porch outside the house, ignoring neighbors
who stared at me briefly from the sidewalk or from car windows. I
didn't know how to be a good mother. I hadn't had one. I mostly saw
them on TV. My mind brought up pictures of Marion Cunningham and
Laura Petrie. What did those women
do
all
day?

Nicholas's
car came into the driveway hours later, when I was thinking of all
the things I wouldn't have access to that I needed for having a
child. I couldn't tell Dr. Thayer about my mother's family history. I
didn't know the details of her labor.. And I would not tell Nicholas
that there had been a baby before this and that I was someone
else's before I was his.

Nicholas
swung out of his car when he saw me, his body unfolding and
straightening for an attack. But as he came closer he realized the
fight had gone out of me. I sagged against the pillar of the porch
and waited until he stepped in front of me. He seemed impossibly
tall. "I'm pregnant," I said, and I burst into tears.

He
smiled, and then he bent down and lifted me up, carrying me

into
the house in his arms. He danced over the threshold. "Paige,"
he said, "this is great. Absolutely great." He set me down
on the skin-colored couch, smoothing my hair away from my eyes.
"Hey," he said, "don't worry about the money."

I
didn't know how to tell him that I was not worried, just scared. I
was scared about not knowing how to hold an infant. I was scared that
I might not love my own child. More than anything, I was scared that
I was doomed before I began, that the cycle my mother had started was
hereditary and that one day I would just pack up and disappear off
the face of the earth.

Nicholas
put his arms around me. "Paige," he said, holding my
thoughts in the palm of his hand, "you're going to be a terrific
mother."

"How
do you know?" I cried, and then I said it again, softly: "How
do you know?" I stared at Nicholas, who had done everything he'd
ever set out to do. I wondered when I had lost control of my own
life.

Nicholas
sat down beside me and slipped his hand underneath my sweater. He
unzipped the waistband of my pants. He spread his fingers across my
abdomen as if whatever was growing inside needed his protection. "My
son," he said, his voice thick at the edges.

It
was as if a window opened, showing me the rest of my life as it lay,
dissected and piecemeal. I considered my future, stunted and squeezed
into boundaries defined by two men. I imagined being in a house where
I was always the odd one out. "I'm not making any promises,"
I said.

^chapter
8

Paige

_T
he
first person I fell in love with was Priscilla Divine. She had come
from Texas to Chicago and enrolled in Our Lady of the Cross, my grade
school, when I was in sixth grade. She was a year older than the rest
of us, though she'd never been left back. She had long blond hair the
color of honey, and she never walked but glided. It was said by some
of the other girls that she was the reason her family had to move.

There
was such an aura of mystery surrounding Priscilla Divine that she
probably could have picked just about anyone she wanted to be her
friend, but she happened to choose me. One morning during religion
class she raised her hand and told Sister Theresa that she thought
she might throw up and she'd like it very much if Paige could help
her down to the nurse's office. But once we were in the hall she
didn't look sick at all, and in fact she pulled me by the hand into
the girls' bathroom and took a pack of cigarettes out of the

waistband
of her skirt and matches from her left sock. She lit up, inhaled, and
offered the cigarette to me like a peace pipe. With my reputation
hanging in the balance, I drew in deeply, knowing enough not to let
myself cough. Priscilla was impressed, and those were the beginnings
of my bad years.

Priscilla
and I did everything we weren't supposed to. We walked through
Southside, the black neighborhood, on our way home from Our Lady. We
stuffed our bras, and we cheated on algebra tests. We did not confess
these things, because as Priscilla taught me, there are certain
things you do not tell priests. It got to the point where we had each
been suspended from school three times, and the sisters suggested we
give up each other's friendship for Lent.