How to Save a Life (2 page)

“Yes.”

“A
baby
baby.”

“Jill. Yes.”

We went on like that for a while, and I got angrier and angrier, though I couldn’t say exactly why.

“I’m not asking you to do anything, Jill,” she said. “You’re leaving after graduation. You know Dad and I talked about doing something like this for years.”

Yes. And they really got into their volunteer work with foster kids a few years ago. “That’s different.” What I wanted to say was that with Dad gone, it didn’t seem so much that she was carrying out their plans as trying to replace him. With a baby. Which just seemed like a really, really bad idea, for so many reasons. But I couldn’t say that. Sometimes even I know when to shut up.

As I got up from the table and took our bowls to the sink, something I didn’t want to feel pushed up from underneath the anger. Anger I can deal with. Anger is easy for me. It can actually be kind of energizing to fume and feel superior and think about all the ways you’re right and other people are wrong. But the truth is I felt like I was going to cry. The feeling pushing up, the one I avoid at all costs because I don’t know what to do with it, was hurt. That she’d decided this huge, life-changing thing without consulting me.

My mom is not a stupid person and not a selfish person. Things she does that might seem that way on the surface come from a really good place in her heart. One year she boycotted Christmas because she was fed up with consumerism. A cool idea from a good place, yet it also kind of sucked because, you know, no tree, no presents, not even a stocking. And one time she decided we’d eat only one meal a day for a month and send our grocery money to Sudan, where a lot of people eat only one meal a day all the time. Again, chronic hunger wasn’t so terrific for helping me get homework done, and I’m pretty sure my dad was sneaking lunch on the job, but you have to love that heart.

And I know that’s the heart that led her to make this decision. Adding someone to a family, though? Is major. Life-changing. Permanent. When someone’s been subtracted from a family, you can’t just balance it out with a new acquisition. In the months after Dad died, a couple of people told us we should get a dog. A dog!

How is this all that different?

I rinsed the dishes and beat down the hurt with more anger. “I can’t believe you’re doing this, Mom. It’s just so impossible.”

Grim, resigned, she got up and headed to me with the casserole dish. She spooned leftovers into a plastic container. Snapped on the lid. Put it in the fridge. Handed me the casserole dish to rinse. “I want to give a good home to someone who might not otherwise have one,” she finally said. “Why see that as impossible? Seeing good things as impossible is exactly what’s wrong with our world.”

What could I say to that?

She put on the teakettle. I watched her middle-aged body move, her back half-covered by silvery hair Dad would never let her color, and I could almost see his hand smoothing it down as he bent to give her an after-dinner kiss before taking down the cups and saucers—pottery from their tenth anniversary trip to Brazil.

“Mom…” I stopped short, not sure what to say. I knew how much she missed Dad. I missed him, too. And I knew how different our missing him was, and that made it even harder. Couldn’t it be just us for a while, missing him together, in our separate ways? Couldn’t she at least wait until after graduation? Let us get used to each other, the people we are without Dad. “Mom,” I tried again, but she probably thought I was going to keep berating her and said, “No, Jill, I’ve made up my mind. It feels right. A death, and now a life.”

The next day, she chopped off her beautiful hair.

Mandy

The train’s horn is always two long, one short, and one long. A lonely sound.

It fits, because almost everyone is asleep but me, and it’s lonely to be the one who’s awake.

The man next to me has been sleeping for the last few hours, and I’ve passed a lot of that time watching him in the near dark. He’s nice-looking, with black-gray hair and short sideburns. Skin like he might be Hispanic, or Indian like Christopher, or even the other kind of Indian. He could be in his thirties or forties, and two times his leg has brushed against mine without his knowing it. When I got on in Omaha, he was already sitting there, and as I walked the aisle, he looked up and smiled. So I stopped, and he let me sit by the window.

There’s no wedding ring on his left hand.

Someone else is awake—the woman in a seat across and in front of us has been crying off and on. It started with sniffles, and the sniffles got more frequent, and then she put her face down into her scarf and pressed it against her eyes. I wonder what kind of crying it is. Anger or hurt or betrayal or feeling lost. Those are things that might make me cry, but not in public. My mother says a little bit of sadness is okay, and sometimes it can help men notice you. But crying is too much, she says. Crying makes them scared. They feel helpless, and you never want to make a man feel helpless.

She didn’t have to warn me about public crying. I haven’t done that since I was little. I barely even do it in private.

At the train station in Omaha, I came close. The cab picked me up in the afternoon, the way I’d arranged it, so that I left before my mother or Kent got home from work. In my mind I said good-bye and searched inside myself for pieces of me that would miss it, miss them, and didn’t find any. That’s not what made me want to cry.

The drive across the river from Council Bluffs and into downtown Omaha is short; the cab got to the station, and we unloaded my bags and I paid, tipping the driver two dollars, and he said nothing, and it wasn’t until he pulled away and I walked to the door of the station that I saw it was closed. It didn’t open until nine thirty at night. I’d planned to stay there, waiting for the ten-thirty train, and it was only just after four. I should have shouted and waved my hands in case the driver looked back, but mostly in life I don’t protest things. I go along, or at least I make people believe I’m going along. Sometimes it’s better if people think you’re dumb or don’t care.

A light snow had started to fall on top of the snow already on the ground. My bags were big. I didn’t have a cell phone to call another cab. Why couldn’t the driver have waited to make sure I got into the station? Did he notice it was closed? I would have noticed if I were him, driving a pregnant girl from Council Bluffs to the train station. I would make sure she was okay. This is what I’m saying. This is what made me want to cry. It felt bigger than only a cab driver, a stranger, leaving me in the snow. It felt personal. Abandonment. Knowing no one really cares if you stay or if you go or if you freeze to death in a train station parking lot or if you simply disappear. I’ve been knowing that a long time. Mostly it doesn’t bother me, and my mother says don’t be the squeaky wheel because you might get the grease but you’ll also get the grief.

At the train station, though, seeing the cab drive away, that hurt me where I already hurt.

Still, I didn’t cry. Instead, I dragged my big bag behind me in the snow and put the smaller one over my shoulder and walked uphill to the corner and went into a place called Joe Banana’s, where I ate a pizza as slowly as possible so I could stay. Some people stared. I stood out. At nine fifteen, I dragged my bag back down the hill in the dark and waited for the station to open.

I’m not sure what I expected from a train station. Something different from what it was: small, cold, and ugly like a hospital waiting room, like a classroom. After a while more people started to come in: a few old people, and a group of boys my age who had matching jackets, like they were on some kind of sports team. One of them, a tall one with a wide face like Kent’s, stared at me too long and then started typing on his phone. Another boy near him began to type on his. I knew they were sending each other text messages about me. I’d been walking around school for months looking like this, so I was used to it. Still.

I closed my eyes so I couldn’t see them seeing me.

I thought I’d sleep on the train. But now, even after hours on board, I can’t and I don’t want to. It’s my first time riding a train and my first time more than a hundred miles from Council Bluffs, and I don’t want to miss anything. The snow-covered plains light up the night, and the train car is dim, so I have a good view of spiny trees and run-down farmhouses and empty fields. I try to imagine Denver. It has mountains, and a big football stadium, and a river running through parts of it, just like in Omaha. That’s all I know. Though I’m not a nervous kind of a person, when I think about getting to Denver, I feel sick. Because what if it’s all the same? My mother says you can lead a horse to water… and I forget how that saying ends, because she hardly ever finishes it.

I have to remember what I’ve told Robin, so that I don’t get tense and mess it up when we meet. For example that I’m thirty-seven weeks pregnant, when the facts are different. Not that different. Close enough, I think. There a few other pieces of information that are more wishes than facts, plus one I don’t know myself.

The man next to me stirs. “Did you say something?” he murmurs.

“No.” At least I probably didn’t. Sometimes things come out and I don’t notice.

“Oh. Dreaming, I guess.” He sits up straight; I smile and rub my belly, which is something I’ve learned calms people. They like to see a healthy pregnant young woman, and it doesn’t hurt if she’s pretty.

Glad to have someone to talk to and glad it’s him, I ask where he’s going. This train started in Chicago and goes all the way to the California coast.

“Salt Lake.” He pats at his hair, smoothing out the sleep ruffles. “My sister’s getting married. I don’t fly.”

“Me neither.” And I only mean I’ve never been on a plane. “I’m getting off in Denver. Two more stops.”

We talk softly so we don’t bother sleeping passengers.

He should ask, “Business or pleasure?” and I would say, “Neither,” and I’d run my hand over my belly again, once, and then maybe with a look of concern he’d ask, “Where’s the father?” I’d glance away. Then I’d reply, “Afghanistan. He’s a soldier.” Because another thing I’ve learned is that’s one of the best answers you can give. People look at you like you’re a hero yourself.

He doesn’t ask, though. Only shifts in his seat and opens up a magazine.

So I ask him, “Are you married?”

It’s a question to make conversation is all, but after I ask it, I know I should have thought of another type of a question. My mother says I have no social sense. She says I make people uncomfortable. And I want to say,
Well, you make me uncomfortable when you tell me things like that, so maybe I got it from you
. Actually, I never think of what to say to her until a few days later; by then it’s better to not bring it up.

The man pauses the uncomfortable pause I’m used to before he says, “Yes.”

“You’re not wearing a ring.”

He holds out his hand, looks at it. “No. I never have. My wife doesn’t, either.”

“Why not?” If I were married to someone like him, I would wear the ring.

“We just don’t.” He shrugs and goes back to his magazine. When he flips the page, a sharp, spicy smell comes up from a cologne sample. “Whoa. Maybe I should rub some of this stuff on. Another eighteen hours to my next shower.”

“I like the way men smell just naturally.” When he pretends not to hear, I realize that’s another thing that should stay in my head and not come out of my mouth. “What’s your name?” I ask. “I’m Mandy Madison.” Madison is actually my middle name, but I like the way the two names sound together without
Kalinowski
on the end.

“Oh. Alex.”

“Alex what?”

He lifts his magazine. “I’m sorry, I really need to—”

“You don’t have to tell me. I was only wondering if you were Indian. Like in Nebraska, we have Comanche, Arapaho, Pawnee….”

“No. I’m a plain old Mexican American. Third generation.”

I don’t know why he won’t just say his last name. “Really my last name is Kalinowski,” I offer. “It’s Polish. I don’t know what generation.”

When he doesn’t reply, I tell him, “I’m going to try to sleep now. Enjoy your article.”

I close my eyes and imagine him watching me, wondering about me, thinking how pretty I am while I sleep. My mother says men like to see you like that. In sleep you look vulnerable, and it makes them want to take care of you.