Читать книгу Picture Perfect - Kate Forster, Kate Forster - Страница 6

Los Angeles 11 May, 1996

The girl shivered and hugged her new baby closer to her chest. It had been a restless night in the hospital room, her friend shifting uncomfortably in the hard plastic chair, while the baby snuffled into her chest, trying to find the source of the scent of milk.

She felt sick, but she wanted it finished. Every second she was with the baby was another second that might change her mind.

Her friend sat watching her, her slim legs in skintight jeans, chewing gum and sipping from the can of Mountain Dew she’d bought from the vending machine down the hall. She was swinging one foot, a habit that her friend knew came from nerves, not restlessness.

‘She’s gonna have a real nice life,’ her friend said for the millionth time.

‘I know,’ she answered numbly.

‘Better than anything we ever had.’

The baby stirred and she shifted her up onto her shoulder, and she felt her breasts ache. She was bottle-feeding, as they had all agreed, but her body yearned for the feel of her baby on her skin.

Her milk was coming in, the nurses had told her this morning, as the baby rubbed her little face against the bare skin on her neck.

Skin hungry, she thought, her tired mind recalling what she’d read about babies trying to bond with their mothers.

Is this what love feels like? she wondered, and then she felt the let-down of her milk, soaking her one good T-shirt.

‘Goddammit,’ she said and stood up from the bed. ‘Take her, I have to dry this,’ and she handed over the warm bundle.

Her friend took the baby with the confidence of someone who had grown up around younger children.

‘Hush now, little one,’ she said to the babe, and started singing about Jesus.

All her friend’s songs were about Jesus, thought the girl as she went into the bathroom and plugged in the hairdryer from the cupboard under the sink. This was a real nice hospital, with fancy toiletries and hairdryers in each room. Better than the apartment she shared with her friend. She waved the hot air over her milk-stained T-shirt. She saw the milk had left a shadow of two eyes on her front.

Proverbs 15:3, she thought. The eyes of the LORD are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good.

What was he thinking as he watched her now?

A knock at the door made her jump and drop the hairdryer.

‘Give her to me,’ she said, rushing out and snatching the baby back. Time is precious, don’t waste a moment, she heard the preacher say in her head.

Her friend walked to the door and opened it. ‘Hi there,’ she said, like she was about to serve them at the Pick ‘n’ Mix candy store.

She heard the woman’s breathless voice answering and she walked to the window and stared out unseeingly at the parking lot.

If the Lord was watching her, and he knew how she was feeling, then he would have found another way, wouldn’t he?

‘Sweetheart?’

Turning slowly, she saw the woman who was about to become her baby’s new mother.

The first time she met the woman she had been a tired, scared teenager, heavy with this child. Everything had ached.

Now everything ached for a different reason.

This woman had everything she didn’t and she had the one thing the woman couldn’t have.

Too old to adopt, the agencies had said.

The woman didn’t look at her, just at the beautiful baby in her arms.

‘How is she doing today?’ she asked, lines of worry and age on her face.

And here was she, too young to keep the baby without family support.

Who was anyone to say this woman shouldn’t have a baby just because she was older? It was unfair, but then the girl had always known life was unfair.

The woman didn’t dress like anyone she knew. No one in her life wore smart suits or scarves, not even in church.

The baby mewed. Though the girl’s breasts still yearned for the sweet mouth of the baby, she held her out to the woman.

‘Do you want to hold her?’ she asked shyly.

The woman pounced on the baby and cooed and clucked her tongue at the child.

‘She’s perfect,’ she said, looking up with tears in her eyes as she took her from the arms of the young mother.

‘Nobody’s perfect,’ she said quietly. ‘Not even a teeny, tiny baby.’

But the woman didn’t seem to notice anything but the baby.

‘You got the money?’ asked her friend and the girl frowned at her bluntness, but then her friend had always been able to separate money and emotion. It was business, she had said to her when she balked at the amount her friend suggested for the baby.

The woman reached into her black leather handbag and handed a yellow envelope to the girl.

Her friend took a sip of Mountain Dew and opened the envelope. ‘I need to count it.’ She set to work, carefully counting the money.

‘It’s all there,’ the woman assured her, tearing her eyes away from the baby for a moment. ‘And the contract for you to sign.’

Her friend looked up from the money with cold eyes. ‘She’ll sign when I’ve counted the money,’ she snapped.

The woman was rocking the baby. The girl looked, and saw the baby’s feet poking out of the pink blanket.

‘She’ll get cold,’ she said and she tucked the blanket more snugly around the baby.

The woman stared at her.

‘You are going to sign the papers, aren’t you?’ she asked, her eyes searching the girl’s face.

Her voice was filled with fear; something the girl knew well.

‘I am,’ she said in a low voice. She went to the drawers by the bed and pulled out an envelope, and held it out to the woman.

‘This is for her, when she’s old enough, just in case something happens…’

The woman tore her eyes from the baby and nodded, her expression kind, as she took the envelope from her.

‘Can I read it?’ she asked politely. The girl knew the woman would read it later, even if she had said no at this moment.

She nodded and the woman struggled to open the envelope with the baby in her arms. She thought about offering to hold her while she read it but she didn’t trust herself to hand the child back.

She’s not yours now, she reminded herself.

The woman started to read.

She knew the words by heart.

Dear Baby Girl,

I am your momma, and I love you, but I don’t have anything a momma needs to look after a little baby.

I promise you I will come back for you when I can. Until then, be happy with this nice lady, who wants to be your momma for a while. She can take care of you and buy you a four-poster bed and good food and lots of clothes and lots of other things I can’t.

One day, when I’m rich, I’ll come and find you again and give you everything else you need.

Until then, know that I will always love you, my precious little girl.

Your Momma

xoxoxo

The woman folded the letter and put it back into its envelope and she saw her eyes wet with tears, but still she refused to cry.

Crying never helped nobody do nothin’, Grammy used to say.

The old woman had been right. Crying wouldn’t make her rich, or magically give her everything she knew the baby needed. She didn’t have enough money for her own food, let alone to raise a child. How would she clothe her? Educate her? Take care of her in a crisis? God knows she had had enough drama in her own short life to know things happened, terrible things that no child should ever go through.

And there was no way she was going to let her go into foster care, not after what she has been through. There was not a time she could remember when she had felt as though her life was turning out okay. Too many foster homes and too many of her grandmother’s broken promises had shattered her trust that the world was a safe place for a young girl to raise a child alone.

There was no point in crying, no point in wishing. The best thing for the child was to be with someone who could make sure she would be safe, and that she would never go hungry. That she would have the opportunity to go to school, that she would have a packed lunch and shoes without holes and that no one would ever call her ‘white trash’ to her face.

Her friend nodded at her that the money was all there. She picked up the pen and, with a shaking hand, she signed the papers on the table.

All those years of practising her signature for when she was able to make her own decisions instead of the welfare department, and this was the first time she got to use it for something grown-up.

With aching breasts and a breaking heart she pushed the papers over to the woman and nodded to her friend.

‘She’s yours now until I can come back,’ she said dully.

‘Would you like to hold her again?’ asked the woman.

She shook her head.

She knew that if she held her baby again, she would never let her go.

‘No, thank you, you’re her momma for now,’ she said, and the woman who at forty-five had nearly given up on being a mother, blinked and nodded.

‘Please. You should hold her again,’ said the woman as she walked over to the girl. ‘It will help you say goodbye.’

But the girl shook her head and picked up the plastic bag that contained her few personal belongings.

‘There’s no goodbye,’ she said. ‘Just take care of her till I can. I’ll be back for her, I promise, and I’ll pay you back the money and take care of her myself.’ She spoke with absolute certainty.

Without a backwards glance, she left the hospital room, her friend following, with a copy of the adoption documents, thirty thousand dollars and a desperate dream that one day she would have everything she ever wanted, including her baby girl.