The Same Sky (2 page)

“She took the baby back,” I said. “She just … we had him at our house. We had him on the couch, and even on top of our bed. We put him in clean diapers and a swaddling blanket. He slept in his crib. And then she … she changed her mind.”

“They came and got him this morning,” said Jake.

“Oh my God,” said Lucy.

“Maybe she’ll … maybe it’s not …,” sputtered Carole, an English teacher at Chávez Memorial High School, which was located three blocks from Conroe’s BBQ.

“Anyone want a
flauta
?” I said, passing the tray. We
didn’t mention Mitchell again, and Jake and I left the restaurant without the baby gifts. We were pretty drunk, so Jake called Austin Taxi from the Matt’s El Rancho parking lot. On the ride home, I rested my head on my husband’s shoulder, watching the bright signs outside the cab window as we crossed the interstate to the Eastside: We Buy Gold Emporium, Churros Aqui!, Top Dawg’s Bar and Grill. I told the driver to hang a right after Frank’s Coin Laundry, where I brought our clothes every Monday when Conroe’s was closed. Two blocks later, Jake said, “Here we are.”

2215 Mildred Street—our home. We’d bought it from an elderly black woman who was moving to Pflugerville, joining the exodus of black families from downtown Austin’s Eastside to the sprawling suburbs. It was a cottage, really: one thousand square feet of termite-nibbled hardwood. Jake and his father had painted the house a glossy white, added black shutters to the windows, erected a picket fence around the yard. I’d bought two brass lanterns to hang on either side of our hunter-green door. On one of our evening walks around the neighborhood, we’d found a broken porch swing. Jake used his welding equipment and a few cans of Rust-Oleum to restore the swing, hanging it on the front porch. In the backyard, we’d planted a lemon tree and a row of bamboo. We could be poster children for Eastside gentrification, but we were not ashamed. We’d made a home for ourselves on Mildred Street, same as the crazy lady at 2213 and the young family at 2217. Same as Omar Martinez, who lived across the
street and worked at Juan in a Million, home of the best hangover breakfast in town.

Our house was dark. As the cab pulled away, Jake sank into the porch swing and I let myself inside. This had been, we’d vowed, the last chance. I was infertile, and our hopes for adoption had about run out. We had borrowed every last dime available to try to impregnate a kind but stoic surrogate in Detroit named Janeen. After Jake and I had flown to Michigan seven times, Janeen said—kindly and with stoicism—that she needed to close this chapter and move on. She was now pregnant with a Brooklyn man’s sperm. I knew because I read her blog.

In the decade we’d been trying to have a baby, our life had become a symphony of failure, almost rapturous with dramatic and dashed hopes. Pregnant women contacted us through our adoption agency, but then chose another couple, kept the baby, or (in one case) turned out to be a nut job who’d never been pregnant in the first place. I’d maintained a website advertising our cheery life and happy home (writing corny stories about how we’d met; what our days at Conroe’s BBQ were like; and what sports, religion, and hobbies we’d teach our youngster), but though we received emails aplenty, none of the desperate people perusing the site had decided to bless us with a baby.

In the Detroit airport, after Janeen’s announcement, Jake told me he was done. In the Fuddruckers restaurant next to Gate C17, he grabbed my hand and begged me to
stop. Exhausted and low, I agreed to deactivate our adoption file, to close this chapter, to move on with grace, gratitude, and all that crap. We embraced, ignoring the stares of the other Fuddruckers patrons. I felt, when we were aloft and sailing through the sky toward Austin, that maybe we would be okay. But then Naomi had chosen us, and baby Mitchell had come.

The night before, I’d fed him. Small and dark, with a cap of black curls, Mitchell had opened his brown eyes and looked at me. “I’m your mommy,” I said, tasting the precious words. I fit a bottle between his lips and watched him suckle, felt his body ease. As I held him, he passed with a tiny shudder from wakefulness to sleep. The moon outside his window was full. I was full. And then the agency called.

I went to Jake, brought him a beer. He opened it and drank, then I grabbed the can and took my own mouthful. The beer made the pain a bit less sharp, just for the evening. “Oh, God,” I said, sitting down next to Jake, breathing the sultry air. The moon was still round and bright.

“I wish I knew what the point of this was,” said Jake. “Or would you say
were
?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “and I don’t care.”

“Fair enough,” said Jake.

People always seem surprised when they first meet me and Jake. He’s good-looking and sure of himself, a blond former football star. In contrast, I’m nervous and dark-haired, more comfortable in the backcountry than at a country club. If Jake is a lion, regal and handsome, I’m a
wren: fragile, easily spooked, ready to take flight. Somehow, though, it works. At night, I tuck myself into a ball, and Jake surrounds me, and I am warm.

In the moonlight, I saw a figure emerge from Beau and Camilla’s house next door. “Hello?” called Camilla. As she approached, I could see she was carrying a metal pot.

“We’re drinking on the swing,” admitted Jake.

“I am so sorry,” said Camilla. Her Nigerian accent made the words especially sad somehow.

“Did you see them take the baby?” I asked.

Camilla hesitated, then nodded. Camilla and Beau had two daughters who had inherited their father’s light hair and their mother’s feisty attitude. “I made soup,” said Camilla, unlatching our gate.

“Thanks,” I said. I made a move to stand, but Camilla shook her head.

“I’ll put it in the kitchen,” she said, climbing our three front steps, opening the door. I heard her set the pot on our stove, and then she reappeared. “We’re here, if you need anything,” she said. “I mean, we’re there,” she said, pointing.

“Thanks,” Jake and I said in unison. We watched Camilla walk across the alley back to her home, where her family waited for her.

3
 

Carla

I
WAS SEVEN YEARS
old when a black car pulled up outside my grandmother’s house (which was also my house, as I have mentioned). I had just returned from doing the washing in the river, rubbing my hands raw getting all the dirt out of strangers’ pants or worse: the pants of people I knew! I hated the way my skin grew red and chapped, how I couldn’t stop myself from pulling ribbons of dead skin from my fingers. But my grandmother was old, her own hands curled with arthritis that only a few sips of
guaro
would ease. She hung the clothes on a rusted wire, and my twin brothers toddled around her in circles, their feet caked in mud and God knew what else.

The car slid to a halt. I squinted against the sun, watched as a fat woman stepped from the driver’s side and put her hands on her hips. Smoothing the front of her
dress, my grandmother moved toward the woman. They spoke in hushed tones, my grandmother looking down and nodding, her lips pinched together in a way that meant she was scared.

My grandmother was not scared of much. She kept a crowbar underneath our pallet and had twice prevented robberies with her loud voice alone. No one who knew us would dare to steal from Ana—everyone understood that she was doing her best to raise her grandchildren in an uncertain world. But as jobs dried up and bad men grew more powerful than good, desperate strangers began walking farther from the city, toward neighborhoods like mine. They were looking for money or food, hoping for safety, searching for a way to remain in a place that had become unrecognizable.

My grandmother beckoned my brothers. Carlos and Paola (whom we called Junior) moved toward her with halting steps, pushing their chests forward and then throwing their feet out to catch themselves. Junior wobbled, flapped his arms like a chicken who had been disturbed, then fell on his naked bottom. He began to cry. Carlos waited, and when his brother dried his eyes, Carlos took his hand and helped him rise. They approached my grandmother and the fat woman.

“Only one,” said the fat woman. “I would prefer the quiet one, but the choice is yours.”

“What’s going on?” I said, standing up.

“Nothing to do with you,” said my grandmother. To the fat woman, she said, “They cannot be separated.”

The woman shrugged. She wore a tight tank top and
had large breasts. Her jean shorts said “Sweetie” on the back pocket. I liked her shoes, which were called jelly sandals and could be bought at the market in the city.

“The mother only paid for one,” said the woman. “I’m busy. Let’s get this part over with before the whole neighborhood gets involved.” (It was true that people had begun to swarm around, sniffing trouble like a dog smells food.)

My grandmother looked very old. Her shoulders were bony underneath her faded dress, but her stomach pooched out. Her face was full of lines, especially around her mouth and across her forehead.

“Fine,” said the fat woman. “This one. In we go.” She picked up Carlos, who did not make a sound. With her other arm, she unlocked the trunk of her car. “Anything you want to send along?” said the woman. “Diapers, water …?”

“What are you doing with Carlos?” I said. I think a part of me already knew, and I felt a mixture of terror and envy.

“He’s going to be with his mama,” said the woman. Carlos looked straight at me, opened his mouth. I shook my head, willing him to keep silent.

“Carlos!” cried Junior. “Carlos!”

Carlos began to sob soundlessly, his face contorting into a mask of fear. He tried to climb out of the trunk, but the woman held him in place, her hand splayed on his head.

“Don’t take him,” I said. “Please. Take me instead.”

The woman looked me over appraisingly, taking in my dirty feet and callused hands. “Nobody paid for you,” she
said. And then she pushed Carlos down and slammed shut the trunk.

“He’ll suffocate,” I told my grandmother, my voice brassy with panic. From inside the trunk, Carlos began to make terrible sounds.

“Carlos!” said Junior.

“He’ll be fine,” said the fat woman. The sky above us was sand-colored, as flat and pale as desert. A lone grackle cawed, but there was no answer. I wished I knew how to stop time, to keep the shining car from departing with my brother inside. I put my hand to my mouth, bit hard on my knuckle. I wanted to do something, to feel something, to be the one leaving, and not the one left behind.

The fat woman got into her car and drove away.

“Hush, Junior,” said my grandmother. Junior had abandoned himself to sorrow: he was blubbering loudly, his face covered in tears and snot. Ana picked him up and he curled into her body.

“What about me?” I said.

“Keep hanging up the washing,” said my grandmother. But she came to my side and included me in her hug. “God will watch over him,” said my grandmother. “God will watch over us all.”

4
 

Alice

W
HEN I HANDED
Principal Markson her Sweet Stacy sandwich (chopped beef, sausage, and coleslaw on a soft bun), she peered over her glasses for an extra moment. “Alice,” she said, pushing the burgundy frames back into place, “what in heaven’s name are you doing here? Is the baby in the back somewhere? Asleep in a nest by the smoker?”

“The adoption didn’t work out,” I said, the simplicity of my words belying my mangled heart.

“Oh,” said Principal Markson. “Oh, Alice. I’m so sorry.” She held her paper bag in one hand and her phone in the other. The phone buzzed, but she did not look away from my face.

“Well, you know …,” I said, but could not think of a way to finish the sentence.

“I’m so sorry,” repeated Principal Markson.

“If you want, I can give you back the sweater,” I said, my voice wavering as I pictured the small garment, which Principal Markson had knitted herself. When she had time to knit, I had no idea. Principal Markson, a heavyset black woman, was in charge of Chávez Memorial, which had been called Johnson High until the city shut it down the year before and replaced all the faculty. Most of the new teachers and many of the students came into Conroe’s at lunchtime, though ever since the
Texas Monthly
“Best BBQ” issue, we had to let them skip the line or they’d never get a morsel.