“Honey, promise me you’ll never do what I done.”
Cassie hugged me against her hard belly and sobbed, “I’ll never forgive myself for what I done. When you’re a teenager like me, don’t you never forget this promise.”
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I came home one day when I was 15 to find Susanna crying over a small framed photo of a very little boy in bib overalls, holding a small rake, standing in a freshly plowed field. His smile and nose and eyes and hair were hers. I had not known she had a child.
“He’s my little boy. I gave him up for adoption. It might have been the right thing to do, but I didn’t know it would always be this hard.”
“Do you know where?”
Instead I found her twin, crying hysterically beside two speakers turned all the way up. I shut off the stereo. I brought the second baby outside, and Anna and I repeated the whole routine. Finally, back in the house, searching for baby clothes, I found Stella, their mother, throwing up into a pan, pale and sweaty; she said that she flew to Maui to withdraw from smack, but she just couldn’t, she was so sick, and did I know of any smack dealer? I said no. I offered to help if she’d stick with it. I told her her babies were fed and clean and sleeping now. Anna and I persuaded her to have some crackers and ginger ale, a shower, and then some rest.
Mrs. Bessie Baruch (that’s just what I’m calling her here) was an affectionate grandmother to her first unexpected granddaughter, even though her eldest son no longer had a relationship with the young mother. When the second pregnant girlfriend showed up, Bessie received her compassionately and helped out financially.
