“Her daughter killed my mother and did this to me,” I said. “She said she was high on Ecstasy.”
She stopped eating. And for a few moments, she looked as if she should be the one in the hospital bed, not me.
4
People with Influence
I knew Jackie was thinking how much more horrible this was because I was a homeless child without anyone to care for me, and therefore I had to appreciate what Mrs. March was willing to give me and do for me. Another child who had a family would probably tell her to go to hell with her daughter.
“Well,” she said after a few moments to gather her thoughts, “you just take whatever she gives you. You deserve it and more. Maybe her husband is afraid some alert attorney will come see you and get you to sue the Marches. A lot of money could be held in trust for you to have when you’re eighteen. I bet that would bring your father back.”
“Would it?”
“I imagine so. Of course, he might be returning just to get his hands on the money. How long has he been away?”
“Three years,” I said.
“Three years? Has he called you often?”
“Never.”
“Not even written or sent you things?”
“We don’t even know where he really is.”
“Well, don’t you worry about it. Your first job is to get better.”
“Maybe he’ll come back when he hears what happened.”
“He might not find out about it. I always read the newspaper from beginning to end, and I didn’t see anything about this accident. I’m not surprised that the Marches were able to keep it out of the news, though,” she added. “They are what you call ‘people with influence.’”
She didn’t have to convince me of that. Look at what Mrs. March had gotten done for me in so short a time.
After I finished eating, I began to look through the magazines and books. Most of it was what I would read when I could get my hands on it. I hadn’t seen any of the movies she bought for me, and I had never had a DVD machine you could hold in your lap. Jackie checked my blood pressure and temperature and then sat and read some of my magazines, too.
We spent the next two days like this. Mrs. March didn’t return during those days, but I knew she called often to speak with Jackie. The nurse who came when Jackie left was older and less talkative, at least with me. She spent most of the night talking with other nurses. I guessed Jackie was right. I really didn’t need the second nurse, because I slept through most of the night. I did look forward to seeing Jackie first thing in the morning.
Either because she really enjoyed talking about her family and her life or because she was just trying to keep me from thinking about things, Jackie told me all about her brothers and sisters, her parents, how she became a nurse, and her one disappointing love affair. She rattled on about her taste in music and things she loved to eat. It seemed there wasn’t anything she didn’t like. I enjoyed listening to her talk about her family. I imagined myself a part of it.
What was a family, anyway? Could just a mother and a daughter be considered a family, or did you have to have a father, too, not to mention at least one brother or sister? A house or an apartment didn’t seem like much without a family living in it. When Jackie described her house, especially when all of her brothers and sisters had lived in it, I felt as though the house was alive, a warm place that embraced them and kept them happy and safe. How far that was from the cold apartment we had lived in and that small hotel room. How could I call either one a home?
Soon, though, instead of enjoying hearing Jackie describe her family and home life, I became sadder. Look at all I had been missing and would miss forever now. What sort of a woman could I become? I’d be like someone without any past. How could I ever do what Jackie was doing, describe my parents, where I lived? I’d be like so many of those homeless people I saw at the beach, pan-handling or trying to sell something to survive. Their faces were caverns of despair, their eyes empty, a smile as hard to find as a decent meal or a place to stay the night. The sound of other people laughing was painful to them and to me. If one day we weren’t there, no one would care; no one would look for us. Sometimes I wished the tide would come farther in and wash us all away. I was sure many people who saw us and shook their heads wished the same thing.
As I looked around my nice hospital room, I wondered where I would go from there. One day, the doctors would tell me I was recuperated enough to be discharged, but discharged to where? An orphanage? Some foster home? When I thought about that, I almost wished Daddy would come rushing back to get me, even if it was just to get himself some money. At least I’d be with someone who was supposed to care about me.
Late on the third morning, Mrs. March appeared and told Jackie she had arranged for me to be brought down to the morgue.
Jackie’s face lost color, and she turned sharply toward me. “Are you sure?”
“I know it’s very, very unpleasant,” Mrs. March said, “but she wants to say good-bye. Am I right, Sasha? We don’t have to do this if you’ve changed your mind, and Jackie’s right to be concerned for you. It’s ugly.”
“I don’t care. I want to see her,” I said. Mama could never be ugly to me, I thought.
“Then you will.”
She stepped out and returned with an aide and a wheelchair. I was helped into it, and the four of us went to the elevator. No one spoke all the way down to the morgue. My heart was pounding, and my eyes were filling with tears so quickly I had trouble seeing as we went down the corridor and through a pair of doors. A man in a white lab coat was waiting for us just inside and had me wheeled sharply to the right to avoid seeing anything else.
We entered a cold room. I saw no bodies, just what looked like a giant file cabinet.
“You stay with her, Jackie,” Mrs. March said. “We’ll hang back here.”
I looked at her and the aide. He didn’t seem unhappy about that, and she looked as if she was trembling. It got me trembling. Jackie wheeled me deeper in and up to a cabinet. The man in the lab coat looked at me, and then he pulled on the handle and slid Mama out. She was under a sheet. He lifted it, and something inside me shattered like a windowpane.
It didn’t look anything like Mama, and for a moment, I hoped it wasn’t her. Maybe she was still alive somewhere in the hospital. Maybe there had been a terrible mix-up. I looked at Jackie, and she shook her head. It was no good to pretend, to lie to myself. I knew it was Mama.
Tears were trickling down my cheeks. “Mama,” I whispered. “I love you. I’ll always love you.”
I reached out to touch her face and then recoiled when I felt how hard and cold it was. Suddenly, I was very nauseous and began to dry-heave. Jackie whisked me around and away. The aide stepped forward.
“Let’s get her back upstairs,” Mrs. March said. “Quickly.”
I kept my eyes closed and my head back until I was upstairs and in my bed. Then I slowly looked up at the ceiling.
Jackie rubbed my arm softly. “Don’t think of her down there,” she said. “That was no longer your mother. Think of her as being in a better place now, where she is always warm and happy and safe, okay?”
“Okay,” I said in a voice so small I thought I had become three years old again. I closed my eyes and fell asleep.
Days passed. Mrs. March sent me more presents, more magazines and movies and boxes of candy. I could tell from the way other nurses looked when they gazed in at me that I was quite a curiosity. I had no visitors other than the doctors and my private nurses. I was sure that by now there were all sorts of stories about me. Despite Jackie and the gifts, I felt more and more as if I were in prison or in some cave in a human zoo.
Jackie tried to help me feel better about it. She got me into a wheelchair whenever she could and pushed me down to a small patio to get some air and sunshine. Except for a few visitors, only other hospital employees used the patio. Some ate their lunches out there. Jackie knew some people and introduced me. While I read or listened
to music on the new iPod Mrs. March had sent, Jackie would move off and tell those people all about me. By the way they looked at me afterward, I could see that she had given them all the grisly details. I knew she didn’t mean any harm, but soon, because of their looks of pity, I wasn’t so eager to go down there anymore.
One afternoon, Mrs. March returned. I was sitting up in my bed and reading with my earphones on. They were plugged into the iPod, so I didn’t see her or hear her, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jackie get up quickly and put her magazine down. I turned and saw Jordan March standing there. She looked as if she had just come from a fancy affair, and later she did say she had attended a charity luncheon. She wore a white wide-brim hat with a pink ribbon and a sleeveless V-neck dress, embellished with a pink scarf.
I took off my earphones.
“You can take a break now, Jackie,” Mrs. March said.
Jackie nodded, smiled at me, and walked out. Mrs. March stepped up to my bed and smiled.
“I hear good things from your doctors,” she began. “Your bruises are healing, the concussion has receded, and you do look a lot stronger. How are you feeling?”
“The cast itches,” I said. “It’s hard to get used to it.”
“Yes, I imagine so. Dr. Milan says it’s too early to know how the break will affect the growth of your leg, but it’s important to remain hopeful. He’s one of the best doctors in all of Southern California for this problem. Of course, when the cast is removed, you’ll need therapy, and I’m arranging for all of that.”
“Where will I have to go?”
“We’ll see,” she said, looking away for a few seconds. When she looked at me again, her face was full of sadness, the way it had been when we had first met and she told me about losing her younger daughter. I could see her eyes filling with tears. She took a breath. “I want you to know I’ve taken good care of your mother,” she said.
Taken good care of my mother? She said it as if she meant that Mama hadn’t died. Maybe that really wasn’t Mama I had seen in the morgue. Maybe I wasn’t lying to myself. I held my breath. I think she saw that I was misunderstanding her.
“What I mean is, I bought a plot in Greenlawn Cemetery for her. I wanted my husband to make my daughter come to the burial, but he wouldn’t do that, so I went myself and made it as dignified as I could. I’ll make sure you are taken to the grave as soon as you are able to go. I didn’t have any stone put up yet. I thought you might want to have something besides her name and dates of birth and death. You might want something like ‘Loving Mother,’ whatever. You don’t have to think about that right now.”
At least Mama wasn’t where she had feared she’d be, in that Potter’s Field, I thought.
“I had one of our attorneys research your mother’s family, and then I had any we could locate called, but no one wanted to attend the funeral. Your father was harder to find. He was in Honolulu for a while, and then he … Well, he went off with someone to Australia. He hasn’t responded to any calls or inquiries, I’m afraid. We have it from reliable sources that he has another daughter with this woman. I’m sorry to have to tell you all this, but I thought you should know. Any man who would desert a daughter like you isn’t worth spending any time on, anyway,” she added angrily.
“How old is his new daughter?”
“Not quite two.”
Did he love her, I wondered, or did he think of her the same way he thought of me, as a burden, a punishment for his past sins, as he had told Mama children were?
“He just left you two one day? He didn’t tell you he was leaving?” Mrs. March asked.
I tried to recall the exact details. That day, Mama had made a meat loaf because she said if he didn’t show for dinner, we could keep it for lunch the next day. When he didn’t return home hours after we had eaten, she had gone into their bedroom and come out with a look of shock and anger on her face. I was doing my homework in the living room.
“That bastard,” she had said. I looked up and waited for her to explain. “He took all the spare cash I thought I had hidden from him under my panties in the top drawer of my dresser. So I thought I had better check my mother’s jewelry, the ring and necklace and that cameo my mother gave me. It was worth a few thousand, at least. Guess what? That’s gone, too. He went and pawned it all, I’m sure.”
I didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t sobbing, nor were her shoulders shaking, but tears were streaming down her cheeks.
“I went into the closet and saw that he’s taken a lot of his clothes.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Why? Why?” She sniffed, looked up at the ceiling and then at me. “He’s gone, Sasha. That glob of flesh and bones who called himself my husband and your father is gone. I knew he was seeing this woman over in West L.A. My guess is, he’s moved in with her. I’ll find out, and I’ll get the police on his back. You can be sure of that.”
She returned to her bedroom and shut the door. I could barely breathe. Just remembering it took my breath away now. How could Jordan March expect me to relive it?
“No,” I said. “He never told us he was leaving. My mother thought he had moved in with another woman, but when the police checked, both of them were gone. Later, she heard that someone thought he had gone to Hawaii. She tried to find him, but no one really helped us.”
“How terrible for both of you. Your mother had stopped working, right?”
“Yes, but she went back to working at a restaurant the next week, and for a while, everything seemed okay. She was sad, though, and tired and …”
“Began to drink?”
I nodded.
“So she lost her job eventually?”
“Yes, but she got another and …”
“The same thing happened.”
I nodded.
“So your bills began piling up. There are so many people, especially women who’ve been deserted, who are just like that out there. You lost the house, I imagine?”
“We didn’t have a house. We had an apartment, and the police came one day and told us we had to leave right away.”
“Evicted? Yes, of course, that would happen. Where did you go?”
“To a hotel, but Mama wasn’t doing well. She didn’t have a job anymore, so we couldn’t pay the rent too long.”
“And that’s when you went out on the street?”
I nodded.
“You said she sold calligraphy she created?”
“And I sold lanyards.”
“Yes, which you made. That’s sweet, but how terribly difficult it had to be. Where did you sleep, exactly?”
“Sometimes just under the tree, sometimes in a big box Mama made. For a while, we slept in an old deserted car, but then someone came along and took it away.”
“You stopped going to school?”
“It was too far and hard for me to go. I didn’t have my old clothes.”
“Of course, and anyway, where would you do your schoolwork?” she said, nodding. “Didn’t your mother try to get some help?”
How was I to explain what Mama had been like without making her sound terrible? I just shook my head.
“Your mother …” She hesitated and thought for a moment. I could see she was deciding whether or not to tell me something.
“What?”
“Your mother had quite a bit of alcohol in her at the time of the accident,” she said. “I’m not saying that made it her fault or anything,” she quickly added. “She was like that often, though? I mean, every day?”
I didn’t say yes, but I didn’t have to.
“I’m sure it made it all that much harder for you.” She grew angry again. “That father of yours should be stood up and shot.”
“Mama didn’t want to drink whiskey,” I said. “It made her feel better.”
“Well, yes, I suppose …”
“She didn’t have to think about us. She tried to change herself into another person so that she wouldn’t have to think about all that had happened to her.”
/>
She stared at me. “That’s very astute. You’re a very bright young girl. I can see that, Sasha. It would be a waste to let you fall through the cracks. I’m sure you wanted to be in school.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m not usually someone who believes in fate. When Alena died, I knew there were some people who thought it was just something meant to be and that was why nothing we tried to do could stop it. It’s like everything is designed, and we just follow the path we’re given. Something like that. Donald believes that. I’d like to think that maybe some good could come out of Kiera being the one to have caused your accident, the injuries, and your mother’s death.”
I recoiled. Good?
“It brought me to you and you to me,” she said. “I had a great loss when Alena died, and so did you when you lost your mother. We can help each other. Actually, you’ll be helping me and Donald by giving us more to do with our lives, our family lives.”
“How?” I asked.
She smiled. “I’d like you to think about something. I’d like you to come live with us, Sasha. First, we’ll be your foster parents, and then, if you’re happy, we will adopt you.”
All I could do was stare at her. She wanted me to live with her? But I’d be living with her daughter Kiera, too?
“You’ll only end up a ward of the state otherwise and be shipped off to some orphanage or multichild foster home,” she quickly added. “You don’t want that. Even your mother, in the condition she was in, that you were both in, avoided putting you there, and now that I have gotten to know you, it would make me very sad, too.”
My continued silence unnerved her.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” she asked.
I nodded, and she stood up.
“Okay. You just think about it. I’ll be back tomorrow, and we’ll talk again about it.”
Jackie came to the door and hesitated, waiting to see if it was all right for her to return.
“You can come in,” Mrs. March told her. “She’s doing quite well, according to Dr. Milan.”