“Vaya con Dios,” she whispers, and they disappear into the darkness and the rain. She closes the door behind them, locks it. In a matter of hours, she will call the police. But now, she straightens her rubber gloves and goes to take care of the baby.
50
Aeromexico Flight 179
PENNY
Everything is different; the orange-and-brown fabric, the shape of the seats, the stink of jet fuel and stale air spitting out from the vent overhead, the ladies in blue dresses walking around checking up on everyone like teachers during a test, and the little tables that go up and down from the seat in front of her. What is the same: the feeling of public transportation, of waiting for someone to take her somewhere, the weight of an arm draped over her shoulders like a fallen tree branch, and the emptiness about her forearms, thighs, and middle, where recently there had been the wriggling weight of a baby.
A missing baby is familiar, the scooped-out jack-o’-lantern feeling of her belly after Buddy, cramps like fists wringing out her hollowed womb. Oh, Buddy, she thinks as she looks out the window. She does not think of the other baby.
Penny tips her head to Jason’s shoulder, and he palms her knee. Like a rocking teeter-totter they have been banging up and down, jerking each other, only now peaceful, comfortable. Balance, no more see, no more saw, just two folks leaving on a jet plane, thousands of dollars in a gym bag at her feet. “I’ll carry it,” she’d told him, counting, in the airport bathroom, what was left after the tickets.
They have a blue blanket spread over their laps like pioneers in a wagon. Underneath, Jason’s hand moves north up her thigh as the engines beneath their feet hum and vibrate, come to life.
She should be scared, first time in the air. Should be crying, or excited, worried about the garbage bag of their entire earthly belongings that the airport woman took from them, promising it would be there when they got to Mexico. Jason’s hand comes to clamp down over her crotch, tingling with the jiggling of the seat, and it stays there, comfortably.
She looks down at her own hands spread on top of the blanket on her thighs, stubby nails, no longer bloody with the picking. Clean hands. She pictures them, warm red dirt curling up under her fingertips. She turns to Jason, his broken face, ugly as hers now. Behind his scratched-up sunglasses his swollen eyes are closed, head tipped back against the seat as the plane tilts into the sky. She imagines the rich soil crumbling between her palms, sifting it, moist and dry as she digs holes.
She rests her head on his shoulder and whispers, “When we get there, I’ll grow things. We’ll have a garden.”
51
Phone Call
EVA
From the minute you start the adoption process, the telephone takes on a special significance in your life. You anticipate The Phone Call the way another woman imagines the two blue lines appearing on an EPT stick. You fantasize about it, where you will be when it happens, what it will mean. You savor it, the fantasy of it, and for the first few weeks, it is like a sugar cube melting on your tongue, the waiting, the delicious possibility that any day could be the day that the phone rings, and you might think, “Oh, it’s probably my friend calling back with the answer to that recipe question, or my husband just calling to chat,” except maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’s the agency.
It’s the call that every couple imagines with the wild unpredictability not present in a typical pregnancy. At least then you know that probably anytime within a six-week window, your Braxton Hicks contractions will stand up and demand your attention, or your water will break in the grocery checkout line, all setting into motion a fairly predictable chain of events. A trip to the hospital or birth center, and somehow or other, within a set amount of time, your baby will be born.
For adoptive parents, you can go from planning a romantic jaunt off to Cabo for the weekend to dashing around buying an automatic bottle sterilizer. This call can take many forms, from “Hi, this is Chloe Pinter from the Chosen Child. I just wanted to call and let you know that one of our birth mothers has chosen your portfolio. She’s due in March,” to “Hi, this is Chloe Pinter from the Chosen Child. Grab your car seat