The Best One
I thought I’d share a short story I wrote a while back, I’m guessing four or five years ago. I’m sure it needs heavy rewriting, but you know, I’m just going to offer it up as is. [I’m having a few problems in getting the margins to “stay put” when I publish the page, so if they’re off, that’s why.]
Have a beautiful Monday.
THE BEST ONE
She brought him to the house today. Nelly brought my new, four-year-old, brown-skinned grandson to my house today, with shiny promises of swimming in our turquoise jewel of a pool.
His first pool experience.
There he stood. On my wrap-around porch. Pudgy fingers wrapped in Nelly’s slender hands. Quivering nose stuffed into a mass of milky clematis rimming the front doorway. Chocolate eyes, looking up at me, finally.
Smells good, he said.
I warned Nelly about doing this—this adoption thing. I explained that the birth mother would come scrambling after her lost baby. How the adoption papers with the indelible, black-inked signatures would dissolve under legal scrutiny. What pain would rip through her heart and soul when her son was torn from her side, screaming.
But, Mom, I want a child, Nelly had said, one brisk Saturday in November when the maple leaves hugged the earth like a wet leather glove. Nelly sat on my polished wood floor in one of her yoga positions, legs crossed, palms facing up to the ceiling, eyes closed, breathing deeply. A small square of hot sun illuminated her brown, frizzy head.
Nell, you’re a legal secretary. You don’t have time for a child, I said. She had to see the reason in this—the same cold, hard logic that those lawyers she slaved for used day after day.
I could quit, she said the words soft.
And live off Rick’s salary? Please, I said.
Yeah, I suppose not, she said. Then, she opened one eye and said, Maybe you could take care of it.
It.
It? This was before she knew the sex of the child. Did she have any idea of what “it” was capable of? Messy diapers. Crayoned upholstery. Flung food. Non-stop screeching. Electrocuted fingers. Incessant colic. Midnight feedings. Nelly herself had been more than a handful when she was a baby. Did Nelly understand these things? She did not.
Not one iota.
Nelly stood, balancing on one leg, the other crooked at a ninety-degree angle. Still, eyes closed. She breathed in, and on the exhale, she whispered, You had me and worked, too.
I watched her, my Nelly, contort her body. I smiled. You were a cherub, you know, I said.
She smiled. You know what Rick says, she said, about getting a baby?
Don’t do that, I said, alarmed at the wild flexion in her back.
He says it’s like picking a flower in a field and taking it home and putting it in water, here baby, drink up and live. She giggled and opened her eyes all the way.
Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Children are not flowers, I said.
But here he was. A wild, curly-haired flower picked in Uganda and delivered onto my clematis-trellised porch for watering.
Come in, child, you ready for a swim? I said.
He nodded, those delicious eyes locked on mine.
I cautioned Nelly against adoption. She did not listen. What’s a mother to do?
I led them both out to the backyard, onto the baked, cement-tiled pool deck, where the icy blue water shimmered in trapezoidal reflections. I was proud of the Smith & Hawken garden furniture and the plush, oversized towels. The potted palms that I had to bring in during the winter months so that the pool could look languidly tropic in the summer.
The child dropped Nelly’s hand and wandered in the opposite direction, towards the flower garden. He stood, his back to us.
Come, love, don’t you want to go for a swim with Mommy? said Nelly. She walked to his side and grabbed his hand.
He pulled away and pointed at the earthen patchwork quilt of petal and leaf combinations—blue mistflowers, butterfly weed, brown-eyed susans, zexmenia, cowpen daisies, blazing stars, Texas lantanas, and switchgrass.
He looked up at her and mouthed something.
Nelly turned to me, May he pick a flower?
Um, yes, of course, I said, honey, can you pick just one?
He nodded and still, he waited for something.
Nelly said, Do you want us to go bye-bye?
He nodded again. He may have laid down roots in the loamy soil because he was still standing there when we glanced out the kitchen window a few minutes later.
Come, Mom, let’s wait in here, said Nelly. She sat on the living room floor again, in her Lycra swimsuit and shorts, and leaned her face toward the wood planks. He’s beautiful, isn’t he? I can’t get over he’s ours.
I feel old, I said.
You’re a grandma, said Nelly, and I’m a mom. Try that one on for size.
The pool, I said, and started.
I closed the gate, Nelly said. She exhaled, her breath whistling past her teeth, through her puckered-up lips.
If the pool doesn’t get him, I thought, his birth mother will. I warned her. I did. But Nelly didn’t listen. And now the child wants to pick a flower. What child wants to pick a flower? Not a normal one. You know what? A normal child wants to swim in a great big blue pool, splashing the bright reflections away. A normal child wants to hold his breath, dive under the surface, and open his eyes. That’s what.
You know what he told me last night, said Nelly, when I tucked him into bed? He said I had eyes like chameleon skin. She grinned. I don’t know if that’s good or bad.
What’s his story? I asked.
Nelly tucked herself into a tight ball on the floor in front of me. She said, he was a seed. She stretched up slowly with her long arms. He grew, and we picked him.
No, really, I said, what’s his story?
He’s ours, Mom.
There was a quiet tapping on the back door.
Baby, is that you? Nelly called. She pulled herself up off the floor. Love, I’m coming. She was trying out different pet names.
Oh, honey, I heard her say. Oh, love, I don’t think you can take that in there. Mom! Mom, come quick. He wants to give it to you. At first all I saw was Nelly standing there with her hand over her mouth, suppressing giggles.
The child stood there, fat fingers grasping an eight-foot tall sunflower torn up by the roots. A dwarfed boy standing at the end of a jagged dirt path that stretched across the linoleum floor from the back door to right in front of me.
He grinned and thrust the massive flower higher.
Said to me, I picked the best one for you.
[Post image: Sunflower by olkaprill at stock.xchng]