Beauty from Ashes

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 17

Jake’s sound asleep. He’s just like his mom, Sunday naps and all. He’s snoring loudly enough that there’s no way I could drift off even if I wanted to. I’ve always hated naps though. What’s the point when they make you feel so groggy and disoriented when you wake up?

It’s two hours before Natalie needs another feeding, and my trailer is clean enough that the Queen of stinking England could stop by to use the toilet and I wouldn’t feel embarrassed. I don’t know what Patricia’s got planned for dinner, but I can guarantee it’s going to have a golden top, it’s going to be served along with plain brown rice, and she isn’t going to need or want my help.

Who would have thought being a new mom could be so dull?

I bundle Natalie up. It’s not too cold out, mid-forties. The snow’s falling pretty hard. It’s probably stupid of me to have her out in weather like this, but I can’t just stay cooped up in this trailer forever. Something about that church service today has given me cabin fever. I’ve got to get out. Patricia will pitch a royal fit if she sees me with Natalie tramping about in the middle of winter, but I checked the clock before she lay down for her nap. I have exactly thirty-seven minutes. Plenty of time to stretch my legs and get Natalie and myself both some fresh air.

I can’t believe I’m walking around the trailer park in a snowstorm just for the fun of it. Do you remember when power walking used to be all the rage? I never understood it before, but it’s starting to make sense now. The walking around outside part, not the whole ball your fists and bend your arms at a ninety-degree angle junk. Natalie’s got this cheap stroller one of my co-workers at Winter Grove passed down to me. Her kids are all teenagers now, so that will tell you how old of a model it is. Nothing fancy like those ones you can strap a car seat into or anything, but it works. I wish it weren’t so cold. I swear I’ve felt Natalie’s forehead and cheeks at least five times since I left.

I’d love a more visually appealing neighborhood to walk around in, but it’s over half a mile just to get out of the trailer park, and I only have thirty-two minutes left to get home, stash the stroller somewhere, and get Natalie out of her winter things. I feel like Cinderella keeping her eye on the clock before she has to rush back to her wicked step-mother’s.

I suppose if I was like Jake and grew up with Patricia, I wouldn’t see all her faults. I wouldn’t care so much. I mean, I know he’s not the sharpest crayon in the box, but I’m pretty convinced Jake thinks his mom is nice. Nice as in he’s lucky to have someone like her. And the way she berates him, never directly, never right to his face, but man. I wouldn’t put up with it for ten minutes if I were him. If it were my trailer and she were my mom, I would have thrown her out on her middle-aged Buns of Steel butt before the end of that first week.

Fish and company both stink after three days. I forget which one of my foster parents said that, and seeing as how I was a foster brat and therefore more like company instead of family, I wonder why she told me in the first place. I’ve got my cell phone in my pocket, and part of me thinks about checking in with Sandy. She’s called me a few times lately, but that trailer’s so small and the walls are so thin I never feel comfortable talking to her when Patricia’s around. I should call her, but I know I won’t. She’s busy. She’s got that little boy she adopted to take care of. I guess that makes him my foster brother. Not that those labels mean anything.

I check Natalie’s cheeks one more time to make sure she’s not getting too cold, and I think about those three days Sandy spent with me at the hospital when Natalie was having her G-tube surgery. It was like we’d only been apart for a week or two, when it was more like three years and I’d gone from a foster kid in Sandy’s modest home in her perfect little suburban paradise to an unemployed welfare mom in a trailer park.

How’s that for moving up in the world?

It’s funny because by the time I was a senior in high school, I was so sick of Sandy babying me. It was always tell me about your day and you look tired, are you sleeping all right, and I hated that attention and smothering. Fast-forward three years, and all of a sudden I can’t get enough of her mothering. I fell asleep on her shoulder once in Seattle. Can you believe that? It was the morning Natalie went in for her surgery, and the nurse told me I could wait at the Ronald McDonald house and they’d call me when it was over, but I didn’t want to be that far away, so Sandy and I sat in the surgery area for four stinking hours. At one point, she said I looked tired and wrapped her arm around me, and the next thing I knew I had drool on my cheek and the nurse was there to say Natalie was in recovery and the surgery had been a success.

Man, I miss Sandy. I’d probably go postal if I tried to live with her again, but it would be nice to at least be in the same town or somewhere nearby. I just hate picking up the phone and calling someone. It feels so arrogant, like I expect her to drop everything and talk to me about all my stress and worries just because I made a little device of hers ring a couple times. And I know if I call she’d want to know about Natalie, and what is there to say? She’s not dead yet. But there’s been no measurable progress. She’s not even gaining weight. The poor little thing weighs eight ounces more than she did at birth and that’s all.

No change.

I wonder if that’s going to be the story of Natalie’s life, as long or as short as it is. She’ll be eighteen years old, but instead of ordering her cap and gown or worrying about college tuition, I’ll be pouring predigested formula down her G-tube. Measuring out her anti-seizure meds that knock her out for twenty-three hours of the day. Suctioning out her throat whenever she starts to choke on her own drool.

Thinking about the suction machine reminds me that I left it at home. And by the time I’ve turned around, Natalie’s grunting in her sleep because her airway’s getting clogged. If I had that Yankauer with me, she’d be comfortable in two seconds flat. As it is, I’ve got to rush all the way home in the snow, and now I’m the one who looks like a stupid power walking maniac.

At least I’m getting my exercise for the day.

Count every blessing, right?