Chapter 28 Not a Dinosaur Cara #3
Emmett jogs over, holding out his hand. “Hey, Catharine. Abel talks about you all the time. I’m—”
“Hot.” Her eyes widen, and she clamps a hand over her mouth as I snort a laugh. “I’m so sorry.” She drags her hands down her red face. “I Googled you guys. I thought you were hot online, but in person, you’re… wow. And you.” She gestures at me. “I thought maybe it was all just angles, but—”
“I really am that pretty.” I toss my hair over my shoulder for effect, but then wave myself off. “Just kidding. Kinda. Not really.”
“She’s not kidding,” Emmett confirms.
“Oh, shoot, Abe. Lemme see what you made.” She pulls out the stack of papers, chin quivering as she unfolds the first one. “You painted.”
“I gots paints at Cara and Emmett’s.” He thumbs proudly at his chest. “I painted this for you. And guess what? I spilled and make a mess, and”—he waves his hands around—“Cara and Emmett didn’t even yell at me.”
Her eyes flicker, and she drops to her knees, taking Abel’s hands in hers. “I’m so happy you get to paint and make messes at Cara and Emmett’s house. Can you tell me about your paintings?”
Abel sits with Catharine, labeling each and every paint stroke on the page.
Then she pushes him on the swing, and he tells her all about what it’s like living with us.
She asks him what his favorite thing to do at our house is.
Making pizza with Emmett, watching hockey with me, reading under the stars with both of us, and being a team. That’s what he says.
When Abel requests his one-handed pirate help save him from the crocodile, Emmett and Catharine swap places. We sit on the small bench in silence as we watch them play, and I can hear the gears in her head turning as much as mine are as we each search for the right thing to say.
“How are things—”
“It seems like—”
“Oh, sorry.” I wave her on. “Go ahead.”
“No, I was just gonna say, um…” She pulls her sleeves over her hands, looking at her knees. “Abel seems like he’s doing really well.”
“You think so?”
“Yeah, I mean, his stutter has improved so much.”
“Yeah? I thought so as well, but it’s hard for me to gauge in such a short time without knowing what his speech was like before.”
Catharine looks up at Abel, swallowing hard.
“It started about a year ago, out of the blue. His speech has always been really good, maybe because he’s always been around adults or older kids.
But Peter and Elizabeth—uh, my parents,” she clarifies, “they just started getting really irritated with him for everything. Stupid crap, like spilling milk at the dinner table. One time, he colored off the paper with a marker, and they threw all his markers and crayons out. I got him more from the dollar store and hid them in my bedroom, and when they found one of his drawings, they ripped it up and made me throw out the markers in front of him. ‘He needs to learn,’ they said,” she mutters.
“The only thing he learned was how to stutter, because he was so damn anxious every time they looked in his direction.”
Clenching my jaw, I look up to the sky, praying for some form of restraint. When I don’t find it, I say, “Your parents sound like fucking donkey dicks. No disrespect.”
Catharine barks out a laugh. “All the disrespect.”
I give her a half smile, nudging her with my elbow. “How are you?”
“I…” She frowns. “Nobody ever asks me that.”
“Nobody? What about your friends?”
She shakes her head. “They don’t understand.
They thought all this meant more time for partying.
I had a breakdown, after the first and only time I visited Abel when he was still in the group home.
I couldn’t… I couldn’t see him like that.
They told me he wasn’t talking, that he was sitting by himself in a chair by the window all day.
But when the visit was over and I had to leave…
” Tears drip down her cheeks, and she swats them away angrily.
“He screamed. He yelled my name, over and over. He begged for me to take him with me. He begged me not to leave him. Again.” She hangs her head, fiddling with the sleeves.
“It took two workers to restrain him. When I got back to my friend’s place, she said, ‘I don’t understand.
You got what you wanted.’ ” A bitter laugh falls from her mouth as she looks to the sky.
“I didn’t want to be a mom in the first place, not ever, and definitely not at sixteen.
But to act like I should be happy my three-year-old’s in the foster system so I can have more freedom to drink and party? Yeah, they just don’t get it.”
Hesitantly, I lay my hand over hers, feeling the way it stills beneath mine. “I’m sorry, Catharine. I’m sure it’s a maturity thing that will come with age, but respectfully, your friends sound like trash.” I bet they’re all named Courtney.
Another snort of laughter. “You can stop saying that. Respectfully, or no disrespect.”
“It makes me feel better when I’m being blunt about how shitty some people are.”
“I like you,” she says with a sad smile.
“I hoped I would and thought I wouldn’t at the same time.
I hoped I’d like you because you were taking care of Abel and he was happy.
And that’s all true. But I thought I wouldn’t because, well, no disrespect”—she pauses to grin when I laugh—“you’re rich.
You’re beautiful. Your husband is hot. You have a perfect life.
I thought I’d see you doing this so easily, so perfectly, and I’d feel like…
shit. I’d be bitter. Jealous. But I just feel grateful, and I can’t tell you how relieving that is. ”
“I think I have a pretty good idea. And for what it’s worth, it’s a beautiful life, filled with beautiful people, but as far as perfection goes? Nothing is ever exactly as it seems.”
“I dreamed of getting out of that house as soon as I could. And when Abel was born, I knew I wouldn’t be leaving for a long time.
They held it over my head, always. Wouldn’t let me be his mom, even though they forced me into going through with the pregnancy and keeping him, and every time I got fed up with them, said I would take him and leave, they’d laugh and ask me where I’d go.
What I’d do with a baby as a teen mom with no high school diploma and no job.
They told me I needed them. Just for them to turn around and kick us both out because I came home drunk on my nineteenth birthday.
And they were right, I had nowhere to go.
My friends were too scared to tell their parents that Abel was actually mine, that they’d been lying to them.
One friend told her mom, and she let us stay that first night, but the second night, when her dad found out…
” She swallows hard, looking away. “She hasn’t been allowed to see me since then.
Her dad said he didn’t want his daughter hanging around with someone who had no morals.
” Her voice drops just as my rage bubbles.
“Gave me fifty dollars before he closed the door in my face.”
A bitter laugh croaks in my throat. I place my hand over hers. “This isn’t the right time, but I’m going to need a list of names. You don’t need to worry about what I’m going to do with the list; you just need to make sure I have first and last names, and it’s written as clearly as possible.”
Catharine barks out a laugh before her shoulders slump. “It’s hard losing all those people, all at once.”
I nod. “Absolutely. It hurts, and it’s allowed to. It might hurt for a while, and maybe forever. But one day you’ll look back and realize those were never your people. Not the right ones. The right ones don’t hurt you in unforgivable ways.”
She grips the edge of the bench, the ghost of a sad smile on her lips as she watches Abel.
“I wonder what it’s like to have parents you can rely on, not just to take care of you and keep you safe, but to love you too, through all your stages.
I wonder how my life would’ve been different if I’d had that.
Instead, mine called my social worker and told them I was no longer living with them, that I was couch surfing, and without permanent housing… ”
“They took your son,” I finish for her quietly, following her gaze to the innocent boy whose bright smile rivals the sun as he soars through the air on the swings.
“Maybe it was a blessing in disguise for Abel. I might not be his mom the way I’m supposed to be, but I would never want to raise him the way they raised me.
I don’t think I ever even realized how damaging it was, all the yelling, the slamming doors, the shame…
I knew I hated it, but when it started happening to him, when I saw how it was affecting him, how anxious he was becoming…
” She shakes her head, sniffling. “That’s not the childhood I want for him.
And today, with you guys… he’s not looking over his shoulder, anticipating the worst. He’s just…
he’s just a kid. And that’s enough. Finally. ”
My heart aches as I watch Abel and Emmett, two boys with more in common than I’d realized.
Two boys that needed to cross paths at one point in time.
Because as I watch Emmett, I see him being the parent he didn’t get.
And Abel… I see a boy who’s not as scared as he was just weeks ago to be exactly who he is. Maybe… maybe they needed each other.
“I love him, you know,” Catharine says, drawing my attention back to her as she sniffles, wiping her nose on her sleeve at the same time I realize quiet tears are sliding down my cheeks.
“That’s never been a question, and maybe it’s the only thing I’ve ever been sure of in this life.
Maybe I never wanted to be a mom, but he’s a part of me, and when I look at him…
all I see is innocence. His heart is so pure, so kind, and he… he deserves a better shot at life.”
“What about you? What about your better shot at life?”