11.
“You’re pregnant.”
The matron was disappointed but not shocked. These poor bred like river rats, like dogs in the field. They were lucky their
puppies were not put into burlap bags and drowned.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, who is he? Or should I bother asking?”
Desirée thought about it. She could say the caretaker, and she knew the look she would get then. As if scorn were something
the matron could spit on her cheek. Or she could say nothing, and maybe that was wiser.
The truth was, she really didn’t want to be with the caretaker. When she had told him, he had looked at her like she was nothing,
and had said, You liar. She sensed there was a greater world out there, and she wanted to find it. Eventually.
“Well, I guess it don’t matter. I won’t have room for the brat. And you’ve already been here too long.”
Cold shock filled Desirée. “You mean you’re kicking me out?”
“This isn’t a home for unwed mothers. It’s a place to learn how to work, and sister, you’re doing the wrong kind of work.”
A mean smile crossed the woman’s lips. “You might consider going to the Catholic home in Portland. They take your type there.
They might even find a home for the bastard.”
It was more than the matron had ever spoken to her at one time. Standing there, Desirée felt the hair on the top of her head rise: God was lifting her up, or some spirit was.
“Okay,” she said, and left to pack her things.
She took a little blue bottle she had found buried in the backyard compost, extra clothing from the dresser, and she taped
the bottom of her shoes for extra protection against the road. She had an old toothbrush and a simple black comb.
She wrapped it all into an old sheet for a satchel and started walking down the dirt road. She knew there was a shortcut to
town through the woods, but she didn’t want to take that.
No one came to say goodbye. There were already lines around her mouth from the sun and lack of love.
It was a very long walk into Chinook, where a mare-faced woman ran the corner market. There was a post office and a set of
brick buildings. The new sheriff came out of his station to stare at Desirée as she passed. She had learned enough of life
to know that men like him were not in her corner.
She walked down to where the main road crossed the highway, and stuck out her thumb. Brakes squealed, and a fat-faced truck
driver looked down at her like he had struck pay dirt.
“Need a ride, honey?” he asked.
Desirée was standing at a window of her single-room occupancy in Old Town, Portland. Outside, the street was wet from rain,
and a singular smell rose from the cement: hops and despair and stale beer.
Her trip to Portland had been uneventful and yet exciting.
The doughy-faced truck driver had turned paternal the moment he’d learned of her age and condition, and he had dropped her, solicitously, outside the home for unwed mothers.
Desirée knew at a glance—it had bars on the windows—that it was not the place for her.
So she begged a few quarters from a passerby and rode a creaking orange bus to Old Town, where she found groups of winos on the corners, and people just like her lining up for soup.
Walking into the first hotel she saw, she had asked for work, lying about her age and pretending to be eighteen. She had gotten
a job cleaning, and now she was here.
She turned to look at her daughter in the corner.
Ruby was not yet one, and had just pulled herself up to stand. The room had a bare metal cot with a mattress, and Ruby wore
stained, saggy training pants. Those were the days when babies still had schedules, and Desirée put her on the ceramic pot
every hour, whether she liked it or not. But it was the cold, wet cotton pants that trained babies. They were like wearing
wet flesh.
“My baby girl.”
She had named her Ruby, after the most beautiful gem she could imagine, but to a loving mother, one name is never enough.
Not even the air can contain a love that explodes from seed into life: a vast puff of love.
Her daughter grinned at her, toothless, and in a way she was grinning at her even now, this miraculous, unending love undiluted
in the years since.
Which makes this story so hard to bear.