Daughter's Keeper (28 page)

“Sure,” Elaine said. “I'd be happy to.”

“Are you serious?” Olivia asked.

Elaine didn't answer for a minute; then she said, almost as if surprising herself, “I…I think so.”

She looked anxious and faintly nauseated, and something about her expression made Olivia laugh. Elaine looked up, startled, and then Olivia waved the little clay sculpture at her and said, “Ooga booga, push push push.” That started Elaine, and they stood there, in the cool air of the Berkeley night, laughing until the tears streamed down their cheeks.

***

That night Elaine lay in bed, trying to imagine the scene of her daughter giving birth. For some reason, Olivia at ten or eleven years old was the image stuck in her mind. The idea of that knobby-kneed, awkward young body birthing something not much smaller than itself was so wrong, so horrifying, that it was almost funny. Her giggles started again, and she hushed herself. She looked over at Arthur, but he hadn't stirred. He lay next to her, his head back and his mouth gaping open, snoring softly. Not for the first time, Elaine imagined dropping something into that gaping maw, an olive, maybe, or a nickel.

Elaine had worried from the beginning that Olivia would ask her to be there at the baby's birth. It was just like Olivia to request something from her mother that they both knew would make Elaine terribly uncomfortable—this type of intimacy was, of course, exactly what Elaine loathed most. She had not seen her daughter's naked body since she was ten years old, had avoided even discussions of puberty and sex, dropping pamphlets on Olivia's desk instead of making speeches and answering questions. What Elaine had not expected—and even now still could not quite believe—was how much she would
want
to be present at Olivia's labor. She would never have imagined herself not only willing, but eager to help her daughter do this overwhelmingly difficult and absolutely commonplace thing—give birth to a baby. Elaine lay in bed next to Arthur's slumbering, snoring form, running the movie of her grandchild's birth in her mind. Olivia sweating and straining. Elaine calmly suggesting new positions, gently mopping her brow. Or perhaps, more likely, Elaine vomiting quietly in a corner of the room. And the baby. The tiny yet impossibly huge creature with its soft damp skin and slippery warmth. Elaine had dozed through Olivia's birth in a drug-induced fog. She remembered nothing—not what the contractions felt like, not even how long they had lasted. She didn't recall pushing her baby out into the world, or even whether they'd let her hold Olivia before they took her off to be weighed and measured. She was sure they must have; they did that, didn't they? But she had absolutely no recollection of her daughter's newborn face. The birth of Olivia's baby would allow Elaine the opportunity to experience what she'd forgotten, what she'd never known.

Elaine imagined nothing beyond the birth itself. She closed her eyes and fell asleep with the happy scene playing and replaying in her head, without once asking herself who would care for her grandchild if her daughter was sent away.

***

A week before the trial, Olivia mentioned to Izaya for the first time that she had received a letter from Jorge.

“You got a
letter
from him?” Izaya bellowed.

They were in a conference room at the federal defender's office. Olivia was being cross-examined by a colleague of Izaya's, a short, red-headed woman named Giselle. They had been practicing all morning, and Olivia was exhausted. Giselle, who had been so pleasant and friendly when Olivia had shaken her hand, had, as soon as she'd assumed the role of prosecutor, asked Olivia one witheringly contemptuous question after another, giving her no time to gather her thoughts. Olivia had lost her temper more than once and found herself giving contradictory answers to Giselle's convoluted questions. Izaya had been steadily growing more and more impatient with what Olivia could only assume was her incompetence. Olivia's answer to Giselle's question about her contact with Jorge since her arrest had pushed him over the edge.

“You didn't bother to mention to me that you got a
letter
from him?” Izaya shouted, again.

“Whoa, take it easy, guy,” Giselle said.

He spun around to her. “You know what? We're done. She's as ready as she's ever going to be. Which is not saying much, is it?” He turned back to Olivia. “Are you out of your fucking
mind
, you don't tell me about this until a week before trial?”

“Why? It just never occurred to me. It's not that important.”

“Oh really? So now
you
decide what's important? That's just great.” He slammed down the pad on which he'd been taking notes.

“You know what?” Giselle said. “Let's take a break. We've been at this for four hours. We could all use something to drink.”

Izaya glared at her. “No,
you
know what? Fuck you. I don't need no fucking break.”

“Okay,” Giselle said, drawing out the word and rolling her eyes. She scooped up her papers and tapped them on the desk, evening out the edges. “I'm out of here.” She turned to Olivia. “Don't worry. He's always like this before a trial. I wouldn't take it personally.” She left the room.

“I'm sorry,” Olivia whispered. She wasn't sure what she was apologizing for, her failure to tell him about Jorge's letter, or for her dismal performance in their practice cross-examination. Her eyes burned with embarrassed tears.

“Oh, shit,” Izaya said. He walked around the table to her seat. He pulled a chair up next to her and leaned close, his elbows on his knees. “I'm the one who's sorry. Giselle's right. I'm always a basket case before a trial. I'm sorry I freaked out on you.”

His apology made her tears come even faster. He reached an arm around her, and she leaned against his chest. It felt hard and warm under his crisp, pale-pink shirt. She sighed, hiccuping, and let her weight lean into his. It felt like a long time since she'd been this close to a man. He smelled good, like sawdust, with a thin overlay of some fruity soap. Her tears had made his shirt translucent, and out of the corner of her eye she could see where his brown skin darkened the fabric. Suddenly, she grew conscious that his hand was resting lightly on her hip. They both stiffened at the same time, and she sat up, wiping her nose on the back of her hand.

“Bring me the letter, okay?” Izaya said. “Maybe I can use it.”

***

Inexorably, the days tumbled over themselves until it was the night before the trial. Olivia lay in bed, her eyes open wide, staring at the ceiling. But as always, after a while, lying on her back made her uncomfortable; she couldn't breathe. She flipped over on her side, shoved a pillow under her belly, another between her knees, and willed herself to sleep. Her mind thrummed, as though she had just drunk an entire pot of coffee. She flipped over again, rearranging her pillows afresh. The baby must have sensed her ­agitation, because it too began to toss and turn, rolling in the space that was starting to feel too small for its increasing size. Olivia pressed on the bulge underneath her right rib, trying to force down the sharp elbow or knee that had lodged there.

She closed her eyes and tried to calm herself by imagining not her criminal trial, but the birth of the baby. She saw herself squatting and pushing, heaving out a perfectly round head, then a tiny squirming body. For a moment the image soothed her, but then it took an unpleasant turn. She saw the baby snatched by a grim-faced Nurse Ratched in a prison uniform. Olivia groaned and flipped over again.

Olivia had done a remarkable job, for a while, of not thinking about what it would mean if she were convicted. She could not bear the thought of losing her baby, so she simply refused to consider the possibility. But, as the trial grew nearer, it had become harder to pretend that nothing was wrong, that she was just another young mother about to have her first baby. For the last few days, she had been overwhelmed by the sickening fear of never getting to hold her child, of never changing its diaper, never pushing it on a swing, not taking it to its first day of school.

Olivia began to weep, and almost immediately sat up in bed, angry at herself. She needed to sleep. She needed to look and feel well-rested for tomorrow. If the jury saw her looking haggard and wan, with black smudges under her eyes, they might feel sorry for her, but they wouldn't
like
her. And Izaya said it was important that they like her. The jury was supposed to feel like she was one of them; that she was their daughter or sister or wife.

She rolled her legs off the bed with a grunt, and heaved herself to her feet. She pulled on the old flannel robe of Arthur's that he'd given her when she'd grown out of her own and headed downstairs to make herself a cup of tea. She found Elaine sitting at the kitchen table, her small square hands wrapped around a steaming mug.

“What's wrong? You can't sleep either?” Olivia asked.

Elaine shook her head. “Tea?”

“Yeah, something that'll help me sleep. Chamomile.” Olivia sat down and propped her feet up on a chair. “God, my ankles. They're totally swollen. Look, I can make a dent.” She pushed her index finger into the swollen flesh. The indentation lingered long after she'd taken her finger away. “At this rate I'm going to have to wear bedroom slippers to the trial. Do you think they'll let me put my feet up in court?”

“Here you go, honey.” Elaine put an oversized yellow mug in front of Olivia. “Some honey for you, honey?” she asked—the same joke she made every time she made Olivia a cup of tea.

Olivia spooned honey into her cup and stirred the water.

“I downloaded some stuff off the FAMM site,” Elaine said.

“Really?” Olivia murmured. Despite Elaine's encouragement, Olivia had not bothered to look through the FAMM materials or explore their website. Reading about the plight of other incarcerated drug offenders provided her with none of the comfort it seemed to give Elaine; on the contrary, it made her even more anxious.

“There's some amazing information here,” Elaine said, pushing a small stack of paper over to Olivia. “Things about national rates of drug use. That kind of thing. It's just been such a colossal failure, this drug war.”

Olivia leafed through the documents without reading them. “Yeah,” she said.

The two sat in silence for a few moments. Then Olivia spoke. “I need to come up with a plan for the baby. Just in case.”

Elaine paused, her cup halfway to her lips. She set it down on the table without drinking. “I suppose that's a good idea,” she said.

“I want the baby. I mean, I know I'm being selfish and ­everything, but even if I go to jail for ten years, I want it to be there waiting for me when I get out.”

Elaine nodded.

“Okay,” she whispered.

“And you can't take it.”

“No.” Elaine voice was almost inaudible. “I wish I could help you, Olivia. I really do. If it were just me that would be one thing. But it's not. Just me, that is.”

Olivia wasn't surprised. She had not expected Elaine to change her mind. No, she wasn't surprised, but she
was
angry. She was furious with her mother for refusing to help her, and, even worse, for pretending an ambivalence and a regret that she didn't truly feel.

Elaine sipped her tea. “Do you need more tea?” she asked.

“I still have a full cup.”

“Okay.”

“I thought about maybe trying to find some kind of open adoption where the adoptive parents would agree to let me have visitation or even partial custody when I got out of jail.”

Elaine looked up, a glint of hope in her eye. “That sounds promising. Do you think you'll be a able to find a couple who would agree to that?”

“I don't know. Maybe. But it doesn't matter. I decided that's not what I want. I don't want to be the ‘birth mother' like that girl in group. I want to be my baby's mother. In jail or out of jail, I want to be its mother.”

Olivia glanced at her mother to see how well she stifled her disappointment. Elaine held her cup to her face, blowing on the already cool tea.

It was time to tell her mother what she had decided.

“I'm going to ask Jorge's family to keep the baby for me,” she said.

“What?” Elaine's voice was suddenly loud in the night's quiet. “Are you
kidding
, Olivia? You're going to give the baby to the man who
betrayed
you?”

Olivia knew it wasn't really a good solution. Unfortunately, however, it was the only one. A few days before, she'd gone online, searching for some organization that could help her. She found Legal Services for Prisoners with Children and had felt an intense jolt of hope that was quickly dashed by the kind woman who had answered her phone call. Olivia had explained her situation and asked the woman what normally happened in cases like hers.

“Well,” the woman had said, “generally a member of the family takes the child.”

“And if there's no one who can do that?”

The woman paused. “Do you have a friend who can take it?” she asked gently.

“No.”

“Then the outlook is pretty bleak, I'm afraid. If you have the baby while you are incarcerated, Child Protective Services will take custody within seventy-two hours of its birth. That means they'll come pick it up at the hospital. They'll put it into foster care, and then there will be a series of hearings establishing the infant as a dependent of the court. How long of a sentence are you facing?”

“Ten years,” Olivia whispered.

The woman's voice grew even more tender. “I'm sorry. Because it's such a lengthy sentence, there will be no reunification plan. In California, a parent has only six months to reunify with a child who is removed from her physical custody before three years of age. Sometimes that's extended to twelve months, and I've even had a case or two where a mother's been given eighteen months. But not ten years. Not even two or three. I'm afraid the state will move to terminate your parental rights, and the rights of the father, and then place your baby up for adoption.”