Far from the Tree: List 1: Grace (1) – Grace (2)

The thing was that she didn’t make any assumptions.

But her period had always been erratic, so that was no help.

By the time Grace realized what had happened, she was in the fifth day of her second trimester.

Peach would need Grace in ways that she couldn’t give to her, and at night, she would sit in her room, holding her now-rounded stomach, and say, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” a prayer and a penance, because Grace was the first person who Peach would ever need and Grace felt like she was already letting Peach down.

The adoption lawyer sent over a huge folder of prospective families, each of them more eager looking than the next.

Grace nixed one family because their toddler looked like a biter, and another because they hadn’t ever traveled east of Colorado.

Grace wanted intrepid explorers who mined for gold—because they were about to strike it rich.

Also, there was the risk of her going into labor one day during AP Chem and traumatizing everyone in the junior class.

There was Pitocin and white-hot pain that seared Grace’s spine and ribs and hips into rubble.

She reached out and took Peach from the nurse, and she didn’t know how else to explain except to say that Peach fit, she fit into Grace’s arms like she had fit beneath her rib cage, nestled there soft and safe, and even though Grace’s body felt like soot and ashes, her head felt as if it had been washed clean for the first time in ten months.

Right after she was born, Grace was flying on the sort of adrenaline that she imagined only Olympic athletes could experience, and she was half ready to jump up, tuck Peach under her arm, and run like a linebacker toward the end zone.

She locked her bedroom door and writhed in agony, one of Peach’s receiving blankets clutched in her fist as she choked into it, sobs pressing down on her chest, her heart, crushing her from the inside.

She was untethered, floating away.

At the breakfast table, Grace now watched her mom reflexively screwing and unscrewing the lid on the peanut butter jar.

There was no picture of Melissa, or fingerprints, or note or memento, just a signed court document.

He had been one year old when Grace was born, and had gone into foster care a few days after her parents brought her home.

If her life had been a movie, this was where the reflective, orchestral music would swell.

“We couldn’t, Grace,” her mother said, her voice wavering before she cleared her throat.

Then again, she would have let her mother drink three bottles a night if it kept her calm, complacent.

At some point, and Maya wasn’t sure when, their conversations had gone from riotous giggles to whispered secrets to short sentences, and then just one- or two-word responses.

Maya could still remember Emily’s face as she explained the “facts” to her, could still remember the sharp, cutting way she’d wanted to put her eight-year-old fist right through Emily’s smug little mug.

She loved her parents, though, with a desperation that sometimes scared her.

(Maya coveted her Doc Martens and cursed the fact that her feet were two sizes bigger than Claire’s.)

Maya’s parents, because they weren’t antiquated dinosaurs, didn’t care that she was gay.

He knew from seeing his birth certificate once that her name was Melissa Taylor, and that his father’s last name was Gutierrez, but that had been about ten social workers ago, and Melissa’s parental rights had long been severed.

There had been the foster mom who once lost her temper and whacked Joaquin in the back of the head with a wooden hairbrush, making him feel like one of those cartoon characters who literally saw stars...the parents who kept the fosters’ food on a separate pantry shelf, the generic store brands lined up right below the brand-name cereals for the biological kids.

He would writhe and scream and howl until the monster retreated, satiated for the time being, leaving Joaquin wrung out and exhausted, beyond comfort, beyond punishment.

He would writhe and scream and howl until the monster retreated, satiated for the time being, leaving Joaquin wrung out and exhausted, beyond comfort, beyond punishment.

He still had that blue ribbon, though. He kept it buried at the back of his sock drawer, its edges frayed from the eighteen months that Joaquin had slept with it under his pillow.

He hadn’t had that many strokes of good luck in his life, but Joaquin knew he had gotten lucky by not having any siblings. He had seen what that had done to other kids, how hard they fought to stay together and how destroyed they were when they were inevitably pulled apart.

Grace had no idea if she was a good person or not, but Max’s dad obviously equated “good girl” with “person whose womb is currently unoccupied.”

It was a sort of stone mansion—only one turret short of being something out of a Disney movie.

She followed her parents into the house, which shone and gleamed and had the vague air of a mausoleum, thanks to all the marble.

“She looks just like her,” Bob said. “Isn’t it uncanny, Di?”

Diane was either delusional or, more likely, trying to keep her children from ruining dinner.

“It’s fine, go ahead,” her mom said, and she left her plate and scampered up the stairs behind Maya, slipping a little on the marble.

Maya’s duvet was soft against her leg, the worn material reminding Grace of all the days and nights she had spent in her own bed after Peach, huddled up in her own sheets and blankets like they could protect her.

“You seem nice, your parents seem fine, and you know, if I ever need a kidney or a blood transfusion, it wouldn’t hurt to have you in my contacts.”

She hadn’t told anyone—and she had no plans to, either—but she kept having nightmares that Peach’s new parents gave her away, that she was suddenly gone all over again, lost in the system that had ensnared Joaquin.

Grace couldn’t help but giggle, oddly relieved that Maya wasn’t in some awful, oppressive home.