Goodbye, Mr. Calloway

The ceiling had forty-one cracks. I counted them twice that morning. Then I counted them again, because counting was better than listening to the quiet. The monitor beeped beside my bed. Beep, beep, beep. My heartbeat, in green lines. The blood pressure cuff squeezed my arm every twenty minutes like a tight hug from someone who didn't mean it. I was twenty-eight years old. I was nine months pregnant. And I was in room 412 at St. Anne's Medical Center, on bed rest, because my blood pressure would not come down. Outside the window, Tampa looked gray and wet. A tired kind of gray. Rain tapped the glass like someone who wanted to come in but knew better. My phone sat on the blanket next to my hand. One new text. It came at seven that morning. From Jack. "Nanny has Mason. Don't worry." That was all. No question mark. No "How are you?" Not even my name. I had read it maybe thirty times. I kept hoping the words would change, like a magic trick. They never did. A nurse walked in with a cup of ice chips. Her name tag said Kayla. She had a ponytail and kind eyes, and she looked at me the way you look at a stray dog in the rain. "How are we feeling, Mrs. Calloway?" "I'm fine," I said. "Anyone coming to visit today?" I smiled. It felt like lifting a heavy box. "Maybe later. They're busy." Kayla nodded slowly. She didn't believe me. I could tell. She set the cup down and gave my shoulder a tiny pat. "Press the button if you need anything, okay?" "I will." She left. The door clicked shut. I said that word again, out loud, to nobody. "Fine." I had said it so many times in my life that it didn't mean anything anymore. It was just a sound. Like a cough. I looked up at the ceiling. Forty-one cracks. One looked like a river. One looked like a lightning bolt. One looked like a little hook, the kind you hang a coat on. I picked a name for each one. That's what I do when I'm lonely. I make a game out of it. When I was a little girl in Ocala, I named the stains on the wall by my bed. Mr. Brown. Big Lady. The Dog With Three Legs. I was twenty-eight now, naming cracks. Some things never change. Mason was at school. He was nine. He had Jack's gray eyes and my brown hair, and a million questions a day. Last night he had asked me why my face looked "tired in the middle." I told him it was the baby. It wasn't the baby. My mother hadn't called. Not once this week. Not even to ask if the baby had a name yet. My father hadn't called either. They lived twenty minutes away, in a big white house with a big white door and a big white silence. I rubbed my belly. "Hey, you," I whispered. "Don't worry. I'm here." The baby kicked. A strong little thump, right under my hand. I laughed, just a tiny bit. And then my throat got tight, because I wanted somebody to share that with. Somebody to put a hand on my stomach and say, "Wow." Jack never did that. Not with Mason. Not with this one. I closed my eyes. The rain got louder. Noon came and went. A tray arrived with a gray chicken sandwich and a little cup of green Jell-O. I ate half. The nurse took it away. I was just about to count the cracks a third time when my phone buzzed. I jumped. My heart skipped. For one silly second I thought, Jack. It wasn't Jack. It was a number I didn't know. No name. Just a string of digits that started with 727. There was a photo. No words at first. Just the photo. I tapped it, and it grew big on my screen. It was an old newspaper clipping. The paper was yellow and soft, like it had been folded a thousand times. The ink was blurry. At the top, in thick letters, it said: "SEARCH CONTINUES FOR MISSING TAMPA TODDLER" Under that was a picture. A little girl in a yellow sundress. Maybe two years old. She had a round face and big eyes and one white sandal on her foot. The other foot was bare. She was standing on a wooden dock. Behind her, boats floated on blue water. My mouth went dry. I knew that dock. I didn't know how. I'd never been there. But something in my chest knew it, like a song I'd forgotten the words to. Below the photo, in small black text, someone had typed a message on top of the picture. "Ask Richard what he really saw." Six words. I read them. Then I read them again. Richard. My father's name was Richard. "No," I said out loud. My voice sounded thin. "No, no, no." My fingers shook. I stared at the little girl in the yellow dress. She looked like Mason. She looked like me. I held my breath. I pulled the picture closer with two fingers, the way I do when I zoom in on a drawing. I looked at her eyes. Her chin. The tiny dent in her cheek when she almost smiled. That was my dent. That was my face. I felt like someone had pulled the floor out from under the bed. I have been the girl nobody picks since I was two years old. That's what I always told myself. Nobody picked me at school. Nobody picked me at home. Nobody picked me at the Whitfield house, where I was always the extra chair at the table. I thought I was done feeling that. But here was a stranger, sending me my own baby face from a newspaper, and my chest cracked open like a door I forgot was there. "Who are you?" I whispered to the phone. "Why are you doing this to me?" The phone didn't answer. I zoomed in more. That's when I saw her. In the far corner of the photo, half cut off by the edge of the paper, there was a woman. She wore a white blouse. Her hair was blonde and messy. She had both hands pressed over her mouth. Her eyes were wide and wet and wild. She was screaming. You couldn't hear it, but I could feel it. That kind of scream goes straight through paper. I leaned closer. I knew that jaw. I knew that tiny mole near her left ear. It was my mother. Linda Whitfield. Thirty years younger. Her face was all broken open, like glass that had been dropped. I had never seen her look like that. Not once. Not when I fell off my bike. Not when I donated my bone marrow. Not when I told her I was getting married. Not for me. She had never screamed for me. Except, maybe, once. A long time ago. On a dock I couldn't remember. My stomach turned over. The baby kicked again, hard, like she was saying, "Pay attention." I pressed my hand to my belly. "I'm okay," I told her. "I'm okay. Just breathe." But I wasn't okay. My hands were cold. My chest hurt. The monitor started beeping faster, and a red number on the screen blinked at me. I breathed in through my nose. Out through my mouth. Like the nurse taught me. In. Out. I looked at the message again. "Ask Richard what he really saw." What did my father see? He was the quiet one. The man who stood at the back of every room. The man who never looked me in the eye for more than two seconds. When I first moved into the Whitfield house, he used to stare at me from the end of the hallway, like I was a ghost. I had always thought he just didn't like me. But what if it wasn't that? What if it was something worse? My mind went spinning. Twenty-six years of little things came back to me all at once. The way Mom flinched when I said my old name. The way Dad never talked about the day I came home. The way they never showed me a single baby picture. Not one. I had asked once. Mom said the albums got lost in a flood. I had believed her. Because when you want to be loved, you believe a lot of things. The door opened. I jumped so hard the phone slid out of my hand. It was only the nurse again, with a new blood pressure cuff. "Sorry, hon. Didn't mean to scare you." "It's okay," I said. My voice cracked. She frowned. "You look pale. Are you sure you're all right?" I looked at her. I wanted to say everything. I wanted to say, Somebody sent me a picture of a missing little girl, and I think it's me, and I think my parents lied to me my whole life. But I just picked up my phone and flipped it face down. "I'm fine," I said. There it was again. That word. Kayla checked my arm and wrote something on her chart. Then she left, and the room went quiet. Rain. Beeping. My own heartbeat in my ears. I flipped the phone back over. The picture was still there. The little girl. The dock. The white sandal. My mother's mouth, open wide in a scream. Somebody out there knew the truth about me. Somebody had waited twenty-six years to tell me. And they chose today. The day I was alone, with no one to hold my hand. I stared at the number. I typed three words with my thumb. "Who are you?" My finger hovered over the send button. Then three little dots appeared on the screen. Someone was typing back!