The Reaching by Jude Anderson

The Reaching

fiction by Jude Anderson

Estrella asks if she can stay with me if Matéo doesn’t manage to find his way back to El Valle for their baby. She tells me she’s sure he wants to be a father but she’s not sure that he can move things around enough to be here. And this is where she wants to have this baby. She’s sure of him, always, and it makes me think he’ll find a way to be there. She’s asking just in case. I am a contingency plan. We’re still standing in the airport terminal. Matéo isn’t joining her here—I already knew this—but she has a letter in her hand that ensures his presence eventually. Her eyes still don’t meet mine, and I wonder what I ever did that makes her believe I will not say yes to anything she asks. I study her shaking hands, even though she isn’t afraid of flying. I watch her watch planes land and take off, and then she turns to look at me for the first time since she landed in el Valle. She tells me she doesn’t know how I did it, how I held a life inside of me and did not ask for help. I do not tell her that I didn’t know how, that I would have asked if I believed it would have changed anything. But here she is. Asking. So I say yes because I think it might change things here. She sends the letter on the way home and four days later Matéo is on my doorstep. (This is how I imagined Cosme coming home to me and our son. His uniform and rifle in hand but with a smile that was gentle and just for me and the baby in my arms. The way the baby would reach out for Cosme—even then, even before meeting his father, he’d know. He would know Cosme could keep him safe, and he would reach.) Matéo can’t look away from her belly, and he has a smile that’s going to break through his face. She can’t look away from him either, even after all these years and distance. A week after that, he has bought a house in el Valle for the three of us and the baby. His face still has a similar smile, although it's softer, more settled. It won't break but only because he is sure—of Estrella, of me.

I move in and can barely see her stomach growing. She’s tiny, so I figured I’d be able to tell earlier, but she stays small for so long that I forget she’s growing a life. Her clothes still fit her the way they’re supposed to. I force myself to remember she’s pregnant on days where I am questioning why Matéo lets me live inside of their home. I give her clothes that used to fit my son when her son is still inside of her. She’s sure it’s a boy; I’m not sure how or why. She knows I kept the clothes, but when I hand them to her like something precious, she looks surprised. I think she expected me to have given these away the way I gave away Cosme’s clothes to Matéo. I do not tell her I will only give their things to people who matter to me. To people I love and trust. To people who have earned them—and she has done more than enough to earn them. “Aitana, this is—” “They’ll serve a purpose again,” I say. I don’t let her refuse the clothes even though she wants to, because having clothes for the next year of her baby’s life is a noble purpose, and I am tired of opening the drawer and seeing them when I reach for something that isn’t there anymore. We don't talk about being a widow or a mother. She doesn’t mention Agosto or her other children. I don’t mention my son or Cosme even though we are all apart for different reasons. I almost ask about Silver and Violeta once, when her stomach is big enough that she stays inside most of the time. I know they are being taken care of by her parents, the only people she has in the states who know why she is here. I know Agosto is somewhere else, with someone else, and he doesn’t know about Silver’s existence, only Violeta’s. I want to ask if she ever plans on telling him about Silver. I want to ask if this is the best choice, especially with her in el Valle for this long. I almost ask if she has ever given Agosto the opportunity to be a father the way she is bending over backwards to give one to Matéo. I don’t. I don’t know how or why they ended, and so I hold my tongue. I tell myself I don’t need to know about the past to be there for this child the way I can’t be for Violeta and Silver. Agosto’s sister knows, though, about Matéo and this baby, so she comes by on Tuesdays with a small quesadilla Salvadoreña for us to share. I make the coffee and we sit and make plans for what will happen when the baby is born. She has questions

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about Silver and Violeta like I do, though she never asks them. Consuela spent the first handful of years with them in her restaurant, feeding them the way she feeds Estrella now. A person cannot nurture children like that and not have questions for their mother when she is eight months pregnant in another country without those children. I remember taking them to the river. I took Violeta only once, when she had just turned one and Agosto had just left them. I wanted it to bless her with the type of love she deserved. I wanted to show her that although the river is empty for most of the year, it means we can still love something even when it gives us nothing. Even with the shallow waters and dry trees we could still point to it and say we loved it and it loved us back.

I took Silver more often. His face would light up at the mango trees, small hands grabbing for the fruit. A mango was his first solid food. Lichas were his second, and I cut them in the palm of his hand so he felt like he was contributing. I know he was able to point to the water, to the leaves and fruit, and call it love.

Estrella begins to give birth on a Tuesday when Consuela is getting ready to leave. Bebe Matéo Espinoza Paredes del Valle—we all call him Bebe, or Teo—does not enter the world until early Wednesday morning with the rising sun and a battle cry no one had to hit him upside down for. Estrella looks the most beautiful like this: as a mom. She finally has a place to put all of her love and it shows when she holds Teo close and lets herself close her eyes. Estrella looked like this after Violeta, after Silver, too. When she held their tiny bodies and filled them with love, I knew that this was what she was meant to do. I take Teo with me everywhere, especially when Estrella is in one of her moods— when she locks herself in her room and believes herself to be a danger to Teo. I take him with me everywhere when Estrella believes it to be what is best for him. I know she is what’s best for him just like I know she will remember this soon. Sometimes I think she’s remembering how difficult my pregnancy was. Like she’s making up for it somehow even though it’s no one’s fault. I want to tell her that, but it

won’t help how she feels about her own child, so I hold it inside me. I place it between my second and third rib and leave it there while I run errands with the baby. I repeat Estrella's name in my head. This child needs someone, will still need someone even when Estrella emerges from her room and understands her motherhood the way I do. I create a promise, a secret adjacent thing to hold close: this child will never know what it is to reach out and not find me already reaching back. Three days later, Estrella comes out of her room and sits me down at the kitchen table. I’ve learned by now that kitchen tables are where she prefers to have serious talks. It gives her a sense of stability. Something solid to lean on, to support her when she needs it. I let her make me coffee and she burns it a little bit. I wrap my hands around the mug and watch as she taps her fingers along the edge of the table. She’s working up to something, so I let her take her time. I’m halfway through the cup when she finally speaks. Estrella asks me—begs like I've never seen her do for anything—to take care of Teo when she goes back. She says Matéo is going to go with her for a little bit, just for a week while she gets settled back into life there after so long here. I create this scenario in my mind while Estrella talks: Matéo is at a nearby cafe when Estrella returns home for the first time. Estrella’s parents are yelling at her for leaving her children with them for so long, and they are asking when she will return to take care of her children here for longer than a few months at a time. Silver and Violeta are in the backyard and can hear bits and pieces—not everything. They won’t put together the pieces of the arguing enough to find out about Matéo or Teo. Estrella’s parents are not asking about Teo, and it takes her too long to realize they won’t. They don’t ask about Matéo either, but when he returns, of course he is the one to hold her while she cries about it. His hands, like Cosme’s, are better suited to hold a warm body than a rifle. “How long?” I ask. She looks at me, looks at the baby, and for the first time in maybe our whole lives, I can't read her mind. I can't see the twist of her mouth and the tears in her eyes and know.

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“A year, maybe longer. I’ll try to come back in the summer, but—” “Your parents won’t want you to, will they?” She shakes her head, and I reach for her hands to stop the drumming of her fingers. I remember, all at once, that Violeta and Silver don't have a father there. They don't have me, either. They need to have someone, and so she needs to go. I think we both come to this understanding at the same time. Teo starts trying to crawl out of his highchair, feet kicking, arms swinging wildly. He cries out, so I take him and settle him in my arms. I rock him until he’s no longer crying. Only when he’s content do I look up at Estrella’s face. I don’t know what she’s thinking, again. All I can see is the desperation radiating off her like she doesn’t think I’ll say yes. Just like the airport, I wonder what I could’ve done to make her not believe I’ll say yes. I wonder what I can do now so she knows I’ll always say yes. “Aitana, please.” Teo squirms in my arms. I look down at him; maybe he knows what's about to happen. His hand reaches out, and I let him grab my finger. He settles back down, squeezing it. Teo lets out the world’s tiniest baby sigh, and it cracks open something inside me. “Of course.” The promise I made to this baby is burned into my brain. There is not a world in which I say no, where I make her take Teo to his siblings and a strange country and grow up without me to reach for. “I will come back,” she says, like she's trying to convince herself. “I know.” Because I do. I know she will try and come back when she can. I know that she loves Teo more than she loves herself. I know that she will always be torn between Silver and Violeta and Teo. I know she will always feel guilty for everything, even if she says nothing. She will say nothing, and I know this because when my baby died and I felt guilty, I said nothing. It wasn’t my fault; I am able to tell myself this after years. I am finally able to look at the memory of a baby I held inside of me and say that I did not kill him.

Estrella won’t say anything about the guilt she feels, though she feels it. I could see it during the pregnancy before Teo was even outside of her body. I could see it on her face when Matéo was overly attentive, when he was bringing her everything she needed in bed because the last month was hard the way it was when she was pregnant with Silver. Boys seem to take a toll on her body, and I try not to think about the easy way Violeta came into the world or the nearly impossible way my son was born. Matéo is there for all of it this time and anyone can tell he wants to be. Being a father suits him and he knows this. He fills the role confidently, deliberately. He is a caretaker by nature, and that includes unborn babies and Estrella and me. I like to pretend I am a caretaker, also, but it is only because I am trying hard to make it seem like I am. I am trying hard to be there for Teo and Estrella. So I don’t point out her guilt because it won’t help. I tell her I’ll take care of Teo when she leaves, and I mean it.

We fall into a pattern when Matéo comes back without Estrella. We move Teo’s crib into Matéo and Estrella’s room, and I sleep on the side of the bed closest to the baby. Matéo sleeps on the side closest to the door. We do not wake up entangled in each other like I was worried we might. I was worried that with Estrella gone he would want comfort, but he doesn’t seem to need it, yet. He seems satisfied with almost daily phone calls that come right after dinner and bedtime routines that include only me and Teo. Matéo treats me gently, like something that could be blown away if the wind blew too hard or could be spooked if the door slammed too loud. He’s envisioning my son, sometimes, though he never got a chance to meet him. He almost starts to ask about him, but he stops himself. I’m holding Teo the same way I held my son, and Matéo looks like he wants to say he’s sorry, like he wants to ask how it feels to hold a baby that does not belong to me. I don’t know how to tell him that with Estrella gone this baby will belong to us, which means this baby will belong to me. “You can ask,” I say, and he looks now like he’s been caught—eyes wide and guilty, like he was doing something he shouldn't. “If you wanted to ask about my son, you can.”

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I don’t think about the significance of Matéo wearing a shirt I gave him years ago, Cosme’s second favorite. A powder blue button up, one he saved for special occasions. It was for moments he thought were important like our wedding and his father’s funeral. It’s Matéo’s everyday shirt, and I don’t think about that either. He tries to tell me he wasn’t going to ask, but after months of this I know him well enough. It’s in the way his face looks half-sad, half-remembering. “Ask.” “Are you scared?” Yes, the answer is yes. It is always yes. I ask, “Of what?” “Of history repeating itself.” See, the answer is yes. “It won’t.” “Okay.” There’s a small silence where Matéo looks at Bebe, and I know Matéo will always be scared of a history he did not live through. Until this baby is an adult, until he lives a full life, Matéo will be remembering my baby and his death. I do not tell him I am doing the same. “It won’t,” I say. “We don’t know how it happened, but it won’t happen with Teo.” He doesn’t say anything, so I try again. “Cosme never met him. It was me and Estrella, for his whole tiny life. And this baby will have you and Estrella and me.” “Do you think Cosme would’ve been a good father?” What he really means is, “Do you think I can be a good father?” I say yes, to both of his questions.

. . . . . .

We continue our routines, and we parent Teo together, and we fall into something that feels like we could call it family if we had to call it something. He starts waking up closer to me, and I stop trying to sleep on the edge of the bed. We share the blanket instead of bringing out the one from the hall closet and sometimes I feel his breath on my shoulder when I wake up in the morning. I feed Teo when he wakes up in

the middle of the night, and Matéo changes his diaper before he feeds him in the afternoon. There is stability and solidness, even without Estrella here. Matéo blows a raspberry on the baby’s belly and watches the way his face lights up with bright eyes that match his own. Estrella was right, fatherhood suits him, looks better than okay on him. He looks like he was meant to do this. Teo’s first word is “papa,” and I will not tell Estrella this. Teo’s second word is “mama,” and he says it to me at breakfast, and I will not tell Estrella this either. When Matéo has run out of time he can take off from work, I take care of Teo alone. I take him to the river where I’d taken Violeta and Silver and where I would’ve taken my own child had he stayed alive long enough. Teo reaches for the trees like Silver did, and I see so much Estrella in him that I want to cry. All of her children, and her, should be together. Teo should be able to grow up with an older sister who will tease him but teach him everything she knows. He should be able to grow up with Silver who will pour an endless amount of love into him like another parent. He should be able to grow up with more people who love him, but instead he has me. He has me and Matéo and sometimes Estrella. Teo will always have two parents, I think, staring at the shallow water running over the tiny pebbles I can only barely see. When Estrella is gone, he has me and Matéo. When Matéo is gone, Estrella will be back, and so he will have me and her. I don’t think I will ever be gone, but if I am, he will have Matéo and Estrella together. He will be so loved here, with this river and Consuela’s restaurant and Matéo’s house and my arms holding him, but he deserves more. This is another thing I will not tell Estrella. I will not question how she parents because I believe that even if she is making the wrong choices, she is doing them for the right reasons. I believe she has thought about all of the options, and this is what she thinks is going to hurt the least for everyone. I do not know if I believe that, but I believe in her. I always have.

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