They Call Me Patrice

The train ground to a stop.

A knock sounded right behind her back.

“Caulfield.”

Then someone tried the knob.

“Help you with yo’ things?”

She ran to the seat and picked up her baby boy.

People were standing just on the other side of the window. Their heads were low, but she could see them, and they could see her. There was a woman looking right at her.

Their eyes met, locked, held fast. She couldn’t turn away her head. It was as though those eyes riveted her where she stood.

The woman pointed to her. She called out in jubilation, for the benefit of someone else, unseen. “There she is! I’ve found her! Here, this car up here!”

The girl held the baby near the window and the woman outside raised her hand and waved. She waved to the little sleepy head in the blue blanket, looking solemnly out the window. Made her fingers flutter in that special wave you give to very small babies.

The look on her face was as when hope revives again, after hopelessness. It was as when the sun strikes through at the end of a bleak wintry day.

The girl holding the baby put her head down close to his, almost as if averting it from the window. Or as if they were communing together, exchanging some confidence in secret, to the exclusion of everyone else.

“For you,” she breathed. “For you. And God forgive me.”

Then she carried him over to the door with her, and turned the latch.

Sometimes, a dividing-line runs across life. Sharp, almost actual, like the black stroke of a paint brush. Sometimes, but not often.

One girl left the train window. Another girl came down the steps. A world ended, and another world began.

Patrice Hazzard came down those car-steps with her baby. Frightened, tremulous, very white in the face, but Patrice Hazzard.

She was aware of things, but only indirectly; she only had eyes for those other eyes looking into hers from a distance of a few inches away, All else was background. Behind her back the train glided on. Gone forever now, never to be retrieved.

The hazel eyes came in even closer to hers. They were kind and gentle, tender. It hurt a little to see how trustful they were.

She was in her fifties, their owner. Her hair was softly graying. She was as tall as Patrice, and as slim. Something about her clothes revealed that thinness to be recent, the result of the past few months of strain of heartbreak.

But even these details about her were incidental, and the man of her own age standing behind her was only a background too. It was the woman’s face that was immediate, saying so much without a sound.

She placed her hands lightly upon Patrice’s cheeks and kissed her on the lips. There was a lifetime in the kiss, the girl could sense it. The lifetime of a man. The many years it takes to raise a man, from childhood, through boyhood. There was bitter loss in the kiss, the loss of all that at a single blow. The end for a time of all hope, and weeks of cruel grief. But then too there was the reparation of loss, the finding of a daughter, the starting over with another, a smaller son. Going back and starting again from the beginning, in sweeter sadder sponsorship this time, forewarned by loss. And there was the rising of hope anew. This was not an ordinary kiss; it was a sacrament of adoption.

Then she kissed the child. And smiled as you do at your own. And a little crystal drop that hadn’t been there before was resting on the baby’s small pink cheek.

The man came forward and kissed her on the forehead.

“I’m Father, Patrice.”

He stooped and straightened, and said, “I’ll take your things over to the car.” A little glad to escape from an emotional moment, as men are likely to be.

The woman hadn’t said a word in all the moments the girl had been standing before her. She saw, perhaps, the pallor in the girl’s face — could read the shrinking, the uncertainty, in her eyes.

She put her arms about her in a warm embrace. Drew the girl’s head to her shoulder for a moment. And as she did so, she spoke for the first time to give courage, to give peace.

“You’re home, Patrice. Welcome home, dear.”

And in those few words, so simply and sincerely said, Patrice Hazzard knew she had found at last all the goodness there is or ever can be in this world.

Chapter Four

This was what it was like to be home; to be in a home of your own, in a room of your own.

She sat there waiting, her hand resting on the crib, the crib they had bought for him. The baby lay safe in it now. They’d thought of everything.

They had left her alone; she had to be alone to savor the feeling of home as fully as she was doing. A roof over your head. A roof to keep out rain and cold and loneliness. Not just the anonymous roof of a rented building, the roof of home. Guarding you, sheltering you, keeping you, watching over you.

Downstairs somewhere dimly perceptible was the soothing bustle of an evening meal in preparation. Carried to her in faint snatches now and then at the opening of a door, stilled again at its closing.