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Authors: Debra Gwartney
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Amanda, a tender and sweet girl who wanted to help and who wanted to please.
Once a week or so Mary and Mollie and I dragged in tired after work and daycare and found the two older girls, who'd walked home from school, all decked out in the old thrift-store prom dresses I'd bought them for Halloween, one mint green, one sea blue. Stephanie, who had a gift for coming up with colorful adjectives and for drawing fleur-de-lis, had written and decorated menus, which she handed to me, and the delighted little girls as soon as we got our coats off and seated ourselves at the din
ing room table.
Creamed peanuts on crispy toast wedges,
$1;
Melted cheese on crackers,
$1
.
50;
Tea with cream and sugar, free with any purchase.
The ink bled down the edges of the paper in long strands of yellow, blue, orange.
Amanda held a tray spread with tiny sandwiches and barely brewed tea. The ripped seam of her dress's waistline tore open another few inches as she walked toward us, her milk-white belly skin peeking through the separated fabric as she balanced the rose-covered china cups I'd inherited from a great-great-aunt. Amanda hurried back into the kitchen for plates and napkins and silverware, which were supposed to have come out first, while Stephanie turned on the Bach Concertos. I smiled at my oldest daughters, tamping down the impatience I tried desperately not to showâI had laundry to do, bills to pay, I smelled cat pee somewhere in the living room, and now there was fine if chipped china to wash by hand. I had no idea what to cook for dinner or how much homework stretched out in front of us before I could finally collapse on the couch and prepare myself for the next day's early rise. I didn't have time to stop everything to sip Earl Grey laden with sweet milk and chew on half a peanut butter sandwich, and yet it was ridiculous to be anything but thrilled, silly to be anything but relaxedâAmanda did this and Stephanie did this because they wanted our everyday life to include some possibility of elegance, or at least to offer a good dose of ease among us.
Now here I was, a few months after the last tea party, surrounded by three men who wanted me to believe that my oldest daughter was a criminal. That she deserved to be punished by the state. That she had to be slapped with a sentence. "I'm sure she wasn't trying to burn the school down," I said, finally finding a few wits with which to defend her, mild as that defense was. I couldn't tell if Amanda had heard what I'd said. She'd sat up again, her face blank.
The cops stared at me. The vice principal cleared his throat. "Give me a call in a few days and let me know what's happened," he said, nodding to us, releasing us from his office, leaving us to sort out our own disaster.
***
In late August, five months after Amanda's arson arrest, I waited again at the end of a passenger tunnel that led from plane to terminal. Post-divorce, I realized how often I'd find myself in this very spot, ready to catch my daughters as they swung from one life to the other and not knowing what to expect. This time I was even more nervous than the others. This time Amanda had threatened not to come back from her father's house.
"You can't just decide to ignore the custody agreement," I'd told Tom the night before, our last talk before the girls left Tucson. I still believed, despite his often-expressed opinion that all rules were made to be broken and that he was the right guy to do the breaking, that the expensive divorce documents bore some weight.
"It's ignored," he said. "She wants to stay with me and she's going to."
Still, standing there at the airport, I had to think he wouldn't go through with it. I couldn't believe he'd actually keep her from me. How would he wedge Amanda into his new family? Besides, she'd done her community-service hours, paid the fine, attended droning fire-prevention and anger-management classes, caught up on her schoolwork, and, worst of all, sat in a cold empty
Once a week or so Mary and Mollie and I dragged in tired after work and daycare and found the two older girls, who'd walked home from school, all decked out in the old thrift-store prom dresses I'd bought them for Halloween, one mint green, one sea blue. Stephanie, who had a gift for coming up with colorful adjectives and for drawing fleur-de-lis, had written and decorated menus, which she handed to me, and the delighted little girls as soon as we got our coats off and seated ourselves at the din
ing room table.
Creamed peanuts on crispy toast wedges,
$1;
Melted cheese on crackers,
$1
.
50;
Tea with cream and sugar, free with any purchase.
The ink bled down the edges of the paper in long strands of yellow, blue, orange.
Amanda held a tray spread with tiny sandwiches and barely brewed tea. The ripped seam of her dress's waistline tore open another few inches as she walked toward us, her milk-white belly skin peeking through the separated fabric as she balanced the rose-covered china cups I'd inherited from a great-great-aunt. Amanda hurried back into the kitchen for plates and napkins and silverware, which were supposed to have come out first, while Stephanie turned on the Bach Concertos. I smiled at my oldest daughters, tamping down the impatience I tried desperately not to showâI had laundry to do, bills to pay, I smelled cat pee somewhere in the living room, and now there was fine if chipped china to wash by hand. I had no idea what to cook for dinner or how much homework stretched out in front of us before I could finally collapse on the couch and prepare myself for the next day's early rise. I didn't have time to stop everything to sip Earl Grey laden with sweet milk and chew on half a peanut butter sandwich, and yet it was ridiculous to be anything but thrilled, silly to be anything but relaxedâAmanda did this and Stephanie did this because they wanted our everyday life to include some possibility of elegance, or at least to offer a good dose of ease among us.
Now here I was, a few months after the last tea party, surrounded by three men who wanted me to believe that my oldest daughter was a criminal. That she deserved to be punished by the state. That she had to be slapped with a sentence. "I'm sure she wasn't trying to burn the school down," I said, finally finding a few wits with which to defend her, mild as that defense was. I couldn't tell if Amanda had heard what I'd said. She'd sat up again, her face blank.
The cops stared at me. The vice principal cleared his throat. "Give me a call in a few days and let me know what's happened," he said, nodding to us, releasing us from his office, leaving us to sort out our own disaster.
***
In late August, five months after Amanda's arson arrest, I waited again at the end of a passenger tunnel that led from plane to terminal. Post-divorce, I realized how often I'd find myself in this very spot, ready to catch my daughters as they swung from one life to the other and not knowing what to expect. This time I was even more nervous than the others. This time Amanda had threatened not to come back from her father's house.
"You can't just decide to ignore the custody agreement," I'd told Tom the night before, our last talk before the girls left Tucson. I still believed, despite his often-expressed opinion that all rules were made to be broken and that he was the right guy to do the breaking, that the expensive divorce documents bore some weight.
"It's ignored," he said. "She wants to stay with me and she's going to."
Still, standing there at the airport, I had to think he wouldn't go through with it. I couldn't believe he'd actually keep her from me. How would he wedge Amanda into his new family? Besides, she'd done her community-service hours, paid the fine, attended droning fire-prevention and anger-management classes, caught up on her schoolwork, and, worst of all, sat in a cold empty
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