How to Bake a Perfect Life - Barbara O'Neal [52]
“Hi, Poppy,” he said. “Ramona.”
“Hey,” I said, and stood up to pull the sweater over my head.
“No, no. Don’t worry.” He smiled. “You can wear it awhile longer. Looks better on you than on me, anyway.”
I hugged my arms around my body. “I like it. It’s warm.”
He held out a cassette tape. “I made you a tape of the classical guitarist you were listening to this afternoon.”
“Oh!” I felt dizzy, taking it. Like maybe he really did like me or something. “Thank you.”
He glanced at Poppy, gave her a wink. “Rare that a teenager likes classical music, right?”
She nodded. “Thanks, Jonah. That was thoughtful. Give your mother my regards.”
“Will do.” He saluted us both and sauntered off.
Poppy put her hand on my upper back and rubbed a warm little circle. “Too bad he’s way too old for you. He’s a good man, I think.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Too bad.”
One afternoon at the end of July, I walked down the road in Sedalia with a pink umbrella over my head in case it rained. Which it seemed like it would, any second. Dark purple clouds covered the sky about twelve feet over my head.
Back in Poppy’s kitchen was a war party made up of my mother, my grandmother, Poppy, and Nancy. A war party determined to convince me how stupid I was for wanting to keep my baby. I’d asked them to come so we could talk about the whole thing, hoping they would listen to me, but all they had done was bring lists of all the reasons I should give the baby up.
As if I didn’t know all those reasons. As if I didn’t get it.
From the day in the record store when the baby started dancing to classical guitar, I knew I didn’t want to give her up. We went to Denver that week to meet with the adoption people, and on the way there I told Poppy and Nancy the truth about the baby’s heritage. They said they didn’t think it would matter, that I should keep the information to myself.
So I did, but it made me feel icky.
Then I had a nightmare that I was walking around a park with a baby in my arms—my baby—and she was laughing. A woman came up to me and yanked her out of my arms and walked away really fast. Somebody said, “You will never see her again.”
When I told Poppy about it while we were weeding the garden the next morning, she said, “It’s normal that you should have conflicting emotions, sweetie. It’s a big thing.”
I said, “But what if I don’t want to give her up?”
She looked at me. Pinched off a handful of squash blossoms, and inclined her head. “Is that what you’re thinking?”
I took a breath and nodded. “My mom is going to be so mad at me.”
“She won’t be happy, that’s for sure, but this is not her decision to make. We can help guide you, but ultimately you have to make the choice yourself.”
“Will you help me talk to my mom and my grandma?”
“Can we think about it for another week or so? Let’s me and you and Nancy talk about it before we bring the others into it.”
So we did. Nancy brought me books on single parenting, on mothering a baby—and also the statistics on the lifelong earning loss for teen mothers. Poppy talked about her travels and how much she had hoped I would follow in her footsteps. That pained me. I wanted that, too.
But would it be enough?
My heart felt torn in two, and for that long week I thought and thought and thought. I thought about it while I gardened and while I listened to music.
And while I kneaded bread. Especially then. I was learning now to combine flours for new flavors—a bit of buckwheat added specks of purple to a white loaf, and spelt made it taste a little spongier. I folded eggs into a brioche dough and imagined myself as a world traveler, living in Paris, learning to bake bread