Then one Monday, when both Sarah and I were there, the phone rang again. I picked it up upstairs and heard someone say, “This is Suzanne, Roberta’s assistant at Adoption Option …” But Sarah had answered it downstairs, so I hung up and went back to Mary-Emma. Steve was still swimming in his bowl, which we had moved to a high shelf in Mary-Emma’s room. She and I were doing our song and dance to Diana Ross’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” There were oohs and ahhs and Ross’s own breathy sing-sprecht at the beginning, which I mimicked, teaching Mary-Emma. When I was very little, it was the only song I knew by a black woman, or the only one my mother knew, for she was the one who had taught it to me. I pointed my thin arms out and up. “ ‘If you need me, call me.’ ” I made the fingers to the face sign of talking on the phone. “ ‘No matter where you are.’ ” Arms out again, my head smiling and shaking. Mary-Emma did the same. Downstairs the phone rang again and again. “ ‘No matter how far.’ ” I could hear Sarah’s voice below: “No. Yes. That’s true.”
I continued with the oblivious and radiant Mary-Emma. “ ‘No matter where you are, just call my name, I’ll be there in a hurry.’ ”
There was a loud moan from below, which somewhat matched the music. “ ‘On that you can depend and never worry.’ ” I ratcheted up the volume. “ ‘No wind,’ ” I sang, practically shouting, and then Mary-Emma shouted back, “ ‘NO WIND!’ ” “ ‘No rain,’ ” I sang. “ ‘NO RAIN!’ ” she repeated. And I then lifted her up as I always did and bumped her on my hip in front of the mirror, where we watched ourselves. “ ‘Or winter’s cold can stop me, baby, if you’re my goal.’ ”
And then for a brief minute there was anguished wailing from below that had nothing to do with our song, though I kept on with the music, which had a corresponding whooping cry to it, turning up the volume even louder so that we would hear nothing more from downstairs. I kept Mary-Emma busy for almost half an hour with this. She came in on all the sliding moans and dreamy cries, and also on command repeated whatever phrase I’d just sung. “ ‘Life holds for you one guarantee, You’ll always have me.’ ” We were practically shouting.
“ ‘YOU’LL ALWAYS HAVE ME!’ ”
“ ‘And if you should miss my love, One of these old days …’ ”
“ ‘THESE OLD DAYS!’ ”
“ ‘If you should ever miss the arms, that used to hold you so close …, just remember—’ ”
“ ‘JUST REMEMBER!’ ”
“ ‘—what I told you that day I set you free!’ ”
“ ‘SET YOU FREE!’ ”
And then, during a pause in the song, the front doorbell rang. Just before the chorus. Sarah came dashing up into the nursery. I turned down the music. Sarah was wearing my perfume, the same scent, and her rush upstairs warmed the air with it. Arabian Goddess.
“Mama!” Mary-Emma sang out.
Sarah grabbed her to her chest and began rubbing her back frantically while Mary-Emma played with Sarah’s hair, pulling it straight up and seeing if it would stay or fall.
“Quick, Tassie,” Sarah said in a sibilant whisper full of panic. “Would you answer the door for me, please?”
“Sure.” Then I added, “Uh, what should be my MO?”
“Stall,” she said.
I trudged downstairs. I affected a proprietary saunter.
At the door was a woman who either reminded me of someone I knew or was someone I knew, or both.
Both it was: it took a while for it all to come into focus, but quickly it did. She smiled tightly and said, “Hello, Tassie — you probably don’t remember me. Roberta Marshall.”
From the adoption agency. I remembered her well. At least it wasn’t Bonnie herself. That might have been too much for me.
“Yes, I do. Hi.” I shook her hand. I felt a saucy manner come over me, as if I were not Bonnie or the shy McKowen girl but Amber Bowers in the Kronenkee Perkins Family Restaurant. Whatever Roberta’s presence meant here, it could not be good, it seemed to me. She was like the police, but the police dressed up in taupe and beige. A state trooper with earrings. Strangely, I felt protective of the house. I had worked here for what felt like a long time, I guess, and was attached to its very doors and walls more than I realized.
Roberta had never met Amber, so it didn’t matter if I pretended for a spell to be her. My teeth were better — thank you, Bess and Guess! — but if I remained tight-lipped she might never see them. I might be hiding all manner of fangs and fossils and other spittable bits. This secret would give me skank power.
“How’s little Mary? Is she doing well?” Roberta stared straight into my eyes. If only I’d been wearing a hat with a brim I could angle down over them! If only I’d been accessorized more insouciantly — or accessorized at all — I might have felt myself a real match for her.
Everyone, I only noticed now for some reason, called Mary-Emma by a slightly different name, like she was no one at all. “She’s fine,” I said, as if I were talking to a spy. Still standing in the doorway, I sank into one hip and leaned one arm up against the doorjamb. I stared at Roberta without inviting her in. I did not know how to smirk — at least, not that I knew of. Not deliberately. Neither did I have any gum to chew. But I could move my mouth around a little as if there were food in my teeth, and so I did, and then I pursed my lips in a manner that hovered on the edge of incivility. This was new for me and not without its fun.
Function and intention gave Roberta a sturdy demeanor. “Is Sarah here?” she inquired, hoping to clear away me, the riffraff.
“Let me think,” I said. I actually did need to think in order to figure out what further to say. I wasn’t sure what Sarah might want me to do. Roberta was starting to be irked with me. Irritation entered her eyes in a low, cold flame. “Let me go see,” I added.
Upstairs Sarah was already standing in the hall, a little paralyzed, but with Mary-Emma dressed in a pink corduroy jacket and a pink velvet headband around her afro. Mary-Emma’s head was sunk down on Sarah’s shoulder, as if it tired her to be so dressed up; it was getting close to nap time.
“Roberta Marshall’s downstairs,” I said.
“Jesus, I can’t believe she came so soon. I can’t even believe she came today.” Sarah looked paralyzed. But then breathed deeply and brushed past me, with Mary-Emma, to go greet Roberta at the door.
Sarah, too, did not invite her in, so I could see from the landing, where I watched, near an open black trash bag of stuffed animals, a Brio train, and folded baby blankets, that my instincts had been correct. She did not even open the outer door but just stood, slightly braced against the open inner one.
“Hi there, Sarah. And hello there, Mistress Mary,” chirped Roberta from the doorstep through the screen.
Mary-Emma looked at her wordlessly, then buried her face in Sarah’s sleeve again.
“Not quite contrary,” said Roberta, shrugging off the quip.
“You did not make it clear you were coming today,” said Sarah.
“I’m sorry. I thought you understood. Legally, your time is up as foster parents, and if the adoption papers can’t be finalized, we move on to the next couple in line. Which means—”
“Which means what?”
“I was getting to that. It means Mary has to be moved into the regular foster care that we use. Just for the time being, of course.”
“Why can’t we be the foster care?” Sorrow flooded Sarah’s face.
“Because you’re not. Our agency has specific ones we use. There was that problem with your withheld information, which we’ve discussed already. I don’t want to get into that now.”