Page 4 of Counting Backwards

I did think a story time seemed like a nice thing to do, nice enough that it might even be worth a walk with Miss Drummond and her friend. Still, I didn’t want to disobey Ma.

“I could leave a note for your mother, if you’d like. As long as she knows where you’ve gone, she’ll think you’ve been responsible. I believe they’re readingOld Mother West Windtoday. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Vestry?”

Now, I didn’t know much about different children’s books, but it just so happened that Miss Drummond had mentioned the very same book that Wendy Dinkins was showing off about just the week before. Her rich uncle from Norfolk had sent it, and she wouldn’t let none of the neighborhood kids even touch the drawing on the cover.

Thinking about Wendy’s neat yellow braids, and all them peppermint candies her uncle sent too, I was suddenly gathering up baby Roy out of the cradle. I told Miss Drummond that we didn’t havea pram for ferrying either of the little ones, so she would have to carry Doris.

It wasn’t but two hours later when Ma showed up at CHS.

I was sitting beside Miss Willis, the reading lady, looking at a picture book while two older boys hunched over a small table across the room, working on a drawing together. Miss Willis was asking me questions about the pictures we was looking at, like why was the bunny smiling, and what did I think that bunny was going to do with her bowl of porridge. That was when I heard shouting from down the hall. It only took a few seconds for me to recognize the rumble of Ma’s husky voice, coming loud as if she was using a blow horn.

“You can’t just come to my home and take them all!” she hollered. “Who do you people think you are, stealing my babies?”

I stood up from the small mat where we were sitting and peeked out the open doorway of the little library room. There was Ma in her work smock. Even from the other end of the hallway, I could see smudges on her arms, and I knew those spots of grime meant she’d got herself some cleaning work for the day. It looked like she’d been sweeping out somebody’s hearth and chimney. She might have gotten paid in kind, like happened sometimes, when she traded her services with folks and came home with a sack of food. I was hungry just thinking on the grits and butter cake she’d got the week before.

My ma was a thick woman, tall too, with dark brown hair she kept short and blunt like the edge of a box, never letting it grow past her ears. Her sleeves were rolled higher than her elbows, probably for the hot day, and her thick muscles were plain to see even from looking at just the bottom half of her arms. I wondered if that skinny Miss Drummond was afraid, standing across from Ma’sbig body and all that shouting. But then Miss Drummond took up like she was the one in charge, and I suppose she always was.

“Now, now, Miss Buck,” she said in a calm voice.

“It’sMrs.,” Ma snapped back. “Mrs. Buck.”

Miss Drummond started over. “Mrs. Buck, we were just minding the children for a time so Carrie could come get a sense of the place. You needn’t get out of control. You can go on and take them home as soon as you like. But we hoped Carrie might like to stay on with us here.”

To stay at the CHS? I ought to have known. That Miss Drummond had tricked me. I should have remembered seeing Mallory Johnson’s aunt after seven-year-old Mallory had gone to the CHS. It was only a few days later that the girl was living with a whole new family. Her aunt Tilly had celebrated with a fresh bottle of whiskey in the street, hooting that she no longer had to look after her sister’s brat.

But I didn’t remember. Not then. What I was focused on in that moment was the small wooden shelf that must have held at least eight more books for children. I wanted to know what was inside each one. When Miss Drummond came to ask me what I wanted to do, whether I wanted to stay a little longer, it didn’t take much for her to convince me.

Once I agreed, Miss Drummond went and had a quiet conversation with my mama down the hall. I never did learn what she said to Ma in those hushed whispers, or why Ma agreed. She let Ma take Doris and baby Roy back home, keeping only me. Later, after everything that happened, I told myself that Miss Drummond must have made some awful threats to make Ma leave me the way she did. And Ma must never have realized what-all would happen next or how it would change everything.

3

Jessa

February 2022

I stared blankly at the list of interrogatories I was supposed to be editing. It wasn’t even lunchtime yet, but the sky outside my office window was dark gray, filled with ominous rain clouds that added to the malaise I was already feeling. It had been four weeks since the managing attorneys announced new partners. Although the list included thirteen new partners worldwide, the New York office of Dillney, Forsythe & Lowe had chosen just two. Maybe the fact that only two new partners were from New York should have lessened the sting of not making the cut.

It didn’t.

The verdict was in, and I guess I just wasn’t partner material. No matter how hard I tried to be taken seriously, it seemed I’d never be invited into that inner circle, never follow in my father’s footsteps or live up to the memory of my great-grandfather in the ways I’d envisioned. Had my parents still been around, I’m sure they would have said I should be proud of my effort even though things hadn’t panned out as I’d hoped. My dad would have looked me in the eye and tried to comfort me with one of the many quotations he liked to toss around. I could picture him with that crooked half smile, ahand resting on my shoulder. He’d have said something like, “Remember: ‘Big shots are just little shots who keep on chasing the stars.’” Even so, I couldn’t help feeling like a disappointment.

A knock sounded against the open office door, and I looked up to see Dustin Ortiz’s perfectly coiffed head poking into the room. Even before noticing the smug tilt to his lips, I knew my morning frustration levels were about to get worse.

“Stan just added me to Hannity Blue,” he said, referencing one of the firm’s biggest cases. It was a securities litigation that I’d been working on with Stanley Rubin, a senior partner, for close to a year.

I considered why Stan would have added Dustin to the team. It was true that I’d been spending less time at the office during the last few weeks, still licking my wounds from being passed over. I’d been arriving slightly later in the mornings and sometimes using lunchtime to catch up on things I’d neglected for too long amid my quest for partnership, like dental checkups and eyebrow waxing. I’d even scheduled a lunch with my college friends, Sophie and Jane, whom I’d nearly fallen out of touch with during my prolonged efforts to rise to the top. Even with that little bit of self-care, I was still billing more than forty hours per week. And billable hours didn’t account for all the time I spent at work that couldn’t be charged to a specific client. Just because I wasn’t using face time or all-nighters to prove my dedication anymore didn’t mean I was slacking. Yet apparently, my marginally breezier lifestyle came with this unfortunate new consequence.

I couldn’t stand Dustin. He was a few years older than me, but he’d only recently graduated from law school and had been working at the firm for less than a year. Supposedly, he’d spent several years traveling the world and working odd jobs along the way so he could earn just enough to continue his blithe, nomadic manner of living. I didn’t know what had inspired him to finally set downroots in New York and pursue a more traditional career path, but I also didn’t care.

Wanderers and free spirits like that were antithetical to me. My negative feelings toward people who didn’t push themselves toward success were perhaps irrational and unfair, but I knew too well that life was a finite gift. I didn’t have patience for people who didn’t try to make the very most of the time they’d been given, whether by working toward personal accomplishments or endeavoring to improve the world around them. Somehow, slacking off on beaches the world over didn’t seem like the most productive way to use years of your life, no matter how a person spun it.

I might have tried to overlook my distaste for Dustin’s personal history, but then I got to know him. The more time I spent in his presence, the more infuriating I found him. He seemed to think his age offered him seniority he hadn’t yet earned, and he somehow found every opportunity to question my actions. From “Why are you using this conference room?” to “Don’t you think there’s a more efficient strategy for reviewing those documents?” Dustin always seemed to think he knew better.

Yet if I complained about him being staffed on the Hannity case, it would only look like sour grapes after my lack of promotion.

I shoved my chair out from the oversized desk and moved toward the box of binders that had been delivered to my office that morning. I’d been planning to spend the next day and a half organizing them, but fine. I’d let Dustin do it.

“I assume Stan sent you the complaint and the other digital files. Why don’t you read over those to start, and then you can take these flagged docs”—I lifted the heavy box and pushed it toward him—“and arrange them by topic.”