Page 7 of Counting Backwards

“Are you saying they removed your uterus and didn’t tell you until afterward? They didn’t explain everything to you in advance?”

Isobel hesitated a moment.

“I don’t...” Her eyes shuttered for a moment. “I’ve been trying not to think about it too much, mostly.”

My mind jumped without warning to the baby I’d lost so many months before and the doctor’s promises that Vance and I wouldstill have plenty of time to create our perfect family. I pushed away the thoughts, scribbling the words “adequate medical care” onto my memo pad and putting three large question marks beside it.

Meanwhile, Isobel cocked her head and looked off to the side, like she was still trying to remember something.

“No one ever said it just like that,” she finally answered. “There was a lot they talked about that day in the exam room, risks to my health if we didn’t deal with the cyst, issues with insurance. But then that was that.” She wiped her hands together like she was ridding them of crumbs. “No use dwelling on it now. The important thing is that I find a way to stay in this country with my daughter.”

I wanted to ask why cramping might lead so quickly to a hysterectomy, but I hadn’t been called to Hydeford to discuss Isobel’s medical history. I quickly crossed out the question in my notebook, drawing several dark lines through it. I had to respect my client’s wishes and stay on task, no matter the feeling of unease that was burgeoning in my gut.

“Let’s talk about your arrest,” I said instead. “Can you tell me about what your job was at the time?”

Isobel let out a long sigh.

“I was working as a manicurist,” she said. “I was good at it too. My customers learned they had to call ahead, by at least three days usually, if they wanted to get the seat across from me.”

I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for Isobel. Going to her job as a manicurist one day and being incarcerated in an immigration detention center the next.

As we talked more about Isobel’s circumstances and her daughter, Sia, I wondered whether I might be able to prove that Isobel’s case qualified for the “extremely unusual hardship to a child” exception to removal orders. That avenue could potentially prevent a deportation. But I didn’t know what conditions wouldconstitute an extremely unusual hardship. Thus far, I’d read only the file of materials Legal Aid had provided in advance of the meeting, and I was starting to realize that I needed to do much more research on my own.

I berated myself again for thinking I could waltz into an ICE facility and save someone’s entire future based on only a couple hours’ worth of reading. I’d have to learn so much more about immigration law, everything I could, in order to give this woman the best chance of success. In the meantime, I continued peppering her with questions, copying down notes furiously. It would have been so much easier had I been allowed to bring in my laptop.

I was startled from my focus when Isobel put her hand up to her throat and asked, “You think we could take a break for some water?”

“Oh.” I halted midscribble and glanced at the wall clock behind her. “My goodness. I’ve had you talking for nearly two and a half hours. No wonder you’re parched. Yeah, you know what, I have enough. We should wrap up for the day. I’ll get to work on all of this, and then I’ll make another appointment so we can fill in any gaps if necessary.”

I began to push back my chair so I could ring the call button for the guard, but Isobel took hold of my wrist, stopping me.

“Thank you,” she said, holding eye contact.

“Oh, you’re sweating,” I responded without thinking.

“I’m telling you,” Isobel said, laughing lightly, “these hot flashes are no joke.”

As I drove north on the Turnpike, heading back toward Manhattan, my mind raced. I thought of the many legal sourcebooks and journals I wanted to review that evening, trying to keep a mental tally of what to tackle after I finished dinner with my grandmother.I’d been meeting my mom’s mother for dinner at the Dreamland Diner on the Upper East Side once a month, religiously, ever since I started college. In the past couple of years, I’d begun to feel that the monthly visits weren’t enough. Gram was in her eighties, and her mortality suddenly felt glaring to me, even though she was still in relatively robust physical health. Recently, I’d been asking for plans with increasing frequency; museum outings, weekend brunches, walks around the neighborhood. I wanted to soak up all the time I could with her, especially since I’d begun to worry I might never have another blood relative.

As I approached the George Washington Bridge, I thought more about my new client, Isobel, wondering about her childhood and whether she and I might have had similar experiences growing up despite our different backgrounds. It sounded like Isobel’s grandparents had sacrificed so much to raise her. Having always been so focused on my own suffering, I hadn’t given much thought to what my grandmother might have sacrificed, becoming responsible for a child again in her midsixties. When I moved in, newly orphaned at age twelve, she had showered me with hugs and attention, trying single-handedly to fill the void left by the car crash that killed my parents. They’d been on their way home from parent-teacher conferences when they hit a patch of black ice. For all the years that followed, Gram showed nothing but affection and pride in me, guiding me and loving me. But maybe it hadn’t always been so easy to be pseudomother to her grandchild, to have to give up the freedoms of later adulthood. Perhaps it was time I asked her these questions myself.

As I pulled into a spot in the parking garage, I felt a familiar gush between my legs. But I prayed I’d mistaken the sensation. It couldn’t be my period, not yet. It was three days early. Maybe it had just been my imagination, or random bladder leakage. Or plain old sweat. But in my heart, I knew. It was the end of anothercycle, another month of wasted effort and fruitless hope. As I reset my imagined pregnancy timeline yet again, my thoughts flashed to Isobel and how that high-spirited woman’s body had been altered irrevocably, in a manner that would prevent her from ever having another child. Even with the disappointment of passing time, at least I still had a chance.

4

Carrie

1920

As we walked toward the railroad tracks, Billy was talking a mile a minute. He was my best friend—really my only friend. His family lived on a tidy plot of land just up the road from the folks who’d been fostering me since I was six years old. After Miss Drummond brought me to the CHS facility all those years earlier, it was only a couple of days before she had me placed with Mr. John and Mrs. Alice Dobbs. I still didn’t know what Miss Drummond said to my mama that day when I first got took. All I remembered was that while Ma continued carrying on in the hallway of the children’s facility, orderlies asking her over and over to lower her voice, Miss Drummond came to talk with me. She said if I went to stay with certain upright folks across town and helped them keep house, I’d get a warm bed all to myself and a chance to go to McGuffey Primary School. She told me I’d be allowed to sit at my very own desk five days every week. When she dangled the possibility of real Crayola crayons, I was ready to do just about anything she asked.

Alice and John Dobbs were all right. They never hugged me up like my mama did, but they didn’t beat on me neither. Long as I did my daily chores, the mopping, the laundry, starching, mending,canning, and such, they let me come and go from school, let me have a fair share of their hot food each night. I was one grade behind the other kids my age in school, on account of getting started late, but I didn’t mind. Over time, I often forgot I was a year older than the other kids in my schoolroom. Especially Billy, since he always knew so much more than I did anyhow. The placement in a lower grade also kept me farther apart from Loretta Dobbs, which was probably for the best.

Mr. and Mrs. Dobbs, they told me to call them “Mrs. Alice” and “Mr. John” from the start. Loretta was the only child they had of their own. She was two years older than me, and mostly she just ignored me. The only times we had cross words was when she had friends around and wanted to show off by hassling me. Then later, she’d try to make up for it one way or another, pushing her dessert toward me when I cleared the table that night or giving me a piece of her scented soap before I took my bath. I suppose she was glad enough that it was me sweating out the family chores every day and not her.

Miss Drummond never told me how long I’d be staying there with the Dobbs family, but before I knew it, seven some-odd years had passed since I’d started sleeping in the alcove off their kitchen. Other foster kids had come and gone while I was there, especially in the summers when there was more work to be done, but I’d been there the longest. Billy thought the reason the Dobbs family took in fosters was because they needed the money they got from the state each time they did so. I couldn’t really say.

As we walked along Second Street, enjoying the first truly warm day that spring, we kicked at pebbles along our way. I watched the dust getting thicker on the laces of Billy’s Buster Browns and wondered if his mother would be sore at him for not being careful. The afternoon felt like any of so many others until Billy surprised me.