Chapter Eighteen

Ruby

Being back in the States feels overwhelmingly bizarre. Ruby and I share the same look of confused disbelief as the popcorn world of bright colors and electric pace descend on us both like a bad dream. Mexico City has it’s own kind of rhythm, but compared to this, it’s like going back in time. I’m not prepared for the assault of questions at border control no matter how much Jaxon tries to prepare me, partly because I’d forgotten what coming into this country was like, and partly because of the nature of our arrival, which is supposed to be under guidance from our own government.

I get stared at, like a walking contemporary art piece, examined and then taken to the side for further questioning. Jessica doesn’t have an American passport, which causes a delay of almost two hours, before border control can get hold of Rachel Harp or one of her assistants and the whole thing gets cleared up in a matter of minutes.

I feel like a hostage coming home after four years in the wilderness, except there’s no-one waiting for me at the airport with outstretched arms, no TV crews or journalists waiting to shove microphones in my face to get a statement, no old friends or family members to guide me back into a life I once used to know.

We didn’t have time to get word to Dad, and there’s hardly anyone else from my old life I’m in contact with regularly enough to care. Besides which, although I may have had a difficult last few days, I certainly haven’t been kept against my will for the last four years so imagining myself in that role, which my brain is clearly doing because of how exhausted I feel right now, doesn’t seem to be all that fair.

Once through, past the customs agents, the passport control, the security checks, the endless adverts, the conveyor belts and luggage trolleys and swing doors and handbag shops, I make my way to the restrooms with Jessica, to prepare myself for the next part of our journey. I still haven’t introduced my little girl to her father, which means that she’s going to meet her father and her grandfather in the very same day. I could go anywhere - I’ve still got money saved up from before I left - but the right place right now is with Dad.

I sit Jessica up on the counter and take a look at my reflection. The bruises are coming through where the swelling has gone down, which means that I look a lot less like the elephant man and a lot more like a domestic violence victim. I wash my hands, wash my face, and then try a few different poses, holding my head at a few different angles, just to see which one of them makes me look the least frightening.

While I do this, Jessica watches me avidly and it makes me smile.

“Ugly, right?” I say.

Jessica shakes her head defiantly. “Does it hurt?” she says, pointing towards the bruising, just in case I might have misunderstood what she was referring to.

“A little”, I say. “Not much anymore.”

I take a deep breath. “Mommy?” Jessica asks.

“Yes sweetheart?”

“Is Jaxon going to be my daddy now?”

I frown. “Where did you get that idea?”

Jessica shrugs and lifts up the palm of her hand in that cute way she seems to have developed over the last year or so. It reminds me of Emilio. “I don’t know”, she says.

“Listen, honey”, I say. “I know this is all really difficult for you, and you’re being such a brave girl already and-”, I pause, thinking carefully about how to proceed. “Nothing”, I say instead. “You’ve always wanted to meet grandpa haven’t you? Do you remember me telling you about him?”

Jessica nods. “Is he the one with the big house and the grey hair and the funny leg?”

I nod. “That’s him. We’re going to stay with grandpa for a while until we find our feet again, okay? And you’ll see more of Jaxon too, would you like that?”

“What about ‘Melio and Rosa?” she asks.

“Emilio and Rosa are back home in Mexico, but we won’t be able to go there for a while, okay?”

Jessica nods. She’s a bright kid, but this must be so difficult for her to understand. One minute she’s having dinner, the next her Mom shows up battered to shreds and practically carried through the door by a complete stranger who happens to be her dad, then the house blows up, people die in front of her and a day later she’s on a bed in an aeroplane and someone’s giving her as much juice smoothie and ice cream as she can fit in her tiny little belly.

“Can they come here?” she asks innocently.

“I don’t know honey, not for a while. Let’s just concentrate on getting everything else sorted first. I lift her off the counter and we head back out into the melee of the airport to find Jaxon.

“Are you okay?” he asks us both. “You were in there for like, a long time.”

“It’s difficult to adjust”, I say. “People keep staring at us like we’ve crawled in here from some cardboard box in the street. We’re okay. You don’t have to hang around. You must be dying to get back to your own life.”

I don't really want him to go, but I don’t want him to know that either.

“Daytime TV and washing clothes?” he says, his eyebrow raised.

“You could come and meet grandpa”, Jessica says. “Mommy says that’s where we’re going.”

“I promised”, Jaxon says. “It’s not really a completed mission if I don’t.”

“I should call him”, I say, suddenly thinking about it.

“He knows we’re on our way”, Jaxon says. “I called him while you were mentally preparing yourself a second ago.” He takes his cell phone out of his pocket and hands it over to me. “Call him again if you like.”

I shake my head. “It’ll probably be better to do it all in person.”

“Okay”, Jaxon says. “I didn’t tell him about Jessica by the way, I figured you’d want to do it yourself.”

“Thank you.”

We head outside and flag a cab down and on the way into the city, Jessica can’t stop craning her head to look at things.

“Not much has changed”, I say, taking it all in bit by bit.

“Not here it hasn’t”, Jaxon says. “All the change seems to have happened at your end.”

“Been away long?” the driver asks, his eyes all over me in the rear view mirror.

“A few years”, I say, not all that keen on getting into a conversation. I only do because he’s not native. I’d guess latin American, maybe Mexican but not from the city.

He nods in a kind of understanding way. “Some things change quickly if you’re not around to look at them”, he says philosophically. “Other things seem like they don’t change at all.”

He pauses dramatically, the second of silence he inserts between his sentences almost professionally placed. “Sometimes it’s just the person that has changed, not the thing they are looking at.”

We cross the harbour and drive through the city because I tell the driver I want Jessica to see it, and not because I want to delay my arrival for as long as I can, and while we pass through a city I grew up around, memories come flooding back to me like sea shells on an early morning tide. Jessica seems to be dumbstruck by the difference between the two cultures while Jaxon and I look out of our opposing windows at the world go by, in quiet, pensive reflection.

There are bars I used to drink in, streets I used to walk down, restaurants Jaxon and I used to eat in, none of which I had any intention of seeing again. We leave the swell of the city behind us and head south, around Franklin Zoo Park, on through Mattapan and Milton, Blue Hills Reservation and the Great Pond and onto Dad’s house - the house I grew up in, the house Jaxon and I once fucked in when Dad was away on vacation, the house I never thought I’d ever be coming back to.

The driver pulls up outside and kills the engine. We’re here, home, if that’s what you can call it, and I can’t even bring myself to unbuckle the seat belt and get out of the car.

“Take as long as you want”, the driver says kindly, perhaps noting my predicament. “It’s not easy coming home.”

From the car window I see the front door open, Dad rush out onto the lawn and stop abruptly as our eyes meet, frozen in panic at what to do. It wasn’t just Jaxon that I wanted to get away from all those years ago, and I did so without the conversation Dad and I should have had to reconcile things. Just look at me now, I think, the queen of running away from her problems, all of them back at once to bite her.

“Is that grandpa?” Jessica asks.

“Yes”, I say and finally open the door. “Let’s go and say hello.”