Page 70 of The Librarians
The long-buried ache of everything that could have been—Sophie, Elise,andJo-Ann…How delighted and proud Jo-Ann would have been about Elise, how tightly and protectively she would have held them to her.
Sophie’s throat tightens.
“She used to show us her sonogram pictures too—I already had presents all wrapped up for Baby Elise. When I heard that Jo-Ann died in childbirth, I couldn’t believe it. I went to the hospital, thinking I’d find a way to pass on my gifts, but all I found out was that Jo-Ann’s sister took Baby Elise and that Baby Elise would most likely live with her grandmother in Jamaica.
“So imagine my shock on Saturday when you guys walked into the library. You haven’t aged a day from when Jo-Ann used to shove your pictures in my face, and Elise is a carbon copy of Jo-Ann.”
That she is. And she inherited Jo-Ann’s easy way with people.
“I talked a little to her,” continues Jeannette. “I didn’t dare ask too many questions but it was pretty obvious she had no idea she was supposed to have spent her life in another country. I became suspicious. I’m sorry if what I’m about to say sounds offensive, but I wondered if Jo-Ann had a trust settled on the kid and you erased Jo-Ann from her life in order to have total control over the money.”
“What?!”
Jeannette scratches at the side of her cell phone case, as if embarrassed. “I’m sorry—I worked in a retirement home for a while and saw some wild schemes to get old folks’ money, even when there wasn’t a lot of money to be had. That’s why I passed you the notes. But tonight, when I was home changing, I got results back from the Hudson County probate record search I paid for and found out that—”
“That Jo-Ann didn’t leave a will?” Sophie can’t help a hint—or a large, dripping heap—of sarcasm.
Jeannette smiles sheepishly. “Right. Her estate had to go into probate and was then divvied up among surviving family members according to New Jersey’s succession law. Your name was nowhere to be found in the records.
“But according to the filings, there was also no mention anywhere of a child. Could it be possible? The sister they’d mentioned at the hospital, the one who took the baby, could that have been you? I mean, theoretically that shouldn’t have happened, because Jo-Ann was Jamaican. Why would they let an American woman take her baby? Was it because Elise was a Black baby that no one paid attention?”
It had helped that Jo-Ann had put Sophie down as her sister and emergency contact, and that Sophie’s grief was real and palpable. But still, it had taken lying, cheating, and document forging on a breathtaking level—thank you, Eileen Su and your cousins who knew everybody under the sun—for Sophie to become Elise’s mother. At every step along the way Sophie had quivered like a Jell-O cube in a commercial, convinced she would be caught and sent to jail.
Instead of a too-merciful Almighty, as her mother had thought, had Sophie’s salvation been, ironically, the system’s indifference to the fate of little Black girls?
“I mean, obviously it was possible—you already did it. But why? That’s what I had to know. Elise is obviously flourishing—what an impressive young woman. And you guys clearly love each other very much. But why did you steal her?”
Jeannette sounds sincere rather than threatening. But the threat is ever present.
What business is it of yours?Sophie wants to shout.You were just Jo-Ann’s acquaintance. That you fell for her doesn’t give you any say in the matter.
But Sophie broke the law—she brokeallthe laws. And lawbreakers don’t get to claim privacy for their lawbreaking. All she can do is to somehow get Jeannette on her side.
A gust blows. Sophie took off her Nick Fury pleather coat even before the library closed and without it she shivers in the wind. “I took Elise at Jo-Ann’s request—she realized much too late that she’d made no arrangements for contingencies. Without my intercession, Elise would have gone to Jo-Ann’s mom in Jamaica, who’d disowned her for being queer.”
Silence. The traffic light on the street beyond changes; a small red car goes through the intersection, then turns into the H-E-B lot.
“I never want to make another queer woman’s life more difficult,” says Jeannette. “But how do I know what you’re saying is true? How do I know that you didn’t steal Elise because you couldn’t handle the pain of losing Jo-Ann?”
Just Sophie’s luck that instead of a blackmailer, she gets a self-appointed arbiter of truth and justice.
Sophie’s voice turns hard. “I already lost Jo-Ann. All the times Jo-Ann waxed poetic to you about us? We were done. We broke up because I wasn’t ready to have a kid, so she went ahead and had one without telling me—until she needed the biggest favor anyone’s ever had the gall to ask.
“But if you want proof, I can let you listen to the last voice message she left on my phone, on the day Elise was born. The recording, however, is in a safe-deposit box at my bank. I can retrieve it tomorrow morning and you can come by my office at one p.m.”
“Fair enough.”
And then I want you out of our lives. There is another perfectly good branch library less than five miles away—use that one in the future. Whatever good intentions you may have about other queer women’s lives, you’ve already made mine both more difficult and less secure. I hope you understand that. I hope you understand that your sense of right and wrong and your need to know are the least important anything here!
All this and more races through Sophie’s mind. But she says only, “I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon, then.”
Sophie sits in her locked car for ten minutes before her mind, painfully over-revved on anger, frustration, and dread, can think about anythingpractical. She decides to go to the store anyway, because Elise might still be awake when she gets back and, knowing Elise, she will want a cookie or two.
She drives to a larger H-E-B closer to her house and buys fifty dollars’ worth of groceries. The brisk walk in a 100,000-square-foot establishment helps—she feels a little calmer, like she might be able to fall asleep in a couple of hours.
The worst has not happened. She has a problem on her hands, yes, but not a catastrophe. Or at least, not yet. Jeannette has poked her nose where it doesn’t belong but she is still operating within semi-normal bounds. Linguistically, lightning does not strike the same spot twice, but in nature, it does. And Sophie just might prove lucky again, should Jeannette hold her secret long enough for Elise to turn eighteen.
She gets back to her car, loads the groceries in the trunk, and sees that there’s already a canvas bag there—the stuff she and Elise take with them every time they volunteer for park cleanups. It’s Elise’s job to take it back home to the garage but it’s one of those chores Elise sees as optional.
