Amy Gustine - You Should Pity Us Instead

“Sorry,” Brian said. “I didn’t want to leave it there.”

Obi picked up the bikini’s top and examined it in the light from the living room. Dangling cords connected two small red triangles decorated with gold stars. It didn’t seem like clothing at all. Jolly swam in a one-piece blue Speedo with wide shoulder straps. Obi tossed the bikini across the gap to Brian. “This is nothing like Jolly. I don’t think it belongs to her.”

Brian folded the suit carefully into a single neat triangle like a flag. “Yes, sir. I’ll take care of it.”

Obi turned away. Now he could go home. Jolly didn’t live here anymore.

Sarah didn’t apply for the job with a plan. She just wanted in.

Melanie Cuppernell was returning to work as a third-grade teacher and needed a nanny for ten-month-old Grayson and almost five-year-old Beatrice, who’d missed the kindergarten cutoff. “You’ll have to keep her entertained.” Melanie laughed. “And let me tell you, that’s no easy task.”

During the interview in a bright room with yellow sofas and paintings thick with color, Melanie asked questions Sarah could answer truthfully. Where was she from? Here. Age? Twenty-two. How long had she nannied for Melanie’s friend Rachel? Two years. How long had she worked at the daycare before that? Two years. Melanie didn’t ask about her family, so there’d been no need for lies, though Sarah had a string prepared because Nancy, the social worker assigned to her when she aged out, had warned against telling employers Sarah grew up in foster care. “Some people see it as a negative.”

If asked, Sarah claimed her father died when she was two and her mother, a retired secretary, lived in Florida. This narrative had satisfied Rachel and it would satisfy Melanie. Sarah had refined it to such simplicity, it was impossible to forget. To such banality, no one ever wanted more. If she ever married, Sarah’s husband might want more, but husbands, like other family, were bestowed by the universe, and so far the universe had not been all that forthcoming.

At the end of the interview, Sarah affected a lighthearted voice and asked, “So, are you related to Judge Cuppernell?”

“He’s my dad,” Melanie said. “Do you know him?”

Sarah shook her head. “Just the name.” Judges’ names appeared in the newspaper and on yard signs every few years. Sarah wasn’t worried about her own name being recognized. Melanie would have no reason to know it and the Judge, if he remembered, which seemed unlikely, would probably dismiss it as coincidence. Before scheduling the interview, Sarah had gone to the library and checked. There were nine Sarah Andersons in Toledo’s white pages and so many on Facebook the computer crashed trying to load them all.

As Melanie backs out of the driveway that first morning, the first time Sarah is alone with the children, Beatrice looks at her with trusting eyes. “What do you want to do?” Her voice rides high with anticipation.

“Nothing,” Sarah says, trying out cruelty.

“Well, we have to do something. That’s what Mommy hired you for.”

Melanie had not lied when she called the girl precocious.

Weekdays Sarah arrives at seven thirty, by which time Melanie has left for school and her husband Aaron stands by the front door, tapping at his phone. Every day he says, “Bea’s in the kitchen and the baby’s up, I think,” until one morning Sarah says it before he can and after that Aaron smiles and salutes her as they pass in the foyer. “It’s all yours, Captain.”

She imposes a schedule similar to the daycare. “It will get you ready for kindergarten.”

Beatrice balks. “I do what I want.”

“Not anymore.”

Grayson waits, half awake, in his crib. Diaper change, face wash, breakfast, tooth brushing, clothes, then a walk, though Sarah allows a little variation here. Bea can take her bike or scooter. Snack time, reading time, playtime, lunchtime, nap time (Grayson) and craft time (Bea), TV time, another walk, song time, snack time (kids) and cooking time (Sarah). At Rachel’s cooking was both harder — her twin infants liked to be held a lot — and easier — unlike Bea, the babies never questioned why there were two dirty pans but only one loaf of banana bread.

Sarah makes spaghetti because no one counts pasta strands. She makes casseroles because women like Rachel and Melanie don’t have plans for the leftover ham or the vulnerable half of last night’s green pepper. When Sarah tells Melanie, “Just warm it up, it’s all baked,” Melanie, like Rachel, doesn’t notice the ragged edge of the casserole, which attests to its having been cut and the larger portion transferred from the 9x12 to the 9x9 bakeware.

“You’re such a good cook!” Melanie exclaims instead. “I can’t believe what you make out of stuff I throw away.”

“My mom taught me.” It’s one of the few true things she’s ever revealed about her mother, who made delicious meals out of things Sarah couldn’t name, like a blade-shaped lettuce she put in a pan with black water. One time Sarah tried describing the black water’s taste to a stocker at the grocery store, but the woman looked at her like she was nuts. Embarrassed, Sarah switched stores, afraid to run into her again. Months later, at Rachel’s, she sniffed the contents of a brown bottle on the counter. Balsamic vinegar. A taste confirmed: this is what her mother cooked the lettuce in.

Week four, Thursday afternoon. While Grayson is napping and Beatrice is in the basement making Play-Doh cupcakes, Sarah sneaks out, locking the door to make it appear as though she’s still in the house, then stands behind the garage knee-deep in yard clippings and mounds of white-veined dirt dislodged from last year’s pots. Disturbed by Sarah’s footsteps, bees emerge from beneath one of the mounds and draw their turbulent pattern in the air. Sarah takes several steps away and regards the lurch of her watch’s second hand. One minute. Two.

It takes only three and a half minutes. Three and a half lousy minutes!

Beatrice’s muted voice hollers Sarah’s name, the “ah” long and echoing, while the bees slowly retract into their nest. As the minutes grind on, Sarah strains to detect any change in the child’s tone, but fear is not discernible in so muffled a version. Beatrice doesn’t come out, or even open the back door, and Sarah remembers how it is to be a child, the unspoken boundary between your life and out there. Your apartment. Your mom. Your kitchen table. You do not cross that boundary alone, and no one has to tell you that. Sarah’s mother never told her. She just knew: you wait.

Twenty minutes and the shouting has stopped. The feeling in Sarah’s stomach is both familiar and strange. A memory she had not remembered until now.

She slips from behind the garage, forces herself to sidle past the climbing rose she will later learn Melanie’s mother planted forty years ago. The Judge’s wife comes by several times a year to fertilize and trim the plant, worrying over its blooms because Melanie lacks a green thumb.

Sarah opens the door and hears Grayson crying, finds the two of them in his room. Beatrice has somehow gotten her brother out of the crib and sits with him on the floor, paging through his favorite book, her high-pitched voice wavering through tears, trying to interest him in what the zebra is going to do about his stripes.

When Sarah appears, instead of rushing to her, Bea levels a knowing, angry look. “I thought you left.”

“I just went outside a minute.” Sarah sits down cross-legged and takes the baby, rocking him against her chest, his feet anchored in the flesh of her folded thighs. “You should have come out.”

“Gray was crying.”