Rachel Alexander 09 - Without a Word

if they were at the end of a long dance marathon, schools of brightly colored fish suspended as if in midair, Sally, clearly in her element, moving gracefully, easily through the water ahead of me, as if she were one of them.
    Afterwards we sat on the warm sand, Roy between us, Madison and Leon between us, too.
    “I have Madison’s medical records with me,” I said, knowing it was too late for all that, years and years too late, but still feeling I had to try.
    She waved a hand in the air.
    “I have a couple of pictures.”
    “I can’t,” she said. “I don’t expect you to understand, but I just can’t.”
    I nodded, and for a while we sat there quietly looking at the ocean, neither of us able to think of anything to say.
    “How did it happen,” I finally thought to ask, “you and Leon?”
    “Me and Leon,” she said, “some pair. It was the day I’d told Jim that I was pregnant.” Turning to look at me now. “Did he tell you about it?”
    I nodded.
    “What he said to me, he told you that?”
    “He did.”
    “I can’t think of words to describe how I felt, Jim’s sneering disbelief on one side, my mother’s fanatical intolerance of anything less than perfection on the other, and me fifteen years old. I was even too afraid to cut class—so I went.“
    “Leon’s class?”
    “I actually sat through another class first. Creative writing. Then Leon’s honor history. Last period. When the bell rang, I couldn’t move. It was as if I was telling my body to stand and it didn’t hear me.
    “He didn’t do anything at first. He was packing up his briefcase, putting some books in it, erasing the board. Then he saw that I was still sitting there and not doing anything. I must have looked like hell. He must have known something was really wrong because before he came over to talk to me, he walked over and closed the door. Then he sat at the desk next to mine and he said, ‘Something the matter?’
    “I still remember the way the tears welled up and out of my eyes, remember how they felt running down my cheeks, how helpless I was to stop them, how helpless I was, period.“
    “So you told him?”
    She nodded. “Everything but who.”
    “And where.”
    Sally looked at me, a line between her eyes.
    “He didn’t know about this place, right? He didn’t know the circumstances. Nor how you’d chosen your daughter’s name. Is that right?”
    She nodded, sighed, put a hand on Roy’s back.
    “But he knew the boy knew?”
    “Yes.”
    “And that you had your back against the wall?”
    “Yes, he knew that.”
    “And then what?”
    Sally turned to look at me, her eyes shining. “He said, ‘Marry me.’ He said, ‘I’ll take care of you. I’ll raise the baby as if it were mine.’ ”
    “Did you agree right away?”
    “I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. I was so overwhelmed by the whole thing, by fear, by grief, by anger, by gratitude, I couldn’t speak. So Leon took charge. He worked it out. He figured it out on the spot, what we’d do, how we’d do it, everything. He was so sure.”
    “That you became sure.”
    She nodded. “Without thinking.”
    “There’s that,” I said. And now this, I thought.
    “What about your mother?” I asked. “How did that... ?” I stopped in mid-sentence, lifting a hand, letting it fall back to the warm sand between us. I knew the answer, didn’t I? So why ask?
    “Leon asked how she’d handle it, and all I could manage was more tears. So he said I shouldn’t worry about it at all, I should leave everything to him, if that was okay with me. I’m saved, I thought. He was talking, and I remember sitting there thinking, I’m saved. That’s all I could manage. It was like falling off a building, and at the last minute you saw there was a net, you weren’t going to die.”
    Or you saw Superman coming to scoop you up in his powerful arms moments before you hit the ground.
    “So he took the heat on this, too, the blame?” I asked. “He did.”
    “Then how did it end up he wasn’t in trouble with the law? Did your mother relent? Because he said there were no charges pressed. A teacher and a fifteen-year-old student... ?” Sally was shaking her head. “My mother went insane. She never forgave me. Nor Leon.”
    “But?”
    “When he went to the precinct, and to the Board of Education, he had proof that he wasn’t the one who’d gotten me pregnant.”
    “I don’t understand. What sort of proof?”
    “Leon didn’t tell you?”
    “Tell