Page 73 of Counting Backwards

I allowed myself one moment to bask in his unbridled support, closing my eyes in gratitude.

“Thank you for saying that,” I said as I pushed the elevator button. “Speaking of the TRO though, I’m on my way to a prep meeting, so I’d better run. Thanks for checking in.”

After my meetings, I rode the 6 Train uptown. Winding my way through the tightly packed train, I maneuvered to a spot where I could clutch one of the stanchion poles while the train rocked from side to side. Looking around at the crowded car, I wondered if soon my belly would grow large enough that others would begin offering me their seats on rides like this. It was hard to imagine reaching such a different point in the pregnancy, where simply standing up would feel like hard work. I prayed again that I’d get there.

As the train sped north, my mind wandered back to Carrie Buck’s journal. After the call from Dr. LaRusso’s office, I’d beenin such a hurry to start working again that I’d put the notebook aside, hiding it deep within the drawer of my nightstand. Tucking it away like that had probably been a gesture of protectiveness, a safeguarding of Carrie’s secrets. Or maybe I was just protecting myself from more of Vance’s gaslighting. Either way, now that I was caught up on the new developments with Hydeford, I was eager to see what else Carrie’s pages revealed.

I wondered what Carrie possibly could have written about at such length. If it turned out to be page after page condemning Harry Laderdale, I decided I wouldn’t hate that. I imagined there would have been some catharsis for her in filling a journal with all the things she never got to say to the men who trampled her rights, Harry Laderdale being at the front of the pack. But I doubted Gram would have shared the notebook in that case.

When I finally reached the apartment, it was only six o’clock. Vance wouldn’t be home for another couple of hours.

I made a beeline for the nightstand, removing my blazer and tossing it across the foot of the bed. I kicked off my shoes and climbed onto the bed, settling myself against the plush pillows. Then I reached into the drawer for the notebook and began to read.

***

After more than two hours, I was nearing the end of the journal when my phone rang. I ignored the call, instead reaching for a tissue on the nightstand and wiping at the wetness under my eyes.

I’d read all about Carrie’s life, starting with how she ended up in foster care, then the sexual violence she suffered, followed by her subsequent transfer to an institution for “mental defectives.” I struggled to keep turning the pages. When I read about the loss of her baby, Vivian, and how it shattered Carrie so completely, all my prior thoughts about curses and karma started coming atme again. Breathing in and breathing out, I reminded myself that panic wasn’t good for me or the baby. Then I returned my focus to the scrawl of Carrie’s writing.

In the last few pages, Billy had shown up in her life again, taking a second chance at asking for Carrie’s heart. Carrie finally had relented, figuring maybe it was time to let him in, to embrace the one good thing she had.

And then I was on the last page. As I stared down at her final words, I realized that the entire time I’d been reading, I’d been hoping Carrie had written something about mercy and forgiving the unforgivable. All along, I’d wanted to believe that if she could find a way to forgive those people, then maybe I, too, could find a way toward compassion and forgiveness like Gram had said. I was so very tired of holding my anger and disappointment like a force field around me, clasping the despair like a talisman. I felt almost desperate for guidance from Carrie—a way out. Pulling the notebook closer in, I turned my eyes back to the page, equal parts nervous and eager to see what those last few paragraphs would reveal.

23

Carrie

April 1970

I feel near certain God won’t forgive those men for what they took from me. I still can’t figure how it was they thought they were in charge of deciding who should and shouldn’t be allowed to make babies, who was or wasn’t good enough. Lord knows it was never up to them.

All these years later, I suppose I’ve come to understand much that was unclear to me as a girl. Folks might say I’ve lived a small life, just being a wife, cleaning house, keeping to myself, and not much else. I never had an important job, going off to business like the young girls do now. I didn’t travel hardly anywhere either, born and likely to die in this here state of Virginia.

Yet I’d say I’ve been through more than most. I never would have got past those days after Vivian died, nor the long years of missing the other children I never had, if not for the way I learned to rely on myself. Billy, he tried, but he was just the icing on top, not the answer itself. In the quiet days of my little life, I learned to believe in my own self and my own strength.

I did choose to love my old friend Billy the way a woman loves a man. But I set him straight right from the start that I was going tobe making any decisions for myself all on my own. I knew by then for sure that I always needed to be true to myself.

I gave Billy a good life, I think, except for the children he never had. He would have loved getting to watch his own babies grow like weeds in the garden. They’d have been beanpoles surely, just like him, those same freckles dotting their cheeks. Even now, on lonely days, I like to imagine boys like that, doting all the time on their father.

A little stream trickles along behind the house here. When we first settled in, right away Billy set to building me my own special bench out beside it, a place where I could rest myself when I wanted a quiet moment to remember Vivian. It’s been years now since Billy passed, and here I still sit, remembering Vivian and Billy both. I try not to let my mind wander away with all the what-ifs. Even so, one thought keeps creeping back up on me: If only I’d been born some years later. Surely what happened to me would never happen to a young woman today. But then I remind myself there’s no use carrying on that I didn’t land up in better times.

All the while, I’m still scribbling in this here book. Sometimes when everything else falls away, we finally see the clearest. I didn’t ever give myself enough credit for pushing through the hard times. I focused so hard on what I’d lost and how it’d been taken from me. I wish I’d come to understand sooner that I should be grateful for my own two feet, the very same footing that held me up all along.

24

Jessa

May 2022

I closed the journal, glancing at the clock and discovering I’d been reading for three hours. I’d expected Vance back earlier, but whatever delayed him had given me a chance to read to the end of the diary.

It was hard to wrap my mind around everything Carrie Buck had been through. One thing painfully obvious from the journal entries was that the woman had never been feebleminded. No, she’d just been a poor girl from the wrong side of the tracks who had neither the education nor the support necessary to beat a system that was rigged against young women like her.

I rose from my spot on the bed, stiff from all that time sitting. As I stretched my arms toward the ceiling and then twisted back and forth to loosen myself up, the movement made me think of Dustin, and I felt my lips tick up. I couldn’t say for sure what emotion welled inside me at the thought of him. Was it just a surprising fondness? Actual longing? I almost began to berate myself. But then I thought of Carrie and her insistence on being true to herself, so I allowed myself to simply feel what I was feeling. I shrugged to myself in the empty room. If the feeling persisted, sooner or later I’d be able to name the emotion.

I took my phone from the counter to check my missed calls and saw only one notification, but not from Vance. The voicemail was from Lydia, letting me know that ICE had responded to the plaintiffs’ request for a temporary restraining order to prevent any retaliatory deportations.

“Call me back!” Lydia had shouted in the recording, sounding frantic. “Doesn’t matter what time!”