Page 72 of To the Moon and Back

DELLA THE DEEPEST PLACE ON EARTH

I waited at a café for, unbelievably, Steph Harper.

She’d started it. She’d sent me an email out of nowhere.

I ignored it for a few days, maybe just because I could?

But then I was in Tahlequah with the baby, visiting with Matthew and his family.

( Our family; I was still working on that.) I decided I’d be curious to see Steph’s mom and sister— maybe Steph herself—on one of my trips back here.

At some point we might overlap, probably Christmas. I replied.

Still, I was curious. We hadn’t seen each other in twelve years.

I was also anxious for a distraction. The election results had come in at three that morning, in favor of someone who freaked me out.

When the president-elect had given testimony against Indian gaming laws, and the tribal citizens they applied to, he’d said “they don’t look like Indians to me.

” It edged too close to what they’d said about me as a child in a courtroom, how the justice had cited my blood quantum.

It made me want better for my baby, who was Indian in a country still puzzling out what that meant.

The bell jingled at the entrance. I watched Steph through the wall of glass.

She struggled with crutches in a way that shouldn’t have been funny to me but almost was, her body stuck half in and half out the door.

I stayed in my chair and made little sounds to quiet the baby.

Steph kept her eyes on the floor—interesting—before ordering at the counter.

Was she pretending not to see me? I did the same.

I looked back and forth at what was in front of me, the baby in my arms and the pile of student essays on the table. The fancy red pen, uncapped on its side. Like, Here they are, my kid and my career! Or, I bet you thought you could stop me!

“Della?” she said.

Steph stood across from me, tall even as she hunched over her crutches.

She wore a white linen collared shirt and a pair of jean shorts, even in the fall weather.

Probably to show off the bandage, which was, admittedly, cool.

My own body had gone soft in the last year, in a new way I was slowly coming to like, but Steph looked like she’d come straight from army bootcamp.

Not thin, but weirdly disciplined, all purposeful angles and lines.

It was like she’d spent these years shaping each muscle to her will.

In college she’d spent money she didn’t have on monthly salon visits.

She’d had short hair then, too, but was insecure about its style and shape.

She’d agonized over it when she thought I wasn’t looking. Now she had a buzz cut.

“Hi, Steph,” I said. I didn’t get up.

A man stood behind her in a black apron, holding two large mugs. He set them on the table and backed quickly away.

With some trouble, Steph sat down. Her bad leg stuck straight out on an extra chair she’d dragged over with the help of a crutch.

“Still drink caramel macchiatos?” she said, nudging the drink in front of me. It was topped with whipped cream, rising above the rim like a cathedral spire.

“Of course not,” I said.

Her face fell.

“But I got here early and ate. Figured at least I’d have breakfast, get some work done?” I gestured at the pile of papers, at the very nice pen.

“ At least , like, in case you regret the rest of it?” Steph said. She tried to smile. I’d forgotten what nervous was like on her.

“Exactly,” I said.

“I meant what I said in my email,” Steph said. “I’m really sorry. I should have treated you better.”

“I appreciate that.”

“Can I ask how you’ve been since then? Are you comfortable with me asking that?”

I laughed. “Steph. Please. I’m not here to march you to a public stoning.”

She relaxed a little in her chair. “Yeah, I’d hope for a lighter sentence than that.”

“I’ve been well,” I said. “Want to ask about the kid on my chest?”

“Yes. Who is that?”

“My new baby.”

“He or she is beautiful! I can tell from the top three inches of the back of their little head.”

I smiled, gently turning the baby around to face her. I bounced him a little in my lap, and he reached out for the air in front of him. It made me miss the tiny person he’d been last month. I felt a silly ache for the week he’d discovered his hands.

Steph held out her own hands, either to mirror his or to ask to hold him. She caught herself, abruptly, and lifted her mug for a sip. She said, “See? From this angle you’re even more beautiful.”

“Did you read my op-ed?” I said. “Like, two weeks ago?”

Everyone in my life had read my op-ed. And of course, many thousands of people not in my life.

The ones who hated it had emailed me to make sure I knew it.

The ones who didn’t hate it had also emailed, but I was taking my time in replying to them.

They were kids like me, or parents and siblings and grandparents who’d lost kids like me.

Reading their stories was heavy, now that I was both myself and someone’s mother.

The op-ed was the first time I’d told my story, after more than two decades building back my privacy.

I’d never had a social media account and never agreed to an interview.

I’d ignored several emails from publishers wanting a memoir.

But the Indian Child Welfare Act was being challenged at the Supreme Court this term, again, over the contested adoption of a three-year-old Osage boy.

I had skin in the game. Now my baby did, too. This time, I’d said my piece.

“I didn’t know you’d written one,” Steph said. “Where can I find it?”

“So you aren’t caught up at all ?”

“I wish I were. I wish we’d stayed friends.”

What an insane thing to say, considering the last time I’d seen her. I ignored it. “It’s a lot to catch up on. You ready?”

“Ready.”

“After you nearly destroyed my spirit—”

“Oh my God, Della, I’m so sorry !”

“—I went home and lived with my parents. Gave up being gay. Started dating poor Ethan again. Got engaged. Planned a wedding. Sent out invitations.”

“Wow!” She was trying to sound neutral. For all she knew, Ethan could be the baby’s father.

“Then Lucy sent me this obnoxious email about what a big disappointment I had been, how I’d wasted her time and made her look bad to the colleagues she’d set me up with. But she was also like, ‘hey here’s another rec letter; you should apply one more time!’?”

“I love Lucy.”

“Cute. I applied to PhD programs,” I said. “ Secretly .”

“Hey! Your signature move!”

“Got in. Broke up with poor Ethan two weeks before the wedding. Went to UC Santa Barbara.”

“Wait, wait, what happened to Ethan?”

“He got married, maybe six months later? Three kids. He’s fine.”

“Cool.”

“Maybe I’ll email him someday,” I said, laughing, “and beg forgiveness over coffee.”

“Very funny. Then what?”

“I went in under an adviser I met through Lucy,” I said. “And then, in my second year—”

I stopped myself.

So much time had passed. I didn’t feel like talking through the rest of my résumé, and Steph hadn’t asked me to.

The six years of school didn’t mean much, in the long run, compared to nights I’d spent listening to the ocean outside my window.

Totally on my own for the first time and rewriting who I wanted to be.

I made very few friends in grad school, but that was okay.

I learned to surf. I went on a research trip to Tahiti.

I dated just enough to get to know myself, and to know I wanted more time alone.

Once, in a miracle of place and time that has happened three times in history, I observed and recorded a live frilled shark in the wild.

Steph wouldn’t understand what that meant in my field—the version of her I’d known could only process achievements in the category of shoots self into space.

I realized, my hand warm against the mug of sugar-coffee I wouldn’t drink if she paid me to, that I didn’t care if Steph was different now.

Or if she wasn’t. I no longer felt that urge to impress her.

I smiled at her, gently, and meant it. “You remember Sam,” I said.

“Of course,” Steph said. “Are you two still in touch?”

I nodded. “He’s a neonatologist in Kansas City. He got stuck in New York forever, becoming very fancy and sought-after, and then he moved to be near his family.”

“Good for him.”

“Well, that’s why I moved, too. I told you I’m visiting Matthew this week, but I live in Kansas City, too. I used to teach at USC. Now I’m at Haskell.”

“Wait. You moved to be near Sam?”

I almost laughed at her tone. Like we were all kids again, and she was still jealous.

Sam used to complain to me that every time he tiptoed back toward a friendship with Steph, she’d get weird about me and him and be impossible all over again.

He used to say Steph’s whole vibe reminded him of straight male culture, a culture he had no patience for.

I said, “Yes. I moved to be near Sam’s family. Our family. Our son is Sam’s biological nephew.”

I kissed the soft top of the baby’s head, avoiding Steph’s gaze.

I knew the guidance on talking to the baby about our family—early, honestly, often.

But I was still learning to steel myself for how other people might take it.

By the time our son could be a real witness, I’d need to model an easiness I didn’t yet have.

“Wow,” Steph said. Again, her voice was too neutral. Like most well-meaning people, she didn’t understand and seemed scared to ask for help.

“He’s Prairie Band Potawatomi and Kickapoo,” I said. “So that was a factor, too, for where we’d live.”

Steph looked like she was straining to form a question, maybe workshopping it in her head, but I waved her off with my hand. It was easier this way.

I said Sam’s sister wasn’t in a place to parent right now. (The why , she and Sam and I agreed, was not our story to tell.) She had called him in New York last year, asking him to come home and consider adoption. He, immediately, had thought of me.

Since when was romantic love required of parenthood? That wasn’t how it worked in the animal world—not that I still looked there all desperate for reassurance. Sam and I could live together, even as we continued to date other people. We could parent together.

What I didn’t tell Steph was what it had meant to me, to hear Sam say I’d be good at this.

The out-loud echo of what I’d known a long time—not just that I knew how to raise a child like this child, but that—apart from anything that had happened to me, or anything that had been done to me—I would make a loving parent.

I was a loving parent. I invited everyone in to love our baby, everyone I possibly could.

Sam’s sister. Sam’s mother. Sam’s giant extended family.

My mother, who had lived with us for the first month of the baby’s life.

Matthew, and his wife I’d decided not to hate so much, and the three little siblings I was starting to get to know.

If I ever found my own bio-mother—off and on I still looked for her—I’d invite her in, too.

Steph was nodding, smiling, amazed. It felt good to sit with her, and I realized I did want to know about her life. The shark bite was, I suspected, the least interesting part of it. I would stay here as long as I wanted. I’d order an early lunch. I had nothing to prove.

Back in college, Steph had made me feel known and wanted. It had been special at the time, a gift, but so many people had done that since. I had made myself knowable. It was the rule in my life now, not the exception.

I never thought I’d be an adoptive parent.

I had been so literal back then, so punishing of myself, like my only ticket to the human family would be through genetic offspring.

Last year, when Lucy and I met for drinks at a conference, I was finally ready to laugh at that.

Lucy said she’d been almost scared to teach me about the parenting behaviors of hamsters and black widows.

She said I’d come a long way since then.

I said, sure, I turned out all right. But weren’t we peers now?

She raised one eyebrow, flagged down the bartender, and ordered me another drink.

My child wasn’t the only part of my life that surprised me.

I’d never expected the relationship I now had with my parents.

Or the job that let me think and write and teach about the ocean.

Ninety-five percent of it was still unexplored.

I’d been so determined back in Utah, after all the things I’d been wrong about in college, to even just once stand at a seashore.

I’ve done that now, many times. The first time I saw it was my first night on my own, after dropping my bags in grad student housing.

I thought of my mother, the one who’d carried me.

She’d grown up near a beach, and had felt sand and cold water like I felt now.

She’d made choices, one and then another, which didn’t need forgiving.

Standing alone, at the edge of an unthinkable volume of water, I saw stars.

Now there was a watercolor painting of the Mariana Trench at home, hung above the baby’s crib.

More blacks than blues. Abstract, unknowable, the deepest place on Earth.

Mom said, on one of her first visits after the move, that the painting was spooky.

Dark. Not for babies. I said I didn’t want the baby to be scared of the ocean, or anything else we can’t fully know.