by Cynthia Hand
“I’m all about the drama. Trust me.” I consider telling him about being adopted. I’m working out where I should start, how I even bring up the subject, but before I get a chance, Bastian says, “I mean, your drama’s mostly over now, right? Your mom’s okay.”
“My mom’s okay,” I agree.
He nods. “I love hanging out at your house when we’re all over there, watching you and your mom interact.”
“You watch us? You mean, like zebras at the zoo?”
“You’re really classy zebras. It’s so obvious that she’s your mom. She tilts her head the same way you do when she asks a question. And she uses her hands to talk exactly like you. And she bites her lip when she’s thinking, and you do that all the time.”
“You’ve been paying attention,” I murmur.
“Well, that and you look just like her,” he says.
I glance away, out the window, smiling. It’s fully dark now, and the lights of Idaho Falls have blinked on and it feels like I’m staring down into a field of stars. And then I look back at Bastian. “I guess I do.”
“So, see? You’ve had a lot of drama lately, but you’re at the happy ending.”
I laugh. “The happy ending.”
“You end up here,” he says, gesturing out to the pretty view. “Right now. With me.”
That’s right, I think.
I end up here.
Dear X,
I keep imagining your parents right now, preparing themselves, setting up your room, building the crib and putting up a painting of a rabbit or a sheep or something equally cute on the wall they painted in soft colors just for you. I want your mom to have a rocking chair. I want her to sing to you. My mom used to sing to me, I think. When I was little.
I called my mom today. She asked me how I was, and I said I was ready.
“Can I move in with you?” I asked her. “After she’s born?”
“You want to move to Colorado?” she asked me, surprised. I always wanted to stay in Idaho before, with Dad and his quiet instead of Mom and her yelling.
“I don’t want to go back with Dad,” I told her, and I didn’t tell her why—God knows she’s already fully aware that Dad has his problems. I didn’t want to bring up the way he looked at Ted, and how every time I think about Dad now, I see Ted’s face trying to be nice to this guy who’s obviously a racist asshole.
“I’m sure we can work something out,” Mom said. “I’ll ask Brett, but I think he’ll be okay with it.”
“Thanks.”
“Then you can really put it behind you, once this is all over. You can start fresh,” she said.
“Right,” I agreed with her. “I’ll have a clean slate.”
I really am ready now, X.
It makes me think about something Heather said once, back when she was about as pregnant as I am now. Her grandmother was in the process of dying of cancer, and Heather said she felt like they were both having a similar experience—her grandmother and her. They were about to go through something inevitable and terrifying, something that they couldn’t control and didn’t know exactly when or how it would happen. But eventually they’d both just have to get it over with—to die, to give birth—and come out on the other side.
I guess I’ll see you on the other side.
S
41
We’re here. Mom and Nyla and I are finally standing in the middle of Twenty-Fourth Street, in Boise, Idaho, looking up at a large brick building with the Salvation Army symbol over the doorway. It’s called the Marion Pritchett School now, and it’s still meant for pregnant girls, but the girls don’t live here anymore. Behind the brick building there’s another long, tan-colored building, and a van that says “Giraffe Laugh Early Learning Center” on the side. School’s not in session, because it’s spring break, so everything’s perfectly quiet.
We’re still standing in the street when a woman comes out the front door. She’s wearing a plaid shirt and glasses and comfortable shoes, and when she sees us she pushes her glasses up on her nose and asks, “Can I help you, ladies?”
I wish she were wearing a name tag, so I could tell if she’s Melly, but then I guess Melly is not Melly’s real name. S said she changed all the names, so Ted and Dawson and Evelyn—the whole cast of the characters that made up her life—are all going about their business in the world being called something else.
Except for Amber. I think S kept Amber’s name, because that’s also the name of the woman on adoptedsearch.org who was looking for her daughter, and that can’t be a coincidence. So maybe she didn’t change Melly’s name, either, or the other people from the school. I mean, why would she need to?
“No, we’re just walking around,” I say to maybe-Melly.
The woman looks both me and Nyla up and down to see if we’re uniquely qualified to go to the school. Neither of us looks pregnant, but maybe we’re not showing yet.
“If you’re interested in becoming students here, I’d be glad to give you a tour,” she says.
“That’d be gr—” begins Nyla.
“No,” I say firmly. There is a part of me that wants to see the room where S slept and the living area where she did her homework and the basement where Brit was hiding on the Fourth of July. But the dorms have all been converted to offices, from what I could tell by using the powers of the internet. I also don’t want to sneak around pretending to be someone I’m not. I only wanted to see the school. To stand on the same sidewalk where S stood, if only for a few minutes. To see what she saw.
But from the outside.
“Okay, well, if you change your mind, here’s my card.” The woman pulls a little piece of cardstock out of her pocket and hands it to me.
“Thanks.”
She smiles and passes us and goes down the street to her car, and then gets in and drives away.
“Do you think that was Melly?” Nyla whispers.
“I don’t know. Melly worked here like nineteen years ago. Did that lady look like she’d been here nineteen years?”
“I’m going to choose to believe that was Melly,” Mom says.
I turn to her and smile. “Me too.”
She takes my hand and squeezes three times. I squeeze back.
I glance at the card. Carmella Lopez, it reads.
“So what do you want to do now?” Mom asks me.
“I want to find S.”
Finally, we’re ready. Mom is stronger. Her body has accepted the new heart. The doctors don’t even seem worried anymore. She’s got pink in her cheeks, a little spring in her step. She’s a beast in her physical therapy. The medical professionals have okayed her for a short trip to Boise. So we’re here.
Mom laughs. “I meant for lunch.”
“Oh. I have no idea.” I meet my mom’s eyes. “But I do want to find her, Mom. Not just take a tour of the letters, but actually find her. That’s really okay with you? You’re not saying that because you know it’s what I want to hear?”
She smiles, and it’s a real smile and not one she’s putting on to make me feel better.
“I want you to find her,” she says. “It’s what I want, too.”
“Okay. If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure if you’re sure.” She swings my hand between us the way she used to when I was little and she was trying to make even walking down a sidewalk something fun, like a dance.
“I’m sure.”
“Good.”
“Well, come on, then,” Nyla says from up ahead of us. “Let’s go find S.”
We meet Dad for lunch, and then we stop by an office supply store, where Dad buys a big whiteboard like the ones he uses at school, because he’s a nerdy teacher and thinks all of life’s puzzles can be solved by mapping things out in dry erase marker. Then we go over to the BSU library and make copies of the letters for each of us and spend a few hours poring over them, reacquainting ourselves with S’s world. Taking notes. Looking for the little details that might turn out to be clues.
“What a pret
ty campus,” Dad says as we’re bumming around Boise State.
“Dad.”
“I’m just saying.”
He’s more open to the find-the-birth-mother quest than I expected him to be. Things changed the night he read the letters. He’s officially on board now.
“Okay,” he says when we’re settled into one of the study rooms at BSU. He sticks the whiteboard to the wall with Fun-Tak putty. “Let’s write what we know.”
At the end of the next hour, the board looks like this:
First name starts with S.
Lived at Booth.
Could have come from another city or state, but it’s unlikely, since her father visits her.
S mentions that her old high school was BHS (Boise? Borah? Possibly Bishop Kelly High school, but it would then have a BK).
Mother in Colorado.
Brother a football “star?” at college across the country.
Amber mentions that S’s father is “big politician,” and S talks about his constituents. The NII form says he’s a lawyer.
Check out potential colleges that Dawson could have attended.
I step back, taking it all in. It seems like a lot, what’s written up there. We know so much more now, about S, about her life.
“So what’s the plan?” Dad asks, because if there’s one thing Dad loves, it’s a plan. “What’s next for today?”
“I think we should head over to the Boise Public Library.” I’ve already given this a lot of thought. “Check out the yearbooks again. Maybe look at some microfilm for the local newspaper for the high school football ‘stars’ who were playing at the time S’s brother would have been. Make a list of all the state and US congressmen for the year in question, especially those who were newly elected. We should also look into city council members and any other elected office.”
Dad raises his hand. “I get football.”
“Yearbooks,” Mom laughs. “Maybe I could recognize your chin.”
I’ve already tried that and totally failed, but okay.
I turn to Nyla. “I guess that leaves us with the rotten politicians.”
She cringes. “Yay.”
42
“I’m ready to call it a day,” Dad sighs about three hours later.
I rub my eyes. “Yeah, me too.”
“Me three,” says Nyla. “Plus the library’s about to close.”
I glance over at Mom, who’s still buried in yearbooks, but she doesn’t look up.
“Hey, Mom. Mom?”
The librarian gives me a “shh” look. I get up and go over to touch Mom lightly on the shoulder.
“Yes, honey,” she says, her voice kind of dreamy.
“We’re tapped out over here.”
“All right.” She closes the current yearbook.
“Any luck?”
The tiniest frown appears behind her eyes. “No. I mean, maybe. There are a lot of sixteen-year-old girls at these schools with a first name that starts with the letter S. But no, nobody who’s obviously the one we’re looking for. How about you?”
I sigh. Nyla and I made a list of congressmen and tried to cross-check those names with what we know about S and her family, and we were able to eliminate several men who were in office at the time, but there was no clear candidate.
“We did okay,” I say. “But like you say, no one obvious.”
We gather up our stuff and leave the library. We’re quiet on the drive back to the hotel.
“We did good today,” Dad says. “We made progress.”
But it doesn’t feel like we have anything more to go on than when we started. It seems like all this information provides us with leads, but the leads don’t go anywhere.
Maybe that’s on purpose, whispers a tiny warning voice in the back of my head, one I’ve been trying to ignore. Maybe S didn’t give you any real clues because this isn’t a scavenger hunt for her. This is her life. If she wanted to make contact, she could do it in a heartbeat.
Shut up, voice. I know. I know. But it’s like Mom said in the beginning. It’s been almost twenty years. Things change.
“What about my birth father?” I say.
My dad’s smile dims a little. He might be on board with me finding S, but I don’t think he’s as sure about D. Still, he’s determined to be supportive and let it be my choice.
“Let’s focus on one thing at a time,” Mom says brightly. “We have so much on your birth mother, and if we locate her, she can give us Dawson’s real name. It shouldn’t be too difficult from there.”
“Exactly,” Dad says. “Let’s stick with S.”
At the hotel, Mom takes a nap. Dad goes for a walk. He says he needs to get some air, even though the air quality in Boise’s pretty bad—what people won’t tell you about Boise is that it’s shaped like a bowl, and sometimes there’s an inversion, and all the city’s pollution hangs out in the bowl. The sky is a gritty mix of brown and gray. The snow’s all melted off, and the grass is dead. The air is cold and wet and this strange kind of heavy.
Boise is a pretty good reflection of my mood, I find.
Nyla and I go out on the balcony of the hotel room to talk.
“Okay, tell me straight,” she says. “How are you doing?”
She’s been quiet today, mostly, tagging along, offering her opinion only when called upon. It’s not like her.
“Fine,” I report. “How about you?”
“Today wasn’t quite the episode of Cold Case Files that I expected, but that’s okay.” That’s how this search thing sounded, when we were talking about it earlier this month. We were all going to go back to Boise, where my story started, and we were going to put all the jigsaw pieces together to form a picture. But we didn’t. We’re not any closer to finding my birth mother than we were yesterday. Or last month. Or last year.
I was trying to put on an “oh well, at least we tried” face for my parents, because they don’t want to see me get hurt. But it hurts.
I say all of this to Nyla, in not so many words.
“That bites,” she says. “I’m sorry. Maybe it’s not the right time, you know?”
“The right time? When’s the right time?”
“Maybe you’re not supposed to find her now. What’s that your mom always says? Things happen when they’re supposed to happen?”
“Something like that.”
“It’ll happen if it’s supposed to happen,” she says.
“What if it’s not supposed to happen?”
“I guess by this logic, that would mean it won’t happen.”
“Like ever.”
She’s not exactly cheering me up.
“I just want to know,” I murmur. The hotel balcony has a magnificent view of the parking lot, and below me I watch a woman trying to get her screaming toddler into her car.
“Oh come on!” I hear her say in frustration. “Let’s go!”
This woman might also be a good reflection of my mood. Or the toddler. I’m not sure which.
“What do you want to know?” Nyla asks.
“Who she is.”
“You know who she is. You know the important stuff, anyway.”
I sigh. She’s right. “Then I guess I want to know who I am.”
“What, and you want to meet her so she can tell you? How would she know who you are?”
“Well . . .” Gosh, Nyla, I think, way to be rude about it. “She’s a part of me, a part of who I am that I’ve never had access to.”
“Yeah, you said that, once. But the thing is, Cass,” Nyla gently points out, “we all wonder who we are, whether we know who gave birth to us or not. We all ask the same questions, right? Who am I? Why am I here? And even if we know the simple answers, the question never goes away. It never gets easier. It never gets solved.”
I get the sense that she’s not talking about my life so much anymore, but hers.
“I know my first parents’ names, and my brother’s name. I know the place I was born. I know why I ended up in the orphanage
. I don’t want to remember some things, but I do. Like the smell of rotting food. My mother hid me in a trash can when the bad men came to our house. It’s in the file my mom has.”
She’s never told me that. I hug her, but it doesn’t feel like enough.
“I can’t really remember her face,” she says. “I wish there was a picture, or a letter, but I don’t think she even spoke English. Bindu, that was her name. Did I ever tell you?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Nyles.”
She sighs. “No, I’m sorry. I just made this about me. Wow.”
“It’s about both of us, I think.”
“My point is, I know everything. I know what picture my second parents looked at when they picked me out of a pile of photographs of these sad parentless children who were available to be rescued. I know that part of my story, but none of that defines who I am now. I am who I am. Full stop.”
“You’re right.”
“Dang right, I’m right. But it still sucks, what happened—or I guess didn’t happen, today. Maybe you’ll find your birth mom someday, but don’t build up your identity on that. On her. Because that’s not on her. It’s on you.”
“Oh, Ny, tell me what you really think.”
She laughs. “Sorry. A little tough love, there.”
“Thank you. And thanks for coming over with me. Again. I know it’s not easy for you.”
She turns to give me a full hug. “No worries. I got you, babe.”
“I got you, too.”
She starts humming “Bless the Broken Road” by Rascal Flatts.
Through the sliding glass door I can see that my mom’s awake. She waves at me. “Hey, let’s go in.”
“I’m going to go scrounge up some candy from the vending machine,” Nyla says after we come back inside.
Mom pats the bed next to her, the most familiar of gestures. I sit. She puts an arm around me.
“So today didn’t go the way you thought.”
“No, but that’s okay.”
She leans back to look at me. “It is?”
“I’m not going to find all the answers in one day,” I say.
She makes a little hmm noise. “Yes, that’s probably true.”