by Laura McNeal
A month or so later, I wrote two letters—the real thing, handwritten, pen and paper. The first was to Robby and repeated Mary Beth’s story. The second was to my aunt Agnès and said that I knew she could never forgive me, that I didn’t forgive myself, but I wanted to tell her that I knew it was my fault that my uncle died in the fire.
Six weeks or so went by and we received a postcard with a picture of the Tuileries on the front. The postcard was addressed to my mother, not me, and it said, Dear Aunt Sharon, Please thank your daughter for the informative letter. R.
I looked at the postcard several times before it occurred to me that in addition to pretending I didn’t exist, he must have decided never to say or write my name.
A little while after that, one of my aunt Agnès’s monogrammed envelopes, cream-colored and heavy and smooth, appeared in the mailbox. When I opened it, her perfume wafted out like a ghost.
Dear Pearl, it said. Faute avouée est à moitié pardonnée.
She didn’t translate, but I managed to look it up and be comforted a little by her belief that a fault acknowledged is halfway forgiven. I might write to her sometime and tell her that I’ve pinned lines from the Victor Hugo poem above my desk and that they have helped me plan the future:
The breeze that takes you lifts me up alive,
And I’ll follow those I loved, I the exile.
Fifty-nine
It’s spring again, two months from graduation. I take night classes in botany and Spanish and work for an hourly wage that goes directly to the bank. By September, it will be enough for a Spanish immersion program at an institute two hours from a town that has a bus to San Ygnacio, Guanajuato. I’ll go from San Miguel to Silao and from there to the dirt road a former employee of my uncle’s has described to me as muy, muy larga and lined on one side with guayaba trees. When I see the church of San Ygnacio, I’ll get out and begin to ask, “Do you know Amiel de la Cruz Guerrero?” If the men and women shake their heads, I’ll find a tree with wide branches and take my place in the shade until the children creep forward. Then I’ll point to my eyes and say that I see into this world and the next, and I’m looking for one who has passed over la frontera and returned home. He speaks little and works in the fields. He lives in a house on the hill. Sometimes at night you will see him on his porch painted turquoise, looking out, sitting alone with two empty chairs. Do you know him?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
With particular thanks to John Hayek, Todd and Bia Jackson, Josh Krimston, Kathy Lambert, Jeff Lucia, Candido Rocha, and Diane and Bailey Wilson. What you knew, you shared with me. I am also indebted to Joan Slattery, Allison Wortche, George Nicholson, and, from beginning to end, to Tom.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Laura Rhoton McNeal holds a master’s degree in fiction writing from Syracuse University. She taught middle school and high school English before becoming a novelist and journalist.
Together, Laura and her husband, Tom McNeal, are the authors of Crooked, winner of the California Book Award for Juvenile Literature and an ALA Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults; Zipped, winner of the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Children’s Literature; Crushed (called “compelling” by Publishers Weekly); and The Decoding of Lana Morris, a Kirkus Reviews Best Young Adult Book of the Year.
The McNeals live in Southern California with their two sons, Sam and Hank. To learn more, please visit the authors’ Web site at www.mcnealbooks.com.