Over the past few weeks, we’ve had a long-term substitute in math. Our regular teacher is out for all of April for some major hush-hush family situation. The sub is lousy, and I’m getting more and more lost, and more and more frustrated. I actually miss Hawk Lady.
Eliana, Joci, Clare, and Olivia are all talking about Joci’s upcoming birthday party at lunch. I interrupt the happy conversation and blurt out, “Long-term subs are the worst. She’s terrible! I can’t follow her explanations at all.”
“Well, if those kids would shut up, maybe she could teach us something,” says Clare.
Clare is probably right, and that makes it annoying.
“It’s a total waste of time. She can’t explain how to solve quadratic equations or the quadratic formula and all that other quad garbage.” I’m just getting started on my rant. “She’s pathetic and should never have gotten a teaching degree or license or whatever it is that teachers need,” I add.
“Well, I feel sorry for her,” Clare says a little defensively.
“Yeah, but what am I supposed to do? I’m already totally lost in math. She’s the last thing I need.”
Then Joci piles on. “You’re being kind of harsh, Corinna. What’s up with you?”
“Whatever.”
I sound like a jerk, but I’m mad about math, and I’m mad that Clare and Joci are making me feel bad about being mad. Joci’s in the advanced section of math, and Clare loves math, so they don’t have to worry. But I do. And besides, at the dance when they were busy having fun and I wasn’t, they didn’t even seem to notice.
After school, I go to the band room to get my flute. My heart stops. My favorite “orange boy” is talking to Mr. Morgan about ordering new drumsticks.
“Hey, Alex. Hey, Mr. Morgan.”
“Hey, Corinna.”
I grab my flute and music folder and hurry out so Mr. Morgan can’t force me into another heavy-duty conversation. Alex must have finished his fascinating drumstick conversation, because he starts walking out a few steps behind me.
“Wait up,” I hear him say.
I turn around and wait for him. He doesn’t say anything, so I ask him, “So . . . what do you think of the math sub?”
He laughs and says, “She sucks.”
“Can you follow what she’s saying?”
“No, she mumbles and I don’t think she knows what she’s doing.”
“That’s what I think. Joci and Clare think she’s fine. I don’t get it.”
“Maybe they’re math geniuses.”
“Yeah, well . . . anyhow. I’m glad to hear you agree. See ya.”
“Yeah.”
I did it! I started a conversation with him. Check that off my list of New Year’s resolutions! So what if it was a few months late. I sure hope this gets easier.
Secrets
On Saturday, I have a whole day with nothing to do but my outline for a five-page research paper on the internment of Japanese Americans. I’m looking online at photos by Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange of the kids and parents who had to wear luggage tags with their camp destinations, and the signs that said Go home Japs. I’m pretty horrified to read about the treatment our country gave them even though most of them were U.S. citizens. I wonder if Mom knew about that.
Even though I chose the topic and it’s pretty interesting, I’m not exactly thrilled to spend this beautiful spring day doing research. As soon as Dad tells me he’ll be gone for an hour to get his hair cut, I head back into my parents’ room, once again locking the door. I burrow through the hanging clothes and find the duffel bag with Mom’s journal. Dad hasn’t moved it. Maybe he doesn’t know about it. I feel like a spy, but I can’t resist reading more. I’m not prepared for what comes next.
The page is dated a year after the one before, so she must have been twenty-eight when she wrote it.
Well, so much for my attempt at writing about my feelings. My parents were terrible at the whole expressing-your-feelings thing, too. How did Jennifer get to be so good at it? At least compared to me, that is. I tried to explain to Daniel that my parents kept secrets from me, big secrets, and how betrayed I’d felt. I wanted him to understand how awful it was when I found out about my father. I’m not sure he gets it, that having my parents lie to me by NOT telling me that my dad wasn’t my biological dad was a huge deal. If I hadn’t overheard them arguing after they read some article about genetic testing, I’d probably never have found out. My dad was completely silent when I asked them about what they were fighting about. Mom said Dad and Jennifer might be at risk for Huntington’s disease and should get tested to see if they carried the same gene as my father’s brother, who had just been diagnosed with it.
I can’t stop after one page. I have to get to the most important part.
Then I asked the obvious question of what about me, shouldn’t I get tested. They both just looked at me. Finally, after what felt like a century, Mom told me that my genes were a different mix than theirs because they used someone else’s sperm to help them conceive me. I was shocked and demanded to know why they hadn’t told me. Mom tried to explain that the doctor had advised them not to tell me, that there was no reason for me to know because my father was truly my father, regardless of the whole sperm thing. But frankly, it was my information to know. And when you consider the whole genetic component of various diseases, it can be very important. Now that I’m pregnant, I’ve been thinking a lot about genetics and what I’m passing on to my baby. What if my donor father or his blood relatives developed or carried a genetic disease? I didn’t talk to my parents for two weeks after I forced them into telling me. I could barely look at them. They were crushed, but I was outraged.
There is no way to stop before I get to the end of this, so I keep going.
After I told Jennifer, she tried to play the role of peacekeeper, but she couldn’t really understand. She really was my parents’ kid, 100 percent. That hurt, too, that we weren’t 100 percent sisters.
It’s super-weird to be reading this stuff about Mom, about my grandparents, and about my aunt. Why hadn’t Mom burned it or asked my dad to do something with it? Did she want me to find it? Had she forgotten about it when she was getting more and more out of it at the end? What other secrets did she keep from me? I’m excited to read more about her, but I’m also kind of scared. I should probably talk to Dad or Aunt Jennifer about this shocking stuff, but it’s totally weird and gigantically confusing, and I don’t know how to even begin that conversation.
All this new information in Mom’s journal has started me thinking about who I am and who my mother was, and it makes me so mad that she’s not here to help me figure that out. If only my parents had had me earlier, I would have had my mother longer. Is there also a secret about why they waited so long to have me? They were married five years before I was born. I feel cheated out of time with my mom, of having her be a part of my life while I go through high school.
Sometimes I wonder if there’s anything I could have done that would have made things turn out differently. In my group at school, we talked about guilt, and it seems like everyone has something they feel guilty about. Some of the things seemed ridiculous, like if Chris had visited his dad on the day he died then he wouldn’t have died at all, but maybe my guilty feelings sounded ridiculous to them.
My biggest guilt is that I didn’t tell Mom I loved her on the day she died. Even though I knew it was probably her last day, I felt uncomfortable talking to her because she was so out of it. Maybe if there hadn’t been other people in the room so much of the time, I would have found a way. At the end, it was kind of scary to see her lying there, barely breathing. I couldn’t tell for sure if she was alive or not. I wanted to hold her hand, but I didn’t know what I was and wasn’t supposed to do. I wish someone had told me it was okay to talk to her and hold her hand. And I wish I knew what to expect when she died. I didn’t know if there would be some dramatic, awful, scary event or if it would be peaceful. I wasn’t even there when she died. It happened
in the middle of the night, when I was asleep. The next morning, Dad came into my room and told me.
“Is her body still here?” I whispered.
“Yes, she’ll be here until nine, when the undertaker comes,” he whispered back. “Do you want to see her?”
I didn’t want to, but that felt like an awful thing to say, so I told him I didn’t want to go downstairs.
“That’s okay. You don’t have to.”
But now I wish I had. I wish I’d said good-bye.
Speaking Up
When I get back from Joci’s birthday party, I find a letter on my bed. I don’t recognize the handwriting. Even though I love getting mail, this envelope is a mystery, and I’m worried it will be something I don’t want to know. I can barely read the handwriting, but when I see it’s signed by David, I go back to the beginning to see if I can decipher it. It’s been two months since I sent my letter, and I really want to know what David DiGenoa has to say.
Dear Corinna,
Thank you for your letter. Sorry about your mom. I’m living with my grandparents now. Good luck.
David
Boys aren’t exactly chatty in their letters, but it’s nice he wrote back. I hope things go okay with his grandparents. It doesn’t sound like he wants to become pen pals or anything, so I don’t think I’ll write back. Too bad he doesn’t go to our school. We could use more nice guys around here, guys who could be antidotes to boys like Hank and Dylan. At least Hank isn’t in any of my classes, unlike Dylan, who is in almost all of them, including PE.
We’re starting kickboxing this week. Dylan is bouncing a Super Ball up and down, trying to act cool while the rest of us are just standing around in our PE clothes, waiting for the teacher to show up and teach us some fancy kicks and punches. Then Dylan opens his big fat mouth. I can see the bright green elastics on his braces stretch, and I just know he’s going to say something obnoxious. I hope they snap in his mouth.
“Hey, Shamu,” Dylan teases.
Nicole looks like she’s about to cry.
My face gets hot, my back starts to sweat, and I jump into action.
“You are such a jerk, Dylan. How would you like it if you got teased about your parents’ being divorced or being a short shrimp or your crooked teeth? Huh?”
Then I turn to Nicole.
“Nicole, come stand with us. Just ignore him. He’s nothing but a poser.”
Nicole’s face transforms from blank to a big, wide smile. I’m shocked at myself and how good it feels to stand up for Nicole. It’s just too bad it took me so many months to get up my nerve to tell that loser to shove it.
Dylan tries a lame, “Oh, come on, I was only joking. Can’t you take a joke?”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” I practically spit out.
The girls in our class all nod in agreement, making a sea of bobbing heads.
“You go, girl,” someone shouts.
“You rock!” cheers Eliana.
Soon the teacher arrives, puts on some rowdy music, and begins demonstrating roundhouse kicks, jabs, uppercuts, and hooks. I’m pretending Dylan is my target when I do my jabs. Jab, jab, jab. My jabs and hooks are flying. One time, I do a right hook up into my own chin, which kind of hurts, but luckily no one notices.
After our showdown with Dylan in PE, Nicole begins to hang out with Joci, Clare, Eliana, Lena, Olivia, and me. She’s really fun, and when she doesn’t have that blank look on her face, she’s really pretty. I feel sorry for her, though. It must be so painful to be teased over and over about your body. It’s hard enough to feel confident about how you look without other people being super-critical. But no matter what I say to her about the teasers being jerks, I can’t undo the fact that she is a little heavy.
There are definitely times when I don’t feel good about what I see in the mirror. I don’t like my nose at all. It is way too big for my face. And my ears stick out, just like my dad’s. I used to ask my mom if I could get them stitched closer to my head. She always said, “Oh, Corinna, you’re beautiful just the way you are.”
But moms have to say that, even if it’s not true.
Just when I’m feeling unsure about how I can help Nicole, she surprises me.
“Hey, Shamu,” Jake taunts in a mean singsong tone in the cafeteria.
“Shamu? I’m sick and tired of being called Shamu. Screw Shamu. I am no whale, and I am no animal. I am Nicole, and I have feelings, and don’t you ever call me Shamu again. Do you want me to call you skeleton because you are so thin you look like you could blow away? You pathetic wimp. Give me a break!”
“Yeah, Shamu, you tell him,” says Dylan. The very same Dylan who just last week also called her Shamu.
“I’m talking to you, too, Dylan. Don’t be calling me Shamu anymore.”
“Okay, sorry. My bad.”
Nicole continues, “What’s with everyone? What’s wrong with you that you have to go around insulting other people? That is so twisted.”
Silence. No one knows what to say. I’m totally proud of her but scared, too. I’m scared one of those boys will hit her or something. Or that she’ll hit one of them.
“Ow! Ow!” cheers Eliana.
“What she said,” pipes up Olivia.
The whole cafeteria feels likes it’s ready to explode and I don’t want to hang around waiting for flying objects.
“Let’s get this girl-power show on the road!” I announce with a mix of excitement and fear.
As we walk out of the hot, noisy cafeteria, I tell Nicole, “That was so brave of you,” and wait for my heart to slow down.
After lunch, we have social studies. I’m half asleep and the minutes feel like centuries. Mr. Spinolli gives us five minutes at the end of class to start our homework while he meets with a group of kids about their final project. I look up from my notebook and notice Joci’s face. She looks really sad, which is not normal for her.
The bell rings, and everyone is pushing out of the door at once, eager to get out of Mr. Spinolli’s classroom. Joci is one of the last ones out the door, and I wait for her in the hallway, so we can walk to our lockers together after the stampede. We greet each other with the usual, “Hey,” and then walk slowly down the hall. Not sure what to say, I ask if she’s mad at me.
“No, just kind of bummed out.”
“What’s wrong?”
“My sister has mono, and my mom’s all paranoid that I’m going to get it. On top of that, we had to cancel our trip to New York this coming weekend because she’s so sick.”
“That’s awful. Do you think you’re getting mono?”
“Every time I yawn or feel tired, I get worried, but so far, I don’t have any of the other symptoms. I hate that feeling, like you’re waiting to get sick.”
“I know what you mean.”
Hidden
Much to my relief, Dad has recently started playing tennis again with his friend Mike, the guy who got the facial. I can’t see any improvement in his face when he shows up at our door, but he does smell like vanilla. Maybe he’s using some new cream or something.
As soon as they leave, it’s time for my routine. I run up the stairs into my parents’ room and begin reading in Mom’s notebook, starting at the place where I’d stopped the last time after that megashock of a secret about my mother’s family.
I’m so worried because Corinna has a high fever. It is so scary when neither she nor her pediatrician can tell me what’s wrong. I can’t wait until her sweet little face is smiling again.
I must have gotten better, because the next entry is three years later. How could she have waited that long before writing again? I can barely go three days before I have too many things I have to get off my chest by writing in mine.
Deborah, Daniel, and Jennifer are all doing their best, trying to help me with the sorrow and pain I feel about losing my baby boy. I can’t stop imagining what he would look like if he’d been born a few months later. It kills me when Corinna keeps asking me why she can’t have a baby brother o
r sister. We almost told her about Mommy being pregnant, but I had read that a toddler’s sense of time would make it feel like forever before the baby was born. So we waited. Then, after the miscarriage, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her. What would I say? You had a baby brother who we were going to name Zachary, but he died before any of us got to see him? How would she be able to understand that? How can anyone understand that? But I do know that someday I will have to tell her. I want to tell her. I don’t want to keep secrets the way my parents did.
Wow. Mom really had a lot of sad things going on that I didn’t know about. This gets me thinking about how quiet she was whenever I begged her for a baby brother or sister. Mom’s usual response was to tell me how lucky they were to have me. I got so frustrated that they never really gave me an answer no matter how I asked. Now that I’ve read about Zachary, I can’t believe she had been pregnant while I was toddling around. I read her words over a few times. “It kills me when Corinna keeps asking me why she can’t have a baby brother or sister.” Those are almost the same words I got so mad at Joci for using, when she said it would kill her if her mom died. I hate to think that my words were so hurtful to Mom. I had no idea.
Speaking of words that hurt, could there be any more radio ads and TV commercials about Mother’s Day?
“It’s not too early to order flowers for Mother’s Day.”
“Don’t forget to wish your mom a happy Mother’s Day.”
“Just in time for Mother’s Day.”
“Celebrate Mom.”
When I’m not hearing the ads, I’m seeing them. Hallmark card signs fill the CVS pharmacy windows. Talk about in your face.
Sunday morning is Mother’s Day, and it’s one of those sad days. As soon as I wake up, I spread out my quilt — her quilt — on my bed and spend some time thinking about Mom, each square reminding me of different memories of her. The center square has a piece of the nightgown she was wearing when she died. It’s really soft and delicate, with pale blue flowers on a white background. I think they are forget-me-nots. The piece from her blue flannel bathrobe reminds me of all those breakfasts together and of when she got up at night with me when I was sick or having a bad dream. She loved that bathrobe. Another square is from her purple silk scarf. It’s shiny and smooth. One of the squares on the top row is from the blue swirly batik dress she wore all the time. Then there’s the blue-and-white Japanese cotton I used from the napkins that her host family sent her as a gift one year. Each square is connected to a memory of her. During the day, I keep the quilt in my Mom Box, but at night, I spread it out under my pillow.
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