The Orphan Daughter

by Cari Noga

  “How could I what?” My back winces as I stoop to pick up the cup, which didn’t break, at least.

  “Tell them I couldn’t go to the dinner!” She’s still in her pajamas and barefoot. Never been outside barefoot. Her face is flushed and she’s fairly vibrating with fury.

  “Tell who you—” Oh no. Gloria’s memorial award dinner. Did I leave an email open? How could she have found out?

  “How could you!” she says again, her fists clenched.

  “Lots of reasons. It’s in New York. On a school night. It would be expensive.” I tick off the reasons on my fingers. The coffee has soaked through my jeans, making them clammy against my legs.

  “I could stay with Phoebe!” My own rationalization, thrown back in my face.

  “It’s still on a school night.”

  “So what? This is more important!”

  “I get to make that decision, actually.” The real problem is she’s not adapting here. A trip to New York isn’t in her best interest right now. The day of the week doesn’t matter.

  “Stupid school! One day!”

  “At least two days, to get there and back.”

  “Two days, then. What’s the big deal?”

  “That’s exactly what you said about the detention, and that’s the big deal. Your attitude. That nothing besides what you want matters. This reaction is why I didn’t tell you about it.”

  Her lip is trembling and she’s shivering in her thin pajamas. Am I really so sure? A flicker of resentment, like I felt in Paul’s office, crackles alongside the doubt. This is exactly the kind of decision I didn’t want in my life anymore. All this drama over one dinner. “It’s important that you settle in here. This is where you live now.” I step over the plants, heading back to the house for dry clothes.

  “Oooh! Not because I want to! Not if I—” Lucy stops short as we walk to the house on our parallel paths.

  “Not if you what?” I turn around to look at her, standing stock-still on the stump, her arms folded, tousled hair wild around her face. The memory of our first meeting, when her hair was pulled back in braids, surfaces. Why doesn’t she wear it that way anymore?

  “Nothing.”

  Nothing, my eye. But with her lips now clamped shut and her eyes telegraphing unmitigated hostility, she’s certainly not telling me. I push open the side door, which feels far heavier than it should. Lucy follows me in and stalks upstairs, banging her door. A second later Lexie shoots downstairs and through the kitchen. Deserting again.

  The kitchen computer is on and my email is open. I sit down to read. Lupe Hernandez, president of Latinas in Media, replied, suggesting that perhaps Lucy could join them via Skype for the awards.

  A compromise. Hallelujah! I jog upstairs to present Lucy with the news.

  “I want to be there!” She sits up on her bed.

  “You’ve made that perfectly clear. But that’s not an option. This is.”

  “It’s for my mom. It’s a big deal!”

  I blanch at the hint of tears in her voice. Anger is easier to deal with.

  “I understand. I do. And this is a way you can participate.”

  A wail, in between a sob and a snort, comes out of her throat. “It’s not fair.”

  Maybe not. Nothing has been since April, why should it change now? But she’s set my doubts smoldering again. What would Sarah have said?

  “They said it’s an annual award. Next year, after you’re more settled into school and all . . .”

  “Next year!” She makes that sob-snort noise again and flops back onto her pillow.

  “Lucy . . .”

  I reach for her shoulder, but she turns to the wall, away from my touch.

  Chapter 49

  LUCY

  Jared’s not at school Monday, so I don’t have anyone to sit with at lunch. I’ve talked to a couple of other kids who seem OK, a girl with blue streaks in her hair who’s in my Digital Communications class and another girl from Western Hemisphere Studies whose locker is near mine. But they don’t have A lunch.

  Pete does, though. From the corner of my eye, there he is, at his same table as far from the lunch monitors as possible, with the kid he gets on the bus with, one who’s in our gym class, and two more I don’t know. They’re laughing and loud and obnoxious here, too, but you don’t notice it so much in the cafeteria.

  Is Jared sick? I pick at the soggy French fries and mealy apple on my tray, wondering. I kind of miss Aunt Jane’s lunches now. They were weird, but at least they tasted good. What’s the food like at Graciela’s school? Mexican, naturally. Enchiladas, tacos, arroz, all delicioso like Daddy made or like Osorio’s serves. And of course we’d sit together every day. If she was sick, I could take her lunch and eat with her, in our room. Which would be pretty and comfortable and safe, with no trees nearby to crash through the windows. Or any grass.

  Every night would be like a sleepover, talking with flashlights under our covers and giggling. It would be sunny and warm all the time, even in winter. All the teachers would be nice and never give homework. We’d play soccer together—no, not soccer. Ride horses? I’ve never ridden a horse, but it sounds fun. Why wouldn’t Aunt Bonita let me come? I wouldn’t be any bother, especially since I’d be with Graciela, away at school most of the year. I could pay for myself, too, with the money Mr. Langley said is mine. If only I could talk to her, I know she would change her mind.

  “Hola.” Pete’s voice punctures my daydream. But he says it wrong, like hole-ah. And mean. “Where’s your boyfriend?”

  “I don’t have a boyfriend.”

  “Livingston.”

  Jared? “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  “He hangs out with you all the time now.” Pete puts his tray down.

  I shrug.

  “How come you didn’t go out during the fire drill?”

  “None of your business.” My stomach elevator starts to creak.

  “How come you’re always talking to that new bus driver?”

  “That’s none of your business, either.”

  “I hear you guys talking in Spanish. Did you come from Mexico, too?”

  I start to shake my head, but Pete keeps talking, leaning over his tray. I can see chocolate milk at the corner of his mouth. “You should go back there. In America, we don’t want people who won’t speak English and don’t follow the rules.”

  The picture of Daddy and Mom and me in front of the Statue of Liberty rises in my head.

  “Idiota.” I stand up and sweep past him.

  “Hey. What did you call me?”

  “Figure it out!” I call over my shoulder, dumping my barely touched lunch onto the tray return. But Pete plus the daydream did plant an idea. Go back there. Why am I waiting? If I just went, Aunt Bonita would have to let me stay. Especially with a one-way ticket. My stomach elevator creaks louder, but now it’s rising instead of falling. I could just go! Like I walked out of my old school that time. I just need a ticket. So how can I get $789? Or $732, since I have the farm-stand money.

  Pawn, buy, sell. Best terms in TC! The ring Juan got Esperanza had one little diamond. Each piece of Mom’s jewelry has lots of diamonds. So I could keep most of it, like she wanted. Practically all of it. Just sell one bracelet. Maybe a pair of earrings. I bet that would be enough. I could bring the jewelry to school one day and go to A-1 Buyers afterward. We pass the street on the bus; it’s not far.

  Chapter 50

  JANE

  “Good to see you again, Jane,” Sarah says, gesturing toward a chair. I wonder if she’s been expecting me to return all along, through some kind of therapist’s sixth sense.

  “Thanks for seeing me.” Taking the UCLA envelope from my bag, I turn it over. I’ve practically memorized it, I’ve read it so often, but I still can’t believe what she says.

  “I found this letter from my sister about a month ago. Lucy’s mother.”

  “Yes?” Sarah’s eyes drop to the envelope.

  “It got mixed up in her things. She dictated
it in the ambulance, after the car accident, but before she died. She asks me to take care of Lucy for them.” Pleads, really. You will, won’t you?

  “You hadn’t already agreed to be her guardian?”

  I shake my head. “It was a complete surprise. We grew apart. I did, anyway. Or I thought I did. She’s really my half sister, and nine years younger.”

  “I see.” Sarah is nodding, but confusion on her face belies her words.

  “Sorry. I’m jumping around.” I fill her in on our childhoods, the odd family quartet we made briefly, whittled to a trio when Esteban vanished, and then a de facto duo as Mom withdrew, foisting Gloria onto me. Jim’s appearance as salvation and escape. Our good early years of marriage, taking on new assignments and Matt’s birth.

  “Then I got pregnant again,” I say, suddenly noticing my chair is a rocker. How ironic.

  Sarah removes her glasses, polishing them with the edge of her lacy blue shirt. The color recalls the bay outside my window earlier. It’s turning my favorite shade, deep, serene blue. Gone are the bright, changeable aquas and pastels of summer. Now it’s the autumn azure that I love, that abides instead of sparkles, steady and reassuring. The exact opposite of the memory replaying in my head.

  “We were stationed in Alaska. It was tough, but it felt like an adventure together, too. Matt was almost three. I was thirty-six weeks. Everything seemed fine.” I rock forward hard, giving the words, twenty years unspoken, momentum to emerge. “Then my daughter was stillborn.”

  Sarah’s lips tighten, but she doesn’t gape or let her face fall. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I had a hysterectomy, too. Emergency.” I rock back.

  “I’m so sorry,” she repeats. “Two major losses, consecutively. How old were you?”

  “Twenty-four.” It seems astonishingly long ago. Matt will be twenty-four in February.

  “Is this the first time you’ve talked about it in a therapy setting?” Sarah asks.

  “The first time I’ve talked about it.”

  “Ever?” Sarah’s voice climbs with incredulity.

  “Since the first anniversary.” Following Matt’s tricycle, my mental stupor as thick as the Houston humidity.

  “How does it feel? How do you feel?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Fair enough.” Sarah nods. “You know, there’s a saying about grief. ‘The only way out is through.’”

  “Meaning?” I rock a little faster.

  “You’ve buried those losses for so long. Tried to do what your husband wanted. But he was wrong. That’s not healthy.”

  My hands clench the chair’s arms tighter. “I know. And Matt was the one who suffered for it. His whole childhood, I felt like I was going through the motions. I—I denied him the mother he deserved because I couldn’t get over her.” There. I’ve confessed it all.

  Sarah doesn’t recoil, or even frown or grimace. She pushes over a box of tissues.

  “People can only do as well as they can. You didn’t get the help you needed,” she says. “Grief needs to be expressed. We talked about this in terms of Lucy, if you remember.”

  “The exposure therapy,” I say.

  “Yes. While that’s an effective technique to deal with symptoms like her grass fear, the underlying anxiety or grief also needs to be addressed. Same with you. I’m guessing Lucy’s arrival stirred those feelings to the surface, but reflexively, you’ve clamped them down.”

  I pause my rocking, thinking. The high ten on the stepping stumps. Running the farm stand. The fire-drill detention scare. Her fury over the banquet invitation.

  “Your son is grown. Gone from home?”

  I nod, laying my head back, staring up at the ceiling.

  “Now here comes another child, forcing you to confront all those memories of loss and guilt. Hard, conflicting feelings about what you needed, and what your husband wanted. A girl at that, struggling with her own grief. That’s a hell of a lot.”

  I start rocking again.

  “Gloria’s letter brought you here. What else did she say?”

  I finger the envelope again. “I didn’t understand all of it, but it implied she was sorry we drifted apart.” I hesitate. “And that I was a devoted mother, and they trusted me to take care of Lucy.”

  “How did it feel to read that?”

  Now I don’t hesitate. “Like a fraud.”

  “Because you’re convinced that you fell short with your son.”

  I swallow hard. And that I will again. With Lucy.

  “I’d encourage you to try and see it from Gloria’s point of view. Possibly your son’s, too. Ever talked to him about it?”

  I shake my head, looking at the clock. We’ve gone well over the fifty minutes.

  “You might consider it. Sometimes what we hang on to hardest, others have long let go of.”

  “I’m sorry to run over our time,” I say.

  “Not at all. So will you think about that?”

  “I’ll try.” I stand to leave. Sarah does, too.

  “May I ask her name?”

  “Whose?”

  “Your daughter’s.”

  The hospital wanted one for the records. We hadn’t settled on one, and Jim had taken Matt home. So I picked, arbitrarily, it seemed.

  “Nina,” I say, out loud for the first time in more than twenty years. “Her name was Nina.”

  Chapter 51

  LUCY

  “So quiet today, niña,” Miguel says on the bus home.

  “I’m picking out my outfit for tonight.” Finally, it’s the award banquet night! Esperanza texted me pictures of dresses that Raquel said I could borrow. Her daughters wore them to dances and stuff. Maybe even a quinceañera. Esperanza’s bringing them over later and said she’d do my hair, too.

  “Tonight?”

  “The scholarship dinner!” I’ve only told him about it, like, a hundred times. I can’t wait. It’s all I’ve had to look forward to since the pawnshop wouldn’t buy any of my jewelry. The red-haired lady said I had to be eighteen, and gave me a lecture, too.

  “Honey, I remember you. And let me tell you, whatever you think you need to buy isn’t as important as keeping this,” she told me. Like she could possibly understand. I don’t know how to get the money for the ticket now. But at least I have the jewelry to wear tonight.

  “Isn’t the dinner about being smart, not how you look?” Miguel says.

  “For whoever gets the scholarship it is. Not me.”

  “Tú también.”

  You, too. “Inteligente y bonita,” Daddy told me after we went to the bodega. Does he know what’s going on with me right now? Can he and Mom see me, from heaven or wherever? Up there with the I-love-you stars? I know that I’m the best student in Digital Communications. I got a ninety-two on my last math quiz and a ninety-four on my Western Hemisphere Studies test. Mom would be proud of me for running the farm stand, too, I think. Being in charge of it, like she was on her show.

  “Lucy?” We’re at my stop.

  “I know, I know. It’s important to be smart. But tonight I want everyone to think I’m pretty.”

  “They will.” Miguel smiles. “Have fun, niña.”

  Like she has been since the detention, Aunt Jane is in the kitchen instead of outside. “How was school?”

  “Fine.”

  “Homework?”

  “A little.”

  “Better do it now, then. Later you—”

  “I know, I know.”

  I’m glad I can see the driveway from my window. Over my math book I keep checking for Esperanza, but half an hour later it’s the Livingstons’ car that rolls in. The CSA is over. What are they doing here? Mrs. Livingston gets out by herself and carries in a shopping bag. I walk downstairs.

  “. . . as modest as I could . . .”

  “What’s going on?” I ask, interrupting Mrs. Livingston. Aunt Jane looks up, closing the bag quickly. Macy’s. They have that here?

  “What’s in the bag?”

  �
�A surprise from your aunt,” Mrs. Livingston says.

  Aunt Jane’s last surprise was the high-speed Internet. I eye the bag. “What is it?”

  “Go on, Jane.” Mrs. Livingston sounds excited.

  Aunt Jane hands me the Macy’s bag. Underneath tissue paper is something soft—clothes—a dress?

  I lift it all the way out. It has a black velvet top with short sleeves. At the neck is a heart made of rhinestones. The flouncy skirt is made of gauzy, tiered white ruffles. It looks like something a seven-year-old would wear to a Christmas party.

  “I know how disappointed you were about not going to the banquet tonight,” Aunt Jane says. “I thought you could at least dress up for the Skype part.”

  She wants me to wear this? To an elegant, formal banquet!?

  “I asked Mrs. Livingston to pick out something, because, well, I’m not very good at gifts. Especially clothes,” Aunt Jane says, suddenly breaking off. “What’s that?”

  I hear Juan and Esperanza’s car before I see it, the opposite of the Livingstons’ Prius. “It’s Esperanza.”

  Aunt Jane’s lips flatten. “Why is she here?”

  “I invited her.” What is Aunt Jane’s problem with Esperanza? “To help me get ready.”

  “¡Hola!” Esperanza knocks on the door, coat hangers hooked over her shoulder and a big paper bag that smells delicious. Aunt Jane’s face changes to a mask. Is she mad at me, at Esperanza, or both of us?

  “Our own Latina banquet! From Osorio’s,” she says, dropping the paper bag on the table and looking from Aunt Jane to Mrs. Livingston to me. “¡Otro vestido!” she says, taking the black-and-white dress out of my hands. “¡Qué hermoso!”

  “I want to see what you brought,” I say.

  Mrs. Livingston clears her throat. “Well, I’d better be on my way.”

  “Without seeing the dresses!” Esperanza tsks, shaking her head, handing me Aunt Jane’s dress. “Try it on!”

  “No, really, I don’t want to intrude. You’ll want to eat while everything’s hot . . .” Mrs. Livingston says.