by Lael Littke
My finger felt stiff as I punched in our number back in Idaho. I pictured the signal zooming through the phone lines to Prentice, then on up into the mountains to our white farmhouse with the pine and aspen trees bordering the broad lawn. Inside, the three extensions would ring. Nobody would be in the kitchen at this time of morning, or in Dad's office. The phone by the side of Mom and Dad's bed upstairs would be ringing. Please be there, I prayed. Please let everything be all right.
Dad answered on the second ring. “Hello?” I closed my eyes, seeing him sitting up in bed, peering near-sightedly at the clock on his bedside table. The pink light of early dawn would be coming in around the miniblind at the east window.
“Daddy,” I whispered, “are you all right?”
“Selene?” he said. “What's the matter?” His voice sounded tight and worried.
In the background I heard Mom ask, “Dan? Has something happened?”
“I'm fine,” I hurried to say. “Did you call me just now?”
“No,” he said. “No, we didn't call. Why?”
I told him quickly about a man asking for Selene Swensen.
“You say a man? What did he sound like?” His voice was filled with concern.
“I didn't take the call,” I told him. “Brittany did. She said she thought it was a man. When she handed me the phone…” I paused, looking at Mrs. Russo. “I got cut off. I didn't hear the voice.”
Mrs. Russo's face drooped, but she didn't say anything.
I heard Mom again in the background. Dad took a moment to explain to her what I'd said. Then she came on.
“Selene,” she said. “You're sure you're all right? Is everything okay?”
I knew she was asking how things were going with the Russos.
“Yes, Mom. Everything's fine.”
Mrs. Russo turned away when I said “Mom.” I wanted to tell Mom I'd found out who the woman in my nightmares was, but this didn't seem like the right time, not with Mrs. Russo standing right there beside me.
“Selene,” Mom said. “Do you think Brittany might have been mistaken? About the caller being a man, I mean. Maybe it was Naomi's friend Paula who called. Naomi told her you were coming. She lives in a little town just outside of St. Paul.”
“But why would Paula call me?”
“I don't know.”
I could almost see Mom pinching her lower lip the way she did when she was puzzled about something. Suddenly I was very homesick. I wanted to be back there with my true family. The Russos had been okay, or at least they had yesterday. I'd pretty much liked them. But I didn't really know any of their habits, their mannerisms, their family traditions. I shared their blood, but that wasn't enough. I didn't want to stay there any longer, especially since Mrs. Russo had now shown that she wanted to control me. I'd made my duty trip. I'd met them. Now I wanted to go home.
I was opening my mouth to say that when Mom said, “Selene, I'll call Naomi and get Paula's phone number. Or maybe I'll tell her to call Paula and ask if she called.”
“That would be good, Mom.”
“It may take a while to find out anything,” Mom said. “Paula may already be at work, and I don't know if Naomi has that number.”
“I can wait,” I said. “It's okay, as long as all of you are okay.”
“We are.” That settled, Mom went on to say that Grandpa's sore foot was worse and that they would be taking him to the doctor in Prentice that day. “We'll have to hog-tie him to make him go,” she said, and we chuckled together, thinking about how stubborn he was.
We chatted a little longer before hanging up. I didn't tell Mom how much I wanted to come home. That would probably make Mrs. Russo more determined to keep me there.
So when I put down the phone I said, “I'll get dressed. Then we can go on that tour of the big city that you promised me.”
We waited until Chelsea got up and had breakfast, and then we loaded into the minivan and went to pick up Kenyon at his friend's house where he'd gone right after breakfast. A bunch of children were playing there on the lawn, Kenyon's age and younger. All of them followed Kenyon to the van. He must have been telling them about me because he said, “There she is—my lost sister.”
They stared at me. I felt like a sideshow act in a carnival.
“How'd you lose her?” one boy said in a loud whisper to Kenyon.
“It wasn't me,” Kenyon said. “She got lost before I was born.”
“We lost our dog once,” a girl offered. “We found him at the pound. Where'd you find her? “
Kenyon grinned at me. “It was sort of like at the pound,” he said.
“Kenyon!” Mrs. Russo said. But I put up a hand to cover my own grin.
Recalling what Keith had said at the Salt Lake airport, I leaned out of the car and said in a low, confidential voice, “Actually, they found me when I came down out of the sky in a monster grasshopper.”
“Really?” The kids were obviously dazzled by that bit of information.
“Really.”
One little girl backed away a step. “Are you an alien?”
I leaned toward her. “Would you like to see what I really look like?” I put my hands up to either side of my head and slowly began to twist.
Now Mrs. Russo was grinning too. “Get in, Kenyon. We're going to show Micaela what shopping is like here on this planet.”
We drove away, leaving the kids staring after us.
Kenyon giggled. “That was cool, Micaela. They'll all be jealous about my sister who's an alien.”
• • •
The first thing I noticed about downtown St. Paul was that there were connections, like covered bridges, from the second story of buildings on one side of the street to buildings on the other. When I commented on it, Mrs. Russo said, “You can't imagine how cold it gets here in the wintertime. Those overhead bridges are built so that people don't have to go outside any more than necessary during the winter months.”
“It gets cold in Idaho too,” I said.
Mrs. Russo nodded as she drove carefully through the downtown traffic. “There's lots more water here, lakes and rivers, to add to the chill factor. We have an ice festival here in February. People cut huge blocks of ice from the frozen lakes and build enormous ice sculptures. They're amazing, and they don't melt for a long time.”
“There are parades and everything,” Kenyon said from behind us. “And marching bands. They have to dress up like Eskimos or they'll freeze.”
Brittany leaned over the back of my seat. “And Vulcan is there with charcoal on his lips, and if he kisses you, you'll have black all over your cheek.”
“Vulcan?” I said. “Like Mr. Spock in Star Trek?
“Mrs. Russo shook her head. “Like Vulcan, the ancient god of fire. It's all kind of complex, but he represents warmth and a kind of disorder to contrast with the Royal Family of the Festival, who are very cold and pompous. The men dressed as Vulcan have dark grease-paint all over their faces. If they rub their cheeks against yours, you'll get all smudged.”
I laughed. “Sounds like quite a party.” I was beginning to relax. This was the way I'd envisioned my visit—friendly and informative.
“It is.” Mrs. Russo took her eyes briefly from the street to glance at me. “We came here the winter before we lost you. You were afraid of Vulcan, but you loved an ice sculpture that you called Cinderella's castle.”
A dim memory came into my mind of something huge and shimmering. And cold. Was it an ice sculpture, or just the sun shining on the snowy hills at home?
I wondered if Mrs. Russo was prodding me to remember things that would tie me to them. Memories of a family that was broken apart when I was kidnapped.
I could have been happy here. The thought came into my mind quite suddenly, and I was surprised by it. Ever since I'd learned about my birth family I had thought of them as people who would have made me into a different person, a city girl used to tall buildings and tight little city lots and crowded schools. I would have missed the freedom of
the fields and meadows and hills of home. I would have missed knowing Mom and Dad, Naomi, Tyler, and Keith, and all my friends. I would have grown up without the pretty red brick church on the hill and the legacy of all those pioneer ancestors Mom had listed on her family history charts. I had thought I would have been miserable being a different person from who I was.
But maybe not.
Mrs. Russo had turned onto a street that led us out of the downtown area, going back toward home.
“We'll have to cut this a little short today,” she said. “I have to stop at the supermarket to pick up some things for dinner tonight.”
That was all right with me. We hadn't been gone long, but I was exhausted from the emotions of the day.
Mrs. Russo turned into the parking lot of a big food store, finding a space only a few rows from the door. “You can all wait in the car,” she said. “I won't be long.”
I couldn't understand the feeling of unease I had as I looked at the store. It was bigger than anything in Prentice, but it looked like almost any other big city supermarket, with prices in the windows advertising the week's specials. There was a cluster of shopping carts near the door, and a pony ride, the kind where you put in a quarter and it jounces for a few minutes.
I found myself focusing on that pony ride. I watched a little boy climb onto it and saw the woman with him feed a quarter to the meter. As the pony began rocking back and forth, I could almost feel the hardness of the bright green saddle, the smoothness of the red leather reins.
“It's my turn,” a voice said.
“Is not,” I said from atop the pony.
“You're being bad, Micaela,” the other voice said. “I'll go tell Mama.”
“Go tell her,” I said. “I don't care.”
I must have made a funny sound because Mrs. Russo, who was about to close the door, looked sharply at me. “Micaela?” She got back in and reached across the seat to me.
I stared at the little pony. The green saddle was not right. It should be red. The one I'd ridden had had a red saddle. I had loved red when I was little.
My heart hammered, closing my throat.
“This is where it happened, isn't it?” I whispered. “This is where I was kidnapped.”
Chapter 15
Mrs. Russo's face paled. “Oh my dear, no. I would never take you back to that place, not unless you wanted to see it for some reason.”
My heart slowed a little. “It's the pony, I guess. I thought I remembered it.”
“What do you remember, Micaela?” There was an urgency to Mrs. Russo's voice. “There was a pony. I put in the money and ran inside the store while you were riding it. Heather stayed outside with you. Do you remember anybody else there?”
I strained to find any further clues in my memory. Closing my eyes, I replayed the scene. Me on the little pony. Heather, I guess, wanting a turn and telling me I was bad.
But the voice in my nightmares had not been that of a child. That voice was harsher. Older.
“No,” I said in answer to Mrs. Russo's question. “I don't see anything. Except me—and Heather. But there was something bad.”
I was about to tell her how Heather had called me bad, but I decided not to. Somehow it didn't seem fair without Heather there to defend herself. What did she remember?
“It was such a terrible day,” Mrs. Russo said softly, still holding my hand. “I can't even begin to tell you how terrible it was, Micaela.”
“It was terrible for me, too.” The terror of that dreadful day hung somewhere in the darkness at the back of my mind.
A small arm reached up from the seat behind us, and Chelsea whispered, “I love you, Micaela.”
I'd almost forgotten that Chelsea, Brittany, and Kenyon were there behind us. They'd been listening quietly. They knew the story well, I was sure. Now they all reached forward to touch me and smooth my hair. I turned so that I could touch each of them with my free hand. My siblings. Those siblings who looked so much like me, with whom I would have grown up if the terrible thing had not happened.
“Let's go,” I said, withdrawing my hand as gently as I could from Mrs. Russo's grasp. “Can you get what you need for dinner at some other store? I don't want to stay here.” It wasn't the place where I'd been kidnapped. But the memories it brought back were disturbing. I was beginning to understand how a woman who'd been deprived of her child would not want to give that child up again.
Mom and Dad—the ones back in Idaho—had always taught me to look at both sides of a story. But there was a danger to that. If I came to understand Mrs. Russo's viewpoint too well, wouldn't that make me more confused than ever about who I was?
One thing came out of that morning's tour. I could no longer think of my birth mother as simply Mrs. Russo. I shortened it to Mrs. R, which seemed friendlier.
• • •
Uncle Rich and Aunt Marissa arrived for dinner that night with a car full of cousins and a basket full of zucchini. I'd dreaded meeting other members of the family, thinking that it would be a gloomy and depressing evening with even more people crying about what might have been. But nobody could be gloomy around Uncle Rich and Aunt Marissa.
The first thing Uncle Rich did was thrust the basket of zucchini toward me, saying in a voice that sounded as if he could sing high tenor, “You used to love zucchini, Micaela. I brought enough to make up for all the years you've been away.”
Aunt Marissa enveloped me in a huge hug, basket, zucchini, and all. “He still has the big garden you used to love, honeybun. The neighbors hide when they see him coming with his basket of squash.”
“Yuk, squash!” one of the cousins yelled, opening his mouth wide and pointing down his throat.
“Barf City,” yelled another one, and all the kids went off into gales of laughter.
“Do you really like zucchini?” Chelsea asked.
I looked down at the basket of long green lumps. “Let's find out,” I said. “If somebody will show me where to find a pan, we'll cook some.”
I didn't remember if I liked it or not. We'd never had it at home. Home in Idaho.
I had a lot of volunteers to show me where the pans were. Cousins swarmed all over the kitchen where Mrs. R was trying to cook manicotti. “Out,” she yelled periodically. “Give me space.” But everyone just went on laughing and yelling and eventually dinner was on the table, including a pretty yellow bowl full of sliced, boiled zucchini with a light butter sauce, which Mrs. R showed me how to make.
Heather wasn't yet home when we sat down to eat. I saw Mrs. R look at the clock a couple of times, but she didn't say anything.
“Quiet,” yelled Mr. R when we were all seated. The kids instantly quieted down. Mr. R reached out his hands to those on either side of him, and everybody else did the same until we were all connected in a circle around the table. Brittany and Chelsea had fought to sit on either side of me, and they inserted warm hands into mine.
“Tonight we'll say grace,” Mr. R said, looking over at me. “We don't always do it, but this day is very special.”
All of the kids bowed their heads while he said a short blessing on the food. It was a memorized verse, but he said it with feeling, as if he truly meant it. I was reminded, in the silence, of Grandpa's lengthy blessings on the food at home, his endless, eloquent family prayers. The prayers that were so much a part of my life. So much a part of me, whoever I was. What was that list of things I'd thought about on Temple Square back in Salt Lake City? I had looked at the lighted temple, a symbol of my faith, and I'd been so sure of who and what I was. But now there was Micaela. Who was she? What might she have become? What could she yet become?
I became aware that Mr. R hadn't yet said “Amen.” He sat silent for a moment. Then, his head still bowed, he said, “We are grateful, Lord, for the safe return of our beloved daughter Micaela. Our cup truly runneth over. Amen.”
I embarrassed myself in the continuing silence by bursting into tears.
Everybody burst into tears. They wept with as much ent
husiasm as they'd yelled and hollered before dinner. They all hugged me and each other and then me again. I threw aside my embarrassment and joined in. It made me feel a lot better, although I couldn't help but think of my reserved family at home and how they would have reacted to a demonstration such as this. It wasn't their way.
So which was my way? Was I Selene or Micaela? Which door was I going to choose?
“Eat,” Mrs. R finally cried. “Eat before it all gets cold.”
So we ate. I discovered I loved zucchini.
Chalk up another point for Micaela.
• • •
There was a phone call right after dinner. Brittany, who seemed to be the official answerer, handed it once again to me. Could it be that morning's caller again?
But the first thing I heard when I said hello was the sound of a harmonica playing “Love at Home.”
“Abby!” I yelled above the noise of the kids and cousins. “Trash that infernal instrument and talk to me.”
I heard Abby chuckle. “Thought that would get your attention. So what's happening, Big City Girl? Are you living a glamorous life in the fast lane?”
“Yeah, right,” I said. “This is St. Paul, Abs. Not Hollywood.”
“Even so.”
“I like it here,” I yelled. “Everybody is nice.”
My voice came out extra loud in a rare moment of near silence. Then all the kids and cousins laughed and started yelling, “We're nice! She likes us! She likes us!” And more laughter.
Mrs. R swooped down on me and took the phone from my hand. I began to protest, thinking it was like the other time when she'd disconnected my phone call. But, putting the handpiece to her mouth, she said, “Hang on a moment,” and escorted me down the hall to a small study where there was an extension. “It's hard to hear in the midst of that hyena pack,” she said. “You can talk as long as you want in here.” Giving me a smile that seemed to be an apology for that other time, she left.
“Who was that?” Abby asked as soon as I picked up the phone.
“My…” I hesitated.
“Your mother,” Abby finished for me.