Girl in Reverse (9781442497368)

by Stuber, Barbara

  Maybe I have.

  Another newsreel shows blasted bridges and bloodstained snow and marines cooling their guns with river ice after an attack by “the Reds who are trying to split the free nations of the world apart.” Another has Chinese Lieutenant General Wu speaking at the United Nations, blaming UN troops for the criminal acts that precipitated the Korean War. Only the Russian delegate shakes hands with the general after his speech, evidence of commies sticking together.

  To close, the announcer asserts, “We must not capture the enemy; we must destroy the enemy. Red China’s atrocities will be judged by the parliament of the world.”

  * * *

  Friday after school I’m lying on my bed when Ralph barges in as usual. “Scram. This waif has a horrible headache.”

  “Waif?”

  “Orphan.”

  “Hold on.” He exits to the bathroom and comes back with two aspirin and a glass of water. Ralph chews his thumbnail, rocks back on his heels, looking down at me. “Tell me as soon as it’s gone, ’cause I’ve gotta show you something.”

  “What?” I say, rising onto my elbow. Ralph’s hair is stuck up funny in the front. “I am not doing a guessing game. I had a humiliating, horrible day.”

  “With Mom?” Ralph asks, as if everything impossible in my life has to do with her.

  “At school.” I rub my eyes and explain about Tom Bradford being missing in Korea and the devil Lieutenant General Wu newsreel and the traveling waifs and how I feel responsible for the invention of Communism.

  He nods. “Bad day.” Then holds up a finger. “But not as bad as Tom Bradford’s day.”

  “Right.” I picture Susan Bradford looking so dumbfounded and Tom in a grisly prison camp with U.S. soldiers stumbling and starving and dying. Ralph sits beside me on the bed. I lean on him, my heart stopped. He’s quiet for a change. I think he’s crying a little bit too.

  I start sobbing. “Don’t ever go in the army, Ralph. Or the navy or the marine corps. Promise. I know it looks all brave and everything, but please, promise me you won’t go.”

  “I thought you had to enlist with the selective service or something if you’re a guy.”

  “Then get a bad-back deferment like Dad, or a hernia, or flat feet, or . . . get married.”

  “Getting married wouldn’t keep an eleven-year-old out of the army.”

  “You’re right. But being crazy would.”

  “Okay. I won’t get married.” Ralph stands. “Is your head better? There’s something I need to show you. Don’t move.”

  He runs to his room and returns with his hand behind his back. He shuts my door, breathing hard.

  “Now, close your eyes and put out your hand.”

  I start to, then pull back and make a fist. “Is it gonna be wet?”

  “No.”

  “Alive?”

  “Nah.”

  “Dead?”

  Ralph sets something in my hand.

  It’s the same wooden wrist rest from his collection.

  “Oh, this is certainly exciting,” I say. “You’ve shown it to me a million times already.”

  “But see the carving on the bottom?” Ralph points to the flat side.

  It has engraving so faint I have to close my eyes to feel it. I rub my thumb over the gouges and swirls. “Yeah. So? Do wrists really need to rest?”

  “Allow me to demonstrate.” Ralph puts the stick on my vanity, grabs paper. He holds a pencil, props his forearm up on the wrist rest, and writes his name. “This holds your arm steady if you’re doing calligraphy, you know, Chinese writing, or painting with ink.”

  “What’s the joke?” I ask.

  “No joke.” Ralph looks right at me. Pink creeps up his neck. “This one’s used. A rare Chinese antique. Like you’d find in a museum.”

  “No way. Where’d you get it?”

  “Found it.”

  “In the Chows’ trash?”

  “Nooo.”

  I take a breath, then another. A bell chimes in my mind. I turn to him. “Where did you get it, Ralph?”

  He looks like he is trying to swallow a straight pin. “In our attic.”

  “You found this in the . . . ?”

  “Yep! You have to swear not to tell, Lily. If you don’t swear—Boy Scout’s honor, I will join the army tomorrow.”

  Before I know it, Ralph has me holding up three fingers and repeating that on this day of January 26, 1951, I will never divulge that he found a Chinese wrist rest in the Firestone attic.

  I rub my forehead. “My headache’s worse.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s gonna get real worse in a sec. . . .” His look has a story behind it.

  “Why?”

  “Well, I also found that swirly carved rock in our attic.” Ralph’s eyes narrow.

  I sit back on my heels. My insides hum. “When?”

  “When I was building my pigeon coop. I found a box hidden under a tarp.” Ralph’s face is sweaty.

  “What box?” I ask.

  He points, swallows. “It’s up there. Chinese stuff. It’s yours.”

  My hands fly up. I leap off the bed and face him. “Why didn’t you tell me about it? God! You should have told me the second you found it!”

  He shakes his hands at me. “I am telling you. I tried a thousand times—before Michelangelo called. And before that, I showed you that shell thing and pretended I was making a Scout collection, which I’m really not, but you didn’t catch on. I thought you might recognize the wrist stick from your past and figure it out yourself so I wouldn’t get in trouble and . . .”

  “You never get in trouble. What else is in there?”

  “Paintbrushes.”

  I blink at the curved pattern Mother’s vacuum has made in the carpet. I run my foot back and forth until it’s gone. Ralph stares at me. He looks miserable. I rub my cheeks.

  “And tools and rocks and sticks,” Ralph adds, “and Oriental dust and . . .”

  “So that’s why you asked about the adoption belongings.”

  “Yeah. I thought they’d confess,” Ralph whispers. “But of course they didn’t because they hid it. And if Mom finds out that I found it, I’ll be dead before I ever get to go in the army.”

  The house is silent except for Ralphie’s pigeons. I’ve never been in the attic because the stairs are creepy and it’s full of squirrel poop. I can’t imagine my mother ever setting foot up there. “Is it big?” I ask.

  Ralph spreads his hands. “No. Just a beat-up wooden case with a latch.”

  “Maybe it belonged to the people who lived here before us?”

  Ralph shrugs. “Nope.”

  “Why not? There’s no proof it belongs to me.”

  “Uh, just your name on it, plus a vampire door knocker and . . . Don’t you wanna see it?”

  My name? Liquid fear slides through me—a hand grenade from my past in the attic. “I . . . I don’t know. I can’t think. Not yet.”

  Chapter 9

  I cannot go to sleep. Gone Mom is awake too, pacing the attic, waiting for me. “Ralph, wake up,” I whisper at midnight.

  “I already am.” He struggles to sit up in his bed, digs his flashlight from under the covers. “I knew you’d wanna go up there.”

  I nudge him. “Go get it. Please.”

  He hands me the flashlight. “You go. It’s yours.”

  “You’re the better stalker. Come on! I might step in something.”

  Ralph stands facing me in the dark. He tests his flashlight just long enough to highlight his red striped pajamas buttoned up to his chin. He climbs the splintery steps in bare feet and disappears into the dark hole at the top. I hear grunting and faint rattling. I track him crawling across the ceiling. Something drops. He hisses, “Shit!”

  “Shh!” I whisper up the stairs. I cross my arms. My stomach is a circus.

  Ralph’s flashlight beam reappears at the top of the stairs. It flashes—on/on/off, on/off. “Morse code,” he whispers.

  “Meaning what?”

&
nbsp; “I don’t know! I’m just learning it.” He climbs down the steps backward. “Okay, I got it.” He sets the case on the floor, blanching it with his flashlight beam.

  It’s wooden, more toolbox than treasure chest. The outside is scarred with dull metal hinges.

  “Go on,” Ralph says.

  It’s heavy. Whatever is inside rattles when I flip the latch. On top is a sheet of crumpled stationery with the letterhead:

  SISTERS OF MERCY CHILDREN’S HOME

  8400 Waldo Avenue

  Kansas City, Missouri

  Under it is written: “Lillian Loo.”

  Ralph and I stare at each other. I curl over my knees. Ralph pats me on the back. His hand sticks to my nightgown. His pigeons coo through the ceiling loo . . . loo . . . My old name—I’d nearly forgotten. In a moment my birth mother’s name surfaces—Lien Loo. “Lien Loo,” I whisper.

  “Who?”

  “Lien Loo.”

  “Who?”

  “My birth mother. I called her Mamá until she became Gone Mom.” My insides shivering, I reach into the box and lift out a dirty cloth tape measure, a compass, a square of screen, a hammer, wooden stakes, the broken shell, and a carved red box that won’t come open. The hairs in two bamboo-handled paintbrushes are brittle. They leave dust trails across my palm.

  I hold the shell, shine Ralph’s flashlight on it. It’s a stone actually, greenish tan. “What kind of rock is this?” I whisper.

  Ralph shrugs. “I don’t know. Probably jade.”

  “It’s carved.”

  Ralph looks up at me. “Yeah. I noticed that. A swirl.”

  I pick up the metal chunk Ralph had referred to as a vampire door knocker. Lots of the gold is worn off. It’s got a flat monster face with protruding fangs. I hold it to the light. “Not friendly.” I turn to my brother. “I mean, is this what mothers normally leave for their little girls? Broken junk and rusted fangs? Where are the soft booties and monogrammed baby cup?”

  The round red box fits in my palm. It’s bigger than a compact, with a carved deer on the top.

  “Let me see what’s in it,” Ralph says, digging for his pocketknife.

  “Don’t break it!”

  Ralph’s all business, heavy breathing and grunting, wedging his knife blade twice around the seam. He tries again and again to twist the lid loose. His hands are sweaty. So is the rest of him.

  “Let me try,” I say.

  He hands it over.

  With another turn, the lid lifts off. The scent of Gone Mom springs into the room. I gasp. In a split second I’m crying. Ralph looks over like I’m nuts, then he smells it too. Incense dust. Proof of Lien Loo. The exact smell of her neck.

  I take a deep breath and replace the top. My eyes turn her dust into tears.

  Ralph’s face lights up. “So . . . either she was a spy and these were her tools of the trade or they are clues, a trail she left for you to find her.”

  I’m a bundle of battling nerves. “Or maybe she left it so she wouldn’t have to haul it on her trip to wherever.” Ralph and I look at my stuff a while longer. I repack everything but the wrist rest. In the flashlight beam I notice something, a faint carved radish on the curved side, aligned with a bulge in the wood grain. “It’s a radish,” I whisper. “I swear. Look, Ralph. A radish!”

  He shrugs. “Yep! I know. I saw it already. Kinda weird. Kinda loony. Well . . . sweet dreams anyway,” he says, heading back to the attic with my box.

  * * *

  My mind pings and chatters all night. What kind of person—mother—would save these crazy things for her daughter? Nothing goes together except the stationery and my old name. But the box didn’t float to the attic by itself. Maybe my parents knew she was loony and weird and were protecting me from knowing it too. Or maybe they hid it because they knew it was a case of clues. Why didn’t they just throw it out?

  I wake up early Saturday with Gone Mom on my mind—her straight black eyelashes, her long hair gathered in a gold barrette, her smile. I pull up the covers. Which of the Sisters of Mercy nuns would have met her the day she left me at the orphanage? Either Sister Immaculata, who was ancient and decrepit even back then, or Sister Evangeline, who was tall and kind and watched over me.

  I picture the staircase there, with its wide strip of worn brown carpet, and remember stepping on the wooden part by the wall so I could hold on, except once when I was crying and Sister Evangeline pulled a huge white hankie, a “dove,” out of her sleeve, lifted me, and wiped my nose—stopping all the dinner traffic just for me. The hankie was soft and smelled like bleach.

  That staircase spilled into a big entry room that echoed, with rows of hooks for our coats and hats and scarves—pine green, red, navy. Walking by, I swept them like fringe.

  I grip the wrist rest and I sit back on my heels, my face wet. The Sisters of Mercy Children’s Home feels so real, as if we are all still eating peanut butter and begging the nuns to hug us. Still desperate to be chosen.

  * * *

  Right after breakfast I am on the bus headed for the Mercy Home even though I know it’s become a retirement place for old nuns now. There’s just one in-between stop, so I will only have to fight chickening out once. All I will do is sit in the shelter across the street, the way I did at the House of Chow.

  I step off the bus, check the return schedule.

  The orphanage is a block of red brick, smaller than I remember, with a bulky front porch, lace curtains, a rusty fire escape, and a heavy front door with sidelights. I sink back on the bench, having awakened this place that’s been hibernating inside me.

  The front door swings open. Oh, God. Oh, God. Sister Evangeline! Her long black coat is wrapped over her habit. She carries a sack. After brushing snow off the little roof, she shakes seed into a hanging bird feeder. She checks the mailbox fastened to a fat brick pillar, checks the sky, and heads inside, leaving a solitary trail of footprints in the snow-dusted walk.

  I imagine Gone Mom walking down that front walk thirteen years ago, the wind blowing her hair and the leaves in the gutter. Or was it calm that day? Or maybe summer? Was she wearing gloves and a scarf? Was she crying?

  I look down knowing that this is the same spot, next to the same rusty manhole, where she stood waiting for the bus the day she disappeared. After you give your baby away, I guess it would come down to this—just you, all by yourself, on a square of cement.

  Were you sick or in trouble? Was it just a choice you made? How long did you wait for the bus? Long enough to change your mind? Long enough to run back and pick me up and never let go? You could have . . . in the time it took the bus to come.

  My heart shrinks small as an empty locket.

  The traffic heaves past me. I rest my face in my hands and have the wild notion that Gone Mom and I are still hooked by animal instinct and if I just keep sitting here she’ll show up. Since I’ve come back, she will too.

  There are no orphans here now, just Sister Evangeline, whose “family” has rippled away from the rock she was for us. But it is still her home. The limbs of my family tree should include her and my orphan sisters and the nuns. Weren’t we a family? Didn’t this count? Should a waif’s reverse vanish when she gets chosen? That’s what Mother tried to do—make my birth occur at age four.

  I check down the street. Now that I need the bus to come, it doesn’t. I’m waiting the way Gone Mom did that day, unless she didn’t take the bus. Maybe she hopped an airplane all the way back to China. Who will ever know?

  Chapter 10

  I watch The Thinker taking a chilly sunbath on his pedestal. He seems to have forgotten something important, so I don’t bother him. It’s got to be so frustrating to worry and worry without being able to get up and do anything about it. But not me—I am going in the museum to view the shelf with the display of Chinese art.

  I feel small and nervous heading up the steps. Everything, including the fancy glass-and-bronze doors, seems monumental and immovable and famous. I yank the thick handle. My saddle shoe
s squeak across the entry floor.

  Rows of shiny black columns line both sides of the main hall. Voices ricochet like darts piercing the three-story ceiling. The air smells old and warm, like the radiators at the orphanage. I check my coat. The man at the information desk says there is no fee for students. He unfolds a map for me and points. “Our modern artworks and Asian collection are on the second floor. And here’s information about our special exhibitions.”

  Tapestries as big as movie screens hang around the main hall. They depict scenes from Jesus’s life. At least I recognize Him and Mary, but this is nothing like church—a place the Firestones rarely go. Dad called church a “winter sport” before he put his foot down and refused to go altogether. That’s about the only time I’ve seen him take a stand. Mother won’t go alone—“It wouldn’t look right.” In her world looks are everything.

  Donald Firestone also doesn’t like art, as if it is a universal fact that men and museums don’t mix.

  Mermen leap from a splattering indoor fountain. A massive marble lion stares out from the ancient gallery. It is surrounded by sculptures labeled “Athena,” “Hadrian,” “Hercules.” There are huge Egyptian statues—stone bodies without heads and expressionless heads without bodies. I wonder, what if museum owners adopted Mother’s philosophy and decided, hey, let’s just throw this old stuff away? Why live in reverse?

  Before I head upstairs I dart into the bathroom. No art in here, only ladies tinkling and an old-timey fainting couch with a rolled back. If Ralph’s stalking me today, I’m safe in here. A woman comes in pushing an old lady in a wheelchair. They both look tired.

  I stop cold halfway out the door. He’s headed across the main hall carrying a folded easel and an artist’s suitcase and wearing a flannel shirt and the scarf I threw in the trash.

  Elliot James.

  His shoes do not squeak. He walks into the Sculpture Hall like he owns the place.