Girl in Reverse (9781442497368)

by Stuber, Barbara

  “Seriously, Lily.”

  “Seriously, she’s in our basement,” I say, pointing down the hall toward the closed door. “She has black fur. Her name is Joy.”

  My mother looks puzzled.

  “She’s just black, plain black. There’s nothing wrong with that. People who don’t want black cats are just superstitious.” I force myself to look right at my mother. “People step around them, don’t want them crossing their path, but not me.” Usually I can sniff her mood, but I can’t figure it out at the moment. Either she doesn’t believe me, or she’s starting her silent treatment, or maybe, for once, she is trying to figure me out. Ha!

  I open the refrigerator, get the milk, and pour a dish, giving my mother plenty of time to—almost hoping she’ll—say something offensive about black cats. Besides Ralph’s secret pigeons there has never been a pet in our house.

  “You want to meet her?” I ask. Mother’s eyebrows arch. “I’m not kidding. She’s really here.” My mother tilts her head—left, right. It either means “okay” or that her head is falling off.

  I go to the basement. “C’mon, Joy.” She gives me a wary look. “Time to meet my mother.” I carry her upstairs. She immediately jumps from my arms, sniffs the kitchen, cleans her nose, and sniffs some more. Mother stares at this wild creature from outer space. Joy does figure eights around her feet, dusting Mother’s house shoes with her tail.

  Mother jiggles her foot. Joy pounces on the bow on her slipper. Mother jiggles again. Joy pounces again. This goes on awhile. “Does it have a name?” she asks.

  “Yes. I already told you, her name’s Joy.”

  “You say sisters kept her? Where? At your old school?”

  I lean down and pat Joy’s back. “Uh . . . she was a nun’s cat. So was her mother . . . well, or a cat-nun with kittens!” I know I’m not making any sense, but fortunately Mother isn’t listening. She turns to me and says something unbelievable. “I used to have a kitty.” She looks off, her mouth moving silently as if she’s listening to a memory. “Pazooie Pazaza.”

  Watching my mother’s lips say the name is astounding. The way her mouth hangs open a bit after the last za . . . “Was that really its name?” I say.

  “Her name.” Mother kneels down and rolls her knuckles over Joy’s little head. “Pa-zoo-ie Pa-za-za.”

  Joy meows, turns a circle, and curls up—a purring black puddle in front of my mother’s Frigidaire.

  * * *

  “Cats shape themselves around the habits of the people who feed them,” Dad says later between sneezes. He’s obviously allergic to Joy but not admitting it. He looks at Ralph and me across the dinner table, points to the kitchen door, and whispers behind his napkin, “If your mother wants to keep that cat, then so do I—so do we, right?” He sips his bourbon, rattles the ice, and adds, “That animal’s gonna have her on a leash the way your mother will follow it around with the sweeper. I say, save a step and vacuum the cat!”

  Joy follows Mother into the dining room. Mother sets her sausage-and-green-bean casserole on a trivet and says, “I heard that comment about the leash, Don, and I’ll have you know that my first cat, Pa-zoo-ie Pa-za-za, was black, just like Joy, and she raised her tail like a skunk.”

  Ralph and Dad share a glance. Mother sits down and lets Joy hop onto her lap.

  “Well, how-dee-do,” Dad says. We all sit, hypnotized, smelling that old, skunky cat of hers. He nods at Mother. “Joy will elevate your vacuum to family-member status. At least sweepers are cheap to feed!”

  It feels good to laugh. Drowns out the siren that’s been going off inside me since Friday night.

  “Wasn’t Joy supposed to be yours?” Ralph asks me later in my room. “I mean, since you couldn’t leave her with that nun, Evangeline.”

  “Yeah. Her being mine didn’t last a minute. She’s a professional orphanage cat. She knows what she’s doing, filling the lap of the loneliest.” I instantly feel a pang. I need to tell Evangeline what happened, how I adopted Joy for her, and that I’m sorry she can’t have her.

  “What do you mean?” Ralph says. “Do you think Mom’s lap is lonely?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. But Joy does.”

  Chapter 24

  Sidestep it or step in it.

  Which?

  If I step in, go back to the museum and hunt down the world-renowned mythmaker Dr. Michael Benton, I will need to take my box and the pictures, which means lugging them to school first. Ugh.

  If I sidestep, I can be done right now. No more brave flame of truth, but less pain. Maybe.

  I sink down in my bubble bath. Joy sits on my towel taking a cat bath. This is a rare appearance. Since the moment they met, Joy became Mother’s guardian shadow. I pile up bubble mountains like I did as a little girl, with Ivory soap for a boat.

  Gone Mom traveled alone all the way from China for a reason. So why can’t I travel a few miles to the museum? Simple. It would explode our family. I sit up. My bubbles slosh. On the other hand, there is no one on earth but me who can do it.

  It’s my trip to the truth now.

  I shiver, my mind twisting into a new curiosity about Lien Loo. Not about what she did to me, but about her as a young woman probably not much older than I am. Was she truly planning to go to school here? Why? Her father was famous. They had archaeology school in China.

  I can’t blow out the flame—or is it fury?—in me. As I dry off I realize I have made a two-step plan—first confront my parents with my box, then Michael Benton.

  * * *

  “Ralph, I am warning you, I’ve decided to show them the case.” He looks up with a stricken expression. “I’ll show them everything but the pictures and the slipper.”

  “Why? They’re going to blame me for snooping around up there. They’re going to discover the pigeons and—”

  “No they won’t. Not unless you tell them. It’s just going to be the truth about how you found the box in the attic like any kid would. . . .” Ralph gives me an expression that says I’m not any kid.

  “Right!” I say. “Sorry. You are only disguised as a normal person. But anyway, looking around in your very own attic isn’t a crime. I am going to do it. So you might want to go on an extended campout . . . or not. It’s going to be a test. I’m going to put the box in plain sight and see if either of them shows a glimmer of recognition.”

  “Well, one of them has to because I wasn’t born yet and you didn’t hide it under a dirty tarp in the attic, so . . .” Ralph gives me the Boy Scout sign. His voice hops octaves. “My pigeons and I accept the challenge. I will witness the test and help interpret results.”

  Ralph is the coolest uncool brother on earth.

  So right after dinner, while Dad is in the kitchen helping dish up butterscotch pudding, I put Gone Mom’s box, closed, in the middle of the table by the dessert spoons. With the evidence right there, Dad can’t ho-hum it away.

  They don’t notice it for a second. Ralph sits hunched in his chair, his stalker skills in high gear. I grip my napkin, on the verge of exploding.

  “What’s this doing on the table?” Mother asks. Ralph and I share a minute glance. Dad inhales sharply, pats the cigarette pack in his pocket, and shoots a look toward the ceiling. Ralph and I say nothing. The air closes in. The radiators gurgle and spasm. Joy weaves through the chair legs, meows at Mother.

  “Don?” Mother insists. “Is it something from work? Blueprints? Invoices?”

  Ralph’s eyes shift: Mom—Dad—Mom.

  “So, hmm . . . I don’t know.” My father wipes his mouth, screws up his forehead, without looking at me. “Actually, I believe this is from the home, Vivian,” he says, packing a pillow around every word. “It was given to us when we picked up Lily.”

  “But you . . .” Mother snaps her mouth shut; her eyes finish the sentence—you said you got rid of it.

  “I . . . uh, just stuck it in the attic. I’d forgotten all about it.” Dad gets busy distributing the pudding and spoons.

  “You hi
d it in the attic under an old tarp,” I say too loudly.

  “Did you look in Lily’s box, Dad?” Ralph asks with a slightly phony tone of little-boy enthusiasm.

  My father examines the ceiling molding. “I maybe remember shaking it, and yes . . . there were scraps of wood, as I recall, and sticks and rocks and rubble. Nothing much.”

  “It was only nothing to you,” I say.

  Mother’s eyes are trained on my box. I know she is already finding fault with it.

  I reach out, slide the case over, and open it. One at a time I put everything on the table. I even turn the box upside down and tap a cornerful of dust onto the tablecloth. There! Mother leans in, looks over the wrist rest, the incense box, the dusty brushes and broken jade bit. Under the table Joy claws her chair leg. Mother reaches down and places her on her lap.

  “These things were left to me . . . from my life before I came there,” I say. “Before” silently screams from my birth mother.

  Mother looks from me to her husband. “But . . . ?”

  My father bites his lip.

  “This rubble is mine,” I repeat. “It’s from my life before the sisters. Did the nuns tell you that the regular protocol was to bring it home and hide it from me? Or did they advise you to tell me I had no belongings from my past even though I did?”

  Dad chimes in. “Lily! It would have only confused you. We were so ecstatic to have you, to move forward and start a family. What would have been the point?”

  “But you said it didn’t exist when you knew that it did. I believed you, even the other night when you said everything was gotten rid of. Why live in reverse?”

  I wave my hand at Mother’s fancy cabinet of crystal glasses. “You inherited all this stuff from your mother. What if somebody had lied and told you it didn’t exist or had just hidden it under a dirty old tarp or had even thrown it away?”

  The misery on my mother’s face stops me cold. She looks shrunk into a little girl.

  Ralph digs furiously into his pudding.

  “It’s my fault,” says Dad in a raspy, tired voice. “I thought it was best for everyone.”

  My mother straightens her back, picks up the jade, puts it down, and waves her hand. “Well, I can’t make heads or tails of it.” She picks up a paintbrush, drops it back in the box. Rage flashes in me. It takes everything I have not to blurt out about Gone Mom and the art museum. I sweep my things back into my box. I don’t want her to touch any of it, to spout her puny two-cents’-worth assessment of things that are priceless to me. This was an awful idea, putting my heart on the dissecting table. They won’t see it again. But now I know one important fact—it was Dad who hid it from Mother and me.

  “Were you crawling in the attic, Lily?” Dad asks.

  Ralph chimes in. “I was, you know, in the attic because I am doing the Pigeon Raising merit badge.” Mother looks repulsed. Ralph looks pleased. He’s chosen to hit them while they’re down, a one-two punch. “It seemed easy to raise pigeons if they are already on the premises and don’t actually need raising, so . . .” Ralph takes a breath. “I found this box that we figured out belongs to Lily and—”

  Mother slices through Ralph’s explanation. “Pigeons? Where are your birds now?”

  “In the attic,” Ralph answers, “like I said.” He and I turn to our father.

  “About those birds . . . ,” my father says, shooting his wife a look. “We need to talk, son. They carry disease.”

  “They’re supposed to carry messages, but they’re not speedy learners.”

  “We need a screen on that window,” Mother says as she stands and heads up to her room with Joy in her arms.

  Minutes later Ralph and I do the dishes. “Wow! Teamwork!” Ralph gives me a Scout salute.

  Twirling the dishrag, I figure out why Mother wasn’t more upset, why she didn’t seem threatened by these parts of my broken past—one, because my things looked like random bits of heathen nothing, and two, they are contained inside our family. This has not become a public embarrassment like my detention, so it doesn’t count. It’s just me. So what? Sure enough, Dad pops through the kitchen door and says, “Hey, Lily and Ralph, let’s just keep this box business in the family.” He tilts his head in the direction of the stairs. “Easier for everyone that way.”

  “Dad?” I say.

  “Not all memories are good ones. Dredging up bits and pieces of a person’s . . .”

  “Past?”

  “Yes. Parts of a person’s past can be difficult,” he says.

  “Don’t you think I know that already? Plus, I’m not ‘a person,’ I’m me. You act like we’re talking about somebody else.”

  My father doesn’t say it, but his look does—we are. . . .

  The door swings shut. I squeeze the dishrag and listen to bubbles popping in the sink. Funny how the fact that they hid my Gone Mom things makes the things more important. Pushing her away makes her closer.

  * * *

  On Wednesday after school, my purse and I enter the museum. “Are the Chinese experts here today?” I ask, sounding nonchalant in a panicked sort of way. The woman at the information desk looks at me funny. Maybe she can tell I need her to hold my hand. She tells me to check upstairs.

  I pass the Scholar’s Studio. The wrist rest still sits on the desk. It’s good to see it there, doing its job of doing nothing. I clutch my purse and head around the corner to the Main Chinese Gallery. No ginger and scallion steam, no whining zither today, just Dr. Benton by a display case with its wide glass front swung open. He wears white gloves and is examining what looks to be a collection of tiny tea sets.

  My mouth tastes like metal. I cannot just walk over and interrupt him. My mind sparks a million warnings, especially this one: You are about to make misery. So I fiddle around pretending to be interested in this and that and check my watch. One hour until closing. I stare into a case full of ancient jade pieces. Prongs hold them up at a viewing angle—part of a crouched tiger, a broken knife hilt as big as my hand, and the flat carved disk Dr. Benton showed us, the exact same greenish-tan color as the broken lizard tail in my purse. The label says the disk is called a bi, and that it represents the universe with two dragons dancing on the edge. A bi was buried with the emperor because jade ensured immortality.

  I slip past the gates into the Buddhist temple and sit on a bench, my heart a hummingbird. I swear the bodhisattva has grown. They have added a display of fragile silk prayer scrolls and bits of broken mirror found inside cavities in the head and back, left by devotees a thousand years ago.

  Showing Dr. Benton my jade will be an easier place to start than the photographs. I take a breath and begin the impossible trek back over to him in the Main Chinese Gallery. He is crouched on one knee, angling his huge camera lens at miniature teaspoons made of clay.

  “Sir?” He turns. Light bounces off his horn-rimmed glasses. “Excuse me,” I croak.

  He sighs, lowers his camera. He looks windswept, sculpted, Hollywood handsome with thick coppery hair.

  “I’ve got something here. . . .” I fumble my purse open and lift out a folded Kleenex. He glances at it and gives me a questioning once-over. My nerves leap and scream, reminding the rest of me that my next move can never be reversed. I hold up the jade.

  He sets his camera on the floor, stands up. His fingers clench and stretch as if he’s lost his pockets. I see his reflection in the display case glass. An odd thought comes to me—Elliot would have an easy time drawing a caricature of him, with his strong jaw, straight nose, and wavy hair.

  “May I?” He turns the piece to catch the light. He clears his throat, gives me a look of immense puzzlement, or maybe it’s immense wonderment. “Where did you get this, miss?” he whispers.

  I look through the opening into the temple. The bodhisattva looks back. “From a relative of mine, a person who was a part of your team in China.”

  He gives the piece back to me. His hand trembles a bit, or maybe I’m trembling. I know I’m trembling. He takes off hi
s gloves.

  There’s noise in the hall—museum visitors. They walk past the door. Dr. Benton pauses a moment, then motions me into the temple. “Do you have anything else from your relative?”

  “I do.”

  He does not ask my relative’s name. He is clearly more interested in art than people. I remove the red lacquer box. “Ming Dynasty,” he says, turning it in his hand. He points to an animal carved on the lid. “This is a qilin. It has the scales of a dragon and hooves of a deer. The peony symbolizes that one’s sons have great character and success. It is the wish for the birth of sons.”

  It didn’t work, I think. Gone Mom didn’t give birth to sons, at least as far as I know. “I . . . I also have pictures.”

  “Would you mind my seeing them?” he asks. His eyes are pale blue, deep set, and nervous. I would be too if I were him, wondering how he’d been so careless as to leave these things behind. Of course, he lost track of a whole person, Gone Mom, so who knows?

  He takes a long breath and sorts through my pictures. He drops one and snatches it off the floor. He drops another one. “Sorry, miss.” I point to the group picture. “Although it’s hard to see her in my photo, that young lady is Lien Loo,” I say, pointing. “You talked about her . . . saying she didn’t come to America.”

  He nods.

  “But she did.”

  He folds his arms across his chest, steps back. He’s obviously not used to being corrected. “Excuse me?”

  “Lien Loo. I stood in this room with her before the bodhisattva was in here and after she came to America.”

  His face is impossible to read. “When exactly was that?”

  “I was born on December twentieth, 1934, in San Francisco. It was a few years after that.” He says nothing. I glance around the room thinking he must not believe me. “Would one of the other experts know more about her?”

  Dr. Benton straightens his shoulders. “I can ask,” he says. “Yes. I will surely do that. Consult my colleagues. What year did you say you were here with her? It might clear up a discrepancy.”

  Discrepancy?

  He is definitely a date person. It goes with being an archaeologist, I guess. “I’m not sure—in 1937, maybe. I was around three.” I half expect him to ask my height and weight, what I’m made of, and how I was created—the facts for my label. He’ll probably want to take my picture.