The Blossoming Universe of Violet Diamond

by Brenda Woods

  Those facts I decided to keep to myself.

  12

  MORE SLOW MOTION

  At dawn the next morning, loudmouthed Hazel started up. She was mewing her I’m hungry and you need to feed me now mew. But my eyes were sealed shut and my body wouldn’t move. I needed more sleep. “Later,” I told her.

  “Meow! Meow! Meow!”

  And right then, for the first time, I wished Hazel would disappear, not forever but just for a little while so I could stay comfy in my bed.

  “Meow!”

  My head felt glued to the pillow. “I’m sleepy,” I groaned.

  But because cats don’t seem to understand English, Hazel kept mewing.

  “All right, you win.” I squiggled out of bed, practically sleepwalked into the kitchen, and was opening a can of cat food when Poppy came in through the back door, toting his golf clubs.

  In an instant, Hazel dashed for the door, and before Poppy could close it, she squeezed outside.

  “No!”

  Poppy and I ran after her, but she leaped and sprinted off like she was happy to be free.

  “Come back, Hazel!” I yelled.

  Suddenly Poppy grabbed my hand and stopped in his tracks. “No sense in chasing something that doesn’t want to be caught,” he said as he put his arm around my shoulder and led me back to the house. “Sorry, V.”

  I hung my head and whimpered, “It’s not your fault, Poppy, it’s mine . . . for wishing.”

  “Wishing?” Poppy asked.

  “That Hazel would vanish for a little while so I could go back to sleep.”

  “I don’t think wishing had anything to do with it. It’s what cats do, V. She’ll be back,” he promised. “Put the food right outside the door and we’ll wait.”

  We put two chairs by the door and sat.

  “I’ll just wish for her to come back,” I told him, and made a silent wish.

  Poppy frowned. “This wishing business of yours has me a little concerned.”

  “Why?” I asked. “Wishes can come true.”

  “Sometimes . . . but other things just are, like a cat that’s used to being outside making a break for it when a door opens . . . a simple case of a highly probable event.” Before Poppy retired, he was a professor. “And one that’s likely to keep occurring,” he added, “like a drop of rain landing right on the tip of your nose during a storm.”

  I chimed in, “Unless you do something to stop it, like carrying an umbrella.”

  “Righto, my dear. So if we put a sign on the door that says ‘be careful not to let Hazel get out,’ that might reduce the probability of her escaping regularly. We need to do something to keep it from being a highly probable event.”

  I understood. “Instead of just wishing, righto?”

  “Righto,” he echoed.

  I dashed to my room for paper, a marker, and some tape. Then, just as Poppy and I finished making the sign, I heard the tinkling of the bell on her collar. And when she crept up to the food, we scooted her inside.

  “Bad Hazel,” I scolded.

  She looked up from the food and softly meowed as if she were apologizing.

  “Speaking of food, you hungry, V?” Poppy asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Eggs Benedict sound good?” he asked.

  I was ravenous and not in the mood to wait for a fancy breakfast. “How about just plain eggs and bacon?”

  “I hear you’re going to an art show this weekend,” Poppy commented as he cooked.

  “Mom told you?”

  Poppy nodded.

  “Did you ever meet her?”

  He sighed and replied, “Only once.”

  “At their wedding?”

  “No, she didn’t make it to the wedding. I met her at your father’s funeral.”

  “She was sad, huh?”

  “We were all sad, Violet. We were all very sad,” he whispered.

  “But she was his mother and he was her only child, not like you and Gam, who have three children, so she was probably more sad, right?”

  Poppy scrunched his eyebrows together and disagreed. “The loss of any child, whether an only child or one of ten, would make a parent very sad, Violet.”

  “But if you had other children, then you’d still have someone else to love.”

  He frowned. “One child can’t replace another.”

  “But—”

  Poppy interrupted, “I think you have to be a parent to understand.” Suddenly, that same stung-by-a-bee look that Mom gets covered Poppy’s face.

  That look is usually always my clue to change the subject, so I did. “I made my first Axel at the rink the other day . . . without falling.”

  Poppy slid the plate of bacon and scrambled eggs in front of me, finally smiled, gave me two thumbs-up, and said, “Bravo, V . . . bravo.”

  13

  AFRICA

  Just when you want the days to zoom by like a go-kart or roller coaster, they slow down like those kiddie pony rides at the state fair.

  Athena was going to be gone all day with her mom for the new baby’s doctor’s appointments and stuff, and I wasn’t in the mood to ice-skate with Yaz, so I pulled out the atlas and my notebook of Places Violet Diamond Will Travel to Someday. I opened the atlas and flipped to the Africa pages. Africa is a humungous continent and we’d studied it a little in geography class, but I didn’t really know much about it and I’d never, ever thought about going there.

  From the atlas, I learned that Africa has more countries than the United States has states, fifty-four in all. It also said it has a little more than 20 percent of the Earth’s land and the longest river, the Nile. I looked at the countries and wrote down some that had names I liked the sound of. Later, I’d look them up online. In my notebook, I scribbled Cameroon, Kenya, Botswana, and Mozambique. That seemed like a pretty good start. If Roxanne Diamond was Afrocentric, I figured it would be good if I knew at least a little bit about Africa. That way, we’d have something to talk about—I mean, if she would even talk to me.

  The insides of me, where my heart beats, hoped she would.

  • • •

  Studying Africa ate up the whole day, and by dinnertime my body was hungry and my brain was full of interesting facts.

  While helping Gam make lasagna, I began filling her up with information about the African continent. “Did you know Africa has, like, fifty-four countries?”

  “Yes, V. Parts of Africa are so beautiful,” Gam said with a starry-eyed look.

  “You’ve been there?” I asked.

  “Yes, Poppy and I went on a safari in Kenya. It was an amazing experience,” she replied.

  “For real? How come you never talked about it before?” I asked.

  “You never asked before.”

  As I’d learned online, not everything about Africa was good. “But a lot of kids are starving and sick and don’t have doctors,” I told her. “And that’s pretty sad, huh?”

  “No, it’s very sad.”

  As Gam drained the lasagna noodles, the steam fogged her glasses and for a minute she was blind. We both laughed. I thought about Roxanne Diamond and wondered if she made lasagna and wore glasses. Part of me started to think maybe it was a mistake to go to Seattle. Maybe I was chasing someone who really didn’t want to be caught.

  But I have to meet her. I just have to.

  14

  SEATTLE, HERE WE COME

  Do you think I should wear a dress?” I asked my mom as I searched through the clothes in my closet. Tomorrow morning, we were leaving for Seattle.

  She was sitting on my bed, wearing blue doctor scrubs and a worried look. “It’s up to you, V.”

  My hand landed on a lavender and purple striped dress and I pulled it out. It was pretty and girly but not too fancy. “Perfect?” I asked.

  “Per
fect,” she said, but tears were in her eyes.

  Sometimes a person needs another person to hold their hand, at least that’s what Gam says. And I could tell by the look in my mom’s eyes that she needed hers held—now.

  I snuggled beside her on the bed and took her hand. “We don’t have to go if it makes you sad. I mean, it really doesn’t matter that much to me,” I told her, but it wasn’t the truth. More than anything, I wanted to go.

  But if you say no, I will give you the silent treatment for months.

  “I talked it over with one of the psychologists at work, and we both wonder if it’s a good idea. I don’t want you to be rejected or disappointed and have your feelings hurt, Violet.”

  “You mean maybe she won’t talk to us?”

  “That could happen. She didn’t say a word to me at your father’s funeral . . . wouldn’t even look at me. It was as if I’d died, too. I just want to warn you. If she does that to us tomorrow, we will leave right away and I don’t want any argument from you, understood?”

  She won’t do that to me. I didn’t make a U-turn.

  I squeezed her hand tightly. “Understood.”

  She kissed my cheek and said good night, but she still had a worrywart face.

  • • •

  I showered, washed my hair, towel dried it, did finger curls, and put in bobby pins because I was desperate to look pretty tomorrow.

  Later, Hazel was huddled beside me and my head was on the pillow, but I was wide-awake, staring at the dark ceiling, when my door opened and Daisy crept in. “V?” she whispered. “You asleep?”

  “Not.” I sat up and turned on the table lamp.

  D plopped on the bed. “I just came to say bonne chance tomorrow. Good luck.”

  “Good luck? It’s not a test or a spelling bee or anything like that, Daisy.”

  “I just meant I hope she’s nice to you.”

  “Me too,” I replied.

  Daisy gently patted my head, and right then, I felt good. Good like when you press your nose into the middle of a gardenia and sniff out all the sweet smell.

  “Meeting her might be weird, huh?” I said.

  Daisy shrugged. “Maybe . . . but I think it might be good for you to know her.”

  “Do you think it’ll be like finally getting to meet your birth mother?” I asked.

  “Mom is your birth mother, goofball. It’s not the same, V.”

  “But I still have another family I don’t really know about. Don’t you understand?”

  Daisy shook her head. “I guess not really.”

  “Because you know your whole family,” I explained. “But if you had a grandmother you’d never met, wouldn’t you want to meet her?”

  She smiled and said, “Yeah, I would.”

  “So now you get it?” I asked again.

  “I do,” Daisy said. “Plus, since your dad adopted me, I suppose she’s sort of my grandmother, too, right?”

  “Wow, I never thought about that. Humph. You get three grandmothers and I only get two. Not fair.”

  Daisy giggled. “Not fair, but true.”

  Something about that made me shrink a little, and the sweet smell of the gardenia Daisy had brought into my room went poof. What I felt right then was something I had never felt before, but I knew exactly which word from my word book fit the feeling—bewildered.

  Daisy kissed my forehead, said, “Sweet dreams, li’l sis. Je t’aime,” and before I could reply, she had quietly shut my door and was gone.

  I turned off the light and my head sank into the pillow again. I cuddled Hazel and thought, Roxanne Diamond belongs to Daisy, too? For what felt like a very long time, I stared into the night.

  I don’t want to share her—yet.

  • • •

  Seattle is only a car ride away from Moon Lake, so we go there a few times a year. It’s where my mom, dad, and Daisy lived before I was born. I love Seattle. The countryside was every shade of green and the sun was shining its light in my eyes.

  As usual, Mom was listening to her public radio station, so I listened to my iPod. It seemed like the car was rolling along to the beat of my music when I yawned. What is it about long car rides that makes sleep show up?

  Maybe I need some fresh air, I thought, and rolled down the window.

  “No open windows on the freeway, V. You know that. Close it now.”

  I’d forgotten the no open windows on the freeway because stuff can fly in and stick in your eye or something rule.

  “If you’re hot, I’ll turn on the air.”

  “I’m not hot.” Seconds later, I yawned again and started to nod off.

  Certain things seem to be unstoppable—Yaz once she starts a spin, a fall on the ice at the rink when someone bumps into you hard, and a nap when you hardly slept a wink the night before.

  No matter what I did, sleep wouldn’t give up, and in seconds I went from half asleep to all the way.

  Sometime later, I squirmed, stretched, and woke up. In seconds, my eyes landed on the Space Needle. We were in downtown Seattle.

  15

  IN SEATTLE

  I love fancy hotels. I love room service and towels that are always fluffy and beds that get made for you and chocolate candies on your pillow at night and indoor swimming pools. I just do. In fact, I was thinking just the other day that being in charge of a fancy hotel might be a very cool job.

  We pulled up to the extremely fancy hotel where we stayed the last time we were in Seattle, and two guys in burgundy valet suits opened the doors of our car. The reception at the gallery wasn’t until six p.m., so we had time just to be.

  “Can we order room service?” I asked my mom before the bellhop had even closed the room door.

  “Yes,” Mom answered.

  I bounced on the soft bed and yelled, “Yay!”

  Mom and I pigged out on soup and sandwiches and salad and dessert and were watching her favorite movie, The Wizard of Oz, on an old movie channel, when she nodded off.

  I turned off the TV and stared out the window at the city below. Cars sped by and all kinds of people strolled along. A runner dashing across the street nearly got hit by a car, and the driver honked twice. A dog yanked its owner down the sidewalk, and four people on bicycles held up traffic while a blind man, wearing sunglasses, moved his long white cane with a red tip from side to side. At that moment, I decided that I prefer city life. And when I grow up, I’m going to live in a very big city where there are all people of all colors, maybe New York, not some humdrum small town. Maybe I’ll be bohemian. Yep, definitely bohemian.

  By three thirty Mom was wide-awake and pulling on her tennis shoes. “Let’s go for a walk. We have plenty of time.”

  First, we stopped in Neptune Music Company, where Mom bought an original Jimi Hendrix vinyl album. Then we searched the racks at a vintage dress store, where Mom bought a navy blue silk suit from the 1950s. She’s seriously into vintage clothes, and I have to admit it looked pretty good on her.

  “Can we move to Seattle?” I asked. “I like it here. It’s so much fun and there are lots of different kinds of people.”

  “Maybe we should,” she replied.

  “Huh? Are you serious?”

  “Yes. Moon Lake is so . . . isolated from the real world. If I can find a good job. Once Daisy graduates. It wouldn’t be fair to her right now.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “But are you really serious?”

  She gently squeezed my hand. “Yes, Violet, I am.”

  At that point, I stopped looking around Seattle with visitor’s eyes, trying to see everything in a flash, soaking up all the sights and sounds, storing them in my memory. My eyes now saw the city like a person who might live there one day, a person with plenty of time.

  We were browsing inside another store at toys and cards and posters and stuff when Mom’s cell ph
one sounded off the alarm tone. She grabbed my hand and together we speed-walked back to the hotel. Like a candle, time had melted away, the way it always seems to when you’re having fun.

  Mom took a shower first.

  “Your turn, V . . . and make it a quickie.” I put on the shower cap because my curls were looking extremely perfect and I didn’t want them to frizz up the way they do when there’s steam or fog around.

  By the time I came out of the bathroom, Mom was dressed in the suit she’d just bought and she was wearing makeup, even lip gloss. “Wow! You look pretty,” I told her.

  “Thank you,” she replied as she sniffed her clothes. “It kind of has that old-clothes smell. Maybe I shouldn’t wear it before I send it to the cleaners.”

  I got close to her and took a long whiff. “I don’t smell anything.”

  Mom squinted at me. “You swear?”

  Just to be sure, I took another sniff. “I swear.”

  “Okay, hurry and get dressed.”

  We drove up to the museum at exactly 6:05. My insides felt squirmy like worms wiggling and my hands were sweaty. I got out of the car, straightened out my clothes, and fluffed up my hair. “How do I look?”

  Mom smiled, even with her eyes, and answered, “Beautiful, V. You look beautiful.”

  Beautiful? I don’t think anyone had ever called me beautiful before.

  “My little girl is growing up,” Mom added.

  “Do you think I’ll ever be breathtaking, like Daisy?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Suddenly, I felt amazing and spectacular, sparkly like a diamond.

  16

  MEET ROXANNE DIAMOND

  For a moment we stood at the entrance to the museum, where mom reminded me about what we were going to do if Roxanne Diamond ignored us.