But my father and my uncle had told me their father’s name was Evan Charles Healy. This was all very confusing. I dug deeper and found pictures, old sepia photographs that were very faded, but the first one was clear enough to reveal a young man who resembled my father enough to be his twin. I saw classic automobiles in the background, too, one that had a stick for a steering wheel.
The second picture was clearer and was so surprising that it sent me moving backward to sit on the floor. It was the same man, and a woman with a close resemblance to my mother was standing beside him. Behind them was what looked like an old farmhouse, and another very old automobile was on their right. The woman wore something around her neck. It looked familiar.
I went to my father’s desk and found his magnifying glass. It helped me see that the necklace had a pendant of what looked like seven blossoms. I thought for a moment and remembered that I had seen my mother wearing this pendant, but not for some time. Who was the woman? Was it my mother’s mother? Had she given the pendant to my mother? How could all these relatives look so much alike? Why were all these pictures locked away?
I put the picture back. There were many photos with the same two people, but as I sifted through them, the pictures got better; they were clearer, and the backgrounds were more modern, suggesting that they were taken no more than ten or fifteen years ago. The strangest thing about them was that neither the man nor the woman looked a day older in any of the pictures.
I noticed some additional pictures, one of a young boy and another of a young girl. Behind these was a picture of me when I was much younger. Who were the other two? Neither looked anything like me. The boy had much darker hair and almost coal-black eyes. The girl had light brown hair and blue eyes. Both of them looked older than what I imagined their ages really were. They had adult faces on young bodies, I thought, faces that looked troubled, pained. Why were we all in this one folder with the other pictures?
The more I discovered, the deeper I fell into confusion. I almost didn’t look at anything else, but the top of one paper looked familiar, so I dug into that file and found the picture I had drawn years ago of how I imagined my birth mother looked. I sat there staring at it, remembering the day I had shown it to my parents. So they hadn’t torn it up or thrown it out after all, I thought. I should be happy about that. Maybe they were proud of how well I drew at so early an age, but why keep it hidden away?
I couldn’t take it up to my room and keep it, because that would reveal that I had been in the forbidden cabinet. I started to put it back but stopped. There was something else in the file with my drawing. It was a photograph of a woman who looked very much like the woman I had drawn, but she looked sad, as if she was moments away from crying. There was nothing written on the backs of any of the pictures, nothing to help me identify whoever it was.
I pulled out an envelope and opened it. It contained my birth certificate. My name on the certificate was Sage Healy. My father and mother were listed as Mark and Felicia Healy. Attached to it were the adoption finalization papers. This wasn’t a surprise. When I had done some research on adopted children, I learned that a new birth certificate would be issued with the adoptive parents’ names on it. Nobody looking at a birth certificate would know if a child had been adopted.
The birthdate was correct: September 15, 1999. I was born in a clinic in Dorey, so I always had lived here. My parents told people that they didn’t adopt me until I was eight months old, so maybe the original birth certificate with my birth mother’s name on it was still somewhere. Would there ever be a possibility of my finding it and discovering her?
I paused when I saw something to the side of the files. It was a piece of dark brown leather. There was an emblem on it that looked like a family crest with three trees. Under it was the word Belladonna.
Suddenly, just like when a heavy cloud moves over the sun, the room darkened. I didn’t hear thunder, but there was a rumbling in the floor. Maybe I imagined it, but I quickly put the strip of leather back and got up. I studied the cabinet drawer to see if it looked in any way different from what it looked like before I had delved into the files. I thought it was fine and hurried out of the office and into the living room. My mind was spinning with all sorts of questions and thoughts, and I felt a little dizzy. I sat quickly on the settee and closed my eyes.
This could be what my mother meant when she told me that a little knowledge was a dangerous thing. Too many questions and too many answers could clog your brain, but what was worse, they could upset you and make you want to know more than you could or should. What did I gain from peeking into the forbidden cabinet? Only more questions, more secrets to be caught in spiderwebs.
I knew that it was going to be very hard to keep what I had seen and done a secret. Both my parents were very good at looking at me and almost reading my thoughts. Was it because I was so revealing, no matter how hard I tried not to be, or was it because they were perceptive enough to read anyone’s dark thoughts and not just mine?
Lying to them seemed impossible. I hated the thought of having to lie to anyone. Besides, my parents were already sensitive to anything wrong or even slightly defiant that I might do or say. A lie would simply reinforce all that. Maybe it was better to simply confess what I had done. Now I wished that filing cabinet had not been left unlocked. I could almost hear my mother, her face twisted with rage, shouting, “That drawer being opened is no excuse for what you did. Why did you go in there? Don’t you know that curiosity killed the cat?”
If only this had never happened. If only my father had not left that cabinet drawer open. I sat there with my eyes still closed and wished and wished that when I had walked by the office and looked in, the filing cabinet had been closed and locked. I wouldn’t have entered the office. I wouldn’t be feeling so guilty and afraid right now. One thing I always found easy to do was create a vivid picture in my mind of anything I wanted to see, and that’s what I did now with all my might.
Suddenly, I heard the slam of a filing-cabinet drawer. My eyes popped open. I listened carefully. Had my parents come home and one of them discovered that the drawer had been left open? I didn’t hear their voices or their footsteps in the hallway, so I rose slowly and peered out toward my father’s office. There was no one, no other sounds.
Gingerly, I walked back to the office. The door was still open. I peeked in carefully and saw there was no one there, but what shocked me was that the cabinet drawer I had searched was closed. How could that be? I had left it the way it had been, hadn’t I? I was sure of that. I listened again and then approached it and tried to open it, but it was locked, just the way it usually was. For a moment, I just stood there amazed. Could I have imagined I had left it open but really have closed it? After all, my dreams were usually so vivid that it was impossible sometimes to distinguish them from what was real. I was the first to admit that. This could be the most frightening instance of all, because it could mean that now I could not be sure of what I had or hadn’t done.
I backed away and started to flee the office but then stopped in the doorway and looked back at the filing cabinet. No, there was no doubt. I was sure I hadn’t imagined leaving it open. After all, that was how I had found it. How could this be? Obviously, I couldn’t tell my parents anything about this. I couldn’t mention any of the things I had seen in the drawer.
My heart was pounding with both fear and excitement. There was another possibility. When I pictured the drawer closed, had it closed? Had I really done that? Had I willed that cabinet closed? That was something Uncle Wade could do in his magic act. Even if he had some sort of magical power, I couldn’t have inherited it. I wasn’t blood-related to him. I shook my head. This was all too confusing. There had to be a sensible explanation. Either I had closed it without realizing it or the drawer had just rolled closed and automatically locked. Maybe there was a very small earthquake, or a large truck had rumbled by and shaken the ground enough.
I hurried up to my room and sat at my vanity table, sta
ring at myself in the mirror. Sage, I told myself, you must erase the memory of what you did and saw today, all of it. Push it so far back in your mind that it will be thinner than a distant childhood memory, and no one, especially your parents, will be able to read your face and see your sense of guilt. I concentrated on my eyes and willed it to be true.
I didn’t break out of the concentration until I heard footsteps on the stairway and my mother called to me. When I looked at my watch, I realized I had been sitting at the vanity table for nearly half an hour. I must have hypnotized myself or something, I thought. The next time he came, I’d have to ask Uncle Wade if that was even possible. Although he would think it was a strange question to ask, he might still answer it. Of course, I wouldn’t dare ask my mother or father. It would lead to another severe cross-examination.
“Yes?” I called back.
She stepped into my doorway. “What were you doing while we were shopping?” she asked. As was too often the case, her voice was full of accusations.
“Just my homework,” I said. “I had a lot to do this time. All our teachers gave us more than usual for the weekend. Everyone in my class is complaining.”
She continued to stare at me so intensely that I felt uncomfortable.
“What?”
“Did you go into your father’s office and snoop?” My father must have remembered that he hadn’t closed and locked the filing cabinet, and they had found it closed and locked.
“No,” I said. “I’ve been up here practically the whole time you were away. Why?”
She stepped in and narrowed her eyelids. Whenever she looked at me this hard, I felt more than naked; I felt as if she could explore my very bones and nerves, maybe even examine my brain. “Children shouldn’t spy on their parents and snoop in their things,” she said. “And they should never lie to their parents.”
I waited as she gave my face more of her usual close study. Apparently, nothing popped out at her.
“You had better be telling me the truth. Eventually, I’ll know if you’re not. You know that.”
“Yes, I do, Mother,” I said.
“And if that happens, you’ll be severely punished. You understand?”
“I do, Mother.”
She relaxed a little. I breathed in relief. For the first time ever, she really wasn’t sure whether I was telling the truth. Whatever I had done in my self-hypnosis had worked. She put a bag on my bed and took out a new sweater.
“I thought this would look nice on you,” she said. “Violet is your color. You have violet eyes,” she added.
“Thank you.” I was really surprised. It was not that often that she bought something for me spontaneously.
“Try it on,” she said.
I rose, took off the blouse I was wearing, and put on the violet sweater. I looked at myself in the mirror. She came up behind me and put her hands on my shoulders as she looked at me in the mirror. For a long moment, she was silent. I could feel the heat in her fingers penetrate my neck and shoulders.
“How does that make you feel?” she asked in a voice that was almost a whisper, a voice I didn’t recognize.
“It’s very nice. Thank you.”
“How do you feel when you see yourself in this color, Sage?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you feel any different wearing violet?”
I studied myself again. Still looking in the mirror, I gazed at her standing behind me, waiting for some significant reaction. She looked anxious. What was she expecting me to say? “It fits well,” I offered.
I couldn’t tell whether she was relieved or disappointed. “Yes, I’m glad it’s the right size. I want you to wear it for the rest of the day, and I want you to tell me if you have any new feelings about yourself,” she said.
“Okay, but how should I feel?”
“You’ll tell me,” she said.
“I think it’s pretty,” I offered. “It looks nice on me.”
As if I had said something obvious and simple, she smirked with disappointment. “You would look good in any color, Sage. You are a very attractive young girl. But different colors have different effects on us, and in a way, how we react to them tells us something about ourselves.”
So that was what she was still doing, I thought, trying to discover who I really was again. I looked at myself. Was there something about this color that would be more revealing? Would I discover that, too?
She stared for a moment more and then left my room. I continued to study myself in the mirror. Violet was my color, she had said. Choosing colors revealed something about us. Did she mean something more than just complementing my complexion and my eyes?
I turned on my computer and searched the meanings of colors. Violet was associated with the crown chakra, I read, which linked the individual and the universal. It symbolized magic and mystery and also royalty. The advice was to put some violet in your life when you wanted to use your imagination to its fullest and remove obstacles.
Surely, then, this gift from my mother was another test of some sort. But really, how did the color make me feel? Did I feel more powerful, with an imagination that knew no boundaries? At first, maybe because I was trying so hard to feel something, anything, I felt nothing. And then, suddenly, I did feel wiser, older, and even stronger. Was this something else I was imagining? As I studied myself, I thought I saw myself mature physically. My breasts looked slightly larger and shapelier, my face seemed to lose all its youthful chubbiness, and my eyes were filled with wisdom beyond my age. It was as if the new sweater had the power to make me fully aware of my developing figure, helping me envision where it would take me. I had been aware of the changes in my body, of course, but I suddenly felt even more mature. My face flushed a little. Should I, could I, dare think of myself as beautiful? I imagined the admiration of boys and the envy of other girls as I walked through the school halls wearing this sweater.
It was as if I had leaped years ahead and a curtain had been opened. I can’t tell my mother this, I thought. Can I?
But something told me this was just what she wanted to know.
When she asked me again that day, I shrugged and said, “I think I look nice in it, and it’s comfortable. Thank you, Mother.”
“Nothing else?”
“No,” I told her. “What else should I feel?”
She looked at my father. He smiled, but she looked at me suspiciously. Did she realize I wasn’t telling the truth? Was there a reason she wasn’t revealing that, or had I grown stronger, better at hiding something from her? Upstairs, I had gotten away with lying about the cabinet drawer, and I didn’t feel as guilty about it as I’d thought I might. After all, there was so much they were hiding from me. That wasn’t fair, was it? Why were they afraid to tell the truth about me? Why did they hide the picture I had drawn of my birth mother? When would I know the reason for all this mystery about myself?
And when I did finally find out, would it frighten me as much as it seemed to frighten them?
2
I was always suspicious about my birthdays, even before I had seen my birth certificate and wondered if there was another, an original one. Despite what rights adopted children supposedly had when they reached a certain age, I suspected that in order to keep me from discovering my birth mother, my actual birthdate was different from the one my parents celebrated with me. It could easily have been my birth mother’s decision that her identity never be made known to me. Maybe I was younger or older than my parents told me I was, or they really didn’t know themselves. There was only one person who was certain about my age, and that was my birth mother.
When I once asked to see my birth certificate, my parents told me they couldn’t find it. They thought it was just misplaced. They promised that if they didn’t find it, they would help me get a new one. I had never questioned that, but now I knew that my birth certificate had been in my father’s filing cabinet all this time. They had to know that. Why all these lies and secrets? It made every corner of
the house seem darker and every whisper even more forbidden.
Unlike other children, I didn’t look forward to my birthdays. Whenever I had one, my parents studied me even more intently, analyzing with more intensity every word I said and everything I did. What were they watching for as I grew older? Every birthday since I was ten made me aware that they were looking for some sign, something to confirm a suspicion or a fear. Age was slowly uncovering what was inside me and who I really was. I felt like some bird emerging out of a shell.
Because of the way they acted, I would wake up the morning of my birthday and immediately look in the mirror to see if my face had changed in any way. Were my eyes a different color, a different shape? Did my hair, my ears, my mouth, any part of me, look so unlike the Sage Healy who had gone to sleep the night before? I even talked out loud to myself to see if the sound of my voice was different. Then, when I rose, I checked my body, not for the small, subtle differences every young girl might find as time passed but for changes so dramatic that I might have trouble fitting into the clothes I owned, as if I had suddenly returned to the body I was supposed to have.
There was one terrifying thought that gave me a nightmare even my soothing voices couldn’t stop, and that was my looking into a mirror one day and seeing an entirely different person. In the nightmare, as time passed, I would not only look different, but I would act differently, and soon I would forget who I had been. My adoptive parents wouldn’t know who I was, either, and I’d be out on my own, a stranger even to myself, wandering about, looking for some nest to crawl into like an orphaned bird whose mother had cast her out.
How I wished I had a close friend who was also adopted so I could compare his or her life to my own. Was my parents’ behavior normal for adoptive parents, especially if they had never met their child’s biological parents, which was what my parents claimed? If that was true, I guess it was only natural for them to wonder almost daily about what their adopted child was turning into, looking like, sounding like, and behaving like.
Gypsy Eyes Page 4