Unburying Hope

by Mary Wallace

  It’s the little gestures, Celeste thought. The ones she didn’t understand, the ones that felt like backing down but were instead acts of healing trust to Rosalinda. She smiled and pointed to the plants, saying, “you can do it, just go one at a time.”

  Rosalinda reached in and grabbed one of the pots, put it onto her head for a second and tried to balance it.

  Celeste laughed out loud, rolled her eyes and walked close to Rosalinda, her right arm ready to grasp the pot in case it fell.

  Rosalinda pulled the pot back down into her arms, smiled a big smile and skipped back to the redwood trees, then back past Celeste and back again with the two smaller lavender pots as Celeste meandered to where Eddie was choosing the spots for holes for the new plants. She went slowly, looking at each plant and bush and tree that she passed, trying to distinguish each one’s scent. The smell of the freshly dug earth was dank but sweet, it carried the oils of the redwood trees that stood tall around them, shedding their bark onto the property on windswept days.

  Eddie’s face was sweaty and had dirt streaks across his forehead, as though he’d been working since they left for the nursery. His earlier short temper had faded and he was digging the third hole, with Rosalinda standing next to him directing him to dig deeper, deeper, deep enough so that each hydrangea bush could be placed into the hole and the top of its root ball, where the woody stalks left its dirt, would sit at the dirt line in the ground. Rosalinda had been listening at the nursery, Celeste realized, and was delighting in this new form of entertainment, digging into the ground with the hope of bringing life to bear. Working with her father, being able to contribute, Rosalinda’s face opened up into a softness, a happiness that Celeste was relieved to witness.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “What’s your plan for how to occupy Rosalinda during the day?” Celeste asked gingerly, choosing the least controversial wording from all the phrases she’d practiced while he was gone.

  Eddie was chopping onions and mushrooms and spinach for an omelet he wanted to make for her. “She’s going to go to school.”

  “How do you choose a school?”

  “You find out what district you live in and you go enroll her.” He stopped chopping and looked at her. “Do you feel like tomatoes?”

  Celeste nodded. “Malia wants us to send her to the little private school down the road, it’s where her daughter and grandson went.”

  He looked up, startled.

  “She says the local public school is all the way down the mountain, but this little school would be good for Rosalinda, give her a strong education with local kids. She’d have friends in town.”

  “How much does private school cost?”

  “Malia said it’s worth it, it’s small classrooms and the kids do a lot of outside learning and computer learning, something called ‘project based’.” She quoted a few figures Malia had told her, paying the tuition monthly or semi-annually.

  “Okay, we can see if she likes it there, then. Maybe they’ll be easier on us than a public school that has to have all the legal documents.”

  “What do you need to bring? Her birth certificate?”

  “Probably. I don’t really know. I’ve never enrolled her.”

  “Do you know what school she just came from?”

  His eyes flared, “No, I don’t. I’ve never been a part of her school life.” His words bit.

  “Okay, calm down. Why don’t you take her tomorrow and see what they need at the school office?”

  “I’ve got to meet the commercial property landlord. Can you do it?”

  Celeste looked at him, baffled. “But Eddie, you finally have her with you. Don’t you want to do the important things with her?”

  His lips tightened. “I’m no good at that stuff.”

  “Who says?”

  “Everyone. You don’t understand.”

  “Well, she’s your daughter, you should do it. If I’d had a father, I’d want him to help me out.”

  “Your father took off, didn’t he? You never met him?”

  Filled with inexplicable shame, Celeste nodded. “So you’re going to abandon her because my father abandoned me?”

  “I’m not going to abandon her. I brought her here. But I know when I’m not good at something and I don’t know how to stand up in public to explain where I’ve been for the past 9 years.”

  “No one’s going to ask you where you’ve been. How would they know anything about her past?”

  “I don’t know. Can you please do this for me?”

  “You’re asking me to go in and pretend I’m related to her.”

  “They probably won’t ask anything personal.”

  Celeste raised her eyebrows at him, wondering why he didn’t do it if they wouldn’t ask personal questions. “I’m not good with kids.” She bit her lip. She’d only vaguely sketched out the scene of her firing when she came home that day, leaving out the toddler who had simply tried to show off her little car.

  “Look,” his voice got serious, “First, I dumped her mother, not knowing she was pregnant. I didn’t find out about Rosalinda until she was 7 and her mom died. The authorities shipped her off to my mom when I was deployed overseas.”

  “Seven years you missed?”

  “Yep. And I don’t think they were good years for her. Her mom ended up an addict. She OD’d.”

  “How tragic.”

  He looked at her with a bit of embarrassment. “Well, she had too hard a time raising Rosalinda, so she numbed herself so she wouldn’t feel so alone.”

  Celeste frowned.

  “You should be really happy that you had your mother.”

  “Why are you bringing up my mom?”

  “Because she worked so hard to feed you and give you a roof over your head. You have no idea how hard that is, actually. And she slept near you every night.”

  “She did.” Celeste remembered waking up with her little arm flung over her mother’s neck, her mother kissing it in her half sleep.

  “When you told me about your mom, it gave me the courage to face up to Rosalinda,” he admitted, “to try to take care of her.”

  “That’s very sweet,” Celeste said, her heart warm with the thought.

  “But it’s not so easy for me. Kind of like it wasn’t so easy for Rosalinda’s mother.”

  “Didn’t anyone stop her mom from doing drugs? How could she do that knowing how much it would screw up Rosalinda’s life?”

  “You can’t stop someone,” he scoffed. “Drugs change your brain chemistry, they lay down tracks like a horse drawn carriage in the mud. Your neurons change, they can’t make themselves happy anymore without continuous highs, more drugs. It’s hell, being addicted.”

  She remembered Frank’s insistence at lunch that Eddie was addicted. “How do you know?”

  “I saw lots of guys broken by war. Drugs helped them suit up each new day when they didn’t know if they’d be playing chess or scraping guts off their faces before lunchtime.”

  “I know you had a hard time in Iraq.” Celeste leaned in. “Did something happen that hurt you that deep?”

  For a moment, Eddie’s face contorted and then softened and she felt in a flash that she could again see vestiges of his little boy face.

  “No,” he said. “When you come home you put all those memories into a coffin and you bury them. Right now I’m fighting to get the business going and be the least damaging dad I can be to Rosalinda.”

  “What about me?” Celeste minded that she wasn’t on his priority list.

  “Celeste, I love you,” he said softly, spooning scrambled eggs onto two plates. “As well as I can. You have no idea what it means to me that the big-hearted girl who wrote ‘hope’ all over places in Detroit is you. I’m happy that we took this leap together. That we’re in Hawaii together,” he spread his arms wide, pointing to the lush hillside out the window. “I can’t believe I’ve lived long enough to get here. And if I can make up even one day to Rosalinda for not taking care of
her until now, I’ll be a success as a man. I need you to help me with that, if you can.”

  “I can try,” she said, “but I’m really not good with kids.”

  “You haven’t tried yet in your life. You and Frank had great lives but you weren’t really mature.”

  “Hey! I was mature! I worked every day, got myself through college and worked years in that job and I saved money from every paycheck. I was responsible.” Her pride was hurt.

  “But you never cared for anyone, took care of them, like a kid.”

  “I never wanted a kid.”

  “This fight again?” Eddie rubbed his temples, running his fingers around the dent in his forehead. “We’re a package deal, Celeste.”

  “No, not this fight again. But if I wasn’t mature by raising a kid, neither were you.”

  He winced. “You’re right. I let a couple of years go by, trusting my mom to raise her. But I was in Afghanistan. I haven’t been out drinking with my work buddy.”

  “Oh my god, I can’t believe you brought that up.” She seethed.

  “Well, I haven’t been there for her. You’re right. But I’m here now. And I’m telling the truth, I know I can’t do all the parenting she needs, I’m fucked up. I love you,” he leaned in to kiss her neck. “Maybe together we can raise her right.”

  Never, not once in all the days she’d been with Eddie or the nights when they’d made love did she ever imagine them having a baby together. Maybe she was deficient, she thought. She’d been decorating a million homes in her head and never included a nursery or a child’s bedroom. She wanted to be with him and Rosalinda was all right as kids go, but signing on to raise her was more than she wanted. Balancing out between her life in this lovely house, the bed she shared with Eddie, she shook her head at the thought that her path actually did include Rosalinda for years into the future.

  His warm lips pressed in to her ear, his tongue gently played and she moaned, distracted by his passion. She turned her face to kiss him.

  After a long kiss and his roving hands on her body, he whispered, “so, you’ll take her to the school tomorrow?”

  She pulled away and looked into his eyes. They were intense and sincere.

  “I’ll do my best for you, Celeste, if you can help me with Rosalinda.” He kissed the top of her nose, pulling her close. “Please.”

  Her mind torn between the fear of walking into a classroom of screaming children and her desire for Eddie’s body, she pursed her lips and said, “I’ll try.”

  He smiled gratefully and nibbled part of her lip, then moved his tongue deeper into her mouth.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The little school was quiet, not the pandemonium she expected. Class was in session.

  Celeste walked gingerly down an empty, bleached wainscotted hallway, hearing muffled sounds of childish laughter and lilting adult voices.

  Rosalinda pointed to a metal engraved sign on a wall that steered them to the school office. Rosalinda’s hair was long and wavy, Celeste noticed. Very much like her own, except dark black. The little girl looked clean in her sweatshirt and jeans.

  The school secretary was on the phone, taking down absentee student information from a parent. She adeptly motioned to Celeste and Rosalinda to sit down and completed her call.

  “What can I do for you?” she asked. She was Hawaiian, about 5 foot 2 inches tall, solid like a fire hydrant, with short curly hair. She wore an ankle-length casual dress and flip-flops, which amused Celeste. No one wore flip-flops to work back home. Well, maybe they did at schools these days. She had zero experience at schools back home, hadn’t walked into one since she walked out years ago after her college graduation.

  “We are here to sign Rosalinda up for school,” Celeste said. “My landlady, Malia Konani, told me that she’d phoned ahead? You said you have room for a transfer student?”

  “Hello, Rosalinda,” the lady rolled the letter R as she repeated Rosalinda’s name, ‘I’m Mrs. Lokelani. My name means ‘rose’ too, how funny!” She leaned over the desk to shake hands with Rosalinda and Celeste. “Yes, Malia made quite a phone call about you, little lady,” she patted Rosalinda on the shoulders. “She says you are a very good gardener. We have a vegetable garden here, we cook a lot of our school lunches with food we grow ourselves.”

  Rosalinda smiled thoughtfully.

  “Where are you from?”

  “Michigan,” Rosalinda answered. “But we live here now.”

  “Welcome, then. What grade are you in?”

  “Fourth.”

  Celeste was relieved that Rosalinda was so competent, she had been afraid of being found out as a fraud. She hoped this meeting would stay lighthearted and welcoming.

  “You and your mommy moved here?” Mrs. Lokelani motioned to Celeste with a warm smile.

  Rosalinda froze.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean to embarrass you. It’s okay if it’s just the two of you as your family. We’ve got all kinds of families here. We’ve got kids raised by one parent, both parents, grandparents, two dads, two moms. It’s okay if it’s just the two of you.”

  Celeste smiled nervously at Mrs. Lokelani’s mistaken assumption and she reached quickly for Rosalinda’s hand. “Her father is here with us, we just moved in over the ridge.” Technically truthful, she didn’t need to redraw the mother-girlfriend distinction for her. “Malia said her grandson went to school here.”

  “Her daughter went to school here too, poor thing.”

  Celeste cocked her head, confused.

  Rosalinda looked down in her lap.

  “So I’m sure there’s some paperwork?” Celeste spoke methodically to calm herself.

  “Yes, siree! Just a few papers. And we need a copy of an official mailing with your new address showing your local residency. A phone bill or an electric bill with your name on it.”

  “I have a copy of our lease, but it’s just in my name, not her father’s.”

  “That’s just fine, honey,” Mrs. Lokelani said. She took the lease and looked at it cursorily.

  “Do you have a certified copy of her birth certificate? Or her passport?”

  Celeste froze again. She could kick herself for not having read the birth certificate. What if Rosalinda’s mother hadn’t named Eddie as Rosalinda’s father, what if she had named some other man? She stealthily opened the envelope Rosalinda had handed to her days ago and slowly unfolded the official document.

  Mrs. Lokelani was distracted, telling Rosalinda about the after school sports program. She could play volleyball or do Lego camp so mom and dad could work regular hours instead of worrying about her after school, she said.

  The birth certificate had been crumpled and flattened so many times that it was aged nearly as old as Rosalinda herself. Celeste saw for the first time Rosalinda’s mother’s name.

  Strange. Her mother was dead and she was sitting in her stead, representing her in getting her daughter to a safe school. The gravity of the responsibility suddenly weighed heavy on her.

  Colleen was the mother’s name but in the squished up, crumpled spots, the letters could conceivably read similar to Celeste and she gasped at the odd coincidence, handing the form over. Eddie’s name was listed as the father, she was relieved to see. If she was found out, at least Eddie could walk in with his head up and do the legal transacting.

  Mrs. Lokelani took the document, looked it over carefully and flattened the crumpled parts, reading it out loud. She said “Rosalinda Immaculata Rodrigues, daughter of Colleen Rosalinda Rodrigues and Edward Rafael O’Halleran.” She reached next to her, lifted the lid off the printer and placed the birth certificate face down, pushing the button to make a copy. “Such lyrical names you each have.” Smiling, she handed the birth certificate back. “Thank you. It’s nice when families are organized, it makes my job so much easier.”

  Celeste folded up the birth certificate, quickly put it back into the envelope and stowed it into her purse. Part of her was terrified at being found out, part of her wante
d Mrs. Lokelani to trill her own name, calling her into the circle with her beautifully melodious voice, ‘Celeste Elisa Beatrice Hoffman’. She realized that even in her fear, she wanted to be named, to be part of a family. But it was too dangerous. Rosalinda’s safety needed to be protected. “What else do you need?” she asked.

  “I’m named after my mommy,” Rosalinda piped in, “not Celeste.”

  Mrs. Lokelani stared directly at Celeste.

  Celeste felt her shoulders deflate but she kept her head held high, staring back at the woman, biting her lip.

  “Do you have her previous school record? Her transcript?”

  “Why do you need that?” Celeste asked, her voice unexpectedly high pitched. “She told you she’s in 4th Grade.”

  “If you don’t have it, we can write for it. But we need to make sure she’s taken pre-math and science for our curriculum. Don’t worry, though. We’ll test her tomorrow for an hour or so, to figure out what she knows and what we need to teach her to make sure she’s at the same learning level as our students.”

  Rosalinda motioned to Celeste to get the envelope out again.

  Celeste did not want to pull the errant birth certificate out again, but she reached into her purse, looking in askance at Rosalinda. The little girl looked at her intently, almost angrily. She opened the envelope and fished around, awkwardly extracting another sheet of paper in the envelope. There were two more sheets in the envelope, one a formal typed document, the other a hand written note.

  She almost whistled to herself at the thoughtfulness of the grandmother when she read the typed word at the top of the pristine formal page – Transcript. Folded inside was a torn sheet from a yellow pad, with ‘Whoever can care for Rosalinda’. Her heart constricted with the unfocused pathos of the words and the weakness of the hand that wrote them.

  She handed the official paper over to Mrs. Lokelani, smiling wanly at Rosalinda.