I look at myself in the mirror again. I look tired. And old. With the makeup washed off my face, my eyebrows are almost nonexistent. No one looks good without eyebrows.
“What are we doing about Mass in the morning?” I return my toothbrush to the drawer in the vanity.
Remy doesn’t say anything.
“I think we should all go to Mass together.” I stare at my eyebrowless face and wonder if I should look into the cost of having my eyebrows tattooed on. Ann had her lips tattooed last year. They’re a gorgeous shade of natural-looking mauve. She says it’s the best eight hundred dollars she ever spent in her life.
“Remy?” I grab the door frame and lean out the door. He’s still sitting there with his head in his hands. I’ve always been amazed by how much time he can spend doing absolutely nothing.
Slowly he sits up. Exhales, as if I’m annoying him. “Maybe you and Jojo should go. I’ll stay here with Lilla.”
I flinch when he calls her that. But we’ve already had that argument once today so I decide not to revisit it. Not tonight. His reasoning is that we can’t hit her like a brick wall, that we have to help her ease into her new life. And she’s only ever known the name Lilla. I don’t care how logical it is. I can’t call my daughter by the name that woman who’d better spend the rest of her life in prison gave her.
“We go to Mass on Sunday mornings. That’s what our family does.”
“I don’t go every Sunday,” he says. “And neither do you,” he adds.
With one last glance in the mirror, I tuck a lock of hair behind my ear and shut off the light. I walk into our bedroom. “It’s part of who we are, Remy. We’re Catholic. Our faith is what’s gotten us through this nightmare. And . . . and she’s a part of this family now and we need to do things together that define us as a family.”
“But she’s Jewish, Harper.” He says it quietly.
“She’s not!” I snap. “Stop saying that.”
He looks up at me. His dark eyes are pleading. He wants me to let it go. “But she thinks she’s Jewish,” he says. “It’s the way she’s been raised.”
Of course I can’t let it go. I can never let things go. It’s why we ended up in his sister’s office signing divorce papers. “She was raised?” I point as if I could possibly know where Sharon Kohen is right now. “That woman took her, Remy! She—”
“Lower your voice.”
I press my lips together. He means so Georgina doesn’t hear me.
I stand in front of him, looking down at him. I’m trying not to cry.
After a long moment, he grabs my hand and pulls me down to sit beside him. His olive branch. He slips his arm around me, resting his hand on my hip, below the hem of my long-sleeved T-shirt, above my panty line. We just sit there.
“I had an awful day,” I finally say. “She hates me.”
“She doesn’t hate you.”
“You heard her yesterday. She doesn’t want me. She doesn’t think I’m her mother. She wants that woman.”
“She understands that’s not going to happen.”
“But she wouldn’t even talk to me today, Remy. The most I got out of her was what she told me about a Chinese chicken dish.” I rest my cheek on his shoulder. “Did she talk to you? This morning?”
“Not really.” He leans his head against mine. “A little.”
“What did she say?”
He’s slow to reply. “She asked me what I do at Tulane. She likes numbers, too. Maybe she got that from me.”
I smile at the thought and then murmur, “What are we going to do?”
“What do you mean? We’re going to love our daughter. That’s what we’re going to do.”
I close my eyes. “I mean about the Jewish part. About the she-wants-to-see-that-woman part. About the fact that she doesn’t want to go to Ursuline. She doesn’t like my lasagna or my stir-fry.”
My husband—technically, my ex—sniggers.
I lift my head from his shoulder, fully intending to be annoyed with him. He’s not taking any of this seriously enough. But then I can’t help myself. The sound I make is more like a snort than a laugh. But then he starts to laugh and I can’t help it. It’s probably just that I’d rather laugh than cry.
I grab him by the shoulders and push him back onto the bed, laughing with him. “I’m serious,” I say, but I’m still laughing.
The back of his head hits the mattress and bounces up a little. He kisses me, a quick peck, and lets his head fall back again.
“Remy,” I say, leaning over him, my hair falling over my face. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to help her.”
“I’m pretty sure there’s no guidebook for this.” He looks up at me. “We’re just going to have to figure it out as we go.”
I lie on my back, beside him. “I think she should go to Mass with us tomorrow.”
“And I think you’re expecting way too much, way too soon.” He looks at me. We’re serious again.
I turn my head to stare at the punched-tin ceiling. “And what about school? She thinks she should be allowed to go to the school she was attending. A public school. I’m not driving her to Bayou St. John every day. That’s the one thing she did tell me today. She said she would take the streetcar across town and then walk to school.”
“What did you say?”
“Something about over my dead body,” I answer, realizing it wasn’t one of my best parenting moments.
“I think she’s a pretty independent girl. Single mother who worked long hours. Makes sense,” he says thoughtfully.
I choose to ignore his reference to that monster as a mother. “Georgina is not riding the streetcar. Not alone. Absolutely not. And it doesn’t make sense for her not to go to school where Jojo goes.” I gesture. “It’s down the street, for heaven’s sake.”
“So we’ll tell her that. We’re her parents. We have the final say.”
I look at him. “You’ll tell her?” I feel like a coward saying it, but right now, I don’t want to be the mean parent. I know it’s selfish of me, but if he’s willing to be the bearer of bad news, I’m willing to let him.
“I’ll talk to her tomorrow,” he agrees, turning his gaze to the ceiling.
“But I don’t think she should go this week.” I’m staring at the ceiling again, too. It needs painting. In a house this old, something always needs work. I want to paint Georgina’s bedroom, too. It’s still the pale lavender I painted it before she was born. “I took off from work,” I go on. “And I told Elaine at choir I’m going to take some time off.”
“I don’t know that that’s a good idea, baby. I think we need to go on with our lives and let her find her place in them.”
“I thought we could do some things together,” I say, ignoring his suggestion. “She and I. While you’re at work and Jojo’s at school. Get to know each other.”
He sits up on the edge of the bed. Stands. “Okay. She can start next week at Ursuline.” He walks toward the bathroom. “But I don’t think we should make her go to Mass. Religion isn’t something you force on people.”
“My parents forced it on me,” I call after him. “Yours certainly forced it on you.”
He goes into the bathroom and I know that conversation is over. Whether I want it to be or not.
13
Jojo
“Wait.” I hold up my hand like I’m one of those crosswalk guard ladies. “So I have to go to school . . . and Lilla doesn’t?”
“Last week when I wanted you to stay home, you wanted to go to school.” Mom gives me one of her looks from across the kitchen island. She’s sitting on a stool, drinking coffee. She’s wearing mascara and has pulled her hair back in a little stubby ponytail. Usually I like it that way, but I’m in a bad mood this morning. I don’t like anything.
“And please don’t call her that,” she says so quietly that I can barely hear her. But I hear her, all right.
“Why can’t I call her Lilla?” I walk to the fridge and get the OJ out. “That�
��s what she wants to be called. I asked her.” Which isn’t true. But I overheard Mom and Dad discussing it yesterday. She does want to be called Lilla. Dad’s calling her Lilla and Mom is pissed about it. Typical.
Mom’s staring into her cup like she’s reading tea leaves. Or maybe coffee grounds. “Her name is Georgina.”
I get a bee glass from the cupboard and pour myself some OJ. Mom’s got weird taste about some things but I love our bee glasses. They’re French cut glass and there’s a medallion on each one with a bee on it. “You named her that, but that lady who shanghaied her called her Lilla.” I turn around to look at her. “Mom, you can’t just change her name. It would be like if I came down this morning and you started calling me Tiffany.”
“Her name’s Georgina. Named after my father’s grandmother.”
Mom does this all the time. She states her case by just repeating what she’s already said. She’d make a crappy lawyer. I want to be a lawyer. To carry on the Broussard name. Dad’s little brother, my Uncle Beau, says I could totally be a lawyer and work in his office downtown. The Broussards have been practicing law since the Confederate days. I don’t know if he really thinks I’m smart enough to go to law school, but it’s nice that he would say that. I like Uncle Beau. He gives great birthday and Christmas gifts.
I walk over to the counter with my glass. “Dad calls her Lilla.”
“Put the orange juice away, please.”
That’s another thing Mom does. If she doesn’t like the question, or the stated evidence, she just doesn’t respond. I glance over my shoulder at the juice container I left on the counter. I take another sip from my glass before I stick the carton in the fridge. “I gotta go. Makayla needs help with her math.”
Mom’s eyebrows go up. “You’re helping Makayla? That’s nice.”
What she means is that she’s surprised. Because Makayla’s so smart and I’m so dumb. Apparently, Georgina-Lilla’s smart, too. Yesterday afternoon, Mom made us all watch a movie together. It was this old movie about this British dude who was good at math and helped win the war. I think it was World War I. Maybe II. Dad and Georgina-Lilla were talking about the machine he and his guys built that was like a computer before we had computers. The movie was kind of boring, even though Hunky Cumberbatch was in it. That’s what Makayla calls him. I don’t think he’s that hot.
“I help Makayla sometimes,” I argue. I actually want to go early so I can copy her algebra homework. Makayla’s way smarter than me. “You picking me up after basketball or is Aunt Annie?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t talked to her. One of us will be there.” She gets off the stool, taking her coffee with her. “Put your glass in the sink.” She points at my orange juice glass on the counter. “And rinse it out.”
“Fine,” I huff.
“We’re going to walk to Ann’s with you.” She takes another swig of coffee before she sets her mug in the sink and runs water in it.
“Who?” I look at her, making a face. “Why?”
“Georgina and I. I thought it would be nice if we had coffee with Ann. Then Georgina and I are going to the hardware store to pick out paint for her room. We’re going to paint it together. A little project.”
I’ve been asking Mom for, like, the last year if I can paint my room and she keeps saying we’ll talk about it. It’s still the same peachy color I picked out when I was, like, ten. I look at her in her jeans and sneakers. “Aren’t you going to work?”
“I took some time off. To help Georgina get settled. Get your sister and I’ll meet you out front in a minute. I just have to run upstairs.”
I watch her walk out of the kitchen. “Where is she?” I call after her. Like I’m supposed to be keeping track of her now? She’s the big sister. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?
“Front porch.”
I groan and walk across the kitchen to grab my backpack from where I left it on the floor in the doorway. I seriously think about just sneaking out the back and walking to Makayla’s by myself. But then Mom will holler at me. Or worse, cry. And tonight Dad will pull me aside and talk all quiet and calm about how if I want to be treated like an adult, I need to act like one. How I need to be more sensitive to other people’s feelings and blah, blah, blah.
Out in the front hall I grab my scarf off the banister and check my phone. It’s only fifty-two degrees outside. I think about running back upstairs for my coat. It’ll be chilly walking in my skirt and blazer this morning, though it will warm up as the day goes on. But Mom’s upstairs. I wrap my scarf around my neck and wonder if you can pull a scarf tight enough to, like, strangle yourself. I’d be pretty important then, more important than my sister. At least until the paramedics carried my dead body out of the house. But then everything would be about Georgina again. Because she’s smart.
And she’d still be alive.
I walk out onto the front porch. Georgina-Lilla is sitting in one of the chairs, drinking coffee. I can smell it. I don’t like coffee. She’s wearing an oversized Tulane hoodie sweatshirt. I think it’s Dad’s. It’s usually hanging in the laundry room. I don’t know what’s with her and all the Tulane gear.
I close the front door, stalling. Maybe Mom will come down and I won’t have to say anything to Georgina-Lilla. But she looks up at me like she expects me to say something.
“Um . . .” Just standing here next to her makes me feel stupid. She even looks smart. “Mom says she’ll be done in a second. I guess . . .” I drag the toe of my dorky uniform shoe across the porch floor. “I guess you guys are walking up to Aunt Annie’s. She’s my best friend Makayla’s mom. She’s not really my . . . our aunt or anything. I just call her that because she and Mom are . . . best friends or whatever. They met before I was born. When you were a baby.” I don’t know why I say all that. It sounds stupid.
She’s looking at me. At my uniform, I think. Judging. The plaid skirt is ugly.
“I have to wear this. We . . . everybody at Ursuline wears a uniform. You’ll have to wear one, too,” I add.
She looks away. She’s mad that she has to go to Ursuline. Which I guess I kind of get. I don’t really like it there, but if Mom and Dad all of a sudden said I had to go somewhere else, leave my friends . . . there’s no way.
“We didn’t have to wear uniforms at my school,” she says. She talks quiet. But smart. She just sounds so smart.
We both look straight ahead. The park is our front lawn. It’s one of the coolest things about our house. We’ve got big trees that are really pretty. They’re called live oaks. When I was little, Mom used to take me and Makayla over to play under the trees. We’d try to climb them but we never could because the trunks are too big and the branches were too high. Sometimes we’d have picnics and stuff there. Mom would pack a whole basket of stuff, with real dishes. We’d eat little sandwiches on a blanket. Sometimes Mom would put a plate out for Georgina, too. It sounds weird now, but when I was little, I didn’t think so. It was just what we did.
I glance at Georgina-Lilla. She looks really sad and I feel bad for her. I don’t really want to. But I do anyway. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have something like this happen to you. “Did you really think she was your mom? The one who kidnapped you?” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. Mom’s gonna kill me when Georgina-Lilla tells her what I said.
She’s quiet long enough for me to wonder if she didn’t hear me or she’s just not going to answer me. But then she looks at me with those big, sad Dad eyes. “I thought she was my mother. You’ve never questioned if your mom is really your mom, have you?”
I make a face. “Yeah, but, she is my mom.”
“But what if she wasn’t? Isn’t?” She speaks slowly, enunciating each word. Dad talks that way, too. Maybe that’s what makes them sound smart.
What if Mom wasn’t my mom? I think about that for a minute and it kind of makes me dizzy the way I feel dizzy when I think about how the earth is just one planet in our solar system, in our galaxy, but there
are lots of galaxies in the universe. I love my mom more than anyone in the world, even Dad. I mean, I hate her of course. Sometimes. But I love her. I’d never leave her. I don’t even want to go to college out of state. Broussards go to Tulane. I want to go to Tulane. If I can get in.
“Where is she?” I ask. I talk quiet so if Mom sneaks up on us, she won’t hear me. She told me I wasn’t allowed to ask Georgina questions about before she got here. But that seems crazy because Mom also said she wants me to get to know her. How can I get to know her without asking questions about who she was when she was Lilla? “Your . . . what was her name? The lady who took you?”
“Sharon,” she says.
She takes a drink of her coffee and when she does it, she looks like Mom. I mean, she looks like Dad, face-wise, but there’s something about the way she moves, the way she holds her mouth when she drinks from the mug.
“Her name is Sharon. She’s a chef.”
“What happened to her when the cops found out she kidnapped you? Did they throw her in jail, or in a nut house?” I slide my backpack to the floor. “You’d have to be crazy to steal somebody’s baby at Mardi Gras, wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t know.” She looks up at me. “I guess they took her to jail, but no one will tell me anything. The social worker said it would be up to Remy and Harper what I’m told.”
“You going to call them that? Remy and Harper?”
She shrugs.
I guess it must be weird for her to have called that woman Mom and now have our mom saying that’s what she should call her. I can see why Georgina-Lilla wouldn’t want to, but there’s no way Mom’s going to go for her calling her Harper.
I check the time on my phone. We need to go if I’m going to have time to copy Makayla’s homework. I open the front door and yell, “Mom! I’m gonna be late!” I close the door. “I’m going to be late if we don’t go.” I pick up my backpack and head for the steps. “You wanna go with me, or you wanna wait for her? I meet Makayla at her house and then we walk together to school. I’m not allowed to walk alone.”
Finding Georgina Page 9