by Nancy Belgue
My mother believes in ufos. My father doesn’t.
All this was whirling around and around inside my head while Mrs. Muncie talked on the kitchen phone to the hospital where they’d taken my mother. She asked Auntie Graves where my father was, and Auntie Graves said that my father had gone away to visit family in Iran. “No,” Auntie Graves said, “I don’t know how to get in touch with him.”
Auntie Graves said that she would go and find Mr. Singh and that maybe he knew how to contact my father. Then Mrs. Muncie called her husband and told him that she would be late for dinner because she was taking care of a student whose mother had been hit by a car. I sat at the table holding the drawing my mother had made for me that morning.
Mrs. Muncie lowered her voice and said, “I don’t know how bad it is. She is at the hospital, and they are operating. Very serious, I would say.” She looked back over her shoulder at me and gave me a small worried smile.
Auntie Graves brought Mr. and Mrs. Singh into the room. Mr. Singh hugged me, and I started to cry. I cried so hard, Auntie Graves took my mother’s drawing out of my hand so my tears wouldn’t smudge it.
Mr. Singh said, “Do you know how to get in touch with your father, Colette?”
Mrs. Singh put her arm around me. Mrs. Muncie wiped away a tear.
“No,” I said. “Maybe my mother has it written down somewhere.” I started sifting though all the papers on her desk, but my hands were shaking so hard, I couldn’t hold anything.
Mr. Singh said, “Mrs. Singh can have a look. Is there anything you can tell us about where he was going?”
“It’s near the mosque in Isfahan,” I said. “That’s all I know.”
Mr. Singh rubbed a hand across his face.
“When can I go see my mother?” I asked.
Mr. Singh said, “I will call the hospital and see what they say.” Then he went to speak to Mrs. Muncie, who told him which hospital to call.
“You can stay with us tonight,” said Mrs. Singh.
She went to my room and came back with my pajamas, my toothbrush and a change of clothes. That was when I realized that I might not be coming home for a while.
As if reading my thoughts, Mrs. Muncie told me that she would let the school know I wouldn’t be there for a few days.
“The doctor who operated on your mother will call us tonight,” Mr. Singh told me when he hung up. “Think as hard as you can, Colette,” Mr. Singh said. “Can you remember anything else about where your father went? Do you know the names of your father’s parents?”
“I can’t remember,” I said.
Mr. Singh shook his head. I thought of my mother lying on the pavement with her eyes closed and her skin as white as milk. What if she died? I started to shake, and Mr. Singh had to carry me to his apartment and put me in a chair. Mrs. Singh kept offering me food, but I knew I would never be able to eat again.
At midnight Mrs. Singh put me to bed in her room and stayed beside me, rubbing my back and humming softly. I was so tired from crying and shaking that I finally fell asleep.
A loud ringing woke me. I was dreaming of flying like the pigeons on top of the mosque in my poster. I was talking to all the friendly birds, asking which way I should go to find my father, but they kept saying go-go and pecking at the ground. I was so tired from flying that, when I opened my eyes, my arms ached from the effort of flapping them.
For a minute, I didn’t know where I was. Then I remembered I was in Mr. and Mrs. Singh’s apartment and that my mother was in a hospital.
“She is tired and has finally fallen asleep,” I heard Mr. Singh say. “Can’t this wait until the morning?”
“Absolutely not!” said an unfamiliar voice. “She should be with her family!”
“Shhh!” said Mrs. Singh. “You’ll wake her.”
“Just as well,” said the strange voice. “I demand you wake her up this instant!”
I crept to the bedroom door and peeked out. A tall man wearing a dark blue raincoat stood in the living room with his back to me. Beside him, a woman with blond hair was speaking to Mr. Singh. “You have no right to delay us another second.”
Mr. Singh’s wife put her hand to her mouth. Her eyes widened. She had seen me. Mr. Singh peered around the angry woman’s shoulder.
“Well,” he said. “It looks like you won’t have to wait until the morning after all to meet your granddaughter.”
The tall couple whirled around. I stepped backward. They looked so upset, I thought they might put a curse on me and I might shrivel up and die.
The blond woman took a step toward me. Her hand clutched a large brown purse. She crossed the room and pushed open the bedroom door.
“Colette?” she said.
The tall man came up behind her. He put a hand on her shoulder.
“Emily,” he began.
“Are you Colette?” the woman said.
The tall man stepped around her.
“Colette,” he said, “my name is Richard Ridley. I am your grandfather.”
I looked from one face to the other. The man’s eyes were sad and worried. The woman’s mouth was trembling.
“Your mother is our daughter,” he said. He reached out and tried to take my hand. I snatched it away from him.
The woman made a choking sound.
Mr. Singh brushed by them both and gripped my shoulders.
“The doctor found your grandparents’ names in your mother’s wallet,” he said softly. “They have just come from the hospital.”
Mr. Singh pushed my hair out of my eyes, glanced at the man and continued. “Your mother is in a coma. The doctors don’t know how long she’ll be in the hospital. Your grandparents have come here so that they can take you to stay with them.”
“No!” I yelled.
“Stop that!” the tall blond woman said.
“Emily,” said my grandfather. He sounded like our school principal when he wants to summon a wrongdoer to the office. “Perhaps you’d better wait in the car.”
Without another word, the blond woman strode out the door and slammed it after her.
“Are you sure?” asked Mr. Singh. “My wife and I would be happy to care for Colette until her father can return home.”
“That will not be necessary,” my grandfather said. “She should be with her family at a time like this. Would you pack her things, please?”
Mr. Singh nodded at Mrs. Singh, and she disappeared into the bedroom. I grabbed Mr. Singh by the arm. “No,” I whispered. “I can’t go with them! I don’t even know them! What about my father? He won’t know where to find me!”
“These people are your blood relatives, Colette,” said Mr. Singh. “They have legal rights. It will only be until your father returns.”
Mr. Singh nudged me toward the door, where Mrs. Singh handed me my backpack and gave me a long hug. “Be strong, Colette,” she whispered in my ear. “Be strong for your mother.”
The man put his hand on my shoulder. I shrugged it off.
Then I put my chin in the air as if I was trumpeting like the elephant the fortune-teller had seen in my teacup. Her words popped into my head. An elephant is a sign of wisdom and strength. It means you will know how to handle what lies ahead.
The man opened the door.
“It’s time to go,” he said.
Mr. Singh handed me a piece of paper with his phone number on it. “Take this,” he said. “Call if you need anything at all.”
Then the tall man pushed me into the hall and away from the only home I’d ever known.
Chapter 7
When we got into the car, my grandmother turned to me and said, “You can call us Grandmama and Grandpapa.” Then she turned around and stared out the front window. Every so often she dabbed her cheek with a linen handkerchief, and Grandpapa reached over and touched her arm.
The streets were a blur of lights, black asphalt and noise. We turned onto the street that I remembered seeing from the subway with my mother. There were carved pumpkins on porches and st
raw men wearing funny hats. The houses were bigger than any I’d ever seen. Some of them looked like hotels.
We stopped in front of a tall red-brick house. Grandmama got out of the car and went in a side door. Grandpapa stared after her for a moment, then rested his head on his hands, which were clutching the steering wheel. I thought about running away and taking the subway back to my apartment. I checked on the ten-dollar bill I always had hidden in my backpack. My father had taught me that: Never leave home without enough money to make a phone call or take a subway. Maybe he should have added: Leave a number where you can be reached to his list of rules to live by.
I sniffed and ran my hand under my nose. Without turning around, my grandfather passed a white handkerchief into the backseat.
“Don’t wipe your nose on your sleeve,” he said.
The handkerchief had little white initials embroidered in the corner. I blew. After a moment, he turned to study me. “My father was right,” he said. “You don’t look anything like our Alice.”
“You don’t look like her either,” I said. “She looks more like her.” I nodded in the direction of the house. A light had come on in the kitchen, and Grandmama stood looking out the window.
“Colette,” Grandpapa said. “Why did she name you that?”
“She thought it was a pretty name, I guess.” I figured that it wasn’t his business that she had looked into my baby eyes and seen that I was going to be a writer.
“Do you like school?” Grandpapa asked.
“Some of it.”
“I was like that,” he said. “I hated math.”
“Me too.”
“See,” he said, “we do have something in common.”
My grandmother rapped on the kitchen window.
“We’d better go,” he said. He took my backpack as I stepped out onto the quiet driveway. In my neighborhood there are lots of sounds: cars, people talking, sirens wailing, horns honking. Here, the only noise was the rustling of the leaves.
Grandpapa started up the sidewalk, then stopped and waited until I followed him. My grandmother had disappeared, but there was a glass of milk on the table and a plate of cookies.
“Want something to eat?” Grandpapa asked.
I shook my head. He took the glass of milk and put it in the fridge, slid the cookies into a tin and put the plate in the sink. The kitchen was as big as our whole apartment. Every surface glittered.
“This way,” Grandpapa said. He walked through the kitchen and into a large hall, where a staircase curved away into the darkness. He flicked a switch, and a giant light with hundreds of bulbs shaped like tiny candles shone down on us. “Your room’s up here.”
He led the way up the stairs and past a landing that seemed as big as a basketball court. Here the stairs branched in two directions. There was a tiny sliver of light showing under a door at the top of the stairs on the right-hand side. “That’s where your grandmother and I sleep,” he said, pointing at the closed door. “You’ll be in this wing too.”
My grandfather opened a door to a room that was painted red. “This room was your mother’s right up until she left home,” he said. His voice cracked. “As you can see, she always loved the color red.”
He put my backpack on a high bed that had a little stepladder beside it. “There’s a bathroom in there,” he said, pointing at a closed door opposite the bed. “And here’s your closet.” He cleared his throat. “Do you have everything you need?”
“When can I go and see my mom?” I asked.
My grandfather ran his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Why not?”
“She’s unconscious. She wouldn’t know you were there. Maybe you should wait until she wakes up.”
“No!” I yelled. “I want to see her!”
“I’ll speak to your grandmother,” he said.
“No!” I yelled again, looking up into his face to make sure he could tell I was serious. “I want you to promise me now. Promise you’ll take me to see her. Tomorrow!”
“You are a determined girl. Just like your mother. That’s something all three of you have in common.”
“Three of us?”
“Your grandmother, your mother and you.” He harrumphed and shook his head. “Try and get some sleep. Before I go, though, I want to tell you that I am glad to know you, Colette. I am saddened it took a tragedy to bring us together, but it is something I have wanted for a long time.” He stood up and walked to the door. It clicked shut behind him.
It’s only for tonight, I told myself. Tomorrow I’ll make them take me to see her. I would scream and yell and kick until they did what I wanted.
Remember the honeybees, my mother’s voice said in my ear.
“Mom? Are you there?” I whispered.
The voice came again. You catch more bees with honey than you do with lemons, it said. How could I hear my mother’s voice? She was lying unconscious in a hospital at the other end of the city. But I was sure I’d heard something, and if I could hear her, maybe my father could too. Maybe he was feeling the same horrible ache in his heart that I felt. I sent him a message. Come home, Dad, I begged. We need you.
Chapter 8
“Time to wake up.”
I opened my eyes and saw a strange woman looking down at me. I had fallen asleep on the floor.
My grandmother stepped over me, walked to a closet and opened it. “I hope you found the floor comfortable,” she said. Her voice was muffled as she leaned over and yanked out a couple of cardboard boxes. “I saved some of Alice’s old things. You’re pudgier than she was, but I think some of these bigger items might fit.” For a moment her voice trembled.
“I can wear my own clothes,” I said.
“You will not wear those scruffy-looking things,” she said, pointing at the faded jeans my mother had embroidered with moons and stars. “Not while you’re staying in this house,” she added.
This time, I heard my father’s voice. Pick your battles, Colette, it said. It was as if I had developed some kind of antennae.
“You look like a fish,” Grandmama said sharply. “Close your mouth.” She flapped a sweater and a pair of pants at me. “Here, try these. Breakfast is in ten minutes. You will want to shower and wash your hair before you get dressed.”
Her face softened for a minute, and she seemed about to say something else; then she changed her mind. “Don’t dawdle,” she said. She went out and closed the door.
I stared at the clothes. There was a red-polka-dot sweater with brown lace at the cuffs and a pair of brown corduroy pants. My mother couldn’t possibly have worn boring clothes like that, and neither would I! Instead of getting dressed, I went to the window. The backyard sloped away to a giant ravine. Last summer my parents had taken me bicycle riding in the ravine. They had told me that there were ravines that ran all through the city. Climbing along a fence at the back of the yard was a family of raccoons.
A gnome-like woman was bending over a vegetable garden in the yard next door. She reminded me of Auntie Graves. I tried to open the window, but it was locked. I knocked on the pane, but the lady didn’t look up. I banged a little harder, and she paused in her digging and cocked her head like a sparrow. Then she moved toward the ravine. A small black dog darted out from behind a tree and trotted after her.
“What on earth is that racket about?” said a voice from behind me. I swung around. My grandmother was standing there. “What are you doing?” she demanded.
“Who’s that?” I asked, pointing at the woman.
“That’s Miss Ethelberta Jarvis.” My grandmother sniffed. “She’s got to be eighty-five if she’s a day. Getting much too old to live in that big house by herself. Her family wants to put her in a home, but she won’t go.”
The gnome lady was kneeling down, feeding a gray squirrel out of her hand. The little dog was sniffing the base of a tree. “She makes pets out of all the vermin in that ravine,” my grandmother said. “Always feeding the raccoons and the squirre
ls. Making them more of a nuisance than they already are. And that dog. What a pest he is.” She looked down at me. “Now get moving. You need to eat something.”
I showered and dressed in my own clothes. She was waiting at the bottom of the stairs, and, when she saw me, her mouth went all tight, but I didn’t care. I followed her into the kitchen, where she’d put a boiled egg in an eggcup shaped like a chicken. I hate boiled eggs, but something told me I’d better not say anything.
“Where’s Grandpapa?” I asked.
“Whatever would you want to know that for?”
“He promised to take me to see my mother today.”
“No, he didn’t. He told me what you said, and of course I told him that it would be completely unadvisable. Your mother is unconscious and wouldn’t recognize you. You’d just upset yourself.”
“I have to see her!” I shouted. “You can’t stop me!”
“Well,” my grandmother said. “I will be going to the hospital today and will speak to her doctor. If he thinks there is any reason for you to visit your mother while she’s in this condition, we’ll discuss it. Until then, I think it is best that you stay here.”
We stared at each other. She didn’t blink.
Finally she said, “I tried everything with your mother. I gave her every advantage, and she threw it all away.” She looked out the window, and her lip trembled. “Enough of this! I have things to do. I’m sure you can amuse yourself for a few hours.” She thrust a piece of paper at me with two phone numbers on it. “Here is Grandpapa’s phone number and the number of my cell phone. You can call if you need to. In the meantime, the television’s in the den and there are books in the library. Elena, our housekeeper, will take care of you while I’m at the hospital.” She paused and let her hand brush against my hair before pulling it back as if burned. “I’m sure everything will be all right,” she murmured. “Grandpapa is doing everything possible to contact your father.” She cleared her throat and hurried from the room.
I threw my egg at the wall, where it exploded into a waterfall of yellow scum. Then I put my head on the table and cried until I heard her car back out of the garage. A large woman with black hair in a bun came into the room, took one look at the wall and handed me a damp cloth. I wiped up the egg, and she nodded sympathetically before pulling a vacuum cleaner out of the closet. “Go out and play,” she said. “Fresh air make you feel better. Come back in little while and I make pizza for lunch.” Then she went into the hall. I sat on the back porch and stared at the house next door.