D, My Name Is Danita

by Norma Fox Mazer

  “She moved. She and her parents. They left. They went to California. That’s where he was born. One day Donna was in school, the next, gone. The whole family was gone.”

  “Didn’t you think it was a little strange? Didn’t you have the least little suspicion?”

  “No. I told you, we’d broken up. She’d broken up with me a month, maybe six weeks, earlier. I didn’t connect it.”

  “And now, after all these years, this boy pops up and says he’s your son? How do you know this is true? And what’s Dani got to do with all this? When did all this happen?”

  “I met the boy a month ago.”

  “You’ve known about this for a month? And I’m just hearing it now?”

  “Jody, it’s a long, complicated story.”

  “I’m sure it is. Nevertheless—”

  “It’s been hard for me. I literally did not know how to tell you about this.”

  “Why? Why was that so hard?”

  “I was worried,” Dad said. “I didn’t know how you’d take it. It’s always been you and me. Maybe I was trying for damage control by putting it off.”

  “Really?” Mom’s voice was cool. “I don’t think you succeeded, Daniel.” She got up and walked out of the room.

  “Jody!” Dad said.

  “Mommy,” Lizbeth said, hanging up the phone. “Where’re you going?”

  “A movie,” Mom yelled. “I’m going to a movie. By myself!”

  “Without us?” Lizbeth said. “Mommy, that’s not fair.”

  “Shut up, Lizbeth, you’re always thinking of yourself,” I said. I heard the back door slam. Then a minute later, I heard one of the cars driving off.

  Chapter 31

  Mom wasn’t back by suppertime. I made pizza for us. Well, I took it out of the freezer and put it in the oven, anyway.

  “You girls are going to go to school tomorrow,” Dad said, while we were fixing the salad.

  “Are you going to work?” Lizbeth asked.

  We sat down to eat. Usually Dad liked to talk at supper, but he didn’t say much that night.

  Lizbeth was tired and got whiney. “I wish Mommy was here.” She leaned on her elbow.

  “Elbows off the table, this is not a stable,” I said.

  “Be quiet, Dani.” She looked like she was going to cry.

  Dad and I cleaned up the kitchen together. “Are you going to tell Lizbeth about D.T.?” I asked.

  Dad put down the plate he was rinsing. He looked surprised, as if he hadn’t thought of it until just then. “Finish up here, Dani.” I heard him go upstairs.

  Later, I went into Lizbeth’s room and sat on the edge of her bed. “You want to talk about anything?” She was lying on her back with the covers up to her chin, reading Black Beauty for about the sixth time.

  “Talk about what?” she said.

  “Anything. Whatever. Daddy came to talk to you, didn’t he?”

  She put down her book. “He told me about my half brother. What if I don’t like having a half brother, Dani?”

  “He’s nice, Lizbeth.”

  “Why do you know him and I don’t?” she complained. “That’s not fair.”

  I told her how I’d met D.T. in You Can Be a Star, Too. “When Laredo made a video for her little brother. D.T. was working there.”

  “Laredo doesn’t have a brother,” Lizbeth said.

  “Yes, she does. He’s a half brother, too. He lives in Texas. He’s two years old.”

  “How old is my half brother?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “Old!” Lizbeth sat up, smiling. “I thought … I thought he was younger.”

  “No, he’s nineteen. He was born a long time before you and me.”

  She giggled with embarrassment. “I got mixed up from what Daddy said. I thought D.T. was going to be the youngest one.”

  “And you were afraid you wouldn’t be the baby of the family anymore?”

  Lizbeth nodded sheepishly. She was wearing her horse pajamas, with her hair all loose and frizzy from being taken out of braids. I gave her a little squeeze. “Don’t worry, Lizzie, you’ll always be the baby of the family. Unless Mom has another baby,” I added.

  “What?” she said. “Is she going to do that?”

  “Lizbeth, I was just joking. Relax.”

  The next morning, going down the stairs, I could hear Mom and Dad in the kitchen, talking. She hadn’t come back until late last night. “All I can say is, you should have told me right away,” Mom was saying. “No matter how you felt, you should have trusted me to understand.”

  “And I still think I was right to be worried about you. You were pretty shocked and upset yesterday, Jody.”

  “I admit it. I had to get used to the idea. But I didn’t jump over a cliff, did I?”

  “Taking off in the car—”

  “Come on, I told you where I was going. I just sat in a movie for six hours.”

  “Was it any good?” Dad said.

  “No!” Mom said. “Listen, Daniel, I want to tell you something. You didn’t just let me down. You let that boy down, too. Do you know how long a month is to a kid? An eternity.”

  “Jody, another thing. He’s a stranger to us, even if he is my—”

  I hesitated outside the kitchen. Was their conversation private? Should I interrupt it? I’d never hesitated in my life before to walk into any room in our house. Then I thought of D.T., wondered where he was right now. Eating breakfast alone at a counter in a doughnut shop? That made me feel sad for him.

  Mom saw me. “Come in, Dani, breakfast is ready.”

  I sat down at the table. “Good morning.”

  “Good morning, sweetie,” Mom said and went right on talking to Dad. “Maybe he is a stranger, but he’s a child, first.”

  “A child? He’s nineteen.”

  “That’s still a boy,” Mom said. “You should know that.”

  I wondered if D.T. would like it that my parents—his father, his stepmother—were talking about him. I thought it would make him laugh to hear Mom call him a child. And then I thought of something else. For once my parents had both forgotten the morning inspection, forgotten to look me over to see if I’d survived the horrors and rigors of sleeping through the night in my own bed. Oh, joy!

  Chapter 32

  D.T. came to the house a few days later for supper. We were all waiting, all a little nervous, I think. When the bell rang, I said, “I’ll get it.”

  “I’ll get it!” Lizbeth said.

  “Girls,” Mom said, “let your father do it.”

  But then we all went to the door, crowding together. D.T. looked startled to see all of us there. “Hi, D.T.,” I said. Almost automatically I looked down at his feet. Sneakers. No socks.

  “D.T.,” Dad said. He held out his hand and they shook.

  Mom hugged him. “I’m Jody Merritt, Dani’s mother.” She patted his back. “We’re so glad you’re here.”

  “I’m your sister,” Lizbeth said. “Did you read about me in the newspaper?”

  In the living room, we all sat down. It was quiet for a moment. We were looking at D.T., and he was looking at us. I saw him glance at the pictures of me and Lizbeth on top of the TV.

  “I think you have the same nose as Grandma Merritt,” Mom said. “That same little nose.”

  “My mother says I look like her father,” D.T. said.

  Mom brought out the photo album and we all clustered around, looking at the family pictures. That helped break the ice.

  “Where do they live?” D.T. asked, pointing to a picture of Grandpa and Grandma Merritt. “Do they still live around here?”

  “Your grandmother lives in Florida,” Dad said. “Your grandfather died three years ago.”

  “What was he like?”

  “Well … a nice man.”

  “Very nice,” Mom said firmly. “Generous person. People liked him a lot. You would have liked him, D.T.”

  “I’d like to visit her … Grandma Merritt,” he said.

  �
�I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Dad said. “She doesn’t know about you … it might be too much of a shock. She’s not that young, and she was never very flexible.”

  D.T. got kind of quiet after that. I wondered if he was upset. Did he think Dad didn’t want him to know the rest of our family? It was D.T.’s family, too, now. We all were. I knew that, but I still had to keep reminding myself.

  I’d been calling him brother and being really enthusiastic about him, but it wasn’t like saying, “Lizzie’s my sister.” I knew that right in my bones, or my heart, or my stomach. Whatever. It was down there inside me. It was the way it was, and it didn’t matter how irritated I got with Lizbeth, it was still the way it was and always would be. She was my sister. Period. End of discussion.

  But with D.T. I had to keep telling myself—he’s my brother. It was like learning something new, having to repeat it, the way you practice when you’re trying to remember the answers for an important quiz. D.T.’s my brother … D.T.’s my brother … All through supper, I found myself thinking that.

  Maybe Lizzie was, too. A couple times I caught her suddenly looking across the table at D.T. with her mouth open. And was Dad saying it to himself in his own way? D.T.’s my son … D.T.’s my son … I knew he believed it now, but how did he feel about it? Amazed? Happy? Confused? And what about Mom? In a way, she was acting the most natural of all of us, maybe because she wasn’t related to D.T.

  “What do your parents do, D.T.?” she asked.

  “When I started grade school, my mother started college. It took her eight years to get her degree. Now she’s an editor on a trade newspaper. My stepfather’s a policeman.”

  “Donna’s an editor?” Dad said. “I didn’t know she was that smart.”

  “Dad!” I said.

  “Well … I guess she’s changed.”

  “My mother was always smart,” D.T. said, maybe a little stiffly. “Maybe you just couldn’t see it, Daniel.” That’s what he and my father had agreed D.T. would call him for now.

  “Maybe you didn’t expect to see it, Dan,” my mother said.

  “Maybe,” Dad agreed. “Times were different then.”

  “More sexist,” I said.

  “That was one of the things my grandparents didn’t like about you,” D.T. said to Dad. “They thought you were sidetracking her. They knew my mother was smart. They didn’t want her to miss out on her education. And they didn’t think you had any ambition. Sorry. I don’t mean to be rude. I guess you knew all that.”

  “I knew Donna’s father didn’t like me,” Dad admitted. “But he was wrong. I had ambition, I just didn’t have a grasp on what I wanted to do.”

  D.T. brought out pictures of his mother, stepfather, and grandparents. Lizbeth got confused. “Are they my grandparents, too?” She finally got it straight. D.T. was really patient, explaining that one set of his grandparents were hers, but one set wasn’t. And vice versa.

  “And what are you going to do now?” Dad said.

  “About what?”

  “Well … work. School. You’re not going to go on clerking in that video store for the rest of your life, are you?”

  D.T. put his fork down. “Actually, I’ve been thinking about going home. I’ve done what I came for here. I miss my mother.”

  “I bet you do,” Mom said. She got up and brought in the dessert. Strawberry shortcake.

  D.T.’s eyes lit up. “My favorite.”

  “So, you get the biggest piece,” Mom said.

  “It’s my favorite, too,” Lizbeth said quickly.

  We all laughed.

  Around nine o’clock, we got into the car and drove D.T. to the Y. Lizbeth, D.T., and I were in the backseat. “Are you mad at me?” I asked D.T., suddenly.

  “Should I be?”

  “I’m afraid.… I don’t think I was nice tonight.… I mean, we didn’t really talk.”

  He laughed. “My worrywart sister.”

  When Dad pulled up in front of the Y, he turned around and shook hands with D.T. again. It was so awkward and formal. And then everyone started being exceptionally polite. D.T. thanked my mother for the meal. She thanked him for coming. Dad said, “Well, good night, then. Keep in touch.” And D.T. got out of the car.

  I had this sort of quaking in my stomach. I didn’t know what it was—fear, I think. I watched D.T. walk up the steps. Dad started to pull away from the curb. Suddenly I said, “Stop! Let me out. Dad!” I had the door open. I jumped out before Dad even stopped.

  I ran into the Y. D.T. was in the lobby, sliding quarters into a soda machine. “D.T.!” I didn’t have any idea what I was doing, why I’d come running in that way. I only knew that I had to see him again for a moment—say something …

  “What’s up, Dani?” A can of soda bumped down.

  “I have to—to tell you something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I don’t know.…”

  He was staring at me. “You have to tell me something, but you don’t know what it is?”

  I nodded. And then I did know. “D.T. I’m so glad you’re my brother.”

  Chapter 33

  D.T. decided to stay around for a couple more weeks. That was in October. In November, after Mom said she wanted him here for Thanksgiving, he added a few more weeks, but he said he was definitely going back to California for Christmas. Then it turned out his mom and stepfather were going to Hawaii over the holidays, so he stayed through December, too.

  After that, I told him he couldn’t leave until after my birthday, which was the third week in January. By that time, my parents had asked him to move in with us. My father was going to clear out his study downstairs and make it into a bedroom for D.T.

  “No need,” D.T. said. “I’m on my way back home any day now.”

  “You’re living on one foot,” Dad said. “You’re always on your way out any day, any moment.”

  “I can’t stay here forever,” D.T. said.

  “I’d like to find a place for you in the print shop,” Dad said. “You’re too smart for the job you’re doing.”

  “I’ve got plans about college. I’ll be going back. Maybe next semester.”

  “Well, you know, anything I can do to help you …”

  “I know. Thanks. I appreciate it.”

  Dad and D.T. were nice together, almost too nice, too careful. I talked to Laredo about it, and we decided the difference between the way we were with our parents and the way D.T. was with Dad was this: We knew, no matter what we did or said or thought, our parents wouldn’t stop being our parents, and we wouldn’t stop being their kids. But D.T. didn’t have that belief built into him about Dad.

  I don’t remember why D.T. stayed through February, but I know about March. I got him to agree to stay until his birthday, which was, in a weird coincidence, only three days before Mom and Dad’s anniversary. He was going to be twenty. They were going to be married seventeen years.

  We made a big party in the house: tons of food and all of us dressed up. I wore a long skirt, dangley earrings, one of Mom’s silk blouses, and I pulled my hair over to one side. Lizzie had a long skirt, too, but she sort of ruined the total effect by wearing her white blouse printed all over with blue horses. D.T. showed up in a black jacket, black-and-white-striped tie, a thin black ribbon to tie back his ponytail (which he’d grown again), and a white carnation in his lapel.

  I whistled at him. Then I looked down. Still no socks.

  A lot of my parents’ friends, and people they worked with, and our neighbors came to the party. Dad was introducing D.T. to everyone. “This is my son, D.T. Goodman.”

  Laredo was taking pictures with a camera her father had sent her instead of plane tickets for Christmas. She showed me the latest picture of her brother, Jasper. A little freckled boy in a white shirt and red bow tie. She kissed the picture. “Maybe this summer,” she said.

  Mom asked Laredo to take a picture of our whole family. We started lining up. “Dani, get next to your mother,” Laredo sai
d. She had the camera to her eye. “When I say ‘dirty socks,’ you guys smile.”

  “Where’s D.T.?” I said. “D.T., we need you here.”

  “I’m camera shy.”

  “No, you’re not. You get over here,” I said.

  D.T. came and stood behind me.

  “You guys ready yet?” Laredo said.

  “No,” Dad said. “D.T.” He crooked his finger. “Come over here next to me.” He reached over and got his arm around D.T.

  Laredo said, “Dirty socks.” We all smiled. The flashcube went off.

  Mom framed the picture for the top of the TV. I’m a little blurred in it, because my head was swiveling around to look at D.T. and Dad. Mom and Lizbeth look fine, they’re smiling. And Dad is hugging D.T., who is leaning in toward him with this strange expression on his face, like he wants to laugh and cry at the same time.

  I guess that’s the end of the story.

  Well, not actually. Stories like this—I mean, stories of our real life—never end, do they? How could they? That would be unreal life. So I’ll just say this much more.

  My parents still hover quite a lot (I guess old habits are hard to break), but they definitely don’t do it as much as they used to.

  D.T. went back to California in May. We might not see him for a while. He’s going to go back to college in the fall. Dad calls him about once a month to talk. Whenever he gets off the phone he says he’s really getting on with D.T. now. “My son and I have a good relationship going,” he says.

  I’ve been writing to D.T. I like to write letters. He writes postcards back. Four or five words seem to be his limit. One went like this, “Hey, Dani! Miss you. Love, D.T.” I thought that was pretty nice. It would be even nicer to get a real long letter, but that’s okay. I have plenty of time to get letters from D.T.—the rest of my life.

  And meanwhile, anytime I want to, I can sit down and start a letter with the words, “Dear Brother …”

  Turn the page to continue reading from the My Name Is series

  Chapter 1

  As soon as I got off the school bus I heard my best friend, Bunny Larrabee, calling me. “Emily, Emily!” I peered around for her. I’m nearsighted. Dr. Weiss says I should wear my glasses all the time, but I hardly ever do. I don’t like the way I look in them, but it’s not just vanity. I have a theory that the less I use my glasses, the more my eyes will improve from the muscles being forced to work. In the meantime, though, I have to admit that anything more than five feet away is kind of blurry.