The Whole Story of Half a Girl

by Veera Hiranandani

  “I heard about your dad. I’m sorry,” she says. I hate the way everyone’s talking about him like he’s dead.

  Then she leans in to give me a hug. I take it with a stiff back and arms straight at my sides.

  “Thanks,” I mumble into my sandwich.

  She pulls away from me, her blue eyes blinking and sad for me. She looks like she’s about to cry.

  “What were they saying about me?” I ask.

  “Who?” She reaches back and smooths her braid. I’ve noticed she does this in awkward moments.

  “Jess and Jessica.”

  “Nothing,” she says. “It wasn’t about you.”

  “Yeah, right,” I say. A piece of sprout is stuck between my back top teeth. I move it around with my tongue, but stuck it stays. Kate sits in a chair next to me and strokes her braid with both hands. Neither one of us says anything. I go back to eating my sandwich, wondering how I got so mean.

  “Jess makes fun of people when she’s nervous … or when she’s jealous.”

  “Jealous of who?”

  “Well, you, since we’ve been friends.”

  “Why do you like her if she does that?”

  “She’s been my friend forever. Our moms are best friends and she’s really funny.”

  I thought I was the funny one. She goes on.

  “I guess she can be kind of stupid too. But she’s always been there. For me.”

  I just shrug.

  “You know my dad isn’t my real dad,” Kate says. At the word “real,” my heart starts to beat faster and the stale, oily smells of everyone’s chicken nuggets turn my stomach.

  “He’s not?” I say so quietly I can barely hear myself.

  “My real dad left me and my mom six years ago. But I hardly remember him now.”

  My eyes blur with tears. It’s hard for me to breathe. This isn’t what I want to know about her.

  “I know what it feels like, Sonia,” she says, and puts her hand on my arm.

  “My dad’s coming back. He didn’t leave us.” I look at her and wish that I could forget everything that’s happened. I wish we could be best friends in the same way Sam and I were and maybe still are. But I can’t forget that Kate’s not Sam. I turn away, the tears falling and falling. She lets go of my arm and walks away.

  The bell rings and I get up with the crowd of kids moving toward the front doors, the doors that will take me to classes for three more hours. I hear someone calling my name. Once, and then again. I can tell it’s Alisha, but I can’t talk to anyone else, especially her. She’s going to tell me she’s sorry and then she’ll probably want a sorry from me. Maybe she thinks we’ll hug and make up and everything will be back to normal, like Kate did. But there is no normal for me anymore.

  I walk with the crowd faster and faster down the windowed hallway, and when one of the lunch aides turns her head I slip into the bathroom. I pray Alisha doesn’t follow me in. When the sound of voices dies down, and I hear the click of grown-up shoes pass the bathroom door outside, I walk out and keep walking. Then I’m running, running down the hallways, past the closed classrooms, past the lady at the front desk who calls out, “Young lady!” I push through the brown doors into the crisp fall sunshine and sprint as fast as I can off the school grounds.

  I finally stop at the top of a big hill to catch my breath. I’m not sure how far it is to walk home, but if it only takes ten minutes to drive to school it can’t be that far. After a few more hills, I need to rest again. I wonder how long it will take my teachers to know I’m gone. I leave the road and walk into the woods. My feet step on the fallen leaves, making a crisp, satisfying sound. Crunch, crunch, crunch. When my mind starts to wander—thoughts of Kate hugging me, or Alisha’s face when I told her I couldn’t read her book, or Sam’s voice telling me what the Magic 8 Ball said—I just crunch the leaves harder. The birds in the trees add a melody. The trickle of water in a stream somewhere tickles the air.

  After a lot of crunching I step out onto the road. Up ahead is an open field. Did I make a left instead of a right when I left the school? Or maybe I went straight past a road I should have turned on. I walk into the field and the soft grass collapses quietly under my feet. I decide to sit and then lie down. The ground against my back is cool and damp. The silver-white sky shimmers above, and I watch the film of clouds moving across it as my limbs grow heavier. I sink into the ground and let the flat, solid feeling fill me, fill up all those empty spaces I didn’t know I had.

  chapter twenty-five

  Something soft touches my forehead and wakes me up. It’s dark and cold, really cold. I’m shivering. A moving light flashes above me then disappears. Someone’s hair brushes against my face.

  “Sonia,” my mother’s voice calls to me. She’s crying. I sit up and realize she’s holding me, rocking me. I feel the waves of her weeping against me. Then she stops crying, stops holding me, puts her hands on my shoulders, and looks me hard in the eye.

  She opens her mouth to say something, but doesn’t. Then she gathers me in again. I look up and see another person there in the woods with me—a policeman—and he shines a flashlight in my face. I squint and turn away. I have so many questions, but it’s easier not to speak. It’s easier to close my eyes again.

  The policeman drives fast in the dark and the car rides smoother than any car I’ve ever been in, like I’m gliding on air through the night. Mom and I sit in the back. I’m still shivering, even though I’m covered in Mom’s coat and a blanket that the policeman gave me. I lean against Mom and she runs her fingers through my hair.

  “Why?” I ask. “Why did Dad do this? Does he hate us?”

  “Of course he doesn’t hate us.” She looks out the window. I wait for her to say something else.

  “You scared me, Sonia, and I’m very angry at you for that.” Her face is drawn and her mouth tight.

  “I’m sorry. I really am.”

  “I realize you can’t understand what it feels like not to know where your daughter is. To drive around in a police car searching on the sides of roads praying she’s okay. It’s an awful feeling, worse than not knowing where Dad is.”

  I swallow hard and cover my face with my hands. They smell like dirt.

  “I wasn’t thinking, I just wanted to …” I pause to think about what I really did want. I didn’t want to scare Mom and make her feel worse than she already does. “I just wanted to be somewhere new,” I manage.

  Mom is quiet. She plays with her gold and ruby bracelet, twisting it slowly around her wrist. “I ran away once too.”

  “You did? When?”

  “When your dad asked me to marry him,” she says. “I was scared that my parents wouldn’t accept that I wanted to marry an Indian man. I needed to think apart from everyone.”

  “Where’d you go?”

  “I went to Israel. I had always wanted to go there, and it just seemed like the right place, the place I had to go to make my decision. I finally called my mom and she wouldn’t speak to me. She didn’t speak to me until my wedding day six months later. And it wasn’t because I was marrying your dad, although she wasn’t happy about it. It was because I disappeared on her. It’s a terrible thing to do to people you love, but I guess sometimes it feels like there’s no other option. Some people need to be alone for a while to learn how to listen to themselves again.”

  I wonder if that’s what I was doing, listening. “Are you going to not speak to me for six months?” I ask.

  “I’m speaking to you now, aren’t I?” She grips my hand. “I may have to go away for a while myself. I can’t just sit and wait around for the police anymore. I’ve got to try and find him. Grandma and Grandpa will come stay again. Will you be okay with that? I wanted to tell you before”—she sweeps her hand across the backseat of the police car—“all this happened.”

  I nod.

  She turns and stares hard at me. “I need you to promise me, Sonia, that you won’t do anything like this again. If you can’t, you need to tell me and I
won’t go. But I can’t ever go through this again.”

  “I promise,” I say.

  “You’re sure?”

  As I let her words sink in, I feel strangely relaxed. If anyone can find Dad, Mom can. “I’m sure,” I say, and sink back into the leather seat. Finally, I stop shivering.

  chapter twenty-six

  I’ve drawn eleven different Snoopys in the last hour. One’s reading a book, another is flying a kite. Another one is driving a car. Another one’s diving into a pool. I even made one doing a cartwheel. Grandpa looks each one over and either shows me how to make one look more three-dimensional or nods in approval.

  Grandma’s busy making Shabbat dinner. It’s Friday. Mom’s been gone for two days. First she spent a day asking around in local places. A man at a gas station said he might have seen Dad, but that was two weeks ago, so it isn’t much help. She asked at a bunch of motels in the area, but no one else had seen him. Now she’s in Maryland, where my aunties live. The police said she should look in all the places that Dad’s been to, that most people who run away go to a place they’ve been before.

  Grandma’s unwrapping paper plates, cups, even paper bowls, and stirring soup in the special pot that Mom keeps separate from our regular pots. We have to eat on paper since our regular plates aren’t kosher and Grandma and Grandpa are.

  “Grandma,” I say, getting up from my drawing, following the smell of chicken soup, “why are you kosher?”

  Grandma stops stirring and looks at me. “Because my parents were and my grandparents were and my great-grandparents were.”

  “But Mom doesn’t do what you do.” I look in the pot and take a sniff. The smooth, warm smell of the chicken and egg noodles calms me. Then I face Grandma again. I wonder if Mom told her about what I said to Jackie?

  Grandma smiles. “Well, your mother decided to create new traditions. But it’s important for me to keep my parents’ traditions. It makes me feel connected to them even though they’re not living anymore. I’ve come to understand, though, that people stay connected in different ways. And I’ve even changed some of my ways—like cooking in your nonkosher kitchen.”

  “Were you mad at Mom for marrying Dad?”

  Grandma clears her throat. “I was,” she says, going back to her soup. “See, you have to understand how important it is to keep Judaism alive. There aren’t many of us. If we don’t respect the traditions that have given guidance and knowledge and comfort to so many people, we could disappear.”

  The word “disappear” gives me a sudden headache. Grandma continues stirring and talking.

  “I would hate to see that happen. But that was before I knew your dad. He’s a wonderful man and I love him as if he were my son.” Her voice cracks a little on the word “son,” and she keeps her eyes down toward the steamy pot of soup. She clears her throat again.

  “So you were mad just because he wasn’t Jewish?” I ask.

  “Yes, but I was wrong. I should have tried to understand what your mother wanted.”

  “What if I decide not to be Jewish? I’m barely Jewish as it is.” What I don’t say is that as much as I want to, I just don’t feel Jewish. My name isn’t Jewish. I don’t look like Mom or Grandma. If I went to a Jewish school where all the kids were Jewish, they’d probably wonder what I was doing there.

  “Sweetheart.” Grandma puts her hands on my shoulders. “You were born to a Jewish mother, and that makes you completely Jewish, not barely. You were born a girl too, but I guess you could have a sex change if you wanted to.”

  “Grandma!”

  “What I’m trying to tell you is that you are Jewish, even if you don’t go to temple. Even if there are other parts of you. What you do with it is up to you.”

  “But what if I wanted to be another religion? What if I married an Indian man too and I wanted to be Hindu? Would you still love me?”

  “That’s another thing you were born with: my love,” she says, and holds my hands tight. “There’s nothing you can do to change that one.”

  I smile and hold on to her feathery, bony hands, her skin so light and soft it’s almost translucent. My hands look really dark against hers. I stare at them, amazed that we’re even related. I wonder if she ever thinks that, or if Mom ever did, holding the hands of her Indian-looking children. Did anyone ever wonder if we really belonged to her?

  chapter twenty-seven

  Mom’s been gone for five days now; she’ll be in Maryland for one more day. Tomorrow she’s going to search in Massachusetts, where we go skiing every winter. I’m back in school. Mom said I could stay home, but I want to do something else besides sit there with Grandma and Grandpa, and I’ll have way too much homework to catch up on. Natasha’s been at school the whole time. When she’s busy she seems to forget all about our weird, broken life. But that’s Natasha. And even though I can’t forget, I can try to pay attention to other things, like my schoolwork, for once.

  At lunch I watch Kate eating the same chicken nuggets she always eats and this is what I think—she’s afraid to eat anything else. I look down at my cucumber, havarti, and tomato sandwich and take another delicious bite. It makes me feel sorry for Kate.

  I get up and walk over to Alisha’s table. She’s talking to a girl I don’t really know. I sit down next to her and they stop talking and look at me. I smile the brightest smile I can muster, my heart beating hard in my ears.

  Alisha just looks at me.

  “Can I talk to you?” I say.

  “I guess so,” she says. The other girl shrugs.

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “For what?” Alisha says, looking me hard in the eye. The thing with Alisha is that she can see a lie coming from miles away.

  “For being a jerk about your book. For not coming over. I really want to do both those things. I want to be friends again.”

  Just like that, Alisha smiles. I take a deep breath and relax my shoulders, which I didn’t realize were practically in my ears.

  “I’m sorry too, that I haven’t said anything to you since … since your dad.” Then she doesn’t say any more.

  “It’s okay.” I swallow. “Can I sit with you?”

  “Yeah,” says Alisha.

  I walk over to Kate’s table and start gathering up my stuff. I don’t look at anyone.

  “What a freak,” I hear Jess say to Kate as I’m leaving.

  That afternoon I walk over to the field for cheering practice. It’s the first practice I’ve been to since Dad disappeared. Nobody looks at me, but I manage to give Jess a couple of angry stares, just so she knows I heard her in the cafeteria. She looks down at her nails, up at the sky, anywhere but at me. Kate starts some stretches, so I follow, relieved to have something to do besides stand there. As I touch my toes, I hear my name and see Alisha running up to me with her book.

  “Do you want to take it now or tomorrow morning?” she says, breathless.

  “No, I can take it now,” I say, and stand up. I get my backpack.

  Jess comes over, hands on her hips.

  “What’s that?” she asks as I take Alisha’s notebook. “Some kind of secret diary?”

  “No,” Alisha says. “It’s my book.”

  “Oh, yeah? Let me see,” Jess says, and grabs the notebook out of my hands.

  “Hey!” I yell, and try to grab it back. Jess holds it over her head. Alisha glares at her. I grab at it again, get my hand on it, but Jess pulls hard.

  “Stop, you’re going to rip it!” Alisha yells. I let go.

  “God, everyone chill. I just want to read some of it,” Jess says, and opens it to the middle.

  “ ‘Marie sat on the ship not knowing what to do. She knew Jack had escaped from prison. She knew he might be dangerous. But how could that be? She loved him. He must be good, he must be,’ ” Jess reads in an overly dramatic voice. “Oh, no, what are they going to do?” she says, sounding like she’s all worried.

  I look over at Kate. She just keeps stretching, pretending not to notice what’s hap
pening. I move as quick as lightning and whisk the notebook out of Jess’s hand.

  “Why are you so mean, Jess? What did Alisha ever do to you?” I say, and hand Alisha her book.

  Jess just shrugs. “She walks around thinking she’s better than all of us, clutching that stupid book all the time. I wanted to see what was so great about it.”

  “You know what?” I take a deep breath. “I don’t want to be on this team anymore, especially not with you.” I turn to Alisha. “Let’s go,” I tell her. Alisha’s mouth hangs open as she looks back between Jess, Kate, and me. I pull her arm and we leave together.

  “You weirdos belong to each other,” Jess yells after us, then Kate calls my name and tells me to wait. I don’t turn around. I just keep moving toward the buses, Alisha and I leaning against each other.

  chapter twenty-eight

  It’s been six days since Mom left, and I’m sitting on the stairs after school taking off my shoes, which are wet from the rain. Mom would kill me for even coming into the house with them. I hear Grandma talking on the phone. She sounds so serious, it makes me listen harder. I walk over to her. She’s nodding, her eyes wet, saying “okay” over and over. My body feels all tingly like the way it did when Kate told me about her dad never coming back. It’s happened, the terrible thing that no one wants to talk about. Dad is never coming home. I feel dizzy and sit back down on the stairs. It seems like I’m floating above my house, above myself. I put my head in my hands to keep me down on the earth. Then Grandma’s there, touching my shoulder.

  “Sonia,” she says. “They found your dad.”

  “Is he dead?” I whisper into my hands.

  “Oh, sweetheart, no! No, not at all. He’s going to be okay. It’s all going to be okay.”