Life From Scratch

by Sasha Martin

  Another few months went by. I started my senior year of high school. The green leaves began to lose their vibrant hue, and just when the first few began to fall, Pierre announced that Patricia would be home that weekend.

  Though bewildered by the sudden news, I was happy for Pierre that she was in fact coming home. And she wasn’t coming alone. Patricia had decided to bring her dad back to live with us, converting the dining room into his bedroom, since his health was deteriorating and he needed care. She and her father had become close since her mother’s tragic death when Patricia was a young girl.

  That night I crept into the kitchen and checked every last corner for crumbs. I scrubbed it down and silently slipped out again.

  That fall, I put my nose down and focused on college applications, applying to a dozen schools all over the United States. Patricia never mentioned her time away, but resumed her duties with weary determination. But she was different. Her eyes glanced off mine. It was as if my very presence tormented her. It grew worse and worse, until Patricia ignored me so completely for two weeks that I began to pinch myself, wondering if I’d become a ghost. I wondered if she knew I’d been cooking in her kitchen, and asked Pierre if he thought that was the reason for her behavior toward me.

  “I don’t know, Sasha.” He looked up the long, narrow stairway to her shuttered room.

  “You have to find out. Please,” I cried, “I feel … invisible.”

  An hour later, Pierre emerged from her room and motioned me outside into the blue winter light. We sat on a stone bench under an old oak tree by the vegetable patch. No one spoke for a long while. I traced my sneakers through the dirt. Finally, he cleared his throat.

  “Did you tell Annie’s parents that you were adopted?”

  I looked up in surprise. Lately I’d told a lot of people that.

  “Well, yes, I—”

  He took a deep breath. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  “I know it’s not true, but …” I looked down at the potato plants, now blackened from the frost. I wondered if the roots would survive the winter. “It was just easier than saying guardian. It sounded nicer …”

  “Sash, we didn’t adopt you on purpose. We want to keep the door open for you to see your mom again. We never thought you’d be with us this long. Your mother led us to believe this was … a temporary arrangement.”

  I’d been with them seven years.

  “But she doesn’t want me.” My lip was trembling. “She’s made that clear. I haven’t heard from her since Paris—what, almost three years ago?! And even that was …”

  “We know she’s had some difficulties since Michael died. We just … we always hoped she’d be able to take you back.”

  “Is this because of Paris?” I asked, feeling my ears burn. “I’ve been trying to be better.”

  “No, it’s not that, Sasha.” He paused, looking me in the eye for the first time, “We’ve always felt this way.”

  I sat back, shell-shocked by the words he hadn’t said—the ones that trembled between the lines and whispered, “We don’t want you. We never have.”

  Later, Annie tried to tell me that this couldn’t have been what he meant: He was just trying to keep my relationship with my mom a possibility. But I’d been a temporary fixture in enough homes, by now conditioned to believe the worst. I didn’t question Pierre or my new assumption: This family was borrowed.

  Whatever Pierre had said to Patricia worked; the next time I saw her, she was civil, and I tiptoed through life again. But something short-circuited deep inside me as I worked to override my urge to belong.

  Around Thanksgiving Patricia handed me a large padded envelope from my mother. She told me the contents might help with my term paper for psychology class. I opened it tentatively, half afraid I’d find another photo of Michael in his coffin, as I had a few years earlier. But inside were hundreds of photocopied pages from various books about the psychology of family. Carefully penned annotations marked nearly every page. I studied the familiar blue scrawls, warming when I read: “I suppose I can write more often now that you’re a bit more grown up.”

  I turned the envelope over in my hands and saw that the last line of the return address read “Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, 02130.”

  It turned out that Patricia had written to my mother over the last few weeks and asked her to help me with my research: “I realize you must be very busy, but I wish you would give more time to write Sasha. You’re missing out on a very special relationship.”

  A month later, at Christmas, a large cardboard box showed up outside my bedroom door. The return address was Mom’s. Inside was a letter, a wooden keepsake box filled with cinnamon sticks and pinecones from the Boston arboretum, a book of traditional Christmas carols, and a half dozen blueberry muffins moldy from the three-week delivery time. Despite the green mold, I contemplated eating the muffins. But when I unwrapped them, the scent bowled me over. They landed in the trash with a thud.

  I rummaged through the other treasures, choking back giddy laughter. I spent the afternoon turning the box over in the filtered afternoon light, singing the carols in quiet rapture, and setting each item on my desk, as if a shrine.

  I wondered at the timing, but didn’t dare ask for fear of another upset. What mattered was that after a three-year drought, Mom had written twice in one month. For the remainder of the school year, she continued to send letters at this pace. I wrote her back in equal measure.

  In the spring, college acceptance letters began trickling in. Of the 12 schools I applied to, 11 accepted me. I took Wesleyan University’s offer in Middletown, Connecticut. It had a reputation for attracting hippies/conservatives/liberals/rednecks—in other words, everyone. Certainly I could find a place there.

  Best of all, the school was only a few hours from Boston. Though I didn’t know what the future held with Mom, I wanted to be near her. Pierre helped me fill out the financial aid forms, and assured me he would pay the balance. He said it matter-of-factly, as though it were an understood part of his duty to me.

  By the time I graduated from high school, Pierre’s work contract in Luxembourg was over. All summer he continent-hopped, going from job interview to job interview. I wondered where we might live next. Perhaps we’d spend Christmas in the Sahara or along the Great Wall of China. But nothing panned out.

  Pierre started dying his graying hair before interviews, which only made me wonder why he wasn’t retiring. I figured he had to be at least 55, maybe 60. He and Patricia decided that when I went off to Wesleyan, Pierre would continue his hunt stateside so Patricia could care for her dad in the comfort of his hometown, Boston.

  The entire house operated on transitional time. Though Patricia and I were civil again, I’d internalized the reasons they’d decided not to adopt me. I believed myself to be broken, fractured, unworthy of their love. Their home came to remind me of who I wasn’t, and who I could never be.

  Weary of walking on eggshells, I spent the summer with Annie and Eliot, my boyfriend du jour, and avoided home as much as possible. Patricia and Pierre loosened their grip on me too. I’d be leaving soon enough.

  On the morning I left for college, Pierre was a time zone away at yet another interview. The house was uncommonly still, so quiet I thought that I might be the only one home. A few days earlier, Patricia had said that she wouldn’t be able to drive me to the airport. I knew better than to ask her why. Annie’s parents agreed to take me.

  As I waited for their car, the sun clamored over the hills, promising an impressively hot August afternoon by Luxembourg standards. I leaned out of the skylight in my room, angled just two feet above my bed, and let the warm breeze ruffle my hair. I stared out over the undulating hills and wondered what the next decade would hold.

  Annie’s parents pulled up a few minutes early, and I strained to hoist my giant blue duffel bag onto my shoulder. I’d packed clothing and framed photos as well as the letters from my mom. The weight of my belongings made me stagger, and I was f
orced to pull the bag down three flights of tile stairs, its belabored thump, thump, thump marking my descent. Together, Annie and I hoisted it into the trunk, our small frames disappearing behind the bulging contours.

  Just then Patricia opened the back door, her lips pressed into a hard line. She kept her hands tight at the sides of her housecoat. As I approached to hug her goodbye, she took a step back and raised her hands. She struggled for a moment, as though trying to decide what to say to me.

  Finally, she managed, “Where’s Eliot?” She looked down into the car for my boyfriend, whom she’d taken a liking to.

  “He’s—”

  When she saw Annie’s parents, she cut in. “I thought he was going to take you.”

  Before I could respond, she spun on her heel, went back into the house, and slammed the door behind her.

  I stared at the door for a moment. The handle never moved, and there were no shadows in the windows. Finally, Annie put her hand on my shoulder and led me to the car. Only when the plane rumbled off the tarmac did I realize that I’d forgotten my white teddy bear.

  PART THREE

  Cleaving

  “You can outdistance that which is running after you, but not what is running inside of you.”

  —Rwandan proverb

  CHAPTER 12

  School Days

  THIRTY-FOUR HUNDRED MILES LATER, my brother Tim picked me up from LaGuardia and drove me to Wesleyan University. He resembles the comedian Jerry Seinfeld in more than just looks, and soon had me laughing. As the miles piled up between us and the airport, I felt as if I were shedding a dry, too-small skin.

  Before long, I settled in at school with a full course load, a well-behaved group of friends, and a shaggy-haired, prep school–graduate boyfriend named John. Though most of my freshman class was literally drunk on their freedom, I felt sobered by the responsibilities that came with college life and steered clear of the frat parties that thumped along the sidewalks.

  As far as I was concerned, what had happened on that last day in Luxembourg could be water under the bridge if I could just show Patricia and Pierre how well I was doing. In September, when Pierre wrote asking for my new email and phone number, I was relieved. My friends didn’t understand my reaction, but without a hug from either of them on the day I left Luxembourg, I genuinely felt that I needed such permission to reach out. Pierre wrote that he and Patricia had donated many of my things, including my roller skates, to a local shelter. He also enclosed money for books and school supplies, and signed off, “We are looking forward to hearing about your experiences and impressions.”

  Pierre and I emailed a few times after that, but Patricia remained silent. When I called their new house in early November, I was in for a surprise.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Patricia, it’s Sasha. I was—”

  “Hold on.”

  A moment later, Pierre picked up the phone.

  “Hi! I was wondering what you guys are doing for Thanksgiving?”

  There was silence. “Hello?” I asked. “Are you there?”

  “Yes. Sasha, I … we think … well. Now that you’re 19, there’s really no reason …” He took a deep breath. “Y–you probably don’t need to be staying with us anymore. Of course, we’ll continue paying for school, but after that …”

  I twisted at the phone cord, winding the rubber spiral tightly around my index finger.

  “Of course, yes. You don’t have to do that. I just thought …”

  All is well. All is well. All is well.

  “No, we want to. It’s the right thing to do. Have a happy Thanksgiving, Sasha.”

  I closed my eyes: “You, too.”

  I was confused; the letter had indicated a genuine concern for my well-being and future, but if I was to believe Pierre, this was it. I wondered if his daughters felt the same way. It seemed unlikely: Toni had sent me a boom box and card to perk up my dorm room, and Lauren and Heather had sent occasional updates as well.

  As dusk turned to twilight, I thought over my time with them, remembering all the nights I’d stayed out past curfew, the times I’d cursed at Patricia and Pierre out of teenage angst, the times I’d secretly wished I could live anywhere but with them.

  Yet they’d given me so much: the best of everything. In the years I spent with them, we lived in the United States, France, and Luxembourg—just 3 of the 12 countries I experienced, including visits to Norway, Tunisia, Greece, and Spain. Though cherished family and friends washed in and out of my life like driftwood, I’d still managed to cultivate a yearning for adventure. I’d seen, lived, tasted the world. I was curious and hungry—because of what they’d given me.

  Even after my conversation with Pierre the winter before, I hadn’t expected things to end this way. His words felt like a sentence, except that instead of locking me up, I was locked out.

  I stared down at the phone.

  Nothing, it seemed, was forever. Even as I gave in to the status quo, I felt a wave of homesickness, yet didn’t know what or who for.

  When I wasn’t with my siblings in New Jersey, I disappeared into my boyfriend John’s extraordinarily normal family on Cape Cod. As I strolled arm in arm with him along the snowy beaches, I didn’t have to wonder about Patricia and Pierre or decide if it was time to find my mom (it had been seven years since I’d last seen her in Atlanta). And yet she felt so close; John’s parents lived 15 minutes from where I was born. I often caught myself scanning the scattered, faceless tourists, looking for Mom’s small shoulders or that mass of curly black hair on the off chance that she still visited the Cape from time to time. I was equally as afraid that I’d spot her as I would not.

  When spring break rolled around, John gently suggested that we mix things up by going to see friends in Boston. We were sitting together at the campus cafeteria. “That sounds nice, but …” I stopped, thinking of Mom. I didn’t have her number, but if she hadn’t moved, I did know her address. “Do you think I could look up my mother while we’re there?”

  He gave my leg a squeeze and nodded. “I was wondering when you’d ask.”

  We retraced the winding roads and dusty alleys that led to the old apartment in Jamaica Plain. The shuddering elevator train that once spat pedestrians onto the cracked sidewalk was long gone, but even without it I knew we were close. A curious mix of salsa and rap still spilled out from the Latino market a half mile from our house, where Michael and I once ate ice pops on hot summer afternoons. John turned down a small street lined with enormous oaks, end capped by old warehouse buildings.

  My street: There was the fire hydrant I’d splashed in and the handicapped ramp where Mom had once parked, only to get a citation. There, suddenly, was the park where Michael and I had played all those years ago. As I stared at the empty swings drifting ever so slightly in the breeze, I could almost see little Michael run by with a belly laugh, his chestnut hair dancing across his blue eyes. I drew my gray hoodie close around me.

  John slowed the car to a crawl.

  “Is this the right place?” he asked. I followed his gaze across the street: There it was, with the familiar evergreen trim. Nothing stirred: No neighbors milled about; no engines idled but ours.

  “That’s the apartment,” I said slowly, pointing to the first floor, then to the narrow window next to the doorbell. “That’s where my bed was—under that window. Our landlord and some other guy lived in the two apartments above us. It’s hard to believe it’s been almost nine years since I last crossed that threshold …”

  I could still see the seashells we’d scattered like mulch around the rose bushes more than ten years ago. They were dusty and cracked, half buried in the dirt. A few stray blades of grass poked through.

  I didn’t get out of the car right away, but pressed my back against the seat and closed my eyes. I was starting to feel dizzy.

  “You don’t look so hot, Sash. You wanna come back later?”

  “No.”

  “Do you want me to come with you?” he leaned ac
ross the center console and placed his large hand over mine. I pulled away and shook my head.

  “No,” I whispered.

  I peeled myself off the seat, slipped through the squeaking chain-link gate, and climbed the steps, gripping the rail to steady myself. The porch creaked and bowed underfoot. For a moment I thought I was falling. By the time I reached the doorbell, my hand was shaking so hard I could barely ring it. No answer.

  I rang it again, pressing my ear against the window to be sure it was working; still no answer. I peered in through the blinds, but a leggy spider plant hung in the way. What I could see of the room was hazy and dark.

  “This was a mistake,” I said, back at the SUV. “Let’s go.”

  John held out a pen and paper through the window. “Hey. Don’t give up.”

  “She’s not home,” I said. “Maybe we can come back some other time.”

  He didn’t move. Finally I took the slip of paper and pen and wrote, “Hi Mom, it’s Sasha. I’m in town for a few days. If you’d like to get together, you can call me on my boyfriend’s cell phone, 555-1818. We’re staying with a friend in Arlington. I hope you’re doing OK. I love you.”

  I dropped the paper into her mailbox and shut the lid tightly, my hands lingering on the cool metal for a moment before walking away.

  John’s phone didn’t ring until 3 p.m. the following day.

  “I don’t know this number, Sash. Do you think it’s—”

  I grabbed the phone from his hand and walked briskly across the living room.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi …” Her voice was small and unsure. “Is this Alex?” Though the name she gave me at my ninth birthday was on my legal documents, no one else had used it since.

  “Yes. But I go by Sasha now.”

  Only a crackle of static broke the silence.

  I waved John out of the room. “Can I come over to the apartment?”