by Caela Carter
“OK,” I said. “Will we go to Portugal?”
Mom laughed. She always laughed when I asked about going to Portugal, where my daddy had grown up.
“Not yet,” Mom said. “A little adventure today. Just us two. We’ll go to the trampoline park.”
I nodded a lot. “OK!” I said. I loved the trampoline park.
We went into the church. I did everything my mom asked, almost. I sat right next to her. I was still and quiet. I took jelly beans out of her purse one at a time and popped them into my mouth, guessing their colors as they melted on my tongue.
But I couldn’t help hearing all the words. I couldn’t help thinking about Lisa, whoever she was, and how she was dead now.
This was the second dead person I knew about.
Jelly beans melted on my tongue one after another and I imagined Lisa and my dad meeting in some empty, white room somewhere. They would be talking about how good I was being at Lisa’s funeral, eating my jelly beans, staying as quiet as a breathing person could.
There were other children there. They were listening too. One was as small as me. And he sat in front of me and cried and cried and cried. His dad was sitting next to him. His dad didn’t even tell him not to cry.
If my dad were here, he’d probably let me cry too.
After it was over, we got back in the car. I didn’t say anything and I tried not to move in my car seat even though I was all out of jelly beans.
I thought we would go to the trampoline park, but instead Mom followed behind a big black car as it wound through country roads and up a hill covered with the greenest grass I’d ever seen, and through a black gate.
And then I saw them. Rows and rows of headstones. I knew what this was. This was the graveyard. This was where they put dead people. This was where they put my dad.
My heart started tugging everywhere and my dad was suddenly next to me in the car. I was sure I could see him. He was grown-up and a man but otherwise looked just like me.
“Hi, Alma,” he said.
I gasped and he disappeared.
“It’s OK, Alma,” Mom said. “We just have to get through this part and then you’ll be jumping on the trampolines.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You don’t have to be scared,” she said.
Except I wasn’t scared. I was excited.
It was a lot harder to stay quiet and still at this part of the funeral. I stood next to my mother while my blood danced with sugar and surprise. I couldn’t wait to run through this graveyard with her. I would ask her to read every headstone until we could find the one that said Alma’s dad.
They lowered a box into the dirt and lots of people threw a flower on it. Mom didn’t. She watched and held my hand. I tried not to see the grown-ups and the one little boy crying. I tried not to feel as happy as I felt because I knew the people around me were all sad.
And then Mom walked toward the car.
I kept my feet right where they were, my black Mary Janes indenting the wet, green grass.
“Come on, Alma,” Mom said.
I wasn’t supposed to talk so I just shook my head.
Mom walked back toward me and whispered in my ear. “Alma!” she said. “Let’s go.”
I shook my head again.
I usually almost always listened to my mom. But I couldn’t.
I could feel him everywhere. He was tugging on my heart. He was pulling at my feet, trying to get me to walk. He was playing with my hair.
There was no way I was leaving the graveyard without finding him.
“Alma, I’m warning you,” Mom said and turned toward the car.
I looked away, up the hill. I saw hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. White tombstones in all different shapes in all directions. Some looked like curves, some were just squares, some were crosses or angels or other shapes. It might take all day to find the right one. But that was OK.
I didn’t need to go to the trampoline park.
“Now,” my mom said. “Or else we’re not going jumping.”
I took a step away from her. By now some people from the funeral were watching, but I didn’t care.
I ran to the tombstone closest to Lisa’s. Mom ran after me. “What does this one say?” I asked her, pointing.
“I’m not playing, Alma,” Mom said.
“What does it say?” I ask again.
“This is not the time for a reading lesson,” Mom said. She bent to pick me up.
“No!” I screamed. I tried to catapult myself out of her arms. “No!”
“Alma!” she said. “That’s enough!”
I bent backward and managed to fall out of her grasp. I crashed into the grass headfirst and heard voices around me say “Ooh!” That’s when I realized lots of people were watching.
I didn’t care.
I jumped up and ran in the other direction.
Everyone was watching now. Everyone was listening as I was screaming.
“I’m going to find him! I’m going to find him!”
I stopped at a headstone a few rows away. Mom came stumbling after me, her black heels sticking in the grass.
“Alma Meredith McArthur, you get in the car right now.”
I pointed to the headstone. “Tell me what this says!” Then I looked up toward the crowd. “Someone tell me what this says!”
“Alma!” she shouted. “Get! In! The! Car!”
“NO!” I screamed. “TELL ME WHAT THIS SAYS!”
She picked me up again and started to run toward the car. I wiggled and wiggled and wiggled until I almost managed to fall again. I screamed “No! No! NO!” the whole time. “I HAVE TO FIND HIM!”
Finally, she put me down. She held my shoulders between her hands and looked at me with the same look from the car earlier. This time I wouldn’t look back. This time I wouldn’t be still.
“Tell me,” she said. “Tell me quietly.”
I stopped squirming.
“What are you looking for?”
I took a deep breath like Ms. Miller at school had shown me. She said whenever you had something big to say, it was a good idea to take a deep breath first.
“My dad,” I said.
Mom shook her head slowly.
“Alma, sweetie, your dad isn’t here,” she said.
“Nanny said!” I yelled back. But my throat hurt. And I was tired. I couldn’t squirm as much. “Nanny said he was here!”
“She did?” Mom lowered her eyebrows. “You don’t even know where we are. You’re only five.”
“We’re in the graveyard! That’s where you put him! Nanny said!” I was crying by now. Mom’s eyes looked wet too.
She wrapped me into a big hug and rocked me back and forth. “Sweetie,” she said. “He’s in a different graveyard. There are lots and lots of graveyards.”
“No,” I said. But I wasn’t screaming now. “No! There’s only one.”
“There are lots,” Mom said. She rocked me and I could feel myself relaxing into her hug even though I didn’t want to.
“There’s only one! There’s only one!”
People started walking away. I was losing my audience. I was trying to be as loud as I had been, but I couldn’t.
“He has to be here.”
“There are lots, Alma. Lots of graveyards. All over the world,” Mom said into my ear.
“There has to be only one,” I said. “I have to find him. He’s here.”
Because if there were lots of graveyards everywhere, if there were lots of graveyards with rows and rows of stones like this one . . . if there were so many . . . I’d never be able to find him.
Mom reached to pick me up. I let her this time. She started walking toward the car and I saw all the heads of all the funeral-goers turn as we walked by the crowd.
Tears fell out of my eyes, soaking Mom’s shoulder.
There was no more taste of jelly beans on my tongue. There was no more Good Alma left from in the church.
She strapped me into my booster sea
t and I fell asleep. When I woke up, Mom was not huggy and soft anymore.
She turned around in the car and said, “That was incredibly inappropriate behavior for a five-year-old. When we get home, you will spend the afternoon in your room thinking about what you did.”
I nodded. I didn’t feel like jumping anymore anyway.
It’s easiest to be a good girl when I’m practicing the piano. Playing the piano is the one thing I love to do that my mom also loves me doing.
I sit at the piano and play for hours. Mom’s timer goes off saying I’ve practiced enough and I just keep on playing. Mom moves around behind me, getting back into her strange paper-obsessed thing she’s been doing all summer. Every once in a while she comes and stares over my shoulder, listening to the music, a sad expression on her face.
My mom is allowed to be sad.
I’m not.
I play the saddest song I can think of. I play it twice. I start playing it a third time when my mom comes up behind me. I’m certain she’s going to tell me the song is too sad and I shouldn’t be playing sad music.
Music has always been the one thing in my control.
“Alma,” she says. “I need to make a phone call. Please go somewhere else.”
I don’t bother to ask why she can’t make the phone call in her own room.
I want to go to a graveyard. Even after all those sad songs I’m not feeling close enough to my dad. I want to bury a thousand questions about where I’m going to school and why my mom won’t tell me. But it’s the middle of the day and mom is home so I’ll never get away with it.
So I do the weird thing I do whenever I’m not feeling close enough to my dad. I shut myself in my room, plug in my headphones, sit at my desk, and open the internet. I type Jorge Francisco Costa.
I click on the profile. It’s on a Portuguese social media site. I found it right after Adam left.
A bearded Portuguese man smiles back at me.
It’s pretty stupid, but I like to imagine that he’s my dad in another dimension. That my dad looked like him and smiled like him and would have smiled at me exactly like this Jorge Costa smiles on my computer screen.
When I first tried to Google him, I found lots of Jorge Costas in Lisbon, Portugal. Pages and pages of them. Some were dead but most were alive. Some were famous. Some were old and some were young.
I found this profile. Jorge Costa, Lisbon, Portugal, born in 1987 just like my dad. I stared at his face and then started to feed pieces of his profile into Google Translate. I figured out what I could. Jorge Costa is a landscaper or he works in construction or something. He’s from Lisbon but it doesn’t say where he lives now. He doesn’t seem to have any kids or family.
The Internet Jorge Costa has skin darker than mine and gray hair cropped short on his head. He wears wireless glasses and a gray T-shirt. He smiles a sort of half smile, like he’s happy but being professional.
He looks like a dad.
“Do the dead know things?” I ask this alive Jorge Costa, pretending he’s my dad. “Do you know where I’m going to school?”
Jorge Costa just smiles at me. I let him smile at me for a long time.
But the questions are still swimming in my brain. I need more than a smile from my fake internet dad. I need answers.
I open Google. I think for a long time about what to type. What could the internet teach me about my mom?
I try My mom is making me transfer schools. A bunch of results pop up. I read through a few of them. Lots and lots of kids have to transfer schools, I realize. Lots of them are asking for advice on how to convince their parents not to move or not to switch schools or for advice on how to make friends at a new school. At first I feel a little less alone, but then I realize these kids aren’t like me: they all seem to know what school they’re going to.
I try I don’t know what school I’m going to. The first thing that pops up is an article titled Ten Things to Consider When Choosing the Best College for You. All the rest of the results are about college too.
I try My mom won’t tell me where I’m going to school. Nothing.
So I delete where I’m going to school and replace it with anything.
It’s so weird to see those words all spelled out and bolded.
My mom won’t tell me anything.
I shut my eyes tight. I click enter.
After a second I open them.
Advice boards pop up again. My eyes go wide at the results. Half sentences in blue font fill the screen. I want to click on all of them.
I’ve never met my dad and my mom won’t tell me anything.
I have no idea who my father is and my mom refuses to tell me who.
My dad left. My mom won’t tell me where he is.
I open one up and read about a girl whose last memory of her father is sledding with him when she was two. I read about her search and all the ways she’s tried to get her mother to tell her where he is.
I read about a boy who says he looks black even though his mom is white. He says he’s never met anyone who looks like him and it’s the loneliest feeling in the world, but that he can’t talk to his mom about it, because it makes her feel sad.
I read about more girls and boys and kids and I start to feel like they are with me, in my room. Like my room is filling up with kids and teenagers who are searching just like I am. Like it’s filling up with the younger versions of those same teens who looked and looked for their dads, who worded and reworded questions, who understand what it’s like to live with a mom like mine.
I wish I could meet them for real.
I’m so deep into a question by a boy who suspects his dad is a professional baseball player that I don’t hear the doorbell until it’s ringing over and over and over again.
Ding-dong.
Ding-dong.
Ding-dong.
I run down the hallway, rushing to get the door before Mom has to put her work on hold and gets annoyed with me for taking so long.
I open the door. It’s Julia. Her arms are loaded up with books and papers.
“Hello!” she sings. “Are you sick? I brought you the homework.”
“No,” I say. “I don’t need the homework.”
I expect her to ask why, but instead she stares behind me and her eyes go wide.
“Whoa,” she says slowly. She’s looking over my shoulder. “What happened to all your furniture?”
“Oh,” I say.
Before saying anything else, I turn to make sure Mom isn’t behind me.
Mom isn’t there.
Nothing is there.
The only thing behind us is the tiny coffee table covered in papers and calendars and calculators and checkbooks and folders.
I breathe in a sob. Tears threaten to leak out the corners of my eyes.
The couch is gone.
The piano is gone.
Nine
What If I Never Find You?
JULIA DROPS THE BOOKS. THEY THUD thunderously just inside the front of our door.
“You’re moving?” she says. She’s almost yelling. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me! You’re moving!”
“We’re moving,” I say. I mean it to come out like a question but I leave off the question mark. Because how did I not see that? It must be what’s happening. It explains the furniture. And the mysterious project Mom has been working on. And how Mom and I will go on living without Adam.
It will be easier for each of us to live day by day if we aren’t in this house where memories of him haunt every corner.
“You’re supposed to be my best friend,” Julia says. She’s standing in the middle of the pile of books, her shoulders slumped over. The front door is still open behind her so her shadow is cast long through the empty front hallway. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”
“We’re moving,” I say again.
“Where?” Julia says. “When? Why?”
I won’t tell her that I don’t know. She can’t know that I didn’t tell her I’m mo
ving because I needed her to tell me. She’s my best friend, but still. I can’t let her see how little I count in this house, in my own family.
“Not that far,” I say, shrugging.
I glance back to the dining room, where our black piano should be pressed up against the wall. What happened to the piano? Did she sell it or did she move it?
Wherever we go, there has to be a piano, right? Mom wouldn’t take that away from me.
Unless maybe she found all the questions piled in my room.
Unless maybe she figured out about all the lies.
Julia turns and for a second I think she’s going to leave. I think she’s mad enough to walk out the door. I think—for a second—that I may never see her again.
Instead she shuts the front door but stays on the inside. She steps over the pile of books until she’s standing next to me. Then she throws her arms around me and squeezes. Hard.
“Where is not far? Where exactly are you moving?”
I freeze. “Um . . .” I can’t come up with anything fast enough.
Julia releases me. “You don’t know,” she whispers. It’s not a question.
I feel naked. I’m so embarrassed I’m melting.
“Of course she does!” my mom says, coming into the living room. “We’re moving to be closer to her grandmother.”
I stare at my mother as Julia shouts, “Florida! You’re moving to Florida! Florida isn’t that far?”
I shouldn’t be able to answer. I should be stuck processing everything. We’re moving back to Florida. We lived there when I was first born but we haven’t lived there since I was four years old.
And Mom just lied to my best friend. Mom said it like it was the easiest thing in the world.
Of course she knows where we’re moving.
We’re moving to Florida.
The only thing she didn’t say was duh.
But I’m my mother’s daughter. I know how to lie. I don’t miss a beat. “It’s not like it’s another country or something.”
Julia shrinks beside me. I see it happen. A minute ago she was towering over me. Now she seems normal-sized. I shrunk her. I have my mom’s powers.
“We’re moving on Wednesday,” Mom says.
I raise my eyebrows. That’s in two days. I want to yell it at her.