by Caela Carter
Leonor stands. “Come on!” she says.
She drops the ball and kicks it in a beautiful arc. It lands right in the middle of where the boys were just playing. I raise my eyebrows at her. Leonor knows how to play soccer?
The girls all run toward the ball in the grass and I follow. Maybe we do have something in common. I’ve never been so grateful for all the late-night soccer-watching with Adam. And for the lessons he was always signing me up for. It’s Adam to the rescue once again, even though he feels farther away than ever now that I’m on the other side of the world.
We don’t play a real game. We just dribble and pass the ball around for a while. Still, it’s nice to be able to keep up, to participate, to pretend like I fit in.
But the girls make me miss Julia. Soccer makes me miss Adam. Am I going to be missing home for the rest of my life?
The missing feels small, like a rodent nibbling on the side of my heart. A pain that is somehow both small and significant. And familiar.
Missing has always felt like this.
And there’s someone I’ve always been missing.
I have to find his graveyard. I know it’s here, somewhere.
That’s what will make this all worth it.
After a few hours Leonor and I shed the giggling girls and walk away from the school.
“Do you think you will enjoy your new school?” Leonor asks in that overly formal and friendly way.
She kicks the ball to me. We don’t walk the same way we came; we’re walking through the woods behind the school. I guess the ball belongs to Leonor or something because it seems like we’re taking it back on the trolley.
“I don’t know yet,” I say. I don’t bother to point out that I didn’t even see the inside. I’m still not sure what today was about. I kick it back to her.
“I understand,” Leonor says. “I’ll do my best to make sure you are seamlessly acquainted with the institution.”
“Thanks,” I say. But I don’t know how she can do that since I don’t even speak the language.
We continue through the woods and then emerge into a different Portuguese-suburbs street. Across from us is a big stone wall, high over my head. Nothing looks familiar.
“We catch the trolley home on a different stop,” Leonor says as if she’s reading my mind.
We cross the street and I dribble the ball along the concrete wall. My hearts starts to rush. Then it tugs. Something tugs so hard on it, I bump right into the wall.
The wall curves inward and opens into a high white arch with a cross at the top. Beneath it are black gates, open and welcoming.
“What is this?” I ask Leonor, pointing at the wall. “What’s on the other side?”
“Oh,” she says. She makes a face. “I’m afraid it’s rather unpleasant.”
My heart tugs again. “Unpleasant?” I say.
Then I freeze. I see it for myself.
Beyond the gates is the most breathtaking thing I’ve ever seen.
It’s a graveyard. It has to be. Except instead of rows of headstones sticking up out of the grass, I see a spiderweb of little alleyways each lined with tiny houses. I know they are graves. Graves shaped like houses. They’re made of the same white stone a regular headstone would be, except they’re shaped like entire houses. Most are tiny, like only one room could fit inside. But some are bigger and look like they could have many rooms and multiple floors. The one closest to me is made of off-white stone. It has two columns next to the black front door. It’s a grave with a front door. There are steps leading to the front door, almost like a tiny porch. There’s a plant hanging next to the door too. It looks so inviting. It’s what was missing from that JFC headstone. It’s what was missing from every grave I visited this summer.
Similar grave-houses line the main street and fill up all the alleyways. They are slightly different in shape and size and color and texture and details but they are all so much more than a headstone.
It’s a neighborhood graveyard.
It’s a graveyard for dead people who have alive people who want to pretend they are not dead.
My heart pounds uncontrollably. I have to get inside.
I look down at my feet. The soccer ball is wedged between them. This is the most important goal of my life and I have to make it look like an accident.
I move my left foot as if I’m going to kick the ball to Leonor who is just a few feet ahead of me, walking past the most remarkable graveyard to get to the trolley like a good girl would.
At the last second I act like my foot slips and instead send the soccer ball in a perfect line drive right through the black gates.
“Whoops!” I shout. “I’ll get it.”
Before Leonor can say anything I rush into the gates.
I freeze again.
My heart is tugging me to the left and I ache to follow. They are everywhere. Tiny little stone houses. They each have a front step or even a full front stoop and a door. The doors are black and blue and red and green but all the stones are all shades between pure white and almost yellow or almost gray. The only thing that makes me certain they aren’t actual houses is that they have no windows. Some have glass with fancy etched patterns covering bits of the white stone where a window may be if it really were a house. Some have hanging plants. Some have little flags outside. Some have doorbells. At the end of this main road is an enormous structure. It could be a three-bedroom house. Instead it’s a tomb.
This is it.
This is how we should be treating the dead people we love.
We shouldn’t just bury them under a tiny plaque with their initials.
We shouldn’t shove them somewhere that most the world can forget about.
We should build them a house so they know they are loved. We should give them doorbells so they know they have visitors. We should hang plants for them because they can’t do it themselves anymore.
My dad has to be here.
My dad has to be this loved.
He has to be this honored.
I love him.
I love him more than anyone.
In the distance I see two alive people. Men who are bent over in front of the biggest grave-house. They’re planting a garden or something. One of them straightens out and puts his big hand over his eyes as if he’s trying to see something in the sunlight.
I think he’s looking at me.
I should move. I should walk away. But I can’t.
I’m frozen there when I feel cold fingers tap my arm. I jump about five feet in the air.
“I know,” Leonor whispers. “It’s creepy here, huh?” She picks up the ball and walks out the gate. “Come on, cousin!” she calls.
I pause before I run to catch up with her. I don’t have a choice.
But I leave my heart behind. I leave my heart at the gate of that graveyard right where my dad can get it.
I have to get back here.
Alone.
Sixteen
What Would I Do Without Nanny?
ALL THAT NIGHT I FEEL CLOSER to finding my dad than I ever have. It makes me think about how long I’ve been searching for him. It makes me think about how young I was when I first learned about his death, when I first yearned for a dad of my own.
I was four years old and sitting at Nanny’s kitchen table.
Mom was on the phone in the next room. PopPop was just coming in from outside, mud all over his boots.
I got up and opened the kitchen drawer closest to the table. Nanny kept an entire drawer full of crayons, like crayons were as important as forks and bowls and ingredients. I loved that about her house.
“Jeez, Dad,” Mom said to PopPop. “We all walk around in our socks. You have to take off your wet boots before you walk all over the place.”
I stood still at the crayon drawer, two purples in one hand, the other hand hanging on to the drawer handle. “Dad?” I said to Nanny. I’d always thought his name was PopPop.
“Last time I checked this was my house, sweetheart,
” PopPop said. He walked into the kitchen in his boots. Tiny puddles stuck to the floor wherever he stepped. He called Mom sweetheart but his voice didn’t sound nice.
“Why did Mommy call you Dad?” I asked him.
He had his back to me, hunting in the refrigerator.
“Because I’m her father,” he said. “Or so Nanny tells me.”
“Oh, shush,” Nanny said, swatting at PopPop’s arm with a dish towel. “And Mercy’s right. Take off your boots before you walk all over the living room and kitchen.”
PopPop sighed and sat down at the table where I’d been sitting. He started to unlace his boots.
I walked over and put my crayons in front of him. “I didn’t know Mommy had a dad,” I said.
Kids at preschool had dads. I’d see them every once in a while. Kids on TV had dads. They showed up all the time.
“Well, everybody does, dear,” PopPop said, not looking up from his laces.
My nose wrinkled. That was confusing.
I didn’t say anything right away because PopPop looked up so suddenly. He looked at Nanny and froze. I looked at Nanny. She was looking through the doorway at Mom. She was also frozen. I looked at Mom. She was looking back through the doorway at me. She was also frozen.
I had frozen my family.
“I don’t have a dad,” I said finally.
“You do,” PopPop said slowly. “Everyone has a father.”
He had one boot on and one boot off but he still pulled me into his lap.
“But since yours isn’t around, I’ll fill in, OK?”
Usually I settled into PopPop’s lap like it was the coziest chair in front of the warmest fireplace. Usually his hugs were second best only to Mom’s. But I wasn’t quite ready to settle in yet.
“Where is he?” I asked. “My father?”
I was looking at PopPop. He was frozen again. I followed his eyes to Nanny and her eyes to Mom and her eyes back to me.
Finally Nanny said, “He’s passed on, sweet girl. He passed away.”
They moved, the grown-ups, but just a little, like they went from frozen to slow motion.
“Mom?” my mom said to Nanny.
“We have to tell her, dear,” Nanny said. “We have to tell her this.”
“Where?” I said. “Where did he pass to?”
Nanny came to sit at the other chair at the table. She took my hand.
“Passed away means he’s gone, Alma. It means he’s . . . he’s dead,” she said.
I sort of knew what dead meant. I’d seen Jimmy from school squish an ant on the sidewalk at recess. I’d heard about Cathy’s funeral for her hamster. I thought I knew what dead meant. But it didn’t seem possible. That there was this whole person and then there wasn’t.
“But where is he?” I asked.
“He’s in heav—” Nanny started, but Mom finally spoke.
“Mom,” she said. “No.”
Nanny thought for a minute. Finally she said, “He’s in a graveyard, Alma. His body gave up. So his family honored him and put him in a graveyard.”
I asked a lot of questions about that graveyard.
Nanny and PopPop stayed stiff and slow motioned. They fidgeted a lot. Mom never said another word.
That night I laid my dolls out in neat rows in my room. I took white undershirts out of my drawers and put them at their head to look like headstones. I told them they were with my dad.
My mom came to my door and said, “Alma, what are you doing?”
I shrugged. “Playing graveyard,” I said.
Mom shook her head. “No,” she said. “That’s not a nice game.”
She started picking up the T-shirts.
“Hey!” I yelled.
“Alma, no!” Mom said. “This is a bad game.”
The way she said bad made me feel guilty. I hated upsetting my mom.
“Anyway,” she said. “It’s time for bed. Pick out some pj’s, please.”
But I didn’t move right away. I stared at her long and hard as she folded my T-shirt. I stared and stared.
I thought about everything that Nanny and PopPop had said.
I thought about how glad I was that they’d been there to tell me.
Because even as a tiny four-year-old watching my mom fold up my tiny undershirts I knew. I knew that if it weren’t for Nanny and PopPop, my mom would never tell me anything.
Seventeen
How Far Away Is Home?
MONDAY NIGHT, ONCE I’M SHOWERED AND in my pajamas, after my mom comes in and rubs my back and tells me how proud she is of me and the way I’m handling all of this change, I sit down on my bed and imagine Julia is there. It’s the last day of summer, for real this time. Tomorrow I go to school.
The last time I thought it was the night before school I felt lonely because I was missing my mother.
This time I feel lonely because I’m missing Julia. It’d be so different if she were able to go to school with me tomorrow, even here, in Portugal. If I had her to laugh with and share homework notes with and make other friends with.
No one wants a friend obsessed with graveyards and a dead person. No one except Julia.
I decide to try to Skype her again even though I know she won’t answer. It’s four o’clock in the afternoon in Pittsburgh. She’s at soccer practice.
It rings and rings. No answer.
I take off my glasses, climb into my low-to-the-ground double bed, and go to sleep.
In the middle of the night, I’m suddenly awake.
My tablet is beeping next to my bed.
I jump to catch it before it wakes my mom up. Julia’s picture is lighting up the screen. I hit the green circle and whisper, “Hi!”
“Hi!” she says at normal volume. “I’m so glad you picked up!”
I can hear the sounds of her house behind her. Her mom yelling at her brother for tracking mud into the house. Her dad watching TV. It’s so weird that it’s evening for her and it’s night for me. It’s like we aren’t in the same world.
“Mr. Hendricks is the worst,” she’s saying. “He gave us so much homework this weekend, you wouldn’t believe it. You’re lucky you don’t have to have him,” Julia says.
Part of me aches for this. For whining with her about too much homework. For the normalcy of my old life. But I know if I were with her I’d never even realize how great it was. She’d be whining about homework and I’d be on her computer plotting some way to get to another graveyard.
I listen for sounds in my own world. Through the paper-thin walls I can hear my mother snoring. It’s safe to talk.
“You’ll never believe it!” I whisper. “I found the most incredible graveyard.” I launch into a description of the little streets and the houses made of white stone and the front porches. The little bit I saw.
“Google Image it,” I say. “You’ll see what I mean.”
Julia has been quiet ever since I started talking about the graveyard but the screen freezes and I know she’s Googling it.
“Whoa!” she whispers. “That’s so creepy.”
Her face is back on the screen. “Isn’t it amazing?” I say.
“It’s—” she starts, but I don’t let her finish.
“I couldn’t really explore. Because my cousin was with me.”
“Your cousin?” Julia says.
“Yeah,” I say. “The one I told you about. Leonor. She lives with my grandmother, I guess.”
“Back up, back up!” Julia says. “You went out with your cousin? You went to your grandmother’s place?”
“Yeah, she actually lives right downstairs,” I say. “I had lunch there the other day. We played the piano together.”
“What?” Julia says. I watch her deflate. “How could you not tell me that?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Avó—that’s like grandma in Portuguese—doesn’t even speak English. Mom had to translate so who knows what she’s saying.”
“Oh,” Julia says. “What about your cousin?”
“W
hat do you mean?” I ask.
“Like, tell me about her. How old is she? What’s she like?”
I pause. I have a cousin. I have a cousin on my dad’s side and I finally met her after all this time. I wish it felt better but maybe it just reminds me that I’ll never have my dad.
“I don’t know how to do it, Jules,” I say finally. “I never had this sort of family, you know? Cousins and aunts and uncles. My world was always so small. Leonor really wants me to like her but . . .”
“Well, she must,” Julia says. “She took you to a graveyard.”
“No, no, no,” I say. She’s not understanding anything.
I shift on the bed so I’m lying on my belly with the tablet propped up in front of me. It’s almost like Julia and I are lying face-to-face. This is a much better way to get ready for the first day of school.
“She didn’t have to take me to it. That’s the best part,” I say. “It’s right near my new school. Leonor took me there the other day for some sort of orientation and on the way back to the trolley—”
“Excuse me!” Julia interrupts, way too loudly. “You went to school? On a trolley? . . . I’m missing the most important parts!”
I’m not answering Julia because I’m listening for snores. I turn my head to focus on the wall.
Snore, please. Snore.
I have to tell Julia the rest about the graveyard. If Mom wakes up she’s going to come in here and make me hang up. No electronics after bedtime is one of her rules. She’ll take my tablet for a week.
“Alma?” Julia says. “You aren’t even looking at me.”
“Sorry,” I whisper back. “My mom’s asleep. She probably wouldn’t want me talking right now.”
“Oh, OK,” Julia says. “I’ll whisper.”
“Thanks,” I say.
It doesn’t feel right, meeting all this family. I thought I would like it more than I do. I thought it would fill in a little bit where my dad is missing inside me. I thought it would fill in the hurt just a little.
But instead I feel the gaps of him widening. Leonor is only interested in me because of a dead man I don’t know anything about. Avó is only feeding me because of the same dead man.
I don’t know how to focus on the other things. I only know how to focus on my dad.