by Caela Carter
I pause. I hope I’ve paused long enough before I keep talking. “But wouldn’t it be amazing if my dad is buried in that graveyard. It’s the most beautiful graveyard in the world.”
“I don’t know, Alma.”
I’m smiling huge but Julia doesn’t smile back. She studies her lap or her shoes or something beneath the screen of my iPad, something back in her world where things are solid and make sense.
“And it must mean something that it’s next to my new school, right? Like he’s finally leading me to him, right?”
“I don’t know, Alma,” Julia says again.
“What do you mean you don’t know?” I say. “This could be it. It could be the end of the search!”
She’s been to so many graveyards with me. She’s done so much searching. I need her to get excited. I need her on my team.
But she sighs. “I guess so,” she says. “Will you tell me about the school?”
“Are you upset because you won’t be there when I finally find him?” I try.
“No,” she says. “I’m not upset. Tell me about your school.”
“Are you mad that I don’t have to do all this homework from Mr. Hendricks with you? Or that I got to travel to another country?”
“No!” she says.
“Are you—”
“Alma!” she says. “I’m not upset. I’m . . . I just can’t think about missing moms and dads all the time. Sometimes I want to hear about school and kids and cousins and normal stuff.”
I lower my eyebrows. “I didn’t say anything about missing moms,” I say. I never have. My mom has been a lot of things, but never missing.
Julia shakes her head. I can’t tell if it’s my tablet or the lighting or if her eyes are getting a little red. “I know,” she says. “Can we please just talk about the normal stuff for a minute? Anything except graveyards?”
“OK,” I say slowly. Then I remember. Julia is my friend, not my cousin. I know how to be good to her. “Wait. Jules, when I talk about my dad and graveyards, does that make your miss your mom from Korea? Is that why you’re angry?”
“I’m not angry!” Julia shouts.
“Julia!” Her mom’s voice pops out of the background. “Who are you talking to for so long?”
“Just Alma,” Julia calls back. She makes her voice cheerful and happy. It’s so instant it’s like a magic trick.
“Alma?” her mom says. She appears on the screen behind Julia.
“Alma, how are you?” her mom asks.
“Hi, I’m fine,” I say.
“She has her first day of school tomorrow,” Julia says.
Julia’s mom checks her watch. “Alma,” she says. “It’s one thirty in the morning in Lisbon. What are you doing on your tablet?”
My face burns. She sounds just like my own mom. I don’t need her to sound like that anymore though. My mom is mom-ing me again.
“I just wanted to talk to Julia,” I say.
“You girls hang up now,” she says.
But we can’t. I know we can’t. I have to find out what Julia is feeling right now, what she was trying to tell me about her first mom.
“You need some sleep before school tomorrow,” Julia’s mom says. And that might be true. But I need to get to a better conversation stopper with Julia more than I need sleep.
She tried to talk to me about her other mom one other time. And I blew it. I’m not going to blow it again.
“Five more minutes,” I say.
Julia’s mom looks at me like I have five heads. “Good night, Alma,” she says. “We don’t negotiate at one thirty in the morning.”
Julia looks sad and defeated. I don’t ever want to hang up with her when her face looks this broken.
“Good night,” she says. And she hangs up.
My room is suddenly extra dark. I roll over and stare up into the darkness. The noises of the city pour in my open window, people partying and calling out to one another late into the night.
All their voices sound like Julia’s.
Missing moms and dads.
I’m going to find my dad in the beautiful graveyard.
Then I’ll have to convince Julia to let me help her find her mom.
A new day at a new school in a new city in a new country should be enough to keep my mind occupied. But I can’t help thinking about the beautiful neighborhood graveyard that is only a few blocks away. The one I’ll get a glimpse of on the way home today.
Leonor meets me at the bottom of our apartment building and we walk over to the trolley. I think she can tell I’m nervous because she doesn’t talk too much.
Like Mom promised, the teachers all speak English most of the day and the kids are all pretty nice. Some things make me stand out: my frizzy hair that I wear down with just a headband, my backpack that I wear on both my shoulders, and the fact that the teacher, Ms. Sousa, announces that I’m from Pittsburgh in the USA. But there are kids at this school from all over the world.
The morning seems to speed by. Ms. Sousa announces that we’ll be reading The Giver as our class book to start the year. I already read it in fourth grade. Ms. Sousa starts us on a “review” worksheet for math. All the kids around me start dividing fractions in a way that looks completely foreign to me and Ms. Sousa stands over my desk attempting to walk me through it while I try to make my brain listen to her and stop repeating Dad Dad Dad.
At lunch we move to a different kind of room. It’s like a big balcony lofted over the front entrance of the school. There are groups of desks pushed four together to make a little table and each of them is covered in blue tablecloths with cups and silverware laid out. It’s very formal for school lunch and it makes me stop thinking about my dad for just long enough to miss the sticky and loud cafeteria that Julia and Annette and Sharice are in right now, except they aren’t, because lunchtime in Lisbon is not lunchtime in Pittsburgh.
I try to focus on what’s happening here. On this new school where I should be trying to make friends.
The girls and boys all arrange themselves into lines and seem to know exactly what they’re doing. I panic for a quick second because I’m hungry and I don’t know how to get food and I look like a fool. Then a girl comes up behind me and says, “Get on line here, get your tray, and choose a table.”
She pulls my wrist so I end up behind her in line.
She turns back to me and says, “I’m Suzanne.” It’s then that I realize she doesn’t have an accent. Or maybe she has my accent.
“I’m Alma,” I say quietly.
I follow Suzanne down the lunch line until I’m carrying a heavy tray. It has a plate with pasta on one half and some sort of beef stew on the other. It has a bowl of pink soup in one corner. It has a slice of some delicious-looking white cake on the other. It’s the best school lunch I’ve ever seen.
“Here,” Suzanne says. “Sit with me.”
I sit at a table with her and two other girls.
“You don’t look American,” one of the other girls says. She’s Portuguese. I’m beginning to be able to tell by the way someone speaks.
She’s also black and doesn’t look how I always thought Portuguese people looked but I don’t say that. I guess I thought all Portuguese people would look like me. I know now that was silly.
“Alma isn’t an American name either,” the other girl says. “At least I didn’t think so.”
“My dad is Portuguese,” I say without thinking.
“Oh, that’s why you’re here then,” Suzanne says. “He brought you back, huh?”
“Yeah,” I say. Then I stop.
I could tell them my mom brought me here. I could tell them my dad is dead and it’s my mission to find out where he’s buried. I could try to make a new friend here at this lunch table.
But at home everyone knew my dad was dead. Here no one does. If I don’t say another word, I seem like a normal girl with a Portuguese dad who loves her. I seem like the girl I’ve always wanted to be.
I can be that girl in this
new school.
I can be that girl right now.
“My dad wanted me to get to know his country,” I say. I leave it at that.
I’m turning into my mom. Just giving people the little pieces I want to share. Keeping most of my own story to myself.
After lunch I follow Suzanne and the two Portuguese girls down an unfamiliar hallway and into a different classroom. The posters on the walls are not in English. The books on the bookshelves are not in English. The music playing from the teacher’s computer on the desk where she’s sitting is not in English.
We sit and the teacher stands. She does not smile.
She says, “Bem-vindos de volta, alunos! Feliz primeiro dia de escola.”
I try to translate in my head as much as I can.
Bem-vindos sounds like welcome.
Escola is school.
But by the time I get that far, the teacher is talking and talking and the kids around me are laughing and laughing.
I deduce that this is Portuguese class.
I deduce further that if I felt like I was behind in math, I’m never catching up in this class.
Dad Dad Dad Dad
For the next hour I stare into space and imagine my dad’s grave in the neighborhood graveyard. It’ll be one of the whiter houses, I think. The cleaner ones. Surely avó has been taking good care of him all of this time and now I’ll go and help her on Sunday afternoons. I’ll bring little hanging plants for his grave-porch and I’ll clear off the mud during the rainy season. We can sing songs together, avó and I, since we won’t have a piano there. We can honor Dad together.
Dad Dad Dad Dad
I’ll have to find a way to visit him. I’ll find a way to get away from Leonor one day after school and I’ll go straight to the graveyard.
Dad Dad Dad Dad.
I’ll visit him every day if I can until I know everything there is to know about him. Did he grow up here or in the south of Portugal like the rest of my family? Did he go to this school and ride this trolley?
Dad Dad Dad Dad
Is he so proud of me now, seeing me in his old city?
Dad Dad Dad Dad
I’m so far in my head that I’m a few seconds behind as everyone else stands and picks up their books and moves to the back door of the classroom.
“Alma,” the teacher says, the first word I’ve understood in what feels like forever. “Come here.”
I walk to her desk. She has a card in her hands and she’s scribbling quickly.
“Take this home to your parents,” she says. “I’d like to see you after school one-on-one until you can catch up a little bit. It may be a lot, but I’m thinking about several times a week. We have to work hard if you’re going to learn the language.”
I try to hide my smile. I’m not supposed to be excited about staying after school. But I know what this will mean.
I’ll be going home on the trolley without Leonor.
I’ll be able to visit Dad’s grave by myself, three times a week.
Just the promise of it is enough to keep me from more than glancing at the graveyard on the way home from school.
That evening my mother makes spaghetti. The old-school kind with just plain sauce on just plain noodles with Parmesan cheese sprinkled on top. I’m so happy for something so usual, so familiar. I could almost cry.
I hand her the note. She reads it. “Would you like to learn Portuguese, Alma?” she asks.
I lower my eyebrows at her so low they almost push my glasses off my face. Seems like a question she should have asked a long time ago.
“It’s just that you’ve never shown any interest. And if we agree to you staying after school this much, you’d have to work hard to learn the language.”
“Yes,” I say. “I’d like to.”
“Well, OK then,” Mom says. “I’ll write back to the teacher and set it up.”
I nod.
“I spoke with your uncle today.” I freeze with a bite of spaghetti so close to my mouth it starts to drip on my lap.
“My uncle?” I say.
“Leonor’s father,” she says.
Leonor has a dad.
“Oh,” I say.
“We were trying to figure out how you can meet everyone without it being too overwhelming.”
“Everyone?” I say. My voice is a little shaky.
“All your aunts and uncles and cousins,” Mom says. “They live all over the country.”
“How many are there?” I ask.
“Lots, apparently.” Mom says this like it’s no big deal. Like going from having a tiny family of just Mom, Nanny, PopPop, and me to a huge family that has to travel from all over an entire country just to see you should be super easy and normal.
I don’t think I’m ready for this.
I’m still getting used to Leonor and avó.
I have to find my dad before I can even think about the rest of his family. How can I get used to this family if my link to them is missing?
Mom rubs my cheek. “I want you to meet your family,” she says, as if she’s giving me some priceless gift. Which maybe she is. But it’s my family. She sort of owes it to me.
She’s still talking. “Your uncle says you and Leonor have a long weekend in October, sometime right around when you would have fall break at home.”
This makes me think of last fall break. Of Mom taking me and Julia to a pumpkin patch. Of Julia’s dad making us hot apple cider from scratch.
“So he suggested they come that weekend. To get to know you. How does that sound?”
It’s a month and a half away. I can’t even get my brain around the fact that I’ll still be here then.
By then, I will have found his grave. I’m certain of it.
By then a lot of things will be better.
Before I can answer, Mom’s cell phone starts ringing in her bedroom. She gets up to answer it and I finally take my bite of spaghetti.
Then she comes back into the kitchen. “It’s for you,” she says.
I jump up and skip down the hallway. Silly me not turning my tablet on so that Julia could Skype. She had to call my mom’s phone.
I sail into my mom’s room and plop down on her bed where the phone is facedown. I yank it close to my ear.
“Jules? You’ll never believe my school lunch,” I say.
“Alma,” says a voice. It’s not Julia’s. It’s a deep voice. A man’s voice.
Adam.
“Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m afraid I’m not Julia,” he chuckles.
My whole body breaks out in goose bumps. I sort of mumble, “It’s OK,” but that’s not what I mean. It’s better. It’s wonderful.
I don’t need to wait for a catastrophe to call Adam. He’s calling me.
“But I want to hear about this school lunch,” he says.
I grin and launch into details about the pasta and meat combo. I tell him about the trolley and about Leonor and how I have all sorts of other family I still have to meet. I tell him about playing the piano with avó. I’m surprised how much I’m talking. I tell him about every single thing except the beautiful graveyard and how certain I am that I’m about to finally find my dad. It’s almost like old times, like third grade when Adam would come home from work with take-out cheeseburgers and we’d sit around the kitchen table and I’d talk-talk-talk.
But it can’t be that normal because they are divorced and I’m in Portugal and Adam asked about the Bold Idea and then Adam’s Bold Idea went away.
My chatter halts.
“Anything else going on, Alma-bear?” he asks.
“No,” I say.
“Are you doing OK?” he asks.
“I’m good,” I say. “Hey, why did you call?”
“I wanted to know about your first day of school,” Adam says.
“Oh,” I say.
In my head I ask him, but why didn’t you want to know about anything else? Why didn’t you want to know how I was back in Pittsburgh? Why didn’t you want to know why I was a
t Julia’s all the time? Why do you suddenly care about my day when for months you just disappeared?
I’m afraid to ask him any of that though. What if it makes him disappear again?
Too much time goes by, then he says, “Is it OK if I call now and then?”
“Yeah,” I say. It’s OK. But it’s not enough.
Silence again. I can’t think of anything to say because my brain is full of questions I’m too scared to ask.
Finally I say, “My dinner is getting cold.”
“All right, Alma,” he says. “Just remember I love you. Your mom and I, we—”
Except I hang up on him. I don’t want to hear what he’s going to tell me to remember. I don’t want him to pretend to be some hero when all he made is a phone call.
Hearing his voice on the phone seemed so huge. But it’s tiny when I remember the Bold Idea that disappeared.
Eighteen
Is This When I Finally Find You?
IT’S THE SECOND WEEK OF SCHOOL by the time Mom and my Portuguese teacher have worked out a way for me to stay late a few days a week for extra tutoring. The schedule is a little different each week so Mom says it’s up to me to keep track and let her know which days I’ll be staying late. The teacher starts with the super basics like hello (Olá) and goodbye (Tchau) and how to count (um, dios, três) and other things I already know just from listening to my mom talk on the phone for all these years. I’m glad it’s easy because I’m too distracted to pay attention.
I’m finally going home alone.
I can finally make my detour.
As soon as I get out of school, I run the whole way to the graveyard. I’ve been in school so long the sun is sinking low in the sky and the shadows of the trees in the woods have grown to meet one another. I can almost hear footsteps beside me. It’s almost like Julia is here with me, where she should be, helping me solve the mystery, ending all my questions.
I sprint all the way to the gates.
The pull on my heart is so strong that I’ve never been this sure of anything in my life. My dad is in here. In these gates.
I see a trolley coming up the hill. For a second I want to get on it. For a second I want to leave the mystery where it is.
But it’s even more than that. It’s that I’ve been searching for my dad for as long as I can remember. I’ve been as close to him as a living girl can be to a dead father.