Finding Miracles (9 page)

The weekend before school elections, we drove down to Long Island on Happy’s invitation. For the first time ever, we were going to be staying in her mansion—even though renovations were not finished.

All the way down, Dad kept bursting into song, “Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother’s house we go.” You couldn’t blame Dad for being in such a good mood. Grandma had apologized—something she’d never done in her life that Dad could remember. She’d told Dad and Mom, each on an extension, that all of us were her grandchildren. She loved every one of us the same. She had been wrongheaded and she was sorry. I guess Dad tried to blame it on Mr. Strong’s bad advice, but Grandma took full blame. “Not at all, Davey. Eli Strong told me I was being a fool, and I should have listened to him.”

I guess I should have felt good, too. But now, with everyone being so cheery, like we were some big ole happy family after all, my old feelings returned. I couldn’t seem to forget that Happy’s unconditional acceptance had been on second thought. All the ride down, I stared out the window at the sunny spring day outside. Mile by mile, the trees kept getting fuller and greener, the air warmer, the sky bluer. But gray, wintery clouds hung over my heart. I scratched and scratched at my hands.

I think Mom and Dad sensed I was still brooding, and that’s why they started in on their Peace Corps stories. The happy beginnings of our family.
Your
family, I thought, your
blood
family. Any time now, we’d hear all about the orphanage, the baby in the basket, the memory box, Sister Corita with the seagull hat. Please, I thought. Somehow, today, I didn’t want
them
talking about
my
adoption.

“It was love at first sight!” Dad was recalling the first time he met Mom. “I get there and this very foxy lady at the Aereopuerto Internacional is holding up this sign that reads
CUERPO DE PAZ,
and boy, did she have a
cuerpo
on her!”

“What’s a
cuerpo
?” Nate wanted to know.

Mom and Dad and Kate burst out laughing.

“SOMEBODY TELL ME WHAT A
CUERPO
IS!” Nate hollered, his bottom lip quivering. He hated to be left out.

Mom was in too good a mood to scold Nate for yelling in the car. “Honey,
cuerpo
means body. In Spanish, the Peace Corps is called Cuerpo de Paz, Body of Peace.”

“But her
cuerpo
did not bring me any peace, no sir,” Dad continued. “Day and night, that’s all I could think about—”

“The Peace Corps might be going back soon,” Mom cut in, her prim Mormon genes taking the upper hand. Right before we had left, the Bolívars had called. The generals had tried to stop the vote count, but the commission of international observers had threatened sanctions. Crowds were turning up everywhere in support of continuing the count. It looked like the Liberation Party would win by a landslide.

“Bolívar already told me that they’ll probably be going down in August for several weeks,” Dad explained. “Maybe I should take some of that time off, too. How about we all go up to Maine and see the ocean. What do you say, kids?”

“I want to go to Disney World,” Nate pleaded. For his birthday last year, he’d gone with Happy, and he still talked about that trip in excruciating detail.

“Well, we’ll have to take a vote,” Dad said diplomatically. “Kate? Mil?”

Kate shrugged. “Whatever.” She never got what she asked for anyway: a week of shopping in New York City with the cousins.

I usually went along with the group plan, so I don’t know why I even said what I did. It’s not like I had thought a whole lot about it. “I want to go with the Bolívars when they go down.”

There was a sudden quietness in the car. Mom and Dad exchanged a glance, and then Mom turned around in her seat. “Honey, I can understand that you’d like to visit. But things are so unsettled there right now—” She stopped herself, her therapist training kicking in. “Maybe next summer we can all go for a visit?”

“That’s a terrific idea!” Dad looked in the rearview mirror to check on my reaction.

I sat there like some naughty four-year-old, arms crossed, shaking my head no. “I want to go now. And I don’t want to go with you guys. I want to go by myself.”

“But why?” Dad’s voice sounded hurt. “Honey, you’re too young to travel by yourself to a foreign country.”

“It’s not a
foreign
country. It’s my
native
country.” I felt like a horrible, ungrateful daughter, but I couldn’t stop myself. Until election night at the Bolívars’ apartment, I hadn’t ever thought a whole lot about the country. But now its struggle to be free seemed somehow personal to me. “And I wouldn’t be going by myself,” I persisted. “I’d be with the Bolívars. Mrs. Bolívar invited me.” Months back, during one of our shopping trips, Mrs. Bolívar had mentioned that someday she would like to take me to the
mercados
in her native country. This hardly amounted to a real invitation. But for some reason, right now it seemed like enough of one to me.

Kate, who’d been staring out her window throughout this discussion, suddenly turned to me, her face red and angry. “It’s my native country, too, you know?”

I was about to get into it with her—a tug of war over whose native country it really was. But Kate’s face was crumpling up. Horrible sobs were coming out of her mouth. I felt awful, like I’d thrown a rock at an apple on a tree and suddenly heard the crash of glass. What had I done to make my sister cry like this?

“I . . . I...” Kate could hardly talk. “I feel like you’re giving us up as a family.”

It was like hearing an echo from my own heart: Kate was afraid of abandonment, too! Before I knew it, I was crying, and then everyone in that car was sobbing, and here we were pulling into Happy’s driveway, and Happy herself was coming down her front steps toward us, waving and smiling happily.

We put on a pretty good show of the happy family arriving at Grandma’s. Later, Mom and Dad came into the bedroom Kate and I were sharing, and we all collapsed into a big, tearful family hug. “We understand, we understand,” they kept saying, and I kept apologizing, “I’msorryI’msorryI’msorry,” though I didn’t really know for what. I still felt what I felt, only now I was determined not to show it.

At dinner, Happy sat me next to her as if to prove that I was no different from any of her other grandchildren. Except for Della, Grandma’s housekeeper, serving us, the whole night could have been a repeat of Happy’s birthday dinner. Aunt Joan, Uncle Stanley, and the cousins drove out from the city. Mr. Eli Strong was back. Knowing how he had stood up for me made me want to hug him. But shy as we both were, it would have been doubly embarrassing to do so. Instead, I complimented his cuff links, small, gold happy faces like those smiley yellow ones people stick on envelopes. Even that made him blush and stammer thanks.

That night, Kate joined the cousins next door for their usual marathon gossip session. Grandma had put us in three adjoining bedrooms, and Nate had his own pullout couch in the pool room—the place is a mansion. Anyhow, I bowed out. “I’m real beat, guys,” I explained. Glances went around the room.

I lay in bed, unable to sleep, hearing the occasional laughter or dramatic rise and fall of voices through the wall. A while later, Kate came into our room. She sat on the edge of her bed in the dark, like she wanted to say something.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

Brilliant, I thought. At least I had an excuse for not being good at heart-to-heart stuff. I wasn’t the
real
child of a therapist. “Kate,” I said, sitting up in my bed. “Do you want to talk about it?”

I could see her faintly shaking her head. Then, after some more tense silence, she spoke up. “I just want to say one thing, Mil. We don’t have a perfect family, okay? But it’s not the worst, okay? So, please, please, please, think about what you’re doing before you go and...”

“And what?” I challenged. “What is it you think I’m going to do, Kate?”

“I don’t want to talk about it!” Kate sounded fierce and scared, both. “I don’t know about you, but I would like to get some sleep tonight.”

“Kate, I swear, nothing is going to come between us—”

“I said I didn’t want to talk about it!” Her voice was so loud. A second later, there was a knock at our door. The cousins. “Everything okay in there?”

“We’re fine,” Kate called out. I’m sure the cousins were not convinced. But very unlike them, they didn’t barge in. Maybe Kate had talked to them. Great, I thought. That made me feel even less like I belonged in this family.

I lay there, helpless and also angry. I wanted to tell Kate that she was the one creating the separation between us by refusing to even let me talk. But it’s like what Pablo had told me his grandfather had said. Things of the heart, you couldn’t rush them. Kate would come around when she was ready. I just hoped I would be ready then, too.

We tossed and turned. I don’t think either of us slept a whole lot that night.

Sunday morning, while everyone lounged in the sunken living room, recuperating from one of Della’s huge breakfasts, I slipped into the library to be by myself. I reached up for To Kill a Mockingbird—we had read it last fall in English class—and a whole panel of painted books popped out. I was snapping it back in place when I heard steps behind me.

“I’ve been wondering where you went to!” Happy was wearing a colorful robe she called a caftan. It made her look dressed up even though it was basically a long nightgown. She sat down in her red velvet Queen Something chair and patted for me to take the love seat in front of her.

I sat there, feeling awkward, not knowing where to look. When I finally did glance up, Grandma’s eyes were looking straight at me.

“You have the most beautiful eyes. you know that, Milly? They don’t hide anything. They show me how sad you are.”

Don’t you dare cry!
I ordered those eyes.
Or I’ll be really
pissed at you!
“I’m okay, Grandma, really,” I managed.

Happy let out a weary sigh. “No one in this damn family ever tells me the truth. But I’m going to tell you the truth, Milly. Your grandma can be a real bitch.”

The shock of hearing her say so stopped whatever tears had been congregating at the corners of my eyes. Grandma! I almost laughed right out.

“I’ve made a lot of stupid mistakes,” Grandma went on. “Just ask your father. He’ll tell you.” She paused as if looking back over a lifetime of mistakes. “You might not believe this, Milly, but we have a lot in common. I didn’t really have parents. Poor Mother, losing all her family. She couldn’t let herself feel, no less be somebody’s mother. Father was always too busy. I had parents but I didn’t have them. And everyone wondered why I never smiled!” She smiled now, a wise, sad smile. Then leaning forward, she took my hands in hers and whispered fiercely, “You’re one of my babies, and that’s all there is to it!”

I couldn’t help it. Tears began running down my face.

Grandma dabbed at hers, then handed me her handkerchief. I didn’t want to blow my snot into something with a monogram on it, so I just kept balling it up in my hand and sniffling. Happy went on to say that if I ever needed something, I was to call on her. Did I promise that I would?

I nodded, just so she’d know I’d forgiven her.

“Now go ahead and use that hanky, dear. You can’t go out and face the world with a runny nose. Remember you’re a Kaufman. No matter what comes our way, we meet it with style.”

As we were leaving the room, Grandma pointed to the shelves. “Daddy patented those, you know. Book panels. So much easier to keep clean.”

The drive home late Sunday seemed twice as long as the drive down. None of us had gotten much sleep the night before. Kate and Nate dozed on and off. But I couldn’t seem to nap. I kept thinking about Happy. Could it be that she really felt a lot like me?

I was also thinking about election day tomorrow at Ralston. All candidates had to give a speech at a class assembly first thing. Just a few words summing up why everyone should vote for us. Not only did I hate public speaking, but the only thing I could think of to say was
Pleasepleaseplease, don’t vote for me.

Not that anyone was going to vote for me. Despite what Jake had said, I couldn’t believe that all those years of special tutoring wouldn’t work against me. And though I really didn’t want to win and be in student government— a whole year of public speaking, ugh!—still, the thought of losing in front of the whole school was too awful to think about.

Up front, Mom and Dad were reminiscing about the weekend. Could you believe Aunt Joan going on and on about Uncle Stanley’s vasectomy? What about Happy giving Eli those cuff links with
happy
faces! Hmm. Maybe old Eli’s been softening up Happy’s hard edges! Back and forth, Mom and Dad sifted the visit, looking for I don’t know what.

Every once in a while, Mom would turn around and, seeing me awake, reach her hand out for me to take. Dad kept looking in the rearview mirror. His way of making sure I was okay, I guess.

The truth was, I was feeling better. About Grandma, anyhow. And Kate and I had sort of made up with a sleepy bear hug this morning. But it’s funny how a heavy mood will lift, but because of it, you know something you didn’t know before, like something the tide left behind. I really
did
want to go back to the country where I was born. To see if it would feel like the place where I belonged.

Mom switched on NPR for the evening news. A report on the elections was in progress. “We’ve won!” Mom cried out, turning up the volume. Kate stirred awake. Nate yelped that she had kicked him.

“Another big step for democracy,” the newscaster was concluding. The dictator had left the country with his generals. The people were all out on the streets, celebrating. We could hear shouts and music in the background.

Mom, Dad, Kate, even grumpy Nate broke out cheering.

I slumped in the backseat, feeling a welter of relief and, surprisingly, sadness. Would they be celebrating—my birth parents? Now that they were free, would they be sorry that they had given up their baby? Or did being free include being free of
me
?