My So-Called Family (11 page)

“We'll keep drawing branches growing from the branches,” I explained. “So Dad's branch will split into two more branches for Grandma Diane and Grandpa Willie, and Mom's branch will split into two more branches for Grandma Leah and Grandpa Izzy. And the branches will keep splitting until we've drawn branches for everyone. So it will be a family tree with you right there in the middle.”

“Awesome,” Charlie said.

“Move over a little,” I told him. “It's hard to see where I'm drawing when you lean over the poster like that.”

“Sorry,” Charlie said. “I just wanna see.”

I bent forward and got to work. I drew Charlie so his legs looked like roots and his arms were branches. His left arm was for Mom and his right arm was for Simon. I drew branches for everyone else—Charlie's grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Then I made another branch off to the side, extending down from Mom's branch, for me. I wrote my name in a box next to the branch and thought it looked sort of lonely. It was strange how I had just been on the phone with Samantha and she had called me her sister, and then I was drawing my brother's family tree and she wasn't on it. I sat back and looked at Charlie. “What do you think?” I asked him.

“It's way better than Aaron's,” Charlie said. “Well, it will be when it's all colored in.”

“Good,” I said.

“You're so good at drawing,” Charlie said.

“Thank you,” I said.

“I wish I could draw like that,” he said.

“Hey, Charlie,” I said. “Do you think you'd want to meet my friend Samantha one day?”

“Can she come get ice cream with us?”

“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe pizza, too. I think you'd really like her.”

“Okay,” Charlie said.

There was a knock at the door. We turned, and Mom was standing against the door frame. “It's bedtime, Charlie,” she said.

“We're making my family tree,” Charlie said.

“I see that,” Mom said. “But you still have to go to bed now.”

“But we're not finished yet,” he said. “It's not colored in.”

“It's okay,” I said. “We can finish it tomorrow.” I thought about Samantha and my other donor siblings. Did they belong on Charlie's family tree if they were related to me and not to him? The tree looked a little empty without them.

“Come on, Char-Char,” Mom said. “Pick out a couple books and I'll read to you.” Charlie went to his bookshelf while I rolled the poster up. Mom picked up the bucket of markers and crayons and put it back on Charlie's desk.

I walked out of the room and heard Charlie asking Mom, “Did Daddy tell you about the giant we saw?”

T
he next day, I came home from school and Mom was sitting on the front stoop. When I started up the driveway in front of our house, she stood up, and I began to walk faster. Why wasn't Mom at Charlie's school picking him up? Did something horrible happen to him? Had she asked me to pick him up and I'd forgotten? Was he all alone and crying? It's funny how many things can pop into your head all at once when you're scared. Then I remembered he had a playdate with his friend Brandon. Mom and Simon had been making fun of the word “playdate” the night before. They said when they were young, they never had “dates” to “play.” Their parents just let them out of the house to play with other kids in the neighborhood, and then around dinnertime all the kids would go home. They were talking the way grown-ups talk sometimes about the way things used to be—as though it were better back then, even though I know they like things the way they are and they would never actually let Charlie just leave the house to play with other kids. They would want to know exactly where he was, and how he was getting there, and how he was getting home, and who the parents were.

I stepped up to the stoop where Mom was standing. She was clutching a piece of paper. I thought maybe it was something about her book because she was holding it against her chest like it was something important. “I was waiting for you,” she said.

“What's going on?” I asked.

“You tell me,” Mom said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“The credit card bill came this morning,” Mom said. She extended her arm and waved the paper toward me. I recognized the credit card logo at the top—the same logo is on the credit card that Mom and Simon had given to me. It was the credit card I had used to sign up for the Lyon's Sibling Registry. When I tried to breathe in, the breath seemed to catch in my throat. “Is there anything you want to tell me about?” Mom asked.

Up until that moment, I had stopped worrying so much about the credit card bill. Mom and Simon hadn't mentioned anything about it, and it had been almost three months since I had signed up for the Lyon's Sibling Registry. I figured the bill had come and gone and they just hadn't noticed it. But there was Mom standing in front of me, waving the credit card bill. Isn't that always how it happens? You think you're off the hook and you let your guard down, and things blow up in your face. I shook my head. There wasn't anything I wanted to tell her. All I wanted was to go straight up to my room and hide under the covers. I wasn't sure I would ever want to tell her about anything ever again. I braced myself for her to start yelling.

“Come on, Leah,” Mom said, putting her hand on my elbow. “Let's go inside and talk about this.”

I followed Mom to the dining room table, and I sat in the chair that used to be mine, before Charlie traded without asking me first. Now he wasn't there and I wished he were, because then maybe Mom would be too distracted by him to stare at me the way she was. Mom said that the credit card bill had arrived that morning. “I saw the Lyon's Sibling Registry charge,” she said. “I thought it must be a mistake, so I called the credit card company and they said it was a monthly charge. They said someone had signed up on your card several months ago.”

My elbows were propped up on the table. I rested my chin in my palm and I looked down. There was a line of purple marker on the table that had been there for years. Mom had always told me to put newspaper down on the table if I was going to color, so I didn't get marker on the wood, but I had forgotten once. I'd been Charlie's age, and Mom had gone nuts because I'd ruined the table that used to belong to her parents. I kept telling her it was an accident, but she didn't care. She sent me to my room, and when I snuck out later on, I saw her bent over the table scrubbing hard. It looked like she was crying.

“I've just been so busy with my book,” Mom continued. “I haven't been paying all that much attention to the bills when they come in. I didn't look at the individual charges. I wrote out checks and sent them in. But the book's handed in now, so when I opened the bill today, I looked at it more carefully. And after I spoke to the credit card company, I went through the old bills. They were right, you know. I guess you know that. You signed up two months ago. We've been getting charged all along.”

I lowered my face into my hands. My palms were sweaty again, and my cheeks felt hot against them. I hadn't realized the Sibling Registry was a monthly charge. Maybe it was in all that legal stuff I hadn't read. I wished I'd read more carefully. I would've canceled my registration as soon as I got Samantha's phone number. Then the charge wouldn't have been on the bill when it came today, and Mom would never have found out.

“Look up, Leah,” Mom said. She didn't sound angry. I kept waiting for her to start yelling, but her voice had been soft and even when she told me about the credit card bill, and calling the company, and going through all the old bills. I raised my head. “I understand that you're curious about all this,” Mom said.

I hated that she used the word “curious.” It seemed like such a dumb word—a little-kid word. Like the Curious George books that Charlie liked to read at bedtime.
Curious George Visits the Zoo. Curious George Goes to the Beach. Curious George Takes a Trip.
“Curious” was not the right word for a teenager who had just discovered new siblings. Even though Mom wasn't yelling at me, I knew she didn't understand anything I was feeling. “I don't want to talk about it,” I said.

“I know,” Mom said. “But we need to talk about it. We can't just ignore it.”

“I'm not ignoring it,” I said. “I just don't want to talk about it with you.”

“Will you talk about it with Simon, then?” Mom asked.

“No way,” I said.

Mom breathed in deeply and pressed her fingertips into her temples like she had a headache. She closed her eyes for a moment and pressed harder so the tips of her fingers turned white. Then she put her hands back down and opened her eyes. “You have to talk to one of us,” she said.

“I don't know what you want me to say,” I said. “I'm sorry I used the credit card without permission.”

But I wasn't really sorry about using the credit card. I was glad about it—otherwise I wouldn't have found Samantha.

“This isn't about the credit card,” Mom said.

“Then, what is it about?” I asked.

“It's about the website, Leah,” Mom said. “And why you went on it, and what you're curious about.” There was that word again. I wished Mom would just stop talking, but she continued. “Did you find anyone related to Donor 730? I saw the links for the donors, but I couldn't click on them without paying for it. I guess you know that.”

“You went on the website?” I asked. It seemed like such an invasion of privacy, even though anyone with a computer could get on the website, and anyone with a credit card could sign up and access the information.

“Of course I did,” she said. I felt my cheeks flush—
of course
. She made it sound so simple. “Did you find anyone?” she asked again.

“Yes,” I said.

“Who?” Mom asked.

“Four kids,” I said.

“Boys or girls?”

“Both.”

“Leah,” Mom said, “this feels like pulling teeth. You're only giving me one-word answers. Can you give me a little more here?”

I had given her a two-word answer when I'd said “four kids,” but I didn't correct her. “Three boys and a girl,” I told her, which was five words. Mom nodded, waiting for me to say more. “The girl's name is Samantha. She's exactly my age.” I repeated it in my head and counted nine more words. That was enough.

“Hmm,” Mom said, rubbing at her temples again, but this time not as hard. I thought about offering to get her some aspirin. I didn't really want to be nice to her, but I didn't really want to keep sitting with her at the table.

“Do you have a headache?” I said. “I'll go get you some aspirin.”

I started to stand, but Mom moved her hand from her temple and put it on my arm. “No, no,” she said. “I'm just thinking.” The heat from her hand on my arm made me feel trapped. “Maybe one day you can meet Samantha,” Mom said.

“One day?” I asked.

“Yes,” Mom said. “When you're older, if you're still curious. Maybe then you can.”

“Why do I have to wait?”

“We don't even know where she lives,” Mom said.

“
I
know where she lives,” I told her.

“Well, I still think it's a little too much for right now,” she said. “You're only thirteen and have so much going on already—a new school, new friends. You have final exams coming up. I don't want this to interfere with what's really important.”

“This is important,” I said.

“Leah,” Mom said. She rubbed her hand up and down my arm. It was too hot and I pulled away.

“I already met her,” I said.

“When?”

“When I went with Avery and her family to see colleges. Samantha's mom works at Haverford.”

“Were Avery's parents with you?”

I thought about telling her that they were with me the whole time, but what if she met Lori and asked her about it, and Lori told her how it had really happened? “No,” I said. “They took a tour of the school and I had lunch with Samantha and her mom.”

“You had lunch by yourself with strangers?”

“They're not strangers,” I said. “They're family.”

“No,” Mom said. “They aren't family.”

“She's my sister.” I said the word with confidence, just like Samantha always does. I wished Samantha were there to hear me.

“She's not your sister,” Mom said. “All you share is a donor.”

“Then Charlie's not my brother,” I told her. “All we share is a mother.”

“You don't really believe that,” Mom said. “That all you share is me? You've been so much to each other. You've been like another mother to him, and he needs you so much. You've grown up together. That's what being a brother or a sister is.”

We sat there, silent. It seemed like a really long time. I heard cars passing outside the house, and the
tick, tick, tick
sound of the clock in the kitchen. It's bright red and shaped like a cat. The tail wags back and forth with the
tick, tick, tick
sound. Charlie had picked it out as a Mother's Day gift. I knew Mom didn't really like it, but she had to keep it since it was from Charlie. She had taken the battery out while she was writing because her office is so close to the kitchen and the ticking sound distracted her. I guess she had put the battery back in. Finally Mom reached out toward me again. “Come on,” she said. “The proofs for my book came and I want to show you something.”

She stood up and looked down at me, like everything I said didn't count. She was moving on, changing the subject, just like we do when we want to distract Charlie. Why couldn't she realize that I wasn't a little kid? I could make decisions for myself. I could stay out late. I could decide who was and wasn't my sister.

“Your book,” I said, standing up. I felt my eyes beginning to fill, and I bit the inside of my cheek so I wouldn't cry. “It's a total lie.”

“What are you talking about?”

“
How to Talk So Your Parents Will Listen
? What a joke! You never listen to me!”

“Why can't we ever just have a conversation? Why are you turning everything into a battle?”

I didn't answer. I just picked up my backpack and ran to the door.