Regarding Anna (40 page)

I retrieved the letter Minnie had received from O’Gowan’s supposed sister. It was dated April 25, 1950—almost fifteen years earlier. It had been signed by Darina O’Brady, who had provided an address underneath her signature. Who knew if she was even still alive, never mind still residing at that address?

I called the Irish American Heritage Center back.

“I’m sorry to keep bothering you with this, but do you know where I can find a current phone book for Dublin?”

“
That
I can help you with. I get one every year.”

“Can you tell me if it lists a Darina O’Brady at 20 Dawson Street?”

“Hold on a minute, and I’ll check.” She came back to the phone a couple of minutes later. “Sorry. There’s no one in Dublin listed under that name.”

* * *

“Ready?” Raymond asked me.

I hadn’t believed this day would ever come.

“Yep.”

“Relax, Grace. This is going to go fine.”

He wasn’t the one who would be affected by the judge’s decision.

A clerk let us into the courtroom, where we waited for the hearing to start.

I wondered if judges realized the significance of their decisions. And how did I know if this judge was going to be fair and impartial? The nameplate on the judicial bench read LESLIE KRAMER. What if he was some old codger who didn’t want his children to inherit a dime of his, and he put me in the same light? And who judged the judges? What made them qualified to make life-changing decisions?

I sat there desperately clinging to what little was left of my optimism.

Judge Kramer walked into the courtroom, and I was instantly heartened—she was tall, young, and smiling.

She asked Raymond a bunch of questions to which I assumed she already had the answers. Formalities, I supposed. Her last words were, “Possession granted for both boxes.”

Both boxes?

As soon as she uttered those words, I felt liberated—relieved of the angst that had weighed me down for so long, an angst that was soon replaced with one of a different nature. But two boxes?

Raymond and I left the courtroom and waited for someone to bring the boxes to us.

“Did you know there were two boxes?” I asked him.

“Yes, I knew. But I didn’t want to tell you beforehand. You’ve been fretting enough about just one box.”

I smiled. “You do understand why, don’t you?”

He returned the smile. “Yes, Grace, I do.”

The clerk arrived and handed me two metal boxes. I thanked him. Raymond escorted me out to my car. He had other business at City Hall, so we parted ways. He went to the Clerk of the Circuit Court to file a routine claim. I went to my car to discover who I was.

I had parked in a garage two blocks away, on the top floor, facing a wall. I cracked both windows to ensure ample airflow—if I discovered something life-changing, I didn’t want anything hampering my ability to breathe.

One box was decidedly lighter than the other one. I opened that one first. In it was a lone envelope, unsealed. I breathed deeply and read the letter.

The letter had been written the same year I was born. My mother—the person I
called
my mother—had given birth to a daughter almost six months before I was born. But why would she have given up a baby for adoption and then adopted me soon afterward? It didn’t make sense.

I reread the letter. It wasn’t clear if she had written it one day, one month, or one year after she had given birth.

Then it occurred to me that maybe the baby was me. That maybe my birthday wasn’t really June 28. Maybe it was January 5. She could have written the letter right after I was born and then changed her mind when my father came back. But why would she have kept the letter? It was hard to imagine my mother having had to deal with something like this—she wasn’t that strong of a person.

Rosa’s emotions seemed raw in the letter, which made me think she had written it shortly after she had given birth. January 5. Wait...Fern’s birthday was January 4. January 4, 1942.

Rosa could have been Fern’s real mother. That had been Fern’s first inclination, after all. Everything seemed to fit—the birth date, the loving adoptive family.

I secretly wanted Rosa to be Fern’s real mother, not mine. I felt a strong kindred bond to Anna that would be difficult to abandon.

The baby she was referring to had to be one of us.

The thoughts in my head were scrambled and indiscernible. I needed to be home when I opened the second box.

* * *

When I got home, there was a note on the counter from Tymon saying he was there if I needed him. At that moment, I realized I felt closer to that man than I had to my own father. My plan was to call him after going through the second safe deposit box...as soon as my emotions allowed it.

I nestled into the large upholstered chair in my bedroom—Minnie’s favorite chair—my feet up on the matching ottoman, the second safe deposit box on my lap, and a cup of chamomile tea next to me for additional support.

As soon as I realized that the document on top was Anna’s will, I looked away from it. What were my parents doing with Anna’s will?

I took a sip of tea and tried to relax while the hot liquid glided down my throat. I hadn’t expected this to be so hard.

After taking a deep breath, I began reading.

WILL of Anna Thalia Vargas

1. PERSONAL INFORMATION
   
   1. I was born on August 1, 1904, in San Diego, California.
      
   2. I am not married, and I have never been married.
      
   3. I have one living child, Celina Thalia Vargas, born June 28, 1942.
      
2. BENEFICIARIES
   
   1. To Esmeralda Noe, I bequeath my Rolex rose gold watch and the sum of $250 to care for my cat, Tobias, in the event he survives me.
      
   2. To Tymon Kossak, I bequeath my 1938 Buick.
      
   3. To my precious daughter, Celina, I bequeath all my remaining real property, bank accounts, and stocks.
      
3. PERSONAL REPRESENTATIVE
   

   I appoint Martin Torres of Higgins, Fletcher & McKenzie as Executor of my WILL, and if he is unable to serve, then I name Walter Higgins of Higgins, Fletcher & McKenzie as alternate Executor.
   

I leaned all the way back in the chair. Seeing in writing my birth date linked to a child with my unusual middle name convinced me I was Celina Thalia Vargas. And if that was true, then Anna Thalia Vargas was my mother. I let that sink in for a moment and savored the joy that welled up from deep within. But the feeling was short-lived as I was reminded that this further implicated my parents in having had something to do with Anna’s death. I leaned all the way up against the back of the chair and closed my eyes for a long moment. Running through my head were the same horrible thoughts about my parents that I had tried to suppress for the last five years.

The will was dated August 1, 1942, a month after I was born, six months before Anna had died. She had left her watch to Essie and money to care for her cat. And she had wanted Tymon to have her car. That was so sweet.

Two people had left me the same house some twenty years apart. No wonder it felt like home.

I stared out the window—at nothing really—trying to absorb the simple reality of it all.

When the room came back into focus, I picked up the next item, which was an outdoor photo of my parents and me when I was a baby. I stared at my mother, whose hair appeared quite dark. As far back as I could remember, my mother, Rosa, had had light brownish-red hair. I turned it over. Nothing had been written on the back.

The telltale white letters on a black background told me the next item was a birth certificate. I carefully unfolded it.

I basked in the glory of this defining moment, trying to hold on to the feeling of sweet certainty that rolled over me, because I knew the sensation would soon evaporate, never to be recaptured.

I continued reading. There was a check mark beside the box labeled “Illegitimate.” I stared at it blindly, unaware I was crying until a tear made a direct hit on the word.

The box for the father’s name had been left blank. Anna’s address was listed as the boardinghouse address, now my address.

I slowly let go of that place I hadn’t understood for so long, and I mentally prepared myself for going down a path that Anna had started to pave for me. I fantasized about developing new hopes and dreams and becoming my new self. Emerging into the person that I was destined to be felt...I couldn’t explain the feeling really. New…different…exhilarating.

Eventually, I was calm enough to proceed, but instead of reaching for the next piece of paper, I fished out a piece of silver jewelry from the bottom of the box. The necklace was unmistakably the same one that was in the photo of the woman sitting in the rocking chair holding me, the woman I then knew for sure was Anna. I put it on, closed my eyes, and held the pendant in my hand for several seconds.

The next item was Rosa’s birth certificate. The only information on it that I didn’t already know was her birthplace—Kansas City, Missouri.

The last two documents were death certificates for Anna’s parents. Arsenio Vargas had been born in Monterrey, Mexico, in 1876. Maryanne Thalia Palmer Vargas had been born in San Diego, California, in 1880. On both certificates, the place of death was listed as San Diego, and the date April 13, 1910. Their cause of death was listed as accidental, which could have meant just about anything. They died when Anna was just six years old. So my grandmother had had the middle name Thalia too. And it appeared my grandfather had been Mexican. Interesting.

At the bottom of the box was the most beautiful christening dress I had ever seen. It was obviously handmade, crocheted I believed, at least thirty inches long, way longer than an infant, ivory in color. The stitches reminded me of hundreds of seashells all sewn together with pale pink satin ribbon running through them. Tiny pink-and-white flowers randomly speckled the gown.

I folded the dress the same way I had found it and put everything back in the box.

I was disappointed Anna’s death certificate wasn’t in there, as I’d hoped it would shed more light on things. City Hall didn’t have it on file either, but given City Hall’s recordkeeping and Chicago politics, this wasn’t too surprising.

I kept staring at the photograph of my parents and me and wondered why it had been put in there and not with our other family photos. My father was so handsome in it, with a head of wavy hair most women would envy. I didn’t remember him being that handsome, but then I supposed kids didn’t ever think of their parents in that way when they were growing up with them.

It was an interesting photo—snow on the ground, us standing in front of a light-colored house. Ours had been a light color—yellow—but there wasn’t enough of the house showing in the photo to tell for sure if it was ours. After studying it further, I decided I didn’t think it was our house because there was a winterberry bush peeking out above the snow, and my mother had never been able to get a winterberry bush to grow in the summer, let alone make it through a winter.

And then an alarm went off in my brain.

I ran outside to the front corner of the house where there was a large winterberry bush, the one that I had used to coerce Minnie into giving me the time of day nine months earlier.

I held out the photo in front of me at arm’s length and compared a cracked board midway up the first floor of the house to the same cracked board in the photo.

This photo of my parents and me had been taken in front of Anna’s house.

“Looks like you’ve got things figured out.”

Her voice startled me. I turned around to face Essie.

“Not really, but I think I’m about to. Let’s go inside, my friend.”

FORTY