Claudia and the Great Search

  “Buh!” said Emily, whose tears were drying. I set her on the floor and she made a beeline for the channel changer.

  David Michael held it above his head.

  “BUH!” cried Emily, grabbing for it.

  “Can’t Emily play with that?” I asked David Michael.

  “Doe,” he replied. “She breaks theb. She presses all the buttuds at the sabe tibe. She’s dot allowed.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Listen, David Michael, I’m going to give Emily a bath. Do you need anything?”

  “Just sub juice.”

  So I got David Michael a glass of orange juice, and gave Emily a bath. The bath was surprisingly easy. At least Emily wasn’t afraid of water.

  When Emily was dried off and dressed in her nightgown, I took her back to David Michael’s room. “Bedtime,” I told him. “For both you and Emily. Your mom said you have to go to sleep early because of your cold. Do you need anything else?”

  “Cad you put the Kleedex dearer to by bed? I bight deed it id the biddle of the dight.”

  I moved the Kleenex. “Anything else?”

  “Sub water. Ad a wet washcloth for by head. Bobby” (Mommy) “said that will bake by dose feel better.”

  When David Michael was finally settled, I turned out his light, closed the door to his room, and led Emily down the hallway.

  “Okay. ‘Nighty-night time,” I told her. I laid her in her crib.

  I turned out the light.

  “Wah!”

  I turned the light back on.

  Emily stood up. “Hi!” she said.

  Uh-oh. What do I do now? I wondered. Emily won’t fall asleep with the light off and she can’t fall asleep with it on. Finally, I went into Karen’s room, unplugged her night-light, moved it into Emily’s room, turned it on, said “Good night,” and tiptoed out, leaving the door open a crack so that Emily could see the light in the hallway.

  Emily whimpered, but didn’t cry. I waited outside her room to make sure she was okay. When a few quiet moments had gone by, I headed for the stairs.

  KER-RASH! Thunder.

  “Wahhh!”

  Darn it. The storm had arrived. Emily was terrified. I ran back to her room, picked her up, sat in the rocking chair with her, and just held her until she fell asleep — out of pure exhaustion. Once she was asleep, I was afraid to move. I didn’t want to wake her up. But I couldn’t sit there with her all night.

  Very carefully, I got to my feet. Emily stirred, but she didn’t wake up. Whew! I laid her in her crib. She was still sound asleep.

  I crept downstairs.

  I had brought my schoolbooks along with me, and I’d fully intended to start my weekend homework, but I couldn’t concentrate. All I could think about was Emily — and how she’d been adopted. Emily was lucky. Sure, she was having a few problems, but every day, her mother and father told her about her adoption, even though she was too little to understand. I knew this because Kristy had told me. Every day, Watson or Mrs. Brewer would say to Emily that she wasn’t just adopted, she was chosen. And she was very, very special.

  I wished Mom and Dad had told me that so I wouldn’t have had to find out on my own when I was thirteen and completely shocked by the news.

  Ring, ring!

  I dashed into the kitchen and picked up the phone. “Hello, Brewer residence,” I said professionally.

  “Hi. This is the McGill residence.”

  “Oh, hi, Stace! What’s up?”

  “I thought the storm might be scaring you. I’ve sat at that huge house during storms and it can be terrifying. Are you okay?”

  “I guess.”

  “You guess? Claud, is anything wrong? You’ve been kind of quiet all week.”

  Suddenly I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to do more than blurt out my terrible secret to my best friend.

  So I did. I told Stacey everything, finishing up with, “I just don’t understand why Mom and Dad — and, by the way, they aren’t my real parents, you know — why they didn’t tell me the truth a long time ago.”

  “I don’t know,” said Stacey, disbelievingly. “Claud, are you sure you’re adopted?”

  I started to reply, “Pretty sure,” but instead I said, “Positive.”

  “Then,” said Stacey, “I think you should start a search. Look for your real parents. You know you won’t feel better until you do.”

  “You’re right,” I said slowly.

  “Hey!” exclaimed Stace. “There’s one good thing about all of this.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “You and Janine the Genius aren’t related!”

  I was in the middle of a good laugh when lightning flashed, thunder sounded, and I heard cries of, “Me! Me! … ME!” from upstairs.

  “Gotta go,” I told Stacey. “The storm just woke Emily up. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Hey, don’t tell anyone about the adoption thing, okay? It’s a secret between us.”

  “Okay,” replied Stacey. We got off the phone then and I dashed upstairs to Emily. I held her and rocked her again while she cried and cried. But even as I looked at her tearstained face, I couldn’t help thinking that Emily was luckier than I was. She would never be shocked by the news. And she had honest adoptive parents.

  Emily did have a little trouble when Nannie left, but not much. Dawn had an easier baby-sitting job at Kristy’s house than I’d had. She called when she got home afterward to ask me about some homework, and we ended up talking about Emily — and Kristy’s fears about Emily.

  Dawn and Kristy had ridden the bus to Kristy’s house together after school on Monday. That was the easiest way for Dawn to get to Kristy’s neighborhood since it’s too far for Dawn (or any of us) to ride a bike to, and since both Dawn’s mother and stepfather work and couldn’t drive her over.

  Anyway, when Kristy and Dawn stepped off the bus, Kristy said, “I’m going straight to the Papadakises’. Nannie knows that, by the way. But how about if I bring the kids over later? David Michael and Linny will be glad to play, and maybe Emily and Sari could play, too. Emily doesn’t see enough kids her own age.”

  “That’d be great,” said Dawn. “Come over whenever you want.” Then she added, “Hey, I’m inviting you to your own house!”

  Kristy laughed, and headed across the street while Dawn ran up Kristy’s driveway and rang the bell.

  Nannie answered it. “Hi, Dawn,” she said warmly. “Look who just woke up from her nap.”

  Nannie was carrying Emily, who was rubbing her eyes. When she saw Dawn, she buried her head in Nannie’s neck.

  “Little Miss Shy,” said Nannie, smiling.

  She gave Dawn a few instructions, then handed Emily to her and left as quickly as the Brewers had left on the night I was sitting.

  “Good luck in the tournament!” Dawn called after Nannie.

  Emily started to wail, but at that moment, David Michael burst through the front door. He had just gotten off the elementary-school bus.

  Hi, Dawn!” he said. “Hiya, Emily!”

  “Day-day,” said Emily. Her tears were over before they’d even begun.

  “Dawn?” said David Michael after he’d put his things away and had a snack. “Can Timmy come over and play? Timmy Hsu? He lives down the street. He just moved here. He’s a good ballplayer. He wants to join Kristy’s Krushers. I said we could play catch so he could practice.”

  “Sure,” replied Dawn. “Give him a call.”

  So David Michael did, and in no time he and Timmy were throwing a softball around the backyard while Dawn watched Emily. Emily (who’s not the world’s best walker — she’s on the slow side) toddled over to a flower garden. She sniffed at a rose. Then she crouched down and poked at a brown leaf. And the next thing Dawn knew she was picking up a pebble and aiming it toward her mouth.

  “Emily, NO!” cried Dawn, dashing to her. She reached Emily just in time to grab the pebble away. “Don’t put things in your mouth,” she said firmly. Then, for good measure, she added another, “NO!” She certainl
y didn’t want Emily to choke on something.

  Goodness, thought Dawn. Aren’t two-year-olds supposed to be over that business of putting things in their mouths? Yes, they are, she told herself, realizing something: Emily was not like other two-year-olds she knew. She thought of Marnie Barrett and Gabbie Perkins, kids us club members sit for. Both Marnie and Gabbie, especially Gabbie, are talkers. (Gabbie’s a little older than Marnie.) Gabbie is toilet-trained and Marnie is working on it. Both girls can put simple puzzles together. When they color, their drawings are becoming identifiable. And Gabbie has memorized and can sing long songs with her older sister.

  Emily, on the other hand, was nowhere near toilet-trained. Her favorite toys were baby toys like stacking rings. When she got hold of crayons, she just scribbled. And her vocabulary consisted of a handful of words and a lot of sounds (such as “buh” or “da”) that she used to mean a variety of things.

  Yet Emily was smiley and giggly and cheerful. She was affectionate, too, and tried hard to please her new family.

  These were the thoughts running through Dawn’s mind when Kristy showed up with the Papadakis kids.

  “Linny!” shouted David Michael. “Timmy’s here! Hey, Kristy, can you coach us? Pretend we’re having a Krushers practice, okay?”

  “It’s okay with me,” replied Kristy, “if Dawn doesn’t mind watching Hannie, Sari, and Emily. That okay with you, Dawn? I’ll take the boys and you take the girls?”

  “Fine with me,” replied Dawn.

  So they split the kids up.

  Dawn faced Hannie, Sari, and Emily. She didn’t know the Papadakis kids very well. “What do you want to do?” she asked Hannie.

  “Mmm.” Hannie looked thoughtful. “Let’s play Ring Around the Roses. I just started teaching Sari that game.”

  “Okay,” said Dawn. She had recently learned that the actual title and words to the song were “Ring a ring o’ roses,” but she knew that no little kid ever said that, so she didn’t bother to correct Hannie.

  “Come here, you guys,” said Hannie to Emily and Sari, already organizing the game. “Hold my hands. Dawn will hold your other hands…. Your name is Dawn, right?” she added uncertainly.

  “Right,” replied Dawn, smiling.

  They formed a circle — Dawn, Emily, Hannie, and Sari.

  Hannie began the song, singing it as she’d heard it. “Ring around the roses. A pocket full of posies. Ashes! Ashes! We all fall … DOWN!”

  Hannie and Dawn sat dramatically in the grass, pulling Emily and Sari with them. Sari giggled. Emily looked startled at first, but then laughed.

  “Again!” cried Sari, getting to her feet. “Again, Hannie!” She pulled at her sister’s hand.

  Dawn and the girls began the game again. The second time, Emily laughed readily as Dawn tugged her to the ground.

  The third time, Sari chimed in with, “We all fall … DOWN!” And then fell, rolled onto her back, closed her eyes for a moment, and burst into giggles.

  The game continued for several more rounds. Each time, Sari picked up more of the song, and then made a big production out of falling. Emily, however, never said a word. And she rarely remembered to “fall.” Dawn usually had to pull her to the ground. Emily seemed to like the game, though. She smiled as she walked in the circle, and she giggled as she watched Sari’s falls.

  When Sari and Emily lost interest in the game, they let Hannie give them piggyback rides around the yard. Kristy stopped her coaching, and she and Dawn sat in the grass, keeping an eye on the kids and talking.

  “I watched you guys playing the game,” said Kristy to Dawn. “I saw Emily.”

  “Yeah?” said Dawn, not sure what Kristy was leading up to.

  “Emily didn’t catch on very fast, did she?”

  “Not really,” said Dawn carefully, “but I think she had fun.”

  Kristy just nodded. After a moment she said, “You know what’s happened now?”

  “What?” asked Dawn.

  “Mom and Watson tried to enter Emily in a preschool program. Just for a couple of hours two mornings a week. But she was rejected.”

  “What?” cried Dawn.

  “The school wouldn’t take her. They said she’s not ready. She’s too far behind the other kids. She has to be toilet-trained, and she has to catch up in other areas as well. I mean, you just saw her and Sari. They’re about the same age. Look how fast Sari learned the new game. Emily didn’t learn it.”

  “You sound awfully worried,” commented Dawn.

  “I guess I am,” said Kristy. “But I seem to be the only one. Everybody else — Mom, Watson, Nannie, Doctor Dellenkamp, even the teachers at the school — think Emily will catch up on her own. She just got off to a rotten start. I wish I could spend more time with Emily, but I’m all tied up with the Papadakises right now.”

  “Well, don’t worry so much,” said Dawn. “Trust me, it doesn’t do any good. Worrying doesn’t solve problems.”

  Dawn’s right, I thought later. Only taking action will solve problems. And that was what I planned to do myself.

  Deciding to take action about finding my real parents — my birth parents — was easy. Deciding what kind of action to take was not. By the time we held our next club meeting, I still had no idea what to do — but something Kristy said forced me to decide to figure out a way to start my search immediately.

  The meeting was half over. We were talking, eating popcorn, taking job calls, and — in between everything else — listening to Kristy tell us about Emily.

  “We all love Emily to bits,” said Kristy. “Even Andrew and Karen do, and they resented her at first. The thing is, she’s so different from the rest of us. And I don’t mean in the way she looks. I just can’t help comparing her to everyone else in my family. She’s slow. She’s more like a baby than a two-year-old. When David Michael was two, he became fascinated with cars and learned to identify dozens of them. And Watson says that when Karen was two she was making up stories, and when Andrew was two he learned to answer the telephone. But Emily? Well, every now and then she’ll pick up on something that really surprises us. But not often.”

  I couldn’t help it. I began to compare myself to Emily Michelle. She didn’t look like anyone in her family, and neither did I. She didn’t seem to be as smart as anyone in her family and neither was I. When Janine was in eighth grade, she took advanced science and math. She won first prize in the state science fair. Me? I barely squeak by in regular courses, I can’t spell to save my life, and I can’t fathom entering even a class science fair.

  And Emily was adopted.

  I was, too. I was sure of that. So — how should I begin my search?

  * * *

  That night, I finished my homework quickly (probably sloppily, too), so that I could think about how to find my birth parents. Emily, I knew, had been adopted through an agency called Love Bundles.

  I looked up Love Bundles in the phone book. It was listed! It was a local business. I decided to call Love Bundles the next day.

  * * *

  I have never been so nervous about making a phone call. It was Thursday afternoon. I was free until dinnertime. I didn’t even have a sitting job. I was alone at home.

  With a shaking hand, I picked up the receiver of my phone. I glanced at the number in the telephone book beside me. I had to dial it four times because my fingers were sweaty and kept slipping.

  “Love Bundles,” said a pleasant-sounding voice, when I’d finally dialed correctly.

  “Um … um … hello.” I almost hung up. Then I gathered my courage and said, “I — I’m adopted and I’m looking for my birth parents. I was adopted about thirteen years ago —”

  “Excuse me,” interrupted the woman. “I’m terribly sorry, but Love Bundles has only been operating for five years. We’re a relatively new business. And we place Vietnamese children only,” she added.

  “Oh,” was all I could think to say. Then I remembered to thank her, and hung up.

  There was no way Mom and
Dad could have adopted me through Love Bundles. I put away the white pages and took out Stoneybrook’s slim yellow pages. No other adoption agencies were listed. So I went downstairs to the den and found the Stamford yellow pages. Under Adoption Services were listed a bunch of places, some of them not even in Stamford. Well, I couldn’t start phoning agencies all over Connecticut. At least not at first. That would be a last resort. Besides, what if I’d been adopted privately (through a lawyer), and not through an agency?

  Then a thought struck me. My birth certificate! Wouldn’t it say where I’d been born? Of course it would! I had to see my birth certificate. Now, where did Mom and Dad keep it? Oh, yes. Our birth certificates are in the safety deposit box at our bank.

  Frantically, I looked at my watch. Usually our bank closes at three. But not on Thursdays. On Thursdays it stays open until seven. Goody! I scribbled a note to my family in case someone came home before I did, dashed into the garage, climbed on my ten-speed, and rode downtown. When I reached our bank, I chained my bike to a lamp post outside, and pushed my way through the revolving door.

  Now. Where to go? Where were the safety deposit boxes? I had to ask the guy at the information desk. He directed me down a short flight of stairs where I found a woman behind a sliding glass door. She buzzed me into her office.

  “Hi,” I said. “My name is Claudia Kishi. My father is Mr. John Kishi. I need to get into our safety deposit box.”

  “Okay,” said the woman. “Just give me the key — and some identification so I can check whether you’re authorized to open the box.”

  All I heard was, “Just give me the key.”

  Key? What key?

  “What key?” I asked.

  “The key to the box,” replied the woman.

  “I thought you had it,” I told her.

  “I’ve got one. You — or your father — have another. I need both keys to get into the box,” she explained, sounding impatient.

  I felt incredibly stupid. For a moment, I didn’t know what to do. Then I smacked my hand to my forehead and said dramatically, “Silly me! I can’t believe I forgot to bring the key. It’s at home. Sorry to have bothered you.”