“Maybe looking at these will zap Mama’s brain like a bolt of lightning and jump-start her memory, Bernie.” Then it hit me. “Maybe soof is in the pictures!”
“Maybe,” she said, but I could tell she had her doubts.
While Mama finished napping, I let myself float suspended like a lily pad in my private little pool of hope. I passed the time by looking up Liberty, New York, in the atlas and pressing my finger down again and again on the town where Hilltop Home had been—the place where my mama and maybe my grammy had stood in front of a big fireplace smiling at the camera. I wondered about who had taken the photographs, and how Mama and I had ended up so far from New York. I wondered where my grammy was now and whether Hilltop Home was still there, in Liberty. I was just about to go over to Bernie’s and ask if we could call information to check for a listing when I heard Mama stir and call out.
Bernadette had gone back to her apartment to feed her cats, Clara Barton and Cookie Dough—named after one of her heroes and one of my favorite flavors of ice cream. The cats never came through the door into Mama’s and my house. When they got hungry or lonely, they stood on the threshold and cried for Bernie. I used to worry that they did that because they had caught Bernie’s A.P., but she assured me that it wasn’t a catching thing—for animals or people.
When I heard Mama calling, I ran to the kitchen and shouted through the doorway, “Come quick, Bernie! She’s up!”
Bernadette came right over and we went into Mama’s room together. She was lying under her covers rubbing her eyes. When she saw us, she smiled.
“Hello, Heidi. Hello, Dette.”
I remember the first time Mama called Bernadette “Dette.” I thought Bernie was going to cry from sheer joy. Mama didn’t add new words to her vocabulary very often, so each one was a big event in our house. That was a very special addition. It was number fifteen on the list.
“Hello, Precious,” Bernadette cooed as she sat down on the bed next to Mama and pushed the hair out of her eyes. “How did you sleep? How is your head?”
Mama used to get a lot of headaches. She’d hold her head and rock and moan. Usually a nap would make it better, but sometimes she needed Tylenol. She had trouble taking any kind of pills—she couldn’t swallow them—so Bernadette would grind up the tablets and put the powder in Jell-O. Mama loved Jell-O almost as much as Jujyfruits.
“Can we show her now?” I whispered.
“Shh, Heidi. Slow down. She’s only just waking up, and her head was hurting pretty bad before she went to sleep. Give her a second.”
I could barely contain myself as Bernadette sat by Mama, talking softly to her until she was awake enough to get up and go comb her hair and wash her face.
Finally Mama emerged from the bathroom and came to sit by me on the couch.
“Hello, Heidi,” she said, patting my knee.
“Hello, Mama,” I replied, trying to keep my voice calm and even.
I looked at Bernadette and she shrugged.
“Mama, do you want to see some pretty pictures?” I asked.
Mama nodded.
“They were taken a long time ago at Hilltop Home, Mama. Do you remember Hilltop Home?”
Mama smiled and patted my knee.
“Hello, Heidi,” she said.
“Hello, Mama.”
I picked up the stack of photographs and chose one, holding it carefully by the edges so I wouldn’t smudge it.
“Look, Mama. See the Santa Claus?”
Mama looked at the photograph and smiled. I showed her another one.
“See all the people?”
Mama looked at the photograph and smiled. Bernadette came over and looked over my shoulder at the picture I was showing Mama.
“Don’t they look pretty, Precious?” she asked.
Mama said, “Pretty, Dette.”
“Look at this one, Mama. Who do you see?”
I showed her the photograph of the girl and the woman in the red sweater in front of the fireplace.
Mama looked at the photograph and smiled.
“Soof,” she said.
My heart nearly stopped.
“Where, Mama? Show me. Show me soof.”
I was barely able to contain my excitement.
“Tea, Heidi?” Mama said suddenly, smoothing her skirt nervously with both hands.
“Wait, Mama. Not yet. First show me soof.”
Mama began to smooth her skirt faster.
“Tea, Heidi?” she said, her voice rising up a notch.
“I don’t want any tea, Mama. I want you to show me soof. Point to soof,” I said.
I was talking louder than I meant to be, louder than I should have been, and I felt Bernadette reach out and squeeze my shoulder.
“Leave your mama be now, Heidi. She’ll show us when she’s ready to.”
“No she won’t,” I said, shrugging out from under Bernadette’s hand and pulling Mama’s hands roughly away from her skirt. I took her right hand tightly in my own, forced her index finger out straight and pressed it against the photo.
“Show me, Mama. Where is soof?”
“That’s enough, Heidi,” said Bernadette.
“Show me, Mama,” I demanded.
“Uh-oh. Uh-oh,” Mama repeated anxiously, wriggling as she tried to escape my grip. “Tea, Heidi? Tea?”
“I don’t want any tea!” I shouted. “I want you to tell me, Mama! I want to know.”
Mama whimpered.
“Done, done, done, Heidi, shh,” she said.
“Leave your mama be, Heidi,” Bernadette said sternly.
“You’re not ever going to tell me, are you, Mama?” I shouted, ignoring Bernadette. “Are you, Mama? Are you?”
I let go of her hand and angrily ripped the photo in half, throwing the pieces in Mama’s lap. Then I ran to my room, slammed the door, and with a jagged sob flung myself facedown on the bed.
I cried for a long time. I cried so hard, it felt like my ribs might crack open. I imagined my heart flying out like a small, red bird escaping its cage, going off in search of a more promising person to live in. A person with a history. A person who knew.
After a while I heard my door open and Bernadette and Mama come in.
“Your mama’s made some tea for you, Heidi. Just the way you like it. Sit up, baby, and take it from her, will you please? She needs you to,” Bernadette said quietly.
I dried my eyes and sat up. Mama looked so worried and sad standing there with my white cup with the pink roses in her hand. I took it from her and tried to smile.
“Thank you, Mama. Thank you for the tea.”
“Good, Heidi, tea,” she said, brightening immediately. Then she turned and walked out of the room.
“Where are you going, Precious?” Bernadette called after her.
Mama reappeared a second later holding the two halves of the photograph I’d torn.
“Uh-oh,” she said, handing me the pieces. “Soof.”
Slowly I got up off the bed and went and stood beside her.
“Which one, Mama? Which one is soof? This one?” With my right hand I held out the piece of the photograph that showed Mama as a young girl. “Or this one?” I asked, holding out the other piece of the photo.
Mama looked at me and smiled. Then she reached over and clumsily pushed the two pieces together.
“Tea, Heidi?” she said.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Out
Until I had that old roll of film developed and saw the sign with the green letters on it hanging over the porch, I had never heard of Liberty, New York. It’s not exactly a famous place. Just a small town in the Catskill Mountains, about two and a half hours northwest of New York City. But because I knew that my mother and maybe my grandmother too had been there, suddenly it became the most important place in the world to me.
If Mama truly was pregnant with me in the picture, that meant the photos had been taken almost thirteen years earlier. I was afraid that Hilltop Home wouldn’t still be there, but Bernadett
e got the number from information without any problem and we called them up.
I stood next to Bernadette firing questions at her a mile a minute as she spoke to the person on the other end of the phone.
“Ask them if Mama lived there! Tell them she was at a big Christmas party maybe with her mother.”
Bernadette tried to ask all those questions and more, but for some reason the person on the other end wouldn’t let her finish a sentence.
“Yes, I understand, but if you could just tell me if…Yes, I see, but all we really need you to do is look in your records—is that too much to…Uh-huh. Okay, okay.”
Finally Bernadette gave her phone number and hung up.
“What happened? What did they say?” I asked.
“About all I managed to get out of her was that Hilltop is a home for handicapped people and the only person authorized to answer personal questions about it is somebody named Thurman Hill.”
“Then we need to talk to Thurman Hill right away,” I said.
“He isn’t there today. She took my number and said he’d call me back.”
But Thurman Hill didn’t call back. Not that day. Or the next.
So Bernadette called again. And again. Every time, she got the same runaround about how Mr. Hill was the only one who could answer our questions only he wasn’t ever there. Bernadette called back so many times, finally the woman at Hilltop started putting her on hold as soon as she heard Bernie’s voice, and then she’d just leave us hanging like that and never come back.
“Long distance is expensive, Heidi-Ho, and Thurman Hill, that miserable four-letter-word, clearly doesn’t intend to return our phone calls.”
Bernadette never swore in front of me, so when she got really mad, she substituted “four-letter-word” for the real four-letter curses. I knew all the real ones from Zander anyway—I’d even made a list of them in code in my notebook.
“I think it’s time for a postal approach,” she said.
Bernadette had had a lot of practice getting what she wanted by talking to people on the phone or writing them letters, but no matter what she did, she couldn’t get anywhere with Hilltop. Three weeks passed and still we had no answers to our letters or calls. I was beside myself. Bernie tried to distract me by keeping my hands busy. We put new shelf paper in the kitchen cabinets, and one weekend she set me to cleaning out all the closets in our apartment. I was on my hands and knees pulling out boxes and squashed shoes and a battered old suitcase from the back of Mama’s closet when I felt something soft wadded up in the far corner under a stack of old magazines. It was a moth-eaten red sweater. The same red sweater with reindeer on it that the blond woman in the photograph at Hilltop Home had been wearing.
“She was here, Bernie!” I cried, holding up the crumpled sweater for her to see. “My grammy was here. There’s proof.”
After that there was no distracting me. I couldn’t think about anything but Hilltop.
“All we’re asking them to do is just look up Mama’s name in the files. Why is that so hard?” I asked.
“I don’t know, baby, but it makes me so mad, I’d like to march right into Thurman Hill’s stuffy old office and sit on the little piss-ant until he coughs up the information.”
“That’s it, Bernie!” I said, jumping up excitedly. “That’s exactly what we have to do. We have to go see Thurman Hill! We have to go there and make him tell us about Mama.”
“Baby,” Bernadette said softly, “you know we can’t do that. I can’t—”
“Go out? How do you know? How do you know you can’t?” I asked. “When’s the last time you tried, Bernie? Maybe the A.P. is gone. Maybe you’re better and you just don’t know it.”
“It’s not gone, Heidi. Things don’t just go.”
“Colds do. And pimples. How do you know A.P. doesn’t just go too? Maybe it does. Maybe it has,” I said.
I was really excited now. I went to the front door and pulled it wide open.
“Come on, Bernie, try, please try. For me.”
“Heidi, I can’t,” Bernadette said. Her voice was tight and I noticed her hands trembling.
“You make Mama try. That’s why she can open cans, Bernie, and comb her hair. You make me try too. Cursive, Bernie. Shakespeare, you made me try. That’s all I’m asking you to do. Try.”
Bernadette stood up, grasping the arm of the couch for support. Her legs wobbled under her, but she made her way slowly toward me. Toward the open door.
“I don’t know…” she said. “You don’t understand, Heidi. If I go out…If I’m outside I might…if I go out…”
“Nothing will happen, Bernie. Just one step into the hall. That’s all you have to do. One step. The first step. Like when you taught me the cursive a, remember? ‘Round the block, up, down, curl the tail onto the next.’ You can do it, Bernie. I know you can.”
Bernadette took hold of the doorknob, her knuckles white with fear. She stood like that for a minute with her eyes closed tight.
“Round the block, up, down, curl the tail onto the next,” she whispered under her breath. “Round the block, up, down, curl the tail onto the next.” Then she took a deep breath, let go of the doorknob, and stepped out into the hall.
“You did it!” I shouted. “You’re out, Bernie! I knew you could do it. You’re out!”
The best way to describe what happened next is that in the few seconds between when Bernadette let go of the knob and when she collapsed on the floor, her body went from solid to liquid. Her legs juiced out from under her and she fell in a heap, her breath coming loud and fast, her eyelids fluttering as her head rolled backward like a broken doll’s.
“Bernie!” I cried, rushing to her.
“Save me,” she managed to whisper between gasps. “I’m…drowning.”
I stood behind her, taking hold of her under the arms and trying with all my might to pull her back inside, but she was too heavy. Bernie was short but not small. “Peasant stock,” she always said. “Low to the ground and built for business.”
“Help me, Heidi,” she groaned.
I heard a door scrape open below us, and familiar heavy footsteps on the stairs.
“Zander,” I screamed. “Hurry! Up here. We need help!”
A minute later Zander’s pasty round face peered around the top of the staircase. He was out of breath from climbing the one flight up. He had a bag of barbecue chips in one hand and a grape soda in the other. His jaw dropped when he saw Bernadette on the floor.
“Jeez,” he said. “Whatsa matter with her?”
“Hurry. Help me pull her inside,” I said.
He didn’t move, just stood there nervously licking his spicy red fingertips.
“Man, she’s white,” he said. “Like a freakin’ ghost.”
“Zander, come on,” I cried. “Help me get her inside.”
Zander sighed and put his chips and soda down. Then he came and took one of Bernie’s arms in his hands.
“She’s not gonna croak, is she?” he whispered. “’Cause I never seen nobody croak in real life.”
I grabbed Bernie’s other arm and started pulling. One leg of her stockings caught on a nail on the floor and ripped loudly as we tugged. She moaned and went completely limp, which made her feel even heavier, but somehow eventually we managed to drag her across the welcome mat back inside.
“She don’t look so good. Do you want me to call 911?” he asked.
I was terrified. If we called 911, they’d come and take Bernie away. What would Mama and I do? How would we survive without Bernie? I started to cry.
Zander stood for a minute looking down at Bernie’s still body and shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot.
“Is she drunk?” he asked. “’Cause if that’s what it is, I can tell you she won’t wake up for a while and when she does, you gotta keep real quiet and make her drink hot coffee even if she cusses you out for it. You got coffee?”
“Yes, but she’s not drunk,” I said, wiping my nose on my sleeve.
/> “It’s okay, I won’t tell nobody,” he said.
I felt a sliver of truth slip under my skin. A jagged little splinter of what lay underneath all those tales about war heroes and medals of honor.
Bernie stirred and moaned. Zander quickly knelt down next to me, and we both fanned her furiously with our hands as she came around.
“Please be okay,” I whispered. “Please, Bernie, come back.”
It seemed like forever before the color returned to Bernie’s face and she opened her eyes. I sat beside her on the floor the whole time, stroking her arm and talking softly to her the way she always did with Mama when she was waking up from one of her headache naps. When Bernadette was finally able to sit up, I sat cross-legged and scooched very close, putting one arm around her and pressing her head against my shoulder while I rocked gently back and forth. Some of her long gray hair had come loose from the thick rope of braid she always wore, and I smoothed it away from her face, tucking it back into the weave.
“Done, done, done, Bernie, shh,” I whispered.
Zander propped himself up against the door and watched. He didn’t say or do anything more after that, but it was enough that he stayed. When Bernie was able to sit up and drink some water, he left, closing the door quietly behind him. I’d spent hours with Zander, listening to him tell stories out on the stoop, but until that day I hadn’t really known him. Then, just like with the first pack of Twinkies he’d given me, without my asking, he handed me a tiny scrap of truth. After that everything changed. He would never be fat, or dim-witted, in my eyes again. I was only just beginning to see how powerful the truth could be.
Luckily Mama was asleep when the incident with Bernadette happened. I’m not sure how she would have reacted if she’d seen Bernie all fallen to pieces like that. I know it scared me down to the roots.
“I’m sorry, baby,” she said. “I tried.”
“I know you did, Bernie. It’s okay,” I told her. “I shouldn’t have asked you to.”
After a while we went into the kitchen and Bernie tried to make herself a cup of coffee, but she was still pretty shaky.
“Sit down, Bernie. I’ll do it for you,” I said.
Bernadette sat down heavily on one of the kitchen chairs and watched me grind beans in the coffee mill, an old beat-up wooden box with a crank on the top and a drawer in the bottom where the ground coffee fell in. I loved to pull open the drawer and smell the mysterious dark-brown powder, but I hated the bitter taste. I preferred Mama’s sweet tea. Bernadette drank five cups of coffee every day—three in the morning, one after lunch, and one at five o’clock, which she called the cocktail hour.