Girl Unmoored

  I heard Nurse Silvia whisper my name. She was peeking around the corner. “Come on,” she said waving me toward her. When I got there, she handed me a blue paper shower cap and a matching mask. “Here you go.”

  Before I could say anything, Nurse Silvia said, “Put those on.” So I did, right away. Then she opened the door and pulled me in.

  Inside, the air smelled so fragile you could break it with a sneeze. A few beeps were happening and everything was so bright and white it was hard not to squint.

  Until you saw one of the purple banana breads up close—and then it was hard not to turn away. They shouldn’t look like that.

  Nurse Silvia stopped at the crib furthest from the window. There was a pink sign taped to the end of it now; Baby da Costa it said. I started to walk to the other side, but Nurse Silvia shook her head and turned the case around so I could keep my back to the window.

  I wished she hadn’t. Inside, you could see arms and legs so purple and skinny it looked like they should be in a nest instead of a crib. Hospital bracelets were around both ankles and a tube was stuck down her throat. Her chest was covered with tape, which had monitors on it too, and even though they were closed, you could tell her eyes were too big for her head, which was smaller than a tennis ball and completely covered up under her pink hat this time.

  “There she is,” Nurse Silvia said, smiling the way nurses do when they know too much.

  “Is it still fifty-fifty?” I asked.

  She looked at me carefully and nodded.

  “When will they know?”

  “Every day. Every day, she will go one way or the other.”

  I looked back down at that purple gumdrop of a hand. It wasn’t enough of a chance, but it was something and I smiled.

  Nurse Silvia smiled too. “Already in love with her, huh?” she said. I jerked my eyes away and thought about it. But there it was, that tiny heart space, already spreading out between us, my sister and me.

  “Can I touch her?”

  Nurse Silvia got nervous and looked around.

  “Go wash your hands,” she said pointing to a sink on the wall next to us. “Quickly.”

  I pressed some pink soap into my hand, then scrubbed carefully and rinsed off. I pulled a paper towel off too loudly, but when I glanced over my shoulder, those two nurses were still bent over the other cribs.

  “Okay,” Nurse Silvia nodded. I started to reach my hand in but stopped.

  “What?” she whispered.

  I lifted my hand and pulled the blue paper cap back a little, until a piece of my red fell out, then I reached my hand back inside the case. I slid my finger under some tubes and into her tiny purple hand. And just like that, like she had known it was me all along, she squeezed it.

  I tried to shake the happiness out of me, I tried to remember that it was M’s baby, but it wasn’t working. I smiled down at that banana bread sister of mine and knew that Mike was right; she did need me. “Nice to meet you,” I whispered. Then I felt another squeeze around my finger, light as air.

  56

  Alma matur

  Nurturing mother

  Back out in the hall, Nurse Silvia took the cap and mask and told me I better get going. My dad was probably home by now. I stopped for a second and looked her straight in the eye. “Thank you,” I said. Then I hugged her. My first real hug with someone from Brazil.

  “Okay,” she said. “Go.” Then she spun one way and I spun the other.

  Halfway down the hall, I heard a thud against a wall. I turned back to Nurse Silvia, but she was gone. The Delivery doors were all closed and no nurses or doctors were anywhere. Except for one room, which was opened slightly. And then I heard someone mumbling something all wrong in English.

  M.

  If I hadn’t just seen the baby, I would have wondered if maybe she’d thrown her against the wall.

  I thought about knocking, telling her congratulations and that Mike had given me flowers for her, but then I changed my mind. It was bad enough to be around M when all those pregnant hormones were raging, who knew what would happen now that they were falling out. So I kept going and two steps later, there was M, her hair in a hurricane and her face so white she looked like her tan had dropped off.

  “I asked for the nurse!” she yelled at me from the doorway. “The nurse, not you, Aprons.”

  I stepped back.

  “I was—”

  “You were spying,” she said.

  I didn’t know whether she meant I was spying on her, or her baby. So I shook my head and said, “Sorry.”

  She grabbed my arm and pulled me into the room. “Well then, you help me.”

  The room was small and hot and thick with mean. M was wearing a hospital gown, but underneath it she was in pants and a shirt. There was a bag on her bed and next to her, a plastic water pitcher with a bouquet of wild flowers; Queen Anne’s Lace and yellow marigolds mixed in with some cat’s tail from our garden.

  “Cut this off,” she said holding her wrist up and motioning to her hospital bracelet. #13083.

  “I don’t have any scissors,” I said.

  “There,” she said, pointing toward where I had heard the thud, a pair of long silver scissors lying on the ground and a dent on the wall above them. She could have killed someone.

  I picked up the scissors and walked back to her. M looked nervous suddenly, like I might turn them upside down and stab her instead. I slipped the scissors under her bracelet and snipped. She let the bracelet fall to the floor, then turned and sat down on the end of her bed, a flash of pain crossing her face when she did. No one ever told me how much it hurt to have a baby, but now they didn’t need to. M put her face into her hands and started crying long deep sobs. I didn’t know what to do. I went to the door and looked down the hallway, but no one was there.

  “Do you want me to call my dad?” I asked carefully, stepping back in, a little closer this time.

  She didn’t answer.

  I swallowed and took another step. “Margie?”

  Without lifting her head, she said, “I want you to get out.”

  And right then I was sure: M had been born with the mean gene.

  It’s the way we come out, Toby said. Maybe M being mean wasn’t any different than Mike and Chad being gay, or me having freckles. Mean was just the way she came out. She hated me all right, but it was nothing personal.

  I started for the door, then stopped and turned around. “She’s really pretty,” I said, smiling.

  M lifted her head and glared at me. If you didn’t know they were eyes, you might have thought they were ice cubes. Then, without looking at it, she reached for the vase of wildflowers and threw them at me.

  The vase hit the wall and water and flowers splashed everywhere. M put her face back in her hands, but behind me I heard footsteps and the nice-looking mean nurse was standing next to me. “What happened?” she asked, like I was the one who did the throwing. But I couldn’t have been. The flowers were spread out the wrong way and the nurse knew it.

  “It’s time for you to leave,” she said, bending down to start cleaning the mess. I looked at M and turned away. But before I started out the door, I walked back and picked up the broken hospital bracelet. I slipped it into my pocket.

  “Habetis bona deum?” the gray-haired nurse read out loud behind the nurses’ station, holding the tag up from the orange roses still on the counter. “How are we supposed to figure out who these go to?”

  “I don’t know,” a curly-haired nurse said, frowning over her shoulder. “Open it.”

  “Have a nice day?” the nurse read, confused. “It could be your last?”

  The two nurses looked at each other and shrugged. I dipped my head low and walked by them.

  57

  Dulce domun

  A sweet thing, home

  It took a long time to get home.

  It was a good thing Mike gave me that money, a miracle actually. Sitting in my seat behind the bus driver, I watched houses and buildings and
cars zip by, too fast to see what was really going on inside any of them, but hoping for them all the same. Maybe that was the way God felt up there watching us zip around down here, too fast to really see every one of us, but hoping for us just the same.

  My dad’s car was in the garage. “Dad?” I yelled, again and again, walking through the living room, the back porch, and all the way up the stairs.

  I stopped in front of his bedroom door and listened. It was quiet. And when I walked in, it was empty. His bed was only messy on one side, the way it used to be before M. The shades were up, but the sun had passed by a long time ago, you could tell by the cool smell of sheets. Some of M’s beauty supplies were fallen over, making their usual mess, but not as many as there used to be. And then I saw that my mom’s closet door was open.

  I hadn’t been in there since Reverend Hunter’s key fell out of my pocket, not with M and her blue toe sprawled out on the bed all day. It shouldn’t have been open. I clenched my teeth and walked toward it, then stopped.

  Something sniffed.

  I stepped back and got ready for a rat or a chipmunk to run out and crawl up my leg. That had happened before: a chipmunk in the kitchen. My mom didn’t even yell, she just got a broom and swept it outside.

  I didn’t have a broom, but I did have a crutch. Both of them were still leaning up against the wall and right when I grabbed one, another sniff happened. My skin tingled, but I walked over and pulled the door open.

  And saw my dad’s red head.

  A croak spilled out of my mouth at the same time his head popped up. He was sitting on the floor with his knees pulled in and his arms wrapped around them, the bottom of my mom’s velvet dress draped over one of his shoulders.

  I wished it had been a chipmunk.

  “Dad,” I said dropping the crutch and kneeling down next to him. “Is it still fifty-fifty?”

  My dad nodded slowly, like even that was too tiring. “She’s okay,” he said. “The same.”

  I closed my eyes, then snapped them open again. “What are you doing in here?”

  “Advice,” he said softly.

  All this time, he had needed my mom’s closet as much as me.

  “On what?” I crawled in, leaning back against the scuffed up wall next to him.

  My dad tapped his knee into mine and held up a folded piece of paper.

  “It’s the right thing,” he said. “She was a mistake, anyway. Never should have happened.”

  My breath blacked out. I slid away from him. “She’s not coming home?”

  A tiny shake was all he needed to say.

  That space between our hearts, my sister’s brand-new one and my old banged-up one, cracked like the top layer of sand after a rainstorm.

  “Who is she going to live with?”

  “Someone in Europe, I think,” he said tapping the paper. “At least that’s what it says in here. ”

  From the outside, I could see M’s way of writing all wrong in English. And across my dad’s face, I saw it: that little boy in Grandma Bramhall’s picture, as sad as the bluebird sings.

  It was my fault.

  I got to my knees. “I’ll change, Dad. I swear. I’ll keep everything clean; I can do all the cooking—”

  “Stop it,” my dad interrupted. “She’s not going because of you, Apron. She’s going because of me.” He sighed. “Mea Culpa.”

  We both paused. I wanted to tell him that no, none of this was his fault. But the truth was, most of it was. He should have seen the real M a long time ago. And now, after everything she had made us go through, I was never even going to get that sister.

  I looked at my dad. “Errare humanum est,” I put my hand on his arm and sat back.

  He smirked at me. “Well I’m sure the house won’t miss her. This place was a bigger mess with her in it. And now—with a baby around? Forget it. You and I are going to be busy enough.”

  I snapped my arm back. “Wait. We can keep her?”

  “She’s your sister. Of course we can keep her. Margie bought a one-way ticket for herself. She wouldn’t even hold her own baby.” His voice cracked when he said that, and something shivered inside my heart. I used to think the saddest thing had happened to me, but now I knew it had happened to my sister instead.

  I got to my knees again. “I’ll hold her all the time, Dad. I promise. She won’t be sad. Ever.”

  “I know,” he nodded calmly. “I know you will.”

  We smiled at each other for a second.

  “Wow,” I said, sitting back, a million thoughts going through my head.

  “So what should we call her?”

  I turned to him. “Hey. Why doesn’t her nametag say Bramhall on it?”

  He looked down at his fingers, tapping them together in a think. “Because we never actually got married,” he said, a crooked smile growing on his face.

  “What?”

  “All right, I know. But there were no appointments at the courthouse that day, and we were going to have to wait weeks and I just couldn’t listen …” He stopped talking and glanced over at my mouth, dropped wide open. “So I paid the desk clerk fifty bucks to marry us in a back room. He sounded legitimate enough.”

  “But you told me—”

  “I know. Margie didn’t know, either. Until after I heard her,” my dad stopped for a second, “talking to you like that. Then I told her the truth.”

  I nodded, pretending not care what she called me.

  “Dad,” I said, swallowing hard. “Mr. Perry was in love with mom.”

  He glanced at me, but said nothing. Suddenly I wished I hadn’t told him. He’d had enough bad news for one day. But then he nodded. “I know.”

  “You did? Is that why you punched him?”

  “I punched him because he was right when he called me a terrible husband. I was a terrible husband for a little while. So he was right, and it made me mad.”

  I didn’t get it. “But he’s the bad husband. He kept a picture of Mom in his boat and bought her a Cyndi Lauper backpack. You would never have done anything like that to Mrs. Perry.”

  My dad let out a quick chuckle. “No,” he said, “I wouldn’t have.” Then he hit my knee with his again. “But Apron,” he said in a new voice. “Sometimes things get broken and people make mistakes. It’s just what happens. And then, if you’re lucky, they get fixed again, before it’s too late.” He paused. “Do you understand? And I never loved your mother any less for it.”

  I slid away from him. Suddenly there wasn’t enough air in there.

  My dad had watched me. “No one deserves to be lonely, kiddo,” he said in a soft version of his serious voice. “That’s what your mother always said. That’s what she said when she asked me to look after Margie.”

  I blinked at my dad, but his face didn’t change, it just stayed on serious.

  “No she didn’t!” I said shaking my head, furious. “She would never have done that to me.” Except it was a lie, my mom used to like M, always talking to her about finding a husband so she could stay in Maine. She didn’t know the real M any better than my dad did. “Mom hated M.”

  “Okay,” he nodded away from my glare. “You know what Apron? I’m not good at this stuff. I don’t know what I can tell you because sometimes I forget you’re still a kid.”

  I clenched my crooked teeth. “I’m not a kid, Dad.” But for the first time in as long as I could remember, I wished I were. Kids wouldn’t be able to understand any of this. But I could.

  My dad smiled. “You’re right,” he said, no more fight in his voice. “And we don’t need to talk about this anymore, either.”

  We both dropped our heads back against the scuffed up wall after that. All those times my mom pushed over hangars or searched for her shoes were behind us now.

  “I bet she’s with Chad,” I said quietly. “I gave him a picture of her, so he could find her.”

  My dad looked at me with his forehead wrinkled in. My face burned, embarrassed at how dumb I was for saying that. Embarrassed
at how dumb I was for doing it.

  “Just as a joke, I mean.”

  My dad didn’t say anything for a little longer but then he nodded. “You know what? That was smart of you. I never would have thought to do that.”

  And I couldn’t help it, I smiled.

  He cleared his throat. “So what are we going to name her? That’s what I was asking your mother. I’m waiting for her to get back to me.”

  “Dad,” I said carefully, the words begging me not to say them. “Maybe we should call her Margie?”

  He dropped his smile. “You wouldn’t mind?”

  I shook my head. And swallowed.

  “Of course, we could always call her the Latin translation for it instead.”

  We shook on it. It wasn’t quite as good as my name, but not everyone can be named Apron.

  58

  Nunc scio quid sit amor.

  Now I know what love is.

  The next morning after my dad and I ate pancakes at our lobsters, he went to change Daisy’s last name to Bramhall and I got out the Save the Seal pamphlets. The bloody hot dog of a mother was still frozen in front of that sad baby seal, but behind them, there were other seals, some small and some big, some in the middle of a roll and some floating in the ocean, that needed to be saved, too.

  It was already hot, the kind of day when you think the sun broke down up there and was going to laser beam you forever. When I went into the pantry to get a water bottle for my bike, something twitched.

  The Boss was staring at me.

  “Hey, little guy,” I said, poking my finger into his cage.

  He didn’t look any different, but I could tell he was glad to be back.

  Up in my room, I took M’s broken hospital bracelet out of my pocket and slipped it into my drawer next to my mom’s. Daisy might want it someday.

  Later, after my dad came back and I had delivered every single one of those pamphlets, my dad sat down with me on the porch stairs.

  “Mike only told me it was a man who adopted him.”