Girl in Reverse (9781442497368) (28 page)

“It's one of the
Girdles
,” she says, bumping in the door.

My eyes pop wide.

She sets a tray on my vanity, walks over, sits on my bed, and does something miraculous. She leans over and pushes away a strand of hair stuck to my face. We both burst into tears. The mattress creaks under the weight of us.

“I brought you some lima beans,” she says, straightening up and pointing to the tray. “
Suffocated
to perfection.”

“Thanks,” I croak. I glance at her ivory robe. I don't reach out and touch it, but I could. I look at the straight side of her nose, her pale mouth, the creases under her eyes, the shadows under her skin. She looks real and ragged.

“It's ham and egg rolls, actually. And popcorn and bridge mix. I was starving. How about you?”

I nod.

In my mind the bodhisattva floats through the window, faces us across the room. “I have something I was going to give you in the basement before we loaded our weapons,” I say. I get up and reach in the wastebasket. Mother's eyebrows shoot up. I hand her the felt bag.

“My compact,” she whispers. There's a trace of something in her face—distrust, disdain?

“I know it's real sentimental to you.”

“So you threw it away?”

“Yeah, temporarily. Sort of like how Dad hid my box from me.” My mother nods, an
I can understand that
nod. “It was handed down from your grandmother, wasn't it, and then your mother gave it to you?”

Mother's face darkens. She twirls her wedding rings and draws out the word. “Wrong.”

“But you've said a million times—”

“I know what I
said
.” Tears slip from her eyes. “But they didn't!” Her voice is flat. “I made that up. I wanted it to be true. But it isn't. I bought it for
myself
at an antique store! I didn't inherit my crystal, either. I bought it too.” Mother doubles over, with her fingers knotted together, and sobs. I get Kleenex. I know that this outpouring is not about me. “I hid the truth about it from everybody, except your father, and myself sometimes.”

“You made up that story about your mother and grandmother?” She nods. “Like how you created that story you wanted to believe about my birth father still being in China?”

“That was to protect you.”

“That was to protect
you . . .
and Dad.”

She nods. “Protect all of us, I guess.” She looks exhausted and wrinkled in a way that Vivian Firestone is
never
wrinkled. “But it didn't work, did it?”

“So you and Grandma didn't . . .”

Mother holds up a hand. Her voice shakes. “My mother
and I never chose each other, even though I was her naturally born daughter. We were not a good match.”

“So I don't know your true story either,” I say slowly. Mother stiffens, looks off. “I barely remember Grandma. Ralph didn't know her at all.” Shadows from the streetlight play off Mother's face. She shakes her head, as if answering a question inside. I need to add Grandma and my great-grandmother to my family tree. Someday I am going to get her to talk more truth about them and herself. “I guess I don't know very much about you, do I?”

She nods. “Not everything.”

“Should I get the Ouija board?” Mother smiles, touches my hand. “Mr. Howard, the janitor at school, who is my friend, says we can never replace a person who has gone. We can only face it, feel awful, and move ahead. That's it.” My mother looks at me, so sorry and sad. “Then after lots of screaming and heartache the popcorn can start to pop and we feel better in the life that we
do
have.”

I realize I have just strung more sentences together talking with Mother than ever before.
Thank you, Mr. Howard.
Joy comes in, hops on the bed. “I wasn't born the day you chose me, or I chose you, or we chose each other. I had almost four years already. You and Dad were the keepers of my little life story, my
provenance
, until I discovered your version wasn't true.”

“I was doing something wrong for what I thought was
the right reason.” She sighs, slides off the bed, walks to the vanity, and comes back with the tray. She puts a plate on my lap and one on hers. She puts an egg roll and a pile of popcorn on each. We bow our heads a moment, then bite into the sandwiches.

“Where are Dad and Ralph?”

“Father-son overnight.”

“Oh, yeah, right. I guess I forgot about them.”

Mother gets the bowl of bridge mix. “What's your favorite—raisin, nougat, caramel?”

We sit together pawing through the bowl, chewing, pawing. Ralph's doves sleep to the faint hollow chatter of bamboo wind chimes from the attic.

“I think that Gone Mom protected me by leaving me with the sisters. She wouldn't tell my birth father about me. She knew I couldn't go back to China with her. I'd die there—a half-breed girl. It took courage. She wasn't a Communist or a spy or a tramp or a
heathen
. I believe she was smart and decent.”

Mother looks off. Says nothing.

I am not ready to talk about my cloud slipper. I may never be. I feel protective of my first parents' true story. But I do say, “It helps me to know the truth about her and
him.
I am not white, Mother. I'm not brown, either. I'm
golden
!”

Golden.

My mother looks at me a long moment, nods, polishes
her compact on her robe, and wipes her eyes. “Where was this? It's been missing for months.”

I could make up anything but I don't. Her original story about the compact isn't true, but I have a true one.

“Ralph took it because he needed a little mirror at the art museum.” I tell her about the parts of the bodhisattva on the table and his idea of sleuthing using strategic mirror placement and how we forgot it.

Mother almost laughs, which I haven't heard in an age, and I glimpse a little girl in the dim prism of her. Her provenance must be a patchwork of rough stories—some true, some not. I have no idea. But I bet Dad does. It's why he's so careful with her, why he dances around, talking out the sides of his mouth, cushioning her from everything. But, of course, it didn't work. As Mr. Howard said, if you look square at the gut-crushing loss, you can start to find your true self and get free.

Mother says, “Where did it turn up?”

“What?”

“My compact!”

I look her square in the face. “It turned up at the information desk in the lost . . . and found.”

It's Friday. Elliot's hanging around in the art room. He's probably getting a report from Mr. Howard about my current event. Mr. Howard must be telling Elliot that what he drew for me was perfect. I am running around the building to the side street where he always parks. Please. Please. Be parked here. Where's your car? Elliot's car! Yes!

Do not go chicken. Put a note under his windshield.

I rip out a blank notebook page and write so fast the plan practically shows up before I can think it.

Elliot,

Please meet me at the ramshackle old shed next to the Sisters of Mercy Children's Home on Waldo Avenue at 8:00 tomorrow night. I have something for you.

Lily

I fold it and shove it under his windshield wiper.
Do not blow away. Do not get stolen by somebody.
I hurry off thinking that people do not typically use the word “ramshackle” in invitations, but then, Elliot's car is ramshackle and so is his personality, so it fits!

Then I ride all the way to the orphanage, sneak through the side yard, and yes, the shed is still there and unlocked. I adjust the oilcloth window covers. Then I ride home, lock the bathroom door, take off all my clothes, and sink into the tub.

The phone rings. When I hear Ralph answer, I lower my whole self underwater until all that's left of me is steam and a skinny string of bubbles.

*  *  *

When I step out the front door at exactly 7:15 p.m. on Saturday to walk to our rendezvous, Elliot is sitting in his car in front of my house. Zip of nerves. Wonderment. I clutch my bag containing a shoe box and Ralph's camping stove. Elliot leans out the car window. “Were you going to walk the whole way over there?”

“Yes, I'm walking.” I feel just the tiniest bit stupid.

“Do you want a ride?”

“Well . . .”

“Or I can just follow slowly behind you.”

“Okay. Okay.”

Me and my colossal case of the jitters get in the car. “It's dilapidated,” I say. “The shed, it's by the—”

“I know where it is. I went by there already.”

It looks like Elliot has shaved, and the regular rumble of artsy stuff on the passenger floor has been thrown in the backseat.

“It has a light,” I say. “But I brought a heater.”

He turns with a straight face. “Goodie.”

I keep my mouth shut from this point forward. I make much more sense when I keep my mouth shut.

We park down the block, run to the shed, slip in like cats, and shove the doors shut. I turn on the light, which casts a dusty glow on the sawhorses and mowers and crates. I picture Sister Evangeline standing in here with me, handing over my bootie the afternoon she unhooked from her nun self and crawled into the secret passageway of her future.

Elliot makes a low seat with two crates and a plywood plank. I lock away thoughts of mice and spiders. He lights Ralph's camping heater, sets it on a shelf across the room. Tangles of dead vine spill down the inside walls, weave through an old wood-burning stove and across the floor. Curtains of cobwebs drip off the ceiling beams. We hear squirrels on the roof—at least I pray they're squirrels. It smells earthy and old. The shelves are filled with stacked shadows. Dusty shards of light are propped against the walls. Just as I start to apologize for the world's worst meeting spot, Elliot sweeps his hand and says, “This place is magic, an inside-out room.”

We sit quiet a moment. “I used your cartoon for current events,” I say.

“Good.” Elliot rubs his hands together. I'm not sure I've ever seen them without a pencil or a brush. His fingers are long and thin and less ink-stained than usual.

“Mr. Howard was in there too, on a ladder. Did he tell you?”

“Yeah.”

“The cartoon was perfect.” My eyes fill up. I picture how he drew me striding in front of that tank. “If you want to help someone, try drawing her. Right?”

Elliot nods, looks down.

I can't explain how his one powerful ink stroke, the one that created my backbone, made so much difference, but I think he already knows.

I also cannot think of words to say sorry for not kissing him and for making him feel like an idiot. And what could he answer if I did—
Hey, that's just fine, happens every day, I'm used to it?
Or maybe,
Don't worry, it'll
never
happen again?

Words aren't doing their job tonight.

I take the shoe box out of my bag and hand it to him. “It's for you. I didn't write anything on the box or decorate it, because I can't draw, or I guess I don't
know
if I can draw or not . . . but anyway, it's a plain old shoe box . . . and uh . . .”

Words still aren't working.

Elliot shakes it and lifts the lid. His fingers crawl over
a roll of powder-blue silk, looking for the end. I hear his breathing. I see it too.

Elliot unrolls until the wrist rest falls into his palm.

He looks over at me, says nothing, and then examines it in the light. Our abilities to talk seem to have crawled back down our throats. He holds it under his forearm, moves his hand like he's painting. He traces the carving of the Chinese characters on the flat side. “It's old, isn't it?”

“Really old,” I squeak. “There's one like it—”

“In the museum,” Elliot whispers. “I know. Where'd you . . . ?”

“M—my Chinese mother, my
birth
mother, gave it to me.”

Elliot lowers his head, rubs his face, sighs.

“It's yours now,” I say.

Elliot cups the wood in both hands, tilts his head back, and shuts his eyes. “God, Lily. I can't believe it.” He turns to me. His expression is intense, serious. “Thank you.”

Backbones and wrist rests—we've exchanged the perfect gifts and we both know it.

“You know those pictures you spilled in my car? They were that bodhisattva statue, weren't they?” he says.

“Yeah.”

“So . . . ?”

“My birth mother helped find the pieces of it in China. Her father was an archaeologist.”

“Wow. Did you know her?”

“No.
Yes
.” I pause a moment, waiting for a way to say it. “I knew her for three years. She gave me a box of things when she left me at the orphanage”—I point next door—“my
home
for one year. She's back in China now, I think. Her father was sick and she had to go back. I don't know if she's still alive.”
Done. Said. Survived.
“I figured out that the things in the box, including the pictures, were part of our art museum somehow, and so I kinda happened upon learning about her.”

I stop and look around this dusty spot that is helping me talk because it's small and feels safe, and because Elliot James is tall and feels safe. We just sit side by side staring into the overgrown spring jungle.

Elliot brushes his finger down one of my cheeks and up the other. I do not jump to my feet. I do not look away. I clasp my hands, force the words, “Okay, Elliot, stand up.”

“I don't want to leave yet.”

“We're not leaving. Just stand up. Okay?”

I step up onto the bench and face him, eye level under the light. I reach my arms around his neck, breathe in the air he has just exhaled, and kiss him. Actually it is three or three hundred individual kisses run together, who knows? But it is definitely a kiss back and it's going on and gaining strength. I don't remember being up this close to another person in a million years. He doesn't taste mad at me anymore. He's breathing brushstrokes. He's in every dimension
swirling around me. I feel his hands move up and down my spine. I press back into them. He gathers my hair in his fist. Our lips move, match, open, brush, push. I taste the salt of tears on them.