So B. It (4 page)

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 Bernadette 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.

“It’s the devil’s brew, Heidi. One sip and you’re a goner.”

“You’re not gone,” I’d say.

“True enough, but I’m a slave to the bean, Heidi. Trust me, a slave.”

While we waited for the water to boil, I sat down across from her at the table.

“We won’t give up on Hilltop, Heidi. I promise. We’ll keep after them,” she said. “We’ll call and write until somebody up there gives us some answers. We will.”

But I knew in my heart that wasn’t going to work. Thurman Hill clearly planned to let us swing in the breeze. When I looked over at Bernie, still pale and shaken from her single step outside, I knew there was only one thing to do.

“Bernadette, I’m going to Liberty,” I said.

“You? You mean
alone?
” she said incredulously. “That is totally out of the question. You’re just a baby.”

“I’m not a baby, I’m twelve. I go out by myself all the time,” I said.

“Not to New York, you don’t.”

“I can fly there,” I said.

“Have you lost your senses, girl?”

“People fly all the time, Bernie. All those planes we hear going by every day are filled with people.”

“Other people,
strangers
, but not you. You’re not like them,” she said.

“No, Bernie, I’m not like
you,
” I said hotly. “You and Mama are the ones who match.”

Color rose in her cheeks, and her back visibly stiffened.

“I would no more let you get on an airplane than I would cut off my own foot,” she said.

“Fine. I’ll take a bus. It’ll be cheaper anyway.”

“Bus or plane, it makes no difference. You’re not going,” she said. “And that’s the end of the discussion.”

Bernie had a stubborn streak that ran the length of her spine like the white stripe on a skunk. She’d taught me pretty much everything I knew. But there was one thing I knew that Bernie didn’t. I was going to Liberty.

I didn’t tell Bernie about my plan. We both had our minds made up in opposite directions about me going to Liberty, and I didn’t see any point in discussing it with her anymore. Anyway, she had her hands full with Mama, whose headaches were coming on a daily basis now. I might have told Zander, but he made himself scarce for a while after the incident with Bernie.

I called Greyhound from a phone booth outside and found out two important things. One, it would cost me $313 for a round-trip ticket to Liberty, and two, you had to be fifteen years old to travel across the country by yourself. As I’ve mentioned before, I was tall for my age, but the difference between twelve and fifteen is pretty noticeable, especially if you’re looking for it.

Getting the money was the easy part. I won it playing a slot machine in the downtown Reno bus station. Since the machines at the Sudsy Duds only took nickels, I figured I should find one that took quarters so I wouldn’t have to deal with quite so much change.

I wondered whether my sweet way with slots would extend beyond the realm of the Sudsy Duds, and luckily I found it did. I knew $313 in quarters would be a pretty heavy load, which is why I decided to look for a machine right in the bus station. That way I wouldn’t have to haul the money too far. I took the Number Five bus there, crullered my own hair as best I could, and put on some of Bernadette’s red lipstick in front of the cracked mirror in the station bathroom. Up close I wasn’t very convincing, but I’d had plenty of practice flying under the radar.

It took me a little over half an hour to win the money off a big machine I found near a fast-food joint called Tommy Bun’s Hotdog Heaven. I nearly had a heart attack when the coins started chunking down into the bin. They seemed so big and loud compared to the
nickels I was used to at the Sudsy Duds. It was early in the morning and nobody was around to pay attention, so I squatted down next to the machine and counted out my winnings. Twelve hundred fifty-six quarters. One dollar more than I needed.

I had stopped at Bernie’s bank on the way and gotten some paper sleeves to put the quarters in. Ten dollars’ worth in each roll. It took me a long time to count and roll them all. When I was finished, I put the money into a big old canvas duffel bag I’d found in the back of one of the closets Bernie had made me clean out the week before.

I dragged the bag across the floor a little ways, to a bench near the ticket windows. It was too heavy to drag all the way back over to the bathroom, so I wiped off the lipstick with the back of my hand and unpinned my hair, using my fingers to comb out the biggest tangles. Then I sat and waited for the right person to come along and help me buy my ticket.

It didn’t take long. She was kind of beat-up looking, with frizzy dark hair and black eyeliner all the way around her eyes. Her lips
were thin and turned down at the corners in what could have seemed like a mean way, except I had a feeling she was okay underneath. Bernie probably would have found something wrong with what her eyes were saying, but I had to use my own judgment and she seemed all right to me. She sat down two benches away from me, her legs sticking straight out in front of her, snapping her gum and reading a magazine. I walked over, dragging the bag behind me, and got right to the point.

“I need somebody to buy me a ticket,” I told her.

“Running away, are ya?” she said. “Boy, I know what that’s all about, kiddo. Do I ever. But I ain’t got no money for a ticket out of here. Not for you or me neither.”

I didn’t bother to explain to her that I wasn’t running away—she probably wouldn’t have believed me anyway.

“I’ve got the money.” I opened the bag and showed her the rolls of quarters.

“Jeez Louise, whadja do, rob a piggy bank?” She laughed. Her teeth were crooked and the front left one was chipped and gray. “So alls
you need is for me to buy it for you? How come you can’t buy it yourself? You got enough money, right?”

I nodded.

“I’m not old enough to ride alone,” I explained.

“How old you gotta be?” she asked.

“Fifteen,” I said.

“You could be thirteen,” she said, squinting at my face, “but not fifteen.”

“I know. When I get on the bus, I’m going to ask somebody to let me pretend I’m with them. That way the driver won’t ask me how old I am.”

She smiled.

“You got a plan, don’t ya? I like that. Girl with a plan. Hey, you maybe got enough to take me along?” she asked, arching a plucked eyebrow and eyeballing the rolls of quarters.

“No, sorry. All the extra I’ve got is these. You can have them, though.” I fished around in my pocket and held out the four extra quarters I’d won.

She gave a crooked smile and shook her head.

“Keep it, kiddo. Where you looking to get
to anyway?” she asked.

“Liberty.”

“I hear you. Where are you going really, though?” she said.

“Liberty,” I said again. “It’s in New York.”

“Oh. Never heard of it. So what’s in Liberty?” she asked.

“I won’t know for sure until I get there,” I said.

She smiled again.

“You’re pretty deep for somebody so low to the ground,” she said. “Come on, let’s go get you a ticket.”

She helped me drag the duffel bag to the ticket window. I had been right about her being the right person, because I don’t think many people would have been willing to stand there being chewed out by the ticket man for buying a ticket with all those quarters. Judi—she told me she was Judi with an
i
—didn’t even flinch; she just stood there snapping her gum, saying, “Hey, money is money, man,” and waiting until he finally shoved the ticket through the window at her.

“Get lost,” he said as she turned away from
him and handed me the ticket.

“Get a life,” she replied over her shoulder.

I thought about Judi saying that and about how the way she said it made it sound insulting. But later, after I’d thanked her and was standing at the Number Five bus stop with my ticket to Liberty and the four extra quarters in my pocket, I found myself saying it softly under my breath: “Get a life, Heidi. Get a life,” and there was something about the sound of it that I liked a lot.