Girl in Reverse (9781442497368) (21 page)

I rub my face, press my fingers on my eyes. Do I remember it, or am I dreaming it? A gold band on his ring finger. Was he or was he not wearing a ring—a thin band with etching?

A wedding ring . . .

I shut my notebook. I break my pencil and hurl it into the wastebasket.

*  *  *

I knock at Evangeline's apartment door, nervous, knowing I will shock her. But I have questions about Gone Mom and the phantom that standing alone at an ironing board won't answer. And since she's not a sister now, maybe she can
talk
. Plus I need to explain my trying to adopt Joy for her, and the crazy way it turned out.

She opens the door of her tiny apartment. A wind seems to blow her back. She motions for me to come in. I look at the mess. Do I have the right room? Do I have the right Evangeline?

She moves patterns to make a perch for me on the edge of the bed and sweeps her hand. “My new enterprise! Dressmaking and alterations.”

There are stacks of books, a lamp with a rosy pink scarf draped over the shade, a radio, a dresser, a sink, and a hot plate. She runs her hand through her curls, sits across from me on her sewing chair. “So, you found me!”

I tell about my attempt to adopt Joy for her and how Sister Immaculata was terrible at taking care of her and how Joy has adopted my mother now.

Evangeline clasps her hands and says softly, “Immaculata took very good care of
me.
 . . . She raised me.”

“Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to insult . . . I'm so stupid, she just seems so . . .”

“Everything changes. She knew me much better than I knew her. I remember Mrs. Firestone, quite well. Joy will take good care of her. What a marvelous idea you had.”

We turn to her dressmaker's dummy fitted in a rainbow of fabric swatches. “Color is such a joy!” Evangeline says.

I am struck speechless.
I definitely have the wrong Evangeline.

“Everyone has favorites. And, of course, everybody knows that little girls like bright pink. At the Mercy Home I encouraged would-be mothers who wanted to adopt little girls to wear
pink
when they visited.” She stops, as if she'd like to swallow this revelation. Her secret pink adoption weapon fills the moment.

Very sneaky. Sister Evangeline was a
plotter
.

“Did it work?” I ask.

“Sometimes.” Evangeline looks off.

“Did you tell people who wanted to adopt boys to wear cowboy hats and spurs?” She smiles. “Did you advise my mother to wear bright pink the day she came to find a little girl?”

“Yes. It was an unusual encounter.” Evangeline knits her fingers, looks down. She must sense the problems my mother and I are having now.

“So how is it since you left the sisters?” I ask, although it's none of my business.

“I had lived there for forty years.”

My mind tumbles. “But . . . ?”

“I'm an ancient orphan, Lily. Never chosen. I was placed as an infant, went to Catholic school, became a ‘little maid' in the eighth grade, and at eighteen entered the convent.” She speaks in a singsong way, as if sweeping up her past. “And now . . . here I am!” She flashes a smile that instantly dissolves. “I had never lived alone until now. It's difficult.”

“What's a little maid?”

“At fourteen we were farmed out to families who paid our expenses in exchange for housekeeping and child care.” She straightens her spine and says bluntly, “I preferred the orphanage. I did not create my fate. I adapted. We all do.”

A revelation stirs in me. Without Evangeline's intuition and plotting, I might have become a nun or . . . who knows? I might be a little maid right now! Evangeline and the Firestones created
my
fate—as simple and impossible as that.

“Do you remember your first mother?” I ask.

“No. But I have a brother—a half brother . . . or I
had
one. We were separated. I intend to find him.” She looks right at me. “I will learn the whole truth about him even if he is dead. Even knowing
that
will still make him more alive in me. I am going to bring him into my life, love him, reclaim him. That's one reason I left. God and I are having regular conversations now. Arguments, actually.”

I look around Evangeline's tiny studio apartment. It's like the Conservation Department—everything undone, exposed, before coming together.

“I learned the whole truth about myself,” I say. “Both slippers.”

Evangeline inhales and holds it. She turns the full power of her gaze on me. “Oh, Lily . . . the other
slipper 
?”

“Yes.”

The impact of this revelation holds the moment.

“Dr. Michael Benton has the other one. The mate.”

Evangeline sits, composed and nunlike, while I fall apart. “He's more unreal now that he's real,” I say between sobs. She steps toward me. I lower my head and cry and cry until a tiny miracle happens. Evangeline, the human
pillar, sits down beside me, slides her arms around me, and hugs me.

“D . . . did my birth mother mention him or the art museum when she left me with you?”

“Only that her father was ill and she needed to return to China. She said she could not, would not take you. Life in China for girls was unbearable, and for a mixed-race girl even worse. You know, Lily, there are rules in many states, including Missouri, laws that prevent people of different races from getting married. They say it's an attempt to keep the races pure.”

So the slippers fit together in my notebook, but not in real life.

I feel Gone Mom is here with us. I imagine Sister Evangeline struggling to comfort her the day she left me. I imagine Sister Evangeline trying to do the same with three-year-old me minutes later.

We are quiet a long while.

“So you took the slipper out of my box? Kept it separate?”

“Lien asked me to, so it would be safe, unbroken.”

“Did you suspect her connection to the museum?”

“I was curious. I've spent quite a bit of time there. I knew of Dr. Benton's legendary travels in China. And, yes, I saw the mate in the Chinese collection and began to suspect.” She pauses, looks off. “Have you told anyone about him?”

“No! Just you. I can't tell anyone, ever. Neither can you. What if I hadn't come back to the orphanage? Would you have just kept my slipper forever?”

“No! When you turned eighteen I'd have figured out a way to give it to you.” Evangeline pauses and shakes her head. “That little slipper has created a powerful dilemma in me over the years. I knew that if I had given it to your parents it could have gotten broken or discarded. And I knew how critical it was to Lien that you have it.”

“Do you believe she wanted me to find him?”

“Yes.”

I sit, my mind running in circles. I imagine the huge responsibility Evangeline felt trying to do the right and honest thing. I am sure I am not the only child who arrived there with complicated secrets left to her safekeeping.

“Actually I've just started a part-time job at the museum information desk. All the color! Inspiration!” She taps the side of her head. “I can already match visitors with the art they'll like the moment they arrive.”

“So do you direct little girls to paintings with lots of pink?”

“Yes, I do. Pissarro. O'Keeffe. Monet. Cassatt.” She smiles, raises and twists her fist like she's holding a rein. “And now, after your helpful suggestion, I will direct little boys to Remington.”

“Remington?”

“Western scenes. Cowboys and Indians,” she says. “Oh, and by the way, the Chinese art expert will ride back into town in the middle of April.”

I let this fact slide right through my head. I glance at her nightstand.
Jane Eyre
is on top, with fabric scraps used as bookmarks. “I'm reading this too, for English extra credit,” I say.

Evangeline reaches down for the book, thumbs through it. “So many quotes I like. This is my favorite at the moment.” She glances up at me and reads. “ ‘If you knew it, you are peculiarly situated: very near happiness; yes, within reach of it. The materials are all prepared; there only wants a movement to combine them. Chance laid them somewhat apart; let them be once approached and bliss results.' ”

She gets paper and pen. I leave with the quote in my pocket.

“You should have heard Mrs. Chow,” I say to Mr. Howard. “I went by their shop to find an early birthday present for my brother. She was really wound up. I think that the stories about the hard lives girls have in China are not something she has just
read
about; she's
lived
it. If I told her my whole story she'd say
pfft!
and put me to work chopping cabbage. She's carved out a new life for herself and her family in Kansas City. Plus they have their son in Michigan they are so proud of.”

Mr. Howard grimaces, hoists the tall art room waste can, and dumps it into a bag on his janitor cart. I know he and his family have had their own outrages to bear. He leans on his broom. “Sounds like you've really been doin' some
research
with Auntie Chow.”

“A little.”

Mr. Howard says, “The Chows' son, the medical student who hung the moon, is planning to marry a white woman, and in some states that's against the law. And even as open-minded as they are, they will still struggle to chisel her name on the
ancestral tablets
.”

The door bangs open. Elliot comes in, puts his art folder on the table, and shoots me a furious look. I step back, glance at Mr. Howard and back to Elliot. The air sizzles. “Somebody in this school thinks I like you,” he growls.

Mr. Howard gulps. “Say what?”

Elliot's fuming. “Somebody knows I like Lily.”

Well . . . wow.

Mr. Howard steps up, stops Elliot with a look that screams,
Good, it's about time!
He taps the air with his index finger, his eyes flashing. “I don't get it. What's wrong with having the whole world know it?
I
know it. Am I the party you are speaking of? I knew you liked Lily before
you
knew it. Although at this moment I am quite sure Lily doesn't know it.”

“It's not
that
.” Elliot braces himself. “Okay . . . I like Lily,” he states again, as if I am not floating two feet away. “And someone, besides me and
you
, knows it too.”

“Yeah, yeah, you already
said
that,” Mr. Howard remarks, as if this is the continuation of a normal conversation, which it is not.

Elliot pulls the charcoal-and-chalk drawing he did for
the Fine Arts Showcase from his portfolio. It's Atalanta and Meleager of the sweaty, twisted bodies. Their perfectly shaded arms and legs are entwined, wrapped in drapery. It's beautiful, muscley. It is a world apart from what anybody else in our school could do, and it has a blue ribbon.

Elliot points to the woman, Atalanta. Mr. Howard leans in, straightens up fast, sparks shooting from his eyes.
“Shit!”

I look. Someone has drawn a droopy, Fu Manchu mustache on Atalanta in blue ink. I understand it instantly. Elliot James likes a
chink
.

The insult pokes tears right out of my eyes. I cover my face.

“Weapons come in all shapes, from mustaches to machine guns,” Mr. Howard says.

“I'm sorry,” I whisper.

Mr. Howard holds up his hand. “Stop the music! For what?” he snaps. He turns to me, his voice softens. “Why in all of heaven and earth should
you
be sorry, Lily? Don't think I don't see all that you go through every day at this school. Are you apologizing for being
liked 
?”

“Yes. No. I don't
know.
 . . .”
For my whole mixed-up-ness. For triggering this awfulness.

Mr. Howard points. “As I've said before, the worst war, the worst discrimination, is what we feel against ourselves. Do not draw a mustache on your own face, Miss Firestone.”

Elliot looks grim. He stares out the window, his fingers twitching. He is seeing something Mr. Howard and I don't.
Mr. Howard swipes his hand in front of Elliot's face. “Excuse me, Mr. James, but let us pause a moment here before you go shooting off with your pencil loaded. Since you purportedly
like
somebody in our immediate vicinity”—he flips his hand in my direction—“who has just been party to this repulsive act of discrimination—which only disgraces the person who did it, by the way—you might offer a bit of a touch to her, a consolation, a drip of the sweet nectar of humanity.” He points first to the defaced drawing, then to me. “
That
is a drawing, Elliot;
this
is a person.”

Elliot turns to me and says slowly, “It's not the drawing I care about.”

Flutter. Float.
“Okay . . .”

Elliot squeezes his fists. “I've gotta go now, Lily. Bye.” And he bolts out of the room, pulled by a plan only he knows.

Mr. Howard and I exchange a long look. No doubt we're thinking the same thing—imagining someone walking past, checking the scene, grabbing a pen, and in a split second swiping the drawing. Someone all charged up, maybe even with an audience. “It was probably Neil Bradford or his friend Steve,” I say. I remember the day I trapped Anita and Steve in the hall and how stupid I felt afterward.

Mr. Howard isn't buying it. “You don't
know
that. It could be anybody . . . somebody you least expect . . . even Miss Arth.” He straddles a stool. Elliot's drawing lies on the table
beside us. “He's a genius
artwise
, I've gotta admit it. How could
anybody
mark on this?” Mr. Howard turns, nails me with a look. “Do
not
let the mark get on
you.
”