Girl in Reverse (9781442497368) (27 page)

She is. I sit on a bench in the entry waiting for her to get off the phone. All I can imagine is that she's talking with
Michael Benton. Or that he's going to step out of the men's room even though I know he's in Chicago.

Evangeline agrees to run my package to the museum mailroom, where they will forward it to Dr. Benton. No return address. She doesn't ask questions. She is all business, simply helping a museum patron.

Evangeline returns, grabs her sweater, and sits beside me. “Thank you,” I say. “I . . .”

She interrupts in a loud whisper, “I believe you are acquainted with a young man, Elliot James?”

WHAT?
“Y . . . yes.”

“He was here earlier. Quite the talent. Is he your boyfriend?”

God. Help!
“How do you know him?”

“Students who take classes with him at the art institute rent in my building. They talk.”

“Could we sit outside?” I say, desperate to change the subject.

We find a park bench, sunny and private enough. “I need to know something,” I say at the end of a string of Elliot-avoiding talk, including whether she has made any progress finding her brother, which she has not. She turns, her face open, inviting. “It's questions about adoption.”

She looks off. “I'm sorry, but I am not at liberty to discuss that.”

“Can we discuss adoption in general?”

She tugs her camel skirt over her knees. I'll bet she
wishes she had her habit to hide in. “Yes. As a process, a legal procedure.”

“Okay, could you say some more about how orphans and parents get matched up?”

She looks right at me. “Different ways.” She pats her hand on her chest. “I selected which of the available orphans would give prospective parents
tours
of the place—an initial introduction, a chance to get acquainted, so to speak. I watched for the spark, the connection. If I saw it—wonderful! If not, I tried again. The children at the Mercy Home were fascinated by you. You were”—she smiles—“a perfectly irresistible . . .”

“China doll?” I say.

“Yes. So small and beautiful. Mr. and Mrs. Firestone stood in the visitation room when you walked down the steps with Nancy. You wore a dress with peonies that day. I embroidered it for you. The minute you saw Mrs. Firestone you yelled ‘Mamá!' You ran up behind her and hugged her legs as if you already knew and loved her. She just melted. She bent down and picked you up, and that was that!” Evangeline pats her hands together, still relishing the moment. “I'd never seen anything like it, the instant connection.”

I turn to Evangeline. These words stumble out of my mouth: “Did Nancy feel bad that I got picked and she didn't?”

“She wasn't
available
for adoption, but she didn't know it.
Her mother said she'd be back, that Nancy's placement was temporary.” Evangeline sets her mouth, shakes her head. “But she didn't come back.”

“Did that happen a lot?”

“Yes. Parents with the best intentions. Pipe dreams. We didn't tell those children about their nonadoption status, because they would become fixed on their parents' return. A childhood locked in limbo.”

“But my birth mother, Gone Mom, made it clear she would never return.”

“Very clear,” Evangeline says. “Some children were more difficult to place than others.”

“Like me, right? A Chinese waif?”

Evangeline smiles slightly. She neither confirms nor denies this.

“It's not like my mother to pick someone, or anything, that's
different
.”

“I wanted you two to work out together, Lily. You needed each other.”

“Is that why you said the orphanage saved her? Because of getting me?”

She nods.

I think of the old photos of Mother with her long black hair over her shoulders and a big smile on her face. I wonder if Evangeline orchestrated all the adoptions with this level of heart and . . .
manipulation
.

“My father must have been so relieved to see her happy, he would have adopted a python or a laughing hyena,” I say. “Cats and orphans shape themselves around the people who choose them. They want them to stay happy. I sure did.” I look away. “But now she's miserable with her choice.”

Evangeline's breath catches.

I look down. “She should never have picked me. Our match did not work out.” Evangeline turns, a stricken look on her face. “I'm sorry.” I want to die for disappointing her. But it is the whole truth.

“Are you miserable too, Lily?”

I explode into tears—long, knotted sobs and shudders. “Yes! It's terrible. Since the world fell apart and everyone hates Oriental people . . . she's so scared and stiff . . . and high school is so cruel and I'm not . . . I don't . . .”

“Have you told her?” Evangeline's voice is kind and firm.

“I've told them about Gone Mom and Michael Benton. That blew everything up.”

“No, I mean, have you told her about your sadness and frustration with her?”

“She won't listen to it!”

“Hmm . . . Do you know
her
story? Have you asked about her life before you came, or when she was your age?”

“She doesn't talk about that. Ever.”

We sit silent.

“Mrs. Firestone needed you to nurture. I was so often focused on the children in my care, I forgot the harsh realities adoptive parents had experienced—the years of disappointment, their ache for a child, the intense longing to spill their hearts. Adoption is not a perfect ending. It is a path. . . .” She taps her palms. “Lifelong.”

The orphanage stories filed away in Evangeline must be endless. But orphans are not the only ones. Evangeline's own story is yet to be written. Maybe someday she'll tell me.

“So you do the same thing with orphans and museum visitors,” I say. “Predict what will make a good match.”

“Yes. I do.”

“Do you direct visitors like my mother to silver tea sets and crystal, and men like my father . . . ?” I try to imagine her assisting a tough customer like Donald Firestone, yawning and checking his watch—so opposite from Elliot and Michael Benton, whose whole lives are art.

“Men?” says Evangeline. She grips her hands with a faint
Mona Lisa
smile. “The preferences of that breed, if they are over twelve years old, I would know nothing about!”

Evangeline's neck is as red as her hair. We both smile. I feel trust. For an instant I feel like we could be friends.

Steam and starch. Mother's ironing.

I teeter on the top basement step.
Go down there right now. Stop thinking. Go do it.

I grab the rail but don't move. Fear ends when you face what you fear? Maybe not. Fear might mean you should protect what's yours. I feel like Mr. Rochester in
Jane Eyre
“. . . paving hell with energy.”

Mother and I have barely talked since the Michael Benton revelation, but I'm clinging to the tiniest thing—how she smoked a cigarette the night I told her about Gone Mom instead of leaving the living room. So weird, so un-Mother-like. Maybe there's a crack of hope she'll listen to me. Probably not.

I head down carrying my backbone and a prayer for the right words when I need them. I also have a peace
offering—her compact. I've rubbed out all the fingerprints. The stiff Victorian ladies on top stare silently at each other. A bad omen.

The overhead lights glint off her metal hairclips—three rows of them across the crown of her head. She raises her gaze to me, no smile, then plows the hissing iron through a field of wrinkles in my yellow cotton blouse. The ironing board creaks under the shifting pressure of my mother and her iron. She is a steam-powered robot in satin house shoes. She changes position to stay out of her own shadow. Beside her is a suspended rod with empty hangers awaiting assignment.

I pat the felt jewelry bag with her compact in my skirt pocket. “Mother?” I say, halfway down.

She doesn't look up. The vertical wrinkles between her eyes are deep. No amount of ironing can smooth those out. She raises the cuff of my blouse to the light. “I couldn't get this out. What is it, India ink?” She sounds exasperated.
Look at all I do for you. . . .

“Sorry. I . . .”

“No you're not.”

Slap.
“What? Why wouldn't I be sorry about the ink?”

No answer. Head down. Ironing board groaning.

Do not get deterred by a drop of India ink. This is the quicksand of my mother—taking in something I say, defining it, dissolving it.

“I know you're mad,” I say.

No response.

“Because of my finding them, but I . . .”

Mother shakes her head. “I let my guard down and look what happened!” She raises the iron. “You have no idea what it was like all those years not getting to have a baby daughter of my own. I thought God had
had
it with me. And then finally”—she looks heavenward—“I
did
, and now you're ruining it. I don't know if I have a daughter or not! Everything you do is an
insult
. I can't go through this anymore, Lillian, you sneaking behind our backs, undoing all we've done!”

My mouth opens, shuts. Mother has stopped ironing. Her face is fiery. I stand silent, transfixed by the spectacle of my mother's real self exploding right here in the basement—awful and fascinating. If somebody storms out of here, it is
not
going to be me.

If somebody leaves this basement, it's not going to be Mother, either. She's caged. I am blocking her way out.

Silent seconds pass. I cannot take my eyes off her.

The silence gets louder.

Ralph's Scout shirt is yanked from the basket.

Ironing resumes.

Wrinkles resolve.

The air is starched.

A bolt of pure furiousness rocks through me. I'm standing here and it dawns on me that she's already
through
! And it's my fault. She's finished, so
I'm
finished.

I step toward the ironing board. “I'm not through, Mother. I have more to say. You know that I have been made fun of at school—
insulted
, harassed, called names, excluded, even back in grade school. Whenever I told you about someone taunting me, or making fun of your Jap monkey daughter with the ching-chong eyes, you acted like it would just go away.”

Mother snaps a damp shirt in the air and positions it on the ironing board.

“It took me a long time to figure out that it was happening. I thought it was
me.
I let it go on so long without any help from you. You kept telling me to ignore it. To ignore myself. And now, when I told you and Dad about walking out of class and the discrimination and the detention, you only seemed worried about whether other people knew. That was all you cared about!

“Do you know Ralph's getting it too? Kids teasing him about his chinkie, rice-face sister?” Mother looks up. “When I need somebody to talk to or to help me, it's never you. I'm too Chinese for you. I belong to the enemy side. Did you know I overheard that comment you made to Dad one time about my not marrying another Oriental, magnifying the problems in my kids?

“I can't disown my face, but I've tried to. I've tried to be exactly what you wanted. I ignored everything, just the same way you ignore everything. You want me to disown
my
reverse
, my whole life before you and Dad, to have me be born at age four because it didn't suit you. I wasn't looking for my belongings you hid in the attic, but I found them and I'm glad.”

Mother glares at me. “What do you
want
? You think you've found something better now?”

“What?”
I gulp for air. “You chose the wrong girl, didn't you? You wanted someone just like you. I don't
get
it. Why didn't you adopt a nice white baby in the first place?”

Mother takes a sharp breath. I wait.

“Why
did
you choose me?” I snap. “I have never understood that!”

Something drips from my mother's eyes. Tears? Poison? “You ran right to me at the orphanage, Lillian. You threw your arms around me, called me Mama. You latched on and would not let go. Why? Why did
you
choose
me
?”

And from my mouth explode these fatal words: “Because you were wearing a bright pink sweater and you had long black hair and I was little and I made a mistake. I thought you were Lien Loo, my birth mother, come back for me!”

I rock back, whipped by my words. Mother freezes, the steam rising around her. I burst into tears and stamp up the stairs, barely missing Joy on her way to rescue my mother. I end up in my bedroom and slam the door, leaving the pieces of my honest, exploded self in the basement for her to clean up.

Mother's compact whacks against my trash can.

Pack? Sob? Scream? I dig my fingernails into my palms. I pace my room shaking and sweaty, listening to the house. Any minute Mother will slam the front door, get in her car, and
go
 . . . run away from me.

It's done now—all secrets out. The raw truth of our mistaken starting point revealed.

Look for my bright pink sweater, Lily, that's how you can always find me.

Two moms
gone
.

I lie gathered up in a ball facing the wall. I sob and shudder, wiping my cheeks on the sheet. The room gets dusky. The doves coo in the eaves. My eyes sting. My throat burns. I drift, unhooked from everything. . . .

I awaken to a tap on the door. “Ralph?”

I roll over in the dark, stretch to click on my lamp, and look straight at my mother standing in the opening at three o'clock in the morning.