Surviving Valencia (15 page)

That summer I began riding my bike or taking the bus everywhere. Suddenly I was no longer trapped. On Saturdays I would bike to the closest bus stop, and after three transfers I was in downtown Minneapolis. I found a listing of summer jobs posted at a library and decided I wanted to make some money. What I really wanted was to be one of those models at the mall. The ones doing fashion shows, prancing around like real-life celebrities. I had heard that was how Tiffany became so famous, and she was ugly like me, so I figured I stood a good chance of landing the job. Now that I was riding my bike all over, it made escaping my miserable life seem possible. It gave me hopes and dreams.

This was before we got the Mall of America, so news of a talent search at Sears seemed like a big deal. I put on my new Ocean Pacific clothes and rode my ten speed all the way there, arriving sweaty and with bugs in my teeth, but very, very hopeful. I touched up my makeup and got in line. There was a long folding table, the kind you see at bake sales, with four men sitting behind it. They drooled over us little girls. Well, not all of us.

I had hoped I might luck out and be the only person who had caught wind of this, and win by default. No such luck. Throngs of people were there, mostly girls my own age with their mothers.

We each had to climb up a riser to a short, T-shaped catwalk, spin, and walk back down the steps. That was round one. Round two involved singing or dancing and didn’t happen until the following weekend, so I figured I had a whole week to come up with a routine. Flocks of Jennis and Jessis and Karis stood in line in front of me, holding their moms’ hands, cracking their knuckles and stretching their calf muscles. They wore bubble skirts and bolero jackets, not gender-neutral gaudy shorts with dogs surfing on them.

Suddenly I was up. One of the men made a gesture towards me like he was shooting me and I stepped up onto the catwalk. I paused, wanting to nail it. Loud music was playing; I took a step, another step, then skipped down to the top of the T to show that I was FUN. I felt I had to do something memorable or I wasn’t going to advance to the next round, so I tried to do the splits but came up a little short.

“Okay, that’s enough,” yelled one of the men.

I had to roll to the side to get out of the uncomfortable position I was in, and instead of walking back down the catwalk I just jumped off the side and ran away.

So instead of being the next Tiffany, I got a job babysitting a four-year-old girl named Kennedy. She lived far from me, in a scary section of town, but it was better than sitting at home. Every morning I woke up early and rode my bike to her house where I watched her until her mother came home at three. Kennedy and I went to the park or the pool, painted with watercolors at the picnic table, or played with her extensive My Little Pony collection. A fence surrounded their house, and through its chain links we watched such things as one Pitbull killing another, and some policemen catching a teenage boy and throwing him so hard against the hood of his car that an ambulance needed to come for him. “Is that boy gonna die?” Kennedy kept yelling at the police. I think he would have if we hadn’t been there watching. Babysitting Kennedy was great. It made me feel independent and grown up, plus I got paid.

Kennedy’s mom’s name was Sharon and she was only twenty-three. All over their house were wedding pictures of her and Kennedy’s dad, Tom. He was tall and thin with sandy hair and a mustache, and stood there looking at her like he couldn’t have been more proud. Sharon’s dress had a high neck and long, lacy sleeves. Her veil came down between her eyes in a point. I thought she was beautiful. Nine bridesmaids in baby blue dresses fanned out to her right, nine handsome men in brown suits fanned out to his left. Someday, I hoped, I would be just like them.

The best part of babysitting Kennedy, besides that she was my only friend, was that every day at 1:00 when she took her hour-long nap, I was free to do whatever I pleased. At first I just watched their cable television and nibbled on snacks, but as time passed I grew bolder. Soon I was carefully snooping through their drawers. Then one day I sampled all their alcohol and tried some pills I found in the medicine cabinet. The combination of the pills and all the booze made it hard to catch my breath, so I stuck to sips of wine and schnapps after that, always remembering to bring plenty of Big Red gum to disguise the smell.

I was dying to try on Sharon’s fishnet stockings and a purple thong teddy, but I just didn’t have the nerve. Instead I took my babysitting money and went to the underwear section of JC Penney’s, where I got the closest thing I could find to a teddy: An extra small body girdle with a tummy control panel and a padded rear end. I bought it in such a hurry that I didn’t know how lame it was until I got it home. Then I was too embarrassed to return it, so one day I added it to a bag of clothes I had outgrown and threw it in the donation box at one of the local churches.

A couple weeks later when I was riding my bike to Kennedy’s, I saw a toothless old lady pushing a shopping cart, wearing that exact body girdle over a pair of my old jeans and one of my t-shirts, grinning like a jack-o-lantern.

“Your ass looks great,” I yelled as I flew past.

She nodded and reached back, giving the padding a big squeeze.

A few days before the start of eighth grade, I came home from an extended bike ride to find my mother waiting at the front door for me. She was smacking a newspaper against her ample hip. I put the kickstand down and took my time getting to her. I didn’t know what I had done wrong, but that never mattered. She was mad and I was in trouble; that was all I needed to know.

She waited until I was inside, and then closed the door behind me so she had the privacy to start a loud fight.

“What’s this?” She waved the paper in my face. I had no idea what she was talking about.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“‘I don’t know? I don’t know’” She mocked me, using a silly little mouse voice. “Give me a break. Do you think I was born yesterday?” She slammed the newspaper down on the coffee table.

I picked it up and started to look through it. On page four was a photograph of a fountain in downtown Saint Paul and the caption
August Heat Makes the Cities Sizzle
. There I was, along with other random citizens, sitting by the fountain, eating a banana and reading
Endless Love
by Scott Spencer. Oh, how I cherished that book, reading it and rereading it, dreaming of being so much to someone.

“What’s the matter? I’m just reading a book.”

“How did you get to downtown Saint Paul?”

“I rode my bike.”

“No you didn’t.”

“Yes I did. I swear.”

“Who took you there? Did some boy take you there? Some man? Do you have some boyfriend you aren’t telling me about?”

“No. I swear.”

“Who’s he?” she asked, stubbing her finger on the face of a guy in the photo.

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen him before.”

“And you’re both eating bananas?”

“Uh, I guess. I don’t know this guy. I didn’t realize we were both eating bananas.”

“He looks like he’s twenty years older than you! What’s the matter with you? He’s probably married! Do you have some kind of a problem? How am I supposed to trust you when you pull stunts like this? Grounding you isn’t enough anymore. I’m thinking of sending you away to one of those boarding schools. I’m serious. Your father and I are talking about it. This is the last straw!”

“Mom, listen to me! I don’t know that guy! I was just at the park reading a book! I didn’t do anything wrong!”

“
You’re both eating bananas!
Do you think I’m a fool?”

I stood there in disbelief.

“Do you think I’m a fool?” she repeated, putting her head in her hands. “Now I can’t even open the paper without finding you, out who knows where, embarrassing our family. Do you think your sister or brother ever pulled a stunt like this?
Ever
?” She looked at me, disappointment and disgust spewing from her eyeballs. “You’re going to get a month for going there and another month for lying to me if you don’t tell me the truth right now.”

“I am telling you the truth. I rode my bicycle there. I am telling you the truth.”

“Kiss your bicycle goodbye. You father is taking it to work with him tomorrow and he’s giving it away to the first person who’ll take it. You’re grounded. Two months. Write it on the calendar. No television, no phone. I told you, write it on the calendar.” She brushed past me out the door and shoved the bicycle over with her hip. “You got off lucky,” she yelled back at the house. Never one to under-do a dramatic departure, she got in her car and squealed the tires as she drove away. I saw the neighbor across the street duck her head behind her mini-blinds, and the neighbor kitty-corner from us rise from her porch furniture and go inside.

“I guess embarrassing your family is hereditary,” I yelled after her, kicking my knocked over bike. The street was silent, save for the fading rumble of my mother’s car. And all was still, save for the lingering sway of the neighbor’s blinds.

Jeb Wilde said he had some information for me.

“Should we meet at the Golden Dragon?” I asked.

“Yeah. How’s two o’clock.”

That was fifteen minutes away. “Sure.”

Click.

Jeb Wilde was a man of few words.

Exactly one week had passed since our first meeting, and this was the first time I had heard from him. I grabbed my purse and headed out the door, intentionally leaving my cell phone behind so Adrian couldn’t reach me when he got out of the shower. I jumped in the car and drove to the restaurant. Jeb was already sitting inside.

I slid in across from him and the waitress came over. I ordered tea.

“I hope you got cash for that,” said Jeb.

“I do.”

“Don’t want to be using credit cards or checks. You got to be discreet.”

“Do you mean so Adrian doesn’t find out?”

Jeb just looked at me without saying anything, which made me feel stupid. And didn’t answer my question.

“What do you have for me?” I asked.

“So far, not much. But I like to check in, so you know I’m working for you. Forgive me if you know this already, but it’s something.” He had a manila envelope and from within it he drew two copies of birth certificates along with some old photographs.

“This,” he said, showing me a tall blonde man, “is your sister and brother’s dad. So you might already know all this, but this is how I work a case. I got to get to the bottom, look at every angle, you know.”

He had photographs of my mother with a man, posing for a dance, sitting together in a car, waving while she sat beside him on a blanket, both of them wearing swimsuits. I examined the information on the table, careful to slide it out of the way when the tea arrived.

“You need to order food,” said the waitress.

“None for me,” said Jeb.

“I’ll take an egg roll,” I said.

“Egg roll? What else?”

“Dipping sauce. Thanks.”

“Hmph!” said the waitress as she walked away.

“Who is this guy? Why do you think this is their dad, and not just someone she used to date?” I asked.

“This picture is from a Christmas dance, 1967. She would have already been pregnant. Then she marries your dad in July, after your brother and sister are already born. What a sucker. I bet she tried to get him to marry her before they came along, but he was dragging his feet. Back then you didn’t have babies out of wedlock. So the question is, what happened to this guy?” Jeb poked at the photograph. “Turns out he’s working in Tacoma at a bank. Oh, and their birth certificates have his name on them.”

“But Van’s middle name was Roger, after my dad.”

Jeb laughed. He laughed and laughed until tears ran down his leathery cheeks. Finally he pulled off his glasses and wiped them on the corner of his shirt.

“I can’t believe everyone kept this from me. What’s so funny?” I asked.

“This schmuck’s name is Roger too.”

I poured myself a cup a tea, annoyed with Jeb’s amusement over my dysfunctional family.

“It says Loden on their gravestones,” I said.

Jeb showed me the copies of Van and Valencia’s birth certificates and I saw that their last names were originally Nelson. I slid the copies back to him.

“This is a lot to take in,” I said.

“I think she married your dad because he was a little bit older, and was settled, and could provide for her. I’m no psychiatrist, but you learn things when you do this long enough.”

“Are you saying you think my mom or dad had something to do with this?”

“With what?”

“With their deaths!”

Jeb looked exasperated. “No. I’m just trying to show you I do my homework.”

My egg roll arrived and I pushed it away, so Jeb ate it. Repressed memories of overheard conversations between aunts and uncles came back to me. Maybe I had always known Valencia and Van weren’t my real sister and brother. It certainly explained a lot.

“You can take these back,” said Jeb, returning the original photos and clippings I gave him. “I got what I need from these.”

“Oh, thanks.” I wasn’t thrilled to have the pictures back, as I had looked at them a little too much when they were around, but it was better than not knowing where they were. I tucked them in my purse.

“Where did you find those pictures?” I asked, nodding at the photos of my mother and the twins’ real father. “And how were you able to get copies of their birth certificates?”

“You don’t need to know how I do my job,” said Jeb.

I opened my mouth to respond and closed it again, no words coming to me.

“That might sound harsh but it’s the way it works,” said Jeb.

I shrugged, trying to behave as if I knew what I was doing. “So is my dad really my dad?” I asked, dipping my finger in the unused dish of plum sauce and sucking it off my fingertip.

“I can find out, but it will cost you,” said Jeb.

“Never mind.” I signaled for the check.