Finding Miracles (7 page)

“You were just a tiny little thing.” Dad held his big hands about a foot apart, smiling proudly.

Mom smiled, too, like she was really looking at that baby, not just the empty space between Dad’s hands. “The sisters just adored you. Especially Sister Corita. She was the one who found the basket just outside the door. You were wrapped in a shawl with a little piece of paper pinned to your dress with your name on it. And this was also in the basket with you.” Mom nudged the box toward me.

“Beautiful wood, isn’t it?” Dad stroked the box. “Mahogany,” he pronounced. “Shall we open it?”

I eyed the box—which had suddenly been transformed into The Box, with scary capital letters. “What’s in it?”

“Nothing to worry about, honey,” Mom reassured me. “It’s just like a memory box, with some pictures and souvenirs and newspaper clippings. Plus, all your adoption papers and naturalization papers we put in there later. You want to look in it?”

I shook my head and pushed The Box back toward them.

“We don’t have to open it now,” Mom agreed. “Any time you’d like to look inside it or talk about it...”

“You okay, sweetie?” Dad was starting to worry.

“It’s a lot to take in, we know,” Mom added.

I knew I would start crying if I didn’t get out of there soon. I looked up, and instantly their eyes were on me like they were hungry for me to say anything.
Say something,
I told myself,
make them feel better
. But all I could come up with was, “Can I go out and play now?”

My parents looked at each other helplessly. “Sure, sweetie,” Dad said. “Of course you can,” Mom added. But I had to tug at their hands to get them to release mine.

I stood up, pushed in my chair like this had been some kind of formal session. I remember noticing my hands. They were covered with a rash again. Maybe they were itchy, I don’t know. I was too numb to feel anything.

Out in the driveway, I stared at my new bike for a while like I couldn’t figure out what it was for or how to use it. I didn’t know what to do with myself. Somehow it seemed like I would have to be a whole different person from now on.

Then I remembered what I’d said inside.
Can I go out
and play now?
That’s right. Continue as before. Put this story back in The Box and push it away.

I got on that bike and pedaled furiously around the driveway and out into the street, where I was not allowed to go. Somehow, I knew that today, I would not get in trouble for breaking the rules. Looking back now, I can see that I had kept on pedaling ever since. Until the day when Pablo leaned toward me in the lunch room and with a simple question—click!—opened the lid.

Saturday afternoon, Mrs. Bolívar and I took the bus back from the mall. It dropped us off at the town center, half a block from where the Bolívars lived. I was going to walk home from there, but Mrs. Bolívar insisted that it was getting dark and a
señorita
should not be traveling by herself. So Pablo was enlisted to accompany me. It felt silly in our small town, where crime amounts to a car full of teenagers on a Saturday night bashing mailboxes or toilet-papering a girl’s front yard. But I kept reminding myself that these people had been living in a dictatorship with disappearances and horrible tortures. (Mr. Barstow had just finished a whole segment on current Latin American history that was giving me nightmares.)

Not that I minded Pablo’s company. Along with Nate, I had suddenly gotten an older brother and friend. More and more, I admit, there were pangs of not wanting it to stop there.

“So you’re my bodyguard?” I said, once we were beyond earshot of his mother.

“A
body
guard?”

I tried thinking of the Spanish word but drew a blank. “You protect me from danger,” I explained. “Like if a mugger comes, or say, I were famous, you’d keep the fans away.”

“Are you looking for someone for this job?”

“Yeah, right! I’m in such danger in Ralston. No, what I need is a fairy godmother to wave her magic wand. . . .” I waved my hand. And then, it was like when you shake food into an aquarium and a bunch of little fish come zooming over to those flakes. All these wishes popped into my head, things I yearned for, like Grandma’s love and Kate’s understanding and Em not being such a big mouth—and other wishes, too, I didn’t even have words for yet, stirrings about my birth parents and Pablo and the stuff in books that’s just covered by “happily ever after.” But though my head was packed with them, I couldn’t think of a single wish to say out loud. I guess I didn’t want to sound like some whiney teenager who didn’t have her life together.

“¿Bueno?”
Pablo was waiting. “What would you wish for, Milly?”

I thought of saying something sappy like
world peace
. But instead, I shrugged.
“Nada, nada.”
Not a thing. “But no use wasting a wish.” I held out an invisible package. “Why don’t you use it?”

I felt a little silly playing pretend with a grown-up guy. But Pablo didn’t miss a beat. He mimed taking my package, shaking it, and listening to the contents. Then he opened it up and drew out something between his thumb and forefinger.

“What is it?” I asked. I felt a little breathless. He had me almost believing that he’d found something in our invisible wish box.

He shook his head. “We cannot name it or it disappears.”

I felt like I’d opened a door that led to a place I’d never been before. I wanted him to say more. But I also wanted the magic to unfold in its own time, for the little roots to grow.

Since it was a warm spring evening, I suggested we take the long way home through the town’s old cemetery. It really is a pretty spot, with clumps of birches that were just starting to get that tinge of green. Some of the tombstones have quaint inscriptions. I mean, there are people buried there from before this place was the United States. In the summer, you’ll sometimes see tourists taking rubbings of them.

“Walk through
el cementerio
?” Pablo seemed hesitant.

I was about to tease Pablo about believing in ghosts when, again, I remembered Mr. Barstow’s lectures—the murders, the cemeteries filling up. “Oh, forget it, let’s just go through town.”

“No, no, Milly,” Pablo insisted. “I want to go with you.”

“Are you sure?” I looked into his eyes, the way you do to see if someone’s telling the truth. His eyes seemed to soften, meeting mine. A quiver of excitement went through me. I felt that pang again and looked away.

We entered through the little gate and walked down the central path, stopping now and then to read the names on interesting-looking stones.

“¡Qué curiosa!”
Pablo noted, crouching by a tombstone.

I had seen it before and gone quickly by it. Now I knelt beside Pablo and let him guide my hand over the letters as if I were a blind person, trying to read Braille.

“It gives no name, only MOTHER,” Pablo noted. “Was
la
familia
afraid to put the name on the stone?”

“It’s not that,” I explained. “In fact, all the names are listed over on that central stone. I guess it’s just that when someone you love dies, you don’t lose a name, you lose a relationship.”

Pablo nodded absently. I could feel him slipping away into his bad memories. “Every victim in my country is a father, a mother, a brother, an uncle. . . .” His voice faltered. Pablo had told me about his uncle, Tío Daniel, a radical journalist, who was murdered a month or so after the Bolívars had escaped to the States.

Again, I wondered about my birth parents. Had they been victims as well? I had lost them before I even had a relationship with them. No name, no stories. A blank stone.

We were quiet as we made our way down the path. It was dark by the time I got home.

The phone was ringing on the other side of the door. I said a quick goodbye to Pablo and raced to get it before the machine kicked in.

“Good evening. Kaufman residence.” I was hamming it up, thinking my parents were calling, worried that I wasn’t yet back from the mall.

There was a pause. Oh no, I thought. A pervert’s on the other end and my parents are gone! There was still time to race to the door and call out for Pablo to come back.

“Who is this?” It was a woman’s voice, commanding, familiar. “Hello? Sylvia, is that you?”

Happy?! Happy was calling us?! “Oh, hi, Grandma—” Or was I supposed to call her that anymore? “It’s just me, Milly.” I meant to make my voice go flat and uninterested, but I couldn’t. Something in me still wanted this old woman to love me.

“Milly, dear. I didn’t recognize your voice. You sounded so grown up. How are you, sweetie?”

Was this the Academy Awards for Hypocrisy or what? “Nate’s not here,” I told her right off. Just so she’d know and wouldn’t waste her long-distance money talking to me. “And Mom and Kate and Dad are gone for the weekend.”

“Why didn’t you go?”

I shrugged. Like she was going to see me shrugging! “I just wanted to stay, I guess.”

“You sound a little lonely, honey. Maybe I can send Roger up for you.”

I could not believe this. My grandmother who had disinherited me was going to send her driver six hours to pick me up in Vermont?! “No, no, Grandma. Really, don’t worry. Mom and Dad’ll be back tomorrow. And my friend Em is coming over tonight.”

“If you’re sure...” Happy didn’t sound totally convinced. She went on to ask how I was doing in school and how my classes were going. They were the same old questions she always used to ask me. But now she actually sounded interested. I mean, there were pauses between each question, like she was expecting an answer back from me.

It seemed Happy wanted to know about everyone in the family tonight, not just Nate, though we did spend a couple of minutes on this really cute card Nate had sent her, thanking her for her Passover card. (Kate and I had also signed it.) Nate had gotten the picture off the Internet. A huge gorilla holding a tiny gorilla in its hairy arms. Inside the folded paper, Nate had written “LOVE YOU, GRANDMA!!!” I remembered thinking it was perfect that this ugly, tarantula-looking gorilla was supposed to be my awful grandmother.

The doorbell started ringing spastically, no time between rings. Em was here. But I wasn’t on the cordless to just walk over and open the door. And never in my life had I cut off Grandma.

“What’s that sound?” Happy finally asked.

“It’s just my friend Em at the door.”

“I’m going to hold on while you go check, okay? Come back and tell me if it’s her before I hang up.” City people, I swear.

I wasn’t about to tell Happy that we didn’t have a surveillance camera like she did at her mansion or she’d start in on the latest crime statistics. I raced to the door, flung it open, and Em barely got out, “Where have you been—” when I cut her off.

“Talking to Happy. She’s still on the phone.” I didn’t want my big-mouth friend shouting something like
YOU
MEAN YOUR GRANDMOTHER, THE BITCH?

“Grandma, it’s my friend like I said.”

“Good, good. I’m glad. You won’t be alone, then. Anyhow, you tell your parents I called, okay? Go take care of your friend.” But she didn’t hang up. Instead, there was a little pause. “You know Grandma loves you, Milly.”

“Love you, too, Grandma,” I replied automatically, but saying it, I realized I really did mean it. I set the receiver down gently in its cradle.

“Happy?!” Em looked incredulous. When I nodded, she went on, “So was Happy happy?”

I knew Em was trying to make a joke about my mean grandmother. But I felt suddenly sad for Happy always being unhappy. It struck me that Happy had called because she was feeling lonely and needed to talk to someone who wasn’t paid to listen to her talk. Poor Happy. Maybe she was realizing she might lose more than the past if she kept taking out her sadness on the rest of us.

What a night it was turning out to be. The walk home with Pablo. Happy’s phone call. Then Em with the latest “news.” Em made quote marks in the air with her fingers. Her parents had decided they were going to stay together after all.

“They’re such babies.” Em sighed. “They’re really not fit to be parents. I think people who want to be parents should really, like, take a test. I mean, you need a license to drive, right?”

We looked at each other in that way you can look at a close friend and not have to look away. We knew how deep down this truth went in both our lives.

“Do we even have the energy to do this?” I said, leading Em upstairs.

“It’s up to you,” Em said. Though I could tell she’d be disappointed if we just went over to Jake’s instead.

We sat across from each other on my bed, holding hands, The Box between us. Weirdly, the moment reminded me of that day in the kitchen when my parents had told me about my adoption.

“Your hands are really broken out,” Em said, turning them over. “Have you been putting Mr. Burt on?”

For Christmas, Em had given me a bag full of little tins, Burt’s Bees salves, that hadn’t done much of anything but make me smell like cough drops. “Nothing helps,” I told her. “The doctor now says its neuro . . . something—it means it’s all in my head.”

Em shook hers. “That rash looks pretty real to me. Anyhow,” she added, eyeing The Box as if to remind me of our task.