The Orphan Daughter

by Cari Noga

  “Why don’t you stay, too? There’s plenty of food,” Aunt Jane says as, reluctantly, I take the black-and-white dress to the bathroom. I have to try it on there since I don’t have Mom’s mirror in my room anymore. It looks better than I thought, but still little-girlish.

  “¡Qué bonita!” Esperanza exclaims when I go back to the kitchen.

  “You look just lovely, Lucy,” Mrs. Livingston says, smiling.

  Aunt Jane’s pretending to be busy with the food, but really watching. “Very nice,” she says, scooping salsa into a bowl. “What do you think?”

  “It’s OK, but—” I hesitate. “I want to try on the ones Esperanza brought.”

  Surprisingly, Aunt Jane nods.

  There are three, one purple, one black and turquoise, and one a coral color. I like the purple one best, so I try it first. But the skinny straps are too long, and it falls too low. When I walk into the kitchen, Aunt Jane’s eyes go kind of wide, like she’s surprised, but she doesn’t say anything.

  “We could pin it,” Esperanza says, lifting a strap off my shoulder and pinching it together. “No one would see.”

  “It’s a beautiful color,” Mrs. Livingston says.

  The next one, with black and turquoise sequins, is also too big. It’s strapless, and it has a bra sewn inside it. I look down at the cups that stick out, empty. Would it fit Phoebe? I’m not even going to show them.

  The last one fits best, and the coral color is pretty, but it looks little-girly, too, the whole skirt made of ruffles.

  “I like the purple one best,” I announce to the kitchen, quiet except for Esperanza munching a chip. Mrs. Livingston looks at the floor.

  “Then wear that one,” Aunt Jane says, making my mouth fall open.

  “Really?”

  “I’ve got safety pins somewhere. Put it upstairs, and we’ll adjust it after dinner.”

  A smile spreads across my face, the corners of my mouth lifting my stomach elevator, too. Even though she brought the other dress, Mrs. Livingston smiles back. So does Esperanza. I float up the stairs. Aunt Jane says something and I pause on the landing where the stairs turn.

  “. . . just like her mother,” Aunt Jane says. “Gloria loved to play dress-up. Her dad always brought clothes home—he owned a dry cleaner’s. Things people forgot to pick up. They became Gloria’s costumes.”

  I never knew that. Either that my grandpa owned a dry-cleaning store or that Mom liked playing dress-up. I bet she was really cute. Maybe that’s how she learned about clothes. Can you bring down my navy-and-white spectator pumps? Find the scarf I bought on our trip to Majorca?

  “I remember pinning the straps, the hems so she wouldn’t trip,” Aunt Jane continues. Her voice sounds funny. Softer. It’s weird to think of Aunt Jane knowing something about Mom that I don’t. I’m torn between sinking into the cozy memory of Mom’s closet and listening more.

  “¡Yo también!” Esperanza says. “I have a little sister.”

  “In Mexico?” Mrs. Livingston asks.

  “Sí. I miss her so much. She doesn’t pretend anymore, but Rosa still loves to dress up. She makes most of our jewelry. I just sell it here.”

  “Really.” Aunt Jane’s voice changes again, sharper, like usual. “But you’ll be seeing her soon, right?”

  “No creo.” Esperanza’s voice sounds sad.

  “You don’t think so? But it’s October. The season’s over.”

  There’s a long pause. Mrs. Livingston coughs. “I’m starving. What’s keeping Lucy?”

  I run the rest of the way upstairs, throw the dress on the bed, and clatter back down to the kitchen, where all three of them are looking at their plates. I missed something, but I don’t even know what to ask. And I can’t decide if I’m glad I know about Mom and the dress-ups now or I feel bad that there’s stuff I don’t know about her.

  After dinner, Mrs. Livingston and Aunt Jane say they’ll clean up. In my room Esperanza plugs in a curling iron and pins up the straps on the purple dress. “Nails next,” she says, taking out a bottle of purple polish.

  How’d she know I’d pick the purple dress? I watch her paint my nails quickly, perfectly, no blobs or smears.

  “Can you do my hair up?” I say.

  “Claro. Something like this?” She gathers up my hair on top of my head and pulls a few strands down. “We curl these . . .”

  “Yeah.” I smile. Then Mom’s dangly diamond earrings will show up really good.

  It takes forever to get my hair fixed. I know it’s almost eight, when I’m supposed to get the Skype call. I crane my head toward the clock and—owww!—the curling iron singes my neck.

  “¡Lo siento! Oh dear.” Esperanza looks stricken.

  “It’s OK. I’m OK,” I say, standing up, even though my neck hurts. It’s 7:54.

  “Hielo.” She leaves.

  “It’s fine!” Ice will drip on my dress. I check the iPad’s Internet connection. It’s on. Wait, I forgot the earrings! I go to the drawer with my sweaters. I tuck the money back in the drawer and carefully slide the jewelry out on my dresser. The award dinner earrings have a diamond stud and three dangly diamond strands that catch the light when I move my head. I slide all the jewelry onto my dresser. There are three bracelets. I don’t know which is the one Daddy bought when I was born, the Lucy-in-the-sky one, but I slide the one with the most diamonds onto my wrist. I wish I still had Mom’s mirror! Maybe I can see my reflection in the window? As I peer at the glass, the door opens behind me.

  “Here’s the ice. Let me see,” says Aunt Jane, entering in front of Esperanza.

  “It’s fine! I don’t want to drip on my dress.” 7:58.

  “I brought a towel to hold it with. Here, just—oh my—oh my God.” She drops the ice and towel.

  “¿Qué? It’s not that bad, is it?” Esperanza peers over her shoulder.

  Aunt Jane stares at me. “Those earrings. Your mother’s. Where did you get—” Except for her mouth, nothing is moving.

  “The desk downstairs. In the bedroom.” 7:59.

  “And the bracelets. But how—” She’s looking from me to Esperanza and then to my dresser, where I laid the gray velvet bag. Her cheeks are turning pink.

  “I found them. After the storm.” Why isn’t anyone calling yet? My neck does hurt now. Downstairs, there’s a knock.

  “Juan. Time I go,” Esperanza says, coming over to kiss my cheeks. “Estás preciosa.”

  8:01. Officially late.

  “Wait, I’ll walk you out,” Aunt Jane says. “Wrap up the leftovers.”

  “Keep them.” Esperanza waves her hand. “We eat Osorio’s three nights a week.”

  8:02. Finally, the Skype tones sound, but on the screen is a man in a black T-shirt with a headset. “Lucy Ortiz?”

  “Yes?” Where is Lupe Hernandez? Where is the crowd? The beautiful banquet room? He glances at his watch. He’s got a scruffy beard. No tux, no—

  “I’m the production manager. They’re running behind. When they’re ready, I’ll put you through.”

  “Oh.” Duh. I feel silly. Of course, Lupe Hernandez wouldn’t call herself. He disappears. My neck hurts again, and I pick up the fallen bag of ice and press it to my neck. 8:03. 8:04. 8:05.

  “Still there?” The man in the black shirt is back. I drop the ice. It’s 8:08. “They’re ready. You’re live in five. Four. Three.” Then I see two fingers, then one, then he’s gone, and the scene on the screen transforms into the elegant ballroom, with huge crystal chandeliers hanging over white-covered tables with giant flower arrangements. It’s so fancy and beautiful. Then a woman is speaking, a lady who sounds like Mom, with perfect English accented just enough to make it seem like she’s singing every word.

  “¡Bienvenida, Lucy! Me llamo Lupe Hernandez. On behalf of Latinas in Media, we’re so glad you could join us!” She’s wearing a floor-length, blue sequined gown with one long sleeve and one bare arm.

  “Gracias,” I say, smiling, and the room erupts in applause. They told me to prepare so
mething, so I wrote a little speech. I take a deep breath.

  “My mom’s job was really important, and she was really good at it. She would be really proud to have an award named after her. So would my dad. And so am I.”

  “Beautifully said, Lucy!” Lupe Hernandez leads more applause. Then they play a highlight video of Mom. I didn’t expect that. There she is on the set, in the chair I used to spin in. Her voice is her news voice, musical like Lupe Hernandez’s, but confident and strong, too. On location in New Orleans for the hurricane, in front of courthouses, interviewing everybody from men in suits to J.Lo. It ends with the picture that was in the bus shelter ad, Mom standing with her arms crossed and her awards, Best Latina Anchor and all that, listed next to her. The picture stays up as they call up the scholarship winner, a girl named Carmen Delgado who says Mom was her mentor when she interned at the station.

  “I’m going to the University of Michigan, so maybe we can meet someday,” she says.

  I nod, biting my lip. Hearing Mom’s voice again has been really weird. If I try to say something back, I might cry. Actually, I’m glad I’m not there, in the huge, fancy room with Mom smiling at everyone from a giant screen. She belongs to me.

  “¡Qué mundo tan pequeño!” Lupe Hernandez breaks in with her singsongy voice. “Lucy, we know it’s a school night, so we’ll say buenas noches.”

  The screen goes dark. 8:17 p.m.

  “Lucy?” Aunt Jane knocks and cracks open my door. “All done?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “That was quick. How did it go?” She steps into the room.

  “Fine.” I smooth the purple skirt. I can still see the picture, but with the words, plastered to the bus shelter. ¡No la pierdas! Don’t miss her!

  But I do. I do, I do.

  “I brought some more ice.” She sits on the bed and hands me another Ziploc bag.

  “It’s OK now.” I put my finger to the burn mark, and then the dangly strands of the earrings.

  “I didn’t realize that you had your mom’s jewelry,” Aunt Jane says. “We should probably keep it someplace safer—”

  “I like having it here.” It comes out louder than I meant.

  “But—”

  “I want to keep it in my room.” She wasn’t worried about safety when they were in the desk downstairs. The suit Mom was wearing in that picture was one of those that Deirdre abandoned at the dry cleaner’s. Who’s wearing it now?

  Aunt Jane hesitates. “Well. I guess so.” She stands up.

  Suddenly I don’t want to be alone. I even feel a little grateful she wouldn’t let me go, because otherwise I would have been in that giant, fancy room. “Aunt Jane?”

  “Hmmm?” She’s taken two steps toward the door.

  “My neck does hurt. A little.”

  “Here you go.” She hands me the bag of ice and the towel from before off the floor.

  “I, um, heard what you said. Before dinner. About my mom. Liking to dress up and stuff,” I say as I settle the bag against the burn.

  “That’s right.”

  “Did, um, you, too?”

  “Me? Heavens, no. Even back then, I was a plain Jane.”

  Plain Jane. Back in New York, the first day. She said the same thing. I didn’t get it then. “But you still played with her and stuff.”

  “Gloria didn’t really let people choose.” But she’s smiling as she says it. “She didn’t take no for an answer.”

  “Daddy said that, too. That was why she was such a good reporter.”

  “I bet.”

  “They played a video of her. At the dinner. I heard her voice.”

  “Oh, Lucy.” Aunt Jane has left the door and is sitting next to me on the bed again.

  “Interviewing people. And stuff.” The tears are coming back now, stronger. “I miss her.”

  “I know.” Aunt Jane is stroking my hair, curling one of the loose pieces around her finger; then she takes the ice bag so I don’t have to hold it, and I lean into her shoulder. It’s funny, but both the cold ice on my neck and the hot tears falling make me feel a little bit better, the tears soaking right into Aunt Jane’s soft green fleece vest without any tissue or anything, and she just holds and rocks me until my tears are gone and the ice cubes melt into water.

  Chapter 52

  JANE

  I told Lucy to eat the Osorio’s leftovers tonight while I’m at the school district wellness expo. It’ll be good to get them out of the fridge. Esperanza’s generosity stung my conscience all the more. Doesn’t matter that she never knew. Borders aren’t the only invisible, unforgiving boundaries, turns out. Assumptions and judgments are just as dangerous. My assumptions and judgments, or rather misjudgments, which are accumulating into a long list. Not telling the school about Lucy’s phobia. Underestimating how important Gloria’s award dinner would be to her. What happened to the jewelry.

  “I feel so guilty,” I confessed to Sarah at our next session.

  “I think you’re simply human. It’s partly a function of our environment here up north. We are segregated, no two ways about that. Without personal experience, we can default to stereotypes or narratives we hear in the media.”

  “Then how do you stop it? I’m worried it’s a pattern.” Miguel, for instance. Misjudging his pride when I overpaid him last spring. Rebecca and her family, who, with some guidance, have turned out to be dedicated workers, not the greenwashed dilettantes I anticipated.

  “The clearest pattern I see is you being hard on yourself. And let me ask you this. If it’s really true that you’ve misjudged all those people, isn’t it just as likely that you’re misjudging yourself?”

  Her suggestion was so novel it halted my rocking.

  “The most important thing is to learn from misjudgments. Establish new patterns. And you are. Look how the banquet wound up compared to Lucy’s birthday.”

  “She was in tears.”

  “But crying on your shoulder. Releasing grief and being comforted, instead of isolating herself and bottling up her emotions.”

  Good point. “Bottling’s bad. I figured out that much,” I say with a grimace.

  “And again, very human. If we can convince ourselves everything’s fine, we’re fine, then nothing has to change,” Sarah said, snapping her fingers. “Presto. We’ve enabled ourselves to avoid the pain and upheaval that comes with change.”

  I think about Gloria’s letter. Devoted mother. Could that be just as true as what I’ve believed all these years? Memories blur—a snow-day morning, tucking in the blanket around Matt’s shoulder. Blue knitted mittens. Piggyback rides, baseball games, cat rescues, stepping stumps, carrot cake with cream-cheese frosting. Presto, chango? Maybe so.

  I turn the truck into the parking lot of the new high school, not the one Matt went to, where the wellness expo is being held. Like Lucy’s school, it looks like a jail. If the school district’s so keen on wellness, seems like one step in the right direction would be to stop building cinderblock fortresses and cooping up the staff for seven hours a day. Not to mention the students.

  It takes three trips to haul in everything, including a bushel basket of apples to sample and another of fingerling potatoes, each handful bagged with my potato salad recipe. Robert Sears suggested that as a take-home reminder. I luck out with my assigned table, in between a yoga studio and someone offering chair massages. The massage therapist is sure to get a line. While they wait, people can take an apple and some information. I grab a schedule from the yoga studio. Sarah also suggested trying a class, or meditation.

  “Do the mourning you denied yourself,” she tells me every appointment. “Regularly, so the grief is less likely to blindside you.” With the onset of the off-season, I picked mornings, after Lucy’s left for school. Morning mourning. The homophone reminds me, and the daylight keeps it from turning to brooding. So far, I mostly just repeat her name. Nina. Nina. Nina.

  It’s a start. The only way out is through. Which is true for Lucy, too. The dam did seem to break after the
award ceremony, the grown-up pretense of the dress and that infernal jewelry vanished, and she huddled into me like a—

  I stop the thought, then swallow hard, considering. Yes.

  Like a child would. Una niña.

  It’s five minutes before the official start time, but a woman has stopped already. She’s wearing reading glasses and a Traverse City West Titans sweatshirt. A school ID dangles from a beaded lanyard. She holds out one hand and takes an apple with the other.

  “Plain Jane’s! I used to buy your stuff at the farmers’ market, but I haven’t seen you there in a while.”

  I push the picture of Lucy and me away. Focus, focus. “Since I started the CSA, I cut back. You plan for your customer base, and not much more.”

  “Supply and demand, right. I’m an econ teacher.” She laughs. “Well, count me in! Are you taking deposits tonight?”

  “Um, not just yet. But I could let you know.” I dig in my bag for a notepad. The Extension people should see me now! The way it works, the school district will reimburse each employee $150 for wellness expenses. I was worried that wouldn’t be enough incentive, since my subscriptions start at $500. But an hour later the samples have dwindled and the signup sheet of people ready to make deposits is onto a second page. Other people say they remember me from the farmers’ market or stopping at the stand. It’s a good feeling. Supply and demand, like the economics teacher said, and for once I’m on the right side of the equation. Never mind the worthless estate, I can take care of Lucy with Plain Jane’s. The sensation is one of abundance, of deep satisfaction. From somewhere surfaces the memory of the pregnant Amish mother at the farmers’ market. “Full of blessings,” she’d described herself. Right now, I get that.

  The glowy feeling lasts for the rest of the expo. It lasts through the conversation with the yoga teacher at the next table, who gives me coupons for two free classes. Maybe Lucy will try it with me. It lasts through loading up the truck, which only takes one trip, since all the apples and potatoes were taken. It lasts through town and the turn north up the peninsula, which itself glows in the water’s reflection of the almost-full moon as I climb to the gateway view. It lasts until my cell phone rings, displaying a 212 area code.