Becoming Naomi Leon

by Pam Muñoz Ryan

  Gram said, “Naomi. Owen. Go on in your room so I can talk to Terri Lynn.”

  “Oh, that’s not my name anymore. I changed it. To Skyla. Isn’t it beautiful? Naomi and Owen, come on over here. I would like to hug my children.”

  We looked at Gram and she nodded.

  Owen went first and reached out to hug Skyla, but before he could, she said, “Oh, look. You have something stuck to your shirt,” and she reached down and started to pull off the long piece of tape pressed across his chest.

  Owen clasped his hands over the tape.

  Gram and I yelled at the same time, “No!”

  “He . . . he likes it,” I said.

  “It’s just a little comfort thing he does,” said Gram.

  Some kids had blankets or stuffed animals they dragged around. Others got contentment from twirling their hair or sucking their thumbs. Owen had to have tape stuck to his shirt — the clear kind people used to wrap presents. For some reason it brought him a peculiar satisfaction.

  Skyla pulled her hand back. “He wears it on purpose?” She looked from Gram to me to Owen. Then she started laughing. “Woman, what have you done to this boy?”

  Gram’s eyes got all beady, like pigeon eyes. “He’s just fine. There’s no harm done.”

  Owen looked at Skyla as if she was a fairy princess, but still didn’t take his hands off the tape. He gave her his biggest jack-o’-lantern smile (I swore his mouth was too big for his face) and said in a dreamy sort of way, “It’s all right. You didn’t know.”

  I walked over to Skyla and she put her hands on my shoulders, keeping me at arm’s length. She did that sort of leaning-in type of hug, with a quick cheek-to-cheek touch. It was not the I-haven’t-seen-you-in-seven-years type of hug that I would have expected. Then she did the same to Owen. I put my arm around Mr. Starry Eyes and herded him to the bedroom.

  As soon as we were there, Owen grabbed my hands and started jumping up and down. “It’s our mother! It’s our mother! Maybe she missed us and wants to know all about us and has presents for us — ”

  “Shhh. Owen, stop!” I said. We were only a lick and a promise from the living room/kitchen, separated by a flimsy accordion door, which I did not shut. I wanted to hear the conversation word for word.

  “I need a place to hang out for a while,” said Skyla.

  “These children don’t know you.”

  “Well, it’s about time they did.”

  “You should have thought of that years ago,” said Gram. “I’m not going to have you coming in here, Terri Lynn, and messing with their lives.”

  “I told you, my name is Skyla.”

  “And where did that come from?” said Gram.

  “My new boyfriend, Clive. He said I didn’t look like a Terri Lynn. He said I look beautiful, like the sky. I’m Skyla Jones now. I went back to my maiden name. And for your information, I’m not here to mess up these kids’ lives. I’m just here for a visit while Clive’s at training.”

  “Training?” said Gram.

  “He’s a tattoo artist,” said Skyla. “And don’t look at me with that hard-eyed stare. There’s good money in tattoos. He’s learning dragons and flames from a guy in downtown San Diego. Clive is staying with him at the studio and it’s too small for me, too, so I thought since I was in the area, it would be a good time to, you know, reconnect with my children.”

  “Where have you been all this time?” asked Gram.

  “I’ve had some trouble. . . .”

  “What kind of trouble?” said Gram.

  Even though my ear was straining to catch a phrase, their voices gathered in a whorl of whispers I couldn’t hear.

  Then we heard Skyla yell, “You can go along with me or not. I’m their mother and Clive says I have rights.”

  Now we could hear Gram loud and clear. “You left those children with me when that boy was a year old and covered head to hide with infected insect bites. Naomi was four and didn’t even talk until she was almost six — ”

  “Don’t make out like it was such a big deal,” interrupted Skyla. “Naomi was always stubborn and quiet, and Owen just had a few fleabites.”

  “No, ma’am,” said Gram. “Naomi went to a counselor for two years. She had selective mutism — that’s what it’s called — from insecurities and Lord knows what other trauma during her young life. That’s what the counselor told us, and Naomi still doesn’t talk much. Owen was on antibiotics for three months to get him cleared up. There’s no telling what went on in Mexico that caused those children’s abominations. And now, seven years later, after you never sent a card or made a telephone call to even let us know you were alive, you want to talk about your rights?” There was a little hitch in Gram’s voice. “Terri Lynn, they . . . they’re tied to me. You promised I could raise them proper with no interference. That’s what we agreed on before you left.”

  “Naomi and Owen seem fine now, so I couldn’t have been that bad. And I’ve changed my mind about seeing them, that’s all. Now, I’m going to meet Clive but I’ll be back later. And I’d appreciate you calling me Skyla.”

  When the trailer door closed, the floor jiggled beneath our feet. Owen and I ran to the louvered window and looked out. There was just enough brightness from the porch light to see Skyla get into a red Mustang, touch up her lipstick, and pull away from the trailer. She tore out of the trailer park going faster than the posted fifteen-mile-per-hour speed limit.

  Part of me couldn’t wait to see her again. The other part of me was wringing my hands like a contestant in the Worrywart Olympics. All of a sudden I had a million questions. Why did she come back? How long was she going to stay? Would she like us? Would we like her? My thoughts dived into a jumble in the middle of my mind, wrestled around until they were wadded into a fisted knot, and attached themselves to my brain like a burr matted in a long-haired dog.

  Dripping wet, Gram didn’t weigh a hundred pounds, and even wearing her running shoes she didn’t reach five feet tall. Now, sitting down with her skinny neck drooping over the table, she looked like a swan peering into a lake.

  Owen and I slid in across from her. She folded her hands and looked at us. Her face seemed tired, but not happy-tired like after working in the garden all day with Fabiola. Instead, it was worry-tired I saw in her eyes, as if something bad was about to happen. The purple and yellow curlers on her head seemed much too cheerful for her face.

  “I know you probably don’t remember much about your mother,” said Gram, talking real slow as if we wouldn’t understand her if she sped up. “I’ve told you the story of how Terri Lynn came to live with me. . . .”

  We had heard it, but only once in glorified detail because Gram was not one for rehashing events from the past. Owen and I had retold it to each other so many times that we might as well have been reciting from a storybook. It had started way back, after Gram was widowed. Her daughter got married and ran off to live in Kentucky. Gram said it broke her heart to lose her only child to folks in a state so far away. Her daughter and son-in-law had one child, Terri Lynn. Gram had only seen her a few times during her young life. Then, when Terri Lynn was a teenager, her parents suffered a car crash and died two weeks later in the hospital. Terri Lynn was sent to live with her other grandparents. From what Gram could figure out, Terri Lynn defied them so much that they finally didn’t want her anymore. Gram was her only other living relative, so they put Terri Lynn on a bus to Lemon Tree. She arrived mad at the world and almost grown.

  “When she came to live with me, there just wasn’t much I could do with her, wild as she was,” said Gram. “And then . . . and then . . .”

  “Then Walker Gordon had their summer company picnic and you brought Skyla,” I continued. “And Fabiola and Bernardo brought some men who were visiting them from their town in Mexico.”

  Gram nodded. “Terri Lynn met Santiago, a gentle, sweet man, and so handsome. He looked like those Latin singers you see in magazines. He was smart and full of life and spoke English enough to get by. Th
ose two loved each other like crazy. For a while at least. They were really just children themselves.”

  “Then they got married,” said Owen. “Then they had Naomi. Then they had me.”

  “They lived in a little studio apartment, but it was like putting a pack of angry cats in a wood box,” said Gram, shaking her head. “The obligations of you two came into the stew, and their marriage just never thickened. They thought that if they went to Mexico, everything would be better.”

  “Then they took us to Rosarito Beach so our dad could make lots of money fishing and our mom could make lots of money braiding people’s hair on the beach,” said Owen. “Then they got a divorce and our dad stayed in Mexico and our mom went to find her life and we came to live with you.”

  “My apartment was small as a cracker tin,” said Gram. “And here I was with you two and Owen a whirling dervish. My notion was that children needed wide-open space to be wild monkeys. Fabiola told me about the trailer rancho and how it backed up to all the avocado trees. I suspected that Fabiola and Bernardo wanted us close so they could help out with you kids. They always felt kin to you, being that your dad was from their town. And well, I thought it would be good for you to be around them and exposed to your Mexico side.”

  “You filled in real nice,” I said, patting Gram’s hand.

  “And now our mother is back,” said Owen, looking confused. “That’s a good thing, right?”

  “Owen honey, it’s the good and the bad I’m worried about,” said Gram.

  One of her favorite sayings was that the good and the bad of any situation were sometimes the same. When I was younger I had trouble holding my brain on that thought, but now it was starting to make sense. I even had a list in my notebook called “Things That Were the Good and the Bad All Rolled into One”: 1) We had a trailer so we lived real simple without a lot of stuff, 2) We had avocados growing nearby and could eat as many as we wanted to the point of getting sick, 3) Gram was an expert seamstress and made all of our clothes out of polyester-blend remnants, and 4) Gram was retired and could devote her every waking moment to me and Owen.

  Now I would have to add: 5) Our mother came back. What did Gram suspect the bad would be?

  “Where is she going to sleep?” asked Owen. “How ’bout she sleeps in my bed and I could sleep on the floor? I can pretend I’m camping.”

  Baby Beluga had a living room/kitchen, Owen’s and my bedroom with two side-by-side captain’s beds (with drawers underneath), a short hall that ran right into Gram’s bedroom, and a tiny bathroom. That was it.

  “I think we’re awful close to camping already,” said Gram. “She can sleep on the foldout under the table.”

  “Where did she go?” said Owen.

  “Out.” Gram frowned.

  “Maybe she’ll be right back,” said Owen, his voice excited. “Maybe she just went out to pick up a pizza and ice cream so we can sit around together and talk about what we’ve been doing for all these years.”

  Gram and I looked at him. His never-ending good nature was grating on me.

  “Owen,” said Gram. “I give you more credit than that.”

  We heard a quick double-knock on the door, then it opened.

  “¡Hola! Hello, I am here. I made tapioca.” It was Fabiola, just in time for Wheel of Fortune. She held a ceramic bowl and wore one of those flowered bib aprons that went over her head, but she was so short and round that the apron was rolled up at the waist so it wouldn’t drag on the floor. Gram said Fabiola’s mission in life was to feed the world with a smile. Her face was set with lots of little smile wrinkles next to her eyes and framed with brown permanent-waved curls. And I had never once seen her without her little gold dot earrings.

  Fabiola took one look at Gram’s face and asked, “What has happened, María?” Mary was Gram’s given name but Fabiola always called her the Spanish version.

  “Terri Lynn was here. She’s come back.”

  “But we’re not supposed to call her Terri Lynn,” said Owen, “’cause she changed her name to Skyla, after the sky.”

  “Skyla?” said Fabiola, her forehead wrinkling.

  No one said a word. I could hear water trickling from one of the neighbors’ garden hoses.

  In just a few seconds Fabiola’s face changed to worry-tired, too.

  “Come,” said Fabiola, setting the tapioca on the table. “We must tell Bernardo.”

  Gram got up and put on her sweater. Then she handed Owen and me our sweatshirts.

  I looked at Owen. His eyes grew big and his mouth dropped open. He slid off the bench, opened the drawer, took out a roll of tape, and studied it. Then he stuffed the whole thing in his pocket.

  I picked up my notebook, took Owen’s hand, and followed Gram and Fabiola out the door.

  That was the instant I knew with conviction that Skyla walking through the doorway of Baby Beluga was life-changing serious. I knew it for two reasons, and I suspected Owen knew it, too. First, Gram had marched outside the trailer and was following Fabiola into the avocado grove still wearing her clown head. Second, and what locked the possibility of catastrophe in my mind, was that Gram and Fabiola were going to miss Wheel of Fortune, and that was going to mess up their 744 nights-in-a-row record.

  A floodlight cast a path of brightness straight through the avocado grove. Not that we needed it. Over the years we had worn a foot trail to Fabiola’s front door and could get there blindfolded. Up ahead the glow lit up the yard like a bright island, and the tree branches seemed like giant black umbrellas over our heads. We passed the chickens, who made gentle clucking sounds as we walked by their makeshift wire coop. Normally we’d stop to pet them, but Gram and Fabiola had a purpose to their walk that said no stopping. They led us into the little clearing toward the flat-roofed house.

  Lulu, Fabiola’s miniature poodle, ran toward us yapping, her bobbed tail wagging back and forth and her black curls shimmying with excitement. Owen picked her up.

  Bernardo came out of his work shed and stood in the square of light from the doorway, holding a piece of sandpaper and a short plank of wood. He was barely taller than a fence post with skin the color of toasted almonds. When he first saw us hurrying toward him, he tipped his straw cowboy hat back on his gray-haired head and smiled wide, not even minding that he was showing us his crooked teeth, some of them pointing sideways.

  “¿Qué pasó? What happened?” he asked, his smile fading.

  Fabiola spoke in Spanish, the words racing off her tongue. She ended the string of sentences by putting her hands on her hips and saying, “Skyla.”

  A body would think that since I was half Mexican I could speak the language, too, but I couldn’t. I understood a little just from being around Bernardo and Fabiola all these years, but whenever I tried to copy them, the words felt like marbles moving around in my mouth.

  Bernardo looked suspiciously around the yard, as if someone might be watching us, and said, “We should go inside.”

  Fabiola and Bernardo’s small house was wide-open spacious compared to our trailer. It had three bedrooms, one of them set up as a full-on sewing room where Gram and Fabiola still did alterations. Currently they were working every day on a bride’s gown and fourteen bridesmaid dresses for a wedding coming up the first weekend in December.

  In the living room, striped crocheted blankets rested on the back of the couch and chairs. Colorful braided rugs made little bridges from one room to another, and Bernardo’s bookshelves hung on every wall. Photographs of their two sons from high school graduations and in their United States Navy uniforms crowded the end tables, along with school pictures of Owen and me.

  Without saying a word, we all sat in our spots in the living room: Bernardo in the recliner with Owen on his knee, Fabiola on one corner of the couch and me on the other, with Lulu wriggling between us, and Gram in the straight-back rocker.

  I opened my notebook and waited.

  Gram said, “Naomi, I’m not sure taking notes is in order.”

  “Just i
n case,” I whispered. I didn’t want to forget anything important that might be said.

  Gram took a deep breath. “I always worried this day might come.”

  “What’s going to happen?” I asked, my voice barely a breath.

  “I’m not sure,” said Gram. “I suppose she has a right to visit you and you have a right to get to know her. More than that, I want her to see that you kids are healthy and happy and dug-in deep here with me. I hope I can remember to call her Skyla. I just don’t want to get her riled.”

  “The children? She could take them?” asked Fabiola.

  “When she showed up on my doorstep seven years ago,” said Gram, “I didn’t know if they’d be with me for a few weeks or a few months. I knew enough to have Skyla write out a letter giving me permission to get them doctors and medicine, if they needed, and to enroll them in school and such. But other than that, I don’t have claim to them . . . except that I raised them. After so many years of her being absent, I added my last name to Owen’s and Naomi’s on all their records and papers so we’d have a frame for a family. That was just my fancy and not legal-like.”

  Before that our names had been Owen Soledad León and Naomi Soledad León. When Gram tagged on her last name, Outlaw, I took it in stride (until this year), since it made her so happy.

  “She has had a very difficult life,” said Fabiola. “Maybe she is growing up now and wants to present herself to Naomi and Owen, and that is why she is here.”

  I thought Fabiola leaned toward Owen’s disposition when it came to looking on the bright side of everything.

  “I would sorely like to believe she’s changed,” said Gram.

  “Changed?” I said.

  “Naomi, she was always as temperamental as a bead of water on a hot skillet. I am hoping she has settled some.”

  “You want the children to stay here, with us?” asked Bernardo.

  Gram didn’t answer right away. “No, better we’re together.” She took a deep breath and stood up. “I should get them in bed and make up the foldout.”